Chapter 34
Oh boy,” Hela says, looking over the rim of her mug at Isre Din, little brother of Theren Forint. “You’re adorable.”
Isre looks startled, reminding her of a deer in the woods who just caught sight of a predator. She rolls her eyes.
“Just sit,” she says.
He does. He’s not short, but he is trim and narrow through the shoulders, which makes him look smaller than he is. His hair is just long enough to curl at the ends.
This meeting came at a good time. She can think of exactly two people who qualify as a “traitor’s son.” One of them is on some kind of mission with Elegy in Austra. And the other one is right here, about to help her contact Kesia Forint—-the traitor in question.
They’re sitting under an awning in Losan’s most central market, a few blocks away from where Hela spent her adolescence.
It’s late afternoon, but the sun is still hot, and Hela is wearing cutoffs and a tank top, like she would have at sixteen.
Across from her is an old woman running a lemonade stand that’s looking more appealing by the second.
But she still has to finish her tea—-hot, despite the temperature outside. She doesn’t believe in icing it.
“Want something?” Hela says to Isre.
He shakes his head. “I’m fine, thanks. Just wondering what I’m doing here. Primary Arias wasn’t forthcoming.”
“I give you a state--mandated reprieve from work and you don’t even want to take advantage of it?” She sips from her teacup, and sets it gently down on its saucer. “They really have you grunts brainwashed over there in Losan Stronghold, don’t they?”
“Fine,” Isre says. He disappears inside the café, and Hela drinks the rest of her tea in one swallow.
She has the plant waiting in her Finch around the corner, but she’s not going to ask him about it yet. Contacting Kesia Forint for a meeting is more important.
When Isre returns, she’s on her feet. She points across the street at a narrow alley. “That’s where we’re headed.”
Isre looks at the mug in his hands, and then raises his eyebrows at her.
“Oh, you’ll bring it back, don’t worry about it,” Hela says, flapping her hand at him.
Isre looks hesitant. “Why do you need to get in touch with Kesia, anyway?”
“I think she knows about an alien landing.”
“You’re messing with me.”
“I would love to tell you I am,” she says.
“Truly. And sure, maybe it’s not aliens, per se, maybe it’s some kind of top--secret Talusar military tech pieced together by Imbued soldier children that will completely wreck Cedre if it comes to fruition.
But your mom knows about it, and I intend to speak with her. ”
Isre stares at her for a few seconds, then takes a swig of his coffee. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“And if I don’t want you looking at my messages?”
“Trust me, I have no interest in your diary or your assorted romantic liaisons. I need a single point of origin for the message your mother sent you to arrange a meeting. That’s all.”
Isre sighs.
“Screw it,” he says. “Let’s go.”
They cross the street, sidestepping a group of children playing with marbles and a man trying to get the chain back on his bicycle. Over their heads, laundry hangs from a clothesline that stretches between the two buildings.
Up ahead is a door with peeling blue paint and a sign on the knob that reads open. Before she reaches it, she turns back to him.
“Just so you know,” she says, “this place isn’t strictly . . . aboveboard. So this isn’t something you should mention to your soldier friends.”
Isre gives her a look. “You know, I kind of figured that from the ‘walking down an alley that smells like piss’ part.”
Hela sniffs. She didn’t notice the acrid smell in the air, which makes her worry about various other facets of her life. Shoes, for example.
She pushes the blue door open and walks into the shop.
It smells musty, with a hint of stray dog.
The stone walls are painted, but the paint is faded and flaking, as blue as the door.
At one end of the cramped room is a wooden counter, also painted blue.
A neon sign on the wall behind the counter advertises “elixir repair” with the elixir symbol—-an old--fashioned bottle with a cork stopper—-next to it.
A man emerges from the back room like he’s materializing from nothing. He’s far taller than she is, his face shrouded by a red hood. He wears a long red coat of the same material, heavy and thick around his shoulders.
She should have warned Isre about his flair for the dramatic.
“Dreadful,” the man says, in a low, drawling voice.
“Recordkeeper,” she replies, inclining her head. “I was hoping you might help me with something. For a fair price.”
The Recordkeeper waits.
“My friend here received a message,” she says, gesturing to Isre. “I’d like to find out its point of origin.”
“This information is not yours.”
“That’s true.” The first rule of dealing with the Recordkeeper: don’t lie to him. “But I’d like to access it anyway, with his permission.”
