Seek the Traitor's Son, page 22
She’s correct about that, at least—he doesn’t really want anyone in his memories, but if he has no choice in the matter, Arias’s patient presence is the one he would prefer. It’s a shame he can’t agree to it.
Instead he says, “I think it should be you.”
“You can’t seriously be claiming to—”
“Be comfortable with you seeing into my mind?” He laughs a little. “No.”
She’s staring at him, and he wishes she wouldn’t. He loses track of himself when she does. There’s just always something new about her, every time he looks at her.
“But if you join me in this ritual,” he goes on, “you’ll be able to meet Rava as I meet her, with the Fever. You’ll know her in a way that she’ll never know you.”
Before he recognized Elegy in Rava’s interrogation room, he felt her. He was used to other people’s anger feeling like heat, like burning deep in the belly. An agitated, unstable force. But hers . . . hers wasn’t like that. It felt like an anchor settling cold and stable in his body, rooting him to the spot. A metal chain pulling taut, everything going still.
The chain pulls taut again now. Elegy nods.
“Fine,” she says. “Tomorrow, then.”
23
White is the Talusar color of mourning, so for the erczet ritual, Elegy wears white: white pants and a white jacket with a collar high enough to frame her face, and boning in the midsection that makes it look like old-fashioned corsetry. One of her only nice outfits.
Standing at the dock, watching the Sparrow that carries the exiles grow larger as it descends, she doubts the choice. The wind is blowing up dust. But beside her, Theren Forint is also in a white shirt—collared, tucked into his pants. It’s not his shirt; the sleeves are too short for him, so he rolled them up as soon as they spotted the ship above them. He must have borrowed it from Arias. It fits him through the middle, but it’s tight around his shoulders.
He doesn’t have his own clothes, she realizes. He came here with nothing, and he still has nothing.
“How was your brother?” she asks him, just to fill the silence.
“Isre had to go to Cedre Station for a few days. He’ll be back soon.”
It’s not really an answer.
He raises a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. The Sparrow is the size of an apple now, descending. It’s cloudy, hazy, but it’s always bright in Losan. She looks at the scars on his forearm. Faded, crisscrossing.
“What are those from?” she says.
“What?”
Without thinking, she touches his arm, and runs her thumb across one of the faded lines on the back of his wrist. He goes still, staring down at her fingers, tan against his light skin.
“Those,” she says, and she releases him, quick, like he burned her.
“I trained with a vambrace.” It’s an old word, only vaguely familiar. He clamps his right hand around his left forearm, to show her. “It’s a piece of armor. Sometimes in practice I forgot when I wasn’t wearing one, so the blade . . .”
He drags a fingertip sharply along one of the scars, mimicking the cut of a sword.
“Oh,” she says.
They both turn back to the landing pad, where the Sparrow is so close that a cloud of dust is lifting to meet it. She can feel the vibrations of its engine in her skull. She’s relieved when it touches down and the hatch opens, so the engine can gentle.
The erczet ceremony has to be small, Julia told her, because a memory projection can reach only a few people at once. So each Knight has one representative. Julia Martin is the first off the ship. She wears a knee-length white dress, stiff and professional. Elegy researched the exile families that morning, and she thinks it’s Ivy Amalka, Lisia’s mother, who comes next. She looks wan, like she might have gotten sick on the plane. Tor Kovek, Fenn’s father, comes next. He’s tall, and his coloring is lighter than his son’s, his hair as gold as Rava Vidar’s and his skin only a little darker than Theren’s. At his side is Jiro Heather, Furik’s father. His white trousers are rumpled from the flight. Elegy sent him a bouquet of paper flowers when his wife died, two years ago.
Julia looks confused when she sees Elegy, but she recovers quickly, giving her a quick bow. “Your Grace. What an unexpected honor.”
“Hello,” Elegy says. “I’m here—”
“Her Grace is here as my guest,” Theren says, and judging by the way Julia takes that in, it must be explanation enough.
She can’t sense emotions, but if she had to guess, she would say the exiles all feel about Theren the same way she does: they would trade his life for the ones they lost in an instant. Here he is, among so many people for whom his survival is a wound unto itself . . . and thanks to the Fever, he’s cursed with knowing it.
“I reserved a room for us in the library,” Elegy says. “Follow me.”
Losan Stronghold has a beautiful library. From the outside, it matches all the other buildings in the stronghold: concrete. Inside, though, the concrete is arranged in a series of hollow triangles with panes of glass nestled inside them to let in sunlight. All the bookshelves are warm orange wood, and there are rugs everywhere, salvaged from times when such beautiful things weren’t seen as an unnecessary extravagance. They’re colorful and worn in places from the foot traffic, unraveling at the ends—at odds with the neatness of the rest of the space.
She leads them through the hush of the now-empty library and into one of the meeting rooms. The wall opposite the door is all windows that look out into a lush green courtyard—evergreens grow there, their needle-laden branches pressing up against the glass. The courtyard is in an artificial winter now, so there’s frost on the windowpane. A row of chairs is arranged in a semicircle in the middle of the space. Facing the semicircle is another chair, standing on its own, for Theren.
