Veronica Roth - The Fates Divide

I understand, now, what Isae meant when she said it was me, Ast, and her against the galaxy. It’s not just the Shotet we’re up against, it’s the Assembly, too.

Ast, Isae, and I sit on one side of a polished glass table, and the Assembly Leader sits on the other. It’s so clean that his water glass, and the pitcher next to it, almost look like they’re floating. I rammed my legs against the edge when I sat down, because I wasn’t sure where the table ended. If it’s supposed to disarm me, it worked.

“Let us first talk through what happened in Shotet,” the Assembly Leader says as he pours himself a glass of water.

We’re in the outer ring of the Assembly ship, which is arranged in concentric circles. All the outer walls are made of glass that turns opaque when the ship rotates to face the sun, so nobody’s corneas get burned. The walls to my left are opaque now, and the room is heating up, so there’s a ring of sweat around my collar. Ast keeps pinching the front of his shirt and pulling it away from his body to keep it from sticking.

“I am sure the footage the sights provided is more than sufficient,” Isae says, clipped.

She’s wearing chancellor clothes: a heavy Thuvhesit dress, long-sleeved, buttoned up to her throat. Tight boots that made her grimace while she laced them. Her hair is pinned to the back of her head, and shines like she lacquered it there. If she’s hot—which she must be, that dress is made for Thuvhe, not … this —she doesn’t show it. Maybe that’s why she put such a dense layer of powder on her skin before we left.

“I understand your reticence to discuss it,” the Assembly Leader says. “Perhaps Miss Kereseth can give us a summary instead? She was there, too, correct?”

Isae glances at me. I fold my hands in my lap and smile, remembering that the Assembly Leader’s preferred texture was a warm breeze. That’s how I need to be, too—all warm and casual, a layer of sweat you don’t mind, a gust of air that almost tickles.

“Of course,” I say. “Cyra Noavek challenged her brother Ryzek to a duel, and he accepted. But before either of them could hit each other, my brother Eijeh appeared—” I choke. I can’t say the rest.

“Sorry,” I say. “My currentgift isn’t being cooperative.”

“She can’t always say what she wants to say,” Isae clarifies. “Which is that Eijeh was holding a knife to my sister’s throat. He killed her. The end.”

“And Ryzek?”

“Also killed,” Isae says, and for a tick I think she’s going to tell him what she did on the ship, how she went into the storage room with a knife and teased a confession out of him and then stuck him with the blade like it was a stinger. But then she adds, “By his own sister, who then dragged the body aboard, I assume to keep it from being defiled by the mob that had erupted into chaos.”

“And now, his body is …?”

“Drifting through space, I assume,” Isae says. “That is the preferred Shotet method of burial, no?”

“I don’t familiarize myself with Shotet customs,” the Assembly Leader says, leaning back in his chair. “Very well, that is all as I expected. As far as how the rest of the galaxy has responded … well, I have been fielding messages from the other leaders and representatives since your sister’s death was broadcast. They have interpreted the killing as an act of war, and wish to know how we will proceed from here.”

Isae laughs. It’s the same bitter laugh she gave Ryzek before she cut him open.

“We?” she says. “Two seasons ago, I asked for support from the Assembly to declare war on Shotet in light of the killing of our falling oracle, and I was told that the ‘civil dispute’ between Shotet and Thuvhe, as you have termed it, is an intraplanetary matter. That I needed to handle it internally. And now you’re wondering what we will be doing? There is no we , Assembly Leader.”

The Assembly Leader looks to me, eyebrows raised. If he expects me to—what word did he use?— soothe her, he’s going to be disappointed. I don’t always get to control my currentgift, but I don’t want to do something just because he says so. I’m not sure, yet, whether there’s any advantage to Isae being soothed .

“Two seasons ago, Ryzek Noavek didn’t kill a chancellor’s sister,” the Assembly Leader replies, all smooth and level. “Shotet was not in a state of total upheaval. The situation has changed.”

The opaque panels on the left side of the chamber are starting to lighten up again, turning from wall to window.

“Do you know how long they’ve been attacking us?” Isae says. “Since before I was born. Over twenty seasons.”

“I am aware of the history of conflict between Thuvhe and Shotet.”

“So what was your thought process, then?” Isae says. “That we’re just a bunch of thickheaded iceflower farmers, so who cares if we get attacked, as long as the product is safe?” She laughs, harshly. “The town of Hessa is decimated by guerilla warfare, and you call it a civil dispute. My face gets carved up and my parents get killed, and no one budges an inch except to send condolences. One of my oracles dies, and another is kidnapped, and it’s my job to handle it. So why are you all hopping with excitement to help me now? What has everyone scared?”

His eye twitches a little.

“You must understand that to the rest of the galaxy, the Shotet were little more than an annoyance until the Noaveks came into power,” he says. “When you came to us two seasons ago, describing vicious warriors, we thought of the sad wrecks who once came begging at another planet’s doorstep, every season, to dig through our trash.”

“They’ve been looting hospitals and attacking fueling outposts for longer than two seasons, on their sojourns,” she replies. “This escaped the attention of every single planet’s leadership until now?”

“Not precisely,” the Assembly Leader says. “But we received information from a credible source that Lazmet Noavek is still alive, and will soon move to reclaim his place at Shotet’s helm. You have not been alive long enough to truly grasp this, but Ryzek was remarkably civil compared to his father. He inherited his mother’s desire for diplomacy, if not her ease with it. It was under Lazmet that Shotet became fearsome. It was still under his guidance—from beyond the grave, apparently—that Ryzek pursued oracles and, indeed, your sister, at all.”

“So you’re all afraid of him. This one man.” Ast frowns. “What can he do, shoot fire out of his ass?”

“Lazmet controls people—quite literally—using his currentgift,” the Assembly Leader says. “His abilities, combined with the new strength of the Shotet fighting force, are not to be underestimated. We must treat the Shotet as an infestation, a blight on land that could otherwise be used for iceflower farming—for something useful and valuable.”

His eyes glitter. I may not have grown up fancy, but I know how to speak Subtext. He wants the Shotet gone. At one point they were a husk of a people, clanking around the galaxy in their big, outdated ship, starved and sick and sagging. He wants that back. He wants more iceflowers, more valuable Thuvhesit land. More for him, and nothing for them, and he wants to use Isae to get it.

Mom used to tell me that all the galaxy once mocked the Shotet. “Dirty scavengers,” they called them, and “fleshworms.” They flew in circles around the solar system, chasing their own tails. Half the time they didn’t even sound like they were saying words. I knew all this. I’d heard it, even said some of it myself.

But the Assembly Leader isn’t just mocking the Shotet now.

“Then tell me,” Isae says, “what disciplinary action the Assembly has planned for the Pithar, given that the Pithar leadership suggested it might be amenable to a trade agreement with Shotet not long ago?”