The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2) - Veronica Roth Page 0,17

a fight we had, early on, before I knew her better.

You know nothing about my planet and its people, I said to her then. It was after she had gone public as chancellor. She and Ori had shown up at my apartment at school, and she had been rude to me for being so familiar with her sister. And for some reason, my currentgift had let me be rude back. This is only your first season on its soil.

The broken look she gave me then is a lot like the one she’s giving me now, as I walk into her quarters—twice the size of the ones given to me, but that’s not surprising. She sits on the end of her bed in an undershirt and underwear that’s really just a pair of shorts clinging to her long, skinny legs. It’s more casual than I’ve ever seen her before, and more vulnerable, somehow, like letting me see her right after waking ripped her open somehow.

All my life I have loved this planet, more fervently than my family or my friends or even myself, she had replied back then. You have walked all your seasons on its skin, but I have buried myself deep in its guts, so don’t you dare tell me that I don’t know it.

The thing about Isae is, her outer shell is so thick I don’t always believe there’s something under it. She’s not like Cyra Noavek, who lets you see everything writhing just out of reach, or like Akos, whose emotions glitter in his eyes like precious metal caught in the bottom of a pan. Isae is just blank.

“My friend—the one I told you about—will be here soon,” she says, her voice rough. “He wasn’t far from here when I called.”

She’d commandeered the nav deck for a while when the patrol ship first picked us up, saying she needed to make a call to an old friend, one she grew up with. Ast was his name. She said she could use someone’s help, someone who wasn’t tied to the Assembly or Thuvhe or Shotet. Ast was “brim spawn,” as some people liked to call it, born out on some broken moon beyond the currentstream barrier.

“I’m glad,” I say.

I try one of my favorite feelings on her now, to calm her—water, which is odd, since I don’t know much about water, having grown up on an ice planet. But there was a hot spring in the basement of the temple in Hessa, to enhance the visions of the oracle, and Mom had taken me there once to learn to tread water. It was dark as a tomb down there, but the hot water had surrounded me, all soft, like silk, only heavier. I let that heavy silk fold around Isae now, watch that tension in her shoulders ebb away. I’m learning her, slowly, and it’s easier, now that we’re not on that little Shotet ship anymore.

“He was the mechanic’s son, on the ship where I was raised,” she says, rubbing her eyes with the back of a hand. Her trade vessel was always adrift, never staying anywhere for long. The perfect place for someone who needed to stay hidden. “He was there, too, during the attack. He lost his father. Some of his friends, too.”

“What does he do now? Still a mechanic?”

“Yeah,” she says. “He was just finishing up a job on a fueling station near here, though. Good timing.”

Maybe it’s the idea that she needs somebody else, even though I’m here, or maybe it’s just plain jealousy, but I don’t feel good about Ast. And I don’t know what he’ll make of me.

It’s like thinking about him summons him, because the door buzzes right then. When Isae opens it, there’s an Assembly-type standing right there, his eyes sliding down her bare legs. Behind him is a broad-shouldered man holding two big canvas bags. He puts the side of his hand against the Assembly man’s shoulder, and what looks like a flying beetle whizzes out of his sleeve.

“Pazha!” Isae exclaims as the beetle lands on her outstretched hand. It’s not a real bug—it’s made of metal, and emits a constant clicking. It’s a guide bot, meant to help the blind maneuver. Ast tilts his head toward it, following the sound, and drops his bags just inside the doorway. Isae, with the beetle perched on her knuckles, throws her arms around him.

Her currentgift is tied to memory—she can’t take a person’s memories, the way Ryzek could, but she can