Once inside, Tor turns to Julia.
“Well, do you want me to do the whole song and dance?” he says, running his hand through his hair. It stands up where his fingers were.
“If you’re going to do a thing, do it properly.”
“All right.” Tor looks like he would very much like to roll his eyes.
Ivy Amalka takes her seat, with Julia Martin at her side, and then Jiro Heather. Elegy sits in the chair on the end. She’s so tense her shoulders already ache.
Theren settles across from them all, the heels of his hands balanced on his knees. His fingers are trembling.
Tor takes a vial of dark liquid from his pocket. It looks like the water left over from painting watercolor, murky and opaque.
“Do you know what this is?” Tor asks Theren. Elegy notices the pronouns he chose, which indicate a disparity of status between them. If he wanted to, it would be within Theren’s rights to argue it now—those negotiations are common, she’s given to understand. But he doesn’t.
“It’s sovallan,” Theren says. “It will slow my perception of time, to make the projection less chaotic, and cause memories to surface.”
“Good.”
Elegy wonders where Tor got it. There’s no way he smuggled vials of a Talusar memory drug into Cedre as a refugee. Maybe it’s better she doesn’t ask.
Tor takes a small copper bowl from the bag at his side. He passes the bowl to Theren, who cups it in both hands as Tor pours the vial’s contents into it. Then Theren drinks it in a single swallow, and passes the bowl back to Tor.
As he takes it, Tor says, “Loss is a burden.”
“It’s my honor to share it,” Theren replies flatly.
She wonders how he knows this ritual so well. Has he done it before? Sat on the other side of it? Studied it?
Tor sets the bowl aside. Theren stares into middle distance, looking dazed. The drug must be taking effect.
Tor stands behind him, and puts both hands on Theren’s head, fingers spread wide to frame his ears. He raises Theren’s head, slightly, so he has no choice but to stare directly at Julia Martin.
“Tell us, Theren Forint,” Tor says, “what became of the Knights of Cedre.”
24
Elegy stands in an airy room, next to a stove—cool now. There are cushions around it, their colorful array at odds with the tension in the air, the weight in her, like a rock in her stomach.
She sees a young woman on the ground, lying on her back with her hands folded over her stomach. She’s Lisia Amalka, and she’s dead. Her body is beginning to swell as her organs break down.
Beside her, arranged the same way, is Furik Heather. His eyes aren’t closed all the way, and Elegy itches to tug his eyelids down, to make it look like he’s only sleeping.
Kneeling between them is Fenn Kovek. He’s still. And beside Elegy is Maeve Martin. She glances at Elegy—no, at Theren, who’s standing on Elegy’s left.
But this is not a Theren she’s familiar with. He’s not the shorter, leaner boy who swore to be her Knight, and he’s not the hardened man who rescued her from House Vidar, either. He’s so pale he looks sick, with dark circles under his eyes. His body looks stretched out, far too thin for its size. It takes her a moment to recognize that the ache she’s feeling in her limbs is his. It’s as if her body is mirroring his.
It’s strange that in the memory projection, she’s separate from him. She was expecting to experience his memories as if she was him, but apparently that’s not how Tor’s memory projection works.
“Theren,” Maeve says. “What should we do?”
A door on the side of the room opens. Nyx, Rava’s right hand, walks in, her hair knotted on top of her head, and she steps back to let four people in blue robes enter. Their purpose seems clear: two go to stand at Lisia’s and Furik’s feet, and the others, their heads. They’re here to get the bodies.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” Fenn growls at one of them, in English.
Nyx responds in Talusar, not to him but to Theren: “Get him under control, or he’s going to die.”
Theren must be the only one who speaks Talusar.
Theren crouches at Fenn’s shoulder, despite the throbbing in his knees. He puts a hand on Fenn’s back, and Fenn lashes out, shoving Theren so hard he topples.
“Get the fuck away from me,” Fenn says. His eyes are red, and full of tears. “She just hasn’t woken up yet, she’ll be alive again any minute—”
“They’re not going to wake up,” Theren says, dragging himself to his knees again. “Fenn, it’s been too long. They’re gone.”
“She is not gone!”
Theren grabs Fenn’s shoulders as the robed ones pick up Lisia’s body, and then Furik’s. As they lift Furik from the ground, Maeve reaches out and sets one hand on his swollen ankle in farewell.
Theren squeezes tightly to keep Fenn from lashing out. Fenn’s body shudders in his hands.
Theren whispers, “You can’t hurt them, or they’ll kill you. Understand?”
“Fuck you,” Fenn spits at Theren. “Coward.”
* * *
The shift between memories happens without interruption. She was in that room, and then she’s in another one. A bathroom, it looks like, judging by the tile floor—green and worn, cracking in places—and the basin of water on the ground.
Fenn Kovek is kneeling behind it, stripped to the waist, splashing his face. She doesn’t remember much about what Fenn looked like before the Fever, but in its aftermath he’s just muscle wrapped around bone, and it’s painful to look at him. Off to the side, Theren—still obviously fresh from his Fever resurrection—is brushing his teeth.
