Seek the Traitor's Son, page 3
“That’s not an answer! I’m married. I’m happy. I’m . . .” She takes a slow, tremulous breath, and begins again: “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the last one we’ll give,” the oldest augur says. “The prophecy has settled. The paths are laid. It’s time for you to leave, Elegy Rosyk.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Elegy says. “You unload this . . . thing on me, and that’s it, those are the only questions I can ask?”
“Rava Vidar asked as many, we’re told,” the youngest augur says. “Different questions, with different answers, perhaps—but she left unworried.”
“Good for her,” Elegy says. “But I don’t worship you just because a virus stuffed your head with the future.”
The youngest augur’s cheeks get impossibly redder. The oldest augur only shrugs.
“Tumult and rupture,” she says, as if that’s an explanation.
* * *
Elegy sees Rava Vidar only once more.
She marches out of the sanctuary, startling the Sword, and stuffs her feet into her boots without taking out the socks that are rolled up in the toes.
“Slow down,” the Sword says, and Elegy shrugs off the woman’s hand, yanks her shoelaces tight, and walks out of the antechamber, into the hot afternoon sun.
The salt flat is blinding. She squints into it: the white, shimmering hexagons of salt; the hazy mountains beyond them; the pale blue sky; the glow of Cedre Station, a small white barrel above them even during the day, with the Sundial just a speck at its side. When she turns back to the Cenobium, toward Shir, she feels the wind on her cheeks and realizes she’s crying.
“What is it?” he asks, and she remembers the first time she saw him, how annoyed she was with how charming he was, how desperately she wanted to hate him.
And then, years later, in the forest just outside of Nusanta, how his dark, gentle eyes called her back to herself.
She hears the hollow strike of horse hooves. Waiting at the edge of the Cenobium is a line of Talusar soldiers with Rava Vidar at their head. The wind tosses her black cloak to the side and blows her blond hair over her face. Their eyes meet, and it occurs to Elegy that the fate she just heard—that she’s the hope of her people, and that she heralds the destruction of her enemies—might belong to Rava, instead.
Whatever the outcome of their twin destiny, their collision is inevitable.
“We have to wait for them to leave,” the Sword says to her. “Part of the deal we both made with the augurs.”
Elegy’s enemies have always been Talusar. The Talusar have taken over most of the planet. Talusar soldiers killed her father for helping a child flee Talusar country, and then, after Elegy joined the military, they killed her friends and colleagues, too. She’s picked through the aftermaths of a dozen skirmishes in search of survivors; she’s seen, up close, just how deadly their army can be. And Rava Vidar is the worst of them, a monster that lurks in the dark, a mythical thing.
Rava Vidar points at her, her arm straight even as she nudges her horse into motion with her heels. Her body twists as she rides away, her finger still locked on Elegy, until she can’t hold the posture anymore, or until she’s too far away to see.
The message is clear: Rava Vidar wants her dead.
“I need help,” Elegy says, into the wind.
“You’ll get it,” the Sword replies.
* * *
Later that night, Elegy and Shir lie side by side in the double bed of their small apartment in Losan. The air smells like pancakes from the dinner Shir pieced together for them with pantry staples and a pat of butter from their next-door neighbor.
Every time Elegy opened her mouth to tell him what the augurs told her, she felt so choked she couldn’t breathe.
Finally Shir told her, Tomorrow. They would talk about it tomorrow.
In the semidarkness of their second-floor apartment, she stares at the back of his neck, at the chain he wears there. On the end of it is a silver ring—his wedding ring. She touches her own ring, which hangs in the hollow of her throat, sticky with sweat. Outside, the late-night patrons of the tavern below break out into a chorus of laughter.
They got married in the courthouse. Shir wore white, because it glowed against his skin. Elegy wore a red dress. Their reception was in the hangukskie diner around the corner from his parents’ house, and all their friends and neighbors came, as well as every last one of Shir’s cousins. Elegy had only her adopted sister, Hela, and an old photograph of her father.
