"Who gets to go first?" I said.
"The oracle's esteemed colleague, Sifa Kereseth, of course," Pary said, inclining his head to Akos's mother.
"I am honored," Sifa said, and they walked away together, leaving me, Akos, Eijeh, Cisi, and Yssa.
"Anything we should know?" I said to Yssa. "You used to live here, I assume? You seem to know as much about it as Pary does."
"Yes. Pary and I both worked here, once, before I was sent to be an ambassador," she said. She switched into Shotet. "I'm afraid I have nothing useful to say except that the oracle is far more than she initially seems, and if she wants to see each of you separately, that is because she has something distinct to say to each of you."
Akos repeated this in Thuvhesit to Cisi, on a slight delay. I had never seen Cisi look quite this way--not frightened, exactly, but tense, like she was bracing herself.
I didn't often think of Cisi's fate, but I thought of it then. The first child of the family Kereseth will succumb to the blade.
The little buildings where Pary had told us we could stay were arranged in a circle around a garden, and all the walls were open, so it was easy to track who came and went. Sifa didn't return from the oracle, but Pary came to collect Eijeh, who was increasingly making me feel like I was in the presence of Ryzek again.
Akos joined me in the garden, after ensuring there were no killer beetles flying around. Still, he stayed close to me, closer than he normally would.
"What do you think she'll say?" I asked him.
He sighed, and I felt it against my hair. "I don't know. I've given up trying to know what oracles are going to say to me."
I laughed. "I bet you're tired of them."
"I am." He stepped closer, so his chest was against my back and his nose was in my hair, tilted down so I could feel his breaths against the nape of my neck. It would have been simple to move away. He wasn't holding me there; he was hardly touching me, in fact.
But so help me, I didn't want to move.
"I'm tired of everything," he said. "I'm tired all the time."
He sighed again, heavily.
"Mostly," he said, "I'm tired of not being near you."
I found myself relaxing, shifting back so I was pressed against him, a wall of heat all the way down my spine. He rested his hands on my hips, his fingers creeping under the hem of my shirt just enough to dull my pain. Let the damn poison beetles come, I thought, as I felt a kiss on my neck, right behind my ear.
This was inviting further pain, and I knew it. His fate wouldn't let him choose me, and even if that wasn't the case, I suspected the deep well of his grief wouldn't let him choose anything at all. But I was sick of doing what was good for me.
He kissed where my neck met my shoulder, lingering, his tongue tasting my skin, which was likely salty from sweat. I reached up and buried my fingers in his hair, holding him against me for a moment, and then twisting my neck so our mouths collided. Our teeth clacked together, and normally we would have drawn back and laughed, but neither of us was in a laughing mood. I pulled at his hair, and his hands tightened around my hips so hard it was just on the good side of painful.
I had buried myself in rage since the destruction of the sojourn ship, and since the illusions between him and me fell away. Now I buried myself in wanting him instead, twisting into him, grabbing his body wherever my hands found purchase. Want me, I told him, with each clutch of my fingers. Choose me. Want me.
I leaned back for just a moment, just to look at him. The straight line of his nose, and its scattered freckles. His skin was the color of sandstone, and the powder people used to keep their skin from shining, and the envelopes my mother had used to send letters. His eyes were insistent on mine, their color exactly like a storm rolling in over Voa, carrying in them the same apprehension, like even now he was afraid I might stop. I understood. I was afraid I might stop, too. So I pressed into him again, before I could.
We stumbled together toward one of the rooms, stumbled out of our shoes. I yanked a curtain across the space exposed to the courtyard, but really, I didn't care if anyone saw, I didn't care if we were interrupted, I just wanted to take and take and take whatever he would give, knowing that this might be the last time I let myself.
CHAPTER 25: CISI
THE HALL OF PROPHECY, where I go to meet the Ogran oracle, is big and grand, like its name suggests. It's about what I expect, since that's what the hall in Hessa Temple is like, and I used to go visit Mom at work all the time.
