I was hunkered down over my bowl of grains and fruit, watching Eijeh. He sat two tables away, facing me, with his own plate of food in front of him. But there was something odd about him. He was poking at the grains with his spoon, picking out the darker ones and putting them in a line along the edge of his tray. When I first saw Eijeh a few seasons ago, snuffling in the Weapons Hall before my brother, he had been filled out and tall; he had looked sturdy, though not overweight. But this Eijeh was pecking at breakfast, and there were still hollows in his cheeks.
“Uh,” Teka said. “Why are you staring so hard at Kereseth?”
She stood in front of me, partially blocking my view of the new oracle. I didn’t look away, though, still watching Eijeh jab at his bowl.
“My mother told me, once, that she used to scold Ryzek for being a picky eater,” I said. “He ate fruit, but little else. And no matter what she put in front of him, he found something to pick at. She hoped he would grow out of it, but . . .” I shrugged. “I don’t think he ever really did.”
“Okay,” Teka said. “Did an Ogran give you some xofra venom? I’ve heard it addles the mind.”
“No. It’s nothing, never mind,” I said. I looked up at her. “You know, when you stand like that, you look even shorter.”
“Shut up,” Teka said. “I found you some volunteers. Come on over.”
I sighed, and picked up my bowl. My boots were still untied, so the laces flapped with each footstep. Teka led me to a table in the corner, where two other people sat: Yssa, and the man I had fought weeks ago, with the knot of hair on top of his head. Ettrek.
“Hey there, Scourge,” he said to me. He had the kind of face that didn’t give away his age, skin smooth but not layered with the pudge of youth, dark eyes glittering with mischief.
I didn’t like him.
“No,” I said to Teka. “I’m not working with this idiot.”
“My name is pronounced ‘Ettrek,’” he said, grinning.
“Listen, it’s not like you have a deep pool of applicants, here,” Teka said to me. “Ettrek knows people in Voa who can get us whatever supplies we need, as well as give us a place to land.”
“And you?” I said to Yssa. “You’re Ogran. Why do you want to get mixed up in all this?”
“I am a good pilot,” Yssa said. “As to why I want to be involved, well. I have lived among people affected by Lazmet Noavek for several seasons now, and if there is something I can do to help defeat him at last, I will do it.”
I looked them over. Teka, her blond hair made frizzy by the Ogran humidity. Yssa had glowing bracelets up to one elbow, and she had lined her eyes in luminous pencil, so they glowed oddly. Ettrek waggled his dark eyebrows at me. Was this the crew I would march back into Voa with, triumphant?
Well. It was the best I was going to get.
“Fine,” I said. “When do we leave?”
“I’ll check the launch schedule, but it had better be sometime this week,” Teka said. “It’ll take a few days to get to Urek. Once we’re through the atmosphere, I can send a message to Jorek in Voa, and get a better sense of the situation. And Ettrek can reach out to his contacts. But we can’t do any of that from here.”
“All right,” I said.
“Hold on,” Ettrek said. “What qualifies you to be in charge of this mission, anyway?”
“I’m better than you,” I said. “At everything.”
Teka rolled her eyes. “She knows the target, Trek. You want to charge into Voa to kill a man you don’t understand or know at all?”
Ettrek shrugged. “Guess not.”
“Everybody take this week to do what you need to get done,” Teka said. “I’ll start getting the ship ready now. I might need a new gravity compressor, and I know we need food.”
“And,” I said, thinking of what Isae had used to kill my brother, “maybe some new kitchen knives.”
Teka wrinkled her nose, likely remembering the same thing. “Definitely.”
“Anyway, we might not be coming back, so . . .” I shrugged. “Say your good-byes.”
“You’re just bursting with optimism, aren’t you,” Ettrek said.
“Did you expect the person leading your assassination mission to be cheerful?” I said. “If so, I think you’re in the wrong field.” I set my half-finished bowl of breakfast down, and drew the knife at my hip instead. I leaned across the table and pointed the blade at him. “And by the way, if you call me ‘Scourge’ again, I will cut that stupid knot right off the top of your head.”
Ettrek licked his lips, considering my knife.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Cyra.”
CHAPTER 36: CISI
I WATCH OUR DESCENT through Othyr’s puffy clouds like I’m even farther away than I am, drifting through space and looking down at the entire planet at once. I’ve felt like this since Akos and I parted ways, halfway between Ogra and Thuvhe. He didn’t want to come with me back to Assembly Headquarters, and I didn’t much blame him, so I’d hitched myself to the next Assembly freighter at some moon outpost and let him take the autonav back home. Truth be told, I am jealous of him, puttering around our warm kitchen, stoking the burnstones in our courtyard stove.
Ast comes to stand next to me, arms folded.
We’re on a big Assembly craft, the nice, sleek kind they save for chancellors and regents and sovereigns. You can’t see any of the ship’s guts—they’re all hidden behind panels made of a pale metal that looks almost white. I tripped earlier and when I smacked my hand against a wall to steady myself, I left a handprint. Whose job is it to polish all the walls? I wonder.
Ast and I are both dressed up, or as “up” as Isae could get us to go. I wear a dress with long sleeves—so I look Thuvhesit, I figure, because Othyrians aren’t as determined to button everything up to the throat as we are—in a soft gray. Ast is in trousers and a shirt with a collar. The guide bot whizzes around his head, clicking so he can hear its location.
“Isae’s doing it again,” he says. “Go fix her.”
“I can’t stop her all the time,” I say. “It’s wearing me out.”
Since the attack on Shissa, Isae’s been going over every single person who died in the attack on her screen. She keeps spitting facts at me, too. Shep Uldoth, thirty-four. He was a father of two, Cisi. His wife died, too, so now the kids are orphans. As much as I told her she couldn’t dwell on the lives lost forever, she didn’t pull herself away. She said she liked the anger going through the names gave her. It reminded her of what she had to do.
I’m pretty sure she’s just tired of grieving for Ori, and needs something else to focus on, but I don’t say so.
“I don’t really care if you’re worn out,” Ast says coolly. “You don’t think this is wearing her out? It’s more important that she be rested than you, you know.”
I want to curse him out, but my currentgift stops me. So I just ignore him until he storms off.
The ship passes through the cloud layer, and I can’t keep myself from stepping closer to the glass. I’ve never been to Othyr before.
Most of the planet’s surface is covered with cities. There are a couple of big parks that cultivate the planet’s wildlife—feeble, most of it, which was why Othyrians hadn’t much bothered with it—but the rest is glass and metal and stone. Glass walkways stretch this way and that, connecting the buildings, and sleek little floaters, much nicer than the ones we flew in Thuvhe, dart in and out of metal tubes that control traffic.
So it’s hard to explain to myself, given all that synthetic chaos, why Othyr is pretty. Maybe it comes down to the big blue sky, the sunlight gleaming on the buildings in gold, green, blue, and orange. Maybe it’s the neat little parks that show all different colored flowers and trees, the best-looking plants from every other planet but this one. But there is something nice in how busy it is, a kind of cheerful productivity.
I clasp my hands in front of me as I walk down the hall, so I don’t brush any of the walls. Isae is sitting in a waiting room, perched on the edge of a gray sofa. A view of Othyr shows through the floor-to-ceiling window, but she’s not even glancing at it. Her eyes are fixed on the portable screen in her hands.
“Arthe Semenes. Fifty years old. She was visiting her kid in the hospital after surgery. Both of them are dead now.” She shakes her head. “A hospital, Cisi. Why did they have to target a hospital?”
“Because Lazmet Noavek is evil,” I say. “We knew that before, and we know it now, and we’ll never forget it.”