“Are you hurt?” Kyon asks, stroking my cheek and patting it softly.
“No.”
Gathering me up in his arms, Kyon takes me to the chair by the fireplace that is completely restored from having been burned. He sets me down on it. “Oscil, light a fire,” he commands.
A cheerful fire roars to life and snaps in the grate. I watch it for a long time while Kyon moves around the hut, hauling out dead bodies and ordering robots to undertake the massive cleanup. At some point I stop shaking. Resting my head against the arm of the chair, I close my eyes, but I keep my scissors close.
CHAPTER 7
THE MARK IS MADE
Soft raindrops patter on the deck and thatched roof outside. The hurricane shutters are open in the bedroom. There’s unfettered access to the teak bridge as well as the deck that leads to the beach. Becoming more awake, I try to move but I’m tucked beneath Kyon’s arm. We’re entwined on the soft bed, beneath the lovely, sheer mosquito netting.
My back is molded to Kyon’s front. The scent of spent shell casings clings to his large hand, which rests on my hip. Looking at him over my shoulder, I see Kyon’s nose close to my cheek. He’s asleep. I turn my face back to rest against the pillow, watching the rain, wondering if I should move. I might wake him if I do, and I don’t think that’s something I want to deal with right now. I notice the scissors lying on the mattress near my hand. I grasp them, holding them tight once more.
“You won’t need those,” Kyon murmurs. His mouth is by my ear. His deep voice causes me to tense. I fear him—his ultraviolence—it scares me. My heart drums in my ears because he’s crazy, maybe even a little crazy for me. His ruthlessness is attracted to my savagery.
“How do you know I won’t need them?” I clutch the scissors tighter, afraid that he’ll try to take them from me, and right now, I need them.
His fingertips slowly trace a path from my shoulder down my arm toward the scissors in my hand. “We killed everyone that the Brotherhood sent last night—some I tortured first, but in they end, they all perished.”
“You tortured some?” I shiver as his fingers change directions and move back up my arm to sweep my hair off of my shoulder and neck.
“I broke them for you, Kricket,” he whispers like it’s a secret. A fire ignites beneath my skin, and I’m too warm all of a sudden.
“Won’t the Brotherhood send more of them?” I ask, as he snuggles me closer. It’s disturbing how well I fit in his arms.
“Right now, they’re more than likely calling a meeting of the High Council. Some Brothers will take their time to get there—most of them can’t be bothered to attend to business before the sun’s zenith, and not all of them will come. Once the ones who do show up finally assemble in the forum, there will be dissenting opinions regarding what action to take against me, and by default, you.
“It will be divisive. Some will want to mount another attack against us, even though this one failed and they already used their best-trained soldiers. They know that I have an advanced missile defense system here. They know that because I designed their missile defense system. They’ll scramble to get their technicians on the task of creating a new system that will lock me out. But that will take a significant amount of time and they won’t find all the hidden doors I have woven into the one they now use. When they come to this conclusion, they will see that assassination cannot be achieved while we’re here on the island.”
“So we’re safe here?” I exhale. My fingers loosen on the scissors.
“For now. In a few rotations, they’ll send a delegate to speak to me. He’ll be someone who I count as a friend. He’ll try to convince me to speak to the High Council and come to a resolution.”
“A diplomatic solution?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Do you believe there can be such a solution?”
“No.”
“Why not?
“I don’t want one.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know why you’re wearing my shirt.”
“Huh?”
“My shirt. Why are you wearing it?” He runs his hand down my side, grasping the hem of the sky-blue shirt in question as he inches it up to my hip.
I squeak, “Kyon! Don’t!” and put my hand over his and attempt to stop him from raising it more.
“Tell me why you’re wearing it,” he demands, keeping tension on the hem in a threatening way.
I’m just barely keeping him in check. In a rush, I explain, “I sort of set your cottage on fire.”
His hand stills. “You did what?”
“I torched your chair.”
“Why?”
