“I . . . celebrated your mother’s passing,” she said. I went cold. “As I celebrated your father’s, and would have celebrated your brother’s. Even yours, perhaps.” She ran her fingers over the metal railing beside her. I imagined her daughter’s fingerprints, pressed there earlier minutes ago, now wiped clean by her touch. “It is a strange thing to realize that your worst enemies can be loved by their families.”
You didn’t know my mother, I wanted to snarl. As if it mattered, now or ever, what this woman thought of Ylira Noavek. But Zosita was already half faded in my mind, like her own shadow. Marching, in this moment, toward her own doom. And for what? For a well-aimed blow against my brother? Two renegades had fallen to Vas in that attack. Had it been worth their lives?
“Is it really worth it?” I said, frowning. “Losing your life for this?”
She was still smiling that strange smile.
“After I fled Shotet, your brother summoned what remained of my family to his home,” she said. “I had meant to send for my children when I reached a safe place, but he got to them first. He killed my eldest son, and he took my daughter’s eye, for crimes they had no part in.” She laughed again. “And you see, you aren’t even shocked. You have seen him do worse, no doubt, and his father before him. Yes, it is worth it. And it was worth it to the two who died trying to take down your brother’s steward. I don’t imagine you can understand.”
For a long time we stood, with just the hum of the pipes and distant footsteps to break the silence. I was too confused, too tired, to hide the wincing and flinching as my currentgift did its work.
“To answer your question, yes, I can endure an interrogation,” Zosita said. “Can you tell lies?” She smirked again. “I suppose that’s a silly question. Will you tell lies?”
I hesitated.
When had I become the sort of person who helped renegades? She had just told me that she would have celebrated my death. At least Ryzek wanted to keep me alive—what would the renegades do to me, if they managed to overthrow my brother?
Somehow, I didn’t care.
“‘I tell lies better than I tell truths,’” I said. It was a quote from some poetry I had read on the side of a building with Otega on one of our excursions. I am a Shotet. I am sharp as broken glass, and just as fragile. I tell lies better than I tell truths. I see all of the galaxy and never catch a glimpse of it.
“Let us go tell some, then,” Zosita said.
CHAPTER 19: AKOS
AKOS BENT OVER THE pot, resting on a burner in his little room on the sojourn ship, and breathed in some of the yellow fumes. Everything in front of him blurred, and his head dropped, heavy, toward the countertop. Just for a tick, before he caught himself.
Strong enough, then, he thought. Good.
He’d had to ask Cyra to get him some sendes leaf to strengthen the drug, so it would work faster. And it had worked—he had tested it the night before, dropping asleep so soon after swallowing it that the book he was reading slid right out of his hands.
He turned off the flames to let the elixir cool, then jerked to attention at the sound of a knock. He checked the clock. In Thuvhe, he’d been more aware of the world’s rhythms, dark in the Deadening time and bright in the Awakening, the way the day closed like a shutting eye. Here, without the sunset and sunrise to guide him, he was always checking. It was the seventeenth hour. Time for Jorek.
The corridor guard was there when he opened the door, looking critical. Jorek was behind him.
“Kereseth,” the guard said. “This one says he’s here to see you?”
“Yes,” Akos said.
“Didn’t think you could receive visitors,” the guard said with a sneer. “Not your quarters, are they?”
“My name is Jorek Kuzar,” Jorek said, leaning hard into his surname. “So. Get out of his face.”
The guard looked over Jorek’s mechanic uniform, eyebrows raised.
“Go easy on him, Kuzar,” Akos said. “He’s got the world’s most boring job: protecting Cyra Noavek.”
Akos went back to his narrow room, which was giving off a leafy, malty smell. Medicinal. Akos dipped a finger in the mixture to test its heat. Still warm, but now cool enough to put in a vial. He wiped the potion off on his pants, not wanting it to absorb through his skin. He searched the drawers for a clean vessel.
Jorek was standing just inside the doorway. Staring. His hand hanging off the back of his neck, like always.
“What?” Akos said. He got out a dropper and touched it to the potion.
“Nothing, it’s just . . . this isn’t what I expected Cyra Noavek’s room to look like,” Jorek said.
Akos grunted a little—it wasn’t what he’d expected, either—as he squeezed the yellow elixir from the dropper into the vial.
“You really don’t sleep in the same bed,” Jorek said.
Cheeks hot, Akos scowled at him. “No. Why?”
“Rumors.” Jorek shrugged. “I mean, you do live together. Touch each other.”
“I help her with her pain,” Akos said.
“And you’re fated to die for the Noaveks.”
“Thanks for the reminder; I’d almost forgotten,” Akos snapped. “Did you want my help, or not?”