Chapter 39
Elegy leaves General Thompson’s office with fatigue settling deep into her body.
Don’t trust the horse! the general said to her by way of farewell, quoting the memory--addled witness to the Naarm attack, and Elegy suspects it will become a joke throughout the base by week’s end.
One thing she misses about living among soldiers is how they face the darkness: head-on, and with a laugh at the ready.
She wishes she had one at the ready now. She has a meeting with Larke in twenty minutes, and there’s dread humming in her body. Right now, Julia Martin is with Theren, restoring his missing memory. Right now, they’re all inching closer to whatever it is that Rava Vidar is planning.
On the way to the veil room, Elegy stops by Losan Stronghold’s news pavilion.
Early in Cedre’s life, when resources were especially limited, the pavilions were the most important places in Cedre, the places where people could gather to ask for help, or to offer it, or find out about community events.
They still serve that purpose, but now the national news dominates—-especially if it’s entertaining.
At Losan Stronghold, the pavilion is centered around an obsidian stone wide enough to park a Finch on top of it. The stone is surrounded by a wall just high enough for people to lean against as they watch the holograms move.
She slows her steps as she passes through. It’s crowded here, the soldiers of Losan Stronghold gathered at the end of their day shift. She turns to the side to slip through the crowd, muttering “excuse me” as she pushes her way past people.
She’s so busy navigating the sea of people that she doesn’t even notice what they’re all watching until she’s close to the wall.
The images are grainy and a little blocky, but still, she recognizes the pale, glowing shape of Theren Forint with his sword held aloft.
It’s only after a few seconds that she identifies herself, bent low behind him, spear in hand.
Across from them are the hulking man Arias stabbed from behind, and Avka Becken.
This is the surveillance footage from the rescue. She distantly remembers the Eye drifting around the forest, drawn there by the chaos.
Elegy has never watched herself fight before. She didn’t feel graceful while doing it. She felt frantic, like a mouse scrambling to get out of a trap.
She leans forward, her elbows on the low wall, as the Elegy of two nights ago thrusts the spear, and it comes so close to Theren, finding the air right along his rib cage to force her opponent to dodge it.
In the same moment, Theren slams his sword down hard on Becken’s with brutal strength, making her visibly grunt with surprise.
She doesn’t look elegant in the footage, exactly, but there’s something about the way that she and Theren work together that looks almost choreographed. He moves, and she moves. He shifts one way, and she shifts the other way.
There’s something about it that unmoors her.
“How long have they been training together? I thought she was recovering from a nervous breakdown the last few years, not learning how to fight,” she hears someone near her ask, and Elegy twitches in response, but doesn’t look their way. She doesn’t want anyone to recognize her.
“I don’t think they have trained together, is the thing,” someone else replies. “I’ve got a cousin who works at the hospital. Said the Knight escaped Valla just a few weeks ago, turned up all covered in gore.”
“Can’t be true,” the first voice says. “I mean, look at them.”
Elegy watches the big soldier fall to Parekh’s blade, and Theren turns on Becken to fight her alone. In the moment, Elegy considered helping him, but it only took a few seconds to abandon that idea. Theren fighting one--on--one is hard to look away from.
She steps back the second the fight is done.
She doesn’t need to see what comes next—-her putting a hand on Theren’s neck.
She can still feel the ghost of that touch in her fingers, his hot skin, the prickle of his hair.
And the way he held her there, a desperate clutch of his hand, like he couldn’t bear for her to let go.
Uneasy, she continues on to the veil room.
This veil room—-the most secure one in Losan Stronghold—-is bright and clean. Sunlight spills through the skylight overhead, making the veil’s arch gleam. The veil itself scatters bright colors in every direction, like a prism.
Elegy steps through it, keeping her mouth closed so she doesn’t breathe it in. The fabric brushes over her face like wind. Larke appears in front of her, gazing at something in the distance that Elegy can’t see.
She looks exhausted. Even Elegy, unfamiliar with Larke’s usual expressions, can see that. It’s in the way she stands, in the half--focus of her eyes.
“Hello,” she says to Elegy.
There’s no “Your Grace” here, when it’s just the two of them.
No protocol. The last time they were alone together was right after Shir’s death.
Larke asked Elegy to come back to Cedre Station with her to put on a show—-to inspire confidence in the new regime after their mother’s death.
