She had been so careful before then, so controlled, that it startled him when she threw herself across him, hands clutching at his shoulder, his side. At first he didn’t—couldn’t—move. But then he brought his arms around her, and held her tight. They’d never hugged much as kids—except for their dad, they weren’t an affectionate family, as a rule—but her embrace was brief. She was here, alive. And they were together again.
“I can’t believe . . .” She sighed. And she started to mutter a prayer. He hadn’t heard a Thuvhesit prayer in a long time. The ones for gratitude were briefest, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it with her. There were too many worries crowding his head.
“Neither can I,” he said, once she had finished. She pulled away, still holding one of his hands and smiling down at him. No, frowning now, staring at their joined hands. Touching her cheek, where a tear had fallen.
“I’m crying,” she said. “What—I haven’t been able to cry since . . . since my currentgift.”
“Your currentgift keeps you from crying?”
“You didn’t notice it?” She sniffed, wiping her cheeks. “I make people feel . . . at ease. But I also can’t seem to do or say anything that makes them uneasy, like . . .”
“Crying,” he supplied. That she had a gift with ease didn’t surprise him. But the way she described it, it was more like a hand around her throat, squeezing. He couldn’t see the gift in that.
“Well, mine stops yours. Stops everybody’s,” he said.
“Handy.”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you go on the sojourn?” she said suddenly, holding tight to his hand. He wondered if she was just going to start firing questions at him, now that she could. She added, “Sorry, I just . . . I wondered, when I saw the reports. Because you can’t swim. I was worried.”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed.
“I was surrounded by Shotet, in close proximity with Ryzek Noavek, and you were worried because I can’t swim?” He laughed again.
“I can worry about two things at once. Several things, in fact,” she said, with a bite. Not a hard one, though.
“Cee,” he said. “Why am I cuffed to this bed?”
“You were wearing Shotet armor when you were dropped off. The chancellor’s instructions are for you to be treated with caution.”
For some reason, her cheeks went pink.
“Ori didn’t vouch for me?”
“She did, and I did,” Cisi said. She didn’t explain why she would be in a position to vouch for him with the chancellor of Thuvhe, and he didn’t ask. Not yet, anyway. “But the chancellor is . . . difficult to win over.”
She didn’t sound critical, but then, Cisi never had. She could sympathize with damn near everybody. Compassion made it hard to maneuver, but she seemed to him to have managed all right in the seasons they had been apart. She looked almost the same, but thinner, with a sharper jaw and cheekbones. Those were from their mom, of course, but the rest of her—too-broad smile, dark brow, delicate nose—was their dad.
Last time she had seen him, he had been a child, soft in the face, shorter than all the other kids. Always quiet, always poised to blush. And now, taller than most men, hard-featured and muscled and marked with kills. Did he even look like the same person to her?
“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” he said, in case she wasn’t sure.
“I know.” It was easy to see Cisi as this soft, gentle thing, but there was a kind of steel in her eyes, and lines around her mouth, early wrinkles from a life of heartache. She was grown.
“You’re different,” he said.
“You’re one to talk,” she said. “Listen, I wanted to ask you . . .” She gnawed on a fingernail as she found the words. “I wanted to ask you about Eijeh.”
Eijeh’s hand had been heavy on his shoulder as he steered his brother into the prison, though Akos whispered his name and begged him for help. Food. Mercy.
He could still feel Eijeh’s hand there.
“Is he alive?” she said weakly.
“That depends on your definition of ‘alive,’” he said. Sharp, the way Cyra would have said it.
“I saw a hacked Shotet feed last year where he was at Ryzek’s side.” She paused like she was giving him room to say something, only he didn’t know what to say. “And you were at Cyra’s,” she added, again with that pause.
His throat was as dry as dust. “Have you seen that feed lately?”
“No. Hard to access. Why?”
He needed to know if Cyra was okay. He needed it like dry earth needed water, scrabbling for whatever drops it could find. But if he was in Thuvhe, there was no Shotet feed playing on the screens in every home, no way to check if she was dead or alive, until he went back.
Which was a given. He would go back. He would help Cyra. He would drag Eijeh home if he had to poison him first. He wasn’t finished, not yet.
“That’s why Isae—I mean, the chancellor—has you cuffed to the bed,” Cisi said. “If you could just explain why you were with her—”
“I won’t explain.” She looked as shocked by the anger in his voice as he was. “I stayed alive, and now this is what I am. Nothing I say to you is going to change what you’ve already assumed.”