The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(95)

She had an embroidered pillow in her lap, one I had bought from a little shop in Hessa where a friend from primary school worked. She was wearing socks I had loaned her because hers weren’t warm enough. They were yellowish brown, or brownish yellow, I could never decide which, and had a lumpy heel where I’d gone wrong with mending them.

She told me that she hadn’t really grown up on a pirate ship. That was just what she told people to startle them. The transporter ship she was on as a kid did some shady business every now and then, she said, but nothing to get huffy about.

And trust me, she said, if there was something to get huffy about, my parents would be huffy.

They had landed on Essander to dump the goods from their most recent job, and it just happened to be the planet where the Shotet were doing their seasonal scavenge. Only, scavenges weren’t supposed to include theft and murder, according to the ethical guidelines Shotet had agreed to when the Assembly was formed.

The Shotet boarded the transporter ship, much like pirates would have done. And they blew through the vessel room by room, rifling through everything to find valuables, and killing whoever they wanted. One of the scavengers threatened Isae’s mother, and when her father defended her, they both wound up dead. So Isae went at the man with a meat mallet.

A . . . meat mallet? I asked her, so shocked I couldn’t help but smile. It was all right. She smiled, too.

She cracked one of them hard in the head, she said, but meat mallets are worthless against a Shotet soldier. Actually, pretty much anything was, according to her. They were lethal. And the leader of the group, a woman, must have admired Isae’s gumption, because instead of killing her, she pinned Isae down and carved into her face, saying, “Remember me.”

She hadn’t mentioned Ast at the time, except to say that some of her friends were hurt or killed, too. Now, though, I knew that he had been there, and that a Shotet soldier had killed his father, and half of his friends.

Yeah, there were plenty of reasons for Ast to care what happened to Shotet in this war.

“Cee?”

Isae’s voice sounds strained. She looks worn, her hair lank around her face. She grabs my hand and squeezes it. I guess Ast must not have told her I tried to send a message to the Shotet exiles, then, or she would have me arrested instead of sitting at my bedside.

“Did you . . .” My voice sounds creaky as an old door. “Did you make the alliance with Othyr?”

“You don’t need to worry about that right now,” she says. “Just focus on healing, okay? We almost lost you. I almost lost you.”

“I’m fine,” I say. I tap the button to raise the top half of the bed. When I’m partially upright, pain burns all the way through to my back, but I don’t want to lie down again. “Tell me.”

“Yes, I made the alliance,” she says. “Before you say anything—we needed that weapon, Cee. The pressure to retaliate is intense.”

“Pressure from where?” I say. “Ast?”

She frowns at me.

“Everywhere,” she says. “From my own head, for one. From Shissa, Osoc, Hessa. From the Assembly Leader. Everywhere. They killed innocent people. What am I supposed to do?”

“Show mercy,” I say, and it’s enough to set her off.

“Mercy?” she demands. “Mercy? Where was Shotet mercy when they destroyed a hospital? Where was it when that woman held me down and sliced into my face? Where was it for my mother, my father—for Ori?”

“I—”

“Othyr gave us an anticurrent blast, and I’m going to use it as soon as I can,” she says. “At which point I hope you’ll tell me your brain was addled by painkillers, because there’s no way a right-minded person would call for mercy right now.”

She storms out, with a straight spine. The posture a couple seasons at the Assembly taught her, so she would fit in.

They killed innocent people, she said, almost in the same breath she talked about doing the same. And that’s the problem—because to her, no Shotet is innocent. And that is the big difference between us.

I look up at the clouds projected on my ceiling. They’re thicker now, closer together.

I’m stuck here, and out of options. Out of time.

I dream of the oracle Vara, showing me the sculptures in the Hall of Prophecy on Ogra. Each one is a member of my family, made of glass. Even Cyra is among them.

And I wake to Ast’s face, looming over mine.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, when the beetle chirps—signaling to him, I’m sure, that I’ve moved. “Isae will be along soon. I just wanted to have a chat with you first.”

He drags the stool over to my bedside, and sits, the beetle perching on his shoulder.

“You may have noticed that I didn’t tell Isae that you tried to contact our enemies. That you tried to contact Cyra Noavek.”

My face is hot. My throat burns. I want to speak. To yell. To wrap my hands around his throat.

“I didn’t think it was wise to arouse her suspicions—you betray her, and in the same night, you’re attacked?” he says. “But you should know that if I do decide to tell her, I’m sure she will have more sympathy for me than she will for you. Attacking the woman she loves because she turned traitor to her country . . . it’s forgivable. What you did is not.”