Chapter 18
Once we’re on board, Illiviamona orders the others to wait in the command center while she ushers me, with Lament in my arms, into The Bargainer’s medical room.
The chamber is shaped like an egg and features a thousand built-in inserts, each of which contains a different medical instrument.
At Illiviamona’s signal, I lay Lament on the single patient table, then try to find a corner in which to wait.
Unfortunately, egg-shaped rooms don’t have corners, so I’m left to sort of shuffle around as Illiviamona glides from one side of the table to the other, laying her hands on Lament’s neck, his shoulder.
I can see where her touch turns him numb—or rather, I see Lament relax in the absence of pain.
His fingers loosen, his forehead releases its lines. He lets out a slow breath.
“The ape’s bite hit your subclavian artery,” Illiviamona informs Lament, reaching up to press one of the wall’s hidden inserts.
The compartment springs open to reveal a vial of dark liquid.
“This is amoramim.” She hands the tube to Lament.
Then, in gloomy tones: “It will prevent you from bleeding to death.”
Lament nods faintly, grimaces, and downs the serum. As soon as the liquid touches his tongue, his muscles go lax. The vial drops from his fingers. I step forward in alarm as he looks up at me, his eyes bewildered and a little scared. “Keller?”
I round on Illiviamona. “What’s happening? What did you do to him?”
“The amoramim contains a sedative,” Illiviamona explains in that bland, watery way of hers. “I need to mend Mr. Bringer’s wounds. The process will be painful, but the sedative will put him to sleep.”
“Were you going to tell him any of that?”
Illiviamona thinks about this for longer than seems necessary. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
Her freckles start to glow, her giant eyes faintly confused. “Mr. Bringer is not the one performing the operation. Why must he be told?”
“Because it’s his own fucking—” I cut myself off.
Illiviamona is still looking at me with mild confusion, which is the same moment I realize it’s probably pointless to argue the merits of good bedside manner with a Lorian who routinely hopes for the worst. “Never mind.” I touch my hand to my forehead.
It’s streaked with Lament’s blood. So, I realize, is the rest of me. “Please, just—help him.”
I come to kneel at the head of the table while Illiviamona procures a pair of scissors and begins cutting away Lament’s shirt.
There are two wounds: the bite up by his collarbone and the claw marks down his arm.
Some of the blood has dried around the marks, gluing the fabric to his flesh.
As Illiviamona pulls, the cuts crack and begin to bleed anew.
“You’re going to get sleepy,” I tell Lament, taking his hand again. I don’t know if he can feel that, either, because the sedative seems to be taking hold. His eyes are hazy. “Illiviamona gave you a narcotic so she can close your wound. It’ll all be over soon, okay? Just try to relax.”
Lament looks at me. His expression is unguarded. He nods once, closes his eyes, and a moment later, he’s out cold.
With a final deft stroke, Illiviamona gets Lament’s shirt all the way off. I brace myself for the gore beneath, but it’s not the ape’s bite that draws my eye.
It’s the scars.
Lament’s arms and chest are a pattern of red and white, the skin a mess of angry red burns, a landscape of freshly healed wounds. I must make some sort of noise, because Illiviamona’s head swings up. Her eyes narrow. “Be calm.”
I can’t be calm. I think of how Lament is always fully dressed.
How he wears long sleeves even when working, his habit of tugging his cuffs over his wrists.
The realization is like a key sliding into a lock, the click of the bolts coming undone.
I understand, even though I don’t think I can ever understand. These scars, the burns …
The mist did something to Bast, says the memory of Vera’s voice, and Lament radioed for help. Then the signal went dark, and the next thing we knew, Bast was dead and Lament had crashed on some no-man’s-planet way off course …
There’s a feeling rising inside me, dark and razor-sharp.
I thought Lament had come away from that crash unscathed.
That Moon Dancer, being made of zurillium, acted like a cocoon to protect him.
But Lament wasn’t protected. He was wounded in ways I’d never fathomed, and the truth of it—this visual map of that day—is such a shock to my system, for a moment I forget how to breathe.
