Chapter 48
When Theren steps out of the Sparrow onto the salt flat that surrounds the Cenobium, everything is so bright he can hardly see.
The salt flat is wet now and still, reflecting the sky like a mirror. The Cenobium itself is like a mirage up ahead, rippling.
They couldn’t take Nisov back to Losan, so Hela reprogrammed the Sparrow once they got Nisov into quarantine at the back of the ship.
It was Theren’s idea to go straight to the Cenobium, to ask Parekh, Arias, and Isre to meet them here for their mission to rescue Fenn.
They can’t delay it until autumn now, not with Cedre Station vulnerable to the Fever. Cedre might not last until autumn.
The Cenobium is grand in the way that sparse things can be grand. Though there are two long, low buildings on either side of it, the sanctuary is all he can look at; it towers over them, casting a long shadow on the ground.
As Nisov approaches the doors, they open, and an old woman steps out barefoot on the salt.
“What an interesting day this is turning out to be.” Her eyes skip right over Nisov, Hela, and Theren, and land on Elegy. “Elegy. Welcome back.”
“Nerina. Seems like you were expecting me.”
“I was told the odds of your arrival were good,” Nerina says mildly. “Priest and Knight will come with me, since they’re permitted in the consecrated space. Scion and Scout will remain in the antechamber until the augurs make their summons.”
“I’m not going to leave her,” Theren says.
“This is a sacred space. No violence will come to Miss Rosyk here. And you need to clean up if you’re going to stand before the augurs, child,” Nerina says, making a show of looking at his arms. He cleaned and sealed his cuts on the journey over, but his shirt is still stained, and there’s blood smeared on his skin.
“Stand before the augurs?” he says. “I wasn’t aware I would be doing that.”
“Oh, certainly.” Nerina turns and walks through the open doorway, Nisov at her back.
Theren hooks his fingers around Elegy’s for just a moment, then he follows.
The antechamber is dark and cool, lit by lanterns.
They pass through it, into a brighter hallway that follows the curve of the sanctuary, its windows showing the salt flat and the mountains beyond; at the end of it is another hallway, this one straight and airy, with rooms jutting off to either side.
“This is the living space for augurs and attendants,” Nerina says. “As a priest of the Fever, you are our honored guest.”
“Thank you.” Nisov smiles. “It’s a pleasure to be here. I never thought I would see the Cenobium.”
“The circumstances of your arrival are something I’m ignoring in favor of diplomacy.
” Nerina stops beside the first room on the left, and gestures to the open doorway.
“I may be required to welcome you, priest, but I know how you find yourself here, and I am not kind to those who wield our holy instrument against the innocent as if it’s a blade.
You will remain in these quarters for the duration of your stay, which I hope will be short. ”
Nisov’s smile remains fixed, but Theren feels him deflate. Nerina gestures for Theren to follow her to the next room down, which is a communal bathroom.
It’s bright, with a row of sinks down the middle and tubs for bathing along the edges. The windows are rippled glass, letting in light but not shapes.
“I’ll bring you clothes,” Nerina says, and then she’s gone, and he’s alone.
He stoppers one of the sinks and fills it.
He can hear the water pump running in the walls.
There is no Fever field here that makes electricity impossible—-there are too few augurs to emit that much disruptive energy.
The Cenobium has a closed power system, probably running on solar panels.
Still, there are some Talusar customs that hold—-no electric lights, for example.
He strips to the waist and washes with the soap they provided, a colorless lump with lavender and mint pressed into it. It smells like Valla, like washing up with Orda after Crucible training sessions.
He rinses the dried blood from his arms, from his hands. The sweat from his brow. The dust from his hair. He’s just drying off when Nerina walks back in with a stack of fabric in hand, all black.
“Have you heard any news about Cedre Station?” he asks her.
“Only what the augurs saw in advance.”
“How good of them to warn us,” he says, though there’s no real point in offering that criticism. The augurs don’t take sides in the conflict between the Cedrae and the Talusar. At least, that’s what they claim.
He can feel a question in her, tickling at his mind, and he says, “Just ask.”
She looks startled, but says, “I’ve heard you perceive the present.”
“That’s one way of putting it.” He finishes drying off and takes the shirt from the stack she brought him.
The material is soft from repeated washings.