The Ogran space isn't as colorful as Hessa's, though. The walls are paneled with dark wood. Carved and etched into the wood are elegant designs that take the shape of what I assume are Ogran plants. They look almost like they're writhing and snapping right in front of me.
There are windows near the ceiling, untinted, that must be lit from outside, because they glow with a light that's not natural to Ogra itself. The room itself is narrow and long, with sculptures about an armspan away from each other. Some of them are as carefully shaped as the carvings on the walls, and others are hard and grotesque, but all have a kind of menace to them. Most things on Ogra do.
The oracle herself stands in front of one of the sculptures--one of the taller ones, made of metal plates that arc toward the ceiling and twist around each other. They're all polished on one side and raw on the other, and fastened to each other with big bolts the size of my fist. The oracle's hands are folded in front of her. Her oracle robes are a deep, rich blue, and she's barefoot. Stouter than Mom, and smaller. She glances at me, and offers me a smile.
"Cisi Kereseth," she says. "My name is Vara. Come, look at this."
I smile back, and stand next to her, looking up at the sculpture. I only do it out of politeness. I'm no good at looking at art.
"This sculpture was constructed about thirty seasons ago, when the city of Pokgo began to expand. People were angry that we were losing some of what they called 'Ogran humility.' The traditional Ogran belief is that our planet humbles us--reminds us that there are some things we cannot overcome." Vara shrugs. "Some things we should not try to control."
She gives me a pointed look. I'm not sure what to make of it. My instinct is to calm her. I try water, the most useful of my textures, but I can tell it doesn't do much to her. What makes Ograns comfortable, I wonder? Wind, the warmth of a fire, the softness of a blanket? I sift through a few in my mind before finding one I think seems right--the feeling of cool glass under your palm.
Vara raises an eyebrow.
"I have often wondered what that felt like," she says. "It is a heady thing, to be touched by your gift. It is all too easy to succumb to its influence."
"I'm sorry," I say. "I don't mean to--"
Vara rolls her eyes. "Come on, girl. You can fool people who don't know you that well, but I, along with every other oracle in my generation, have been seeing visions of you from birth. I know that your control is far more advanced than most who can influence their own gifts. I also know that you are trying to do good, when you use it against people. So let's talk about Isae Benesit, Cisi."
The way she lays it all bare makes me feel jumpy, and all the words I could say to defend myself get stuck in my throat. I nod, because that's all I can do to show her that I heard what she said.
"Do you truly care about her?" she asks. "Or are you just manipulating her to accomplish your own aims?"
"My aims--" I choke out.
"Yes, I know--you are only doing what you think is best. But the fact is, you are making decisions about the future of this galaxy unilaterally, so they are your aims, and no one else's."
I don't like to think of what I'm doing with Isae as manipulation. It's not that simple. If only Vara knew how much Isae worried me, sometimes. How easy it was for her to kill Ryzek, and order an attack on innocents in Voa. How wild her eyes are when she lets herself disappear into anger, and how settled she seems when I draw her back. She needs me.
Which gets me back to Vara's original question--of whether I really care abou
t her.
"I do care for her," I say. "I love her. But I worry for her. In a fair world, she would have space to feel her grief, but we don't really have the time to let her work out what she's going through on her own, not with a war going on."
Vara purses her wrinkled lips.
"Perhaps you are right," she says. "In that case, I must tell you to be careful of the one I've seen in some of your futures--the mechanic's boy. Ast."
"He senses currentgifts, doesn't he," I say. "He always seems to know when I'm using mine, even if I'm being really careful."
"It seems that way," Vara says. "And he's getting more and more suspicious of you. And more and more angry that Isae is not suspicious, I think."
I nod. "Thank you for the warning."
"Be careful, girl," Vara says, catching my hand and squeezing it tightly. A little too tightly. Her pupils are big--most Ograns' are, since there's so little light everywhere--but I can see a slim green ring around them that makes up her irises.
"And don't trust the Othyrians." She squeezes still harder. "Don't let her agree to it. Whatever you do."
I'm not sure what she means, but I know she wants me to nod, so I do.
