Carve the Mark

Akos went limp.

“Let him up, Suzao,” Vas said.

Suzao—the one with his boot digging into Akos’s face—lifted his foot and dragged Akos to his feet. He couldn’t take his eyes off his dad’s body, how his skin had broken open like the table in the living room, how much blood surrounded him—how can a person have that much blood?—and the color of it, the dark orange-red-brown.

Vas still held the bloodstained knife out from his side. His hands were wet.

“All clear, Kalmev?” Vas said to the tall Shotet. He grunted in reply. He had grabbed Eijeh and put a metal cuff around his wrists. If Eijeh had resisted, at first, he was finished now, staring dully at their dad, slumped on the living room floor.

“Thank you for answering my question about which of your siblings we are looking for,” Vas said to Akos. “It seems you will both be coming with us, by virtue of your fates.”

Suzao and Vas flanked Akos, and pushed him forward. At the last second he broke away, falling to his knees at his dad’s side and touching his face. Aoseh felt warm and clammy. His eyes were still open, but losing life by the second, like water going down a drain. They skipped to Eijeh, who was halfway out the front door, pressed forward by the Shotet soldiers.

“I’ll bring him home,” Akos said, jostling his dad’s head a little so he would look at him. “I will.”

Akos wasn’t there when the life finally left his dad. Akos was in the feathergrass, in the hands of his enemies.

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I WAS ONLY SIX seasons old when I went on my first sojourn.

When I stepped outside, I expected it to be into sunlight. Instead, I walked into the shadow of the sojourn ship, covering the city of Voa—the capital of Shotet—like a massive cloud. It was longer than it was wide, its nose coming to a gentle point with panes of unbreakable glass above it. Its metal-plated belly was battered by over a decade of space travel, but some of the overlapping sheets were polished where they had been replaced. Soon we would be standing inside it, like masticated food inside the stomach of a great beast. Near the rear jets was the open terminal where we would soon board.

Most Shotet children were permitted to go on their first sojourn—our most significant rite—when they were eight seasons old. But as a child of the sovereign, Lazmet Noavek, I was prepared for my first journey through the galaxy two seasons earlier. We would follow the currentstream around the galaxy’s edge until it turned darkest blue, and then descend to a planet’s surface to scavenge, the second part of the rite.

It was traditional for the sovereign and his or her family to enter the sojourn ship first. Or at least, it had been traditional since my grandmother, the first Noavek leader of Shotet, had declared it to be so.

“My hair itches,” I said to my mother, tapping at the tight braids on the side of my head with my fingertip. There were only a few, pulled back and twisted together so my hair wouldn’t fall in my face. “What was wrong with my regular hair?”

My mother smiled at me. She wore a dress made of feathergrass, the stalks crossed over the bodice and extending to frame her face. Otega—my tutor, among other things—had taught me that the Shotet had planted an ocean of feathergrass between us and our enemies, the Thuvhesit, to keep them from invading our land. My mother commemorated that clever act now, with her dress. By design, everything my mother did echoed our history.

“Today,” she told me, “is the first day that most Shotet will lay eyes on you, not to mention the rest of the galaxy. The last thing we want is for them to fixate on your hair. By fixing it up, we make it invisible. Understand?”

I didn’t, but I didn’t press the issue. I was looking at my mother’s hair. It was dark, like mine, but a different texture—hers was so curly it trapped fingers, and mine was just straight enough to escape them.

“The rest of the galaxy?” Technically, I knew how vast the galaxy was, that it held nine significant planets and countless other fringe ones, as well as stations nestled in the unfeeling rock of broken moons, and orbiting ships so large they were like nation-planets unto themselves. But to me, planets still seemed about as large as the house where I had spent most of my life, and no larger.

“Your father authorized the Procession footage to be sent to the general news feed, the one accessed by all Assembly planets,” my mother replied. “Anyone who is curious about our rituals will be watching.”

Even at that age I did not assume that other planets were like ours. I knew we were unique in our pursuit of the current across the galaxy, that our detachment from places and possessions was singular. Of course the other planets were curious about us. Maybe even envious.

The Shotet had been going on the sojourn once a season for as long as our people had existed. Otega had told me once that the sojourn was about tradition, and the scavenge, which came afterward, was about renewal—the past and the future, all in one ritual. But I had heard my father say, bitterly, that we “survived on other planets’ garbage.” My father had a way of stripping things of their beauty.

