Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1)

by Veronica Roth

anointing one after another, with no discernible pattern. Every season we follow its leading, then we land, and scavenge.” “Why?” Akos murmured back. We cull each planet’s wisdom and take it for our own, Otega had said, crouched down beside me at one of our lessons. And when we do that, we show them what about them is worthy of their appreciation. We reveal them to themselves. As if in response to the memory, the currentshadows moved faster beneath my skin, surging and receding, the pain following wherever they went. “Renewal,” I said. “The scavenge is about renewal.” I didn’t know how else to explain. I had never had to before. “We find things that other planets have discarded, and we give them a new life. It’s . . . what we believe in.” “Seeing activity around P1104,” the first Examiner said, hunching even lower over one of the hunks of rock near the edge of the galaxy. His body looked almost like a dead insect, curled into a husk. He touched a section of the current where the color—green now, with hints of yellow—swirled darker. “Like a wave about to hit shore,” the sharp-edged woman purred. “It may build or fizzle, depending. Mark it for observation. But right now my guess for the best scavenge planet is still Ogra.” The scavenge is a kindness, Otega had whispered in my child-ear. To them as well as to us. The scavenge is one of the current’s purposes for us.

“Let’s go to the festival,” he said. He was too thin, I thought. There were shadows under his cheekbones where flesh should have been, in a face so young. “No Ryzek. Just you and me.” I stared down at his upturned palm. He offered touch to me so freely, without realizing how rare it was. How rare he was, to a person like me. “Why?” I said. “What?” “You’ve been nice to me recently.” I furrowed my brow. “You’re being nice to me now. Why? What’s in it for you?”

“Growing up here really has warped you, hasn’t it?” “Growing up here,” I clarified, “has made me see the truth about people.” He sighed, like he disagreed with me but didn’t want to bother to argue. He sighed that way a lot. “We spend a lot of time together, Cyra. Being nice is a matter of survival.”

I grabbed Akos’s arm, and pulled him in to whisper, “They’re staring. They know who I am.” “No,” he said. “They’re staring because you’ve got bright blue paint all over your face.” I touched my cheek, lightly, where the paint had dried. My skin felt rough and scaly. It hadn’t occurred to me that today it meant nothing if people stared at me. “You’re kind of paranoid, you know that?” he said to me. “And you’re starting to sound kind of cocky, for someone I routinely beat up.”

He took the dagger that I had offered him and looked it over, testing the blade with his fingertip and wrapping his hand around the handle. “You handed over this weapon so easily,” he said. “But I could use this against you, Cyra.” “You could try to use it against me,” I corrected him quietly. “But I don’t think you will.” “I think you might be lying to yourself about what I am.” He was right. Sometimes it was too easy to forget that he was a prisoner in my house, and that when I was with him, I was serving as a kind of warden. But if I let him escape right now, to try to get his brother home, as he wanted, I would be resigning myself to a lifetime of agony again. Even as I thought it, I couldn’t bear it. It was too many seasons, too many Uzul Zetsyvises, too many veiled threats from

Ryzek and half-drunk evenings at his side.

“Blue is our favorite color,” I said. “The color of the currentstream when we scavenge.” “When I was a child,” he replied wonderingly, “it was my favorite color, too, though all of Thuvhe hates it.” I took the palmful of blue water I had collected, and smeared it into his cheek, staining it darker. Akos spluttered, spitting some of it on the ground. I raised my eyebrows, waiting for his reaction. He stuck out his hand, catching a stream of water rolling off a building’s roof, and lunged at me. I sprinted down the alley, not fast enough to avoid the cold water rolling down my back, with a childlike shriek. I caught his arm by the elbow, and we ran together, through the singing crowd, past swaying elders, men and women dancing too close, irritable off-planet visitors trying to cover up their wares in the market. We splashed through bright blue puddles, soaking our clothes. And we were both, for once, laughing.

“This was our mother’s favorite,” he said as the door closed behind me. He touched the currentstick, suspended on a diagonal from the wall. It was a long, narrow pole with blades at either end. Each of the blades contained a channeling rod, so if the weapon touched skin, dark shadows of current wrapped around the whole thing, from end to end. It was nearly as long as I was tall. “An elegant choice,” he said, still without turning around. “More for show than anything; did you know our mother was not particularly proficient in combat? Father told me. But she was clever, strategic. She found ways to avoid physical altercations, acknowledging her weakness.” He turned. He wore a smug smile. “You should be more like her, sister,” he said. “You are an excellent fighter. But up here . . .” He tapped the side of his head. “Well, it’s not your strength.” The shadows traveled faster beneath my skin, spurred on by my anger. But I kept my mouth closed. “You gave Kereseth a weapon? You took him through the tunnels?” Ryzek shook his head. “You slept through his escape?” “He drugged me,” I said tersely. “Oh? And how did he do that?” Ryzek said lightly, still smirking. “Pinned you down and poured the potion into your mouth? I don’t think so. I think you drank it, trustingly. Drank a powerful drug prepared by your enemy.” “Ryzek—” I started. “You almost cost us our oracle,” Ryzek snapped. “And why? Because you’re foolish enough to let your heart flutter for the first painkiller who comes ar...

