“You might have guessed that I didn’t ask you here to bring me my old stuff,” Isae says, folding her hands in front of her. She’s switching into her formal speech, her chancellor posture. I can tell Ast notices something’s different. He looks almost alarmed, his eyes twitching from side to side.
“I want to ask for your assistance. For a longer period,” she says. “I don’t know what you’re doing, what you’re leaving behind. But there aren’t many people left I can trust—maybe just the people in this room, and—”
He puts up a hand to stop her.
“Quit it,” he says. “Of course I’ll stay. As long as you need.”
“Really?”
He holds out his hand, and when she takes it, he shifts their grip, grasping her at the thumb, the way soldiers do. He brings their joined hands to his heart, like he’s swearing an oath, but brim spawn don’t swear oaths except by spitting, rumor has it.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” he says. “I only met her once, I know, but I liked her.”
It’s beautiful, in its way. Straightforward and honest. I can tell why she likes him. I try another feeling, for him—an embrace of arms, locked around the chest. Firm but bracing.
“Now that’s downright disconcerting, Cisi,” he says. “No way to turn it off?”
“My brother’s currentgift can, but I’ve never found anything else that does,” I say. I’ve never met someone so aware of my gift before. I would ask him what his is, if that wasn’t so impolite.
“Don’t get so twitchy about it, Ast,” Isae says. “Cisi’s been helping me a lot.”
“Well, good.” He manages a small smile in my direction. “Isae’s opinion about a person says a lot to me.”
“It says a lot to me, too,” I say. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about the ship you two grew up on.”
“She probably told you it smelled like feet,” he says.
“She did,” I say. “But she also said it was charming in its way.”
Isae reaches for my hand, sliding her fingers between mine.
“It’s the three of us against the galaxy, now,” she says. “Hope you’re both ready.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Ast says.
She purses her lips, tightens her hand on mine, and says, quietly:
“I’m not.”
CHAPTER 8: CISI
EVERY NOW AND THEN it hits me that most people don’t make friends wherever they go. I do. Assembly Headquarters is like anywhere else—people just want to be heard, even if what they have to say is boring. And boy is it boring most of the time.
I get good information from it sometimes, though. The woman behind me in the cafeteria line that morning—piling synthetic eggs high on her plate and covering them with some kind of green sauce—tells me there’s a greenhouse on the second level stocked with plants from all over the solar system, a different room for each planet. I inhale a bowl of cooked grains and head there as soon as I can. It’s been such a long time since I saw a plant.
That’s how I end up in the hallway just outside the room for Thuvhe. The corners of the windows are dusted with frost. I would need to put on protective gear to go in, so I stay just outside, crouched near the cluster of jealousies growing by the door. They’re yellow and teardrop-shaped, but if you touch one at just the right time in its growth, it spits out a cloud of bright dust. Judging by the swollen bellies of these, they’re just about ready to burst.
“You know, try as we might, we can’t seem to grow hushflowers here,” a voice says from behind me.
The man is old—deep lines frame his eyes and mouth—and bald, the top of his head shiny. He wears pale gray slacks, like all the Assembly staff do, and a thin gray sweater. His skin, too, looks almost pale gray, like he got caught downwind of the wrong field on Zold. If I think hard enough about it, I can probably figure out where he’s from by the color of his eyes, which are lavender—the only remarkable thing about him, as far as I can tell.
“Really?” I say, straightening. “What happens when you try? They die?”
“No, they just don’t bloom,” he says. “It’s as if they know where they are, and they save all their beauty for Thuvhe.”
I smile. “That’s a romantic thought.”
“Too romantic for an old man like me, I know.” His eyes sparkle a little. “You must be a Thuvhesit, to look so fondly at these plants.”
“I am,” I say. “My name is Cisi Kereseth.”
I offer him my hand. His own is dry as an old bone.
“I’m not permitted to tell you my name, as it would hint at my origins,” he says. “But I am the Assembly Leader, Miss Kereseth, and it is lovely to meet you.”
My hand goes limp in his. The Assembly Leader? I am not used to thinking of the person with that title as a real person, with a creaky voice and a wry smile. When they are selected from a pool of candidates by the representatives of all the planets, they are stripped of name and origin, so as not to show any bias. They serve the solar system in its entirety, it’s said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you,” I say. Something about the man makes me think he will like a subtle manifestation of my currentgift: the touch of a warm breeze. He smiles at me, and I think it must have worked on him, since he doesn’t look like a man given to smiling.
“I am not offended,” he says. “So you are the daughter of an oracle, then.”
I nod. “The sitting oracle of Thuvhe, yes.”
“And the sister of an oracle, too, if Eijeh Kereseth still lives,” he says. “Yes, I’ve memorized all the oracle names, though I confess I had to use a few memory techniques. It’s quite a long mnemonic device. I would share it with you if it didn’t have a few vulgarities thrown in to keep it interesting.”
I laugh.
“You have come here with Isae Benesit?” he says. “Captain Morel told me she had brought two friends with her on this visit.”
“Yes. I was close with her sister, Ori,” I say. “Orieve, I mean.”
He makes a soft, sad sound, lips closed. “I am deeply sorry for your loss, then.”
“Thank you,” I say. For now I can push the grief aside. It’s not something this man would be comfortable seeing, so it wouldn’t show even if I wanted it to, thanks to my gift.
“You must be very angry,” he says. “The Shotet have taken your father, your brothers, and now your friend?”
It’s a strange thing to say. It assumes too much.
“It’s not ‘the Shotet’ who did it,” I say. “It was Ryzek Noavek.”
“True.” He focuses on the frosty windows again. “But I can’t help but think that a people who allow themselves to be ruled by a tyrant such as Ryzek Noavek deserves to shoulder some of the blame for his behavior.”
I want to disagree with him. Supporters of the Noaveks, sure, I can blame them. But the renegades, the exiles, the poor and sick and desperate people living in the neighborhood around that building we used as a safe house? They’re just as victimized by Ryzek as I am. After visiting the country, I’m not sure I can even think of “the Shotet” as one thing anymore. They’re too varied to be lumped together. It would be like saying that the daughter of a Hessan farmer and a soft-handed Shissa doctor are the same.
I want to disagree, but I can’t. My tongue is stuck, my throat swollen with my stupid currentgift. So I just look passively at the Assembly Leader and wait for him to talk again.
“I am meeting with Miss Benesit later today,” he says at last. “I hope that you will attend. She is a bit thorny at times, and I sense your presence would soothe her.”
“That’s one of the things I like about her,” I say. “That she’s ‘thorny.’”
“I am sure in friendship it is an entertaining quality.” He smiles. “But in political discussions, it is often an impediment to progress.”
I give in to the instinct to step back from him.
“That depends on how you define ‘progress,’ I suppose,” I say, keeping my tone light.
“I hope that we will agree on a definition by the day’s end,” he says. “I will leave you to look at the plants, Miss Kereseth. Do stop by the Tepessar area—it’s too hot to go in, but you’ve never seen anything like those specimens, I promise you.”