Her currentgift had changed.

Ryzek nodded to Vas. Vas crossed the platform, drawing the knife at his back. The soldiers around Cyra stepped aside for him. Cyra smirked at him, and said something inaudible. Ryzek said something inaudible back, stepped close, and leaned in, his lips moving fast over words no one else could hear. Vas grabbed her by the hair, forcing her head back and to the side. Her throat was exposed; Vas angled the blade over it, and as the knife dug in, Akos gritted his teeth, and looked away.

"You get the idea," Jorek said. There was silence as the footage stopped.

"What did he do?" Akos said roughly.

"He . . . scarred her," Teka said. "Took all the skin from throat to skull. Not sure why. All the rite requires is flesh. Mutilator's choice."

She drew a line from the side of her neck up to the middle of her scalp. Akos felt like he might throw up.

"That word he used, I don't know it," Isae said. "Nem-nemhalzet?"

"Nemhalzak," Jorek said. "It's the elimination of someone's status, perceived or actual. It means anyone can challenge her to the arena, to fight to the death, and it means she's no longer formally considered Shotet. With all the people she's hurt at his behest, and all the people who loved her mother, well . . . there are plenty of people who want to challenge her. Ryzek will let as many of them do it as it takes to kill her."

"And with that wound in her head, she's losing blood fast," Teka said. "They put a bandage on it, but obviously that's not enough for what he did to her."

"She'll fight all those challenges in that amphitheater?" Akos said.

"Most likely," Teka said. "This is supposed to be a very public event. But that force field will fry anything that touches it-"

Akos talked over her. "Obviously you have a ship, or you wouldn't have been able to dump me on that hospital landing pad."

"Yeah," Jorek said. "A fast, stealthy one, too."

"Then I know how to get her," Akos said.

"I don't remember agreeing to some detour rescue mission," Isae snapped. "Particularly not for Ryzek Noavek's little terror. You think I don't know the things she's done, Kereseth? The rest of the galaxy hears plenty of Shotet rumors."

"I don't care what you think you know," Akos said. "You want my help getting any further? You'll wait for me to do this first."

Isae crossed her arms. But Akos had her, and she seemed to know it.

Ara offered Cisi and Isae a spare room upstairs, and a cot on the floor in Jorek's room for Akos. But judging by the look Cisi gave her brother as they reached the top of the staircase, she wasn't about to just let him leave. So he followed her into a little bedroom with a big, bulgy mattress in it, and a furnace in the corner. Multicolored light spotted the floor, sunset burning through the windows.

He took off his armor there, but left the knife in his boot. There was no telling what would happen here. Akos felt like Vas and Ryzek were around every corner.

"Is-Badha," Cisi said. "Why don't you clean up first? I need to talk to Akos."

Isae's head bobbed, and she left, nudging the door shut with her heel. Akos sat down on the bed next to Cisi, blue and green and purple dots of light marking his shoes. She put her hand on his wrist.

"Eijeh" was all she said.

So he told her. About all the memories Ryzek had poured into Eijeh, and all the memories he had drained. About the new words Eijeh used and the way he spun a knife on his palm just like Ryzek did. He didn't tell her how Eijeh had watched while Ryzek hurt Akos, not once, but twice, and he didn't talk about how Eijeh had used his visions to help Ryzek. There was no reason for her to lose hope.

"That's why you didn't try to escape," Cisi said softly. "Because you needed to kidnap him to do it, and that's . . . harder."

Near impossible is what it is, Akos thought.

"That," he said, "and what kind of future do I have in Thuvhe, Cisi? You think I get to be the first one in the galaxy to defy his fate?" He shook his head. "Maybe it's better if we just see the truth. We don't get to be a family anymore."

"No." She was very firm. "You didn't think you'd ever see me again, but here I am, right? You don't know how fate finds you, and neither do I. But until it does, we get to be whatever we can be."

She put her hand in his and squeezed. He saw a little of their dad in her arched, sympathetic eyebrows and the dimple in her cheek. They sat there for a little while, their shoulders touching, listening to the splatter of water coming from the bathroom across the hall.

"What's Cyra Noavek like?" she asked him.

"She's . . ." He shook his head. How could he describe a whole person like that? She was tough as dried meat. She loved space. She knew how to dance. She was too good at hurting people. She had gotten some renegades to dump him in Thuvhe without Eijeh because she hadn't respected his goddamn decisions, and he was stupidly grateful for it. She . . . well, she was Cyra.

Cisi was smiling. "You know her well. People are harder to sum up when you know them well."

"Yeah, I guess I do."

