Akos sat up, slowly, making a show of his trembling hands, his food-stained shirt. Cyra had told him to make sure Suzao underestimated him before they made it to the arena, if he could. He wiped the spit flecks from his cheek, and nodded.
“I accept,” Akos said, and drawn by some kind of magnetism, his eyes found Jorek. Who looked relieved.
CHAPTER 22: CYRA
THE RENEGADES DIDN’T PASS me a message in the cafeteria, or whisper one in my ear as I walked across the sojourn ship. They didn’t hack into my personal screens or cause a disruption and kidnap me. A few days after the scavenge, I was walking back to my quarters and I saw blond hair swinging ahead of me—Teka, holding a dirty rag in grease-streaked fingers. She glanced back at me, beckoning me with a curled finger, and I followed her.
She led me not to a secret room or passageway, but to the loading bay. It was dark there, and the silhouettes of transport vessels looked like huge creatures huddled in sleep. In a far corner, someone had left a light on, attached to the wing of one of the biggest transport vessels.
If rain and thunder were music to the Pithar, the churn of machinery was music to the Shotet. It was the sound of the sojourn ship, the sound of our movement side by side with the currentstream. So it made sense that in this part of the ship, where their conversation would be buried by the hum and thrum of machinery on the level below us, was a small, shabby gathering of renegades. They were all dressed in the jumpsuits that maintenance workers wore—maybe they were all actually maintenance workers, now that I thought about it—and they had covered their faces with the same black mask Teka had worn when she attacked me in the hallway.
Teka drew a knife, and held the blade against my throat. It was cold, and smelled sweet, not unlike some of Akos’s mixtures.
“Move any closer to them and I will knock you out cold,” Teka said.
“Tell me this isn’t your whole membership.” In my mind I ran through what I could do to free myself, beginning with stomping on her toes.
“Would we risk you exposing our entire membership to your brother?” Teka said. “No.”
The light clipped to the wing of the transport ship lost one of its metal bindings, and swayed on its cord, dangling now from only one fastener.
“You’re the one who wanted to meet,” one of the others said. He sounded older, gruffer. He was a boulder of a man, with a beard thick enough for things to get lost in. “What did you want, exactly?”
I forced myself to swallow. Teka’s knife was still at my throat, but that wasn’t what was making it hard to speak. It was finally articulating what I had been thinking for months. It was finally doing something instead of just thinking about it, for the first time in my life.
“I want safe transport out of Shotet for someone,” I said. “Someone who doesn’t exactly want to leave.”
“For someone,” the one who had spoken earlier said. “Who?”
“Akos Kereseth,” I said.
There were mutters.
“He doesn’t want to leave? Then why do you want to get him out?” the man said.
“It’s . . . complicated,” I said. “His brother is here. His brother is also lost. Beyond hope of recovery.” I paused. “Some people are fools for love.”
“Ah,” Teka whispered. “I see how it is.”
I felt like they were all laughing at me, smiling under their dark masks. I didn’t like it. I grabbed Teka’s wrist and twisted, hard, so she couldn’t point the knife at me. She groaned at my touch, and I pinched the flat of the blade between my fingers, pulling it free. I flipped it in one hand so I was gripping the handle, my fingers slippery with whatever had been painted on the blade.
Before Teka could recover, I lunged, pinning her against my chest by the arm and pointing the knife at her side. I tried to keep as much of the currentgift pain to myself as I could, gritting my teeth so I wouldn’t scream. I was breathing hard right next to her ear. She was still.
“I may be a fool, too,” I said. “But I am not stupid. You think I can’t identify you by the way you stand, the way you walk, the way you speak? If I’m going to betray you, I will do it whether you wear masks and hold me at knifepoint or not. And we all know that I can’t betray you without betraying myself. So.” I blew a strand of Teka’s hair away from my mouth. “Are we going to have this discussion with mutual trust, or not?”
I released Teka, and offered her the knife. She was glaring at me, clutching her wrist, but she took it.
“All right,” the man said.
He undid the covering that shielded his mouth. Beneath it, his thick beard crept down to his throat. Some of the others followed suit. Jorek was one of them, standing off to my right with his arms crossed. Unsurprising, since he had so baldly requested his Noavek-loyal father’s death in the arena.
Others didn’t bother, but it didn’t matter—it was their spokesman I had cared about.
“I’m Tos, and I think we can do what you ask,” the man said. “And I think you’re aware that we would require something else in return.”