Fenn pushes himself to his feet with a grunt, but he doesn’t seem used to his body’s new weakness—he tips to the side, and Theren is there to catch him, his toothbrush still sticking out of his mouth.
Based on the way they related in the memory before, she expects Fenn to snap at him. But instead his eyes go glazed and unfocused as he stares up at Theren.
“Fenn,” Theren says. He takes one hand off the other man’s shoulders to tap his cheek. “Fenn!”
Fenn blinks at him, and straightens.
“It happened again?” Theren says to him, his voice low.
“Yeah.” Fenn closes his eyes, briefly. “More and more often.”
“You could just tell them you’re an epocha,” Theren says to him. “Epochas are well-treated, well-fed—”
“—and fucking property of the Talusar state,” Fenn snaps, sounding more like himself. “I would never see you or Maeve again, and I’d be so well-guarded there’s not even a shred of hope that I could escape. No thank you, I’ll pass.”
“Where we’re going is brutal. If I were you—”
“You’re not the one whose brain is sending them decades into the past at random, so it’s not up to you to decide,” Fenn says. “Just keep your mouth shut.”
He grabs a towel from a stack by the door, and wipes his face. Elegy hears tapping against the window—rain.
“I think I saw your father,” Fenn says, before he walks out the door. “Looked just like you.”
* * *
The tap of the rain disappears, and in its place: a roar.
She hears it as if from a distance. A sweaty, shirtless man just toppled to the floor in front of her. He spits blood on the wood. Wheezes. And stands.
There’s an audience around her, above her—layers of them, like she’s in an amphitheater, but it’s dark in here, so she can barely see their faces. She stands in the spotlight, in the heat, and all around her is the tangy smell of sweat.
She watches as another man, just to her left, steps forward, hands raised to protect his face. She takes in the bloody fists, the muscled torso, the expressionless face of Theren Forint. There’s a cut in his eyebrow, and blood runs down the side of his head.
She’s never seen him like this. Bare from the waist up, and thicker—well-fed and fit, like an athlete. His shoulders back and his spine straight. Confident. A master of this fight, of this place.
He has one black bar tattooed on his hand. One year in the Crucible.
His posture is relaxed as he advances on the other man, his movements fast and predatory. His opponent tries to punch him, but Theren catches it, twisting his arm brutally to the side as he hits the man in the face with his left hand.
Southpaw, she thinks, and she watches as the other man tries to pull away, but Theren shifts with him, effortlessly, following him around the edge of the arena and twisting, still twisting, wrenching the man’s arm to strain the limits of his shoulder joint. Elegy cringes. The man screams, and Theren drives a knee into his side, so he goes down hard.
The man slaps the ground with his uninjured arm, yielding.
Theren raises his head.
She follows his gaze to Maeve, standing somewhere above in the first few rows of spectators, her eyes wide. But Theren doesn’t acknowledge her. He just walks to the edge of the arena as everyone cheers and chants something. Their voices are muffled. He goes through a doorway that stands open beneath the seats.
There, beneath the amphitheater, the hallway is dark and quiet. Only a few people are milling around, chatting. They look at Theren but don’t speak to him as he leans into a wall, his forehead against the stone.
His next breath shudders on the way out. She feels burning in her throat, in her chest. Deep in the pit of her stomach. Everywhere, burning.
Then Maeve’s voice:
“Hello.”
Theren straightens and pulls away from the wall. Maeve and Fenn are coming toward him, from the arena floor.
“What are you doing here?” Theren says, his voice rough. He speaks English, and it comes to him a little unsteadily, as if he’s gotten rusty.
“Nice to see you, too,” Fenn says.
“We came to talk to you about something,” Maeve says.
Theren sighs, and nods. He leads them down the hallway, past a few people who nod to him and call him by a name Elegy doesn’t recognize. Or—perhaps she does. Intere. It’s a word that means “sifted together.” If she had to guess, she would say that in his case, it refers to Cedrae and Talusar.
He opens the door to a small, bare room with no windows. When they walk in, lights flicker on as if triggered by motion—febra glass. When a person survives the Fever, their body starts emitting some kind of energy. Febra armor channels that energy into a shield, and febra glass channels it into gentle light.
There are a few chairs in the room, scattered here and there. A basin of water stands in the corner, on a table, next to a stack of towels, a box of medical supplies. This is a place for fighters to recover in.
Theren goes to the basin and scoops water into his hands, then drinks, long and slow. Once. Twice. Three times.
“I’ve never seen you like that before,” Maeve says to him.
“Like what?” Theren splashes water on his face, then probes gently at the cut above his eyebrow.
“I don’t know.” She sounds troubled.
“She means you’re fucking brutal now and it scares her,” Fenn says. “As it happens, though, that’s why we’re here.”
Theren picks up one of the towels and presses it to his bleeding head. He still doesn’t turn to look at either of them. Elegy can’t stop staring at the muscles in his back, shifting with every movement.
“Is this an intervention?” Theren says. “You’re fine with the fact that we all have to survive by beating the shit out of people here, but it’s not okay for me to be good at it?”
“It’s not okay for you to like it, maybe,” Fenn says.
Theren only laughs. He leans against the table that supports the water basin.
