here as a child, to teach me how the scavenge worked. These Examiners would spend days observing the flow of the current.
“The current’s light and color is always strongest over our planet,” I said to Akos in a low voice. “Wrapped three times around it, Shotet legend says—which is why our Shotet ancestors chose to settle here. But its intensity fluctuates around the other planets, anointing one after another, with no discernible pattern. Every season we follow its leading, then we land, and scavenge.”
“Why?” Akos murmured back.
We cull each planet’s wisdom and take it for our own, Otega had said, crouched down beside me at one of our lessons. And when we do that, we show them what about them is worthy of their appreciation. We reveal them to themselves.
As if in response to the memory, the currentshadows moved faster beneath my skin, surging and receding, the pain following wherever they went.
“Renewal,” I said. “The scavenge is about renewal.” I didn’t know how else to explain. I had never had to before. “We find things that other planets have discarded, and we give them a new life. It’s … what we believe in.”
“Seeing activity around P1104,” the first Examiner said, hunching even lower over one of the hunks of rock near the edge of the galaxy. His body looked almost like a dead insect, curled into a husk. He touched a section of the current where the color—green now, with hints of yellow—swirled darker.
“Like a wave about to hit shore,” the sharp-edged woman purred. “It may build or fizzle, depending. Mark it for observation. But right now my guess for the best scavenge planet is still Ogra.”
The scavenge is a kindness, Otega had whispered in my child-ear. To them as well as to us. The scavenge is one of the current’s purposes for us.
“Much good your guessing will do,” the first overseer said. “Didn’t you say His Highness specifically requested information about current activity over Pitha? Barely a wisp there, but I doubt that matters to him.”
“His Highness has his own reasons for requesting information, and they are not ours to question,” the woman said, glancing at me.
Pitha. There were rumors about that place. That buried deep under the water planet’s oceans, where the currents were not as strong, were advanced weapons, unlike anything we had seen. And with Ryzek determined to claim not just Shotet’s nationhood, but control over the entire planet, weapons would surely be useful.
Pain was building behind my eyes. That was how it started, when my currentgift was about to hit me harder than usual. And it had been hitting me harder than usual whenever I thought about Ryzek waging war in earnest, as I stood passive at his side.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
