The End and Other Beginnings Read online

  A debt was something I could understand. Not feelings, not religion—something straightforward, like the wires and devices I spoke to with my hands, using my currentgift. All they knew was their own function, and whatever kept them doing it. That was all I really needed to know from Otega, and all I needed to know about myself, too.

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s next?”

  My hair was wrapped in a gray scarf, to keep me from getting noticed. There was blond hair—not uncommon in Shotet—and then there was Surukta blond, which was so pale it was almost white, and tended to draw attention. My eyepatch, too, was distinct, so I had to put in my glass eye and comb my hair so it fell across the right side of my face. I was not supposed to draw attention to myself in the kitchens of Noavek manor.

  Otega was there, laughing with one of the cooks as she folded linens. She had told him I was a niece of hers, sent to Voa to work, and he hadn’t questioned it. My false name was Keza. I was dressed in Otega’s clothes: a gray shirt with a vest over it, tucked into dark blue trousers, and black calf-high boots. The fabric was soft, but the clothes were loose enough that they almost blurred my figure, making me more forgettable.

  “Keza, how are you at changing bed linens?” Otega said.

  “Good enough,” I said. “Why?”

  “You’re going to help me change out the linens in the west corridor. Wash your hands.”

  I had been chopping roots for the cook’s stew. I washed my hands in the deep metal sink in the corner, then Otega piled my arms high with linens and led the way into the hidden hallways of Noavek manor.

  She explained the marking system at the end of each hallway to me, and assured me that I would get used to maneuvering in the dark—everybody did. I was less worried about that and more worried about how long I would be in Noavek manor. Long enough to learn the hallways? Long enough to think of this as my actual job?

  When she pulled back a wall panel, we were in the west corridor, on the second floor—also known as Cyra Noavek’s wing. Fear buzzed in my chest. I wanted Cyra Noavek dead, sure, but I knew she was dangerous, and I didn’t want to be discovered. I kept my head down as Otega led the way down the hall.

  She stopped at the first door on the left, which was open. The room within was small, with an apothecary station on the left side packed with ingredients and tools. I recoiled when I saw the half-chopped currentflower on the counter. Otega grinned.

  “He’s basically immune to them,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The Kereseth boy.”

  “He lives here? Why?”

  She was stripping the little bed across from the apothecary station of its sheets. There was a pile of pillows in the corner of the room. It looked like Kereseth had thrown them there in his sleep.

  Everyone knew who Akos Kereseth was. Kidnapped from the land of our enemies, Thuvhe, with his brother; fated to die serving the family Noavek; trained with the Shotet army outside of the city; and now, apparently, resident of Noavek manor, for some reason.

  “There are some things you don’t know about Miss Noavek’s currentgift,” Otega replied. “It takes as much as it gives. And Kereseth’s own gift . . . relieves things. Come along.”

  She led me down the hallway, past a large, empty room—“for training,” Otega explained—and a huge bathroom—“for guests”—to a closed door on the right. She knocked, and a clear, feminine voice called out, “Come in.”

  Otega leaned in close to me, and whispered, “If you can’t keep your head in this room, you can’t handle your mission. Understand?”

  I nodded, and followed her in.

  And then I was in the same room as Cyra Noavek.

  The blunt instrument Ryzek used to torture his enemies.

  People said she was mad. Barely capable of forming coherent sentences. They said she could kill with a touch. That she relished it. That she frothed at the mouth like a rabid dog. That she was every bit as evil as her father had been.

  It was dim inside the room—which was large enough to house half a dozen people rather than just one. All the blinds were closed, and the only light came from a floating projector. The monster herself stood facing the wall above the fireplace, watching the projected footage, which seemed to be of a hand-to-hand fight in some kind of arena.

  I couldn’t see her, at first, as my eyes adjusted to the light. I could tell that she was tall, with an athletic build, her thighs thick and her bare arms ropy with muscle. But when the footage lit up brighter—zooming closer to the fighters—I got a glimpse of her face.

