it to Cisi, who was sitting alone on the bench just outside the galley.
“You waiting for me?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Mom told me to.”
“Good,” he said. “Will you take this to Isae? It’s just to calm her down.”
Cisi raised an eyebrow at him.
“Don’t drink any of it yourself,” he added.
She reached for it, but instead of taking the mug, she put her hand on his wrist. The look in her eyes changed—sharpened—like it always did when his currentgift dampened her own.
“What’s left of Eijeh?” she asked.
Akos’s whole body clenched up. He didn’t want to think about what was left of Eijeh.
“Someone who served Ryzek Noavek,” he said, with venom. “Who hated me, and Dad, and probably you and Mom, too.”
“How is that possible?” She frowned. “He can’t hate us just because someone put different memories into his head.”
“You think I know?” Akos all but growled.
“Then, maybe—”
“He held me down while someone tortured me.” Akos shoved the mug into her hands.
Some of the hot tea spilled on both their hands. Cisi jerked away, wiping her knuckles on her pants.
“Did I burn you?” he said, nodding to her hand.
“No,” she said. The softness her currentgift brought to her expression was back. Akos didn’t want tenderness of any kind, so he turned away.
“This won’t hurt her, will it?” Cisi said, tapping a fingernail on the mug so he would hear the ting ting ting.
“No,” he said. “It’s to keep from having to hurt her.”
“Then I’ll give it to her,” Cisi said.
Akos grunted a little. There was some more sedative in his pack, maybe he ought to take it. He’d never been so worn, like a half-finished weaving, light showing between all the threads. It would be easier just to sleep.
Instead of drugging himself to oblivion, though, he just took a dried hushflower petal from his pocket and stuck it between his cheek and his teeth. It wouldn’t knock him out, but it would dull him some. Better than nothing.
Akos was coasting on hushflower an hour later when Cisi came back.
“It’s done,” she said. “She’s out.”
“All right,” he said. “Then let’s get her into the escape pod.”
“I’m going with her,” Cisi said. “If Mom’s right, and we’re headed into war—”
“Mom’s right.”
“Yeah,” Cisi said. “Well, in that case, whoever’s against Isae is against Thuvhe. So I’m going to stick with my chancellor.”
Akos nodded.
“I take it you won’t be,” Cisi said.
“Fated traitor, remember?” he said.
“Akos.” She crouched in front of him. At some point he had sat down on the bench, which was hard and cold and smelled like disinfectant. Cisi rested an arm on his knee. She had tied her hair back, messy, and a chunk of curls had come loose, falling around her face. She was pretty, his sister, her face a shade of cool brown that reminded him of Trellan pottery. A lot like Cyra’s, and Eijeh’s, and Jorek’s. Familiar.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, just because Mom raised us fate-faithful and obedient to the oracles and all that,” Cisi said. “You’re a Thuvhesit. You should come with me. Leave everyone else to their war, and we’ll go home and wait it out. No one needs us here.”
He’d thought about it. He was as torn now as he’d ever been, and not just because of his fate. When he came out of the daze of the hushflower, he would remember how nice it felt to laugh with Cyra earlier that day, and how warm she was, pressed up against him. And he would remember that as much as he wanted to just be in his house again, walk up the creaky stairs and stoke the burnstones in the courtyard and send flour up into the air as he kneaded the bread, he had to live in the real world. In the real world, Eijeh was broken, Akos spoke Shotet, and his fate was still his fate.
“Suffer the fate,” he said. “For all else is delusion.”
Cisi sighed. “Thought you might say that. Sometimes delusion’s nice, though.”
“Stay safe, okay?” he said, taking her hand. “I hope you know I don’t want to leave you again. It’s pretty much the last thing I want.”
“I know.” She squeezed his thumb. “I still have faith, you know. That one day you’ll come home, and Eijeh will be better, and Mom will stop with the oracle bullshit, and we can cobble together something again.”
“Yeah.” He tried to smile for her. He might have halfway accomplished it.
She helped him get Isae settled in the escape