Chapter 10 #2
She steps through the kitchen—-it only takes one stride—-to give Hela enough room to work, then passes the little table to reach the desk against the back wall.
It’s piled high with their father’s old things: weapons that are too dull or rusted to be useful, yellowing notebooks with his scribbles fading into their pages, and . . . the box.
“Don’t start,” Hela warns her. She’s standing at the stove—-which consists of a burner and a hot plate—-poking a pot of savory porridge with a wooden spoon.
“I don’t want to argue about it,” Elegy says, as she takes the lid off the box. “I just want to know why you don’t want to get rid of it.”
The box contains “artifacts”—-that’s what Keen called them, anyway.
Elegy’s word for them is “junk.” They’re scraps from an old ship—-knobs and handles and even a chunk of metal from the vessel’s side.
They’re odd, there’s no denying that. Unfamiliar shapes and designs.
The metal is warm in color, like copper, but dull as lead and as strong as tungsten.
Her father insisted it was unlike anything found on Earth.
“He loved collecting them,” Hela says. “And I loved looking for them, for him.”
“So you don’t believe him. That an alien walks among us.” Elegy gives Hela a sly smile.
Hela returns it.
“I think you know intelligent life exists out there and has in fact contacted us, so you shouldn’t be so scornful of the idea that it’s also secretly landed here,” Hela says.
“They made contact at a distance,” Elegy points out. “From somewhere between Mars and a sea of asteroids, in fact. Pretty sure we threatened to blast them out of orbit if they came any closer than that.”
In the time before Cedre, before the Talusar, before the Fever, Earth received an invitation.
It spoke of a greater interstellar order beyond their solar system.
The governments of Earth were just trying to decide whether to respond to the message or not when a string of catastrophes struck—-the exact nature of them is lost to history, as is the data associated with the invitation.
The intended purpose of the little ship next to Cedre Station, the Sundial, is to try to trace the invitation’s origins back to its source.
Those who oppose the Sundial’s launch call it a pointless search—-the universe is so vast that finding the people who sent that message would be like finding a single grain of sand on a beach, a disastrous waste of precious resources.
Those who support the Sundial’s launch call it Cedre’s only path forward—-it’s either succumb to the Talusar, or find another world.
Regardless, Elegy has grown up with the knowledge that there are others out there, others who are intelligent and capable of interstellar travel.
But that knowledge is abstract. The idea of encountering one of them here on Earth still sounds ludicrous.
Even now that Earth doesn’t have the weaponry to stop an unidentified ship from landing, who would come here? This is a planet of ruins.
Hela turns off the stove. “It’s not so silly to think that whoever and whatever invited us to meet with them also sent a scout to quietly investigate us. And with the Talusar controlling everything, it’s also not silly to think that Cedre wouldn’t have heard if they uncovered evidence of it.”
Elegy nods a little, conceding.
“I guess not,” she says. “I just . . . when I remember Dad, I try not to think about how obsessive he was. And he was most obsessive about this.”
“He was most obsessive about collecting cat figurines,” Hela says, gesturing to the shelf above the stove, where cat figurines of all sizes and styles are arranged in no particular order.
She pours the savory porridge into two bowls. It has protein powder in it, but also greens from the market in Twentynine, and onions that Elegy stole from a garden in Losan the last time she was there.
“You know you’re a Cedrae citizen, right?” Elegy says, as she takes the bowl from Hela. “You still talk about it like you don’t belong to it.”
“Well, you spend eleven years in Silvis and then call yourself a Cedrae,” Hela says.
Hela was born Talusar. When she was eleven, her parents arranged for a Scout—-Keen Ahn, Elegy’s father—-to take their daughter somewhere safe rather than risk her dying by Fever.
Keen had flown deep into Talusar country to get her and tried to find a family in Losan that would take her in .
. . but she’d fit in so well with Elegy that she stayed with them, instead.
Her accent is gone, for the most part—-trained out of her so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself. But she still doesn’t think of herself as Cedrae, which is her prerogative.
Together they sit in the pair of chairs behind the house, bowls balanced on their laps, and watch the sun set.
“It’s been four years exactly since Shir died,” Elegy says, at one point, watching the rocks turn a brilliant red.
“Yeah. You want to talk about it?”
Elegy takes Hela’s bowl and her own, and walks toward the house. Just before she passes through the door, she says, “No. That’s all right.”
That night, Hela sleeps in the bed that’s wedged into the house’s addition, and as she always does when the weather accommodates it, Elegy sets up a cot outside, under the stars.
For a long time before she falls asleep, she stares up at Cedre Station, glowing like a second moon, and its constant companion, the Sundial—-duller, and tiny as a distant star, but still visible in the night sky if you know where to look.
The next morning finds Elegy in the Octopus, the one café--restaurant--bar in the collapsing desert town of Twentynine.
She’s drinking coffee. Aki—-the bartender, and a former Scout himself—-warned her that it would be sour, but she wasn’t prepared for how sour.
She puts three sugar lumps in it to cover up the taste.
She’s on edge, her knee bouncing so hard it’s making her chair squeak. Maybe it’s the coffee.
Or maybe it’s the fact that Isre Din, brother of former Knight Theren Forint, will be here any minute now.
Two weeks after the Getty attack, the office of the Sword sent her a message: they’d received a box full of bloody tracking devices from Rava Vidar, along with a note declaring that all five Knights were dead.
So Elegy flew to Cedre Station for the funeral.
She stood in the back, out of sight. And she only spoke to Isre Din.
If you need anything, she said to him, on impulse more than anything, reach out to a Scout named Inexplicable.
