The cell was lavish, as far as cells went. A soft bed with a heavy blanket. A tub in the bathroom as well as a shower. A thick rug on the hardwood floor. It was essentially just a bedroom with a sophisticated lock, one that Akos was sure he could dismantle if he had enough time, but then he would have an entire household of soldiers to contend with.
He drank water from the faucet, when he had to, but no food came his way, and he wasn’t stupid enough to think it wasn’t on purpose. If Lazmet had wanted him fed, he would have been fed. They were starving away his currentgift.
In the morning, after he woke, the door finally opened. Akos was standing by the window, thinking about how bad it would hurt if he jumped out and made a run for it. Not a smart decision, he knew—he’d break both legs and get caught by a dozen guards even if he did manage to run away.
A tall man with a scarred face, and a short, white-haired woman walked into the room. The man was Vakrez Noavek, the commander of the Shotet military, who had seen to Akos’s education as a soldier. The woman looked familiar to Akos, but he didn’t remember her name.
“I don’t understand,” Vakrez said, squinting at Akos.
“Oh, do catch on, Vakrez,” the woman said, with humor in her voice. “Only Noaveks are that tall and yet that thin. Like drawn hot glass. He’s Lazmet’s son, obviously.”
“Hello, Commander,” Akos said to Vakrez, his head bobbing.
“I’m going to tell him your name and where you came from, you know,” Vakrez said to him. “So what was the point of the evasion in the first place?”
“It bought me time,” Akos said.
“So you two know each other,” the woman said, sitting in a chair by the fireplace. Akos had thought about climbing out the chimney, but after investigating, ruled out the possibility. It was too narrow for him to fit.
“He was a soldier. Not a very good one,” Vakrez said with a grunt.
The woman raised an eyebrow. “My name is Yma Zetsyvis, boy. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”
Akos frowned at her. He knew her. Her husband, and her daughter, had both been subject to Cyra’s currentgift before they died, and she had been glued to Ryzek’s side after that.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were both loyal to Ryzek. And now, what, you just . . . switch to his father before his body is even cold?”
“I am loyal to my family,” Vakrez said.
“Why?” Akos said. “Didn’t Lazmet’s mother kill your mother?” He paused. “Why are you even still alive? I thought she killed everyone, including his cousins.”
“He’s useful,” Yma said, brushing a lock of white hair over one shoulder. “So he lives. That’s the Noavek way. It is why I am alive as surely as it is why you are alive, boy.”
Vakrez scowled at her.
“What use do you have to a man like Lazmet Noavek, sir?” Akos couldn’t help but add the honorific. He was used to seeing Vakrez Noavek as this armored, authoritative thing. Someone to be feared.
“I read hearts,” Vakrez said, looking uncomfortable. “Loyalties. Other things. It’s hard to explain.”
“And you?” Akos said to Yma.
“He reads hearts, and I rip them apart.” Yma examined her fingernails. “We’ve been sent to assess you, if we can.”
“Hold out a hand, boy,” Vakrez said. “I have other work to do today.”
Akos’s guts grumbled with hunger, but he couldn’t feel the hum-buzz of the current, so he knew his gift hadn’t failed yet. He held out a hand, and Vakrez grabbed him around the wrist, yanking him closer. He stared up into Akos’s eyes, squinting, squeezing. His skin was warm and rough.
“Nothing,” Vakrez said. “He’ll need more starving time. Maybe a beating or two, if Lazmet is impatient.”
“I told him it was too soon,” Yma said. “He didn’t listen, of course.”
“He only listens to people he respects,” Vakrez said. “And he only respects himself.”
Yma stood, straightening her skirts. She wore light gray, a pillar of pale against the dark wood of Noavek manor. He wasn’t sure what to make of her, the way her bright eyes lingered on him, the way she pursed her lips as she looked him over. Like she wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Get some rest, boy,” she said. “You may need it.”
He had not eaten in days.
Vakrez had visited every so often, to see if Akos’s currentgift had failed yet. But it was still clinging to him, even now, when he was too weak to do much more than sit next to the fire until it dwindled, and then stoke the flames again.
That was where he was when Yma came to his room again. She wore blue as pale as her eyes, draped artfully around her slim body. The combined effect of her pale hair, pale skin, and pale clothing made her almost glow in the dark. He hadn’t gotten up to turn on the lights, so only the fire lit the room.
She sat in the chair beside him, folding her hands in her lap. She had seemed confident when she was here with Vakrez before, but now she rocked back and forth a little, tangling her fingers in her lap. She didn’t look at him when she started to speak.
“He took me from my home when I developed my currentgift,” she said. There was no question that the “he” she was talking about was Lazmet.
“I had a sister, and one living parent. My mother,” she went on. “I was low status. A nobody. He gave me clothes, and food, and vaccinations—for those things alone I would not have refused him, but you also don’t refuse Lazmet Noavek, or you end up . . .”
She shivered slightly.
“Because he forced me to distance myself from my family, though, I was protected when they turned against him, so to speak. My sister Zosita taught languages, you see, in secret.” Yma laughed, softly. “Imagine that. Becoming an enemy of the state just because you teach something.”
Akos squinted at her.
“I’m not good with faces,” he said, “but do I know you somehow? Other than seeing you at Ryzek’s side, I mean.”
“You know my niece, Teka,” Yma said, still without looking at him.
“Ah,” he said.
“I’m surprised, frankly, that Miss Noavek didn’t tell you about me. She’s more trustworthy than I gave her credit for, I suppose. She found me out the night before she felled her brother. I’m the one who poisoned Ryzek before their confrontation in the amphitheater.”
“Cyra ‘found you out’?” Akos said. “As a spy, you mean.”
“Of a sort,” Yma said. “I am uniquely positioned in that I can bend a person’s heart toward me, if I stay close to them, and do my work subtly, slowly. That’s why Ryzek kept me around even when my entire family was against him. But it is much more difficult with Lazmet. His heart is . . . uniquely disconnected from everyone, everything. Hard as I try, I can’t get him to budge an izit in any direction.”
She turned toward him at last. He noticed that her lips were peeling, like she had gnawed on them one too many times. The skin around her fingernails, too, was raw. She was wearing thin, trying to keep Lazmet in her grasp, that much was clear.
“You seem decent,” she said. “Your affection for Miss Noavek notwithstanding. But I don’t put my trust in other people. I wouldn’t put it in you, if I wasn’t desperate.”
She reached somewhere in the folds of fabric wrapped around her, and took out a small drawstring bag, the kind fancy people used to carry Assembly chips—the general system currency, which people of Shotet rarely used. She handed it to him, and when he opened it, his mouth filled up with saliva.
She had brought him dried meat. And bread.
“We have to strike the right balance,” she said. “You can’t appear to be in vigorous health, or he’ll suspect someone. But you need your currentgift to work. And it’s in shambles right now.”
It took all of Akos’s willpower not to stuff the entire wad of dried meat in his mouth at once.
“I’ll teach you about him, when I come in here. I’ll teach you how to pretend with him that what I’m doing to your heart is working,” she said. “I’m good at pretend, these days.”
“Why are you doing this?” he said.
“You are the only person I have ever met that he can’t control with his currentgift,” she said. “Which means you are the only person who can kill him.”