held, had come because he offered me relief. Because I was so grateful for the reprieve from pain—and from isolation—that my heart had softened. I had been stupid. “You can’t blame him for wanting to rescue his brother, or for wanting to get out of here,” I said, my voice quaking with fear. “You really don’t get it, do you?” Ryzek said, laughing a little. “People will always want things that will destroy us, Cyra. That doesn’t mean we just let them act on what they want.”

“Why are you keeping him here?” Akos said through gritted teeth. “Does he even have a currentgift? Or have you starved it out of him?” Vas—casually, lazily—backhanded Akos. Akos crumpled, clutching his cheek. “Akos,” Eijeh said. His voice was like a light touch. “Don’t.” “Why don’t you tell him, Eijeh?” Ryzek said. “Have you developed a currentgift?” Akos peered past his fingers at his brother. Eijeh closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, nodded. “Rising oracle,” Akos murmured in Shotet. At first I didn’t know what he meant—it was not a phrase we used. But Thuvhesit had different words for all three oracles—one falling, close to retiring; one sitting, prophesying from the temple; and one rising, coming into the fullness of his or her power. “You would be correct in assuming that I have not been able to make him use his gift for my benefit,” Ryzek said. “So instead, I intend to take it.” “Take it?” Akos said, echoing my own thoughts. Ryzek stepped closer to Akos and crouched in front of him, his elbows balanced on his knees. “Do you know what my currentgift is?” he said lightly. Akos didn’t answer. “Tell him about it, Cyra dear,” Ryzek said, jerking his head toward me. “You are intimately acquainted with it.” Akos, bracing himself with one hand, lifted his eyes to mine. There were tears mixed with the blood on his face. “My brother can trade memories,” I said. I sounded empty. Felt

like it, too. “He gives you one of his, and takes one of yours in return.” Akos went still. “A person’s gift proceeds from who they are,” Ryzek said. “And who they are is what their pasts have made them. Take a person’s memories, and you take the things that formed them. You take their gift. And at last . . .” Ryzek ran his finger down the side of Akos’s face, collecting blood. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, examining it. “At last, I will not have to rely on another to tell me the future.”

Akos stood and dropped the armor over his head. When he tried to tighten the first strap over his rib cage, he winced, shaking out his hand. The straps were made of the same material as the rest of it, and they were hard to maneuver. I pinched the strap between my fingers, tugging him toward me. My own fingers were already callused. I pulled at the strap, working it back and forth until it was pulled tight around his side. “I didn’t mean to involve you,” Akos said quietly. “Oh, don’t patronize me,” I said tersely. “Manipulating me was a crucial part of your plan. And it’s exactly what I expected.” I finished with the straps, and stepped back. Oh, I thought. He was tall—so tall—and strong and armored, the dark blue skin of the creature he had hunted still rich with color. He looked like a Shotet soldier, like someone I could have wanted, if we had found a way to trust each other. “Fine,” Akos said, again in that quiet voice. “I meant to involve you. But I didn’t expect to feel bad about it.” I felt choked. I didn’t know why. I ignored it. “And now you want me to help you feel less bad, is that it?” I said. Before he could answer, I walked out, bringing the door closed behind me.

“I know quarters are close here,” I said. “But space on the ship is limited. I tried to make it livable for us both.” “You made this place?” he said, turning toward me. I couldn’t read his expression. I nodded. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to share a bathroom.” Still babbling. “But it’s not for long.” “Cyra,” he interrupted. “Nothing is blue. Not even the clothes. And the iceflowers are labeled in Thuvhesit.” “Your people think blue is cursed. And you can’t read Shotet,” I said quietly. My currentshadows started to move faster, sprawling under my skin and pooling beneath my cheeks. My head pounded so hard I had to blink away tears. “The books on elmetahak are in Shotet, unfortunately, but there’s a translation device next to them. Just place it over the page, and—” “But after what I did to you . . .” he began. “I sent the instructions before that,” I replied. Akos sat down on the edge of the bed. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry, about . . . everything. I just wanted to get him out. It was all I could think about.” His brow was a straight, low line above his eyes that made it too easy to see his sadness as anger. He had cut his chin shaving. There was a rumble in his whisper: “He was the last thing I had left.” “I know,” I replied, but I didn’t know, not really. I had watched Ryzek do things that made my stomach turn. But it was different for me than it was for Akos. I at least knew that I was capable of similar horrors. He had no way of understanding what Eijeh had become. ...

