Chapter 53
An hour later, they wait at the edge of the tree line, the outpost of Dexa below them.
The monastery is visible from here, high on an overlook, an elegant sprawl of wood with a small pond behind it. The others were impressed by its size and its detail, but for Theren, it will always be the place where he died.
“Are you ready?” Elegy says to him.
Theren’s job is to go into Dexa alone, find Orda, and secure his help. He’ll return to the others after nightfall and escort them into the settlement in the dark.
He checks his things: the pack on his back, the sword at his side, the vambraces protecting his forearms. He looks like a Talusar on a journey into neutral territory, unsure of what he’ll find there.
He glances back only once when he moves out of the tree line and into the open field beyond it. Elegy waves him on.
Dexa is too small to be called a town, so the Talusar refer to it as an outpost, but there are still people other than soldiers living here.
He passes a woman unloading apples into a market stall, and a blacksmith hammering a sword into shape, and it feels like stepping back in time again.
A child leads a horse to water on a side street; a shop sign advertises high--quality salvage, with a display of metal filing cabinets out front.
He turns to the woman at the market stall.
“Excuse me,” he says, and as in all Talusar interactions, he has to decide who he thinks he is, and what status. He decides it’s safe to address her as somewhat inferior to him, as if he’s an army officer. “Do you know where I can find Selio Orda?”
“Soldier?” the woman says, and at Theren’s nod, she waves her hand at the buildings closer to the monastery. “Don’t know that name, but they mostly live over that way.”
“Thank you.”
He keeps walking, ignoring the voices that implore him to buy. He’s never handled Talusar coin. Crucible fighters weren’t paid, and he certainly never received money in House Vidar. He tucks his left hand into his pocket to disguise the symbol tattooed there.
He moves closer to the buildings the woman pointed out, and then circles them, trying to find the route that the soldiers will take when they walk home from the monastery after their shifts are done.
He has to ask a child to confirm it, and she does, pointing out the deep footprints the soldiers leave there with their heavy boots.
Theren waits in an alley, watching passersby.
He hasn’t had much opportunity to observe the Talusar in their everyday lives, and it’s a good reminder that they aren’t all Rava Vidar.
He sees a group of children chasing a ball, a pair of older women exchanging onions for potatoes from their shopping bags, an old man stopping to roll a cigarette against his own leg.
When the first cluster of soldiers ambles down the road, laughing at some shared joke, he straightens.
If it’s time for a shift change, he’ll either see Orda walking toward the monastery or away from it.
For a soldier to be assigned to the monastery, they have to either be well--connected, wealthy, or have earned their position through loyalty and service.
So many of the soldiers that pass him, moving in both directions, have soft hands and unburdened smiles.
Their uniforms are tidy and they don’t wear febra armor.
There’s no point; no one ever attacks the monastery.
So though they’re required to be proficient in the sword, they’ve undoubtedly gotten lax and comfortable. They aren’t ready for action.
He spots Orda when it’s just starting to get dark, and the chill is settling over his shoulders like a cloak.
Theren knows him by his stride, loping like a wolf, from an old injury in the Crucible that makes him favor his left side.
His smile, bright against the gathering dusk, is a little wolfish, too.
Not mischievous, exactly, but a little wicked.
He’s walking with three other soldiers, one of whom peels away with a friendly wave before she passes Theren’s alley.
Theren pulls away from the wall as Orda passes, and then he falls into step a few paces behind him.
He can’t exactly call out to him with the other two soldiers still flanking him, so he follows all three to one of the buildings the shopkeeper pointed out, and waits at a distance, leaning against a wall with affected casualness.
He slips into the building and listens as they all unlock and open their doors, keys jingling, conversation still continuing though they’re separated by one story—-the two soldiers seem to live together on the second floor, but Orda is on the third.
Theren creeps up the stairs, his footsteps as silent as he can make them. When he gets to the second--floor landing, he sees Orda pause with his key in the lock. He turns, and looks at Theren.
His expression doesn’t change, but Theren can feel how his heart leaps, and he grins.
“Well,” Orda says neutrally. “You’d better come in, I suppose.”
Theren climbs the stairs that separate them, and follows Orda into his apartment.
The place looks just like he expected it to.
The apartment is a single room, small but pleasant.
Orda’s guitar hangs on the right wall, and his shoes—-salvaged sneakers, red with fraying laces—-are next to the door.
In the center of the kitchen is a woven rug made of grass.
The dishes are drying next to the sink, heavy earthenware on a threadbare towel.
It’s not a proper kitchen—-just a burner and a sink the size of a bucket, a table big enough for two people to eat.
Theren turns back to Orda, who’s shut the door and is now leaning back against it, trapping his hands behind him.
