Chapter 26
All right, so . . .” Parin—-Hela’s friend, fellow Scout, and trustworthy confidant—-scratches behind his ear. “Remind me again where the hell you found this thing?”
“In a cave north of here,” Hela says.
They sit at the little table in the trailer, their knees touching. Between them is the plant Hela retrieved for Dr. Canterbury, who still has no idea that she was successful.
She’s been friends with Parin since Keen died and she had to start making her own Scout friends instead of tagging along with him.
Parin’s Scout code name is “Incorrigible,” which is at odds with his quiet, thoughtful personality—-but it’s not her job to criticize anyone else’s Scout name, with hers being “Dreadful” and all.
Hela glances at the back of the trailer, where Elegy’s old trunk still stands open, fabric spilling out of it.
She had to dig deep to find white clothes for the erczet this morning.
Hela wouldn’t agree to an erczet if someone paid her—-why invite pain that isn’t yours into your mind?
Life is painful enough already—-but she’s not Elegy.
Parin tosses his hair out of his eyes—-a pointless exercise—-and says: “And the windows are all blocked off because . . . ?”
Hela covered all the windows with heavy blankets and wood scraps that morning. “Because it doesn’t like sunlight.”
“It’s a plant, though.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
Parin nods, as if he’s considering this. There’s a tattoo on his neck—-flowering branches that follow the contours of his throat.
“What happened the last time you touched it?” he says.
“I hallucinated.” She frowns. “I think. I saw a woman, anyway.”
“Was she hot?”
Hela smacks Parin’s arm.
“What?” he says defensively. “If she was hot, isn’t that evidence that you hallucinated her? You wouldn’t hallucinate a woman who wasn’t hot.”
“Yeah, she was hot,” Hela admits. “I just want you to observe me when I touch the thing, and, I don’t know. Be there to shake me if I go into a trance or something.”
“Got it.” Parin folds his hands in front of him. “Well—-fire at will, Tausia.”
Hela looks at the plant, stern. She’s been handling it with gloves since the day she saw the woman, watering it sparingly and trying to keep it out of direct sunlight.
She’s still not ready to hand it over to Dr. Canterbury.
For all she knows it’s some kind of Talusar biological weapon, and it’s dangerous in the wrong hands.
Maybe it’s dangerous in her hands.
She shakes her head a little. It’s just a plant. She props her elbow up on the table, and rests her fingertips lightly on one of the leaves, the one that’s stretched out toward her like a reaching hand.
This time it’s the woman she sees first, not the room she’s in—-lending some credence to Parin’s theory that she’s hallucinating. Hela hasn’t been on a date in a really long time.
She’s wearing gloves, the woman. Black ones, tight to her hands. -Well--made—-Hela knows quality when she sees it, though her own trailer is rickety and her pants are patched at the knees.
The woman is sitting at the edge of a stone path, in the same greenhouse she was in last time Hela saw her. Hela recognizes the lush vines dangling from the glass ceiling, and the white band that stretches across the sky beyond it—-a day sky, this time, pale blue.
When the woman sees Hela, she jumps back, bracing herself on the stone path.
She’s dressed strangely, Hela notices—-in layers that make no sense to Hela’s eyes, leggings with long shorts over them, and a tunic over both, maybe a coat and a vest. All the fabrics are lightweight, their colors dark and rich and setting off her cream--colored skin nicely.
The woman comes to her feet. She’s Elegy’s height—-above average, but not as tall as Hela. Her hair is such a dark brown it’s almost black.
“Who are you?” Hela says.
“Be more specific,” the woman says. Her accent isn’t one Hela recognizes, but then, Hela has never spoken to any Talusar outside of Vidara territory.
“Okay,” Hela says, drawing the word out. “Your name?”
“Akara,” the woman says. “And you?”
“Tausia. But people call me ‘Hela.’ ”
“Well met,” Akara says, with a bob of her head.
The response seems ingrained—-good manners.
If Hela had to guess, she would say the woman is high--status, but she’s not addressing Hela like an inferior, and Talusar is always very specific about status.
The terms she’s chosen are the ones for uncertainty about social standing, and Hela knows she’s being rude by using them right back—-refusing to clarify—-but she has no interest in telling this woman she’s a poor Scout who is currently, at this very moment, sitting in a trailer.
“How are we here right now?” Hela says, gesturing to the greenhouse.
“The plant is facilitating it,” Akara replies.
“Yeah, I figured that part out. But how?”
“I’m not sure about the exact biological mechanism that allows for it,” Akara says, and Hela laughs.
“You’re being intentionally obtuse.”
“Yes,” Akara agrees.
“Why?”
Akara brings a gloved hand up to her mouth, as if to bite her fingernails. Then she seems to remember the glove, and lowers her hand again.
“We have to be careful what we say,” she says, “because there are those who see the future, and we don’t want to reveal anything to them.”
Hela puzzles over this for a moment. She doesn’t want to sound like an idiot, but she has no idea what that means.
“Um,” Hela says. “What? Are you talking about the augurs?”
“Augurs, yes.” Akara looks relieved. “But they don’t see all things at all times. Certain meetings, certain conversations, certain events—-they prompt new visions. We must be careful not to provoke them. The less we say, the less risk there is of that happening.”
Hela has a thousand questions to ask, and also none at all, her mind blank. This doesn’t make sense. It feels like a dream.
“Why are we here?” she asks, eventually.
“I have a task for you, Hela,” Akara says. “It’s the only thing I’m permitted to reveal. The only safe thing to say, in a time when nothing is safe to say.”
Hela stares at her.
“Find the one who makes it bloom,” Akara says.
And the greenhouse disappears.
When she opens her eyes again, Parin is sitting upright, his hands braced against the edge of the table. His eyes are wide.
“What?” she says. “What happened?”
“It got really bright and the leaves all reached for you at once,” Parin says. “What happened on your end?”
“Hot girl,” Hela says. “She spoke to me this time.”
“In what language?”
Hela worries at her lower lip. “In Talusar.”
Parin lets out a low whistle, and leans forward again, scrutinizing the plant.
“You’ve looked it up, obviously,” he says.
“Obviously. The library had nothing.”
“It seems to me you gotta find out more about this thing,” Parin says. “Because if it’s some kind of weird Talusar experiment, you have to tell someone.”
She thinks of Elegy, who is right at this moment letting someone pour Theren Forint’s memories into her mind. She doesn’t want to add to Elegy’s already considerable burdens.
“And if it’s not a weird Talusar experiment?” Hela looks toward the back of the trailer, at the box of artifacts that Keen insisted were alien in origin. She thinks of the glowing band across Akara’s sky, like the rings of Saturn.
“If it’s not, then . . .” Parin shrugs. “You still have to know, don’t you?”
Hela nods, looking down at the green--veined leaves of the mystery plant.
“I’ll set up a meeting with the guy who gave me the job,” she says. “Will you come with me?”
Parin doesn’t hesitate. “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”