He didn’t want me to see this. He’s always been so careful, not to let me see.
I should leave. Respect his privacy.
But I can’t.
Illiviamona is bustling around, preparing materials to clean and stitch the ape wounds.
I grasp Lament’s hands in both of mine. Bring our joined fingers to my mouth.
“It’s going to be okay,” I murmur as Illiviamona starts in on the gash.
Lament is sedated—he can’t hear me—but I speak the words anyway.
“Lament, you just—I can’t even—I know it’s not okay now.
It’s not okay now. No one should have to go through what you’ve been through, and I get that saying that doesn’t change anything, but a person can only handle so much.
Everyone has a breaking point, you know?
And what if—” I worry my lip between my teeth, squeeze his hand tighter.
“What if this is yours? I don’t want it to be.
I don’t want you to reach a place where you can’t—” I cut off again, and I know I’m rambling, but Lament’s face is relaxed and Illiviamona doesn’t seem to be paying attention, so I keep going.
“I see the things you do to protect yourself. And I know you feel like you have to be strong, that you have to carry this all on your own, but you don’t.
Because you’re not alone. The Sixers are here for you, and so am I.
Whatever you need to get through this, however long it takes. I’m here, and you’re going to be okay.”
It takes Illiviamona less than twenty minutes to close the puncture wounds on Lament’s shoulder and dress the scrapes on his back, using a mix of methods that are more or less beyond my comprehension.
(There are herbs involved, and a bowl that hums when she runs her finger along its interior, which appears to coax Lament’s flesh to reknit.) If I had a clearer head, I’d probably marvel at Illiviamona’s ability, wonder if there wasn’t some magic involved, but I don’t have a clear head, so I don’t really care how she does it.
All my focus is on Lament: his face, his shallow breathing.
The golden sweep of his eyelashes. His white-blond hair matted with blood.
When she’s finished, Illiviamona packs everything away and says, “Now he must rest.”
I don’t trust my voice, so I just give a nod.
“And you,” she continues. “You must return to the others.”
I clear my throat. “I’m fine.”
“I know. I would sense if you were injured.”
“I mean, I don’t want to leave him.”
“We all must do things we do not want.”
I’ve been holding it together pretty okay until this point, but for some reason, that makes my throat clench. “Can’t I stay?”
“No.”
“What if he wakes up?”
“Of course he will wake up.”
“What if he wakes up and I’m not here?”
“Why must you be here?”
“Someone should be here.”
“Yes,” she replies blankly. “Me.”
Talking to Illiviamona is kind of like looking through a kaleidoscope. You start at one place and end up at another without really knowing how you got there. I accept the futility of this argument, but I can’t just leave, so I say, “Do you have pen and paper?”
Illiviamona points me toward the supplies.
She starts to wash up while I stare at the page and try to think of what to write.
I’m no poet. I don’t have much practice putting my thoughts into words.
But maybe that doesn’t matter. It’s important to me that Lament knows I was here, that I’ll come back for him the moment he needs me.
If I can get that down, it’ll be enough.
Hey, Lament.
I spend a few minutes writing the note, then fold and tuck it into the pocket of his pants.
After, I take a minute to wash the worst of the grime off my hands and arms, change into a clean shirt (Illiviamona lends me one of hers, which is about my size), and find my way back to The Bargainer’s command center.
The other Sixers are there, sitting in despondent silence.
When I enter, seven pairs of eyes look my way.
Vera stands from her chair. “How is he?”
I think I mean to say something like, He’s sleeping or Illiviamona closed the wound, but what comes out is, “The scars.”
Vera pulls in her lips. “You saw?”
“Yeah.” I swallow. “I didn’t know.”
“He doesn’t … he doesn’t really like to talk about it.”
“I’m not sure he wanted me seeing. I feel like I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s good you did,” she’s quick to interject. “The two of you … I mean, I think it’s good.”
I just stand there. I feel more rattled by Lament’s scars than by the fresh ape wound.
My understanding of who Lament was—who he is—is changing by degrees.