My father, Lazmet Noavek, walked ahead of us. He was the first to pass through the great gates that separated Noavek manor from the streets of Voa, his hand lifted in greeting. Cheers erupted at the sight of him from the huge, pulsing crowd that had gathered outside our house, so dense I couldn’t see light between the shoulders of the people before us, or hear my own thoughts through the cacophony of cheers. Here in the center of the city of Voa, just streets away from the amphitheater where the arena challenges were held, the streets were clean, the stones under my feet intact. The buildings here were a patchwork of old and new, plain stonework and tall, narrow doors mixed with intricate metalwork and glass. It was an eclectic mixture that was as natural to me as my own body. We knew how to hold the beauty of old things against the beauty of the new, losing nothing from either.

It was my mother, not my father, who drew the loudest cry from the sea of her subjects. She extended her hands to the people who reached for her, brushing their fingertips with her own and smiling. I watched, confused, as eyes teared up at the sight of her alone, as crooning voices sang her name. Ylira, Ylira, Ylira. She plucked a feathergrass stalk from the bottom of her skirt and tucked it behind a little girl’s ear. Ylira, Ylira, Ylira.

I ran ahead to catch up to my brother, Ryzek, who was a full ten seasons older than I was. He wore mock armor—he had not yet earned the armor made from the skin of a slain Armored One, which was a status symbol among our people—and it made him look bulkier than usual, which I suspected was on purpose. My brother was tall, but lean as a ladder.

“Why do they say her name?” I asked Ryzek, stumbling to keep up with him.

“Because they love her,” Ryz said. “Just as we do.”

“But they don’t know her,” I said.

“True,” he acknowledged. “But they believe they do, and sometimes that’s enough.”

My mother’s fingers were stained with paint from touching so many outstretched, decorated hands. I didn’t think I would like to touch so many people at once.

We were flanked by armored soldiers who carved a narrow path for us in the bodies. But really, I didn’t think we needed them—the crowd parted for my father like he was a knife slicing through them. They may not have shouted his name, but they bent their heads to him, guided their eyes away from him. I saw, for the first time, how thin the line was between fear and love, between reverence and adoration. It was drawn between my parents.

“Cyra,” my father said, and I stiffened, almost going still as he turned toward me. He reached for my hand, and I gave it to him, though I didn’t want to. My father was the sort of man a person just obeyed.

Then he swung me into his arms, quick and strong, startling a laugh from me. He held me against his armored side with one arm, like I was weightless. His face was close to mine, smelling of herbs and burnt things, his cheek rough with a beard. My father, Lazmet Noavek, sovereign of Shotet. My mother called him “Laz” when she didn’t think anyone could hear her, and spoke to him in Shotet poetry.

“I thought you might want to see your people,” my father said to me, bouncing me a little as he shifted my weight to the crook of his elbow. His other arm, returning to his side, was marked from shoulder to wrist with scars, stained dark to stand out. He had told me, once, that they were a record of lives, but I didn’t know what that meant. My mother had a few, too, though not half as many as my father.

“These people long for strength,” my father said. “And your mother, brother, and I are going to give it to them. Someday, so shall you. Yes?”

“Yes,” I said quietly, though I had no idea how I would do that.

“Good,” he said. “Now wave.”

Trembling a little, I extended my hand, mimicking my father. I stared, stunned, as the crowd responded in kind.

“Ryzek,” my father said.

“Come on, little Noavek,” Ryzek said. He didn’t need to be asked to take me from my father’s arms; he saw it in the man’s posture, as surely as I felt it in the restless shift of his weight. I put my arms around Ryzek’s neck, and climbed onto his back, hitching my legs on the straps of his armor.

I looked down at his pimple-spotted cheek, dimpled with a smile.

“Ready to run?” he said to me, raising his voice so I could hear him over the crowd.

“Run?” I said, squeezing tighter.

In answer, he held my knees tight against his sides, and jogged down the pathway the soldiers had cleared, laughing. His bouncing steps jostled a giggle from me, and then the crowd—our people, my people—joined in, my eyeline full of smiles.

I saw a hand up ahead, stretching toward me, and I brushed it with my fingers, just like my mother would. My skin came away damp with sweat. I found that I didn’t mind it as much as I expected. My heart was full.

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THERE WERE HIDDEN HALLWAYS in the walls of Noavek manor, built for the servants to travel through without disturbing us and our guests. I often walked them, learning the codes that the servants used to navigate, carved into the corners of the walls and the tops of entrances and exits. Otega sometimes scolded me for coming to her lessons covered in cobwebs and grime, but mostly, no one cared how I spent my free time as long as I didn’t disturb my father.

When I was newly seven seasons old, my wanderings took me to the walls behind my father’s office. I had followed a clattering sound there, but when I heard my father’s voice, raised in anger, I stopped and crouched.

For a moment, I toyed with the idea of turning back, running the same way I had come so that I could be safe in my own room. Nothing good came of my father’s raised voice, and it never had. The only one who could calm him was my mother, but even she couldn’t control him.