Elegy, then barely able to think straight, just told her she didn’t believe in prophecy, and she was leaving.
For once, Larke didn’t argue. She just assured Elegy that she would take care of arranging her exit. Elegy thinks of that brisk but oddly compassionate reaction now. At the time, it was what she needed most, and Larke gave it to her without a second thought.
She wishes that was the Larke standing in front of her now. But Larke’s jaw is even more set than usual. Not a good sign.
“Here she is,” Larke says, her voice quiet. “The hero of the hour.”
Elegy looks up at the skylight, searching for a reply that doesn’t make things worse. The sky over Losan is a rich blue dotted with clouds. It’ll probably be a beautiful sunset.
“Julia’s safe. That’s what matters.”
Larke rolls her eyes. “Yes, Julia is safe. And currently disobeying one of my direct orders, I assume at your behest.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Did I or did I not tell you that Specialist Gylle needed to approve any further meetings between Julia Martin and Theren Forint?” Larke’s voice is getting louder. “I believe I did. So then please explain why Ms. Martin appeared at Theren Forint’s door a half hour ago.”
Elegy keeps her expression passive. “I’m sure Julia just wants to talk to him about her daughter. He was close with her in Valla.”
“Bullshit,” Larke snaps. “Stop lying to me, Elegy. I know you didn’t just happen to fly over that Talusar ship in Austra, I know you arranged for Julia Martin and Theren Forint to meet this afternoon so she could look into his mind, I know your sister is visiting Talusar sympathizers out in the desert.
I’m far more observant than you suppose and far less stupid than you imagine. ”
“Fine.” Elegy crosses her arms, and steps closer to Larke, stretching the limits of the veil. “I’ll tell you the truth, then: you’re trying to control what you don’t understand, and if you could just stop focusing on the wrong things—-”
“And you think you know what the ‘wrong things’ are?” Larke laughs.
“You spend four years fucking around in the desert with Tausia Helasz, catching criminals and drinking whiskey, and then you come back and you know everything about our enemies? You know better than the person whose entire life has been preparing them for fighting the Talusar?”
“Your entire life has been about a political position,” Elegy says.
“Not about the Talusar. You’ve never fought a Talusar soldier, you’ve never gone to Talusar country, you don’t know a goddamn thing about our enemy that you haven’t read in a brief.
I do. And instead of listening to me, you spend all your time playing these ridiculous political games—-”
“Oh, sure. Elegy Ahn would never play games.” Larke snorts.
“You’re the one who undermined me at Theren Forint’s hearing.
Who confirmed the rumors that you are the great, prophesied savior of Cedre only when it was most convenient for you.
Who has been ignoring my orders, and lying to me, and scheming behind my back! ”
Elegy says, “The one time I did what you said, you used me as a fucking puppet for your Restorationist agenda without my permission. Forgive me for not being eager to repeat the experience.-”
“I spent four years apologizing for your absence and your silence,” Larke says.
“And in return, I received blame from every direction. Larke Rosyk, who’s keeping her poor bereaved sister in an attic somewhere.
Larke Rosyk, who’s lost control of Cedre’s future.
Larke Rosyk, who can’t even get her sister’s loyalty, so why should anyone else give it to her? ”
“I’m sorry my grief was so inconvenient for you.”
Larke doesn’t respond right away. Instead, she shakes her head at Elegy like she’s dealing with an incorrigible child or a puppy that just chewed her slippers. Elegy hates it far more than she has ever hated a word out of Larke’s mouth.
“I know exactly what you’re doing, and I won’t allow it,” Larke says. “I’m going to do what I should have done from the start. I’m going to approve the use of truth serum—-”
Elegy imagines Theren Forint in an interrogation room, the serum forcing him to talk about Rava, about what happened to him in her house, about what he survived—-
Her anger is sudden and intense. “No fucking way.”
“—-and you, meanwhile, will run everything you do past me first, including whatever it is you’re doing through Tausia Helasz—-”
“No.”
Elegy’s voice is louder now, deeper. She sounds both strange and familiar to herself. She sounds like their mother.
And it seems like Larke hears it, too, because she goes still.
“You,” Elegy says, “are not going to add to his suffering.”
Larke hesitates. There’s a glint in her eyes that Elegy doesn’t like.