  I should have known she would be beautiful. Full lips and a stately nose; dark, focused eyes and elegant hands. But then a patch of dark, spidery veins sprawled over her cheek, and she flinched—as if her deadly currentgift hurt her.

  Otega snapped her fingers at me, and I remembered myself, rushing over to the bed with the linens. She had already taken the sheets off the mattress and the pillowcases. My hands shook as I unfolded the fitted sheet and tried to spread it across the bed. Otega clicked her tongue at me and took it from me so she could do it instead.

  “To what do I owe this honor?” Cyra said. Her voice was low, for a woman. “You haven’t changed my sheets in seasons, Otega.”

  I could have sworn she didn’t notice us come in.

  “Just helping out one of the others,” Otega said. “What are you watching?”

  Her familiarity was surprising to me, but then, she had tutored Cyra from her childhood, hadn’t she? Maybe they were friendly. It seemed at odds with the image of Cyra Noavek in my mind—taciturn, cruel, and impatient. Someone capable of murder.

  After all, she had killed my uncle, Uzul Zetsyvis.

  His daughter, Lety, had told me what happened. That Cyra had put her hands on Uzul, at her brother’s command, and tortured him senseless. That he had been unable to get rid of the pain, afterward, and had taken his own life. That Lety had sent a message to Cyra, telling her to mark the loss—mark my uncle Uzul’s life—on her arm.

  I couldn’t tell if she had listened—a forearm guard covered her left arm from elbow to wrist.

  “A demonstration from last year’s Festival,” Cyra said. “Ryzek asked me to fight Vas for the entertainment of the soldiers. I wanted to study it—I’m teaching Akos.”

  “Out of the goodness of your heart?”

  Cyra snorted, which made Otega smile.

  “He’s making me painkillers,” Cyra said. Another black vein shot down her right arm, from shoulder to wrist, and then spread in four branches down each finger. Cyra flinched again, and shook out her hand. “They’re helpful. It’s a fair exchange.”

  I looked from Cyra to the footage. In it, she stood in a practice arena—similar to the one on the Sojourn ship—with her hair tied back and her hands up by her face. Across from her was Vas Kuzar, his hair shaved on one side, bruises marking his arms. I nearly shuddered at the sight of him, Ryzek’s constant companion, who couldn’t feel pain.

  Black lines spread across Cyra’s skin in a dense web, and her entire body contorted before pulling in on itself. She stifled a moan.

  In the footage, she was also covered in the black lines of her currentgift, but she was moving, sidestepping Vas and hooking her leg around his to trip him. He recovered, and delivered a wide punch—which she ducked under, and shifted back to punch him hard in the side. He grinned, making a grab at her; she twisted away, escaping him.

  I forgot about the linens as I watched them gain momentum. They shifted forward and back, their feet fast, their bodies bending, twisting, tensing and releasing. It was like watching a dance, except the dancers kept colliding, all elbows and knees, fists and feet, bloody and bruised.

  I had been practicing combat since before my mother’s exile, and since then, I had doubled down on the exercise with a ferocity that alarmed most of the renegades I sparred with. I had made huge leaps forward in skill. Only a handful of the others could best me.

  But one thing was distressingly clear: I was not as
good as Cyra Noavek.

  “Who won?” Otega asked. She snapped her fingers at me, and I tried to focus, arranging the pillows at the head of the bed.

  “It was a draw,” Cyra said, tilting her head as she watched. More currentshadows, these sprawling across her throat, like a hand, choking her. She stopped talking, closing her eyes instead and breathing through her nose. Then she continued, once the currentshadows moved on. “He wasn’t getting hurt, and I wasn’t getting tired, so Vakrez just told us to stop after a while.”

  “I guess you’re evenly matched.”

  “Without his currentgift, he’s above average at best,” Cyra said, her brow furrowed. “He doesn’t know how to think.”

  “We’re all done,” Otega said. “Let some light in eventually, would you? It’s stuffy in here.”