It’s been two years since they saw each other last. Theren won the Tournament and stood before Rava Vidar as the untriumphant victor.
It was his right to ask for a reward for his victory, and most fighters asked for their own freedom.
But Theren asked for Selio Orda’s, instead.
The last thing he remembers of that moment is Orda staring at him from the first row of seats in the amphitheater, his eyes blank, too far away for Theren to read him.
Orda is unchanged. Shorter than Theren, but still tall and lanky, his straight hair now long enough to sweep away from his forehead, and grayer than it used to be.
His nose is crooked from breaking more than once in the Crucible, and there’s a scar through his lip, but the combination works for him.
“Teacher,” Theren says, in greeting.
“Aren’t we past that nickname now?”
“I thought it might amuse you.”
Orda smiles, and pulls away from the door to wrap his arms around Theren. Theren returns the embrace, and for a long moment they hold on to each other with obvious relief radiating between them like two tuning forks resonating at the same frequency.
“You look better. Cedre must be treating you well,” Orda says. As he pulls away, Orda’s hand comes up to the back of Theren’s neck, light and brief. “I see you have someone in your life.”
“I asked you not to do that.” Theren doesn’t know which of his memories Orda saw, but he knows Orda’s usual time frame—-he reaches back only a few days, so he can only have seen Elegy.
“And if I asked you not to read me in return, that would be easy for you?” Orda’s smile fades a little. “I assume you’re not here for a social visit.”
“Fenn is alive.”
Orda trained Fenn just as he trained Theren—-to survive the Crucible. But they were always at odds, and Orda was never charmed by Fenn’s combativeness the way Theren ultimately was.
Sighing, Orda turns away from Theren to unbuckle his sword from his waist, to untie his shoes and line them up next to his sneakers.
He goes into the kitchen to pour himself a drink, a glass of something cloudy from an unmarked bottle.
Brandy, Theren assumes, because that’s what people drink outside of Valla.
He pours some for Theren, too, and they sit across from each other at the kitchen table.
The sun is setting. A grid of bars protects the space from intruders, and through them, Theren can see soldiers walking to the monastery in a pack, the new shift on its way.
Theren touches his glass to Orda’s before sipping.
The brandy burns his lips, but it’s sweet—-made from apples, maybe, or pears.
“I knew that Fenn was alive, of course,” Orda says. “Since he’s in the monastery. But there was no way to tell you, and—-”
“I don’t blame you,” Theren says. “But surely you understand that I can’t just leave him here when I’m the reason he’s a captive to begin with.”
Orda presses his mouth into a line.
“You saved his life. If you hadn’t told them he was an epocha, they would have executed him. And you would have had to carry it out.”
“He preferred death to captivity. I knew that, and I still chose for him.”
“You gave him a life as a holy man instead of death. It wasn’t just the best choice; it was the only choice.”
“Don’t try to tell me that you think life as a ‘holy man’ is some kind of universal reward.”
Orda shakes his head. His sister was an epocha. She was infected a few years after him, and sent to the monastery. But the Fever tormented her with visions of the beginning of the world, and the horror of it was too much for her. She took her life a few years after.
A few years her family would have liked to spend with her, Orda said, when he told Theren the story.
“You came here for my help,” Orda says.
“I just need to know where in the building he is.”
“For a truthsayer you’re a miserable liar,” Orda says. “You need far more than that from me, if you want to get him out of that monastery.”
Orda was a hard man when they met. He’d been assigned the three coltish Cedrae, the most useless fighters in the Crucible, in retaliation for some past slight, and he made sure they knew it.
But he’d still taught them, made it possible for them to survive their first few months.
His kindness didn’t come in the form of gentle words but in doing.
“I’m sorry to ask this of you,” Theren says.
“Theren,” Orda says, and he reaches across the table to touch Theren’s arm. Theren stares at the black bars tattooed between each of Orda’s knuckles, markers of time spent in the Crucible. Too much time.
“If you need my help, you’ll get it,” Orda says, as if it’s a simple fact. He releases Theren and sits back in his chair. “I assume you didn’t come alone. You wouldn’t be that foolish.”
Theren drinks the rest of his moonshine, and doesn’t answer.
“That woman I saw in your memory,” Orda says. “You referred to her in a particular way. As if she’s much higher status than you are. Can I ask how high?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because. If she’s important enough to get me into Losan . . . maybe even get me citizenship papers . . .” He sits back in his chair. “Then you don’t need to feel so bad about asking for my help.”
Theren runs his finger along the edge of the glass, and tries not to give away too much in his expression.
“As it happens, that woman you saw is certainly important enough to get you into Cedre.”