FOUR MONTHS AGO
The training camp was a field of beige tents set up beside training yards and shooting ranges: Kochin’s home for the next six weeks. War had come quickly to a city-state without a substantial military; boot camp packed in the hundreds of medics-in-training like cigarettes waiting for a light, four recruits to a tent. Even after he’d unpacked his sparse trunk, he made no effort to fraternize with his tentmates. As medics, they’d be split off between squadrons, some stationed in the Gaikhen Mountains and some deployed to Yarong.
Nhika had been wrong about one thing: He would not be a scholar on the battlefield. The training made sure of that, six hours a day in basic military training and ten hours learning tactical medicine—how to splint a fracture, clot a gunshot wound, tourniquet a limb.
The first week was the hardest: physical conditioning that burned through his body, rope courses that tested his agility, drills performed in the open heat during the height of summer. His tentmates called it sadism—Kochin called it a test of resolve, and any time he felt his heart might burst, he remembered who he owed the organ to. Every grain of muscle was a debt unpaid; each breath drawn was a breath stolen.
Once he survived the conditioning, he was given his first weapon: a semiautomatic pistol.
Kochin had used one of these before—nearly the same exact make. He’d used it to veer Mr. Congmi’s horses over the bend. He’d pointed it at a girl in his shophouse.
Sometimes, Kochin wondered what might’ve happened if he had pulled the trigger. A bullet through the roof, just to scare her off. Or, if he’d wanted to truly keep her away, maybe a bullet where it didn’t matter—through the foot, the hand—because he knew she could heal it. Then she could hate him, and Dep Trin might’ve even come through that door to arrest him, but at least she’d be alive.
Instead, here Kochin was, shooting bottles from a dozen yards away and imagining a mirror at the end of the range—because his own sternum was the only suitable target for a bullet. Maybe the recruits to his left and right were imagining Daltan soldiers, but he found that a little abstract. Daltanny had destroyed his mother’s culture, her people, his heritage—but the hole in his heart right now was not their doing. There was only one person responsible for Nhika’s death, so Kochin was shooting bottles and trying to find himself in the shattered glass.
In the few moments he had to himself—the half-hour meals, the minutes before sleep overtook him—his thoughts were on Nhika. What she was back then. How she was now. The dwindling hourglass, each grain of sand a day he had left until she became unsalvageable like Santo’s son. Kochin wasn’t quite sure where the divide was—his mission and Santo’s futile goal. He only knew he was running out of time before she was just another stripe of bone on her ring.
“Tomorrow, it’ll have been two months.”
“What?” Kochin turned on his bunk to find Nhika sitting at his feet.
“Since you left Chengton. You never did tell your family you enlisted, did you?”
“I’ll be back before they realize I’m gone.”
“Or they’ll receive your bloodied ID tags atop a folded Theuman flag.” She shrugged, as though the prospect of his death was not such a terrible thing.
But to Kochin, there was no option in which he didn’t make it home—because Vinsen was waiting for him with Nhika’s casket, and he had an outstanding debt to a girl who’d lent him her heart. “What, no faith in me?”
“A realistic amount of faith in you, I’d say.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“I thought that once, too.”
Kochin raked a hand through his hair. “Fine, I’ll write a letter if it would please you.”
Her smile was smug. “Yes, it would.”
And when he turned around again, trying to catch some sleep, she was gone.
Boot camp came and went with the aftertaste of gunpowder and heatstroke. At the end of it, they were lined up in rows and marched by their training officer, who pinned a new badge to their uniform lapel and gave them their first rank: private.
Then came the moment that determined it all: their deployment. It didn’t hit him until the list came out how definitive this was—because if he wasn’t sent to Yarong, he would just burn months of time somewhere far from Nhika. He’d have to break his own bones for a medical exemption, go home, find some other way to Yarong. He would have to start over from the beginning.
Kochin hadn’t realized it, but his hands were shaking.
Their training officer began. “Under order of the Commission, Theumas will commit two hundred units to the Gaikhen Mountains and a hundred fifty units to Yarong, all of which will require medics. We will begin with those of you deployed to the Gaikhen Mountains, which is as follows: Adau Rin; Ahao Sanna…”
A breath nocked itself in his throat as the officer went down the list of names. He was doing the math in his head, that fifteen percent greater likelihood of being deployed to the Gaikhen Mountains, estimating the number of privates in this camp and calculating their division—until he realized the list was merely alphabetical, the divide arbitrary.
