The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(98)

“Judging by your Shissa attack, you want to be theatrical. Big, destructive gestures are demoralizing, as well as costing a lot of lives,” Akos said. “But Hessa doesn’t have grand, floating buildings you can knock out of the sky. It has the temple. It’s stamped on our old currency, from before the Assembly was formed. There’s nothing else to attack in Hessa except the temple.”

The odd thing was, he knew that both men already knew this. Lazmet was old enough to remember the siege his mother had led against Hessa, the one that Hessa temple still bore the busted windows and scraped-up stones from. The one Akos’s grandmother had gone into with nothing more than a meat cleaver, if the stories were true.

So Lazmet probably just wanted to see if Akos would persuade him, or bother to try. More “curiosity,” more experimentation. It never stopped.

“It’s a temple, not a labyrinth,” Lazmet said. “I don’t really need your help to attack it, now that you’ve told me that’s what I ought to do.”

Akos felt the sharp stick of panic in his chest. But he knew Hessa temple better than most Thuvhesits did, and that had to be worth something. It had to.

“By all reports, it may as well be a labyrinth for as much sense as its layout makes. You’d be hard-pressed to find a map of it, either,” Akos said. “But if you and your fighting force want to run around like a bunch of idiots, giving the oblates plenty of time to summon the whole army of Hessa—the best army in all of Thuvhe, I should add—then go right ahead.”

“So the layout is nonsensical, there are no maps, and you just happen to know how to navigate it,” Lazmet said with a sneer. “How convenient.”

“None of this is convenient,” Akos said, scowling. “You brought me here because you thought I had something useful to tell you about Hessa, and now I tell you I know something useful and you refuse to believe it?” Akos let out a short laugh. “I betrayed my country, I got my friend killed—I have nothing to go back to, nothing left in the world except for that house, where people will leave me alone. You made sure of that. So have your attack, have your war, have whatever you want, but leave me alone, and I’ll give you whatever I’ve got.”

Lazmet’s eyes were fixed on his, searching, calculating. Akos imagined himself as the Armored One, tearing into his own abdomen to make a space for Lazmet to get in. He felt the wire wiggling in his head, and the involuntary twitch of his fingers that meant Lazmet was testing him. Suspicious, as always, but Akos had come to expect it.

Lazmet took in his twitching fingers. Akos felt the swoop of something like hope in his gut, and then—

“Vakrez, give me a read on him,” Lazmet said.

Akos knew it would be more suspicious to object than not, so he stuck out his arm for Vakrez to take. It was getting easier and easier to imagine himself as the Armored One, the more he wanted to be away from everything and everyone. Armored Ones were solitary, separate from everything that channeled the current. Lonely, but impenetrable, just like he was. He knew most people who killed them had to find a way to stick a knife in them right under the arm or leg joint, where there was a space between the thick plates that covered its body. They had to get in far enough to make the thing bleed to death. That was how Cyra had killed it, he was sure. It was her way—find the weakness, exploit it, be done with it. It was more honorable than the way he had done it, lulling the beast to sleep, giving it relief, like he was someone to be trusted, and then poisoning it.

But that was his way.

Except now, there was nothing he could do except let down his currentgift shield so that Vakrez could poke his way into Akos’s heart. And what he would see there was pure intention, the desire to kill Lazmet unmistakable.

Vakrez touched him, his hand cool and rough as always, and closed his eyes for a few ticks. Akos waited for the blow to fall, waited for the end of him.

“So much clearer now,” Vakrez said. He opened his eyes, and looked to Lazmet. “All he wants is to escape.”

Akos tried not to stare. It was a lie.

Vakrez was lying for him.

He didn’t dare look at the commander. He couldn’t afford to give himself away now.

“Then, my boy,” Lazmet said to him, “it seems we have a deal. You take me to Hessa. And I’ll let you go home.”

I’ll take you to my home ground, Akos thought, and that’s where you’ll die.





CHAPTER 50: CYRA


THE NEXT MORNING, THERE was nothing left to do but leave the safe house. Leave Voa, and Lazmet, and Akos.

Give up, in other words.

We rifled through the drawers of one of the abandoned apartments to find a change of clothes for everyone, then left the safe house. We had promised Yssa, who was waiting in the ship for the signal to retrieve us, that we would meet her if we managed to escape.

I fidgeted as we walked, the rough fabric of my ill-fitting trousers rubbing at my thighs. Someone’s old throw blanket had become a scarf to cover my face, and it, too, chafed. Zyt and Ettrek led the way, the knot atop Ettrek’s head bobbing with each footstep, then Yma and Teka, at a respectable distance, and Sifa and me, trailing behind. As we passed beneath boarded-up windows, I listened to Yma and Teka’s conversation.

“I left the house to its ruin,” Yma was saying. “It’s too far away for most thieves to bother breaking into it, anyway.”