"If you think she's worth saving, I guess we all just have to trust you on that," Cisi said. "Hard as it is."

Isae came out of the bathroom, her hair wet but pulled back in a tight knot, like it was lacquered to her head. She wore a different shirt, another one of their mom's, embroidered at the collar with little flowers. She shook out the other one-wet, like she'd washed it by hand-and hung it over a chair near the furnace.

"You've got grass in your hair," Isae said to Cisi, with a grin.

"It's a new look I'm trying," Cisi said in response.

"It works for you," Isae said. "Then again, everything does, doesn't it?"

Cisi flushed. Isae avoided Akos's eyes, turning toward the furnace to warm her hands.

There were a couple more people crammed in the low, dim room with the flaking walls when Cisi, Isae, and Akos went downstairs again. Jorek introduced them to Sovy, one of his mother's friends, who lived just down the road and wore an embroidered scarf in her hair, and Jyo, who wasn't much older than them, with eyes that looked a lot like Isae's, suggesting some common ancestor. He was playing an instrument that lay flat on his lap, pressing buttons and plucking strings faster than Akos could follow. There was food on the big table, half-eaten.

He sat next to Cisi and shoveled some food on his plate. There wasn't much meat-it was hard to come by out here, outside of Voa-but plenty of saltfruit, which was filling enough. Jyo offered Isae a fried feathergrass stalk with a big smile, but Akos snatched it before she could take it.

"You don't want to eat that," he said. "Unless you want to spend the next six hours hallucinating."

"Last time Jyo slipped someone one of those, they wandered around this house talking about giant dancing babies," Jorek said.

"Yeah, yeah," Teka said. "Laugh all you want, but you would be scared too if you hallucinated giant babies."

"It was worth it, whether I will ever be forgiven or not," Jyo said, winking. He had a soft, slippery way of talking.

"Do they work on you?" Cisi asked Akos, nodding to the stalk in his hand.

In answer, Akos bit into the stalk, which tasted like earth and salt and sour.

"Your gift is odd," Cisi said. "I'm sure Mom would have some kind of vague, wise thing to say about that."

"Ooh. What was he like as a child?" Jorek said, folding his hands and leaning close to Akos's sister. "Was he actually a child, or did he just sort of appear one day as a fully grown adult, full of angst?"

Akos glared at him.

"He was short and chubby," Cisi said. "Irritable. Very particular about his socks."

"My socks?" Akos said.

"Yeah!" she said. "Eijeh told me you always arranged them in order of preference from left to right. Your favorite ones were yellow."

He remembered them. Mustard yellow, with big woven fibers that made them look lumpy when they weren't on. His warmest pair.

"How do you all know each other?" Cisi asked. The delicate question was enough to dispel the tension that had come up at Eijeh's name.

"Sovy used to make candy for all the village kids when I was little," Jorek said. "Unfortunately, she doesn't speak Thuvhesit very well, or she'd tell you about my misdeeds herself."

"And I first met Jorek in a public bathroom. I was whistling while I"-Jyo paused-"relieved myself, and Jorek decided it would be amusing to harmonize with me."

"He did not find that charming," Jorek said.

"My mother was a kind of . . . leader of the revolt. One of them, anyway," said Teka. "She came back to us from the colony of exiles from the Noavek regime about a season ago, to help us strategize. The exiles support our efforts to end Ryzek's life."

Isae's brow was furrowed-it was furrowed a lot of the time, actually, like she didn't like the space between her two eyebrows and wanted to hide it-and this time, Akos understood why. The difference between exiles and renegades, and the connection between them, wasn't of much interest to him-all he wanted was to make sure Cyra was safe, and to get Eijeh out of Shotet; he didn't care what else happened there. But to Isae, chancellor of Thuvhe, it was clearly important to know there was a swelling of dissent against Ryzek, both inside Shotet and outside.

"How many of you-renegades-are there?" Isae asked.

"Am I likely to answer that question?" was Teka's reply. The answer was clearly no, so Isae moved on.

"Is your involvement in the revolt why . . ." Isae waved a hand over her face. "The eye?"

"This? Oh, I have two eyes, I just like the patch," Teka said.

"Really?" Cisi asked.

"No," Teka said, and everyone laughed.

The food was plain, almost bland, but Akos didn't mind it. It was a little more like home, a little less like Noavek finery. Teka started humming along to Jyo's song, and Sovy drummed on the tabletop with her fingers, so hard Akos's fork rattled against his plate whenever he set it down.

Then Teka and Jorek got up and danced. Isae leaned over to Jyo while he was playing and asked, "So, if this particular group of renegades is working to rescue Cyra . . . what are the other renegade groups doing? Hypothetically, I mean."

