Akos put on gloves, so the silverskin wouldn't stick to his hands instead of her, and Cisi handed the first strip to him. It was heavy, and cold to the touch, not as slippery as he'd imagined it to be. She helped him position his hands over Cyra's head.

"Lower it straight down," she said, and he did. He didn't have to press it in place; the silverskin rippled like water and buried itself in Cyra's scalp the moment it found flesh.

With Cisi's clear voice coaching him, Akos placed the rest of the silverskin. Each piece grew together right away, no seams to speak of between the different strips.

He acted as Cisi's hands for the rest of Cyra's wounds, too, the gashes on her arm and side covered with stitching cloth, the bruises treated with a healing salve. It didn't take long. Mostly they would heal on their own, and the real trick for her would be forgetting how she got them. There was no stitching cloth for the mind's wounds, real though they were.

"That's it," Cisi said, stripping the gloves from her small hands. "Now you just wait for her to wake up. She'll need to rest, but she should be fine now that she's not losing any more blood."

"Thank you," Akos said.

"Never thought I would be trying to heal Cyra Noavek," Cisi said. "On a transport vessel full of Shotet, no less." She glanced at him. "I can see why you like her, you know."

"I feel like . . ." Akos sighed, and sat down at the table next to Cyra's head. "Like I just walked right into my fate without meaning to."

"Well," Cisi said, "if you are destined to serve the Noavek family, I think you could do worse than the woman who was willing to endure all this just to get you home."

"So you don't think I'm a traitor?"

"That sort of depends on what she stands for, doesn't it?" Cisi said. She touched his shoulder. "I'm going to find Isae, okay?"

"Sure."

"What's that look for?"

He was suppressing a smile. "Nothing."

Akos's memories of the interrogation were hazy, and the edges of them, creeping into his mind, were bad enough on their own, without any of the details to make them more real. Still, he let the memory of Cyra in.

She had looked like a corpse, with the currentshadows making her face look pitted and rotted away. And she had been screaming so loud, every izit of her resisting; she didn't want to hurt him. If he hadn't told Ryzek what he knew about Isae and Ori, maybe she had, just to keep from killing Akos. Not like he would have blamed her.

She woke up on the galley table with a twitch and a moan. Then reached for him, touching his jaw with her fingertips.

"Am I sealed in your memory now?" she said, sluggish. "As someone who hurt you?" The words caught in her throat like she was gagging on them. "The sounds you made, I can't forget-"

She was crying. Half-drunk, too, from the painkiller, but still, crying.

He didn't remember the sounds he'd made when she touched him-when Vas forced her to touch him, that was, torturing them both. But he knew she had felt everything he had felt. That was how her gift worked, sending pain both ways.

"No, no," Akos said. "What he did, he did to both of us."

Her hand came to rest against his sternum, like she was going to push him away, and then she didn't. She brushed her fingers over his collarbone, and even through his shirt he felt how warm she was.

"But now you know what I've done," she said, staring at her hand, at his chest, anywhere but his face. "Before, you had only seen me do it to other people, but now you know the kind of pain I have caused people, so many people, just because I was too much of a coward to stand up to him." She scowled, and lifted her hand. "Getting you out was the one good thing I've ever done, and now it's not even worth anything, because here you are again, you . . . you idiot!"

She clutched at her side, wincing. She was crying again.

Akos touched her face. When he first met her, he thought she was this fearsome thing, this monster he needed to escape. But she had unfurled bit by bit, showing him her wicked humor by waking him with a knife to his throat, talking about herself with unflinching honesty, for better or for worse, and loving-so deeply-every little bit of this galaxy, even the parts she was supposed to hate.

She was not a rusty nail, as she had once told him, or a hot poker, or a blade in Ryzek's hand. She was a hushflower, all power and possibility. Capable of doing good and harm in equal measure.

"It is not the only good thing you've ever done," Akos said, in plain Thuvhesit. It felt like the right language for this moment, the language of his home, which Cyra understood but didn't really speak when he was around, like she was afraid it would hurt his feelings.

"It's worth everything to me, what you did," he said, still in Thuvhesit. "It changes everything."

He touched his forehead to hers, so they shared the same air.

"I like how you sound in your own language," she said softly.

"Can I kiss you?" he said. "Or will it hurt?"

Her eyes went wide. Then she said breathlessly, "And if it hurts?" And smiled a little. "Life is full of hurt anyway."

Akos's breaths shuddered as he pressed his mouth to hers. He wasn't sure what it would be like, kissing her this way, not because she surprised him and he didn't think to pull away, but because he just wanted to. She tasted malty and spiced from the painkiller she had swallowed, and she was a little hesitant, like she was afraid to hurt him. But kissing her was touching match to kindling. He burned for her.

The ship jerked, making all the bowls and cups clatter against each other. They were landing.

CHAPTER 31: CYRA.

