Chapter 42
Elegy watches Theren pass through the gate to Losan Stronghold—-the guard now recognizes him on sight—-and disappear into the dark, his hands in his pockets. She sighs, and leans back against Hela’s Finch, which is still hot from the sun. Hela leans next to her, her arms crossed.
Theren and Hela talked for a while about the strange, verdant room where the plant transported them both.
For having solved a mystery, Hela said, she had more questions than she expected.
Why Theren’s touch had made the plant bloom, why the woman they both saw wanted him to find her without telling him how .
. . they were bigger questions than any of the ones that preceded them.
There are those who see the future, and we don’t want to reveal anything to them, the woman had said to Hela, and Elegy thought immediately of the augur and the epocha in Theren’s lost memory—-how Fenn saying the name “Sevik” had provoked a vision from the augur.
Maybe Akara, whoever she is, has to break her message into pieces so that someone out there doesn’t put them all together.
But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
Eventually, worn out by the day’s events, Hela and Elegy took Theren back here.
The moon is bright, so there’s enough light to see by even outside the stronghold’s limits.
The distant glitter of Losan’s downtown catches Elegy’s eye; it’s been a long time since she walked the streets of the city where she grew up, and she’s not sure she even knows her way around anymore.
“So,” Hela says, and Elegy knows her too well. This is her way of bringing up Elegy’s stolen moment with Theren.
Elegy can’t help but remember secondary school, after the annual school dance, wandering the market close to their apartment.
Strings of light overhead, the smell of fried food in the air.
Hela, trying not to cry over some girl, Elegy can’t remember her name now.
Elegy, trying to sound wise about matters of the heart, even though she’d only kissed one boy and he’d spent the whole time poking her closed lips with his tongue.
Not exactly what she’s dealing with now.
She can still feel Theren’s wet fingers curling over the nape of her neck.
She can feel Shir’s fingers brushing her spine as he zips up her dress, right before the ceremony at the Getty.
She can feel the weight of her wedding ring on its chain around her neck.
She can feel the weight of Shir’s absence every single morning in the moments after she realizes he won’t be lying next to her in bed when she opens her eyes.
She feels too much, all at once. She tips her head back against the Finch, and when she closes her eyes, tears run down her cheeks. They’re hot on her skin, and then cold.
Hela moves to stand beside her, her foot up against the side of Elegy’s foot, her arm bumping up against Elegy’s shoulder, and then—-her hand clasping Elegy’s hand.
“So it’s him, then,” Hela says.
Elegy thinks of Theren’s eyes on hers in the mirror, as focused as a thread passing through the eye of a needle.
She nods, her eyes still closed.
“It’s all right, El.”
“No.” Elegy doesn’t bother to wipe her cheeks. “It really isn’t.”
They stay there for a long time, listening to distant sirens and the faint music playing from the guard station.
Two days later Elegy stands at the back door of the Octopus, peering out the back window to make sure the coast is clear.
Aki, the bartender, agreed to let her use the space for the afternoon, and while she trusts him more than she trusts a lot of people, she still doesn’t want him to overhear what they’re doing here.
She spins the key ring around her finger, once, and walks back into the main room.
The Octopus gets its name from a mural on the back wall, a menacing tangle of suckered tentacles with light bulbs for eyes.
But the rest of the place is like a tavern from a fairy tale, the main room framed by arches and columns that create shaded alcoves lit by lanterns—-dim now, their flames not lit—-and low stools and rickety wooden tables scattered throughout.
Milky pale light comes in through the dusty windows around the front door, but otherwise the place is dark.
The floor creaks with each step she takes.
Everyone she trusts with her life is in this room. Hela stands with her back against the bar. She’s wearing one of Elegy’s old Cedre army shirts with the sleeves sawed off, so red threads trail down her arms. Irreverent.
Across from her, sitting at one of the little tables, are Parekh, Arias, and Isre Din, dressed in their casual clothes but unmistakably military, thanks to their posture and the way they almost snap to attention when Elegy walks back in, like she’s their Primary and they’re waiting for the next order.