No wonder he doesn’t want to fly with anyone.
No wonder he’s so determined to uncover the source of the mist. How can he possibly move on from Bast’s death when his body bears that kind of memory?
Tears—unwanted, possibly unwarranted—threaten my vision.
“Oh, Keller.” Vera is there in an instant, wrapping me in her arms.
I hug her back, feeling stupid and grateful. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“Because you care.”
I do. I care a fucking lot, and honestly, what am I supposed to do with that?
“Come on.” Vera takes my hand and pulls me toward the couch, sitting me next to her. “You’ve really had a time of it since you got here, haven’t you?”
“We were going to haze you,” Avi admits from her beanbag, “but now we feel too bad.”
I give a weak laugh and wipe my eyes. “Thanks, I guess?”
“I told the others what we found,” Vera prompts. “About the unidentified fumes around Mount Kilmon and the blue-eyed apes. But … we don’t have to talk about any of that yet, if you’re not ready. We can sit and wait for—”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’ve done enough sitting and waiting. I want to hear what everyone thinks.”
She blows out a breath and looks at the others. They give her encouraging nods. “Well,” Vera starts, tucking away a loose strand of hair, “I’m going to go out on a limb and say these two findings—the apes with blue eyes and the fumes around the volcano—are not a coincidence.”
“Which means we’ve identified our unidentified white space mist,” the Youvu Hums chime. “It’s actually a poisonous gas called voroxide, and it’s leaking out of Mount Kilmon.”
Lament was right, once again, Jester adds, his mouth somber. The voroxide caused Moon Dancer to crash. It’s what killed Bast.
“And,” Avi says, “when Kilmon erupts, it will kill everyone on this planet, too.”
A series of images flash in my vision: bloody raptor bodies, Moon Dancer’s mangled frame, Lament’s scars, Master Ira’s face.
They swirl together, making my insides harden.
“The voroxide has probably already affected those around Mount Kilmon,” I say.
“There are Masters of the Order on the volcano, living alongside initiates who’ve spent the last nine years preparing for this year’s eruption.
If a dangerous gas is leaking from the mountain, they’ll be the first ones to inhale it. ”
“Wait.” Vera twists to face me. “You’re saying people live on the volcano?”
“Order initiates, yeah.”
“But how do you know that?”
And then my brain fails me, because I say, “I used to live in the village beneath it.”
Silence.
“Keller.” Vera’s mouth hangs open. “What?”
But your transcripts, Jester says. I read them myself. They say you’re from Planet Monasai.
“Oh.” I’m suddenly hot all over, and why does my mouth taste like aftershave? “Um, yeah. Technically, I was born there. I moved to Venthros when I was nine.”
“Here?” Vera looks like she’s been slapped in the face. “You mean, we’re on your home planet? Like, right now?”
“Um … yes?”
“The volcano, the voroxide—we’ve been talking about your people this whole time? Your family?” Vera looks stricken. “Your friends? Neighbors?” With each word, my face burns harder. “Keller, I don’t—why didn’t you say so?”
Because I didn’t want to have this conversation, I think miserably.
I don’t have a family here. Anywhere. I’m alone, and I have been for a long time.
Only, admitting that feels so positively pathetic, and I’ve already had my heart flayed open so many times since joining the Sixth, and how do I even begin to explain my reasons without revealing even more of my own shameful past?
“I left on bad terms,” I say, picking at a loose thread on the couch. “I haven’t been back to this planet since I joined the Academy.”
“But—”
“Let it rest, Vera,” Toph interrupts. “It’s Keller’s choice whether he wants to share his history or not.”
“Of course.” Vera’s cheeks go slightly pink. “Of course, I don’t mean to push. But Keller, if you have family here—”
“I don’t,” I say firmly. I can feel my lifestone where it sits against my sternum.
I think about how I saw my mother in Soto, how she met my eye and turned away.
The messages I’ve left Master Ira, a thousand voicemails, all unanswered.
“I don’t,” I say again, more quietly this time. “My family is gone.”