Dahlen was silent for a moment. “Hand me your knife.”
He produced a whetstone and wielded it lightly along the edge. She watched him impatiently. He moved with painstaking slowness, as if they had all the time in the world, as if there wouldn’t soon be a man on the other side of the knife.
Unexpectedly, he began to speak. “You can’t apply too much pressure to the blade,” he said. “You move the steel in the arc—one fluid motion, like so—so that the entire length of the edge sharpens equally. The angles must be precise.”
“It’ll work fine for my purposes either way,” Rhee said.
“A knife is not only for killing,” he replied. “A knife might be used a dozen different ways, all of them subtle, some of them unexpected. And you’ll be glad you planned ahead, worked all the angles, sharpened it to perfection . . .”
Dahlen was talking about the day she would become empress. Hadn’t Veyron said something similar—that Rhee needed to think, to plan?
“I was ready when Veyron came for me.” Rhee’s voice was without pride. It was laced instead with guilt, and anger, and the memory of the man’s blood-slicked hand reaching for hers as he died.
“It won’t be the same as it was with your trainer.” He remained focused on the blade. “Every death by your hand is different than the one that came before. You’ll be changed.”
“I’m counting on it.” She wanted to be changed. It was revenge that directed her focus and gave her purpose. The hole in her heart would finally be filled.
He held up the newly sharpened knife and examined its edge. The silence stretched. “Don’t say you weren’t warned,” he said eventually. “Every time it’s for the worst.”
He handed it back to her. In the reflection of the blade she saw the damage done by the octoerces: a plum-colored scar that covered half her face, and burst blood vessels that made her entire right eye red. It gave her speckled, hazel iris a dark brown color.
“Do you think of those moments?” she asked. “The moments that changed you?”
“The order does not encourage recall. It’s the reason we turn off our cubes, as part of our vows. Even our fellow Fontisians don’t seem to understand that memories cloud judgment. They make one . . . weak.”
Rhee wondered what he could possibly mean. Memories were the foundations for people’s lives. Who would she be without her memories? Without the crystal clear moments with her family, preserved forever in her cube?
“What was it like? Growing up the way you did?”
“You’re not asking what it was like. You’re asking what made me this way.” Dahlen almost smiled; his mouth moved as if it had been touched by something bitter. “Erawae was a territory to which we did not belong. But there was no place for fear or sadness when Vodhan walked beside you. He knew every move, every intention of my heart.”
“How do you know he exists?” Rhee asked. “How can you be sure?”
“You do not doubt your ancestors. I do not doubt my god.” Rhee could tell by the way Dahlen’s eyes went cold that there would be no more conversation. “We should not delay any longer,” he said.
They gathered along the chain-link fence that surrounded the site: dozens of large, jagged crystals arranged in a semicircle atop a grass knoll. They were easily three times Dahlen’s height, some of them even taller—but all of them had a beautiful cloudy quality to them, and reflected the light in such a way that all the colors of the spectrum were trapped in the crystal formations. No one knew how they’d got here; early civilizations couldn’t have had the technology to move something so impossibly heavy. It was thought to be a religious site for an ancient species, perhaps one that had retreated to another planet.
Rhee saw the image of her own face projected above the crystals. Hundreds of people had gathered, possibly to mourn Rhiannon, possibly just because they hoped to tell future generations that they had been there. So many witnesses, she thought, as the gates swung open, and from here she could see the crowd surge. The smell of incense hung in the air.
She moved to join them, but Dahlen stopped her. “You won’t be dissuaded.”
He spoke flatly, but she knew it was a question. She shook her head.
Something moved behind his eyes, an expression gone too quickly for her to decipher. It was as if a sigh had moved through him in the form of a shadow. “Grip the knife in your hand and drive the blade up, here, into his kidney,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it against the spot just under his rib cage. His stomach was hard; he was breathing heavily. “He won’t survive. Do not wait to check.”
Rhee pulled back. Stunned. Confused. The same hand that was close to Dahlen’s vibrant body was about to take a man’s life.