Carve the Mark

“Come now, you must have heard the rumors!” I said cheerfully. “More importantly, though: Are you insane? Here you are, sleeping heavily without even bothering to bar your door, a hallway away from one of your enemies? That is either insanity or stupidity. Pick one.”

He brought his knee up sharply, aiming at my side. I bent my arm to block the strike with my elbow, pointing the blade instead at his stomach.

“You lost before you woke,” I said. “First lesson: The best way to win a fight is to avoid having one. If your enemy is a heavy sleeper, cut his throat before he wakes. If he’s softhearted, appeal to his compassion. If he’s thirsty, poison his drink. Get it?”

“So, throw honor out the window.”

“Honor,” I said with a snort. “Honor has no place in survival.”

The phrase, quoted from an Ogran book I had once read—translated into Shotet, of course; who could read Ogran?—appeared to scatter the sleep from his eyes in a way that even my attack had not been able to manage.

“Now get up,” I said. I straightened, sheathed the knife at the small of my back, and left the room so he could change.

By the time we finished breakfast, the sun had risen and I could hear the servants in the walls, carrying clean sheets and towels to the bedrooms, through the passages that ran parallel to every east-west corridor. The house had been built to exclude the ones who ran it, just like Voa itself, with Noavek manor at the center, surrounded by the wealthy and powerful, and the rest around the edge, fighting to get in.

The gym, down the hall from my bedroom, was bright and spacious, a wall of windows on one side, a wall of mirrors on the other. A gilded chandelier dangled from the ceiling, its delicate beauty contrasting with the black synthetic floor and the stacks of pads and practice weapons along the far wall. It was the only room in the house my mother had allowed to be modernized while she lived; she had otherwise insisted on preserving the house’s “historical integrity,” down to the pipes that sometimes smelled like rot, and the tarnished doorknobs.

I liked to practice—not because it made me a stronger fighter, though that was a welcome side benefit—but because I liked how it felt. The heat building, the pounding heart, the productive ache of tired muscles. The pain I chose, instead of the pain that had chosen me. I once tried to spar against the training soldiers, like Ryzek had as he was learning, but the current’s ink, coursing through every part of my body, caused them too much pain, so after that I was left to my own devices.

For the past year I had been reading Shotet texts about our long-forgotten form of combat, the school of the mind, elmetahak. Like so many things in our culture, it was scavenged, taking some of Ogran ferocity and Othyrian logic and our own resourcefulness and melding them until they were inextricable. When Akos and I went to the training room, I crouched over the book I had left near the wall the day before, Principles of Elmetahak: Underlying Philosophy and Practical Exercises. I was on the chapter “Opponent-Centered Strategy.”

“So in the army, you trained in zivatahak,” I said, to begin.

When he gave me a blank look, I continued.

“Altetahak—school of the arm. Zivatahak—school of the heart. Elmetahak—school of the mind,” I said. “The ones who trained you didn’t tell you in what school you were trained?”

“They didn’t care about teaching me the names for things,” Akos replied. “As I already told you.”

“Well, you trained in zivatahak, I can tell by the way you move.”

This seemed to surprise him. “The way I move,” he repeated. “How do I move?”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a Thuvhesit hardly knows himself,” I said.

“Knowing how you fight isn’t knowing yourself,” he retorted. “Fighting isn’t important if the people you live with aren’t violent.”

“Oh? And what mythical people are those? Or are they imaginary?” I shook my head. “All people are violent. Some resist the impulse, and some don’t. Better to acknowledge it, to use it as a point of access to the rest of your being, than to lie to yourself about it.”

“I’m not lying to mysel—” He paused, and sighed. “Whatever. Point of access, you were saying?”

“You, for example.” I could tell he didn’t agree with me, but at least he was willing to listen. Progress. “You’re quick, and not particularly strong. You’re reactive, anticipating attacks from anyone, everyone. That means zivatahak, school of the heart—speed.” I tapped my chest. “Speed requires endurance. Heart endurance. We took that one from the warrior-ascetics of Zold. The school of the arm, altetahak, means ‘strength.’ Adapted from the style of fringe mercenaries. The last, elmetahak, means ‘strategy.’ Most Shotet don’t know it anymore. It’s a patchwork of styles, of places.”

