“Boring,” Jorek said. “I saw the side of Lazmet’s head today. Most of the upper-level guards are stationed near Ryzek’s secure rooms—you know, the ones Cyra’s blood couldn’t get us into. But he walked through the back door today.”
Akos logged that information away, along with everything else he’d heard about Lazmet since getting to Voa, which wasn’t much. He was a myth in people’s minds more than a man, so what they knew sounded like legends and folk tales instead of facts.
“At least I don’t have to fight in Thuvhe or anything,” Jorek said. “Not that I would. That attack was . . .” He shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t mean to bring it up.”
Akos tucked a hand into his pocket and took out a strip of dried hushflower petal. He was chewing them more than he should these days. He would run out soon. But the tension in his jaw and shoulders was giving him headaches, and he needed to be able to think, if he wanted to face what was next.
He was here, in Voa, to kill Lazmet Noavek. And it wouldn’t be easy.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Akos said.
“I was wondering when you’d get to the point,” Jorek said.
Ara set a plate down in front of Akos. There wasn’t much on it—a roll, probably a little stale by now, some dried meat, some pickled saltfruit. She brushed the crumbs off her fingers and sat down next to her son.
“What Jorek means is, we like having you here, but we know you don’t do things without a good reason,” Ara said, flicking the side of her son’s nose to chastise him. “And crossing the galaxy is no small thing.”
Jorek rubbed his nose.
“Not everyone can wait things out on Ogra. Some of us have to get our hands dirty,” Akos said.
“But those who can stay safe, should,” Ara said.
Akos shook his head. “I had to get my hands dirty, too. Call it . . . fate.”
“I call it a choice,” Jorek said. “And a dumb one.”
“Like leaving your girlfriend—and your mother and brother—without a word of explanation,” Ara said, and she clicked her tongue.
“My mother and brother don’t need me to leave word to know where I am. And this is how things are between Cyra and me,” Akos said, defensive. “She plotted for weeks to send me away without telling me about it. How is this different?”
“It is not particularly different,” Ara said. “But that doesn’t make it right, either time.”
“Don’t scold him, Mom,” Jorek said. “He was basically born scolding himself.”
“Scold me all you like,” Akos said. “Especially because I’m about to ask for something you won’t like.”
Jorek’s arm snaked across the table, and he stole some meat from Akos’s plate.
“I want you to let me into the back gate of Noavek manor,” Akos said.
Jorek choked on the meat he was now chewing, prompting Ara to thump him on the back with her fist.
“What are you going to do once you’re inside?” Ara said, narrowing her eyes.
“It’s better if you don’t know,” Akos said.
“Akos. Trust me. Even you, pupil of Cyra Noavek, are out of your depth with Lazmet,” Jorek said, after he had swallowed his bite. “There isn’t a single shred of decency in him. I don’t think he even has the capacity for it. If he finds you, he’ll turn you into a goddamn stew.”
“He won’t kill me,” Akos said.
“Why, because of your stunning good looks?” Jorek snorted.
“Because I’m his son,” Akos said.
Ara and Jorek stared at him in silence.
Akos pushed his plate across the table, toward Jorek.
“Want my roll?” he said.
CHAPTER 34: AKOS
AKOS RID HIMSELF OF the heavy robe he had worn to get there, tossing it in an alley. It would only slow him down past this point, and he was cloaked by night, anyway.
He kept his footsteps as quiet as he could as he crept along the high wall behind Noavek manor. He still remembered staring out at this wall when he was a prisoner, teaching Cyra to make painkillers. It had been his way out: Go through the hidden hallways. Get to Eijeh. Leave through the back gate, using the code Cyra had showed him without meaning to.
He could have pried open the locking mechanism himself and shoved his fingers inside, disrupting the current, but the risk of getting caught was too high. The guard changed too often. So instead he stood by the back door and waited for Jorek to open it.
It had taken a lot of arguing to get Jorek to agree to this. Not just with Jorek, but with Ara. They suspected, of course, what Akos was here to do, and they didn’t want him to take the risk. They thought it was bravado, or stupidity, or downright instability.
Eventually, it was the reminder of what Akos had done for Jorek that got him to agree. The ring that hung around his neck, and the precise mark on his arm. Jorek had owed him a favor. A big one.
The heavy door opened a crack, showing a sliver of a man—boots, armor, patchy facial hair, and a bright, dark eye.
Jorek jerked his head to the side, beckoning, and Akos opened the door just wide enough to slip through. Once it closed behind him with a click, he knew he couldn’t go back. So, even though he halfway thought he’d lost his mind, he kept going forward.
As agreed, Jorek got him to the kitchen. Akos found the edge of the wall panel that would let him into the manor’s hidden passageways, and pulled it back. The familiar musty smell washed over him, sending him into memory. Terrified and desperately hopeful, with the toe of Eijeh’s shoe catching on his heel. And then, that little pool of heat in his gut as he followed a painted Cyra to the Sojourn Festival, the one that told him he liked her, no matter how hard he pretended otherwise.
Liked her, then loved her. Then left her.
Jorek pulled him into a hug, quick and firm, before leaving Akos alone in the dark passageway.
He stopped at the corners where the walls split, feeling for the symbols he had learned from Cyra. An X for a dead end. A circle with an up arrow for stairs going up, and a circle with a down arrow for stairs going down. A number for which floor he was on.
He had gone this way when he went to free Eijeh. All he had to do was get to that part of the house again, and then he’d be near the gene-locked rooms that had confounded the renegades when they came here to kill Ryzek. Cyra’s blood hadn’t opened the locks, but Akos’s would, if Vara wasn’t screwing with them both.
Akos got to the exit he’d taken when he got Eijeh out. He knew he was tripping the same sensors that had made his escape attempt fail on that fateful day, but it didn’t really matter; he wasn’t trying to go unnoticed here. He left the panel open behind him and walked past the door that had once been Eijeh’s with a little shiver.
Even in the dark, this part of the house was grand. Dark wood, almost black, on the floor and the walls. Light fixtures packed with fenzu, sedate now as they slept through the night. Decorative vases and sculptures, made of warm metal or polished stone with veins of color running through it, or etched glass. He couldn’t imagine running through these halls as a kid, skimming the wood paneling with his fingers. He probably wouldn’t have been allowed to run, or touch walls, or fall on his brother laughing, or any of the things that had made his young years rich and warm.
He got to the secure door that he was pretty sure led to Ryzek’s old bedroom, and held up his hand over the locking mechanism. His fingers were trembling.
He stuck his hand in the lock, wincing as it pierced his finger, drawing blood.
A click, and then the door opened.
If there had been any doubt in his mind that he was a Noavek, it was gone now.
CHAPTER 35: CYRA
IT WAS, PERHAPS, NOT the best idea for Teka to approach me during breakfast, before my brain had booted up.