They ate until they were about to burst, and drank twice as much, and then spilled out into the street, laughing. Hela sang an old folk song at the top of her lungs just to give them something to dance to. Then they stumbled home, stumbled out of their shoes, stumbled into bed. Shir woke up a few hours later to vomit and make oatmeal. Worth it, he said to her in the morning, with a sleepy smile.
She touches the chain that stretches across the back of his neck with just her fingertips. She’s loved him for five years, ever since he stopped her from killing a young Talusar soldier in the forests north of Nusanta. How we fight them matters, Elegy. I know you believe that. She wasn’t sure, at the time, that she did. But she came to.
And now, the hope of Cedre’s victory—not just survival, but victory—will be preceded by a betrayal she can’t even imagine. I saw a man. You have never said his name. You will fall in love with him. It’s a reminder that she’s never touched a rose without being pricked by a thorn.
“Shir,” she says. “Are you awake?”
He turns, and she can see the freckles dusting his nose, the curl of his eyelashes, the lines in his forehead that weren’t there when they first met. And oh . . . she loves him.
She loves him, so she tells him the truth.
3
Theren is late.
It’s not his fault. He had to cross all of Cedre Station to get here from the university library where he works as a custodian, and there was some problem on the train tracks, a busted signal, that took ten minutes to resolve. As soon as the shuttle doors open, he breaks into a run, dodging people in line for the food carts—the woman selling dumplings is particularly popular—and children playing marbles right in the middle of the walkway, for some reason, and the grassy edges of the birch grove before he skids to a stop right outside the temple.
He’s a little sweaty and a little disheveled, but he smooths down his hair and strolls in like this chaotic arrival was all part of the plan. The priestess standing in the temple antechamber looks startled. She’s dressed in green ceremonial robes, with a glowing headdress that looks like the halos from ancient religious art. The gilded, embroidered, and embellished robes are so elaborate that he doesn’t recognize her at first.
Not until she says, “Theren?”
He chokes a little as he replies, “Zuza?” But that’s a stupid question—he knew Zuza worked in the temple. He just didn’t know she would be working today, the day of his brother’s Imbuing.
“Not that I’m not glad to see you,” she says quietly, looking left and right like she expects to be discovered, “but I thought we agreed ‘no defiling of sacred spaces’?”
Theren laughs. “I thought this wasn’t a religious thing. Besides, I’m not here to . . . defile anything.”
Zuza rolls her eyes. “Semantics.”
“No, no.” He shakes his head. “My brother is about to be Imbued. Isre Din?”
Understanding dawns on Zuza’s face. “Oh.” She adjusts her headdress, which is dipping a little on the left side. “Well, in my defense, I would have known that if you’d ever told me your last name.”
“I still haven’t.” Theren’s grin widens. “He’s my stepbrother. Different name.”
He and Zuza met in the university library, when Theren was supposed to be reorganizing a bookshelf but was actually taking an illicit reading break. The book was a volume of Talusar poetry that Zuza needed for her thesis. She mistook him for a fellow grad student—and he nearly convinced her that he was, given how fluent he was in Talusar—and ten minutes later they were pressed up against the shelf, hands all over each other. They’ve been chasing stolen moments ever since then, but they hardly know anything about each other.
Or rather, she hardly knows anything about him, which is by design. It’s become a kind of joke between them.
“I’ll just have to get better at sleuthing,” Zuza says. “Later? After the ceremony?”
“Yes,” he says.
She smiles. She has the kind of smile that always looks a little bit mischievous. “Your brother’s already in the vestibule. You should just go into the hall.”
“Right.” Theren looks at the door behind her, which is sealed with light. “I can’t actually open that.”
She raises her eyebrows. Theren is twenty years old, which means that if he was normal, he would have elixir running through his veins like every other person over the age of sixteen on Cedre Station. And elixir is all that’s required to open doors to rooms where children aren’t allowed . . . like the one that leads to the temple sanctuary.
