We stood there for a long time before the ship appeared above us, lowering without swerving to the landing pad. The ship was small and humble, a Hessa transport. The people around me gasped when they recognized it, the battered metal, the heat vents that keep the engine from freezing. To me it seemed like a message: I am one of you, just a simple Thuvhesit. It was a manipulation.
The Hessa ship landed, and the door opened, and a woman in black stepped out. Her face was covered, of course, from nose on down. But she wasn’t wearing goggles, like the rest of us were, so I could see her dark eyes, with their narrow slope, eyelashes pressed up into the skin above them.
At the sight of her, everybody cheered. Not me, though, I was trying to figure out if I was seeing things. Those were Ori’s eyes, but I hadn’t seen her in years, and she was . . . well, she was Ori.
A tick later, another woman stepped out behind the first—the chancellor’s sister, I assumed, only I could have sworn I was seeing double. She was the same—same height, same coat, same face covering. Same eyes that scanned the crowd without feeling.
The women walked shoulder to shoulder toward the building. They didn’t stop to grasp hands. They lifted gloved hands to wave; their eyes crinkled in smiles that we couldn’t see. One’s gait was smooth, like she was rolling over the ground on wheels. The other’s was buoyant, making her head bob up and down as she moved. When they passed me, I couldn’t help it; I pulled my goggles down so I could see their faces better, see for myself if this was Ori or not.
One set of eyes found mine. Her steps faltered, just a little. And then they were gone.
Later that day, I heard a knock.
I lived in the dormitory just next to the hospital, connected to it by a covered bridge. Sometimes I leaned my forehead against the glass and stared down at the iceflower fields from there. I could only see smudges of color from up here, where the buildings of Osoc dangled in the sky like chandeliers.
My rooms were small and packed tight with objects. Fabric, mostly. Paper—and as a result, books—was a luxury on a planet without many trees, but we spun fabric out of iceflower stems, and treated it with purity petal essence to make it soft. We dyed it all kinds of colors, muted and bright, dark and light. Anything but gray, which was what we saw all the time. I hung fabric across shelves, to hide what was on them; I draped it on the walls to cover up where they peeled. Mostly my room was a kitchen; I had little burners here and there with something stewing on them, and the air was full of steam or smoke, depending on the day. They weren’t clean rooms, but they were warm.
They weren’t fit for the company I got that day, though. I wiped my hands on an apron and opened the door, sweat wetting my brow. A very tall, thick man stood right in front of me, looking gruff.
“Their Highnesses of the family Benesit request the honor of your hospitality,” the man said. He wasn’t a Thuvhesit; I could tell by how he left his shirt buttons open at the throat. He was wearing pale gray, which meant he must be from the Assembly, and his formal tone confirmed it.
“Uh,” I said, because it was all I could manage. Then my currentgift kicked in, and his posture relaxed, so I didn’t feel as nervous. “Of course. They are welcome here, as are you.”
The man gave me a little smile.
“Thank you, ma’am, but my job is to stay outside the door,” he said.
He checked my apartment to make sure it was safe, roaming through each room with his eyes on all my stuff. Even poked his head into the bathroom to make sure nobody was crouched in my shower with a knife, or so I assumed. Then he stepped out, nodded to someone out of sight, and there they were. Two tall, lean women in black dresses buttoned up to the throat, hooded, with fabric covering their faces. I stepped back to let them in, but I didn’t greet them. All I could do was stare at them.
Then one of them stepped past me to close the door, and smiled at me. I could tell by how her cheek creased.
“Cisi,” she said, and then I knew, I really knew, it was her.
“Ori,” I said, and we collided in a tight hug, squeezing little laughs out of each other.
Over her shoulder, I saw her sister walking through my little apartment, trailing her fingers over everything she passed. She paused by the shelf where I kept pictures of my family behind a gauzy hanging so I didn’t have to look at them if I thought it might hurt too bad.
I pulled away from Ori, who fumbled to pull her hood and face covering down. She looked just like I thought she would—the same, but sharper, older. Her black hair was mussed from the hood, and straight as straw, pulled into a knot at the back of her neck. Her mouth, already tilted up at the corners, curled into a deeper smile.
“I can’t believe . . .” I can’t believe you’re the chancellor’s sister, I can’t believe you’re here, was what I meant to say, but I couldn’t.
“I’m so sorry.” She looked down. “If there had been another way . . .”
How could you lie to me all our lives? I thought, because I knew I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say anything at all, in fact.
I put my hand on her elbow and guided her into the room, toward the cushions I had piled around a burner and a sturdy pot with tea steeping in it. I was studying the effects of cold-steeped iceflower against the warm kind.
“Where did you go?” I said.
“The Assembly ship,” she said. “Isae was there . . . recovering.”
She looked to her sister, then, so I knew the chancellor’s name was Isae. She perched on the only chair in the room, close to her sister. Her hands were folded in her lap for a tick or two before she rolled her eyes and tugged the face covering away from her mouth and nose. The scars that bisected her face were wicked, and fresh, judging by their bright red color.
They weren’t beautiful. Scars rarely were.
“Recovering from this, is what she means.” Isae waved a hand in front of her face.
I tried a smile. “That must have been difficult.”
Isae snorted.
“So you’re the oldest Kereseth, then,” she said. “You’re the talk of the system, these days. The Kereseths—oracle, traitor, and . . . well, the one who ought to be careful around knives. ‘The first child of the family Kereseth will succumb to the blade,’ isn’t that your fate?”
I choked. My brother is not a traitor. I’ll be as careless around knives as I damn well please. Get out of my apartment. Who the hell do you think you are? I couldn’t say any of those things, though.
“Isae!” Ori said, chastising.
“I suppose I shouldn’t bring up unpleasant subjects uninvited,” she said, “but it’s the reality of who you are, and who I am, and who my sister is. And I like to face reality.”
“You’re being rude,” Ori said.
“It’s fine,” I said, my tongue finally loosening. “I’ve experienced worse.”
Isae laughed, like she knew what I was trying to say. Maybe she did. She must have been educated by the Assembly, at least for a little time, and they, better than most, must have known how to say two things at once.
“They would have loved you at the Assembly ship,” she said in a low voice.
“Good memories, I said, not ones where you’re angry with me!” Isae pulls me out of memory and into the Assembly ship again, and though she’s scolding me, she’s also laughing.
“I’m sorry, it’s hard to control!” I say with a giggle.
“I was horrible to you.” Isae’s eyes sparkle a little when she looks at me next. They’re a nice color, dark brown with a little warmth to it, like rich earth. “How did you ever become my friend?”
“Come back in and I’ll show you,” I say.
The smell of spice came to me first. My hands were buried in it, plunged into a wad of dough the size of my head. A cloud of flour puffed up around my face as I slammed the dough down on the counter. I didn’t visit home often, but it was the Deadening time, and I had never missed the Blooming in Hessa, so I was there for a few days.
Sitting at the table behind me was Isae Benesit. She had refused to go to the temple with Ori, who wanted to ask the oracle—Mom—about something. So Ori dropped her off here like she was a kid that needed to be watched, even though she knew we didn’t like each other much.