Seek the Traitor's Son, page 5
She gives him an odd look, but doesn’t answer.
“Our ancestors were cold-weather people,” she says, and she points ahead of them. “From the northern continent, there under that grouping of clouds. I didn’t know this myself, but I met an epocha once, and she told me. She saw snow. Red cheeks.”
Apart from the augurs, most Talusar had the gift of retrocognition—they could see a past they had not experienced themselves. It was most common to see someone else’s recent past at a touch. But there were rarer gifts. The ones they called “epocha” saw much further back. Decades. Sometimes more. They were considered holy, and lived sequestered in monasteries . . . except for Rava Vidar, who supposedly embodied the spirits of long-dead warriors. Her mother had argued that such a special gift should not be wasted in a monastery, and the emperor had agreed.
“Do you like it?” Theren asks Fenn. “Being a Knight?”
Fenn snorts, and tips his head back against the wall. “Does it matter? It’s this or I get deported.”
Theren watches Earth grow larger in front of them by fractions.
* * *
In the early days of Cedre’s existence, the megacity of Losan was the reason Cedre Station survived. It was the first quarantine zone, protected by the miles of desolate land that surrounded it. It provided food and resources when the space station had none. A fortified city of laborers, some wealthy—those who had inherited successful farms, or livestock, or factories—and some less so—those who were in the employ of Cedre’s elite.
He and Kesia spent the night at a hotel near the water, a clean but cramped establishment with fresh fruit at breakfast that he savored like it was the nectar of forgotten gods. He spent most of the morning listening to the waves hitting the sea wall. He was too nervous to wander the city with Kesia, who reappeared in the afternoon looking windswept and frantic. Nervous for him, he thinks, though she would never admit it.
Then he took a bath—an impossibility on Cedre Station—and dressed in his blue jacket, and just like that, his freedom ran dry, like the last sip from a glass.
Now they’re on their way to the ceremony. The Sparrow coasts over the cluster of tall buildings in the city’s downtown, where most of the population lives—buildings in other parts of the city were razed over a century ago to make room for other, more useful structures. The downtown area, though small, looks like a whole world to Theren, lit up neon, the streets packed with people. Before he can get a good look at it, it’s behind them, and all that’s left ahead of them is a sea of greenhouses and solar farms and low, flat buildings that house livestock. Except, of course, for the Getty.
The Getty is a white sprawl on a hill. It was built in a time before the Fever, all white tile and glass, manicured gardens littered with sculptures. It was a museum. It still is, but it’s used more often as a place of ceremony.
“Will the other Knights be there?” Theren says.
“Yes,” Fenn says. “But it’s a high-security event. Very limited guest list.”
Theren doesn’t see the other Knights often, but he attended their oath ceremonies. Fenn and Lisia were the first, eight years ago, when Theren was twelve years old and gawky with his collar itching his throat. Furik and Maeve were next, four years ago, a small affair that included the exiles and a handful of government officials.
But this . . . he has no idea what to expect from this.
Kesia looks uneasy, like the motion sickness has finally hit her.
He feels the shift in air pressure as the ship’s elevation drops, and he chances a look out the window. Red and orange lights glow in the nav panel, in front of the pilot. And beyond it, the Getty, white, curved in places, like it’s following the shape of the land. The Sparrow slows, and shudders as it descends to a landing pad just south of the building. Theren watches the pilot’s hands move. Finally he hears the hiss of decompression, and the hatch door opens.
The landing pad is painted with the seal of Cedre, which is an abstraction of the planet below and Cedre Station above, connected by the line of the shuttle’s path. Everything for the Cedrae is about Earth, Kesia said to him once, and everything for the Talusar is about the Fever. It seems to be true.
Waiting for them on the landing pad is a young woman with messy hair and an uneven smile. Maeve Martin, one of the other Knights.
Maeve bobs her head to Kesia. “Mrs. Forint.” But when she turns to Theren, she relaxes. “Hey, kid.”
