Chapter 43
The next few days disappear into training and planning.
Hela and Isre leave for hours at a time, hunting down supplies that can’t be traced back to the Cedre military.
Theren and Arias help Parekh with her hip exercises in the Octopus before training starts.
Isre and Parekh fly back in an unmarked Sparrow one afternoon with sly looks and inside jokes.
The plan is to set out from the Cenobium and fly as close to the monastery as possible before the Talusar notice them.
Once the Talusar spot them, they’ll perform what Arias calls—-and Elegy refuses to call—-a “whoopsie daisy,” which is disembarking from a ship while it’s still in flight.
They’ll then approach Dexa, the outpost next to the monastery where its workers and guards live, on foot.
Theren will find Orda in Dexa, and assuming he agrees to help, they’ll plan the rest of the rescue mission from there.
To prepare, Elegy and Arias pore over satellite images of the monastery, the path of their approach, the land between the Cenobium and Dexa.
Sometimes Theren joins them, leaning over Elegy’s shoulder to look at the map, just close enough for her to feel his warmth, but never touching her.
He gives details like how long it takes to walk from one place to another given the terrain, how loud a person’s footsteps will be in the forests that surround the monastery, how bright it will be at night.
She tries to avoid him. She knows she can’t do it forever, but she tells herself she needs more time.
That before she can think about it, she needs to get through this day, then the next day, then the next.
She can tell that Theren notices her distance, but he doesn’t talk to her about it; he, too, seems eager to throw himself into the work they’re doing.
There’s one time she can’t avoid him: training.
It’s likely they’ll encounter isolated Talusar guards when they enter the monastery, and the only way for a Cedrae to beat a Talusar on foot is by outnumbering them.
So they practice fighting in pairs. On the first day, he just had them do drills together, simple ones that helped them get to know each other.
The next morning, he put them in different combinations, and they sparred, two--on--two.
They train in the Octopus in the afternoon, and then again in the evening just outside the trailer in Twentynine, in the dirt.
Arias, meanwhile, has them practice moving in the dark, looking out for hand signals instead of verbal commands. Hela teaches them all how to scatter and how to look for exits.
By the time Elegy reaches the Octopus on the fourth day, she has sore muscles she forgot existed—-the ones in her shins and forearms, in her hips and abdomen.
There are few residents in Twentynine, and most of them don’t come out until nighttime. The ones who see them training here in the late--afternoon hours seem inclined to mind their own business.
When the others arrive, they all run together in a pack down Main Street. Elegy jogs alongside Parekh, and she’s glad to see Hela and Arias together at the front—-the first day, Hela and the soldiers kept apart, but now they seem willing to work as a group.
When they’re done, they all duck into the Octopus, where Theren has pushed all the tables to the edges of the room and arranged practice weapons at his feet. Courtesy of Parekh.
Theren says, “I think I have everyone’s preferred weapon—-”
There’s a spear for Elegy. She picks it up without having to ask if he intended it for her, and steps to the side to move through a few of the postures her father taught her. She fell into them naturally when fighting Avka Becken in Naarm; she falls into them a little less naturally now.
“Hela and Arias, you’re up,” Theren says.
He has an authority here that she wasn’t expecting from him. Being good at fighting doesn’t mean someone is good at teaching, but Theren is patient, never rising to their level of frustration.
“Two--on--one, really?” Hela says.
“Really,” he replies, and he’s more focused than Elegy has ever seen him, winnowed down to the bone. He moves around Hela to make her a barrier between him and Arias, and then he dances around them to reverse their positions, turning them both in a frantic circle.
Their confusion seems to give him clarity; he thrusts at Arias, the practice sword jabbing the other man in the rib cage. But Hela gets a cut in, too, prodding him in the leg.
He lowers his sword to acknowledge the hit, and then picks it up again, and they reset their positions.
He prowls around them, and Elegy can hardly hear him move, just the faint sticking and unsticking of his bare feet on the floor.
He attacks, and she can see every muscle in his body standing at attention.
He occupies his body more fully than anyone she’s ever seen, aware of every edge of it, every ending.
It’s hot out, but that has nothing to do with the heat in Elegy’s body, with the way her eyes cling to his muscled forearms, his heaving chest, the trickle of sweat that follows the line of his throat like a swallow.
A cold weight settles into Elegy’s stomach as she watches a real, wide grin spread across Theren’s face as he calls out encouragement to Hela. It’s a brief thing, but Elegy wasn’t expecting it—-how joy makes him fierce as a wolf.
I saw a man, an augur says in her ear, in her memory.
Elegy walks out of the room and into the street.
It’s too cloudy in Twentynine to see Cedre Station. Elegy spends a few minutes staring up at the blank sky. There’s something ominous about a desert storm.