Four years passed with no communication, so she assumed Isre Din was out of her life forever. But last week, he requested a meeting.
The door to the Octopus opens. It’s too bright to see Isre clearly until he’s right in front of her, looking nervy, like he might bolt any second.
He’s different now than the boy she spoke to at that funeral. The playful quality is gone from his face. His hair is cut too short to show a curl. He stands very straight.
“Your—-” he starts, and she thinks he’s about to call her “Your Grace,” the honorific typically used for the Sword’s family—-which she can’t allow. So she interrupts him.
“Inexplicable is the name I told you to use,” she says. “Sit.”
He blinks at her for a moment, then sits. He looks around the Octopus, his eyes landing on the bartender, who’s picking at his cuticles.
“Aki,” she calls out. “If you’re not busy . . . mind strumming a little?”
Aki startles at the sound of her voice, but nods. He reaches under the bar for his lute, then sits down to tune it. He’s not a skilled musician, but the sound will offer them some privacy.
“Better?” she says to Isre.
“Yes. Thank you.”
He’s still so upright.
“Are you a soldier, Isre?” she asks.
He looks surprised. “Yes. Enlisted after the Getty attack. I’m a technician, though.”
She nods. She was too hazy with grief to notice, at the time, but there was a surge in enlistment numbers after the Sword died, and a surge in bloodshed, too, as Cedre sought revenge against the Talusar .
. . unsuccessfully. She wonders what Isre Din was planning on doing before his brother was killed and his mother betrayed Cedre.
She’s willing to bet it wasn’t joining the army.
“Are you really a Scout?” Isre says, with just a hint of the scorn she expects from a soldier.
It was a huge scandal when the Sword chose a Scout to raise her second child.
Keen liked to say the late Sword—-Annika was her name—-was more interesting than people gave her credit for.
All she ever said to Elegy about it was that there was strategic advantage in having one child raised by an “outsider.”
“Scouting is the family business,” Elegy replies tartly.
“And you’d rather be doing that than fighting Talusar in the army, like you were before?”
“There are a lot of ways to fight the Talusar,” she snaps. “And dealing with bullshit military hierarchy is a waste of my time. What can I do for you?”
He hesitates a little. Behind him, Aki starts plucking the lute strings, sending gentle music toward them.
“I need to go to Valla,” Isre says. “I thought . . . if you knew a Scout named Inexplicable, then you might know someone who can take me there. I didn’t realize that Scout would be you, but . . .”
“You need to go to Valla,” she repeats. “Why?”
He hesitates again. His perfect posture collapses a little.
“Isre, I’m not going to help you until you tell me what’s going on. So you may as well just spill it.”
“A month ago, I got a message,” he says. “Asked for a meeting, and referred to something only someone close to me would know. I couldn’t help myself—-I went.” He lifts his gaze to hers. “It was Kesia.”
She feels like someone just tightened the strings on a corset, forcing her to straighten, to stiffen. Making it hard for her to breathe.
“You went to a meeting with a traitor,” she says.
“I didn’t know it would be her.”
“Who else could it have been?” she demands, her voice low.
“I thought . . .” He sighs. “I thought it would be him.”
Him. He means Theren.
“He’s dead,” Elegy says.
“No, that’s the thing.” Isre laughs a little, and it’s tinged with desperation. “He’s not. That’s what Kesia wanted to tell me. We’ve been misled. He’s not dead. He’s alive, and he’s a prisoner in Rava Vidar’s house, and I have to—-”
He chokes a little. She can hear the end of the sentence anyway. I have to get him out.
“She must have been lying to you,” Elegy says. “Manipulating you.”
“I asked her for proof. She had this.” Isre reaches into his pocket and takes out a photograph.
It’s been a long time since Elegy touched a photograph. Not many people in Losan bother with them. Paper—-especially this kind of paper—-is a precious resource, and film is even scarcer. Among the Talusar, it’s more common, since there are only so many ways to document things without elixir.
Elegy holds it like it’s hammered gold, cupping it in her palm.
The image is grainy and grayscale, but she recognizes in it the young man who knelt before her in the Getty.
Only . . . he’s not quite that young man anymore.
His face is rough with a beard. He’s not looking at the camera; he’s touching his mouth, an idle movement.
There are two straight lines tattooed between his first two knuckles—-tattoos he didn’t have before.
Theren Forint. Alive.
Her ears are ringing. She can still see him in that antechamber before the ceremony, his eyes lowered. Hey, eyes up, she said to him, then, to make him look at her. She almost wants to say it again now, to the still image of him.
Her Knight is alive.
This can’t be a coincidence, Deji telling her Rava’s planning something big, and Kesia telling Isre—-after four years—-that his brother is still alive. But she doesn’t know what the connection is, or what Kesia’s motivation could possibly be.
There’s only one way to find out.
“So,” Isre says. “Can you get me to Valla?”
“You want to try to infiltrate Rava Vidar’s house?” she says distantly.
“I know it sounds insane. I know I’ll have to stay in the city for a while. Get to know it. Make a plan.” He scratches behind his ear. “But I have to try. Okay? I have to try.”
She nods.
She doesn’t think Isre should try. He doesn’t know how to deal with the Talusar. Doesn’t know how to sneak into Valla and watch Rava Vidar’s house and figure out how to slip in and out unnoticed.
But she does. And maybe a part of her has been waiting for a reason to try.
“I’ll make arrangements,” she says.
They talk logistics. What time to leave, what day. What supplies he should bring. They agree to meet in a week’s time, and she watches him go.
But she’s not going to meet him in a week’s time.
She’s going to set out for Valla in the morning. Alone.