“I’m taller than you,” Theren says. “You can’t tousle my hair anymore.”
“That rule sounds made-up.” Maeve reaches up in an attempt at a tousle that Theren smacks away.
He and Maeve didn’t really know each other until Theren’s stepfather died. She came to the funeral, and every few months she took the shuttle to their apartment and insisted that Theren and Isre come with her to a movie, or the arcade. She helped them put up twinkling lights in their living room on Kesia’s birthday; she tutored Isre in Hànyǔ; she brought Theren to his first party. And she made the prospect of his oath seem easier, because at least when he was a Knight, he would spend more time around her.
But now he’s not swearing his oath to the Sword of Cedre, as she did. Instead, he’ll be the only one swearing it to the Sword’s secondborn, Elegy. So he won’t get to see much of Maeve. Or anyone.
“Fenn!” Maeve says, as Fenn descends the hatch steps. “You look like someone peed in your cereal, as usual.” She grins, and Theren is surprised to see that instead of snapping back at her, Fenn just rolls his eyes. “Lisia’s waiting for you in the Room of Ceremonies.”
“Noted.” Fenn gives Theren a look. “Don’t mess it up, Forint.”
He walks past them and disappears around the side of the Getty. Maeve addresses Kesia: “They prepared a room for both of you to rest a moment before the ceremony and meet everyone. I volunteered to escort you.”
Kesia nods. Her jaw is tight.
They follow Maeve through a side entrance. Most of the building’s exterior is covered in white tiles or pale stone; the interior, too, is stark. There are paintings on the walls in gilded frames; sculptures of glass and bronze arranged in the spaces between, the ancient and the less-ancient keeping company.
Maeve says, “When I took my oath, I got here an hour early. Pretty sure I used the bathroom every five minutes. Furik thought I was sick or something.”
“Nervous bladder,” Kesia says.
“Most people wouldn’t share that so openly,” Theren points out.
“I’m not most people.” Maeve grins. Her smile is her best feature, wide and infectious.
They pass a room that’s empty except for a huge feminine figure, a story high, chiseled from stone. Theren slows to look at it.
“Ah. Cassandra,” Maeve says. “In the myth, she’s a prophet who’s cursed never to be believed.”
Kesia taps the plaque on the wall. “The artist reimagined her as Zhu Hualing.”
Zhu Hualing was the first scientist to write about the Fever after the Empty Time, which was a blank space of about a century in their planet’s historical records. No one knows much about her, just that she was the first person to describe the Fever as a virus instead of a miracle.
The statue stands with open hands extended, a seer begging to be heeded. Theren looks up at her face for a few seconds, then rushes to catch up.
Maeve leads them to a small, clean room. “I’ll go let them know you’re here,” she says, and she disappears into the hallway.
A table in the corner holds a jug of water and glasses—Kesia makes a beeline for it. There’s a table, chairs. Windows that overlook the lawn. On one of the walls is a line of old photographs. Theren draws closer to them automatically. They’re pictures of Losan from a long time ago. The colors are faded, but he still gets a sense of them, the peach-red of clay roof tiles and the parched green of desert trees.
“It seems like another world, doesn’t it?” a wry voice says from behind him.
An older woman stands in the doorway. She wears gray robes stained salt-white at the bottom. An augur.
Kesia makes the sign of the Fever over her mouth, and bows. Theren just stares. The augur’s hair is close-cropped and gray, and she looks at him in an unfocused way, as if she’s also looking through him to the room beyond. She speaks English, but in a halting way, like she’s not sure of her words.
“Theren Forint,” she says. “I am the primary augur of the Cenobium. Primary is just a polite way of saying ‘oldest.’ ” She smiles a little.
“Augur,” he says. He realizes a beat later that he said the word in Talusar. The augur’s eyes glint. She looks at Kesia.
“The other Knights didn’t speak it so automatically,” she says. “You are to be commended, Ms. Forint, for teaching your son properly.”