Pain had a way of breaking time down. I thought about the next minute, the next hour. There wasn’t enough space in my mind to put all those pieces together, to find words to summarize the whole of it. But the “keep going” part, I knew the words for. “Find another reason to go on,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be a good one, or a noble one. It just has to be a reason.” I knew mine: There was a hunger inside me, and there always had been. That hunger was stronger than pain, stronger than horror. It gnawed even after everything else inside me had given up. It was not hope; it did not soar; it slithered, clawed, and dragged, and it would not let me stop. And when I finally named it, I found it was something very simple: the desire to live.

“You want to know what Ryzek is holding over me?” I laughed again, this time through tears. I tugged the last strap of my chest armor loose, yanked it over my head, and hurled it at the wall with both hands. When it collided with the metal, the sound was deafening in the small anteroom. The armor dropped to the floor, unharmed. It hadn’t even lost its shape. “My mother. My beloved, revered mother was taken from him, from Shotet,” I spat at him. Loud, my voice was loud. “I took her. I took her from myself.” It would have been easier if he had looked at me with loathing or disgust. He didn’t. He reached for me, his hands carrying relief, and I walked out of the anteroom and into the arena. I didn’t want relief. I had earned this pain.

For a moment, everything was dim. I released her limp body, then turned to walk into the anteroom again. The entire crowd was silent. As I passed through the doorway to the anteroom, I was, for once, clear of shadows. It was only temporary. They would return soon. Just out of sight, Akos reached for me, pulling me against him. He pressed me to his chest in something like an embrace, and said something to me in the language of my enemies. “It’s over,” he said, in whispered Thuvhesit. “It’s over now.”

There were marks up and down my arm, from elbow to wrist, row after row. Little dark lines, perfectly spaced, each one the same length. And through each one, a small diagonal hash mark, negating it under Shotet law. Akos’s brow furrowed, and he took my arm in both hands, holding me with just his fingertips. He turned my arm over, running his fingers down one of the rows. When he reached the end, he touched his index finger to one of the hashes, turning his arm to compare it to his own. I shivered to see our skin side by side, mine tawny and his pale. “These aren’t kills,” he said quietly. “I only marked my mother’s passing,” I said, just as quietly. “Make no mistake, I am responsible for more deaths, but I stopped recording them after her. Until Zetsyvis, anyway.” “And instead, you record . . . what?” He squeezed my arm. “What are all these marks for?” “Death is a mercy compared to the agony I have caused. So I keep a record of pain, not kills. Each mark is someone I have hurt because Ryzek told me to.” I had counted the marks, at first, always sure of their number. I had not known, then, exactly how long Ryzek would put me to use as his interrogator. Over time, though, I had just stopped keeping track. Knowing the number only made it worse. “How old were you, when he first asked you to do this?” I didn’t understand the tone of his voice, with all its softness. I had just shown him proof of my own monstrousness, and still his eyes fixed on mine with sympathy instead of jud...

like that. Or he thought I was lying, or exaggerating. “Old enough to know it was wrong,” I snapped. “Cyra.” Soft again. “How old?” I sat back in my chair. “Ten,” I admitted. “And it was my father, not Ryzek, who first asked.” His head bobbed. He touched the point of the knife to the table and spun the handle in quick circles, marking the wood. Finally, he said, “When I was ten, I didn’t know my fate yet. So I wanted to be a Hessa soldier, like the ones that patrolled my father’s iceflower fields. He was a farmer.” Akos balanced his chin on a hand as he looked me over. “But one day criminals went into the fields while he was working, to steal some of the harvest, and Dad tried to stop them before the soldiers got there. He came home with this huge gash across his cheek. Mom just started screaming at him.” He laughed a little. “Doesn’t make much sense, does it, yelling at someone for getting hurt?” “Well, she was afraid for him,” I said. “Yeah. I was scared, too, I guess, because that night I decided I never wanted to be a soldier, if my job would be to get cut up like that.” I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “I know,” he said, his lip curling at the corner. “Little did I know how I would be spending my days now.” He tapped the table, and I noticed, for the first time, how jagged his nails were, and all the cuts along his cuticles. I would have to break him of the habit of chewing on his own hands. “My point is,” he continued, “that when I was ten I was so scared of even ...

was scolding him, but instead I sounded like I was pleading with him. I cleared my throat. “Okay? It doesn’t make it better.” “Okay,” he said. “You were taught this ritual?” I asked him. He nodded. “Carve the mark,” I said, my throat tight. I extended my arm, pointing to a square of bare skin on the back of my wrist, beneath the knobby bone. He touched the knifepoint there, adjusted it so it was at the same interval as the other marks, then dug in. Not too deep, but enough that the feathergrass extract could settle. Tears came to my eyes, unwelcome, and blood bubbled up from the wound. It dripped down the side of my arm as I fumbled in one of the kitchen drawers for the right bottle. He took out the cork, and I dipped the little brush I kept with it. I spoke Lety Zetsyvis’s name as I painted the line he had carved with dark fluid. It burned. Every time, I thought I would be used to how much it burned, and every time, I was wrong. It was supposed to burn, supposed to remind you that it was no trifling thing, to take a life, to carve a loss. “You don’t say the other words?” Akos said. He was referring to the prayer, the end of the ritual. I shook my head. “I don’t either,” he said...