“And which one did you study in?”

“I’m a student of all,” I said. “Of anything.” I straightened, moving away from the book. “Let’s begin.”

I opened a drawer in the far wall. It squeaked as old wood scraped against old wood, and the tarnished handle was loose, but inside the drawer were practice blades made of a new, synthetic material, hard but also flexible. They would bruise a person, if used effectively, but they wouldn’t break skin. I tossed one to Akos, and took one for myself, holding it out from my side.

He mirrored me. I could see him adjusting, putting a bend in his knees and shifting his weight so he looked more like me. It was strange to be observed by someone so thirsty to learn, someone who knew that his survival depended on how much he took in. It made me feel useful.

This time I made the first move, swiping at his head. I pulled back before I actually made contact, and snapped, “Is there something fascinating about your hands?”

“What? No.”

“Then stop staring at them and look at your opponent.”

He raised his hand, fist to cheek, then swung at me from the side with the practice blade. I stepped away and turned, fast, smacking him in the ear with the flat of the knife handle. Wincing, he twisted around, trying to stab me when he was off balance. I caught his fist and held on tight, stalling him.

“I already know how to beat you,” I said. “Because you know that I’m better than you are, but you’re still standing right here.” I waved my hand, gesturing to the area right in front of my body. “This area is the part of me that has the most potential to hurt you, the part where all my strikes will have the greatest impact and focus. You need to keep me moving so you can attack outside of this area. Step outside of my right elbow so it’s hard for me to block you. Don’t just stand there, letting me cut you open.”

Instead of making a snide comment back to me, he nodded, and put his hands up again. This time, when I moved to “cut” him, he shuffled out of the way, dodging me. And I smiled a little.

We moved that way for a while, turning circles around each other. And when I noticed that he was breathless, I called him off.

“So tell me about your marks,” I said. My book was still open to the chapter on “Opponent-Centered Strategy,” after all. There was no opponent quite like one you had marked on your arm.

“Why?” He clasped his left wrist. The bandage was gone today, displaying an old kill mark near his elbow—the same one I had seen seasons ago in the Weapons Hall, but it was finished now, stained the color of the marking ritual, a blue so dark it was almost black. There was another mark beside it, still healing. Two slashes on a Thuvhesit boy’s arm. A unique sight.

“Because knowing your enemies is the beginning of strategy,” I said. “And apparently you have already faced some of your enemies, twice-marked as you are.”

He turned his arm away from his body so he could frown at the dashes, and said, like it was a recitation, “The first was one of the men who invaded my home. I killed him while they were dragging my brother and me through the feathergrass.”

“Kalmev,” I said. Kalmev Radix had been one of my brother’s chosen elite, a sojourn captain and a news feed translator—he had spoken four languages, including Thuvhesit.

“You knew him?” Akos said, face contorting a little.

“Yes,” I said. “He was a friend of my parents. I met him when I was a child, and watched his wife cry at the memorial dinner after you killed him.” I cocked my head at the memory. Kalmev had been a hard man, but he kept candies in his pockets. I had watched him sneak them into his mouth during fancy dinners. But I hadn’t mourned his death—he was not, after all, mine to mourn. “What about the second mark?”

“The second …”

He swallowed hard. I had rattled him. Good.

“… was the Armored One whose skin I stole for my own status.”

I had earned my own armor three seasons ago. I had crouched in the low grasses near the army camp until the daylight waned, then hunted one of the creatures in the night. I had crawled beneath it as it slept, and arched up to stab the soft place where its leg joined its body. It had taken hours to bleed to death, and its horrible moans had given me nightmares. But I had never thought to carve the death of the Armored One into my skin, the way he had.

“The kill marks are for people,” I said.

“The Armored One may as well have been a person,” he said in a low voice. “I was looking into its eyes. It knew what I was. I fed it poison, and it fell asleep at my touch. I grieved for it more than I grieved the loss of a man who robbed my sister of two brothers and a father.”