“Thank you, augur.” Theren has never seen his mother so hesitant. “May I ask why you’re here?”
“I asked to conduct this particular ceremony,” the augur replies. “Elegy Rosyk is the subject of a very important prophecy, and my presence may help to usher her along the path I hope she’ll walk. The Sword was kind enough to agree.”
And no wonder, Theren thinks. If the prophecy is, as Fenn said, a prediction of Cedre’s triumph over the Talusar, the Sword would probably hand her secondborn daughter over to the Cenobium if she thought it would improve Elegy’s odds of fulfilling it.
“The others will be here momentarily,” the augur says. “But I wanted to see you in the present before we begin.”
Her eyes are gentle and solemn. She stands in front of him for a moment and as she looks at him, her expression changes. She looks . . . sad.
“I’d almost forgotten what you looked like before,” she whispers.
“Before what?” he says.
But the augur only shakes her head.
“I sometimes forget the sequence,” she says. “Seeing you has helped me to put things in order. Thank you.” She looks to Kesia. “It’s time for us to go. He must meet the Hope of Cedre alone.”
A look of conflict contorts Kesia’s face, briefly, and she rushes toward Theren, throwing her arms around him. Theren stiffens, at first, unused to his mother displaying affection so publicly. Then he hugs her back.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into his ear, and he’s not sure what she’s apologizing for.
5
Elegy stands in her underwear, staring down at the dress. It’s black, a simple sheath that falls straight down from the shoulder. She thought putting it on would help her to put the whole persona on, like an actor donning a costume, but suddenly she doesn’t want to.
This happens every few minutes now, this feeling of disconnect between who she is and who she’s been told she is. The Hope of Cedre. It sounds like a joke, only no one’s laughing.
She bites down on her thumbnail. There’s still salt under all of her fingernails, even though she’s scrubbed her hands more than once since yesterday. With a sigh, she shakes out the dress and steps into it, leaving the back unzipped as she searches for her shoes in the small closet she shares with Shir. She wanted to wear her formal military uniform for this, but the Sword refused. You have to look more human than that. Elegy didn’t quite understand—soldiers were human, weren’t they? But the Sword’s intention was to announce Elegy’s place in the prophecy tomorrow, along with pictures of this ceremony, and when they circulated, she couldn’t look like a piece of military propaganda. Even if that’s exactly what the Sword wanted her to be.
Elegy can’t think about that right now—how this will be used. She has to focus on salvaging her marriage.
She finds her shoes and straightens, the straps dangling from her fingers. Shir is in the doorway.
“Hi,” she says to him.
“I think the last time I saw you in a dress was our wedding,” he says.
He hasn’t said much since last night, when she woke him to tell him about the prophecy. He didn’t get upset—at least, not visibly so. He just sat by the window with her and watched the sun rise over the buildings of Losan. Then he went for a run, and when she asked to go with him, he said no. I need to think.
“Yeah, well,” she says, “it wouldn’t really be practical on a search and rescue operation, would it?”
Shir smiles. She’s so relieved to see it she almost bursts into tears.
“I’m so sorry,” she says softly.
“Shit, El,” he says, and he crosses the room to take her hands. “This is not your fault. I didn’t mean to make you feel like it was.” He squeezes her fingers. She put her wedding ring on properly today, so it shines on her left hand, warm gold.
“What the augurs told you is a miracle,” he says, like he’s decided something. “If saving Cedre means you’ll love two men at once . . . well, it’ll be worth it. And maybe you won’t. Maybe they misinterpreted something. It doesn’t matter.” He touches his forehead to hers. “I love you, and I believe in you.”
She nods, even though his words make her feel uneasy, unbalanced. Yesterday feels like a dream already, standing on that mirror, the sky reflected back at her, the sun burning through the oculus overhead. Shoulder to shoulder with Rava Vidar, the Butcher of Calgara, supposed container for the souls of dead warriors. Tumult and rupture. It felt so huge in the moment, big fate, big responsibility. But now, it’s . . . less. Now she has rough tile under her feet and Shir’s warm hands in hers, and this is reality. The man she loves, and the promise she made to him.