  Cyra grunted a little in response. I followed Otega out of the room and down the hallway. As we passed Kereseth’s room, I spotted him at the counter, handling the currentflower with his bare hands. He was tall, too, with skin as fair as mine, and deft hands that chopped in perfect increments.

  Once Otega and I were in the hidden hallways again, and the wall panel was back in place, she turned to me. I could barely see her in the dark, only finding her face by the gleam of her eyes.

  “What did you learn?” she said.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t sneak you in here so you could change sheets, Surukta,” she snapped. “Tell me what you learned.”

  “I’m not as good as she is,” I said. “Not even close. None of us are.”

  “And?”

  “And . . .” I couldn’t think of what else was relevant to my mission, except maybe that Otega wanted me to know my enemy, generally. So I decided to stick to the hard facts: “Her currentgift causes her pain.”

  “Constant pain,” Otega clarified. “Go on.”

  “She’s observant. She knew you had come in even though she didn’t look at you or acknowledge you. She’s tall—a head and shoulders taller than me. Strong, to be sure. Beautiful. Focused. And . . . surprisingly casual with a servant, even one she’s known for a long time.”

  “When she was a child, she refused to respond when I called her by any honorific,” Otega said, nodding. “You handled yourself poorly. You couldn’t focus on your task and observe her at the same time, you stopped to stare, you seemed overwhelmed by the experience overall. It’s lucky for you that she was so focused on something else, or she would have noticed how strange you were acting in an instant.”

  “You can’t expect me to just pretend she’s not who she is,” I snapped. “She’s Ryzek’s Scourge. It’s a little distracting to suddenly be in the same room as her with only a few moments’ warning!”

  “You’re so eager to be a renegade.” Otega snorted a little. “But the truth is, you’re a little girl with a grudge.”

  “It’s not a little girl’s grudge!” I snapped. “She killed my uncle. Her brother—”

  “I do not care,” Otega snapped. “If you are discovered, you will be tortured, interrogated, and executed.”

  She grabbed my arm, and pulled me close.

  “This is what your mother meant when she said your anger was a hindrance,” she said in a low, harsh whisper. “It makes you a goddamn fool. And if you want to live long enough to complete your mission, you’ll stop wallowing in your hurt and grow a brain.”

  She released me, grabbed what remained of the linens from my arms, and started down the hallway.

  I spent the next week in Noavek manor, carrying laundry back and forth. Bed linens, towels, clothes, the place was stuffed full of so much fabric I thought I might drown in it, choked by pillowcases.

  I spent the next week learning about Cyra Noavek. Her bedroom, I discovered, had no personal touches at all. It looked no different than the empty guest rooms in Noavek manor. I had no regard for her privacy, so when I collected her laundry, if the room was empty, I opened the cabinets in her spacious quarters and looked inside. I found trinkets from past scavenges: defunct Tepessar coins from a past currency; a single plate earring from Essander, stamped with concentric circles; a spinning top from Zold, coated with the planet’s trademark gray dust.

  Another drawer held relics of Cyra’s late mother, Ylira Noavek. Not clothes and jewelry—though Cyra had some of those, too—but notes scribbled on scraps of paper in loopy handwriting, small vials of perfume, a silk handkerchief with a fenzu stitched into it. And beneath it, a printed picture of a child Cyra, sitting on her mother’s lap. Ylira was smiling down at her daughter, and Cyra was smiling back. They didn’t look anything alike.

  As for the young woman herself, she was nearly always in the training room, sometimes with Akos, and sometimes without. I didn’t dare to stop and watch them from the hallway, but once, when I went to change the sheets, there was a book on Cyra’s bed. A book on elmetahak, the oft-forgotten text on Shotet strategic thinking in combat. She had made notes in the margins about Akos. Loses his focus often, seems to coincide with bouts of insomnia. Teach meditation techniques? And: Leaves left side unguarded; may want to supplement armor accordingly. The notes became more detailed the farther ahead in the book they were, and while they were always about combat, I started to wonder if they reflected a certain amount of . . . tenderness. You didn’t watch someone that closely unless you cared about them.

