Chapter 36
Theren stands outside the interrogation room with Elegy beside him, looking through the mirror glass at Avka Becken. Parekh and Saetang are leaning against the wall right next to the glass, talking about a recent change to Cedrae ship mechanics. Parekh is biting her nails.
“What does she feel like to you?” Elegy asks him.
Sometimes he forgets that Elegy being inside his memories in the erczet meant she was within him. That she knows to talk about his Fever gifts not as seeing or perceiving, but as physical sensations.
He touches his fingertips to the glass and leans closer.
Avka Becken sits in a bare room. It’s small and square, with one window that looks out at the ocean, a table and chairs, a pitcher of water, and an orange.
Cedre’s laws are strict about the proper treatment of prisoners.
The orange is a sign of compliance with those laws.
He stares at it, a smear of color against the faultless white.
Avka’s hair, too, looks almost garish. Orange--red and still wet from the shower she took that morning. Her febra armor and boots are gone, soft Cedre fabrics replacing them.
“She’s brittle,” he tells Elegy. “Hard and consistent. Easy to read.”
Elegy frowns at the glass. She’s wearing a loose gray sweatshirt that keeps slipping off one of her shoulders, baring the defined ridge of her clavicle.
“Will you help me?” she asks him.
He’s put his abilities to use as a truthsayer countless times. Once Rava realized how deeply he could read people, she came to rely on him more than she had ever relied on Satka or even Nyx. But he’s never been asked before. Never felt like he had the right to say no.
“Of course, Your Grace,” he says.
The honorific chafes against her in the same way that the pronouns he selects in Talusar do.
She doesn’t like to acknowledge any status differences between her and anyone else.
But Theren prefers to be honest with himself about them.
If he isn’t, he’ll dwell on how it felt to touch her last night, the way she tasted and sounded and smelled—-a momentary lapse, for her; and for him, something unexpected and stolen.
She flips the deadbolt on the interrogation room door and steps into the room. He follows her. Avka’s eyes find him immediately, and there’s something eager in her, almost gleeful.
“You,” she says to him in Talusar, as if it’s his name. And then, to Elegy: “And who are you, exactly?”
“No one in particular,” Elegy replies. Theren pulls the empty chair across from Becken back from the table and offers it to Elegy. A moment too late, he realizes it was a mistake—-Becken’s eyes light up, like she’s realized something.
Elegy sits. “Did you wake with a headache? The substance I drugged you with is known for that.”
“I thought the Fever, in its wisdom, devoured all Cedrae substances,” Becken says. “Or is it only your elixir that disintegrates at the touch of our God?”
“Before we restored all of Cedre’s relics, we developed several powerful substances,” Elegy says, sounding like a museum docent. “A sedative, a healing ointment, and a truth serum, among them. They don’t require elixir, and they seem to stand up to your god just fine. Especially the truth serum.”
Fear is an unsteady, fluttering sensation.
Panic is electric. Theren searches Becken for either of them, and comes up empty.
Which is strange, really, because she’s a prisoner in Naarm Stronghold, with no reason to expect mercy.
They could wrench the truth from her by force.
They could execute her. They could keep her here for life.
But she’s not afraid.
“I can imagine a truth serum would be effective.” Avka crosses her legs, and leans back in her chair. “If a person actually knows anything of value.”
“You’re assuming, of course, that you’re the only prisoner we have.”
“It took a Talusar to bring me down, and I doubt there are many of him to go around.” She gestures at Theren, carelessly.
“I’m Cedre--born, you know,” he says, curious to know how she’ll react.
Not every Talusar feels this level of superiority over Cedre that Becken seems to; her confidence in Talusar supremacy seems to be accompanied by a borderline religious fervor.
And perhaps it is religious. The Talusar are the chosen people of the Fever, after all.
What he feels, instead of the embarrassment he expects at the revelation that a Cedre--born man beat her in a fight, is a stab of insight, like a ray of light piercing the clouds.
“I forgot about that. You were a Knight, weren’t you?” she says.
He leans back against the wall. Cold seeps through his shirt. “If you know me, then you know you can’t lie to me.”
“The only Knight left alive,” she says, as if he never spoke. “I wonder why that is.”
