Chapter 101:

Vek didn’t realize the Cursed girl had taken his knife until after he shut the door to his Rajas dorm room and felt the point of it against the back of his neck. He raised both hands, slowly, and said in the castle serf pidgin, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Blood was trickling down his neck and seeping into his collar. The knife’s point dug into his skin. Trying not to flinch, Vek repeated himself. “I’m not going to hurt you, Lainla.”

He hoped that by using her name he could get her to relax. Or relax enough to give him the time to turn and slap the knife out of her hand, anyway. But instead, he felt the girl’s hand push him forward against the wall next to the door. The knife remained steady against his neck.

She said something to him in a language he didn’t understand. It wasn’t like anything he’d heard before. Eenma, Chenmay and Xhom were all dialects of each other but what the Cursed girl was saying sounded like it came from another age.

“Do you speak Xhom?” he asked. His palms were up against the wall. If she shifted, he could overpower her…

But she didn’t shift. She said something again in what Vek assumed was the Cursed language. Then at the end, she added in Xhom, “Xhom only a little.”

Great, Vek thought. If she doesn’t know Xhom, she won’t understand the castle serf pidgin. And she won’t be able to say anything I understand, either! Irritation flooded through him. Briefly he considered shouting for help, but he didn’t want to. He should be able to handle a girl.

“Sukren told me your name,” Vek tried instead, checking his annoyance. “You know Sukren?”

He felt the knife’s pressure release a little. “Sukren?”

“Yes, Sukren. He’s here, in the castle.”

A stream of Cursed followed. Vek had to fight back more frustration. The Cursed girl looked like a dozen Xhota girls he knew. How could she not know how to speak Xhom?

“I’m looking for Mayah,” he said. “Mayah. Do you know where Mayah is?”

He didn’t wait for her grip to slacken this time. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Vek ducked and spun around. The knife’s edge slid up against his shaved head, but he managed to grasp her right arm with his left hand. At the same time, he pinned her left hand, knife and all, under his right armpit.

The girl kicked her heel around Vek’s ankle, throwing him off balance. Vek grunted as the back of his head connected with the wall. Then he gave a yelp. She was trying to free her knife hand by yanking it out, heedless of how the edge cut into his side. Xhom-speaker or not, the murder in her eyes was clear.

Vek didn’t blame her for fighting back. She didn’t know he only wanted to question her, not hurt her. But it was becoming clear that the girl was going to hurt him if he didn’t incapacitate her. Using his left hand, he grabbed her by the throat and began squeezing with all five fingers. She jerked backwards. The momentum yanked him forward. His foot tripped against hers and they both fell sideways onto the floor, her knife hand now trapped under his weight.

Finally Vek had the advantage. He reached across his chest and wrested the knife handle away from the girl, rolling onto his back as he did so. Once he was clear of her, Vek clambered to his feet. He held the knife out, pointing it at her, keeping the door to his back. She responded by scrambling for the hanging chair in the room’s center. With a speed Vek found impressive, she detached one of the chair’s chain-links and held it up in her hand like a whip.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said again. Well, now he did, a little, but only because he was annoyed at how long it had taken him to get the knife back! “I’m looking for Mayah. That’s it. Do you know where Mayah is?”

She studied him without dropping her stance. Her face was dark.

Vek almost lunged for her. But then his old mission instincts kicked in. Yes, he could keep fighting with her, and probably eventually bring her down, but he had to remember that this girl wasn’t like his other marks. What information could you torture out of someone who didn’t even speak your language? It would go faster if he won her over.

Keeping his eyes on her, Vek placed the knife at his feet and kicked it over. Then he put his hands up. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He saw the girl look at the knife. She bent down to pick it up. Hopefully, she wouldn’t attack him with it. Would she? He honestly wasn’t sure. Had he made a mistake in giving it up?

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The girl glanced at him through her glasses. “Where Mayah?” she said to him in Xhom.

Vek nodded.

After a tense, lingering moment, she dropped the golden chain-link to the ground. Vek took a deep breath, then released it. She was still holding onto the knife but was keeping it angled downward. Vek watched as she began using it to carve something into the living-wood floor. For the first time in a long time, he felt something like excitement. He started to cross the length of the room to get a better look, but backed off when she jumped to her feet, knife point out.