But he’s not normal. So he can’t open it.
Zuza doesn’t ask, though he can see how badly she wants to. She turns away from him, and sweeps her fingers over the panel on the heavy metal door. It lights up at her touch, and the door opens. His face warm, he walks past her and into the sanctuary.
He was right, before—this place isn’t a religious space, though it’s still sacred to the Cedrae, and it looks the part. The ceiling is so high it’s shrouded in darkness, and the walls are as elaborately decorated as Zuza’s ceremonial robes. They’re a mosaic of gleaming metal and green glass, sparkling like the scales of a fish caught in sunlight. There are friezes above them depicting the ritual Isre is about to perform: a figure walking into the pool, diving beneath its water, swallowing one of the gems at the bottom, surfacing with elixir suffusing their body.
At the center of the room is the pool itself, deep and green and crystalline. Theren takes a position at the edge of the water, careful to keep his feet dry.
It’s his mother’s fault that he hasn’t been Imbued, that he can’t use most Cedrae technology. After quite a few arguments, he agreed to delay the ritual, in accordance with her religious beliefs, until after he took his oath. It’s a cold sort of comfort to know that in a year, when he becomes a Knight and loses most of his freedom, he’ll at least be able to send messages and walk into adults-only spaces unaccompanied.
He’s only been standing there for a few seconds when the vestibule door opens across from Theren, and Isre walks in. He’s dressed in simple garments, the same deep green as Zuza’s robes, and his feet are bare. His riotously curly hair is already springing away from his head, despite whatever he did to tame it. He sees Theren and grins, but when his eyes search the room for their mother, his face falls a little. Theren isn’t sure why—she’s made her position on this ritual very clear, ever since they were young. Maybe Isre thought his stepmother would bend for him eventually. But Theren could have told him that Kesia Forint bends for no one, even when it arouses the suspicions of the Cedre government.
Still, Isre looks happy enough. He goes to the steps at the far end of the pool so he can descend, and Zuza takes her position across from him. Most of the time, a person’s entire family comes to their Imbuing. But Isre’s father—Theren’s stepfather—died years ago, and his aunts, uncles, and cousins live planetside, thousands of miles below them, on the Cedrae continent of Austra. So Theren is all he has.
“Welcome, Isre Din,” Zuza says, in a deep, serious voice Theren has never heard from her before. “Here on Cedre Station, we know better than most Cedrae just how much we have inherited from our ancestors. After all, we live in a place we didn’t build, using technology we didn’t develop. Our very existence is a testament to our predecessors’ care for us.”
Zuza gestures wide, to encompass the room around them, the station that holds two million people suspended over the planet like a thunderhead.
“The Imbuing Pool is another gift we receive with open hands, aware of the great benefits it offers us,” Zuza says. “But with those benefits comes the responsibility to leave this world better than we found it, and to care for those who come after us. This is the work that, regardless of religious tradition, every Cedrae holds to be sacred. Do you accept that responsibility, Isre?”
“I do.” Isre flashes a smile at Theren. He’s bouncing on his toes a little. Isre never was any good at staying still.
“Then please.” Zuza gestures to the pool. “Go ahead.”
Isre steps into the pool, wetting his feet first, and then stepping down so the water covers his calves, his thighs, his stomach. When he’s in as far as his chest, he sinks beneath the surface. Theren studies the ripples he leaves behind, wishing he could see what it looked like at the bottom of the pool. He only knows from what he’s read: the bottom of the pool is covered in stones no bigger than a fingernail. Isre will choose one—the one that calls to him, if he’s superstitious, or any random stone, if he’s not—and then swallow it while he’s still underwater. He’ll surface, breathless, with elixir in his veins.
It only takes a few seconds for Isre’s face to break through the surface of the water. He stands, soaked, and waits. Theren waits, too. And then a line of light climbs up from beneath the collar of Isre’s shirt and sprawls across his throat like a glowing white vein. It spreads quickly down both of his arms and up into his face, creeping over his scalp. Suddenly Theren’s brother is a shining, brilliant thing, like a fallen star. Bright with elixir.
