That was what the challenge with Lety had been, after all: a demonstration of power. His power.

But that power actually belonged to me.

Ryzek had been learning to imitate our father ever since he was a child, and my father had been excellent at hiding his reactions. He had believed that any uncontrolled expression made him vulnerable; he had been aware that he was always being watched, no matter where he was. Ryzek had gotten better at this skill since his youth, but he was still not a master of it. As I stared at him, unblinking, his face contorted. Angry. And afraid.

"I don't need you, Cyra," he said, quiet.

"That isn't true," I said, coming to my feet. "But even if it was true . . . you should remember what would happen if I decided to lay a hand on you."

I showed him my palm, willing my currentgift to surface. For once, it came at my call, rippling across my body and-for a moment-wrapping around each of my fingers like black threads. Ryzek's eyes were drawn to it, seemingly without permission.

"I will continue to play the part of your loyal sister, of this fearsome thing," I said. "But I will not cause pain for you anymore."

With that, I turned. I moved toward the door, my heart pounding, hard.

"Careful," Ryzek said as I walked away. "You may regret this moment."

"I doubt it," I said, without turning around. "After all, I'm not the one who's afraid of pain."

"I am not," he said tersely, "afraid of pain."

"Oh?" I turned back. "Come over here and take my hand, then."

I offered it to him, palm up and shadow-stained, my face twitching from the pain that still lingered. Ryzek didn't budge.

"Thought so," I said, and I left.

When I returned to my room, Akos sat on the bed with the book on elmetahak on his lap, the translator glowing over one of the pages. He looked up at me with furrowed eyebrows. The scar along his jaw was still dark in color, its line perfectly straight as it followed his jaw. It would pale, in time, fading into his skin.

I walked into the bathroom to splash water on my face.

"What did he do to you?" Akos said as he slumped against the bathroom wall, next to the sink.

I splashed my face again, then leaned over the sink. Water rolled down my cheeks and over my eyelids and dripped into the basin beneath me. I stared at my reflection, eyes wild, jaw tensed.

"He didn't do anything," I said, grabbing a cloth from the rack next to the sink and dragging it over my face. My smile was almost a grimace of fear. "He didn't do anything, because I didn't let him. He threatened me, and I . . . I threatened him back."

The webs of dark color were dense on my hands and arms, like splatters of black paint. I sat in one of the kitchen chairs and laughed. I laughed from my belly, laughed until I felt warm all over. I had never stood up to Ryzek before. The cord of shame curled up in my belly unspooled a little. I was not quite as complicit anymore.

Akos sat across from me.

"What . . . what does this mean?" he said.

"It means he leaves us alone," I said. "I . . ." My hands trembled. "I don't know why I'm so . . ."

Akos covered my hands with his own. "You just threatened the most powerful person in the country. I think it's okay to be a little shaken."

His hands weren't much larger than mine, though thicker through the knuckles, with tendons that stood out all the way to his wrists. I could see blue-green veins through his skin, which was much paler than my own. Almost like those rumors about Thuvhesits having thin skin were true, except that whatever Akos was, it wasn't weak.

I slipped my hands out of his.

Now, with Ryzek out of the way, and Akos here, I wondered how we would both fill our days. I was used to spending sojourns alone. There was still something splattered on the side of the stove from the last sojourn, when I had cooked for myself every night, experimenting with ingredients from different planets-unsuccessfully, most of the time, since I had no talent for cooking. I had spent my nights watching footage from other places, imagining lives other than my own.

He crossed the room to get a glass from the cupboard and fill it with water from the faucet. I tilted my head back to look at the plants that hung above our heads, shining in their resin cages. Some of them glowed when the lights were out; others would decay, even in resin, withering into bright colors. I had been watching them for three sojourns already.

Akos wiped his mouth and set the glass down.

"I figured it out," he said. "A reason to keep going, I mean."

He flexed his left arm, where his first kill mark was etched.

"Oh?"

"Yeah." His head bobbed. "Something Ryzek said kept bothering me . . . that he would make Eijeh into someone I didn't want to rescue. Well, I decided that's impossible." Days ago he had looked empty to me, and now full, an overflowing cup. "There's no version of Eijeh that I don't want to rescue from him."