“I thought the doors would open if I started a fire.”
“They didn’t, did they?”
“No. The sprinklers went on,” I reply.
“So you got wet.”
“Soaked.”
“And instead of having something made for you by Oscil, you chose to wear something of mine?” he asks, as if I’ve done something harebrained.
“This is comfortable. What is this, Egyptian cotton? It’s so soft.”
“No one has ever worn my clothes before.”
“No one would dare,” I murmur. “You’re a scary beast.”
“You dared.”
“I did, but I have a problem with authority.”
He smoothes the shirt back down over my hip and rests his hand there possessively. “What would you like to do today?”
“Not die,” I reply.
“Other than that?”
I would say go home to Earth, but I don’t want to make him mad, so instead, I reply, “I don’t want you to be scary today.”
“That’s entirely in your hands. If you obey me, I won’t have a reason to scare you.”
“I don’t obey. It’s not something I do well.”
“You’ll have to learn . . . quickly.”
I want to hit him. He’s so arrogant. I sigh instead and try again. “You said you want to know who I am. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, let’s try to act normal. Why don’t we do what you normally do when you’re here alone so that I can see who you are?”
“You mean do something I like?”
“Yes.”
“The two of us.”
“Yes.”
“I want to teach you to swim.”
“I don’t think that’s a—”
“It’s not a request,” he snarls. His body is rigid against mine.
I ignore his snarl. “What if I’m really bad at swimming?”
“Then it will be a long day.”
“This should be fun,” I say under my breath. “Okay . . . so you’ll give me a swim lesson today, and then you can teach me to use a jet pack or a flipcart—something I want to learn.”
Kyon relaxes against me once more. “You don’t know how to operate a flipcart?”
“I don’t even know what a flipcart is, but I’ve heard that it’s fun.”
“You don’t know what a flipcart is? How is that possible?”
I point to myself. “Raised on Earth, remember?”
“It would be hard to forget it. You remind me of it every time you open your mouth.”
“It’s that bad, huh?” It’s a rhetorical question. I know that my upbringing, or in my case, lack of a proper upbringing, makes me look like pond scum to most people from Alameeda, not to mention the fact that I’m half Rafian. That doesn’t help with their perception of me at all.
He surprises me as he says, “It’s not as bad as you think. You don’t cower, even when I frighten you. I attribute that to Earth. Someone there must have taught you not to back down.”
Did someone teach me not to back down? Was it my father? I don’t know. He tried to have my memory erased, so I can’t be sure what I learned from him or my mother. Without thinking, I blurt out, “Would you hide someone on Earth? Someone you loved?” I bite my bottom lip and wait for his answer.
“No. I don’t hide. I fight.”
“But if you did have to hide? Would Earth be a good place?”
Kyon is quiet for a moment and then he says, “No.”
“Why?”
“I would probably hide someone I loved in the Forest of Omnicron, but I would make it look like we had gone to Earth.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because it would be easy to convince my enemies that I’d gone there. Earth is the obvious place to hide. But Earth is hostile with primitive customs and medical care. There are so many ways to die on Earth. The probability that my enemy would succumb to one of those ways while tracking me there would be high.”
So if Pan could convince the Alameeda Brotherhood to search for us on Earth, maybe even leave something unimportant there for them to find, he could keep safe the person whom he holds most dear—someone who’s more important. He could hide her on Ethar, right under their noses. He could better protect Astrid if he left me behind as bait. I don’t say this aloud. I’d be killing them if I did. I’ve already said too much. Kyon isn’t stupid. He could figure it all out quite easily if he knew Pan was alive or that I have a sister named Astrid—one that he had in his hands and gave away.
I grip the scissors in my fist as tight as I can until the metal cuts into my palm. Even with that pain to distract me, I still can’t hold back the angry tears that cloud my eyes. I’m a con, a pigeon—I’m a mark. That’s all I am to them—someone they can throw away to mislead their enemies from finding the true treasure: Astrid.