And his name, Ven Kochin, was nearer to the end.
His breath released, shoulders fell. That shaking in his muscles still remained, but it was more anticipation than anxiety—waiting for the officer to say his name, send him to Yarong, make it real. He’d spent these last couple months working for nothing else.
“And now, to those deployed to the island,” the officer went on, and Kochin’s name still hadn’t been called. “Liy Munna, Long Yin Laory…”
Each name, a step closer. Each name, a bullet loaded into the chamber. Each name, the pull of the trigger. Kochin was just waiting for a shot to land.
And then: “… Van Nhoa, Vang Ro Miya, and Vei Luuka. If your name hasn’t been called, you’re on reserve. Transports will be arriving tomorrow to take you to your respective stations. Dismissed, and congratulations.”
Kochin’s chest was pounding. He waited for something more—because that couldn’t have been it. His name hadn’t been called. He was meant to go to Yarong. This couldn’t be it.
Around him, the privates left for their tents and luggage. Kochin stayed rooted, trying to make sense of how he could be so close yet so, so far.
Finally, his feet found the volition to move, and he jogged up to the training officer. “Sir, a moment?”
The officer’s eyes flicked to his name tag. “Private Ven.”
“You didn’t call my name.”
The officer checked his list. “That’s right—you’re first at the top of the reserve list. Lucked out—go home, enjoy the extra time, and wait until we call you.”
But Kochin couldn’t wait. If he wasn’t in the first wave of deployment, there wasn’t any guarantee he’d be deployed to Yarong. The island might’ve even changed hands by then. “What about Yarong? Can’t they use another medic?”
“The units are filled. Don’t worry; if Theumas needs you, we’ll call you.” The officer turned, beckoned away by his superior, and Kochin was left standing alone in the yard, wondering if this was an obstacle, or if it was providence.
He hadn’t been drafted; he’d enlisted.
He hadn’t been deployed; he could return home.
Yet … there was something on that island, something the Mother was trying to keep from him. If She were kind, he might’ve assumed it was his own demise She kept him from. But the Mother had never been kind to anyone who defiled Her art.
Kochin glanced back over the tents. Tomorrow morning, everyone would be off to their stations. Tomorrow morning, Kochin would be sent home, unless …
His mind whirred like an automaton. A hundred fifty medics going to Yarong. His name at the top of the list. Just one private who needed to be cut. A hundred disqualifying medical conditions.
And … and a hundred ways a bloodcarver could cause them.
Kochin had to make a decision by tonight. Come morning it would be too late, and he’d be shipped home while another went to Yarong in his place. He’d spent the past couple hours sleepless on his bunk, considering the injury until he’d finally narrowed it down to one: rhabdomyolysis. Muscle cells, torn apart after a period of overexertion like boot camp. The onset was delayed, so no one would wonder how it sprang up overnight. It would require hospitalization, which opened a spot for him on Yarong.
And … with prompt enough treatment, its symptoms were largely reversible. Kochin had seen it done at the Theumas Medical Center before. Hell, it might’ve even been a service, a few weeks of pain in exchange for exemption from the war and the terrors that awaited on the other side of the water. It was a perfect crime.
But … he’d have to use heartsoothing. These hands had had no qualms injuring before, but it had never been with his gift. Kochin told himself there was no difference, whether it was a gun he used or his influence. For some reason, his heart wouldn’t believe it.
Yet, it had been his heart that misguided him before. The moment Nhika had shown up at the funeral, the moment Santo had given her that business card, Kochin had known he’d needed to push her out. It was his heart that’d convinced him to let her in—his heart that had stuttered when she was near, his heart that had searched for her in every crowded room, his heart that dared to imagine her in his future.
It had been his heart that killed her.
Kochin would not let his heart misguide him again. His rationale told him plainly: It had to be tonight. In the morning, he’d be sent home. There was no guarantee Theuman soldiers would be deployed to Yarong again.
And it would be so easy. Easier than any of his previous crimes, easier than framing Santo, easier than coming home to Nhika’s casket and admitting he’d failed.
As if summoned by his mere thought of her, Nhika appeared at his bedside. “It’s a bit extreme, don’t you think, rhabdomyo-whatever-you-called-it?”
He didn’t respond for fear of waking up his tent, but who was she to judge? He’d seen the Butcher with a bruise in the shape of her handprint, and she’d nearly stopped Kochin’s heart herself—how was this any different?
“Well, for one, that Butcher had plans to sell me. And I recall there being a gun involved in our little tussle,” Nhika countered. “Your poor victim’s only crime would be sharing a tent with a bloodcarver.”
At that, Kochin sucked in a breath. Nhika had never called him that—would never have called him that. It was her faith in his heartsoothing that had been so intoxicating; under that lovesick stupor, he’d felt so invincible. That’s how he knew this … this ghost wasn’t really her. It was only his doubt given voice, and he’d come way too far to let doubt stop him now.
Nhika watched him, and her expression dropped like she’d noticed the shift in his intent. “Mother, you’re going to do it, aren’t you?”
Kochin couldn’t meet her gaze. He pulled off her bone ring, hid it beneath his pillow—and she was snuffed. Even if she wasn’t real, he hated the thought of her realizing she’d died for a bloodcarver rather than a heartsooth.
But it had to be done. She could hate him for it when she awoke—he was already accustomed to her enmity. It was her absence he couldn’t stand.
And she was right. He was a bloodcarver.
Even though he’d burned that fox mask months ago, he could feel its familiar grooves over his skin as he lifted himself from bed. The world darkened as though he were seeing it out of two small eyes, and his breath echoed in his ears.
Without realizing when he’d moved, Kochin was standing over his tentmate, hand outstretched. Private Rho was curled up in slumber, looking almost like a child—innocence before the storm, dark hair falling over his eyes. He was on the younger side, and Kochin could almost convince himself this was a mercy, giving the soldier back his childhood. Almost.
When he pressed his fingers against Private Rho’s skin, the body came into color like a sunrise.
This was nothing new to Kochin, soothing a body without permission. He’d seen patients during surgery, the drug-thick sleep that nothing could penetrate, not even his heavy-handed influence. He’d seen them after, too, when it really mattered—making sure Santo’s transplant organs stuck. As he soothed the soldier in sleep, he almost expected to feel the line of an incision curve around his abdomen, the cold taste of scalpel against muscle. But, right now, with no Santo, no surgery, no hospital around him, there was no excuse to soothe. The act felt like violence.
His mission returned to him: rhabdomyolysis. His influence moved toward the leg, and he saw it plainly past the soldier’s blanket. It walked fingers through the layers of the skin, the fat, the fascia … and found itself at the muscle.
As though he’d sunk his fingers into the tissue itself, he felt a pull against his nail beds—like if he just yanked his hand, something in the leg might tear apart. But he hated the thought of such destruction—like tearing flowers off their stems when someone had taken so long to grow them. No, if he were to do this, he’d pluck those petals off one at a time, feel their softness between his fingers, repentance for an act he was in the middle of committing.
“If you do this, there’s no going back,” Nhika said, but she was wrong.
He’d passed that point already, months ago: standing before her grave, promising a feat of necromancy. So, no matter how much the Mother asked of him, he couldn’t back out now.
Kochin rolled the muscle between his hands like a stalk of rice, the beds of his fingers walking down the grain. There was a moment of reverence, as well as a moment of regret, before his influence sank its teeth.
Cells swelled and burst. He started with just a few—their destruction would bring more. Death spread through the soldier’s leg: acid chewing muscle, a spark bringing fire, a rot that wouldn’t come until the next morning.
After years spent using his heartsoothing to heal, it struck him how easy it was to destroy.
Kochin staggered back, his exhale tasting like smoke. He wasn’t sure what was a greater violation: the fact that he’d destroyed the soldier’s leg or that he’d used the soldier’s own energy to do it. Something hammered in his chest, his brain—he was so sure it was his conscience, revolting against his own act of violence. He tried stifling it, drawing back under his sheets and letting the darkness take him, but it persisted.
Are you happy now? No, not yet.
No going back. I know.
And then Nhika’s voice: I can’t believe I died for a bloodcarver.
A bloodcarver.
A bloodcarver.
A bloodcarver.
When Kochin awoke, Private Rho was gone. He jolted up in bed, remembering the events of last night—in the clarity of the morning, he almost hoped that was a nightmare, because he couldn’t have … he didn’t … how could he …
The door flap lifted, and another tentmate entered. Kochin straightened. “Did you see where Private Rho went?” he asked, tilting his head in the direction of his victim’s empty cot.
The tentmate’s eyes went wide. “He went to the infirmary this morning—overworked himself. Heard he might get shipped back home.”
Kochin swallowed, stared at his hands. He still couldn’t tell if this was a victory or a defeat. Everything had gone to plan, yet he felt like he’d just branded himself with a scar only he could see. And every time he looked at his palms, it would be there, that charred skin and bubbling blister, a word written so plainly. To everyone else, he was just Theuman. Private Ven. Physician’s aide. Yet he couldn’t soothe away those deeper scars.
Murderer. Liar. Bloodcarver.
Kochin dragged himself out of bed and donned his uniform. When he reached the infirmary, a portable wooden building, he found his victim already being carried out in a stretcher. The pain looked immense—Private Rho languished on the stretcher, clutching his leg and biting the lapel of his uniform.
For a moment, Kochin wondered if catching Private Rho right now was providence, a second chance. Maybe there was going back, and if he healed the soldier right now he might have it all: He’d take Private Rho’s place to Yarong, but the boy would return home uninjured. Maybe he could pretend this had been his plan all along, not to disable anyone but simply to put on a show. Maybe the Mother was kind.
“Private Ven,” snapped a voice behind him.
Kochin turned, then saluted when he realized it was his commanding officer who addressed him. “Sir.”
“Private Rho’s been discharged on account of injury. I know I said you lucked out, but I fear I spoke too soon. You’ll have to take his place.”
“What station?” Kochin asked, even though he already knew. He just needed to hear someone say it to make it real.
“Yarong. Pack your things—the shuttle comes for you soon.”
Kochin bowed his understanding, and his officer dismissed him. His victim returned to the forefront of his attention, but when he turned, Private Rho was gone.
Perhaps he’d been naive. Repentance had never been his wont. Running, hiding, hurting people—that was always his habit. After he’d killed Mr. Congmi, he hadn’t repented; he’d only tightened the fox mask. He’d run, hidden, pushed Nhika away.
There was only one crime that he had to repent for, and that was killing a heartsooth.
Kochin returned to his tent and packed. The shuttle came for all deployed soldiers later that morning, giving him no time to dwell on boot camp—for which he was glad, because he feared he might only have regrets if he was given time to think.
Kochin and all the other medics deployed to Yarong were taken to a cantonment near the coast, where they awaited the congregation of the troops. He was given a trauma bag, a uniform to distinguish him as a medic, and two ID tags dangling on a ball chain.
It didn’t strike him until he saw his name stamped in nickel that there was some chance he might die. That’s what the tags meant, after all, one to take home and the other to leave on his dead body, a small bid for remembrance in a war zone that would sooner forget him. But if he didn’t make it home, there would be no one to remember Suonyasan Nhika as she truly was.
Perhaps it was he who would not be remembered, and all this world would know him for was a dead girl and a dog tag.
On the quiet night before deployment to Yarong, camped in a coastal town in Eastern Theumas, Kochin slipped Nhika’s bone ring onto the chain beside his ID tags. He was afraid of losing it if he kept it on his finger—and it was the one thing she’d entrusted to him. That, and her heartsoothing.
He recalled her warning, how he might return home as an ID tag and a folded Theuman flag. It was then he wrote to his family:
Ba, Ma, Vinsen, Bentri:
I have enlisted in the war as a medic. Don’t worry about me; I won’t forget what I’ve learned from Ma. But, I hope that the fright of war has not yet reached quiet Chengton. Bentri, I wish you best of luck with your studies, but don’t forget to cherish what you have. Ba, Ma, I apologize if this news comes as a shock, but it’s something I must do. And, to Vinsen, please take care of everything and everyone while I’m gone. You’ve always been so good at it. It’s a debt I can never repay.
Kochin paused, considering folding up the note and sending it before he could make any more false assurances. But, before he could stop himself, he added:
I promise I’ll be home soon.
When morning came, Kochin was off to Yarong.