covered with screens that showed whatever was above us—in this case, the Shotet sky. Pipes and vents crowded the space from all sides—it was only big enough for one person to move around in, really, but along the back wall were emergency jump seats, folded into the wall. I pulled them out, and Akos and I sat. I helped him fasten the straps across his chest and legs that would keep him steady during launch, and handed him a paper bag in case the ship’s movement made him sick. Then I strapped myself in. All through the ship, the rest of the Shotet would be doing the same thing, gathering in the hallways to pull jump seats from the walls and buckling each other in. Together we waited for the ship to launch, listening to the countdown on the intercom. When the voice reached “ten,” Akos reached for my hand, and I squeezed, hard, until the voice said “one.” The Shotet clouds rushed past us, and the force bore down on us, cr...

I thought, suddenly, of Akos thanking me for the way I arranged his room, when we got to the sojourn ship. His calm expression as he took in my marked arm. The way he laughed when we chased each other through the blue sojourn rain. Those were the first moments of relief I had experienced since my mother died. And I wanted more of them. And less of . . . this. “No,” I said. “I won’t.” His old threat—that if I didn’t do as he said, he would tell the Shotet what I had done to my beloved mother—no longer frightened me. This time, he had made a mistake: he had confessed to needing my help. I crossed one leg over another, and folded my hands over my knee. “Before you threaten me, let me say this: I don’t think that you would risk losing me right now,” I said. “Not after trying so hard to make sure that they are terrified of me.” That was what the challenge with Lety had been, after all: a demonstration of power. His power. But that power actually belonged to me. Ryzek had been learning to imitate our father ever since he was a child, and my father had been excellent at hiding his reactions. He had believed that any uncontrolled expression made him vulnerable; he had been aware that he was always being watched, no matter where he was. Ryzek had gotten better at this skill since his youth, but he was still not a master of it. As I stared at him, unblinking, his face contorted. Angry. And afraid. “I don’t need you, Cyra,” he said, quiet.

“That isn’t true,” I said, coming to my feet. “But even if it was true . . . you should remember what would happen if I decided to lay a hand on you.” I showed him my palm, willing my currentgift to surface. For once, it came at my call, rippling across my body and—for a moment—wrapping around each of my fingers like black threads. Ryzek’s eyes were drawn to it, seemingly without permission. “I will continue to play the part of your loyal sister, of this fearsome thing,” I said. “But I will not cause pain for you anymore.” With that, I turned. I moved toward the door, my heart pounding, hard. “Careful,” Ryzek said as I walked away. “You may regret this moment.” “I doubt it,” I said, without turning around. “After all, I’m not the one who’s afraid of pain.” “I am not,” he said tersely, “afraid of pain.” “Oh?” I turned back. “Come over here and take my hand, then.” I offered it to him, palm up and shadow-stained, my face twitching from the pain that still lingered. Ryzek didn’t budge. “Thought so,” I said, and I left.

“I figured it out,” he said. “A reason to keep going, I mean.” He flexed his left arm, where his first kill mark was etched. “Oh?” “Yeah.” His head bobbed. “Something Ryzek said kept bothering me . . . that he would make Eijeh into someone I didn’t want to rescue. Well, I decided that’s impossible.” Days ago he had looked empty to me, and now full, an overflowing cup. “There’s no version of Eijeh that I don’t want to rescue from him.” This was the cost of the same softness that had made him look at me with sympathy earlier that day instead of disgust: madness. To continue to love someone so far beyond help, beyond redemption, was madness. “You don’t make any sense to me,” I said to him. “It’s like the more terrible things you find out about a person, or the more terrible a person is to you, the kinder you are to them. It’s masochism.” “Says the person who’s been scarring herself for things she was coerced into doing,” he said wryly. It wasn’t funny, what either of us was saying. And then it was. I grinned, and after a moment, so did he. A new grin—not the one that told me he was proud of himself, or the one that he forced when he felt like he needed to be polite, but a thirsty, crazed kind of smile. “You really don’t hate me for this,” I said, lifting up my left arm. “No, I don’t.” I had experienced only a few different reactions to what I was, what I could do. Hatred, from those who had suffered at my hand; fear, from those who hadn’t but might; and glee, from those

capable of using me for it. I had never seen this before. It was almost like he understood. “You don’t hate me at all,” I said in almost a whisper, afraid to hear the answer. But his answer came steadily, like it was obvious to him: “No.” I found, then, that I wasn’t angry anymore about what he had done to me, to get Eijeh out. He had done it because of the same quality, in him, that made him so accepting of me now. How could I fault him for it? “All right.” I sighed. “Be up early tomorrow, because we’ll need to train harder if you expect to get your brother out of here.” His water glass was marked with fingerprints around the base. I took it from him. He frowned at me. “You’ll help me? Even after what I did to you?” “Yeah.” I drained the water glass, and set it back down. “I guess I will.”