“I’m ready for that swim lesson now,” I murmur as I slide out from under Kyon’s arm, taking the scissors with me.
“Right now?” he asks, sounding surprised. “Don’t you want to have breakfast first?”
I don’t turn around to look at him—I can’t let him see me cry. I just shake my head no and reply over my shoulder, “I’m not hungry. I’ll meet you on the beach.”
I rush outside to the wet deck and around the front of the teak hut. Soft rain falls gently on my face. It mixes with my tears as I take the stairs down to the sand. The tide has come up higher, so whatever happened here last night has been washed away. I slow when I reach the edge of the water. There isn’t much wind; it’s just overcast and gray with a light drizzle. With the scissors still in my hand, I reach up and cut my hair again. In a few moments, the palm of my hand stops bleeding. Walking into the surf, I rinse the blood from my hand.
Tossing the scissors onto the beach, I pull strands of my newly regrown hair between my fingers, weaving it into a thick braid. The action helps to settle my raw emotions. But the bitterness I feel runs deep, and just when I think I can stop crying, another tear rolls down my cheek to shame me some more.
I knot the end of my braid and pull Kyon’s shirt off over my head. The black bathing suit I’ve had on since yesterday is very skimpy—not something I’d choose to learn to swim in. I wipe my face on his shirt before balling it up and tossing it in the sand behind me, far enough away so that the tide doesn’t get it. Wading into the water again, I go as deep as I dare, up to my chest. Using my good hand, I splash water on my face, erasing the evidence of my emotion.
Pan wants to protect Astrid? Fine. But the minute I can get the hell off Ethar, I’m gone. He’ll never see me again. The thing that I’m most angry about in this moment is that I’ve given him the power to hurt me. I’m stone. I’m stone. I’m stone, I repeat to myself.
“Are you ready?” Kyon asks from behind me.
Looking out over the horizon, I nod.
“Then let’s begin.”
I hate swim lessons right away. Everything Kyon wants me to do is designed to drown me. I have a problem even floating on my back or putting my face in the water, but as the hours drag on, I realize that Kyon isn’t going to let up on me until I master the skill—whichever one he’s teaching me from moment to moment.
As I stand up and listen to what Kyon wants me to do next, a small wave crashes into me, nearly knocking me over. I don’t have much strength left. I can hardly lift my arms up past my chest. Another wave comes and it knocks me against him. I clutch his waist so that I don’t get taken under the water. “What’s wrong with you? Are you tired?” Kyon asks with a frown.
“No,” I lie. “But if you need to take a break, I’ll understand.”
His arm goes around my waist to steady me. “You’re exhausted. You can’t even stand up.”
“I can stand up,” I say mulishly.
“No, you can’t,” he replies. He refuses to let go of me, which is sort of a good thing, because I don’t know if I’ll make it out of the water without his help. My limbs tremble as we get to shore. Without the buoyancy of the water to support me, it’s much worse. My muscles quiver. I’m surprised I’m so destroyed by one stupid swim lesson. The months that I’d spent at Rafe’s palace as Manus’s ward have made me weak. I was never allowed to do anything too strenuous there, and as a result I’m a creampuff.
“You can’t even walk.” He lifts me in his arms. His body is rigid. He takes me up the stairs to the deck and lays me on a soft-cushioned, legless lounge chair. From a nearby recessed shelf, he grasps a big, white towel, which he lays over me. I’m grateful for it and the fact that it has stopped raining.
Closing my eyes, I intend to rest for just a second. When I open them again, the sun is out. There’s a vermillion-colored, kitelike umbrella flying over me. It’s blocking the worst of the sun’s powerful midday rays. Kyon lounges on another legless deck chair with a whole command center of electronics surrounding him on hovering modules. He’s watching something on one screen and making lists on another at the same time. I can’t hear what he’s listening to, though, because he’s using an earpiece.