He might believe in this prophecy. But that doesn’t mean she has to.
“We’ll carry this together,” he says.
“I love you,” she says.
He kisses her like they just survived something—and maybe they did. His hands are tight on her waist; his teeth scrape her lower lip. She presses closer, and his hands slip around to her bare back, the dress still unzipped. His fingers trail up her spine, and she shivers.
“We’re going to be late,” he says, against her mouth.
“I don’t give a shit,” she answers, and she drops her shoes on the floor. He tugs the dress down from her shoulders, and they spill into bed together like they’ve been poured from a pitcher.
* * *
The Getty is up ahead. White and lonely on its hill, a relic of the city that was.
It’s odd to think of a Losan that wasn’t packed with high-efficiency farms and greenhouses, small factories and water purification plants. The nation of Cedre has never been just one land mass—it’s a constellation of them spread across the globe. The Talusar have been putting out each star in that constellation by force, one by one, for hundreds of years. Now there are just three left on the planet’s surface: the megacity of Losan, in the western hemisphere; the continent of Austra, in the east; and north of it, the island chain of Nusanta.
In the very beginning, Cedre Station struggled to survive. All of Cedre tried to help, but Austra was a haven for those fleeing the Fever, and a base of operations for the military, and Nusanta was embroiled in conflict with the Talusar, and all the other territories—conquered now, of course—were too small to offer much to Cedre Station. Only Losan had plenty to give, and that’s the reason Cedre Station exists now.
Shir eases their ship down to the landing pad. The Sword waits at the edge of it, her hair pulled back so tightly the wind doesn’t budge it. She’s wearing her formal military uniform, deepest red with all kinds of patches on the sleeve to indicate her status, her service, her honors.
“You’re late,” she says, and she says it to Shir, like it’s his fault.
“Couldn’t find my shoes,” Elegy says. “It’s only ten minutes, anyway.”
The Sword’s eyes narrow by a fraction. Ten minutes is significant to her, no doubt.
“Everyone else is here, and the Getty has been secured,” the Sword says. “Just a precaution. This ceremony is highly classified. No one knows who you are yet.”
“Aside from ‘the spare,’ you mean.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call yourself that.” The Sword sniffs in a way that seems disapproving to Elegy. “Your Knight has already arrived. You should go meet him.”
“Meet him,” Elegy says. “What am I supposed to say, exactly? ‘Sorry you got traded away to the state before you were even born, hope it’s not too lame for you’?”
“We are not guaranteed infinite choices in this life,” the Sword says. “You and I know that as well as he does. If you wouldn’t want to receive his pity, perhaps you should not offer yours.”
She turns on her heel and walks into the building. Stung, Elegy follows. She hadn’t thought of it that way—that from the moment the augurs summoned her, they winnowed down her choices. Her path is so narrow now there’s only room for one person to walk it. The same is true for her Knight.
To be honest, she pities them both.
“You’re ready to go to Cedre Station with me after the ceremony?” the Sword says, over her shoulder, as they walk past the endless galleries of the Getty. “You can meet with my army there, after the announcement, to determine your rotation of guards.”
“Not sure why I’ll need a guard—isn’t that what the Knight is for?”
The Sword raises an eyebrow at her. “A little redundancy never hurt anyone.”
“I’m also not sure why I have to announce myself as the Hope of Cedre like some debutante.”
“If you ever intend to lead anyone, you need them to know what you are.” She looks over her shoulder, and her eyes soften a little. “Larke wants to spend some time with you, anyway.”
Larke is the Sword’s other daughter. Technically Elegy’s sister, though Elegy rarely thinks of her that way. She already has a sister: Hela, who promised her a bottle of whiskey when all of this is over, even though she wasn’t important enough to be invited to the ceremony.