CHAPTER 26: AKOS
IT WAS LATE THAT night that the oracle finally asked for him--or rather, them, because she wanted to see him and Cyra at the same time.
Earlier, they had fallen asleep tangled up in each other, with light from the plants in the garden casting a soft glow through the curtain Cyra had drawn. The silverskin on one side of her head had been cool against his chest, where she insisted on laying to listen to his heartbeat.
He didn't know what had come over him, in the garden, pulling her close when he knew it was selfish, that he couldn't give her what she wanted, at her own insistence. He ought to listen to her, maybe even break things off with her completely, because there was no ridding him of his fate and no way of convincing either of them that things would be the same if he didn't have death in service to her family to look forward to.
But the longing for her had pierced right through the haze that had settled over his mind the past few weeks, and he was too relieved at feeling something that he hadn't had the heart to suppress it. And he'd gone on wanting her, even while they struggled closer and closer. Like there just wasn't enough of her and never would be.
He couldn't take her hand as they walked--it would only attract the beetles, and he wasn't eager to have one of them perched on his face again--but he stayed close, so he could almost feel her. Her currentshadows were moving faster, darting across her throat and disappearing under her collar, and he wished he could do more for her than the mediocre painkiller he had given her before they left.
Pary led them to the top of the hill, but not to the large hall lit bright from within--down, to the lower level of the place, where the ceilings sloped too close to the top of his head for comfort, and the floorboards creaked with every step. He had to bend to pass through a doorway, and found himself in what looked like a kitchen. A woman not much older than his own mother stood there, her hands buried in a pile of dough. Her arms were freckled, and her hair was gray and curly, cut short around her head.
She smiled up at them when they walked in, with all the warmth he'd learned not to expect from oracles, who always seemed disconnected and harsh to him, even the falling oracle of Thuvhe, before his death.
"Cyra, Akos, welcome," she said. "Please, sit."
She gestured to the bench across the table from her. Akos did as she said, but Cyra stayed on her feet, arms crossed.
"Would you feel more comfortable with busy hands?" she asked Akos. "I know you have an affinity for making elixirs. There is plenty here to chop."
"No," he said, his face flushing with warmth. "Thank you."
"Do you have a name?" Cyra asked, blunt as ever. "Or should we just call you 'Oracle'?"
"Ah, forgive my rudeness. My name is Vara," she said. "I sometimes forget that the people I know do not know me, in turn. Is there anything I can do to make you less hostile, my dear?" She nodded to Cyra. "Or are you content to remain this way?"
A faint crease appeared in Cyra's cheek, the way it did when she was suppressing a smile.
"Fine, I'll sit," she conceded. "But don't read too much into it."
"I wouldn't dare," Vara said as Cyra perched on the edge of the bench next to Akos. Even sitting down, the two of them were taller than Vara, who was short and thick through the middle. There was something familiar about her.
"Are you related to Yssa in some way?" he asked.
"Well spotted, darling, yes. She is my daughter. A rather . . . late-in-life entanglement it was," she said. "She gets her father's frame. Tall and long-limbed. The rest was mine." She broke a piece off the dough and popped it in her mouth.
"Now," she said as she swallowed, "I'm sure you are wondering why I didn't put on my traditional Ogran robes and meet you in the Hall of Prophecy like a proper oracle."
"It crossed my mind," Akos said.
"I would expect no less from the son of an oracle," Vara said, still with that kind smile. "Well, really, let's keep this between us, but I hate that hall. It makes me feel short. So do the robes! They were made for the last oracle, and he was much bigger than me. Besides--I thought, given the nature of what I have to discuss with you both, you might appreciate the more comfortable surroundings."
Akos felt like he'd been dunked in cold water, suddenly. Given the nature of what I have to discuss with you.
"So it's not good news," Cyra said, wry. Leaning on sarcasm almost always meant she was scared out of her mind. The tightening of her hands around the edge of the bench suggested the same thing.
Vara sighed. "Oh, the truth rarely is, dear girl. What I have for you today is something we call 'kyerta'--do either of you know the word?"
