Chapter 31 #2
“Two hours,” Elegy says. “Our people have been keeping an eye out. So far no ships have launched, and there are no boats along the coast. So we don’t know how the Talusar plan to get Julia off the continent.”
General Thompson’s gaze fixes on Theren. “That’s why you’re here, Forint.”
“I—-” Theren’s voice comes out rougher than usual. “I’m not sure how I can help.”
“You were kidnapped from Cedre territory and brought to Talusar territory in an operation planned by Rava Vidar,” Thompson says. “We suspect this attack on Julia Martin was also planned by Rava Vidar, so it’s possible she’ll use some of the same strategies.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Theren asks.
“We can’t guarantee we’ll be right,” Elegy says, with the tone of someone who’s said this phrase before, or maybe heard it before, over and over again, until it became part of the fabric of her. “But we have to pick a path anyway.”
She looks over her shoulder at him, and as grief spikes through her he realizes it must have been Shir who said that to her. Not Shir her husband, though—-Shir her commanding officer.
“Okay,” Theren says, and he steps closer to the obsidian, looking over Elegy’s shoulder at the projected map, at the red dot that represents Julia Martin.
“After the Getty attack . . .” Theren begins, and Elegy stiffens.
Theren remembers the feeling of grit on his clothes, dirt and sand in every fold of skin; he remembers the bounce of the horse’s steps and sitting so close to Maeve that his sweaty shirt stuck to her.
He swallows down his shame at the memory of his own cowardice, the way it pricked at him and still pricks at him, and continues, “After the Getty attack, we traveled at least one hundred miles on horseback. Mostly at night.”
“Where did you go?” Elegy asks. “Do you remember anything about the direction you traveled? The landscape?”
Theren tries to think about the angle of the sun, coming up over the distant hills—-and then, when there were no hills left, just burning over the flat horizon as they stopped to sleep.
“Into the desert,” he says. “Northeast, I think. And then—-there were ships waiting for us, parked in the middle of nowhere. They flew us to Valla.”
He feels Arias’s eyes on his unsteady hands. Theren’s hands always give him away. He crosses his arms.
“So if this kidnapping is orchestrated by Rava, as we suspect,” Elegy says, “she’s stashed a ship somewhere outside of Naarm, and they’re headed there on foot.”
“The question is why,” General Thompson says. “Why not have the ships land somewhere close? Why travel such a long way to reach them?”
Theren says, “She’s playing to her strengths.”
“I’m sorry?”
But Elegy is nodding at him. “The Talusar fight better on the ground. Their ships are slower than ours. Let’s say Rava has a Talusar ship pick Julia Martin up right next to Naarm. We would launch in minutes, and catch up to their ship before they can even reach top speed.”
She’s getting more animated, gesturing as she talks. Her hands are elegant, for a soldier, for a Scout. Thin fingers, almost delicate.
“But if the pickup point is far enough away from our base and close enough to the Talusar border, her ship has a better chance of crossing into Talusar territory before we can catch her in the air. And we can’t pursue her across the border without asking for huge casualties.”
It’s true that Cedre soldiers are no match for the Talusar on foot.
Everyone knows that. Important Talusar soldiers, like the ones Rava would assign to this mission, all wear febra armor.
Febra armor, when worn by a Fevered soldier, channels the energy that a Fevered body produces into a shield.
The shield renders projectile weapons like bullets or arrows useless.
So a Cedre ship can’t do much damage to a pack of Talusar foot soldiers.
Instead, they have to land and engage the Talusar on the ground, where they’re always outmatched.
“So,” Arias says, picking up on Elegy’s logic, “Rava stashes a ship as close to the nearest Talusar border as possible, and then . . . her soldiers travel there, knowing that if we do happen to find them—-which is unlikely—-we’ll have to engage with them on foot, where we’ll be at a disadvantage.”
Elegy nods. “What’s the closest Talusar border to Austra, and how long will it take Julia Martin’s captors to walk there?”
“They won’t be on horseback?” Arias asks.
“For a last--minute mission on Austra? What would they do, catch feral ones and tame them?” Elegy says. “Doubtful. I think they’re on foot.”
General Thompson touches the obsidian with his first two fingers, and the map changes. Suddenly they’re looking at the southern hemisphere, and the general is pointing at a large island south of Austra.
“There’s a Talusar settlement on that island. Small, but once they get to it, they would be out of our reach,” he says. “It would be a short flight. I can ask Austra to fly along that border, but—-”
“But we don’t want Rava to know we’ve figured out their plan, or she’ll change it,” Elegy says. “How long do we have? How long a walk is it from the crash site to that pickup area?”
Arias holds one finger over the red dot that symbolizes Julia Martin’s crashed ship, and another finger over the point on Austra that’s closest to the nearest Talusar border. He squints.
“Half a day’s walk, maybe,” he says.
Theren thinks of the journey through the desert again.
The heat rising up from the land, even though the air was cool after dark.
He thinks of reaching that place in the desert where his mother revealed herself to be a traitor, the two Sparrows perched side by side nearby.
He never had much hope for escape. But once he was in the ship, he knew he was lost.
“Prioritize finding the ship,” Theren says, and he’s aware, suddenly, that he’s standing a little too close to Elegy, speaking over her shoulder.
She’s tense, her face angled just slightly toward him, so he can see the edge of her cheekbone.
He steps back, and adds, “If you get to their stashed ship before they do, you can ambush them. Once they’re in the air, though, they’re gone. ”
“Find the ship,” Elegy says, and she laughs. “Do you know how big Austra is? Finding that ship is like finding a single hair on a person’s head.”
“Not really, though. We know the area she’ll launch from. That narrows things down,” Arias points out. “And you and I are experienced at finding good launch spots.”
“Let’s go, then.” She pauses, and gives General Thompson a hesitant look. “That is . . . if the general approves.”
“You’re not a soldier,” General Thompson points out to her.
“But I am the right person to do this,” she replies. “And you know that.”
General Thompson sighs.
“As it happens, General Saetang invited you to Naarm Stronghold to review all the evidence they have of that Talusar attack. They said your . . . Scout expertise would be helpful,” he says.
“And they asked me if I would let someone fly you there. I doubt they’ll monitor your flight path.
So if you just happen to fly over a parked Talusar ship and then find yourself in the midst of a skirmish—-”
Elegy grins.
“I’ll have someone wake up Parekh,” General Thompson says. “How many people do you need?”
“Well, Arias and Parekh, of course. And . . .”
Then Elegy turns toward Theren, and there’s a little hesitation in the way she looks at him, like she’s not sure she can stand it. He’s not sure he can stand it, either, though maybe for a different reason.
In Talusar, he says to her, “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“I know you will,” she replies, in the same language. “That’s the whole problem.”
He knows from the last time they spoke that she doesn’t believe in her own destiny.
Or maybe that she’s afraid to believe in it, afraid of what it might mean.
It can’t be an accident that right after Shir’s death, she gave up her rank, her authority, her power.
And now she doesn’t want to give Theren an order because she knows he’ll obey it.
She doesn’t want that kind of authority over other people, the authority of the Hope of Cedre.
So he says, “Let me rephrase, then: I want to help you, if you’ll allow me to.”
She meets his eyes, then.
“All right.” Her voice softens. “I’ll allow you to.”