Chapter 20 #2
Theren shakes his head.
“When she was in the army, she was in charge of search and rescue with Shir Alexios. We met because my squad was ambushed just outside of Nusanta and I was the only one who survived. I sent out a distress call, and search and rescue answered. Saved my life and took me back to the base to recover.”
They walk side by side. Theren clasps his hands behind him, at the small of his back, like he’s in parade rest even now. Arias pushes through the front door with his hip, a wry smile on his face.
“Recover.” Arias snorts. “Really they wanted a debriefing, only I couldn’t give it to them. Everything that happened . . . it was all weird and jumbled. Like somebody jostled a puzzle and the pieces all separated. So they gave me three months of leave, and I spent it gardening on Cedre Station.”
“Gardening?”
“Badass, I know.”
They walk across the hard--packed dirt and into the orchard. Theren still has scrapes on his cheeks from walking through here the day before. Today, he ducks under the branches, following Arias to a wooden bench that stands between two lemon trees.
“And gardening . . . fixed it?”
“I have no idea what ‘fixing’ it would even mean.” Arias sits on the bench, and Theren stands across from him.
“But it helped a little. The more I could unclench, the more things made sense. It wasn’t like I suddenly remembered better—-more that I could see how the pieces were supposed to fit together.
I put them in some kind of order, as best I could, and that’s what the army needed me to do. ”
“So, what,” Theren says. “You think if we go running together, I’ll be able to give coherent intelligence?”
“Mostly I think if we go running together, I’ll be in much better shape. But yeah, I think that if you sleep well, eat well, and get some exercise, you might finally be able to relax.”
Theren runs a hand over the bark of the lemon tree. It’s smooth, almost like skin.
Arias asks, “So that man Gylle was showing you the other day—-what was the problem there, exactly?”
“I think . . . I think I know his face from the time when Maeve Martin had just died. I couldn’t—-” Theren pauses, not sure how to explain. “At that point, I wasn’t really . . . there.”
“I understand.” Most of the time when people say that, Theren thinks they don’t. But Arias really might. “Let’s skip that whole stretch of time. When did the haze start to lift?”
He thinks of the paper covering one wall of his new quarters. He divided it, not by month, or by season, but by event. Maeve’s death, to start. And then—-
“I met Rava’s mother, Ileth Vidar.” Theren’s hand, when he brings it up to cup the back of his neck, is trembling. “And she decided to help Rava bring me to heel.”
Arias lifts his eyes to Theren’s. “How?”
Theren runs his thumb along the vine tattooed on his left hand.
“Ileth is . . . we call them ‘sutora.’ ” He drags his fingernail over one of the leaves inked on his hand. “She creates memories. Or alters them. She made me remember things I’d never done. Horrible things. She . . . broke my reality, she . . .”
He can’t tell if it’s Arias’s gut that’s churning, or his own. He feels separate again, distant from himself.
He doesn’t think about those memories, the ones Ileth created, if he can help it. He buried them as deep as they could go.
“Rava got me away from her eventually.” Theren looks down at his hands. “She taught me to recognize the false memories.”
It wasn’t that difficult, once he knew what to look for. Ileth was good at her work, but she didn’t understand Theren’s gift, so the memories from her never felt like he was actually in them.
“Rava promised to keep me away from Ileth, if I was . . . cooperative. So.”
“So you were,” Arias says softly.
The wind blows hot against Theren’s cheek. He nods.
“Let’s talk about what you did for her, then,” Arias says. “Rava called you a truthsayer, but obviously you weren’t a typical Talusar truthsayer.”
“Deception is easy for me to read. Having me around meant people couldn’t lie to her,” he says. “Allies. Potential allies. But more than that—-Rava was raised to be her mother’s muscle, not a politician. She’s awkward and charmless. I helped her to navigate people.”
“What kind of people? Ileth?”
Theren hears something ringing in the distance. An alarm, maybe, or a siren—-
“Sometimes. Her underlings, sometimes. And mostly—-the family. The Talus family.”
“She needs help navigating her own family?”
Theren nods. The ringing is getting louder.
“They’re all devout worshipers of the Fever, and she’s .
. . not. And they see her as a brute. Even those absurd legends about her among the Talusar, about her containing the souls of ancient warriors, they’re designed to make her feared. Set apart, but not equal.”
“Absurd legends,” Arias repeats. “How absurd? I mean, I know she’s not housing a bunch of souls—-”
Theren shakes his head.
“I only have suspicions, based on what I saw,” he says. “But I think . . . I think Rava is just an epocha, and Ileth invented the lie about her daughter channeling ancient warriors so she could justify keeping Rava out of the monastery.”
His hands are shaking. Arias gets up, reaches for him. This time, Theren lets him. Arias squeezes his fingers and releases them, squeezes them and releases them. It’s more soothing than Theren expected.
“I got too close to the truth once,” Theren says, and his mouth feels clumsy, hard to move. “She didn’t take it well.”
Arias opens his mouth to ask another question, then squints at Theren. “I can see we’ve reached our stopping point for the day.”
“I don’t know why this keeps happening.”
“I do,” Arias says sadly. “It’s all right. You did well. Let me walk you back to your room.”