I FINALLY LET MYSELF think it: he was beautiful. His gray eyes reminded me of the stormy waters of Pitha. When he reached for my cheek, there was a crease along his arm where one wiry muscle met another. His deft, sensitive fingers moved over my cheekbone. His fingernails were stained with yellow powder-from jealousy flowers, I was sure. I was breathless to think of him touching me just because he wanted to.

I sat up, slowly, bringing a hand to the silverskin behind my ear. Soon it would adhere to the nerves in what was left of my scalp, and I would be able to feel it like it was my own skin, though it would never grow hair again. I wondered how I looked now, with a little more than half a head of hair. It didn't really matter.

He wanted to touch me.

"What?" he said. "You're giving me a weird look."

"Nothing," I said. "You just . . . look nice."

It was a silly thing to say. He was dusty, sweaty, and smeared with my blood. His hair and clothes were mussed. Nice wasn't exactly the word for it, but the other ones I thought of were too much, too soon.

Still, he smiled as if he understood. "You do, too."

"I look filthy," I said. "But thank you for lying about it."

I braced myself on the edge of the table, and pushed to standing. At first I teetered, unsure of my footing.

"Need me to carry you again?" he said.

"That was humiliating and will never happen again."

"Humiliating? Some people might use another word," he said. "Like . . . gallant."

"Tell you what," I said. "Someday I'll carry you around like a baby in front of people whose respect you're trying to earn, and you can let me know how much you like it."

He grinned. "Deal."

"I'll consent to let you help me walk," I said. "And don't think I didn't notice the chancellor of Thuvhe standing in the next room." I shook my head. "I'd love to know the principle of elmetahak that sanctions bringing your chancellor to the country of her enemies."

"I think it falls under 'hulyetahak,'" he said with a sigh. "School of the stupid."

I held tight to his arm and walked-shuffled, really-into the main deck. The transport vessel was small, with a wide observation window at one end. Through it I saw Voa from above, surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs and on one by the ocean, forests spread over the distant hills as far as I could see. Trains, powered largely by wind coming off the water, wrapped around the city's circumference and traveled into its center like spokes in a wheel. I had never ridden in one.

"How has Ryzek not found us?" I asked.

"Hologram cloak," Teka said from the captain's chair. "Makes us look like just another Shotet army transport. I designed it myself."

The ship dipped down, sinking through a hole in the rotten roof of some building on the fringes of Voa. Ryzek didn't know this part of the city-no one bothered to, really. It was clear that this building in particular had once been an apartment complex, hollowed out by some kind of destructive event, maybe a near demolition, abandoned halfway through. As the ship sank, I saw into half a dozen lives: a bed with mismatched pillowcases in a ripped-apart bedroom; half a kitchen counter dangling from a precipice; red cushions coated in dust and bits of rubble from a destroyed living room.

We touched down, and some of the others used a rope rigged to a pulley near the ceiling to cover the hole there with a huge piece of fabric. Light still came through it-making the ship almost glow, from the warmth of its patchwork metals-but it was harder, now, to see into the apartments that had been. The space we were in was half packed dirt, half dust-streaked tile. Growing in the cracks of the broken floor were fragile Shotet flowers in gray, blue, and purple.

And at the bottom of the steps that had unfolded from the ship's hold, with the angular eyes I remembered from the footage Akos and I had watched together, was Isae Benesit. She was scarred in a way I hadn't imagined, scarred by a Shotet blade.

"Hello," I said to her. "I've heard a lot about you."

She said, "Likewise."

I was certain of that. She had heard of how I brought pain and death to all that I touched. And maybe she had heard of my supposed madness, too, that I was too insane to speak, like a diseased animal.

Making sure that Akos's hand was still on my arm, I stretched out a hand for her to take, curious to see if she would. She did. Her hand looked delicate, but it felt callused, and I wondered how it had gotten that way.

"I think we should trade stories," I said, careful. If the renegades didn't already know who she was, it was better not to tell them, for her safety. "Somewhere private."

Teka approached us. I almost laughed at the bright eye patch she wore; though I didn't know her well, it seemed just like her to call attention to the missing eye instead of disguising it.

"Cyra," she said to me. "Good to see you're feeling better."

I stepped away from Akos's steadying hand, so the currentshadows spread over my body again. They were so different now, winding around my fingers like tendrils of hair instead of coursing through them like veins. My shirt was stained with blood and sliced open where they had applied the stitching cloth, and I was bruised in more places than I could count. Still, I tried to pretend I had some dignity.

"Thank you for coming to get me," I said to Teka. "I assume, based on our past interactions, that there's something you'd like in return."

"We can get to that later," Teka said, lip curling. "I think it's safe to say our interests align, though. If you want to clean up, there's running water in this building. Hot water. Pick an apartment, any apartment."