“You want me to kill a man,” Akos said, if only to test it out in his own mind. “A man who aided in your kidnapping. Yes.” “What, out of the goodness of my heart?” Akos shook his head and held out the practice knife handle-first for Jorek to take. “No.” “In return,” Jorek said, “I can offer you your freedom. As you said, there are hundreds of floaters in the loading bay. It would be a simple thing, to help you take one. To open the doors for you. To make sure someone on the nav deck was looking the other way.” Freedom. He offered it like someone who didn’t know what it meant, someone who had never had it taken away. Only, it didn’t exist for Akos anymore, and hadn’t since the day he found out his fate. Maybe even since he promised his dad he would get Eijeh home. So Akos shook his head again. “No deal.” “You don’t want to go home?” “I have unfinished business here. And I really should get back to it, so . . .” Jorek still wasn’t taking the practice knife, so Akos let it fall between them and started toward the door. He felt for Jorek’s mother, maybe even for Jorek himself, but he had enough family trouble of his own, and these marks weren’t getting any easier to bear. “Then what about that brother of yours?” Jorek said. “The one

who inhales when Ryzek exhales?” Akos stopped, grinding his teeth. It’s your own fault, he told himself. You’re the one who hinted at “unfinished business.” Somehow knowing that didn’t make it any easier. “I can get him out,” Jorek said. “Get him home, where they can fix whatever’s addled his brain.” He thought of the almost-escape again, of Eijeh’s broken voice asking him, “Why did this happen?” His sunken cheeks, his sallow skin. He was disappearing, day by day, season by season. Soon there wouldn’t be much left to rescue. “Okay.” It came out like a whisper, not how he meant it. “Okay?” Jorek sounded a little breathless. “You mean you’ll do it?” Akos forced out the word. “Yes.” For Eijeh, the answer was always yes. They didn’t grip hands, like two Thuvhesits might have, to settle a deal. Here, just saying the words in the language the Shotet held sacred was enough.

“Let me cook, okay?” He took the pot from her. The water sloshed, spilling on his shoes. “I guarantee I won’t set anything on fire.” “That happened one time,” she said. “I’m not a walking, talking hazard.” Like so much of what she said about herself, it was both a joke and not a joke. “I know you’re not,” he said seriously. Then he added, “That’s why you’re going to chop the saltfruit for me.” She looked thoughtful still—a weird expression for a face that frowned so easily—as she took the saltfruit from the coldbox in the corner and settled herself at the counter to cut it up.

“I’m your sister. You don’t have to be this way with me,” I said, as gently as I could. Ryzek was staring at the stain on his cuff. He didn’t respond, which I decided was a good sign. “Do you remember how we used to play with those little figurines in my room?” I said. “How you taught me to hold a knife? I kept making that tight fist and cutting off circulation to my fingertips, and you taught me how to fix it.” He frowned. I wondered if he did remember—or was that one of the memories he had traded for one of Eijeh’s? Still, maybe he had taken in some of Eijeh’s gentleness when he traded away his pain.

“We weren’t always like this, you and I,” I said. In his pause, I let myself hope—for a quiet shift in the way he regarded me, for the slow and steady change that our relationship could undergo, if he would just let go of his fear. His gaze found mine and it was almost there, I could see it, I could almost hear it. We could be as we once were. “Then you killed our mother,” he said quietly. “And now, this is all that we can be.” I shouldn’t have been surprised, shouldn’t have marveled at the way words could hit me like a hard punch to the stomach. But hope had made me a fool.

“You know so little about my gift, for all the time we’ve known each other,” Vas said. “Do you know I have to set alarms to eat and drink? And check myself constantly for broken bones and bruises?” I had never thought about what else Vas had lost when he lost the ability to feel pain. “That’s why I let the little wounds slide,” Vas said. “It’s exhausting, paying this much attention to your own body.” “Hmm,” I said. “I think I might know something about that.” Not for the first time, I marveled at how opposite we were—and how similar that made us, both our lives revolving around pain, in one way or another, both spending an exorbitant amount of energy on the physical. It made me curious if we had anything else in common. “When did you develop it?” I said. “What was happening at the time?” “I was ten.” He leaned against the wall and ran his hand over his head. His hair was shaved close to his scalp. Near his ear, there were a few cuts from the razor—he probably hadn’t noticed them. “Before I was accepted into your brother’s service, I attended a regular school. I was scrawny then, an easy target. Some of the bigger children were attacking me.” He smiled. “Once I realized I couldn’t feel pain, I beat one of them half to death. They didn’t come after me again.” He had been in danger, and his body had responded. His mind had responded. His story was the same as mine. “You think of me the way I think of Kereseth,” Vas said. “You think I’m Ryzek’s little pet, just like Akos is yo...

