Chapter 46
They leave Tube Bar and return to the grid of throughways that comprises the market.
Theren remembers Isre begging him to go there after school at least twice a week.
Isre liked to wander around and dream of all the things he could do when he was Imbued.
The films he would watch, the games he would play, the pen pals he would write to in Austra, Nusanta, and Losan.
But this place was never for Theren—-Kesia didn’t want him to get Imbued, and for all that he considered Isre his family, Theren knew he didn’t belong to his brother as much as he belonged to his mother.
Theren, Elegy, and Hela are stopping to let a line of children holding hands pass them when he feels it. The emotions of the crowd are just a distracting low--level hum to him. But in the midst of them is a pinching sharpness that can belong to one of two people: Ranos or Satka.
No, he thinks, as he reaches a little farther—-too gentle for Satka. It can only be Ranos.
The last time he saw Ranos, he was holding a knife to the man’s throat, trying to muster the will to kill him. You know what she’ll do to me. Ranos had begged him for mercy, and he’d refused.
He stops short, so Elegy runs into him, but he can’t even voice an apology; he’s too busy scanning the crowd for him.
He can’t be far—-his hate for Theren, his rage, is ringing in Theren’s ears like he’s in the center of a bell that has just been struck.
Ranos must have been punished severely when Rava found him still alive on the ground outside of House Vidar, having allowed Theren and Elegy to escape.
Before Theren can locate him, though, the quarantine alarm sounds, filling the air with a pulsing shriek. Light, too, flashes above their heads, slow but impossible to ignore. All around them, the market erupts into chaos as everyone starts running in different directions.
He reaches for Elegy automatically, his fingers pinching her sleeve. He holds out his free arm like a barrier against the crowd. Elegy is reaching back, her hand fumbling for his.
The air is full of panic, crowding him on all sides. Hands and elbows and shoulders shove at him. He can still feel Ranos’s acidic presence, but it’s fading by the second. He’s too focused on it to notice a man barreling right at the connection point between his hand and Elegy’s.
He loses his grip on her, and can’t find her in the crowd. The alarm is too loud for her to hear him shouting her name.
He picks a random direction and starts moving, taking in every feeling of every person he passes, careful not to linger on anyone.
He gets impressions of them: determined to get home, afraid of what this means, annoyed about yet another quarantine drill—-the array of emotions is dizzying.
He keeps moving, keeps sorting and discarding each person he passes without really looking at them.
The lights are still flashing, the alarm still blaring, and then—-
He feels Ranos again. Prickling and stinging like lemon juice on a cut.
He latches on to the feeling and moves toward it, running into a man and shoving him aside, ducking under the roof of a mechanized doll stand that’s been abandoned by its owner.
The stinging feeling gets stronger and stronger as he moves away from the center of the market to the edge.
The market is empty of shopkeepers, now, but all the obsidians in the news pavilion are still on, lit up, showing the scroll of images.
He sees Tube Bar up ahead, empty; he turns to the left, following the feeling of Ranos all the way to a hallway that leads to the maintenance tunnels.
There, Ranos stands with another Talusar soldier, his clothes simple and Cedrae.
In Ranos’s hand is a Vidari blade, the gold handle made of vine filigree.
His companion is taller than he is, a single Crucible tattoo on the back of his hand, but Ranos is obviously the deadlier of the two, radiating capability like the hum of an engine.
Theren was never sure what to make of Ranos.
Of all of Rava’s lessers, he was the one who eased Theren’s burdens the most. He took him for swims in the mountain lakes around House Vidar when the air was hot; he sparred with Theren so he wouldn’t keep getting trounced by Rava and her practice sword; he sometimes smuggled food to Theren when the others were determined to deprive him of it.
But he was unpredictable, sometimes lashing out even harder than Satka, greedy for other people’s pain even when it seemed to serve no clear purpose.
Before either of them can prepare for it, Theren rushes at the Crucible fighter on Ranos’s left and shoves him up against the wall.
The man brings an elbow down hard on Theren’s arms, breaking his grip but dropping his sword in the process.
Ranos is on top of Theren by the time he can reach for it; Theren grabs the blade by mistake, and his hand lights up with pain.
Still, he swings it, beating Ranos back just long enough to get his hand on the sword’s handle.
It’s two against one, and Ranos alone is more than enough opponent for one man.
Theren counters Ranos’s blow from the side, leaving his right ribs exposed; the Crucible fighter punches Theren so hard he can’t breathe, and he stumbles back toward the market, leading them away from the maintenance hallway.
“Forint!” Hela runs toward them, then rushes at the Crucible fighter, ramming her shoulder low into his belly. Caught off guard, the man goes down.
Ranos advances on Theren. Theren wants to look out for Hela, but then Ranos is on top of him, his movements quick and unpredictable, and it’s all Theren can do to keep him at bay. He’s far better than Avka Becken. If he were faster, he might rival Nyx.
Ranos parries with his sword, and Theren has to counter with his forearm. The blade cuts deep, and blood spatters on the ground, but there’s no time to dwell on the pain—-he has to block again, with the sword this time. The ache in his arm drives him deeper into his focus.
Ranos’s blade catches the light and scatters it, dizzying Theren. He trips away from Ranos, and the spark he feels before each of Ranos’s movements means nothing, the attention he pays to Ranos’s footwork means nothing. He’s fought Ranos so many times; he knows what it is to lose to him.
But he also knows how to beat him. Ranos only wins when he’s steady, when he’s enjoying himself. Theren has to destabilize him.
“How did Rava punish you, after you let me escape?” Theren says. “Or is this your punishment—-being sent here to die?”
Rage chokes Theren—-Ranos’s, not his own—-and he moves faster, fiercer. He swings at Ranos, and Ranos laughs a little, dancing back, his teeth bared. He thrusts his sword and Theren arches away.
The hallway—-Hela, the lights, the alarm—-disappears. There’s only darkness and Ranos at the center of it. He cuts at Theren, never enough to be debilitating, but messy, frustrated chaos.
“Rava knew what you felt for her,” Theren says. “And it disgusted her. Did I ever tell you that?”
Ranos screams into his teeth and attacks Theren harder—-too hard, his finesse faltering. He leaves his left side exposed, and Theren is already swinging, but the angle is wrong. He hits Ranos with the flat of his blade, square in the rib cage.
Ranos stumbles into the wall, and Theren follows, pressing the other man into it, the blade against Ranos’s throat, Theren’s bloodied arms pinning him.
Their eyes lock. Theren jerks the handle sharply upward and to the right, cutting Ranos’s throat.
He pulls away all at once, so Ranos slides to the ground with a sickening gurgle.
Gasping, he stares at Ranos until the light leaves the other man’s eyes.
Only then does the alarm come flooding back in, and the lights, and Hela, shoving her incongruously large ring into the Crucible fighter’s face.
The man slumps to the ground. She’s panting.
“I put sopora in the ring in case I need to knock someone out. It’s a little Scout trick,” she explains. “Let’s go find Elegy.”
Theren nods, and wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, trying not to disappear into panic. His ears are ringing, but he hands the short-sword he’s holding to Hela, and pries the gold filigree handle from Ranos’s limp fingers.