Dr. Fadlan’s eyes kept drifting to my mother’s arm. She had her kill marks exposed, and even they looked beautiful, not brutal, each line straight, all at even intervals. I didn’t think Dr. Fadlan, an Othyrian, saw many Shotet in his offices.
It was an odd place. When I arrived, they put me in a room with a bunch of unfamiliar toys, and I played with some of the small figurines the way Ryzek and I had at home, when we still played together: I lined them up like an army, and marched them into battle against the giant, squashy animal in the corner of the room. After about an hour Dr. Fadlan had told me to come out, that he had finished his assessment. Only I hadn’t done anything yet.
“Eight seasons is a little young, of course, but Cyra isn’t the youngest child I’ve seen develop a gift,” Dr. Fadlan said to my mother. The pain surged, and I tried to breathe through it as they told Shotet soldiers to when they had to get a wound stitched and there was no time for a numbing agent. I had seen recordings of it. “Usually it happens in extreme circumstances, as a protective measure. Do you have any idea what those circumstances might have been? They may give us an insight into why this particular gift developed.”
“I told you,” my mother said. “I don’t know.”
She was lying. I had told her what Ryzek did to me, but I knew better than to contradict her now. When my mother lied, it was always for a good reason.
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you that Cyra is not simply growing into her gift,” Dr. Fadlan said. “This appears to be its full manifestation. And the implications of that are somewhat disturbing.”
“What do you mean?” I didn’t think my mother could sit up any straighter, and then she did.
“The current flows through every one of us,” Dr. Fadlan said gently. “And like liquid metal flowing into a mold, it takes a different shape in each of us, showing itself in a different way. As a person develops, those changes can alter the mold the current flows through, so the gift can also shift—but people don’t generally change on such a fundamental level.”
Dr. Fadlan had an unmarked arm, and he did not speak the revelatory tongue. There were deep lines around his mouth and eyes, and they grew even deeper as he looked at me. His skin was the same shade as my mother’s, however, suggesting a common lineage. Many Shotet had mixed blood, so it wasn’t surprising—my own skin was a medium brown, almost golden in certain lights.
“That your daughter’s gift causes her to invite pain into herself, and project pain into others, suggests something about what’s going on inside her,” Dr. Fadlan said. “It would take further study to know exactly what that is. But a cursory assessment says that on some level, she feels she deserves it. And she feels others deserve it as well.”
“You’re saying this gift is my daughter’s fault?” The pulse in my mother’s throat moved faster. “That she wants to be this way?”
Dr. Fadlan leaned forward and looked directly at me. “Cyra, the gift comes from you. If you change, the gift will, too.”
My mother stood. “She is a child. This is not her fault, and it’s not what she wants for herself. I’m sorry that we wasted our time here. Cyra.”
She held out her gloved hand, and wincing, I took it. I wasn’t used to seeing her so agitated. It made all the shadows under my skin move faster.
“As you can see,” Dr. Fadlan said, “it gets worse when she’s emotional.”
“Quiet,” my mother snapped. “I won’t have you poisoning her mind any more than you already have.”
“With a family like yours, my fear is that she has already seen too much for her mind to be saved,” he retorted as we left the room.
My mother rushed us through the hallways to the loading bay. By the time we reached the landing pad, there were Othyrian soldiers surrounding our vessel. Their weapons looked feeble to me, slim rods with dark current wrapped around them, set to stun instead of kill. Their armor, too, was pathetic, made of pillowed synthetic material that left their sides exposed.
My mother ordered me into the ship, and paused to speak with one of them. I dawdled on my way to the door to hear what they said.
“We are here to escort you off-world,” the soldier said.
“I am the wife of the sovereign of Shotet. You should address me as ‘my lady,’” my mother snapped.
“My apologies, ma’am, but the Assembly of Nine Planets recognizes no Shotet nation, and therefore no sovereign. If you leave the planet immediately, we will cause you no trouble.”
“No Shotet nation.” My mother laughed a little. “A time will come when you will wish you hadn’t said that.”
She clutched her skirts to lift them, and marched into the ship. I scrambled inside and found my seat, and she sat beside me. The door closed behind us, and ahead of us, the pilot gave the signal for liftoff. This time I pulled the straps across my own chest and lap, because my mother’s hands were shaking too badly to do it for me.