Cyra and Akos both shook their heads.
"Of course not. Who speaks Ogran but Ograns?" Vara's laugh was like a thin trickle of water. "You see, we think of oracles as delivering the future only, and that's most of what we do, yes." She grabbed a fat metal cylinder from a shelf behind her, and used it to roll the dough flat. "But it's the past that brings about the future--often it stays hidden, shaping our lives in ways we do not understand. But sometimes it must force its way into the present in order to change what's coming."
She broke the dough into three large pieces, and rolled them between her hands until they were long and thin, like tails. Then she began to braid them.
"Kyerta," she said, "is a revelation that causes your world to shift on its axis. It is a profound truth that, once you know it, inevitably alters your future, though it has already occurred and should, therefore, change nothing."
She finished the braided dough, and set it aside with a sigh. Dusting off her hands, she sat down across from them and leaned into her arms.
"In your case, this kyerta comes in the form of your names," she said. "You have lived your lives as Akos Kereseth and Cyra Noavek, when in fact, you are Akos Noavek and Cyra Kereseth."
She sat back from the table.
Akos struggled to breathe.
Cyra let out a peal of laughter.
CHAPTER 27: CYRA
I CLAPPED MY HAND over my mouth to stop the sound, a horrible, forced laugh without any mirth in it.
Cyra Kereseth.
It wasn't the first time I'd ever thought the name. I had daydreamed about it once or twice, leaving the name Noavek behind and taking on Akos's name, someday in an ideal future where we got married. It was customary for the lower-status person in a marriage to change their name, in Shotet, but we could make an exception, to rid me of the label I hated. The name Cyra Kereseth had become, to me, a symbol of freedom, as well as a sugar-sweet unreality.
But Vara didn't mean that my name was Cyra Kereseth through some hypothetical, far-off marriage. She meant that my name was Cyra Kereseth now.
The hard part was not believing I wasn't Cyra Noavek. I had suspected it since my brother told me I didn't share hi
s blood, maybe even since my blood didn't work in the gene lock that he had used to keep his rooms secure. But believing I belonged to the same family that had raised Akos to a soft heart and a knowledge of iceflowers--that was another thing entirely.
I didn't dare look at Akos. I wasn't sure what I would see when I did.
I took my hand away from my face.
"What?" I said, stifling another giggle. "What?"
"Sifa would tell the story better," Vara said. "But unfortunately that task now falls to me, because it is Ogra's future that hangs in the balance. When you were born, Akos, to Ylira and Lazmet Noavek, Sifa saw only dark paths ahead of you. And likewise, Cyra, born to Sifa herself, and Aoseh Kereseth, only dark paths ahead of you. She despaired for both of you.
"And then something happened that had not happened in quite some time--a new possibility presented itself. If she crossed your paths--if she switched your places--new possibilities opened up, and a few--very few, mind you, but a few--did not lead to doom. So she reached out to Ylira Noavek, a woman she had never met before and would never again meet, to present the solution to her. It was very fortunate, for her, that Lazmet had not yet been to see his child. It was likewise fortunate that the bloodlines in both your families are so richly varied that virtually any combination of features and skin shades wouldn't raise eyebrows.
"They met just past the Divide, the feathergrass that separates Shotet from Thuvhe, and they traded their children, so that both might have a chance to avoid their darkest paths," Vara said, with a tone of finality. Her fingers were dusted with brown flour, her nails bitten down to stubs. "Lazmet was told that he had been misinformed about the sex of his child. The messenger who had delivered the news was executed, but Lazmet accepted you as his, Cyra, and all proceeded as Sifa had hoped."
I was caught in my imagining of the moment, my swaddled, infant form passed into Ylira Noavek's hands, with feathergrass swaying in the background. I drew myself out of the fiction, suddenly furious.
"So you're telling me," I said, slumping forward over the table to point a finger at her. "You're telling me that my mother handed me over to be raised by a bunch of monsters, and I'm, what? Supposed to be grateful, because it was for my own good?"
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