He had a sister. I had almost forgotten, though I had heard her fate from Ryzek: The first child of the family Kereseth will succumb to the blade. It was almost as grim a fate as my brother’s. Or Akos’s.

“You should put a hash through your second mark,” I said. “Diagonal, through the top. That’s what people do for losses that aren’t kills. Miscarried babies, spouses taken by sickness. Runaways who never return. Any … significant grief.”

He just looked at me, curious, and still with that ferocity.

“So my father …”

“Your father is recorded on Vas’s arm,” I said. “A loss can’t be marked twice.”

“It’s a kill that’s marked.” His brow furrowed. “A murder.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “‘Kill mark’ is a misnomer. They are always records of loss. Not triumph.”

Without meaning to, I brought my right hand across my body to grip my forearm guard, hooking my fingers in its straps. “Regardless of what some foolish Shotet will tell you.”

The hushflower petals on the board in front of me were curled tightly into themselves. I dragged the knife down the center of the first petal, fumbling a little with the gloves on—gloves weren’t necessary for him, but we weren’t all hushflower-resistant.

The petal didn’t flatten.

“You have to hit the vein right in the center,” he said. “Look for the darker red streak.”

“It all just looks red to me. Are you sure you’re not seeing things?”

“Try again.”

That was how he responded every time I lost my patience—he just quietly said, “Try again.” It made me want to punch him.

Every evening for the past few weeks, we had stood at this apothecary counter, and he taught me about iceflowers. It was warm and quiet in Akos’s room, the only sound the bubbling of water set to boil and the chop chop chop of his knife. His bed was always made, the dingy sheets pulled taut across the mattress, and he often slept without a pillow, tossing it instead in the corner, where it gathered dust.

Each iceflower had to be cut with the right technique: the hushflowers needed to be coaxed into lying flat, the jealousy flowers had to be sliced in just such a way that they didn’t burst into clouds of powder, and the hard, indigestible vein of the harva leaf had to be first loosened and then tugged by its base—Not too hard. But harder than that, Akos had said as I glared.

I was handy with the knife, but had no patience for subtlety with it, and my nose was nearly useless as a tool. In our combat training, the situation was reversed. Akos grew frustrated if we dwelled too long on theory or philosophy, which I considered to be the fundamentals. He was quick, and effective when he managed to make contact, but careless, with little aptitude for reading his opponent. But it was easier for me to deal with the pain of my gift when I was teaching him, or when he was teaching me.

I touched the point of a knife to another one of the hushflower petals, and dragged it in a straight line. This time, the petal unfurled at my touch, flattening on the board. I grinned. Our shoulders brushed, and I twitched away—touch was not something I was used to. I doubted I would ever be used to it again.

“Good,” Akos said, and he swept a pile of dried harva leaves into the water. “Now do that about a hundred more times and it will start to feel easy.”

“Only one hundred? Here I thought this was going to be time-consuming,” I said with a sideways glance at him. Instead of rolling his eyes at me, or snapping, he smiled a little.

“I’ll trade you a hundred hushflower slices for a hundred of the push-ups you’re making me do,” he said.

I pointed the hushflower-stained knife at him. “One day you’ll thank me.”

“Me, thank a Noavek? Never.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but it was also a reminder. I was a Noavek, and he was a Kereseth. I was nobility, and he was a captive. Whatever ease we found together was built on ignoring the facts. Both our smiles faded, and we returned to our respective tasks in silence.

A while later, when I had done four petals—only ninety-six left!—I heard footsteps in the hallway. Quick, purposeful ones, not the movements of a wandering guard doing the rounds. I set my knife down and took off the gloves.

“What is it?” Akos asked.

“Someone’s coming. Don’t let on what we’re really doing in here,” I said.

He didn’t have time to ask why. The door to the apothecary chamber opened, and Vas came in, a young man at his heels. I recognized him as Jorek Kuzar, son of Suzao Kuzar, Vas’s second cousin. He was short and slim, with warm brown skin and a patch of hair on his chin. I hardly knew him—Jorek had chosen not to follow in his father’s path as a soldier and translator, and was regarded as both a disappointment and a danger to my brother as a result. Anyone who did not enthusiastically enter Ryzek’s service was suspect.