"Luxury of luxuries," I said. I looked to Isae. "Maybe you should come with us. We have a lot to catch up on."

I did the best I could to pretend I was all right until we reached one of the stairwells, out of sight. Then I stopped to lean into one of the walls, breathless. My skin pulsed around the silverskin. Akos's touch was taking away the pain of my currentgift, but there was nothing he could do to save me from the rest, the carving of my flesh, the battles I had fought for my own life.

"Okay, this is just ridiculous," Akos said. He put a hand behind my knees and swung me into his arms, not quite as gently as I would have liked. But I was too tired to object. The toes of my shoes skimmed the walls as he carried me up the stairs.

We found an apartment on the second floor that seemed relatively intact. It was dusty, and the half of the living room that remained overlooked the hollowed-out area where the ship was parked, so we could see what the renegades were doing, rolling out sleeping pallets, sorting through supplies, building a fire in the small furnace they had probably dragged from one of the apartments.

The bathroom, next to the living room, was comfortable and expansive, with a bathtub in the center of the room and a sink at the side. The floor was made of blue glass tiles. Akos tested the faucets, which sputtered at first, but still worked, as Teka had promised.

I was torn, for a moment, between cleaning myself up and talking to Isae Benesit.

"I can wait," Isae said, when she noticed my indecision. "I would be too distracted to have a meaningful conversation with you while you're covered in blood anyway."

"Yes, I'm hardly fit for a chancellor's company," I said, a little edge in my voice. As if it was my fault that I was covered in blood. As if I needed the reminder.

"I spent most of my life in a little cruiser vessel that smelled like feet," she replied. "I'm hardly fit for my own company, by the usual definitions."

She picked up one of the large cushions in the living room and smacked it with the flat of her hand, sending a cloud of dust into the air. After brushing it off, she set it down and sat on top of it, somehow managing to look elegant while she found her balance. Cisi took a seat beside her, though with less ceremony, giving me a warm smile. I was puzzled by her gift, how it slowed my turbulent thoughts and made my worst memories feel further away. I sensed that being around her could become addictive, if you had enough discomfort.

Akos was still in the bathroom. He had plugged the bathtub drain and turned on the faucets. Now he was undoing the straps of his armor with quick, nimble fingers.

"Don't tell me you don't need my help," he said to me. "I won't believe you."

I stepped out of sight of the living room and tried to lift my shirt over my head. I only made it up to my stomach before I had to stop for breath. Akos set his armor down and took the hem of my shirt from me. I laughed, softly, as he guided it over my head and down my arms and said, "This is awkward."

"Yes it is," he said. He kept his eyes on my face. He was blushing.

I had not allowed myself to imagine a situation like this, his fingers brushing my arms, the memory of his mouth on mine so close I could still feel it.

"I think I can handle the pants on my own," I said.

I didn't mind showing skin. I was far from frail, with thick thighs and a small chest, and it didn't concern me. This body had carried me through a hard life. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to. Still, when his eyes dropped-just for a moment-I stifled a nervous giggle.

He helped me into the bathtub, where I sat, letting my underwear get soaked. He searched the cabinet under the sink, scattering a straight razor, an empty bottle with a worn label, and a comb with broken teeth before he found a lump of soap, and offered it to me.

He was quiet, setting his hand on me to suppress the currentshadows while I scrubbed streaks of red from my body. The worst part was probing the edges of the silverskin to wash away a few days' worth of gore, so I did it first, biting down hard on my lip to keep from crying out. Then his thumb was pressing, working a knot from my shoulder, from my neck. Goose bumps spread up and down my arms.

His fingers fluttered over my shoulders, finding places to soothe. His eyes, when they found mine, were soft and almost shy, and I wanted to kiss him until he blushed again.

Later.

With a glance at the living room, to make sure Cisi and Isae couldn't see me, I loosened the armor around my left arm, and peeled it from my skin.

"I have a few more to carve," I said softly to Akos.

"Those losses can wait," Akos said. "You've bled enough for this."

He took the soap from me, and turned it in his hand to capture its lather. Then he ran his fingers up and down my scarred arm, gentle. It was, in some ways, even better than being kissed by him. He had no fragile illusions about my goodness, destined to shatter when he found out the truth. But he accepted me anyway. Cared about me anyway.

"Okay," I said. "I'm done, I think."

Akos stood, holding my hands, and lifted me as I came to my feet. Water ran down my legs and back. As I fastened the armor around my forearm again, he found a towel in one of the cabinets, then pieced together clothes for me-the pants from Isae, underwear from Cisi, one of his own shirts and a pair of his socks, my still-intact boots. I looked at the pile of clothes with some dismay. It was one thing for him to see me in my underwear, but to help me take it off . . .

Well. If that was going to happen, I wanted it to be under different circumstances.

"Cisi," Akos said. He was also staring at the pile of clothes. "Maybe you should help with this part."