“He’s going to frame someone?” I said. I felt cold at the thought of an innocent person dying because Ryzek needed a scapegoat, and I wasn’t sure why. Months ago—even weeks ago—this would not have troubled me as much. But something Akos had said was working its way through me: that the thing I was did not have to be permanent. Maybe I could change. Maybe I was changing, just by believing I could. I thought of the one-eyed woman I had let go, the day of the attack. Her small frame, her distinct movements. If I wanted to, I could find her, I was sure of it. “A small sacrifice for the good of your brother’s regime.” Yma bobbed her head. “We must all make sacrifices for our own good.”

I turned to her. “What kind of sacrifices have you made?” She seized my wrist and squeezed it hard. Harder than I thought her capable of. Though I knew my currentgift must be burning into her, she didn’t let go, drawing me closer to her, so I could smell her breath. “I have denied myself the pleasure of watching you bleed to death,” she whispered. She released me and moved back toward the group, sashaying as she went. Her long pale hair hung to the middle of her back, perfectly straight. She was like a pillar of white from behind, even her dress such a light blue it almost matched. I rubbed my wrist, my skin red from her grasp. I would bruise, I was sure of it.

“You aren’t going to tell me why you want to find her, are you.” “No,” I said. “Does it involve seeking your own revenge?” “See, answering that would be a form of telling you why I want to find her, which I just said I wouldn’t do.” I smiled. “Come on, Otega. You know I can take care of myself. I’m just not as harsh as my brother.” “Fine, fine.” She took the knife from me. “I’ll need to spend a little time with it. Come back here right before curfew tomorrow, I’ll take you to its owner then.” “Thank you.” She guided a loose strand of hair behind my ear, and smiled a little, to disguise her wince at touching me. “You’re not so scary, girl,” she said. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell my staff.”

Swirls of rich blue filled the glass. There were veins of lighter color, too, and almost-purple, and deep navy. The currentstream was huge and bright and everywhere, everywhere. Like being wrapped up in the arms of a god. Some people had their hands stretched out in worship; others were on their knees; still others, clutching their chests, or stomachs. One man’s hands glowed as blue as the currentstream itself; small orbs, like fenzu, swam around a woman’s head. Currentgifts run amok.

Akos thought of the Blooming. Thuvhesits weren’t as . . . expressive as the Shotet during their rites, but the sense of it was the same. Gathering to celebrate something that happened only to them, of all people in the galaxy, and only at a certain time. The reverence they had for it, for its particular sort of beauty. Everybody knew the Shotet followed the currentstream around space as an act of faith, but until then, Akos hadn’t understood why, except maybe that they felt like they had to. But once you saw this up close, he thought, it was impossible to imagine a life without seeing it again. He felt separate, though—not just because he was Thuvhesit and they were Shotet, but because they could feel the hum-buzz of the current and he couldn’t. The current didn’t go through him. It was like he wasn’t as real as they were, like he wasn’t as alive. Just as he was thinking it, Cyra held out her hand. He took it, to relieve her of the shadows, and he was startled to see tears in her eyes—from the pain or from the wonder, it was hard to say. And then she said something strange. Breathlessly, and with reverence: “You feel like silence.”

Cyra opened the bathroom door to let out the steam, and pulled her hair over one shoulder. She was dressed, this time in dark training clothes. “What is it?” she asked. She followed his gaze to the screen. “Oh, you—you saw her?” “I think so,” Akos replied. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you try to avoid feeling homesick.” Homesick was the wrong word. Lost was the right one—lost out in the nothingness, among people he didn’t understand, with no hope of getting his brother home except murdering Suzao Kuzar as soon as it was legal again. Instead of telling her all that, he said, “How do you know that?”

“We never speak Thuvhesit, even though you know I could.” She lifted a shoulder. “It’s the same reason I don’t keep any likenesses of my mother around. Better, sometimes, to just . . . keep moving forward.” Cyra ducked back into the bathroom. He watched her lean close to the mirror to poke at a pimple on her chin. Dab water from her forehead and neck. The same thing she always did, only now he noticed—noticed that he knew it, that was; knew her routines, knew her. And liked her.