And across from her, standing in a relaxed parade rest between the two groups, the weak light glowing all around his silhouette, is Theren.
She dragged a table out to the middle of the room before anyone got here, and slid an obsidian—-an illegal one, naturally—-on top of it, so she could transfer a map to it.
“Right,” Elegy says, and she clears her throat, trying to remember how Shir would have done this. He was always better at rallying people than she was.
“Um . . . introductions first. Hela, this is Ciro Arias and Lydia Parekh, who both worked with me in search and rescue. You already know Isre, who’s a technician.
” She gestures to Hela against the bar. “Arias and Parekh, this is my sister, Tausia Helasz. She’s the one who sponsored me as a Scout. And . . . everyone knows Theren.”
Her face heats. What a loaded phrase that is.
“I’ve talked to you all about our mission, which is to rescue a former Knight from a highly secure Talusar facility,” she says.
“Also known as a monastery,” Parekh supplies.
“Also known as a monastery,” Elegy acknowledges with a nod.
“I can’t tell you why this Knight is so valuable, but suffice it to say that we need him in order to move forward in our fight against Rava Vidar.
We only have two weeks until the monastery becomes impenetrable.
Even in two weeks, we’ll be outnumbered and outmatched, so we need to get creative.
We’re also working off--book here—-Arias, Parekh, and Isre have taken temporary leave in order to complete this mission.
General Thompson approved the leave, so he knows I’m up to something, but he wants to maintain plausible deniability. ”
“Neat--o. Where is this highly secure monastery?” Parekh says.
“Northwest of Valla.” Lines of light spread down Elegy’s hands as she steps up to the table with its obsidian stone.
At her touch, a map unfolds across it, glowing with the topography of Valla.
She taps something in the middle of it, a ridge she’s memorized, and a red circle appears where she touched it.
Everyone comes to their feet and steps toward the obsidian to see the map, Hela on Elegy’s right, soldiers on her left.
Theren, across from her, is lit from beneath by the obsidian map, so there are shadows in the hollows of his cheeks.
“We’ll go to the Cenobium first, so Isre can run operations from there—-insofar as that’s possible, with the Valla energy field interfering,” she says.
Small groups of Fevered people don’t emit enough of an energy field to interfere with Cedre technology, but the population center that is Valla is downright impenetrable.
“Why the Cenobium?” Isre asks. “Isn’t that a little close to Talusar territory?”
“It’s the closest politically neutral spot to Valla, and we’ll need you close so you can rescue us if something goes wrong,” Elegy says. “Plus, I have some questions for the augurs. After that—-”
Arias says hopefully: “Storm the castle?” He looks at Hela. “Sorry. That’s S and R for—-”
“A ‘smash and grab,’ ” Hela says. “See? I can use jargon, too.”
Arias only shrugs, good--natured as ever.
“Whatever term you use . . . not the right strategy.” Elegy’s shoulders ache with tension. She’s not used to trying to combine worlds like this. “Theren, you’ve been there—-you have a recommendation?”
Isre laughs a little and says to Theren, “You’ve been to their monastery?”
“I died there,” Theren says, his voice unexpectedly gentle, like he’s breaking hard news to his brother. And maybe he is, because the laugh dies on Isre’s lips.
“If ‘storming the castle’ is what it sounds like,” Theren says, “then no, if we try that we’ll be ripped apart.”
“Then what?” Parekh asks.
“Um . . .” Theren leans over the map and scratches behind one ear. “There’s a guard who will help us. Selio Orda is his name; he’s been stationed there for two years.”
Theren looks up at her, his eyes black and gleaming. She thinks of Orda, graying and handsome, slamming a practice sword into Theren’s.
“All our supplies need to be civilian. Unmarked, unregistered,” Elegy says, looking at Hela. “Weapons, too. We can’t signal that we’re military in any way.”
“I’m on it,” Hela says.
Elegy speaks Talusar automatically when she addresses Theren, though she knows Hela and Isre can both understand it, too. “What else?”
“Training,” he says. “We can’t accomplish that much in the time we have, but we can get used to each other.”
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s get started.”