  On the seventh day that I found myself working in the manor, I walked into the kitchen and Otega was just standing at the counter, staring at her hands.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “Come,” she said without looking at me, and she led the way into the hallway behind the wall.

  This time, she didn’t lead me up to the western part of the manor where Cyra Noavek lived. She reached back for my wrist as she took me down a complicated route on the first floor. Then she stopped, and crouched before a wall panel, drawing it carefully back, one sliver at a time.

  She gestured for me to crouch there, too, and I did, putting my eye up to the narrow space she had created in the wall. I saw a sparse room awash in greenish light, and recoiled, my stomach turning.

  I knew this room.

  I knew it.

  I clapped a hand over my mouth, and sat back, fighting for control of my breathing. I heard Ryzek Noavek’s voice in my mind. And to you, girl, I will give mercy. The glass eye felt suddenly too big for its socket; I resisted the urge to claw it out. I will leave you with your life . . . but not without a reminder.

  Otega’s hands were on my head, her voice whispering in my ear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I forgot. I’m sorry.” Her palm pressed flat to my back, and moved in a slow circle, as my mother’s had done when I was sick as a child. It brought me back to myself. I trembled a little, but my breaths evened out, and I took my hand away from my mouth.

  “Do you want to go?” she asked me.

  I shook my head. I sat forward on my knees, and looked through the gap in the wall again.

  I forced myself to focus. Not on the greenish light, but on my target, on Cyra Noavek, standing at the foot of the dais in full armor. Earned armor. Up near the wall of weapons was Ryzek Noavek, that pale pillar of a man. I felt a surge of revulsion at the sight of him, at the flint of his voice.

  “. . . She found ways to avoid physical altercations, acknowledging her weakness. You should be more like her, sister. You are an excellent fighter. But up here . . .” He tapped his head. “Well, it’s not your strength.”

  I frowned. I was the future assassin of Cyra Noavek, but even I knew that wasn’t the case. Cyra’s strength in combat was in strategy more than physical skill.

  “You gave Kereseth a weapon? You took him through the tunnels? You slept through his escape?”

  I looked up at Otega, who was leaning over to watch above me. She nodded at me.

  “He drugged me,” Cyra said.

  I thought of the apothecary station. It would be simple for him to drug her.

  “Oh? And how did he do that?” Ryzek smirked. “P
inned you down and poured the potion in your mouth? I don’t think so. I think you drank it, trustingly. Drank a powerful drug prepared by your enemy.”

  “Ryzek—” she choked out.

  “You almost cost us our oracle. And why? Because you’re foolish enough to let your heart flutter for the first painkiller who comes around?”

  I couldn’t see her face. But I knew by her sagging posture that he had struck a nerve.

  “You can’t blame him for wanting to rescue his brother,” she said shakily, “or for wanting to get out of here.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you? People will always want things that will destroy us, Cyra. That doesn’t mean we just let them act on what they want.”

  He pointed, and for a horrible moment I thought he was pointing right at me. But he was just ordering her to one side of the dais.

  “Stand over there and don’t say a word. I brought you here to watch what happens when you don’t keep your servants under control.”

  Whatever nerve he had struck seemed to have activated her currentgift. Currentshadows raced all over her body, making her clutch herself, face contorted.

  Ryzek’s Scourge. Shotet’s living nightmare. The monster who had tortured my kind uncle until he was in enough pain to seek release by ending his life. I thought I would delight in watching her suffer.

  But I had seen her as a child on a mother’s lap, as a sister berated by her brother, as a girl with a crush. She had become a person to me, not a monster, and though I didn’t forgive her for what she had done, I also didn’t relish her pain.

  I sat back on my heels.

  Was that what Otega wanted me to learn? And if so . . . why? Would it make it any easier to complete my mission?

  “We must go,” Otega murmured in my ear. I didn’t protest. I didn’t want to see what would come next anyway—what torments Ryzek had devised for Akos Kereseth. So I stood, and together Otega and I walked back to the kitchen.