This was the cost of the same softness that had made him look at me with sympathy earlier that day instead of disgust: madness. To continue to love someone so far beyond help, beyond redemption, was madness.

"You don't make any sense to me," I said to him. "It's like the more terrible things you find out about a person, or the more terrible a person is to you, the kinder you are to them. It's masochism."

"Says the person who's been scarring herself for things she was coerced into doing," he said wryly.

It wasn't funny, what either of us was saying. And then it was. I grinned, and after a moment, so did he. A new grin-not the one that told me he was proud of himself, or the one that he forced when he felt like he needed to be polite, but a thirsty, crazed kind of smile.

"You really don't hate me for this," I said, lifting up my left arm.

"No, I don't."

I had experienced only a few different reactions to what I was, what I could do. Hatred, from those who had suffered at my hand; fear, from those who hadn't but might; and glee, from those capable of using me for it. I had never seen this before. It was almost like he understood.

"You don't hate me at all," I said in almost a whisper, afraid to hear the answer.

But his answer came steadily, like it was obvious to him: "No."

I found, then, that I wasn't angry anymore about what he had done to me, to get Eijeh out. He had done it because of the same quality, in him, that made him so accepting of me now. How could I fault him for it?

"All right." I sighed. "Be up early tomorrow, because we'll need to train harder if you expect to get your brother out of here."

His water glass was marked with fingerprints around the base. I took it from him.

He frowned at me. "You'll help me? Even after what I did to you?"

"Yeah." I drained the water glass, and set it back down. "I guess I will."

CHAPTER 15: AKOS.

AKOS RAN THROUGH THE memory of his almost-escape with Eijeh over and over again: He'd run through the corridors in the walls of the Noavek house, stopping where the walls joined to peek through cracks and figure out where he was. He had spent a long time in the dark, gulping dust and catching splinters in his fingers.

Finally he got to the room where Eijeh was kept-triggering some sensor without meaning to, as Ryzek told him later. But at the time he hadn't known. He had just stuck his fingers in the lock that held Eijeh's door shut. Most doors these days were locked by the current, and his touch could unlock them. Wrist cuffs, too. That was how he had gotten free to kill Kalmev Radix in the feathergrass.

Eijeh had stood by a barred window, high over the manor's back gate. There was feathergrass there, too, tufts swaying in the wind. Akos wondered what Eijeh saw there-their dad? He didn't know how feathergrass worked for other people, since it didn't do anything to him anymore.

Eijeh had turned to him, taking him in bit by bit. It had only been two seasons since they had seen each other, but they had both changed-Akos was taller, thicker, and Eijeh had gone ashen and thin, curly hair matted in places. He wobbled a little, and Akos caught him by the elbows.

"Akos," Eijeh had whispered. "I don't know what to do, I don't-"

"It's okay," Akos said. "It's okay, I'll get us out of here, you don't need to do anything."

"You . . . you killed that man, that man who was in our house-"

"Yeah." Akos knew the man's name: Kalmev Radix, now just a scar on his arm.

"Why did this happen?" Eijeh's voice broke. Akos's heart broke. "Why didn't Mom see it coming?"

Akos didn't remind him that she probably had. No point to it, really.

"Don't know," he had said. "But I'm getting you out if it kills me."

Akos put his arm around his brother, holding him mostly upright as they walked out of the room together. His hand found the top of Eijeh's head as they ducked into the passage, to keep him from hitting it. Eijeh had heavy footsteps, and Akos had been sure that someone would hear them through the walls.

"It's s'posed to be me saving you," Eijeh whispered at one point. Or the closest to a whisper as he could get; he'd always been terrible at sneaking.

"Who says? Some kind of manual on brotherly conduct?"

Eijeh had laughed. "You didn't read yours? Typical."

Also laughing, Akos had pushed open the door at the end of the passage. Waiting for them in the kitchens, cracking his knuckles, was Vas Kuzar.

