The tears subsided eventually, and he fell asleep with his shoes still on.
A while later, when he woke, he stood under the spray in the hall bathroom for just a little longer than usual, hoping it would relax him. No use.
When he got out, though, there was a stack of clothes just outside the door. His dad’s old clothes. The shirt was too loose through the shoulders and waist, but tight across the chest—he and Aoseh were completely different shapes. The pants were long enough, but just barely, tucked into the top of Akos’s boots.
When he took his towel back to the bathroom to hang it—that was what his mom would return to, a wet towel and rumpled sheets and no children—Isae was there, already dressed in some of his mom’s clothes, the black pants bunching around her waist under the belt. She prodded one of her scars in the mirror, and met his eyes.
“If you try to say something meaningful and profound about scars, I’ll punch you in the head,” she said.
He shrugged, and turned his left arm so the kill marks faced her. “I guarantee you yours aren’t as ugly as mine.”
“At least you chose yours.”
Well, she had a point.
“How did you come to be marked by a Shotet blade?” he said.
He’d heard some of the soldiers trading scar stories before. Not kill-mark stories, but other scars, a white line on a kneecap from a childhood accident, a swipe from a kitchen knife during an invasion of Hessa, a drunken accident involving a head and a door frame. They’d all been in stitches over each other’s stories. That wasn’t going to happen now, he was sure.
“The scavenge isn’t always as peaceful as they might have you believe,” Isae said. “During the last one, my ship had to land on Othyr for repairs, and while we were there, one of the crew got really sick. While we were parked at the hospital, we were attacked by Shotet soldiers who were raiding the medicine stores. One of them cut my face and left me for dead.”
“I’m sorry,” he said automatically. For some reason, he wanted to tell her about where Othyrian medical aid went—to Ryzek’s supporters only—and how few people knew about it. But it really wasn’t a good time to explain Shotet to her, especially not if she would think he was excusing the soldier for stealing medicine and scarring her face.
“I’m not sorry.” Isae seized the soap bar next to the sink like she wanted to break it in half, and started washing her hands. “Hard to forget who your enemies are when you have scars like mine.” She cleared her throat. “Hope you don’t mind, I borrowed some of your mother’s clothes.”
“I’m wearing a dead man’s underwear,” he said. “Why would I mind?”
She smiled a little, which Akos felt was progress enough.
None of them wanted to wait any longer than they had to, Akos in particular. He knew the more time he spent there, the harder it would be to leave. Better, he thought, to reopen the wound fast, get it over with, so he could bandage it up again.
They packed supplies, food, clothes, and iceflowers, and piled into the spare floater. It had just enough fuel in it to get them across the feathergrass, and that was all they needed. At Cisi’s touch it lifted off the ground, and Akos set the autonav for a spot in what looked like the middle of nowhere. They would go to Jorek’s house first. It was the only relatively safe place he knew outside of Voa.
As they flew, he watched the feathergrass below them, showing the wind’s pattern as it tilted and turned.
“What do the Shotet say about the feathergrass?” Isae said suddenly. “I mean, we say early Thuvhesit settlers planted it to keep the Shotet at bay, but obviously they have a different perspective, right?”
“The Shotet say they planted it,” Akos said. “To keep out Thuvhesit outsiders. But it’s native to Ogra.”
“I can still hear them from up here,” Cisi said. “The voices in the grasses.”
“Whose voices?” The sharpness left Isae’s voice when she spoke to Cisi.
“My father’s, mostly,” Cisi said.
“I hear my mother,” Isae said. “Wonder if we only hear the dead.”
“How long has it been since she died?”
“Couple seasons. Same time I got cut.” Isae had lapsed into some other, more casual diction. Even her posture had changed, spine bent.
They kept talking, and Akos stayed quiet, his thoughts drifting back to Cyra.
If she had died, he was sure he would have felt it now, like something stabbing him right through the sternum. It wasn’t possible to lose a friend like her without knowing, was it? Though the current didn’t flow through him, her life force surely did. She had kept him alive for too long. Maybe if he held on tight enough now, he could do the same for her, from far away.