Chapter 8 #2
Maeve swears against the top of Theren’s spine. “Where the hell are they taking us? Why aren’t we dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Quiet,” one of the soldiers—-the woman with her hair in a knot on top of her head—-says to them, in English.
As they near the two Sparrows, he sees that they’re parked beside the ruins of an old building. It’s so old, in fact, that he can’t even guess at what it used to be.
The leader swings her leg over her horse and lands heavily in the dust. The other soldiers follow suit.
Theren’s legs are so sore it’s difficult to get off the horse.
He lets Maeve go first, holding her hand as she jumps down, and then he slides off, graceless, almost falling to his knees.
Both of them go to help Fenn, Maeve taking one of his hands and Theren taking the other.
As he dismounts, Fenn bites his lip to keep from crying out, and sags against Theren, gasping.
The back of his shirt is stained with blood.
“Line them up,” the leader says, without looking up from her horse. She’s undoing the buckles that hold the saddle to the beast’s back, her long fingers stained black with dirt.
Theren tries not to react to what she says.
Lining them up feels like a prelude to killing them, but there’s no way the Talusar spent all that effort getting them here just to execute them.
So he doesn’t resist when one of the soldiers grabs him by the elbow and jerks him around so he stands next to Maeve.
The leader finishes taking the saddle and bridle off her horse, and leads it to a bucket of water where the soldiers are setting up their own animals. Finally, she walks along the row of Knights, pausing next to each of them to look them over.
“What a fine collection we have here.”
She stops in front of Lisia. “The Useless Knight, who still can’t ride a fucking horse . . .”
She moves on to Fenn. “The Stupid Knight, who tried and failed to escape . . .”
She moves past Furik and Maeve, and stops in front of Theren. “And the Coward Knight, who ran rather than defend the so--called Hope of Cedre.”
He feels the others’ eyes on him, and grits his teeth. He didn’t tell them why he was caught in the woods instead of captured in the ceremony hall with the others.
“Oh, they didn’t know that, did they?” the woman says, leaning closer to Theren. Her eyes almost glow in the moonlight. “They didn’t know someone so weak walks among them?”
His face burns with shame. She turns on her heel, about to continue her pacing, and he makes himself speak.
“I may be a coward,” he says, in Talusar, “but at least I’m not a murderer.”
She freezes, mid--step, and turns to stand in front of him again.
In his periphery, he sees the other Knights’ heads turning, feels their eyes on him.
Kesia always told him to be discreet about the fact that he speaks Talusar, and now he understands why.
Apparently the other exiles were too focused on assimilating to teach their children their native language.
He seems to be the only one who knows it.
“You speak Talusar,” the woman says. “What’s your name?”
“Forint.” He trembles—-with anger, with fear, with shame, he’s not sure.
She gets a strange, eager look in her eye.
“Right,” she says softly. “I see the resemblance now.”
He doesn’t know how she could. She was a child when his mother fled Valla.
“How many are dead?” he says, before he can stop himself. “Who?”
“I don’t keep a record of the traitorous pigs I slaughter. I just make them into meat.”
The rage that surges through him is so intense it locks up his muscles. He couldn’t have moved if he wanted to. She smiles a little, and steps close again, looking down her nose at him.
“You have a choice to make, Theren Forint,” she says, in English this time, and he knows he didn’t tell her his first name.
“Nyx!” she says, calling out to one of the others. “Bring her.”
Dread turns his stomach like a bad meal as one of the soldiers standing with the horses moves toward the doorway of the abandoned building and disappears inside. The woman—-the leader—-studies his face like she’s seen something fascinating.
Then his mother emerges from the nearby ruins.
The last time he saw her, she was in a starched white shirt and black slacks, blue stones glittering in her ears, her hair loose.
Now she’s dressed like a soldier, black canvas pants tucked into boots, a rough--woven shirt.
She looks as tired as he feels, like she too has spent the last few days wandering the desert—-and of course, she must have, to meet them here.
Her eyes find his with trepidation.
She’s not bound. She’s not bruised or scratched. She’s here of her own free will.
“I knew it,” Fenn says, from down the row of Knights. “You fucking snake!”
He surges toward Kesia, making it only a step before the leader catches him by the throat and forces him to his knees. Theren hears him choke, and gurgle. He doesn’t turn to look. He can’t move. He’s just staring at his mother.
“Behave,” the leader says to Fenn, and she releases him. He coughs, and heaves into the dirt.
“What have you done?” Theren says to Kesia, roughly.
“I wanted you to be free,” she says. “I wanted us both to be free.”
It’s a strange thing to hear when he’s spent the last few days as a captive.
“Your mother made a bargain,” the leader says. “A clever one. In exchange for her help, I have promised to test you all instead of executing you immediately.”
“What does that mean, ‘test us’?” Lisia says, her eyes darting to Fenn’s.
“It means they’ll infect us with Fever and see if we live,” Furik says. “But what if we survive?”
“The Fever makes a person new. Makes a person Talusar,” the leader says. “If you survive it, you will be a citizen of Valla. I will find a place for you to adjust to Talusar society.”
“And who the hell are you?” Fenn says.
“She’s Rava Vidar,” Maeve replies softly. “Obviously.”
The moment she says it, it does seem obvious. Who else could this woman be but Rava Vidar, daughter of Ileth Vidar, rumored to be the living vessel of ancient warriors?