Jorek bobbed his head to me. I, flush with currentshadows at the sight of Vas, could hardly nod in return. Vas clasped his hands behind his back and looked with amusement at the little room, at Akos’s green-stained fingers and the bubbling pot on the burner.

“What brings you to the manor, Kuzar?” I asked Jorek, before Vas could comment. “Surely it’s not visiting Vas. I can’t imagine anyone would do that for pleasure.”

Jorek looked from Vas glaring at me, to me smiling back, to Akos staring determinedly at his hands, which gripped the edge of the counter. I hadn’t noticed, at first, how tense Akos had become the moment Vas appeared. I could see the muscles in his shoulders bunching where his shirt stretched tight across them.

“My father is meeting with the sovereign,” Jorek said. “And he thought Vas could talk some sense into me in the meantime.”

I laughed. “Did he?”

“Cyra has many qualities that are useful to the sovereign, but ‘sense’ is not one of them; I would not take her opinion of me too seriously,” Vas said.

“While I do love our little chats, Vas,” I said, “why don’t you just tell me what you want?”

“What are you brewing? A painkiller?” Vas smirked. “I thought groping Kereseth was your painkiller.”

“What,” I repeated, terse this time, “do you want?”

“I’m sure you’ve realized that the Sojourn Festival begins tomorrow. Ryz wanted to know if you would be attending the arena challenges at his side. He wanted to remind you, before you answer, that part of giving Kereseth’s service to you was to get you on your feet, so you can attend events like these, in public.”

The arena challenges. I had not watched them in seasons, claiming pain as my excuse, but really, I just didn’t want to watch people killing each other for social status, or revenge, or money. It was a legal practice—even a celebrated one, these days—but that didn’t mean I needed to add those images to the violent ones that already existed in my mind. Uzul Zetsyvis’s melting scowl among them.

“Well, I’m not quite ‘on my feet’ yet,” I said. “Send my regrets.”

“Very well.” Vas shrugged. “You might want to teach Kereseth to unspool a little, or he’ll pull a muscle every time he sees me.”

I glanced back at Akos, at his shoulders rounded over the countertop. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

Later that day, when the news feed cycled through the planets in turn, the report on our planet included the comment: “Prominent Shotet fenzu producer Uzul Zetsyvis found dead in his house. Preliminary investigations suggest cause of death is suicide by hanging.” The Shotet subtitles read: Shotet mourns the loss of beloved fenzu caretaker Uzul Zetsyvis. Investigation of his death suggests a Thuvhesit assassination, aiming to eliminate essential Shotet power source. Of course. The translations were always lies, and only people Ryzek already trusted knew enough languages to be the wiser. Of course he would blame Uzul’s death on Thuvhe, rather than himself.

Or me.

I received a message, delivered by the hallway guard, later that day. It read:

Record my father’s loss. It belongs to you.

—Lety Zetsyvis

Ryzek may have blamed Uzul’s death on Thuvhe, but Uzul’s daughter knew where it really belonged. On me, on my skin.

My currentgift, when experienced for long periods, stayed in the body for a long time even after I took my hands away. And the longer I touched someone, the longer it lingered—unless, of course, they drowned it in hushflower. But the Zetsyvis family didn’t believe in taking hushflower. Some people, when faced with the choice between death or pain, chose death. Uzul Zetsyvis was one of those. Religious to the point of self-destruction.

I did carve Uzul’s mark on my arm, right before burning Lety’s message to ash. I painted the fresh wound with feathergrass root extract, which stung so badly it brought tears to my eyes, and I whispered his name, not daring to say the rest of the ritual words because they were a prayer. And I dreamt of him that night. I heard his screams and saw his bulging, bloodshot eyes. He chased me through a dark forest lit by the fenzu glow. He chased me into a cave where Ryzek waited for me, his teeth like knifepoints.

I woke, sweat-soaked and screaming, with Akos’s hand on my shoulder. His face was close to mine, his hair and shirt rumpled from sleep. His eyes were serious and wary, and they asked me a question.

“I heard you,” was all he said.

