The Fates Divide. Вероника Рот

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СКАЧАТЬ as I thought.

      I fall to the bed and stare up at the snow.

      Maybe it wasn’t smart to come here, to contend with a chancellor instead of following my own family. I don’t know much about politics or government—I’m Hessa-born, so far out of my realm of knowledge it’s almost funny. But I know Thuvhe. I know people.

      And someone needs to look out for Isae before she loses herself in grief.

      Isae’s wall just looks like a window to space. Stars all glinting, little pricks of light, and the bend and swell of the currentstream. It reminds me of a fight we had, early on, before I knew her better.

      You know nothing about my planet and its people, I said to her then. It was after she had gone public as chancellor. She and Ori had shown up at my apartment at school, and she had been rude to me for being so familiar with her sister. And for some reason, my currentgift had let me be rude back. This is only your first season on its soil.

      The broken look she gave me then is a lot like the one she’s giving me now, as I walk into her quarters—twice the size of the ones given to me, but that’s not surprising. She sits on the end of her bed in an undershirt and underwear that’s really just a pair of shorts clinging to her long, skinny legs. It’s more casual than I’ve ever seen her before, and more vulnerable, somehow, like letting me see her right after waking ripped her open somehow.

      All my life I have loved this planet, more fervently than my family or my friends or even myself, she had replied back then. you have walked all your seasons on its skin, but I have buried myself deep in its guts, so don’t you dare tell me that I don’t know it.

      The thing about Isae is, her outer shell is so thick I don’t always believe there’s something under it. She’s not like Cyra Noavek, who lets you see everything writhing just out of reach, or like Akos, whose emotions glitter in his eyes like precious metal caught in the bottom of a pan. Isae is just blank.

      “My friend—the one I told you about—will be here soon,” she says, her voice rough. “He wasn’t far from here when I called.”

      She’d commandeered the nav deck for a while when the patrol ship first picked us up, saying she needed to make a call to an old friend, one she grew up with. Ast was his name. She said she could use someone’s help, someone who wasn’t tied to the Assembly or Thuvhe or Shotet. Ast was “brim spawn,” as some people liked to call it, born out on some broken moon beyond the currentstream barrier.

      “I’m glad,” I say.

      I try one of my favorite feelings on her now, to calm her—water, which is odd, since I don’t know much about water, having grown up on an ice planet. But there was a hot spring in the basement of the temple in Hessa, to enhance the visions of the oracle, and Mom had taken me there once to learn to tread water. It was dark as a tomb down there, but the hot water had surrounded me, all soft, like silk, only heavier. I let that heavy silk fold around Isae now, watch that tension in her shoulders ebb away. I’m learning her, slowly, and it’s easier, now that we’re not on that little Shotet ship anymore.

      “He was the mechanic’s son, on the ship where I was raised,” she says, rubbing her eyes with the back of a hand. Her trade vessel was always adrift, never staying anywhere for long. The perfect place for someone who needed to stay hidden. “He was there, too, during the attack. He lost his father. Some of his friends, too.”

      “What does he do now? Still a mechanic?”

      “Yeah,” she says. “He was just finishing up a job on a fueling station near here, though. Good timing.”

      Maybe it’s the idea that she needs somebody else, even though I’m here, or maybe it’s just plain jealousy, but I don’t feel good about Ast. And I don’t know what he’ll make of me.

      It’s like thinking about him summons him, because the door buzzes right then. When Isae opens it, there’s an Assembly-type standing right there, his eyes sliding down her bare legs. Behind him is a broad-shouldered man holding two big canvas bags. He puts the side of his hand against the Assembly man’s shoulder, and what looks like a flying beetle whizzes out of his sleeve.

      “Pazha!” Isae exclaims as the beetle lands on her outstretched hand. It’s not a real bug—it’s made of metal, and emits a constant clicking. It’s a guide bot, meant to help the blind maneuver. Ast tilts his head toward it, following the sound, and drops his bags just inside the doorway. Isae, with the beetle perched on her knuckles, throws her arms around him.

      Her currentgift is tied to memory—she can’t take a person’s memories, the way Ryzek could, but she can see their memories. Sometimes she sees them even when she doesn’t want to. So I understand when she tucks her nose into his shoulder, taking a sniff of him. She told me once that because smells are so tied to memory, they’re special to her; they turn the tide of memory she sees when she touches somebody into a little trickle. Controlled, for once.

      It’s not until Ast blinks that I notice his eyes. His irises are ringed with pale green light, and his pupils are circled with white. They’re mechanical implants. They only move by shifting, incremental. I know they likely don’t show him much—enough to help him, maybe, but they’re just supplements, like the beetle Isae called Pazha.

      “Nice new tech,” Isae says to him.

      “Yeah, they’re the new fashion in Othyr,” he drawls in a brim lilt. “Everybody who’s anybody is cutting out their eyes with butter knives and replacing them with tech.”

      “Always with the sarcasm,” Isae says. “Do they actually help?”

      “Some. Depends on the light.” Ast shrugs. “Seems like a nice setup in here.” He flicks his fingers, sending Pazha away from Isae’s fist and into the room. It flies the perimeter of the room, whistling at each corner. “Big. Smells clean. Surprised you’re not wearing a crown, Chancellor.”

      “Didn’t go with my outfit,” Isae says. “Come on, meet my friend Cisi.”

      The beetle is whizzing toward me now, turning fast circles around my head, shoulders, stomach, legs. I try to hear the clicking like he does, how it reveals the shape and size of me to him, but my ears aren’t trained for it.

      He’s dressed in so many layers I don’t know what piece of clothing is what. Does the hood belong to his jacket, or the sweatshirt under it? How many T-shirts is he wearing, two or three? There’s a screwdriver at his hip where a knife ought to be.

      “Ast,” he says to me, in almost a grunt. He holds out his hand, waiting for me to step forward and take it, and I do.

      “Cisi,” I say. His skin is warm, and he has a good grip, not too tight. By instinct I pick a currentgift feeling for him—waves of warmth, like ripples in the air.

      Most of my textures work for people who aren’t in some kind of turmoil, at least a little, but the ones I like to use are the ones people don’t detect. But judging by his little frown, he knows something isn’t right.

      “Whoa,” he says to me. “What’s that all about?”

      “Oh, sorry,” I say. “My currentgift is hard for me to control.”

      I always lie about that. Makes people less wary.

      “Cisi is the daughter of the oracle of Thuvhe,” СКАЧАТЬ