Rava’s mouth quirks into a smile, as if she knows the effect her name has, and she’s pleased by it.
Reality sinks into Theren piece by piece.
His mother made a deal with Rava Vidar. Traded away her Cedrae citizenship, her loyalty, her decency .
. . why? Because she didn’t like Cedre? Because she regretted letting the Sword make him a Knight?
For his freedom, as if that was something the Talusar would ever actually give him?
“As I said, Forint,” Rava says, “you have a choice to make. You can’t avoid the Fever, either way.
But if you renounce Cedre, you and your mother can go together to Valla, where you will occupy positions of honor in the monastery there.
Or, if you refuse . . . you can count yourself as a Knight of Cedre, and face what they face. ”
There’s good strategy in lying to her—-in renouncing Cedre, knowing it’s just words, and lying just long enough to escape and return home. But his reaction is so visceral, so automatic, that he can’t control it.
“I’m not renouncing my people,” he says.
Kesia’s eyes are fixed on his. “Theren. Don’t be a fool.”
He ignores her.
“I’m a Knight of Cedre,” he says. “I took an oath.”
“I suppose I can’t fault you for trying to salvage your backbone,” Rava says. “I will ask you again in your second life. Perhaps you’ll change your mind after you die.”
She turns away, and makes a gesture of dismissal at Theren’s mother, who obeys. For just a moment, the Knights stand alone in a line in the desert, as the sun begins to peek over the horizon.
They bind the Knights’ hands behind their backs, and march them into one of the Sparrows. They sit three on one side of the ship, two on the other—-Fenn and Lisia, inseparable as always. One of the soldiers comes through to strap them all in, crushing their bound wrists against their backs.
Sitting in the pilot’s chair is a girl. She’s lanky, awkward, like she just shot up and doesn’t know where her body ends yet.
She wears her hair in one tight braid, beginning at her widow’s peak and ending at her spine.
She’s not wearing armor made of febra—-a metal that reacts protectively to the energy field produced by Fevered blood—since she’s not infected.
She’s in a flight suit, instead. But she looks at them with the same disdain the other soldiers do.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Fenn says to Theren, as the engines spin up.
“Fenn . . .” Maeve says.
“You should have just done what she said,” Fenn says roughly. “Then you could have at least found a way to save all of us.”
“And if he had, you would have called him a traitor no matter what he did to help us.” Lisia tips her head back and closes her eyes. “Why do you have such a hard--on for hating him?”
Fenn eyes Theren, but he doesn’t speak again.
Theren tries not to think, but he can’t stop memories from flashing in his mind.
Kesia at the dinner table when he was a child, admonishing him for not speaking in Talusar.
Kesia pressing a practice sword into his hands that was almost too heavy for him to lift.
She was careful to present herself as fully integrated, but when the two of them were alone, she spoke of her home wistfully, she performed the sign of the Fever over her mouth, she read Talusar poetry out loud—-
And then, just days ago. The blue--and--copper jacket in its garment bag. Kesia disappearing all day when they got to Losan. Kesia looking uneasy as they landed at the Getty; he thought it was motion sickness. The way she sounded when she said, I’m sorry.
How long has she been planning this? A week, a month, a year? Or was this always the plan, twenty years in the making?
Did she only go to Cedre with the exiles to wait for the right moment to strike?
Two of the Talusar soldiers who dragged them here step into the Sparrow and strap themselves in. One of them is right next to Theren—-the woman with her hair in a high knot.
“How many of them do you think will survive the Fever?” the bearded soldier across from her says. “Two? One? We’ve got a pool going.”
“This one can understand you, Ranos,” Hair Knot says, jerking her head toward Theren.
“So?” Ranos says, and he looks at Theren. “You want in? Not sure what you can bet, but I’m sure you’re good for it.”
“Fuck you,” Theren says.
Ranos looks at Theren for a moment, then says, “I mean, skinny and scared isn’t usually my type, but you’re not half bad.”
Hair Knot throws a glove at him, and hits him in the face.
He throws it back, hitting her in the knee.
The ship buzzes in anticipation of takeoff.
A low voice comes through on the ship’s radio, and they lift away from the ground.
Theren expects something bumpier than what he gets—-the child pilot’s hands are quick on the controls, all the awkwardness of their movements gone as they do the choreography of takeoff.
“He’s too skinny to survive it, I think,” Ranos says, once they’re in the air. The desert spreads out in front of them, orange in the new morning light. It’s flat where they are, but in the distance, there are mountains.
“It has nothing to do with what you look like,” Hair Knot replies. “The Fever sees strength better than we do.” She performs the sign of the Fever—-three circles traced with the tip of her thumb—-over her mouth as she speaks.
“Ever the zealot, Nyx.”
Maeve nudges Theren with her elbow.
“You understand them?” she says.
Theren nods.
“How do you know it so well?”
“We speak it at home,” Theren says, and with a twinge in his chest, he amends: “We spoke it at home.”
Fenn snorts. “So she raised you like one of them, this whole time.”
Theren wants to argue, but he isn’t sure he can.
“Did you have any idea?” Maeve says, her voice gentle.
“No.”
Theren looks out the window. The desert land is turning green, the mountains rising, rocky and lush, from the plain.