Chapter 4
An hour later, Theren is buckling himself into a seat on one of the Sword’s Sparrows. Fenn and Kesia are across from him.
Theren has only been in run--down public shuttles before this, where all the walls were fingerprinted and scratched with the names of past passengers. But this ship is polished. The interior is covered in sleek metal panels, with lights outlining the jump seats and the central walkway.
His mother’s hands are deft with the safety straps.
The Talusar take elixir from all the places they’ve conquered, and they give it to their child soldiers at age eleven, so they can fly ships until they get infected at sixteen.
Kesia was one of them. Conscripted. Forced to swallow elixir, despite her religious objections.
Taught everything about ships: how they worked, how they broke, how to fix them, and how to fly them.
Then, like all Talusar, she was infected. She died. And two days later, she came back to life.
After that, all the flight skills she’d learned were no longer useful.
“Hang in there,” the pilot says. “Some people find this trip unsettling.”
Kesia snorts. The ship lifts away from the shuttle bay floor so smoothly Theren hardly feels it.
The pilot eases them forward, through the open gate and into the black.
As they turn, Cedre Station, barrel--shaped and bright, takes up the entire view, big as the moon.
Tethered to it is the Sundial, a large ship—-but still tiny by comparison to the space station beside it—-from generations past that will one day carry a crew in pursuit of another planet that supports life.
A planet they know for a fact is out there, because before the spread of the Fever . . . it contacted them.
Theren’s body lightens as they move away from the station’s gravity. He focuses on keeping his meager dinner down.
They turn to face the planet. It looks farther away than Theren expected.
He doesn’t recognize anything in the patches of clouds, white and wispy, or the dark oceans beneath them.
He’s surprised by how bright it is; he has to squint to see it.
It’s supposed to be his home, but he feels no real attachment to it.
He was born on the spaceship Hoatzin, while the exiles waited for the Sword to either grant them refugee status or blast them out of orbit.
So “home” is Cedre Station. “Home” is creaking metal and stale air.
Their speed increases gradually, but it’s still obvious when they leave Cedre Station’s gravity completely. His clothes lift away from his body, and his shoulders press up into the safety straps.
“Why did you want to leave?” he says to Kesia. She’ll know what he means. She usually does.
“I told you,” she says idly. “I was pregnant with you, and suddenly the fifty percent chance of you dying from Fever was unbearable to me.”
Her hand comes up to her stomach, as if in remembrance.
“I guess I just wondered if there was another reason,” he says.
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.