A week after the sojourn ship launched and sailed for the currentstream, Akos went to the public training room to practice. He could have used the empty room above Cyra's quarters, but lately she'd taken to watching footage up there. Mostly it was of people from other planets fighting, but a week ago he caught her imitating an Othyrian dancer, all pointed toes and fingers fluttering. She'd gotten so grouchy with him after that, he didn't want to risk it again.

He didn't even need to check the crumpled map Cyra had drawn for him on their second night. The training room was dim and near empty, just a few others lifting weights at the far end. Good, he thought. People knew him in Shotet as the kidnapped Thuvhesit, the one who Ryzek's Scourge couldn't hurt. Nobody gave him any grief-probably because they were afraid of Cyra-but he didn't enjoy the staring.

It made his face red.

He was trying to touch his toes-emphasis on trying-when he figured out someone was watching him. He couldn't say how, just that when he looked up, Jorek Kuzar was standing there.

Jorek Kuzar, son of Suzao Kuzar.

They had met only once, when Vas brought Jorek to Cyra's part of Noavek manor. His skinny brown arms were bare. Akos had taken to checking for marks whenever he met somebody, and Jorek had none. When he caught Akos staring, he rubbed at the side of his neck, leaving red streaks from his fingernails behind.

"Need something?" Akos said, like there would be trouble if Jorek did.

"Someone to spar with?" Jorek held up two practice knives just like the ones Cyra had, hard and synthetic.

Akos looked him over. Did he really expect Akos to just . . . train with him? Him, the son of the man who had once pushed a boot sole into Akos's face?

"I was just leaving," Akos said.

Jorek cocked an eyebrow. "I know all of this"-he waved a hand over his slim torso-"is downright terrifying, but it's just for practice, Kereseth."

Akos didn't buy that all Jorek really wanted was "someone to spar with," but he might as well figure out what the truth was. Besides, a person didn't choose their own blood.

"Fine," Akos said.

They walked to one of the practice arenas. A circle of paint defined the space, reflective, peeling off in places. The air was warm, thanks to the hot water moving through the pipes above, so Akos was already sweating. He took the knife Jorek held out to him.

"I've never seen a person so wary of a fake fight," Jorek said, but Akos wasn't sparing any time for banter. He swiped, testing his opponent's speed, and Jorek jumped back, startled.

Akos slipped under Jorek's first jab, and elbowed him in the back. Jorek stumbled forward, catching himself with his fingertips, and turned to strike again. This time Akos caught him by the elbow and dragged him sideways, heaving him to the ground, though not for long.

Jorek bent low, catching Akos's stomach with the tip of the practice knife.

"Not a good place to aim, Kuzar," Akos said. "In a real fight, I'd be wearing armor."

"I go by 'Jorek,' not 'Kuzar.' You've earned armor?"

"Yeah." Akos used his distraction against him, smacking the front of Jorek's throat with the flat of the weapon. Jorek choked, clapping his hands over his neck.

"All right, all right," he gasped, showing a palm. "That answers that question."

Akos backed up to the edge of the arena to put some space between them. "What question? About my armor?"

"No. Damn, that sucked." He massaged his throat. "I came here wondering how good you'd gotten, training with Cyra. My father said you didn't know hand from foot when he first met you."

Akos's anger was slow to come, like water turning to ice, but it had some heft to it, when it did. Like right then.

"Your father-" he started, but Jorek interrupted.

"Is the worst kind of man, yes. That's what I want to talk to you about."

Akos flipped the practice knife in his hand, again and again, waiting for the right response to come, or for Jorek to keep going. Whatever he had to say, though, it didn't seem to come easy. Akos watched the ones lifting weights on the other end of the room. They weren't looking, didn't seem to be listening.

"I know what my father did to you, and your family," Jorek said. "I also know what you did to one of the other men who was there." He nodded to Akos's marked arm. "And I want to ask you for something."

As far as Akos knew, Jorek was a big disappointment to his family. Born to an elite Shotet name and working in maintenance. He was grease-streaked even then.

"What, exactly?" Akos said. Another flip of the knife.

"I want you to kill my father," Jorek said plainly.

The knife clattered to the ground.