My deck chair is all the way reclined, but when I sit up, the back of it comes up to support me. Kyon looks my way. “Your lunch is ready.” He gestures to the floating tray beside me.
“Thank you,” I reply before I begin to eat.
Kyon watches me for a moment, and then he glances back at his screens. “You’ve been monitoring the future—often, haven’t you?”
I don’t see a point in lying, so I reply, “I see things.”
“Did you see anything else last night?”
“And if I did?”
“Then I want to know about it.”
“Because we’ve established a circle of trust?” I reply sarcastically.
He shakes his head. “Your loyalty is so misplaced, Kricket.” He turns one of the hovering monitors to face me. It shows surveillance footage with a time stamp running at the bottom of the screen. My pulse quickens when I see myself on it. I’m strapped to a metal chair in a desolate cell, being brutally beaten by a Rafian soldier—a Brigadet. He punches me in the stomach, and then he follows it with an uppercut. It’s clear that he has knocked me unconscious, but it doesn’t stop him from hitting me until another soldier forcefully pulls him away from me. He spits on me as I sag motionless in the chair, dripping blood from a multitude of open wounds.
Adrenaline surges into my bloodstream and I’m no longer hungry. I have to turn away. “I don’t want to see anymore.”
“It’s footage from the Ship of Skye,” Kyon says with anger he can’t hide. “This is what happened to you before I found you shackled to a pole.”
“I know where it’s from,” I murmur. It’s the interrogation that Trey told me about—it happened. Even if I can’t remember it, it was real.
“Nice friends you had, Kricket. They did this to you,” he says with contempt.
Looking at the monitor again, I watch as I’m struck again and again. “It wasn’t my friends.”
“They’re all part of Skye. They brought you there and allowed this to happen to you.”
I turn away from the gruesome scene playing out on the monitor. Swinging my legs off the lounger, I get up from the chair. The towel on my lap slips to the ground as I bump into the hovering tray, knocking my plate off of it. It shatters on the deck as
I hurry down the stairs to the sand. I turn up the beach and run blindly away from him. I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t care, as long as I can get as far from Kyon and the interrogation on his monitor as possible.
When I’m no longer able to run, I slow and walk along the shore, panting and clutching at the stitch in my side. To my left, a wide, grassy path comes into view. Wanting to get off the beach and out of the blistering sun, I turn onto it. It takes me into a grove of palm trees. The trail is lined with conch shells and tropical flowers, which I avoid, because one never knows about the flowers on this ridiculous planet. The path becomes steeper as it wraps around a hill. The trees become thinner. I notice I’m above the beach. There’s a waterfall coming off the cliff face in the distance; it pours into the sea below. Nestled on the cliff near the waterfall is the hangar that I saw on the satellite maps in Kyon’s office.
Continuing to follow the grassy path, I eventually come to the hanger. It’s made almost entirely of glass, with enormous wood beams supporting a metal roof. It reminds me of a longhouse, but on a much grander scale. I walk up to the glass-paneled wall, and it opens for me, granting me access. Inside, there is every kind of airship imaginable and some that are, to me, unimaginable. It feels like a museum with shiny vehicles all polished to the hilt of perfection.
I wander to the airship nearest to me. Etharians call it a trift—it’s a kind of plane, but there are so many different types that “plane” isn’t an adequate description. I don’t know what this type of trift is called; it’s so different from the ones I’ve seen up close, which are only a handful, really. The outside of this one has scales, like dragon skin—muted brown with freckles of green and gold. I run my hand over the hull, and it feels like hardened leather. It’s shaped like a bat. I’d look inside it, but I don’t even know how to get into it.
In the center of the building, a group of hovercycles is arranged in a star pattern, with the rear of each cycle meeting in the center. I walk around them. They’re mean looking. Powerful. One appeals to me more than the others. “Unlace compartment,” I murmur next to it. The hood lifts up, exposing the interior. I slide onto the wide, ice-blue seat, placing my hands on the grips.
Darken the Stars Page 10