A little smaller than he likes to wear things, stretched over his arms and shoulders.
Or maybe he’s just filled out a little after weeks of full meals and plenty of sleep in Cedre. He rolls the sleeves up to his elbows.
“In the life I had before, I studied the Fever,” she says. “There’s a kind of . . . monastery, on the eastern coast. For priests and those who study them, near Ileth Vidar’s home. I was half a monk, half a scientist.”
“I wasn’t aware there were any Talusar scientists.”
“The Talusar empire spans a planet. You have had a very particular experience of us.”
He can’t argue with that.
“In my monastery,” she goes on, “we identified the gene that makes a person a priest. Some of our number perceived this knowledge as too close to heresy, and they had sway with Ileth. She shut us down, and I came here to serve instead.” She tilts her head.
“I have long thought that if we could have continued, we might have identified the gene for augurs and epocha, as well. And, perhaps, for whatever you are.”
He pulls the stopper from the sink drain, and watches the water disappear. “You think I’m a genetic anomaly.”
“Maybe.” She beckons. “Follow me. The augurs would like to speak to you.”
When they reach the sanctuary, Nerina tells him to remove his shoes, and he does, lining them up next to another pair of boots near the door, with his socks folded inside.
The sanctuary reminds him of the room where he was infected with the Fever. Round and cavernous, like the inside of a barrel. But he’s never seen anything like the huge, multifaceted mirror in the center of it, glittering like a diamond.
Elegy stands in the center of the mirror, her fingers twisted together over her stomach. He lets the feeling of her in, just enough, like their fingers brushing together as they walk. What comes back to him is dread. Elegy isn’t eager to hear what the augurs have to say. He can’t blame her.
Nerina stops him. She carries a copper dish full of ash paste, for the blessing that only the Fevered receive. He bends his head to her automatically, letting her brush an ashen fingertip over his forehead. She says the prayer, and though Theren has only heard it once, he knows the words.
“The Fever is change. To change is to die. To die is to experience annihilation. To be reborn is to conquer it. May it be so, may it be so.”
Theren lifts his head.
“Join her,” Nerina says, gesturing to Elegy.
His mother was the first person to teach him about the augurs.
Though apparently loyal to Cedre then—-if she ever was—-she still performed the sign of the Fever over her mouth when she spoke of them.
They have no names, she said. And who they were before the Fever, or where they were from, it doesn’t matter.
He stops next to Elegy on the mirror. He can see the side of her face in one of the mirror’s facets, the curve of her cheek and her furrowed brow.
“I asked about Cedre Station. No one seems to know anything yet,” Elegy says. “They just told me they wanted to speak to me and my Knight at the same time.”
“But I’m not your Knight,” he says.
Before she can respond, the door across from them opens, and four augurs file into the room. Each one is an identical gray robe with a white band at the throat, salt--stained at the bottom as if they walk the salt flats each morning.
He’s known people like this before. People with too many things buzzing inside them, people of machinations and schemes and games. He can feel the gears clicking away inside them, their certainty, the inevitability they feel.
“Hello again,” an augur with pink cheeks says to Elegy.
“She’s very annoyed,” one of the others says. They’re smaller than the rest, and lean the way a child is lean, like their body hasn’t become something yet.
“Or afraid,” the pink--cheeked one replies.
“I’m standing right here,” Elegy says. “This is Theren Forint, not that you asked.”
Theren feels the sudden urge to laugh. Only Elegy would speak to an augur that way, with obvious antipathy. He allows the augurs’ feelings in, for a moment, to find out if it bothers them. He feels tickles of amusement, twinges of irritation. And boiling beneath it: fear.
Fear of what?
“Oh, we’ll get to him in a moment,” the pink--cheeked augur replies. “You must know why we wish to speak with you.”
Elegy says, “Actually, I don’t. You all seem to have trouble with specificity. Where’s the eldest of your number?”
That fear again.
“We will get to that as well,” the pink--cheeked augur replies. “If you had to guess why you were here, what would you say?”
“Either you want to stop me from doing something, based on some outcome you’d like me to avoid,” she says, “or you want to pressure me into doing something based on some outcome you’d prefer.”
“Outcome,” says the augur with the shaved head, “requires an end point, which is of course nonsense.”
“Not nonsense to those who only see then,” the smallest augur replies.