“I just want to see,” he said, but it made no difference. She wouldn’t return to her carving until Vek returned to his side of the dorm.

So he waited, itching with impatience, until the girl stood again. This time she backed away until she was by the window. Only then did she address Vek. He didn’t understand what she was saying, but her gestures were clear. He rushed to the carving and knelt by it.

In the floor was a map of the bio-dome. Vek didn’t recognize it as such right away, but once he saw that the circle inside the elliptical shape was the shelterbelt, the image came together for him. He touched a scratched-out stick-figure at a spot outside the bio-dome. “What does this mean?” he asked, looking up from the drawing.

Lainla looked back at him.

“Is this Mayah?” Vek touched the stick-figure again. “Mayah?”

Lainla nodded.

Vek sat back on his heels. This wasn’t new information. Sukren had already told him that the Promised Daughter had left the bio-dome. Although, to be fair, Vek didn’t even know what that meant. He knew the Cursed did it. He’d heard rumors that they hunted outside the bio-dome’s frame. But what that looked like exactly, he didn’t know.

Then the words of the prophecy came back to him. Over the shelterbelt, the Rajas Daughter who is Promised, Must go. Over and to The Lake Tower, Her feet will tread. With the Ring of the Dome, Dripping in her hand.

The Lake Tower, Vek vaguely remembered, was somewhere outside the bio-dome. Did that mean the Promised Daughter had gone to it? But that wasn’t what was supposed to happen. The Free Serfs were supposed to rally together and build a starship. Only after that would the Promised Daughter go to the Lake Tower to unlock the secret to space travel.

Vek found himself feeling angry. Had Sukren told the Promised Daughter who she was? Was that why she had gone off?

Where was she now?

He didn’t realize Lainla was beside him until he felt her hand on his shoulder. It was a gentle touch. Vek ducked his head and closed his eyes. Be angry, be angry, he told himself, do anything but cry, think about Sukren, about how Sukren betrayed you, how he ran off with the Promised Daughter, how she went with him, how they both left you to face by yourself the howling mob…

Normally it worked. Ever since he’d left Lost Technology, at any rate, Vek hadn’t even been tempted to cry. It was harder for some reason, though, with Lainla’s hand on his shoulder. He had to wait longer to make sure he had himself under control before he could lift his face to her.

The knife was still in her hand, but she no longer looked like she wanted to kill him. She started to say something in Cursed, then stopped. She shrugged, a wry smile on her face. Vek had to bow his head again. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had smiled at him. Certainly, it had been before his trial. Everything had been before his trial.

Lainla’s hand was still on his shoulder. When he glanced at her she was still smiling at him with that same wry smile. I’m sorry, it seemed to say. Everything sure is terrible, isn’t it?

Vek closed his eyes. He took in a ragged breath. Rock-god, rock-god, he didn’t want to go down this path, he didn’t want to start thinking again, let alone feeling, but the disappointment of running into his last dead end was too much to bear. Without the Promised Daughter, how could he go back to the Chenta? How could he face them again?

Because it was the Chenta he would be going back to. In the almost four diurnals that had passed since Vek’s trial – barely two weeks – the Chenta ethnonationalists had resoundingly won. Vek’s trial, apparently, had tipped the balance. That, and all the Chenta villagers from Eenta quinters flooding into Lost Technology and Woodheart Castles. Vek had stayed inside the empty mini-lounge while waiting for his mission to start, and even though he’d spent most of that time – just over a diurnal – completely in hiding, even then he’d seen enough to be able to tell that the future was Chenta.

Fury burned through him again. This time it was steeped in shame. Maybe it was because I’m half Eenta that I agreed to be an interrogator. Maybe it’s something in my blood. Maybe I’ve always had violence in me. Maybe maybe maybe –

Next to him, Lainla squeezed his shoulder, then let go. She stood, saying something, something soft and almost sing-songy in her language. For some reason it made Vek think of the other Cursed he had seen inside the greenhouse. He had never seen Xhota, Eenta and Chenta gathered together like that, not even during the Uprising, and certainly not before. And as far as Vek could tell, more than half of them seemed to be of mixed ethnicity.

At that thought, the longing in his heart could no longer continue to be repressed. Blinking rapidly, Vek bent so that he was almost prostrate on the floor. Oh! he cried out silently. Oh, if only there could be a place like that for me!