It’s a half hour until they’re all supposed to meet again for their nighttime planning session. Elegy showers and dresses, and then instead of combing her hair, she stands behind Hela’s desk, dripping water on her father’s box of supposedly alien artifacts.
Only she’s not looking at them, this time.
Instead, she looks at the small collection of objects behind the box.
They’re some of the only things Hela brought with her from Silvis, from her home.
A journal small enough to fit in a palm.
A trio of interlinked metal rings—-an object used in Talusar prayer.
A vial of her mother’s perfume, now empty. And a tiny carved figurine of a horse.
Equo ne credite, she thinks. That phrase repeating in the memory of the witness to the Talusar attack. It keeps prodding at her.
“You’re dripping everywhere,” Hela says. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Elegy shakes her head. “I was just thinking of something we found out in Naarm. That the witness kept thinking of a phrase about a horse.”
“About a horse?” Hela says. “He was Cedrae, though, right? What does he know about horses?”
“Yeah, I think that’s why it’s bothering me. Why would a Cedrae man know an obscure quote from an ancient text we don’t even study in school here? It’s not like he was a student; he was a guard.”
“What’s the quote?”
“ ‘Don’t trust the horse.’ ” Elegy snorts. “Don’t ask me, I don’t know.”
Hela picks up the horse figurine, and turns it in her fingers. She taps its head.
“ ‘Equo ne credite,’ ” she says, almost idly.
“Yeah. That,” Elegy says. “How do you . . . ?”
“Ileth Vidar is obsessed with ancient warriors, you think she didn’t insist on including old poems about them in the standard curriculum? Rava probably has that quote tattooed on her ass.”
Elegy’s heart leaps. “What does it mean?”
“It’s about a clever trick that won a war,” Hela says.
“The Trojans presented their enemies with what appeared to be a gift—-a big wooden horse. Their enemies brought it inside the city walls. But what they didn’t know was that it was stuffed full of Trojan soldiers.
Don’t trust the horse, see? Don’t trust a benign gesture from an enemy, basically. ”
Elegy rushes across the trailer to the bag she brought with her from Naarm. She takes out her clothes—-still damp from all the rain—-and her toothbrush to reach the slightly compressed sheets of recycled paper Saetang gave her before she left.
She sits on the kitchen floor and puts the sheets next to each other on the linoleum.
On the left is the inventory of the hangar from before the strange Talusar attack.
On the right is the inventory from after.
Elegy touches an index finger to each item as she compares it.
Ships. Tech kits. Fuel tanks. Down, down, down, each number the same. Engine parts, stands.
The bottom section of each inventory is the weekly list of supplies that will be shipped from Naarm to Cedre Station.
Naarm may not supply as many goods to Cedre Station as Losan, but they still send a fair amount, especially fresh fruit and equipment.
Elegy holds her finger over the number 7, for “equipment crates.”
And on the other paper: 8.
Elegy feels a stab of panic deep inside her rib cage.
“What is it?” Hela asks.
“The Talusar didn’t steal anything,” Elegy says, staring at the number 8. “They left something behind. Another crate.”
Hela’s eyes widen. “Are you sure it’s not just a clerical error, or something?”
“No, but think about it.” Elegy sits back on her heels.
“They used a candlesnuffer to knock out the power, so we couldn’t see what they were doing.
They went to all the effort of sneaking in.
And then, they did nothing . . . but they still bothered to addle that poor man’s memories so he wouldn’t be a reliable witness.
And one of the only things he remembers is ‘don’t trust the horse,’ a phrase he has no reason to know. ”
She shakes her head.
“It makes no sense, unless it’s this,” she says, tapping the paper with her fingers. “Unless they were trying to sneak something in instead of out.”
“How big are those crates?” Hela asks.
“Pretty big, I think. Sometimes they put a whole Sparrow engine in one. Why?”
“Because what if the phrase is even more literal than you’re thinking?” Hela says. “What if they were sneaking in a bunch of soldiers? You know, to attack Cedre Station? Granted, the crate would only hold a few people—-not much of an attack, really—-”
Cold creeps down Elegy’s spine. She rushes over to the dresser and starts opening drawers, pulling out clothing without looking at what she’s grabbing.
“When the Talusar exiles came to Cedre Station in search of refuge, what did my mother think they were there for?” she says, and she doesn’t wait for an answer.
“She thought they were there to spread the Fever to Cedre Station. She assumed that the Fever was the greatest weapon the Talusar had. And she was right.”
Hela makes a strangled noise. Elegy straightens, and meets her eyes.
“They don’t need soldiers,” Hela says. “All they need are priests. Priests of the Fever.”