Veronica Roth: Carve the Mark

“ My lady ,” he said, mocking. “I thought, since neither of us wants to maintain constant physical contact, you might try this. It’s the last of my stores.”

I straightened. When the pain was at its worst, I was just a collection of body parts, ankle and knee and elbow and spine, each working to pull me up straight. I pushed my tangled hair over one shoulder, suddenly aware of how strange I must look, still in my nightgown at noonday, a sleeve of armor around my left forearm.

“A painkiller?” I asked. “I’ve tried those. They either don’t work or they’re worse than the pain.”

“You’ve tried painkillers made from hushflower? In a country that doesn’t like to use it?” he asked me, eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” I replied, terse. “Othyrian medicines, the best available.”

“Othyrian medicines.” He clicked his tongue. “They may be the best for most people, but your problem isn’t what ‘most people’ need help with.”

“Pain is pain is pain.”

Still, he tapped my arm with the vial. “Try it. It may not get rid of your pain entirely, but it will take the edge off and it won’t have as many side effects.”

I narrowed one eye at him, then called for the guard standing in the hallway. She came at my urging, bobbing her head to me when she arrived in the doorway.

“Taste this, would you?” I said, pointing to the vial.

“You think I’m trying to poison you?” Akos said to me.

“I think it’s one of many possibilities.”

The guard took the vial, her eyes wide with fear.

“It’s fine, it’s not poison,” Akos said to her.

The guard swallowed some of the painkiller, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. We all stood for a few seconds, waiting for something, anything, to happen. When she didn’t collapse, I took the vial from her, currentshadows surging to my fingers so they prickled and stung. She walked away as soon as I did, recoiling from me as she would have an Armored One.

The painkiller smelled malty and rotten. I gulped it down all at once, sure it would taste as disgusting as these potions usually did, but the flavor was floral and spicy. It coated my throat and pooled in my stomach, heavy.

“Should take a few minutes to set in,” he said. “You wear that thing to sleep?” He gestured to the sheath of armor around my arm. It covered me from wrist to elbow, made from the skin of an Armored One. It was scratched in places from the swipes of sharpened blades. I took it off only to bathe. “Were you expecting an attack?”

“No.” I thrust the empty vial back into his hands.

“It covers your kill marks.” He furrowed his brow. “Why would Ryzek’s Scourge want to hide her marks?”

“Don’t call me that.” I felt pressure inside my head, like someone was pushing my temples from both sides. “Never call me that.”

A cold feeling was spreading through my body, out from my center, like my blood was turning to ice. At first I thought it was just anger, but it was too physical for that—too … painless. When I looked at my arms, the shadow-stains were still there, under my skin, but they were languid.

“The painkiller worked, didn’t it,” he said.

The pain was still there, aching and burning wherever the currentshadows traveled, but it was easier to ignore. And though I was starting to feel a little drowsy, too, I didn’t mind it. Maybe I would finally get a good night’s sleep.

“Somewhat,” I admitted.

“Good,” he said. “Because I have a deal to offer you, and it relies on the painkiller being useful to you.”

“A deal?” I said. “You think you’re in a position to make deals with me?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said. “As much as you insist you don’t need my help with your pain, you want it, I know you do. And you can either try to batter me into submission to get it, or you can treat me like a person, listen to what I have to say, and maybe get my help easily. Your choice, of course, my lady. ”

It was easier to think when his eyes weren’t bearing down on mine, so I stared at the lines of light coming through the window coverings, showing the city in strips. Beyond the fence that kept Noavek manor separate, people would be out walking the streets, enjoying the warmth, dust floating all around them because the earthen streets were dry.

I had begun my acquaintance with Akos in a position of weakness—literally, huddled on the floor at his feet. And I had tried to force my way back to a place of strength, but it wasn’t working; I couldn’t erase what was so obvious to anyone who looked at me: I was covered in currentshadows, and the longer I suffered because of them, the more difficult it was for me to live a life that was worth anything to me. Maybe this was my best option.

“I’ll listen,” I said.

“Okay.” He brought a hand to his head, touching his hair. It was brown, and clearly thick, judging by how his fingers knotted in it. “Last night, that … maneuver you did. You know how to fight.”

“That,” I said, “is an understatement.”

“Would you teach me, if I asked you?”

“Why? So you can keep insulting me? So you can try—and fail—to kill my brother?”

“You just assume I want to kill him?”

“Don’t you?”

He paused. “I want to get my brother home.” He spoke each word with care. “And in order to do that, in order to survive here, I have to be able to fight.”

I didn’t know what it was to love a brother that much, not anymore. And from what I had seen of Eijeh—a flimsy wreck of a person—he didn’t seem worthy of the effort. But Akos, with his soldier’s posture and his still hands, seemed certain.

“You don’t know how to fight already?” I said. “Why did Ryzek send you to my cousin Vakrez for two seasons, if not to teach you competency?”

“I’m competent. I want to be good .”

I crossed my arms. “You haven’t gotten to the part of this deal that benefits me.”

“In exchange for your instruction, I could teach you to make that painkiller you just drank,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to rely on me. Or anyone else.”

It was like he knew me, knew the one thing he could say that would tempt me the most. It wasn’t relief from pain that I wanted above all, but self-reliance. And he was offering it to me in a glass vial, in a hushflower potion.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

Soon after that I led him down the hall, to a small room at the end with a locked door. This wing of Noavek manor wasn’t updated; the locks still took keys instead of opening at a touch or the prick of a finger, like the gene locks that opened the rooms where Ryzek spent most of his time. I fished the key out of my pocket—I had put on real clothes, loose pants and a sweater.

The room held a long countertop with shelves above and below it, packed with vials, beakers, knives, spoons, and cutting boards, and a long line of white jars marked with the Shotet symbols for iceflowers—we kept a small store of them, even hushflower, though Thuvhe had not exported any goods to Shotet in over twenty seasons, so we had to import it illegally using a third party—as well as other ingredients scavenged from across the galaxy. Pots, all a shade of warm orange-red metal, hung from a rack above the burners on the right, the largest bigger than my head and the smallest, the size of my hand.

Akos took one of the larger pots down and set it on a burner.

“Why did you learn to fight, if you could hurt with a touch?” he said. He filled a beaker with water from the spout in the wall, and dumped it in the pot. Then he lit the burner beneath it and took out a cutting board and a knife.

“It’s part of every Shotet education. We begin as children.” I hesitated for a moment before adding, “But I continued because I enjoyed it.”