“You’re not going to provoke me by reminding me of my dead companions.”
“I’m shocked they’re letting you attend this little interview.” Her eyes are wide and wild. “Do they know who I am? Do they know what you spent the last few years doing?”
A cold weight settles on Theren’s chest that has nothing to do with Avka.
“You’re Primary Avka Becken, direct report of Ykev Talus,” Theren says flatly. “They know who you are. And I haven’t hidden anything from them.”
“That can’t be true. I’m sure you kept the most salacious details to yourself.”
Theren hears ringing. Avka Becken has a clenched--teeth smile, like she’s bracing against pain.
“Let’s play a game,” Elegy says to Becken, her voice colder than he’s ever heard it, “where I tell you what I suspect, and he tells me if I’m right.”
Becken says, “I’d rather not.”
“You have no choice.” Elegy sits back. “Recently, a group of Talusar soldiers invaded this base. They left behind a witness with a damaged memory. You kidnapped Julia Martin to keep her from restoring that man’s memory.”
Theren waits for a reaction—-any reaction. But Elegy may as well have spoken to Becken in English. She’s unaltered.
Becken presses her palms flat to the table. Her fingers are thicker at the knuckles and calloused, too, from splitting over and over. His own are the same. “Who’s Julia Martin?” she asks.
“Julia Martin” isn’t a Talusar name. It’s the name Julia chose after she came to Cedre, to ease her transition into Cedrae society. Maeve told him the name she was born with, once. He can’t remember it now.
Elegy sits forward, like she’s going to argue with Becken, but Theren sets a hand on her shoulder, stalling her. Becken’s eyes are steady on his. Her hands are steady on the table. The feeling of her is steady, too.
“She doesn’t know anything,” he says. “That’s why she didn’t refuse to drink the vial of sedative. Why she’s not afraid of truth serum. She doesn’t know anything, and it’s by design. Ykev Talus intentionally kept information from you so that we couldn’t force you to share it, didn’t he?”
There’s something there—-a little leap in her chest, like he’s wrong about something, but not completely wrong. He breathes in through his nose, and out. He has to stay calm. He has to think.
They all thought the Talusar attack and the kidnapping were planned by Rava Vidar. But Avka Becken doesn’t report to Rava Vidar; she reports to Ykev Talus. He assumed that both of those things couldn’t be true at the same time. But what if he was wrong?
His memory of the meeting between Ykev and Rava, of the rain--spattered windowsill and the warm air, flashes in his mind.
“Rava and Ykev have an alliance,” he says, testing it out. “A temporary alliance to accomplish a particular purpose. That’s what they were discussing the day you and I met.”
He’s still surprised, sometimes, by how obvious it is when the truth is revealed. Avka’s expression is a study in control, mouth a flat line. But she can’t hide the way the declaration slides into her mind without friction.
“But you don’t know what that particular purpose is,” he says.
“No, I don’t.” Becken smiles again, coldly this time. “But I know it will be catastrophic.” And then she bends her head to Elegy, in a mockery of respect. “Your Grace.”
Elegy’s body jerks as if she’s been slapped.
“The Hope of Cedre and her coward Knight.” Becken touches a hand to her chest. “What an honor.”
“I think we’re finished here,” Elegy says. She gets to her feet, the chair squealing on the tile. Parekh is already unlocking the door to the interrogation room and opening it, so that Elegy can walk right out.
He can’t bear to feel whatever it is Elegy feels now, and he can’t bear to look at her, either. It’s one thing for her to know the truth about him and Rava, and another for her to hear someone degrade him for it. I’m sure you kept the most salacious details to yourself.
But all Elegy says is: “All right?”
He nods. Elegy steps closer, and takes his hand—-not holding it, exactly, but gripping it to send warmth into his fingers.
“Eyes up,” she says gently, in Talusar, and he forces himself to look at her.
“Parekh and Saetang don’t speak Talusar,” she says. “I’ll only translate what’s relevant. And her petty jabs at you aren’t relevant.” She releases his hand. “No matter what Larke says, I think you need to meet with Julia Martin as soon as we get home. Okay?”
He nods. She turns away to talk to Saetang.
The ringing in his ears is gone.