“You are prepared to pay?”
Because the Recordkeeper only deals in information, it’s also the only thing he’ll accept as payment. Hela already knows what to offer him.
“Of course,” she says. “I came to offer you, not a discovery, but a mystery.”
She reaches into the bag at her side and takes out a box small enough to fit in her palm. She unlatches it, and holds it out to the Recordkeeper.
Inside it is a leaf from the mystery plant. Hela didn’t cut it off—-it fell the other day, in the aftermath of the encounter with Dr. Canterbury. It’s shriveled in death, but it still emits a soft green light, unlike any plant she’s ever seen on Earth.
The Recordkeeper’s fingers reach for it, and stop just shy of touching it.
“You say it’s a mystery,” he says.
“I can’t identify the plant this leaf is from,” she says. “And I don’t know how it survives, since the sun seems to hurt it. I know almost nothing about it, in fact.”
“And why should I accept a mystery as payment?”
“Mysteries are . . . perched at the very edge of knowledge,” Hela says. She thought about this for a while, how to make it sound poetic, the way the Recordkeeper likes. “Where our knowledge fails, we have lingering questions. And those questions are the most interesting thing we have.”
The Recordkeeper does love for things to be interesting.
He seems to consider this for a moment. Then he reaches under the counter and takes out a metal object, egg--shaped, about the size of his palm. It’s striped with concentric circles, and one of them is a seam. When he opens the egg along that seam, there’s a needle nestled inside it.
“Stab your finger on that needle,” the Recordkeeper says to Isre.
“Um,” Isre says. “What?”
Hela taps the edge of the egg. “Stabby stabby. Now.”
Isre sighs, puts his index finger over the needle in the egg, and presses it down until it breaks the skin. Blood bubbles out of the wound, and he takes his hand away.
“What?” he says, when he sees her disgusted face.
“Needles gross me out.”
“I’ll cancel the acupuncture appointment I made for you, then.”
That surprises her. She laughs as the Recordkeeper flips the reader closed around Isre’s blood sample.
“The date of the message in question?” he asks Isre.
“February twenty--eighth.”
The egg starts to quiver, almost like a chick is about to hatch from it, as it distills the elixir from Isre’s blood sample.
She listens for the hum as it feeds the elixir into a vial of base liquid also contained within the egg—-that’s what the Recordkeeper will inject.
Whatever illegal modifications he made to his own elixir allow him to trace the origin of any message in his bloodstream, no matter how old.
The Recordkeeper produces a quill that was tucked into his sleeve. The metal feather is long and thin, curved at the end like a bowstring. The Recordkeeper bows his head, and starts to write.
Hela can’t see the glow of the message he’s writing, but she follows the nib of the quill across the counter just fine. It’s a useful skill for a Scout, to know what other people are reading.
Luckily, this message is in all capital letters.
NEED TO MEET YOU. IT’S URGENT.
SLEEP TIGHT. I’LL SEE YOU IN THE PALE MORNING.
The Recordkeeper’s head tilts. “In the pale morning?”
“It’s . . . a reference to a private joke,” Isre says. “It’s what told me who the message was from.”
“I see,” the Recordkeeper says. He fumbles under the counter for a scrap of paper and a pen that’s stained blue with spilled ink. Then he picks up the pen with his left hand and the quill with his right, and writes the same numbers with both, at the same time.
“Impressive,” Isre says.
Hela almost curses out loud when she sees the sequence of numbers come together. They’re coordinates, and she recognizes some of them . . . because she was just there. Or close to there, anyway.
Wherever Kesia Forint sent this message from, it’s not far from Dr. Canterbury’s dubious estate.
The Recordkeeper finishes and tucks his quill into his sleeve and his pen under the counter. He picks up the box with the shriveled leaf inside it and slides it into a hidden pocket in his robes. Then he bobs his head to her.
She bobs her head back, takes the paper, and says, “Thank you, Recordkeeper.”
He turns to disappear into the void again, but right before he does, he says, “You are welcome, Tausia Helasz.”
She waits until she and Isre are in the alley again before she says anything.
“Well,” Isre says. “That guy was weird.”
“Yeah, but at least he’s predictably weird.
” Most of the people she deals with as a Scout are odd in one way or another.
Some are frightening, and some are harmless, but all of them have their quirks.
She holds up the scrap of paper with the coordinates written on it and says, “I can’t believe I gotta go back to that shithole. ”
“What is it?”