The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(91)

“Vakrez tells me you are too consumed with self-hatred for him to get a meaningful reading,” Lazmet said. “Yma assures me that you are progressing. That a vulnerable heart is easier to bend.”

Akos didn’t answer. Sometimes he wondered if Yma was playing a game with him. Indulging his desire to kill his father while worming her way in to do her actual work. He had no way of knowing that she was on his side, not really, except her word.

A wall panel behind Lazmet pulled back, and three servants filed into the Weapons Hall, carrying plates covered with protective domes of gleaming metal. They set one plate in front of Lazmet, one in front of Akos, and a third in the center of the table, then backed away. Akos didn’t see if they left or if they simply fell into the shadows.

“I am familiar with how guilty people think, though I myself find guilt to be a worthless emotion,” Lazmet said. “Why feel bad for a thing you did with full conviction, after all?” He hadn’t sat down yet. He snapped his fingers, and one of the servants came forward with a cup made of etched glass. She poured something into it, something dark purple and thick, and Lazmet drank.

“I know that you are thinking there may still be time to undo what you have done to your friend,” Lazmet said. “It’s a last effort to maintain the part of your identity that I most need you to let go of. You are someone who thinks in extremes, and you have placed me, my family, perhaps all of Shotet, in an untouchable, unreachable place inside you that you have labeled ‘bad.’”

He reached across the table to the dome in the center, and lifted it. The plate was empty but for a jar, a smaller version of the ones lining the walls. It, too, held greenish preservative. And bobbing inside it were two white globes.

Akos tasted bile and roasted deadbird. He could have looked away. He already knew what was in the jar. He didn’t need to keep looking—

One of the globes turned, showing a dark iris.

“I take one eye if I intend to let someone live,” Lazmet said. “I take both if they are executed, as Jorek Kuzar was at midnight last night.”

Akos swallowed reflexively, and forced himself to close his eyes. If he kept looking, he would vomit. And he would not give Lazmet the satisfaction of seeing him vomit.

“The truth,” Lazmet said softly, “is that you cannot undo what you have done. It’s too late. You will never be able to return to the people you once counted as friends. So you may as well let go, Akos.”

There was horror somewhere at the edge of his mind, so close he could touch it without difficulty, if he dared. He breathed, and drew away from it. Not now, not yet.

What is your mission?

Akos opened his eyes, staring up at the man whose blood and bone and flesh had conspired to create him.

To kill Lazmet Noavek, came the answer, clearer now than ever before.

Lazmet sat down across from him, and uncovered his plate, offering the dome to the servant behind him. On his plate was a roll, a piece of cooked meat, and a whole fruit, its peel still on. Lazmet frowned at it.

“I didn’t think this shipment would come for another week yet,” he said, picking up the fruit. Akos recognized the peel from when he had broken into Lazmet’s office.

A green glimmer caught his eye just over Lazmet’s shoulder. The wall panel had slid back, silent, and a dark head was jutting out of the opening. The head lifted, showing a sliver of silverskin, and a pair of sharp, dark eyes.

Behind Lazmet, Cyra raised a currentblade about the length of her forearm, and made to stab him in the back. Akos didn’t stir an izit.

Lazmet, however, lifted a hand, as if signaling for another glass of whatever it was he was drinking. And Cyra’s hand stopped, right in the middle of her downward swing.

“Cyra,” Lazmet said. “How kind of you to remember my favorite fruit.”





CHAPTER 47: CYRA


MY FATHER HAD NEVER used his currentgift on me. That would have required him to acknowledge my existence, which he had preferred not to do. So I had not realized how strange it would feel, to be the target of his unique power. I felt him wriggling around in my head, an uncomfortable pressure in the primary central cortex of my brain, which triggered movement. I assumed that was the area he manipulated, anyway. It could also have been my cerebellum.

Not the time for a debate over anatomy, I scolded myself.

Regardless of where he focused his currentgift, it was working. My fingers, hand, and arm were completely stiff, holding the blade halfway between where I had raised it and where I had intended to shove it. The rest of my body also seemed to be incapable of movement—not that it was numb, exactly, but it was like a pile of kindling that refused to take a spark. Everything felt the same, but I couldn’t get it to move.

He seemed to want me to respond, though, because what small movement I was able to channel was in my mouth and jaw.

“No problem,” I said, feeling oddly clearheaded though I knew that I was about to die. My last chance to kill him had been a moment ago, and now it was gone. Lazmet’s control over my body was absolute as of the moment he became aware of my presence.

Except, I thought, if Akos touches him.

I tried to make eye contact with Akos, to somehow communicate what I wanted him to do, but I couldn’t move.

The wriggling in my brain went deeper, and I felt utter revulsion. My fingers pulled apart around the knife handle, and the blade clattered to the floor. Lazmet stood, faced me, and picked it up, examining the handle.