“You’re—you’re the last blood relative I have left,” Akos said.
“Is that a reason? It’s a stupid one, if it is,” Lazmet said. “What is blood, exactly? Just a substance, like water or stardust.”
“It’s more than that to me,” Akos said. “It’s—this language. It’s fate.”
“Ah!” Lazmet smiled. His smile had a wickedness to it. “So now you know that little Cyra’s painfully boring fate actually belongs to you. ‘The second child of the family Noavek will cross the Divide.’” His eyebrow arched. “And you, I assume, as a born Shotet, have never been across the stretch of feathergrass that separates us from our Thuvhesit enemies.”
Lazmet was analyzing him, making assumptions. They were incorrect, but Akos saw no need to correct him. Not yet, anyway. The less Lazmet knew about him, the better.
Lazmet went on: “You speak with the diction of someone who is low status. Perhaps you think I will send you to Thuvhe with my army, for some higher purpose. That I will elevate you beyond your grasp.”
Akos kept his expression neutral, though the idea of marching into Thuvhe and waging war just to attain a higher social status sickened him.
“Whether I help you with that or not depends, I suppose, on whether you are worth anything to me or not,” Lazmet said. “I know that you can kill, which is encouraging. You can’t imagine how difficult it was to train Ryzek to take lives. He threw up after the first time. Disgusting. And my wife forbade me from attempting the same with Cyra, though I hear she had a greater capacity for it, in the end.”
Akos blinked at him. What did you say to a man who was deciding whether your life was worth living right to your face?
“You seem to have some meager fighting skill. You’re bold, though unwise at best, and stupid at worst.” Lazmet tapped the tip of his blade against his chin. “Your currentgift intrigues me, but it is . . . troubling, in some respects. Tell me about your marks, boy.”
The part of Akos that had been stalled, like a bad motor, started rumbling again.
“You think you’ll know something useful about me based on who I’ve killed and how?” Akos said. “What about you—what if I judged your worth based on the fact that your weak-willed son managed to trap you somewhere for seasons?”
Lazmet’s eyes narrowed.
“My son was coached by his mother into winning the loyalty of some strategically placed soldiers,” Lazmet said. “The ability to win hearts is not one I have ever possessed, I will admit that now. They kept my imprisonment secret, and guarded me faithfully—from a distance, so I couldn’t use my gift against them. But the chaos in Voa following my son’s murder resulted in a loss of power in some sectors, and I took my opportunity to escape. All my former guards are now dead. I have their eyeballs in a jar to remind me of my own weakness. It was my own failure that resulted in my captivity, not my son’s success.” He stepped back. “Now tell me the names you wear on your arm, boy.”
“No,” Akos said.
“I am getting bored with you,” Lazmet said. “And trust me, you don’t want me to be bored. Even without my currentgift, it would be simple for me to kill you.”
“The last life I took was Vas Kuzar’s,” Akos said.
Lazmet nodded. “Impressive,” he said. “You know, of course, that I can look up his death in the arena records and find out the name you used?” He stepped closer again, and brought his knife up between them. “You must also have realized that waiting for you outside this door are many guards. You will not leave this house alive, if you try to leave it. And given how you entered this room, in the dead of night, with a knife, I am hardly going to allow you any freedom within these walls. Which means you will be imprisoned here, and I will have ample time to find out everything I need to know about you.”
“I realize all those things,” Akos said. “But I didn’t fight Vas in the arena. I fought him in the chaos while your son died. There’s no record of his death anywhere.”
Lazmet smiled. “And you have more than one mark on your arm. How encouraging, to realize that you are not a complete idiot. Congratulations, Akos Noavek. You are not boring.”
Lazmet lurched forward and opened the door before Akos could move an izit. Armored guards filled the small office.
“Take him to a secure room,” Lazmet said. “Don’t hurt him for sport. He’s my blood.”
Akos went quietly, Lazmet’s hollow expression following him all the way down the hall.
CHAPTER 38: CYRA
I HAD TO LEAVE the relative safety of Shotet-exile-occupied Galo and return to Pokgo for the conversation with Isae Benesit. The one I had promised the Ogran leaders I would have, in exchange for them delaying our deportation. The immediate future of Shotet, in other words, was resting on my shoulders.
Not that I felt any pressure, or anything.
In Pokgo, in the forest just outside the city limits, was a high tower built into the trunk of a massive tree, the only place where a person could broadcast off-planet. On the journey, I pestered Lusha’s assistant for information about why that was possible, why at that location and nowhere else, and all he knew was that there was a “soft spot” in Ogra’s atmosphere there.
“That a scientific term?” I asked. “‘Soft spot’?”
“Obviously not,” the man retorted. “Do I look like an atmospheric scientist to you?”
“You look like a person with a brain who lives on this planet,” I said. “How is it you aren’t curious?”
He didn’t have an answer to that, so I got up and walked the perimeter of the ship, pausing at each plant behind glass to scrutinize it. There was the rippled, brain-like fruit that hung heavy from sturdy vines; the cluster of beakish purple leaves that had two rows of teeth just past their edges; the tiny, starburst-shaped fungi that glowed purple and stuck to your skin if you touched it, leeching nutrients from your body. I wondered if, deep in the jungles here, there were plants that had not yet been discovered—how many possibilities were there on this unexplored planet, packed to the brim with the grotesque and the fierce alike?
We reached the tower within the day, the ship touching down on a landing pad cradled between two huge branches. I stood just outside the ship, staring at the wide tree with the tower built into its hollowed trunk. I had never seen a plant so large in my life—it was as large in circumference as the taller buildings in Voa, but those had been constructed by our hands, not the buzz of natural life that some said came from the current.
I crossed the platform that led from the landing pad to the tower. It swayed a little under my weight, two wires the only things keeping me from toppling over the side. My mouth grew drier with each step, but I forced myself to keep moving. Lusha’s assistant gave me a knowing smile as he checked in with the guard by the door.
In order to get into the broadcasting room, I had to submit to a brief search—the guard seemed unwilling to touch me, and I didn’t reassure her—and climb several flights of stairs. At the top of the steps, I paused to dab my hairline—now moist with sweat—with the inside of a sleeve, and followed Lusha’s assistant in.
The broadcast room was abuzz with people—standing at monitors, bent over panels of switches and buttons, plucking pieces of fuzz from the round rug in the middle of the room. Fixed sights, like eyeballs attached to stalks, hung upside down from the ceiling right in the center of the space. The rug was dark and didn’t have a pattern—I assumed it was there to dampen the sound, as any reflective surface might have echoed. This was the top floor of the tower, so its windows looked out over the top of the tree, where the huge leaves—bigger than I was—flapped against the glass. They were dark purple, almost black, and trapped in mossy vines.