“Okay.” I winced as the currentshadows spread. “Are you prepared to endure an interrogation?” “I assumed he wouldn’t need to interrogate me if I came of my own accord.” She raised her eyebrows. “He’s concerned about the exile colony. He’ll want to get whatever information he can out of you before he . . .” The word execute stuck in my throat. “Kills me,” Zosita said. “My, my, Miss Noavek. You can’t even say the words? Are you so soft?” Her eyes shifted to the armor that covered my marked arm. “No,” I snapped. “It’s not an insult,” Zosita said, a little more gently. “Soft hearts make the universe worth living in.” Unexpectedly, I thought of Akos, whispering an apology in Thuvhesit, instinctively, when he brushed past me in the kitchen. I had played his gentle words over and over in my mind that night, like it was music I couldn’t get out of my head. It came to me just as easily now. “I know what it’s like to lose a mother,” I said. “I don’t wish it on anyone, even renegades I hardly know.” Zosita let out a little laugh, shaking her head. “What?” I said, defensive. “I . . . celebrated your mother’s passing,” she said. I went cold. “As I celebrated your father’s, and would have celebrated your brother’s. Even yours, perhaps.” She ran her fingers over the metal railing beside her. I imagined her daughter’s fingerprints, pressed there earlier minutes ago, now wiped clean by her touch. “It is a strange thing to realize that your worst enemies can be loved by their families.”

For a long time we stood, with just the hum of the pipes and distant footsteps to break the silence. I was too confused, too tired, to hide the wincing and flinching as my currentgift did its work. “To answer your question, yes, I can endure an interrogation,” Zosita said. “Can you tell lies?” She smirked again. “I suppose that’s a silly question. Will you tell lies?” I hesitated. When had I become the sort of person who helped renegades? She had just told me that she would have celebrated my death. At least Ryzek wanted to keep me alive—what would the renegades do to me, if they managed to overthrow my brother? Somehow, I didn’t care. “‘I tell lies better than I tell truths,’” I said. It was a quote from some poetry I had read on the side of a building with Otega on one of our excursions. I am a Shotet. I am sharp as broken glass, and just as fragile. I tell lies better than I tell truths. I see all of the galaxy and never catch a glimpse of it. “Let us go tell some, then,” Zosita said.

“Did Mother teach you to do that?” Eijeh said, nodding to the yellow fumes still wafting from the burner. “Yes.” Akos was already flushed and shaking, though he had no reason to be scared of his own brother. “Mom taught me.” Eijeh had never called her “Mother” in his life. That was a word for snotty Shissa kids, or for the Shotet—not for children of Hessa. “So kind of her to prepare you for what awaited you. It’s a shame she didn’t feel the need to do that with me.” Eijeh stepped into Akos’s room, running his fingers over the taut sheets, the even stack of books. Marking them in a way that wouldn’t erase. He drew the knife at his side, and spun it on his palm, catching it with his thumb. It would have struck Akos as menacing if he hadn’t seen Ryzek do it so many times. “Maybe she didn’t think this future would come to be.” He didn’t believe it. But he didn’t know what else to say. “She did. I know she did. I saw her speak of it in a vision.” Eijeh had never talked about his visions with Akos, had never gotten the chance. Akos couldn’t imagine it. The future intruding on his present. So many possibilities it was dizzying. Seeing his family but not knowing if the images would come to be. Not being able to speak to them. Not that it seemed to matter to Eijeh anymore. “Well,” he said. “We should go home and ask her about it.” “I’m doing just fine here,” Eijeh said. “I suspect you are, too, judging by these . . . accommodations.” “You talk like him now,” Akos said. “You realize...

want, but you can’t possibly hate Dad.” Eijeh’s eyes went hazy. Not quite blank, but far, far away, instead. “I don’t— He was always at work. Never at home.” “He was home all the time.” Akos spat out the words like they had rotted. “He made dinner. He checked our homework. He told stories. You don’t remember?” But he knew the answer to his own question. It was in Eijeh’s blank eyes. Of course, of course Ryzek had taken Eijeh’s memories of their dad—he had to have been so horrified by his own father that he’d stolen theirs instead. Suddenly Akos’s hands were in fists in Eijeh’s shirt, and he was shoving his brother against the wall, knocking over a row of vials. He looked so small between Akos’s hands; he was so light it was easy to lift him. It was that, more than his slack surprise, that made Akos let go as quick as he’d grabbed him. When did I get so big? he thought, staring at his thick knuckles. Long fingers, like his dad’s, but thicker. Good for hurting people. “She’s taught you her brutality.” Eijeh straightened his shirt. “If I don’t remember something, do you think you can shake it out of me?” “If I could, I’d have tried it already.” Akos stepped back. “I would do anything to make you remember him.” He turned away, running his hand over the back of his neck like Jorek always did. He couldn’t look at Eijeh anymore, couldn’t look at either of the men standing in his quarters. “Why did you come here? Did you want something?” “We came here with two purposes,” Eijeh sai...

over just taking your power for himself,” Akos said, quiet. Bracing himself against the counter, because his legs felt so weak. “If it even works that way. And as for your iceflower blend . . . well. I’ll never give you something that will...