The light spots Theren’s eyes, but he doesn’t look away. He feels, instead, a pang of longing for a thing he can’t yet be—a thing he’ll never quite be, whether he gets elixir or not:
Cedrae.
* * *
They celebrate at the noodle place in the Grasslands District, Isre’s favorite restaurant. It’s casual and easy, just a group of his friends and Theren slurping noodles as someone sings the blues next door in Lugha—which Isre understands, because his late mother taught him, but Theren doesn’t. Isre is in the middle of translating the song for Theren when Zuza appears in the doorway.
“Is that . . . my priestess?” Isre says, interrupting himself to squint at her.
“No, it’s my date,” Theren replies. He pauses, and then amends, “Who is also a part-time priestess, yes.”
Even though Zuza’s not any kind of religious figure, Isre still looks a little scandalized as Theren waves Zuza over and wraps an arm around her waist.
“I told you I’d get better at sleuthing,” she says, right up against his mouth. She kisses him, then looks up and says, “Hey, Din. What’s your brother’s surname?”
Theren doesn’t have to give Isre a warning look, because Isre is a good brother.
“He doesn’t have one,” Isre says casually. “It’s just ‘Theren.’ Like a famous artist.”
“Oh, so the entire family is in on the bit, huh?” Zuza says, smiling down at Theren.
“Want some noodles?” Isre asks her.
“No,” Theren and Zuza say, in unison.
Theren slides his hand into hers and stands. “Happy Imbuing, Isre. See you on Friday?”
Friday is the day of their weekly family dinner. Isre gives him a clumsy salute, and Theren and Zuza make their way out of the noodle shop and into the market.
The Grasslands District market is a chaotic place, and a beautiful one. The ceiling’s ductwork and pipes are shrouded by huge swaths of yellow fabric, which gives everything beneath a warm glow. The space itself is a maze of restaurants and shops. The signs are in every language of Cedre—hundreds of them, though their number dwindles by the year—and every shade of neon. The smell of spices washes over Theren; a woman nearby flips a savory pancake. He dodges a rack of plush toys shaped like extinct animals and then they’re outside of the market, walking into the quiet beyond it.
He doesn’t live far from here. They wander down the starboard hallway, taking their time. They pass a case of emergency oxygen masks—break seal in case of sudden oxygen loss—and a row of launch seats tucked into the wall. He realizes the “On This Day in History” display is just ahead of them, and he tries to tug Zuza down a side path. She tugs right back.
“No, I love this display, come on—” She drags him toward the pavilion. In the center of it there’s a holographic projection hovering over a large sheet of obsidian, older Cedrae technology that doesn’t use elixir.
The projection is a spaceship. Theren recognizes it, and his mouth goes dry. Text scrolls across the top of the hologram.
On this day in history . . . twenty years ago, a ship called the Hoatzin entered Cedre Station’s airspace carrying twenty Talusar self-exiles who fled their homes after several of them spoke out against the Talusar government. They claimed to be seeking safe harbor in Cedre. A month of tension ensued as the Sword of Cedre, fearing that the exiles had been sent to contaminate Cedre Station with the Fever, contemplated eliminating the Hoatzin for the good of all. Ultimately, though, the exiles’ story of political persecution was confirmed, and they were able to come to terms with the Sword of Cedre.
“Oh, my parents were just talking about this the other day,” Zuza says. “They said everyone basically camped out in their news pavilions for weeks. I don’t remember how the crisis ended.”
“The exiles promised their firstborn children in service to Cedre,” Theren replies. “They had to become Knights or their citizenship would be revoked and they would all be deported back to Talusar country.”
He speaks without thinking about how it will sound. He can feel Zuza staring at him, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He tugs her away from the pavilion, toward his apartment, and she goes without argument.