Jyo narrowed one eye at her, but answered anyway. "Hypothetically, those of us Shotet who are low in status need things they can't get. And they need someone to smuggle it in for them."

"As in . . . hypothetical weapons?" Isae said.

"Possibly, but that's not top priority." Jyo plucked a few wrong strings, swore, and got himself on the right ones again. "Top priority would be food and medicine. Lots of runs to Othyr and back. Gotta feed people before they can fight for you, right? And the farther out of the center of Voa you get, the more diseased and starved people are."

Isae's face tightened, but she nodded.

Akos didn't think about it much, what was going on outside the tangle of Noaveks he'd gotten himself into. But he thought about what Cyra had said about Ryzek keeping supplies to himself, doling them out to his people or hoarding them for later, and he felt a little bit sick.

Teka and Jorek spun around each other, and swayed, Jorek surprisingly graceful, given his gangliness. Cisi and Isae sat shoulder to shoulder, leaned back against the wall. Every so often Isae gave a tired smile. It didn't quite look right on her face-it wasn't one of Ori's smiles, and she wore Ori's face, scarred though it was. But Akos figured he would have to get used to her.

Sovy sang a few bars of Jyo's song, and they ate until they were warm and full and tired.

CHAPTER 29: CYRA.

IT WAS DIFFICULT TO sleep after someone had peeled one's skin off with a knife, but I gave it my best effort.

My pillowcase was soaked with blood that morning when I awoke, though I had of course lain on the side Vas had not flayed from throat to skull. The only reason I hadn't bled to death yet was that the gaping wound was covered with stitching cloth, a medical innovation from Othyr that kept wounds closed and dissolved as they healed. It was not meant for wounds as severe as mine.

I stripped the case from the pillow and tossed it in the corner. The shadows danced over my arm, pricking me. For most of my life, they had run alongside my veins, visible through my skin. When I woke up after the interrogation-a soldier had told me my heart stopped, then started again of its own accord-the shadows were traveling over the surface of my body instead. They still caused me pain, but it was more bearable. I didn't understand why.

But then Ryzek had declared nemhalzak, and had Vas cut my skin away from my body like the rind from a fruit, and forced me to fight in the arena, so I was in just as much pain as usual.

He had asked me where I wanted it, the scar. If it could even be called that-scars were dark lines on a person's skin, not . . . patches. But nemhalzak had to be paid for with flesh, and it had to be on display, readily visible. With my mind addled by rage, I had told him to scar me the same way he had scarred Akos, when the Kereseth brothers first arrived. Ear to jaw.

And when Vas had accomplished that much, Ryzek told him to keep going.

Get some of her hair, too.

I breathed through my nose. I didn't want to throw up. I couldn't afford to throw up, in fact-I needed all the strength I had left.

As he had every day since I self-revived, Eijeh Kereseth came to watch me eat breakfast. He set a tray of food at my feet and leaned against the wall across from me, hunched, his posture bad as ever. Today his jaw bore the bruise I had given him the day before, when I tried to escape on the way to the arena and managed to get a few hits in before the guards in the hallway dragged me away from him.

"I didn't think you would be back, after yesterday," I said to him.

"I'm not afraid of you. You won't kill me," Eijeh replied. He had drawn his weapon, and he was spinning the blade on his palm, catching it when it made a full rotation. He did it without looking at it.

I snorted. "I'll kill just about anyone, haven't you heard the rumors?"

"You won't kill me," Eijeh repeated. "Because you love my delusional brother far too much for your own good."

I had to laugh at that. I hadn't realized that silky-voiced Eijeh Kereseth read me so well.

"I feel like I know you," Eijeh said suddenly. "I suppose I do know you, don't I? I do now."

"I'm not really in the mood for a philosophical discussion about what makes a person who they are," I said. "But even if you are more Ryzek than Eijeh at this point, you still don't know me. You-whoever you are-never bothered to."

Eijeh rolled his eyes a little. "Poor misunderstood daughter of privilege."

"Says the walking garbage can for all the things Ryzek wants to forget," I snapped. "Why doesn't he just kill me, anyway? All this drama beforehand is very elaborate, even for him."

Eijeh didn't answer, which was an answer in itself. Ryzek hadn't killed me yet because he needed to do it this way, in public. Maybe word had spread that I had helped with an assassination attempt, and now he needed to destroy my reputation before he let me die. Or maybe he just wanted to watch me suffer.

Somehow I didn't believe that.

"Is giving me useless cutlery really necessary?" I said, stabbing my toast with the knife instead of slicing it.