Relic

II: Martius 31 Year 242, A.H.

The moment we enter the solar great room, Lukas drops my arm. He disappears into the busy hive of dark-haired, dark-eyed Boundary Attendants lining the wall or scurrying in and out of the kitchen. I must face the room by myself.

The hearth-fire is almost too much for me to bear after the icy night air. My family and friends stand before it, warming their hands close to its orange-red flames. In the flickering light of the dozens of lamps and candles, I can see they are all wearing their Feast finery—dark gowns and tunics, heavily embroidered as The Lex requires, somber against the vibrant flames.

For a brief, blissful tick, no one realizes that I’ve returned. I feel an urge to flee back out into the pure, white cold. Back to my solitude. Back to Eamon. But then my mother looks up from the blaze. I freeze in my tracks, feeling icier than I’d felt up on the turret. I know that expression. She may appear the perfect Lady with her gentle smile and elegantly outstretched hand, but I know anger seethes beneath—anger that will manifest in ever more restrictions for me.

Somehow, I must repress the girl from the turret. For the benefit of my parents and our guests, I must become, once again, the Lex-abiding Maiden I used to be. I think on the admonitions for Maidens: be ever pleasing to the eye and ear. I paint a smile on my face and demurely lower my gaze.

“Eva, my darling. An Attendant has been out searching for you. