TWO WEEKS AGO
In the silence of his confinement, Kochin went to Nhika’s casket. Here, she looked undisturbed, peaceful, and … real. The ghost of her never compared; this Nhika was flesh and bone, golden-brown skin kept warm by this machine and eyes still wet beneath their lids, almost as if she’d just been crying.
Commissioner Nem had made it even easier to bring her back. There would be no legal repercussion—a commissioner himself would sponsor his crime. He would not have to worry about the acquisition of an equivalent life when one would be handed to him. As Commissioner Nem had said, Kochin would have infinite tries.
Kochin brushed a strand of Nhika’s hair out of her eyes, his influence grazing across her anatomy. The revulsion from soothing a corpse hardly came. He could almost convince himself that this body was still alive.
Almost.
His hand went to his chest, where her ring and his ID tag dangled at the end of a metal chain. There, on the beach, he’d made his decision. It wavered now, seeing her here, knowing how easy it would be. Something about her body drew at his influence, luring him in like a plea, but his fingers around her ring were the only reminder he needed.
Nhika would not gain life through Daltan death. Her revival would not be the product of a commissioner’s trial, and Kochin would not make this decision out of desperation.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before Commissioner Nem returned, but it couldn’t have been a full day.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I can see where you’re coming from,” Commissioner Nem announced before he even settled on the platform. “It’s very noble, actually, your refusal to take a life. Enlisting as a medic, too—you’re not even a soldier.”
Kochin kept quiet, fearing Commissioner Nem’s next scheme. Little did he know, it wasn’t about taking a life—Kochin had done that before with Mr. Congmi. It was about killing with his gift when Nhika had died so that he would never have to profane his heartsoothing again. He didn’t have the words to explain that to the commissioner in a way he’d accept.
“I understand the hesitation,” Commissioner Nem continued, but he didn’t. “So, I’m going to try to make it as easy for you as possible.” He waved to someone beyond the room.
A moment later, the door behind Kochin opened. He didn’t have time to make a break for the exit before a man was pushed inside his cell, hands bound and mouth gagged. The door locked again immediately after.
“This man is Rolan Vasse. Does that name sound familiar to you?”
Kochin shook his head.
“Let me elucidate, then. He is the primary investigator heading all current research on Yarongese bloodcarvers. He is the very man responsible for the torture and death of thousands of Yarongese innocents. The very man who headed the terminated study you translated.”
Kochin turned toward Rolan with equal parts horror and disgust. The man returned Kochin’s stare with terrified, bulbous eyes. His injuries were numerous—swollen bruises all over his balding head, cracked and bleeding fingernails, a jagged gash across his neck from what looked like a suicide attempt. His figure was bowed, tongue mumbling something behind the gag: a plea for mercy, Kochin guessed.
Commissioner Nem was right. There was no one more deserving of death. It should’ve been Lanalay, here—she was the one who deserved justice, not Kochin. And Kochin knew from those dead soldiers in the research ward that she wouldn’t hesitate to kill, as he did now. This man before him—this pitiful, quivering man—would undoubtedly kill him if their roles were reversed. Not only kill, but torture, maim, vivisect. This was a man who deserved no mercy.
“He’s being sent to Theumas to be tried for his crimes, but I know for a fact that he will receive a death sentence for his actions. So, I relinquish his life to you, Kochin. You don’t have to worry about taking an innocent life—this man is far from innocent, and he is fated for death anyway.”
Kochin explored Rolan’s frail state. Sweat dripped off Rolan’s forehead in fat beads, and though he was gagged, Kochin saw movement behind the rag—a string of pleas or prayers. It would’ve been so easy: Take that cowardly life, reweave it within Nhika …
But then, just as Nhika walked in step with Kochin ever since she’d saved him, so too would this murderer haunt her new life. Her every breath thereafter would be sowed with the memory of someone who had killed so many Yarongese before. He could not have that.
Turning back to face Commissioner Nem, Kochin opened his mouth to respond before a force knocked him from behind. It was Rolan, jumping Kochin with newfound strength. They grappled and before Kochin could react, he felt Rolan’s binds around his neck, shaking hands pulling them tight. Through pulsing vision and ringing ears, Kochin heard Commissioner Nem call for intervention.
Survival instincts returned to Kochin in an instant, and he rammed his head back, skull connecting with something firm. He felt the crack of bone and Rolan fell backward, the weight of his body pulling against the bind at Kochin’s neck.
Kochin pivoted, catching Rolan by the collar of his shirt. With his other hand, he carved, stealing from Rolan’s very blood to quiet the rhythm in his cortex. Before the man even hit the ground, he was in a deep slumber.
Kochin let out a haggard breath, staggering backward and rubbing the raw skin of his neck. Already, he felt the chafed welts rising and fought back a cough. On the platform, Commissioner Nem had stilled, observing the scene with wide eyes.
“He’s dead?” Commissioner Nem asked, not with horror but intrigue.
“Asleep.” A cough escaped Kochin’s throat.
Commissioner Nem’s eyes expanded with zealous curiosity. “So, you are a bloodcarver. I knew it was true, but it’s so different to see it with my own two eyes. Your gift, it’s … amazing.”
Kochin shook his head. “It’s not what you want it to be, Commissioner.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to bring her back. Not even with this man.”
Anger flashed across Nem’s expression. It was quick to clear. “I don’t understand, Kochin. Explain to me how I can make it any easier for you. I’ll do it.”
Kochin had always feared Nem’s wrath, but now he saw a glimpse of reason. Would Nem so easily let him go if he could explain the sanctity of the gift, explain that all his life he’d used it to take—and he couldn’t bear to do that anymore?
When he was just sixteen, matriculating into his university years early, he’d had this dream. He was going to change Theumas, he’d told his mother. Change the way they thought about heartsoothing. Change the way they thought about heartsooths. Elevate it from superstition to science, just like the botany his father taught him. From the start, his sights were set on medicine—such a perfect corollary to heartsoothing, a ripe breeding ground for change.
He had failed spectacularly. That naivete had lured him into a spider’s web, he a willing pupa. Kochin had not succeeded in changing a single mind, but maybe he still had a final chance—with Commissioner Nem now. If he could convince the commissioner to see it not as a weapon of war, but as a piece of culture, defined by the compassion of its artists, then Kochin could walk out of this cell and hang up his heartsoothing for good—it would not bring Nhika back, but it would also never take an innocent life again.
“I’m sorry, Commissioner Nem,” Kochin began, his voice ringing true around the walls of his confinement. “As long as the price for her revival is an equivalent life, I can’t bring her back. Only half of it is about the life. The other half of it is about my gift.”
Commissioner Nem scrunched his brow. “So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that my gift was never meant to take a life. I’d only just come to realize that myself.”
“Then what, pray tell, does it do?”
“It heals,” Kochin said, growing sure. “It survives. It remembers. It’s not an easy answer to war—there are no easy answers, Commissioner, or Daltanny would’ve found them by now. But when this war ends—and it will end—my gift will still exist on the other side. It was given to me by everyone who has ever loved me, so I have to make sure it lives on in the right way. Killing a man, even to bring back another … That isn’t it.”
Commissioner Nem’s brow lifted, lips parting—like he’d been moved. Like he might understand.
Then his expression collapsed with its usual ire. “Selfish.”
“What?”
“People are dying. Theumans are dying. You’re selfish, Ven Kochin, to keep this gift to yourself on the basis of something as flimsy as morals. You’re so full of contradictions—your gift was never meant to take lives, maybe, but it’s been used that way in the past. Or maybe you’re too young to know the Liver Eater, a serial killer with your same gift. So, be consistent—are bloodcarvers killers or healers? Are you a soldier or a pacifist? Are you going to play your moral high ground to keep from taking the life of this murderer, while so many innocents die in his place?”
The words struck deep because they struck true. Kochin gritted his teeth against Commissioner Nem’s accusations, knowing that he had shone a light on all of Kochin’s inconsistencies. From the very beginning, Kochin had been made from inconsistencies: Yarongese, but with all the looks of a Theuman; a heartsooth, but given only half the gift; a murderer, but one who’d torn himself apart with self-hatred for his act. Maybe Commissioner Nem was right; perhaps, killing this man to bring back Nhika was the correct thing to do. Then a sinful man would die and an innocent would walk in his place.
Kochin stepped toward the casket, lifted the hood. He felt Commissioner Nem’s cold approval burn into him as he curled his finger around Nhika’s stiff hands. For a moment, her body drew him in a way corpses never did. He glimpsed the channels that had given him life, the energy wrung from muscles and the electricity stolen from her heart. For the briefest of seconds, he almost felt he could save her.
But the reality of his predicament returned to him, and Kochin stepped away again. He saw now how cruel he’d been trying to keep her body alive. These wires circulating her blood, that tube feeding her oxygen—this was not life. It was delusion.
“This is my final answer,” Kochin said, reaching into the mechanics of Dr. Santo’s casket to draw out the command roll. The machine slowed, then stuttered, and his heart fell in his chest. This was goodbye; Commissioner Nem had given him the chance to bid Nhika rest in person. But he would not bring her back.
“I’m not sure what’s greater, my surprise or my disappointment,” Commissioner Nem boomed from the top of the platform. “If you will not bring her back, then there is no reason to exempt you from court-martial.”
Commissioner Nem bored into Kochin with his downward gaze, the silence giving Kochin one final chance to renege his hesitance and give in. He hadn’t saved Nhika; he wouldn’t even make it home to his family as he’d promised. Yet, Kochin only contested his stare with silence.
“Very well, then,” Nem said. He gestured to an assistant. “Take him to his holding cell. He’ll be shipped back to Theumas in the morning.”
In the quiet of his cell, Kochin counted down the hours until morning by how the sun dropped in the horizon. Commissioner Nem was right—he was not one to give up. Not when he’d first come to Theumas, anyway. Back then, he’d convinced himself that the heart of the city was the land of promises. He’d graduated from the university early—earning the highest marks in the past decade of its history, so he was promised opportunity. Kochin learned quickly that it was the land of masks: Murderers worked as doctors; megalomaniacs were voted men of the people; and bloodcarvers could almost convince themselves they were heartsooths.
Since then, Kochin had done nothing but give up. He’d resigned himself to Dr. Santo’s service, would’ve still been there if not for Nhika’s intervention. He’d hidden away his heartsoothing behind Theuman looks when he’d promised his mother he’d change the world.
And yet … this didn’t feel like giving up now. This felt like acceptance.
“So, this is it?” Nhika asked, appearing beside him. It’d been a while since she’d shown her face. A part of him was glad for her company, even if only an illusion. The other part feared being haunted by her forever.
“This is it,” he repeated.
“So, heartsoothing truly does die with our generation.” She stared wistfully out the window, at the waning sun that numbered Kochin’s days.
“It’s a good time to believe in an afterlife. Then I might find you there.” He settled on his cot, feeling the springs in his back. “But for now, I’m going to sleep.”
“You’re not going to even try to escape?”
“No.”
“Not even for your family? Vinsen and Bentri and your parents, who are waiting for you at home?”
“My insubordination would only endanger them further.”
“What about your mother? She’ll be investigated.”
“They have no proof of anything.”
“Kochin, I—”
“Please, Nhika. I … I can’t hope anymore. I don’t want to—it’s … it’s how I lost you.” He deflated in the cot, feeling the sudden weight of his decision bear down on him at once. “I’m tired.”
“Who are you talking to?” came a different voice, and Kochin startled straight. When he turned toward the door, he found Dep Trin standing across the bars.
The hairs of his neck prickled in caution. There Trin stood, wearing a guard’s uniform despite the crutch slotted underneath his armpit.
“Volunteered for guard duty, did you?” Kochin asked, not honoring Trin’s question with an answer. “I thought I told you that you didn’t have to worry about me anymore. I’m not going to murder anyone just to bring her back.”
Trin looked unimpressed, staring at Kochin with those impassive eyes. When Kochin had killed Mr. Congmi, it was Trin he feared the most—Trin, well trained with the pistol, who looked like he could split wood with his bare hands and would travel to the ends of the earth for the Congmis. Kochin trusted that Trin wouldn’t kill him here—that would be a dishonor to Nhika’s final request—but that brought little comfort when Trin rested his hand against his gun.
“I heard you’ll meet before a tribunal back in Theumas,” Trin said.
Kochin nodded. He couldn’t read Trin well enough to know if those words came with vindication or apathy. “Yes. I imagine I’ll die by firing squad—the only thing they can trust to kill a bloodcarver.”
He hadn’t meant the words to invoke pity—they only came with sardonic truth—but Trin furrowed his brow with subtle remorse. “For the crime of healing me?”
“For the crime of carving.” Kochin sagged in his corner of the room. “You must find this end fitting for me. I don’t blame you—but please, let Nhika rest. Commissioner Nem brought her body out here, but I don’t want her to be left in a war zone.”
Confusion inflected his expression. “He brought her here? Why?”
“So that I could bring her back.”
“But he knows it would cost a life.”
“That didn’t matter to him.”
“And … and you refused?”
Kochin stared into his hands, limp on his lap. “It’s as you said—I committed an atrocious act, but I’m not going to let it condemn me.”
Trin made a noise of consternation in the back of his throat; the creak of a lock followed it. When next Kochin looked up, his cell door had swung open.
“I didn’t volunteer for guard duty,” Trin said dryly. “I snuck in to release you. There may be things you deserve to die for, Ven Kochin, but saving my life is not one of them.”
Despite the invitation, Kochin didn’t budge. What was the point? He would either be executed or he would escape now and reap different consequences—his family investigated, him never being able to set foot in Theumas again. So, Kochin only stared, the open door an empty promise.
“Well?” Trin asked, sounding perplexed. “Aren’t you going to leave?”
“There’s nothing left for me out there.”
“With her gone, you may just be the last heartsooth, no?” At that word, Kochin met his eye. “I won’t pretend to understand what that means to you, but … doesn’t that give you some obligation?”
Trin’s words were clunky, but the thought behind them sincere. He was trying to connect with Kochin through the memory of Nhika; he was trying to convince Kochin to live. That was something Kochin never would’ve anticipated.
“Why are you helping me?” Kochin asked instead. “You’re right—I healed you because Nhika would’ve asked me to. You owe your life to her, not me.”
“Then you’re in her debt for your freedom. Because if you don’t even try to escape death, then she never should have died for you.” The words were rough, almost castigatory, but they caught Kochin’s attention. Trin cast a quick glance down the hallway. “Now, by my count, the guard will rotate through here again in five minutes. I’ll be leaving in two—I’ll give you until then to decide. Choose to die or choose to live, but if you meet her in your afterlife, let her know I gave you the choice.”
Without another word, Trin turned his back toward the cell, his eyes patrolling the hallway. Kochin righted himself in the cot, realizing that Trin’s offer came with no hidden fees—he could escape now or face judgment when the sun rose on tomorrow.
But the decision didn’t feel like his alone to make: His family would hear of his insubordination either way, but would the commissioners be fair in their investigation? Or would they find some way to indict Kochin’s mother, who could not hide her Yarongese looks as Kochin could? Then again, Trin was right—if he escaped death on Santo’s operating table only to die now, then Nhika’s sacrifice would’ve been all for nothing. He’d just accepted the burden of her memory; he couldn’t well pass it on just yet.
Kochin stood. With laborious steps, he reached the entrance of his cell. “There are gunners stationed around the compound,” he said.
Trin looked unconcerned. “I know. I came in through their blind spot.”
“When Commissioner Nem finds my cell empty in the morning, he might suspect you.”
“As far as he knows, I was shipped back to Theumas yesterday, honorably discharged for my leg.”
Still, Kochin hesitated. Trin gave him a questioning look out of the corner of his eye, a brow raised. No more words passed between them, until at last Kochin said, “Okay. How do we get out of here?”
“This way.” Trin waved him down the hall.
They took the first left at the end of the hall; not the way Kochin came in, but a path to avoid guards. Trin had grown adept with his crutch in very little time, his strides fluid even though Kochin knew he hadn’t fully soothed away pain. Trin must’ve felt each step deep in his bone, but Kochin never would’ve guessed.
They crept down familiar hallways—this was the way Commissioner Nem had taken Kochin before to reach the observational holding cell. Just as Trin banked right around a corner, Kochin stuttered to a halt.
“It’s a right here,” Trin urged, throwing a furtive glance down the hall; they were all clear to escape.
“Commissioner Nem is keeping her downstairs,” Kochin said, drawn to the opposite end of the hallway. “Please—I can’t leave her here. I don’t trust him to give her a proper burial.”
For once, Trin’s eyes were sympathetic, and he nodded—the most camaraderie the two of them had ever shared. Then it was Kochin leading Trin through the halls, having memorized his earlier route with Commissioner Nem. A left here, a descent down the stairs, a quick peek around the corner to make sure they were alone, and then they were there. The bolted steel door that had once bound Kochin with a terrible decision.
He opened it now with ease. Inside, Rolan was gone, but the casket remained. When he stepped inside, he found it dead silent—not even the whir of the cogs to fill the empty space since Kochin had turned off the machine. Trin followed him, each foot placed with caution and eyes wary.
Kochin drew up to the casket. There she was, untouched since he had abandoned her. He wondered if Commissioner Nem ever planned on returning Nhika to Theumas, or if he was satisfied letting her rot here. The enmity was fleeting as Kochin removed catheters and tubes from her body, disconnecting her from the machine that had given her false life. Only when he had finished, when this casket looked less like a medical machine and more like a simple coffin, did grief spear Kochin through his heart.
She was gone. Dead six months ago. The reality of it was only now reaching him.
Not ashamed to show his anguish before Trin, he bowed over the side of her coffin, feeling his throat shrivel, his lungs dry, his heart crack. The piece of her that she’d left with him was truly all that would remain. He reached up to stroke her cheek, the bone ring tugging at his chest. Yarongese tradition dictated that he fit the ring with a sliver of her bone, and he could only do that if he had her body. This was what she’d wanted when she’d pressed the ring into his hands on that operating table: to be remembered in a way that mattered.
“I’m sorry,” Trin said. The simple words held a depth of sympathy.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Kochin said. “It was her decision.”
Clearing catheters out of the way, Kochin hooked his arms beneath her chest and her legs. The weight of the task was heavy, but Nhika herself was light. He tipped her head toward him, where it rested against the cradle of his shoulder, the skin of her cheek brushing the skin of his collar.
That touch was enough to pull his heartsoothing in.
Without his conscious control, his influence entangled itself with her anatomy. Something dragged him in—perhaps the remnants of herself she’d left with him, yearning for reunion, or perhaps the empty organs calling for relief, their signal not yet dormant. Earlier, he’d seen the channels in her body that had saved him from death: the path oxygen took as it leached from her blood, the rivulets sugar carved out of her liver. Now, he saw channels that could bring her to life—they were instructions inscribed in her very anatomy, written by Nhika herself when she’d died for him.
His influence intertwined intimately with the secret history of her body as Kochin soothed the way Nhika had soothed: one with the body, not apart from it.
It was as though his feet had lifted off the floor, as though the room had flipped and his body had reoriented to align with her own. The breath rushed from his lungs as he fell into her anatomy, her blood entwined with his. Where there should’ve been revolt and nausea, the consequences of soothing a corpse, there was only euphoria.
Her body was his body, her muscles his muscles, her heart his heart.
And her heartsoothing … that was his, too. He felt it here, still remnant, like the last embers of a dying hearth. Whether it was a figment of his imagination or truly there, lingering still in the strands of her muscle, Kochin let it guide him.
Her bones showed him how they could be more than just stone, how marrow and blood could renew them as tissue. Kochin saw how electricity had discharged from her brain; its deep canyons and folded ridges told him how he might return it. And her heart, that fragile empathy organ, expressed its longing to feel and keep a pulse again.
Her heartsoothing, whatever remained of it, supplied every answer on how he might restore life to her dormant anatomy. It had never been about restoring the processes of her body by machine and influence; that had only been the pale reflection of life. It had always been about listening to her heartsoothing—his heartsoothing. Just as wounds cried to be tended, Nhika’s body cried for new breath.
Give, her heartsoothing instructed. Give as she did to you.
All that remained was to give, yet how could he?
He’d always been unable, his Theuman body stagnant and selfish. He couldn’t defy its natural instinct to hoard and reap and reserve. Yet, there came a feeling now, like Nhika’s hands on his, unfurling his curled fingers when he never knew they’d been clenched. He saw her on that Chengton beach, their fingers laced, her hand against his heart—wise, gentle, beautiful. In life, Nhika had tried to teach him to soothe as she did, giving and taking in equal measure. Kochin didn’t understand until now, but her sacrifice had been his final tutor.
He’d always thought that being half Theuman and half Yarongese had been the divide to his art. Thought that it made him wholly nothing. He was wrong—it made him wholly Ven Kochin, wholly Yarongese and Theuman, wholly a heartsooth.
In its entirety, giving and taking, he was a heartsooth, and this would be his first true act of healing.
Kochin released the inhibition of his influence. As soon as he did, his sugars went where they yearned to go, restoring her blood and tissue the same way she’d destroyed them. Electricity siphoned from his chest to spark her own, until he felt their two hearts beat in tandem. Gases regulated themselves in her lungs as he exhaled a sour taste from his own.
Kochin gave and gave and gave. Nhika grew heavier in his arms while he grew weaker in his legs until at last they yielded underneath him, knees slamming the concrete with a jarring gravity.
“Kochin!” Trin exclaimed, glancing at the door with an urgent look. Only then did Kochin rattle free from his soothing, blinking languidly up at Trin. He still clutched Nhika tight in his arms, but as soon as his influence pulled away, he felt the return of her deathly pallor.
“I can bring her back,” Kochin breathed, voicing the revelation aloud. “I can bring her back.”
But it would be a life for a life, if he gave her back all that she’d given him. He could already feel the ache in his muscles, but he marveled at the sensation, the thought of giving his body so completely, so freely. Something he’d never been able to do before. Now that he could, he’d give it all to her—she would walk away from this compound in his place, the way it should’ve been on that operating table. Maybe the two of them were never meant to exist together, but it was a beautiful eclipse of fate that they had shared any moments at all.
“Bring her back?” Trin repeated. “But … with whose life?”
Kochin’s heartbeat was drumming. The organ was going to burst. “Mine,” he said, and acceptance settled in. “All I ask is that you get her out of here, keep her safe. Promise me that.”
“I…”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Only then did Kochin bow his head and soothe. He gave her back the strength in her bones, the fullness of her muscles, the color of her skin. He returned all that she had given, tracing along lines prewritten, her body his favorite poetry and her heartbeat his favorite song.
In these final moments, heartsoothing wasn’t a science, nor was it a weapon, nor even the secret to an infinite army.
It was magic. It always had been. And it was his.
He felt a dark curtain falling over his consciousness. What a marvelous feeling, this selflessness, his body yielding where it had once hoarded. His heart squeezed—the empathy organ, finally living up to its name.
Just as he thought his heart might give out, something wrapped over his arm—warm fingers, new skin.
“We’re all walking out of here together,” came Trin’s echoic voice.
“But it’ll require—”
“Take it,” Trin interrupted. “Only what you need, but take it. I … I trust you.”
Kochin bowed his head in understanding, and his influence branched. It threaded itself around three bodies: one dying, one mending, and the third full of life. Faithful to Trin’s instructions, he took only what he needed. It was Trin’s energy that stitched the last of Nhika’s vessels, patched the final cracks in her ribs. It was Kochin’s breath that sparked the storm of Nhika’s brain, electricity returning along the same paths they’d use to dissipate. When everything came together like this, three bodies in space and a heartsooth to connect them, it was symphony.
When it was all done, Kochin nearly collapsed from the effort of it. Trin stumbled, too, pulling apart as he swayed over his crutch. They eyed each other in the ensuing silence, both of them too afraid to speak.
Trin braved the first words: “Did you … Is she…?”
Kochin opened his mouth to express his uncertainty when he felt a movement from Nhika. A muscle twitch. In his arms, a trembling heartbeat gathered strength, muscles tightened with timidity, organs remembered their autonomy …
Kochin exhaled hope.
And Suonyasan Nhika drew her first breath.