“You,” she whispered, “are the only person he could possibly hold over me now.” She touched his chin to steady it as she kissed him. Her mouth was warm, and wet with tears. Her teeth scored his bottom lip as she pulled away. Akos didn’t breathe. He wasn’t sure he could remember how. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I won’t do that again.” She backed away, and shut herself in the bathroom.

I ATTENDED ZOSITA SURUKTA’S execution the next day, as I was supposed to. It was a crowded, loud event, the first celebration that had been allowed since the Sojourn Festival. I stood off to the side, with Vas, Eijeh, and Akos, as Ryzek gave a long speech about loyalty and the strength of Shotet unity, the envy of the galaxy, the tyranny of the Assembly. Yma stood at his side, her hands on the railing, her fingertips tapping out a lilting rhythm. When Ryzek dragged the knife across Zosita’s throat, I felt like crying, but I suppressed my tears. Everyone in the crowd roared as Zosita’s body fell, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Yma’s hands were trembling on the railing. Ryzek wore a streak of Zosita’s blood. And far off, in the crowd that watched, Teka held a hand over her mouth. As Zosita’s blood spread across the floor, as Akos’s father’s blood had, and so many others, I felt the wrongness of her death like an ill-fitting shirt I could not remove. It was a relief, to still be able to feel that.

My father had taught me to fly, one of the only activities we ever did together. I had worn thick gloves so my currentgift wouldn’t interfere with the ship’s mechanisms. I had been too small for the chair, so he had gotten a cushion for me to sit on. He was not a patient teacher—he screamed at me more than once—but when I got it right, he always said, “Good,” with a firm nod, like he was hammering the compliment in place. He died when I was eleven seasons old, on a sojourn. Only Ryzek and Vas had been with him at the time—they were attacked by a band of pirates and had to fight their way out. Ryzek and Vas returned from the conflict—with the eyes of their vanquished enemies in a jar, no less—but Lazmet Noavek did not.

Every culture worshipped something: Othyr, comfort; Ogra, mystery; Thuvhe, iceflowers; Shotet, the current; Pitha, practicality, and so on.

“Quiet in here,” Akos said softly, his fingers curling around my elbow. I shivered, trying to ignore it. He’s just dulling your pain, that’s all it is, nothing has changed, everything is the same as it always was. . . . “Pitha isn’t known for its dances,” I said. “Or any form of combat, either.” “They’re not your favorite, then, I take it.” “I like to move.” “I’ve noticed.” I could feel his breath against the side of my neck, though he wasn’t that close—my awareness of him was stronger than it had ever been. I tugged my arm free to take the drink the Pithar servant offered. “What is this?” I said, suddenly aware of my accent. The servant eyed my shadow-stained arm uneasily. “Its effects are similar to an iceflower blend,” the servant replied. “Dulls the senses, lifts the spirits. Sweet and sour, both.” Akos also took one, smiling at the servant as she walked on. “If it’s not made of iceflowers, what’s it made of?” he asked. Thuvhesits worshipped iceflowers, after all. What did he know of other substances? “I don’t know. Salt water? Engine grease?” I said. “Try it; I’m sure it won’t hurt you.” We both drank. Across the room, Ryzek and Yma were smiling politely at Chancellor Natto’s husband, Vek. His face had a grayish cast, and his skin sagged from his bones like it was half liquid. Maybe gravity was stronger here. I certainly felt heavier than usual, though that was probably due to Vas’s constant gaze. Making sure I behaved. I cringed at my half-empty glass. “Disgusting.” ...

“Really, it’s just Shotet, Thuvhesit, Othyrian, and Trellan,” I said. “But I know a little Zoldan, some Pithar, and I was working on Ogran before you arrived and distracted me.” His eyebrows lifted. “What?” I said. “I don’t have any friends. It gives me a lot of free time.” “You think you’re so difficult to like.” “I know what I am.” “Oh? And what’s that?” “A knife,” I said. “A hot poker. A rusty nail.” “You are more than any of those things.” He touched my elbow to turn me toward him. I knew I was giving him a strange look, but I couldn’t seem to stop. It was just the way my face wanted to be. “I mean,” he said, removing his hand, “it’s not like you’re going around . . . boiling the flesh of your enemies.” “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “If I was going to eat the flesh of my enemies, I would roast it, not boil it. Who wants to eat boiled flesh? Disgusting.” He laughed, and everything felt a little better.

Without meaning to, I found Akos in the crowd, still holding two glasses, both now empty. He smiled a little. I have to get you out of here, I thought, as if he could hear me. And

I will.