I felt the warmth of his hand through my shirt. His fingertips reached over the collar, brushing my bare throat, and even that light touch was enough to extinguish my currentgift and relieve my pain. When his fingers slipped away, I almost cried out, too tired for things like dignity and pride, but he was only finding my hand.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll teach you to get rid of your dreams.”

In that moment, with our fingers laced together and his calm voice in my ear, I would have done whatever he suggested. I nodded, and pulled my legs free from the twisted sheets.

He lit the fixtures in his room, and we stood side by side at the counter, the jars, marked now in Thuvhesit letters, stacked above us.

“Like almost everything,” he said, “this blend starts with hushflower.”

THE SOJOURN FESTIVAL BEGAN every season with the pounding of drums at sunrise. The first sounds came from the amphitheater in the middle of the city, and radiated outward as faithful participants joined in. The drumbeats were supposed to symbolize our beginnings—the first beats of our hearts, the first stirrings of life that had led us to the might we possessed today. For a week we would celebrate our beginnings, and then all our able-bodied would pile into the sojourn ship to chase the current across the galaxy. We would follow its path until the currentstream turned blue, and then we would descend on a planet to scavenge, and return home.

I had always loved the sound of the drums, because they meant we would leave soon. I always felt freer in space. But with Uzul Zetsyvis still in my dreams, this season I heard the drums as his slowing heartbeat.

Akos had appeared in my doorway, his short brown hair sticking out in all directions, leaning into the wood.

“What,” he said, eyes wide, “is that sound?”

In spite of the current’s pain shooting through me, I laughed. I had never seen him this disheveled before. His drawstring pants were twisted halfway around, and his cheek bore the red imprint of creased sheets.

“It’s just the start of the Sojourn Festival,” I said. “Relax. Untwist your pants.”

His cheeks turned faintly pink, and he righted the waistband of his pants.

“Well, how was I supposed to know that?” he replied irritably. “Next time, when something that sounds remarkably like war drums is going to wake me at dawn, could you maybe warn me?”

“You’re determined to deprive me of fun.”

“That’s because apparently, your version of ‘fun’ is making me believe I’m in mortal peril.”

Smiling a little, I went to the window. The streets were flooded with people. I watched them kicking up dust as they charged toward the center of Voa to participate in the festivities. They were all dressed in blue, our favorite color, and purple, and green; armored and armed; faces painted, necks and wrists draped with fake jewels or crowns of fragile flowers. Flowers here, along the planet’s equator, didn’t have to be as hardy as iceflowers to survive. They turned to mush between a person’s fingers, and smelled sweet.

The festival would feature public challenges in the amphitheater, visitors from other planets, and reenactments of significant moments in Shotet history, all while the crew of the sojourn ship worked on cleaning and repairs. On the last day, Ryzek and I would process from Noavek manor to the transport vessel, which would take us to the sojourn ship as its first official passengers. Everyone else would board after us. It was a rhythm I knew well, and even loved, though my parents were no longer here to guide me through it.

“My family’s rule is relatively recent, you know,” I said, tilting my head. “By the time I was born, Shotet had already changed, under the reign of my father. Or so I’ve read.”

“You read a lot?” he asked me.

“Yes.” I liked to pace and read. It helped me distract myself. “I think this is when we get closest to how things were before. The festival. The sojourn ship.” There were children running along our fence line, hands linked, laughing. Other faces, blurry at this distance, turned toward Noavek manor. “We were wanderers, once, not—”

“Murderers and thieves?”

I grasped my left arm, and the armor dug into my palm.

“If you enjoy the festival so much, why don’t you go?” he asked me.

I snorted. “And stand at Ryzek’s side all day? No.”

He stood beside me, looking through the glass. An old woman shuffled down the middle of the street, wrapping a bright scarf around her head—it had come undone in the chaos, and her fingers were clumsy. As we watched her, a young man carrying an armful of flower crowns placed one on her head, atop the scarf.

“I don’t understand the wandering, the scavenge,” Akos said. “How do you decide where to go?”

The drums were still pounding out the Shotet heartbeat. Beneath them was a dull roar in the distance, and music, layered over itself.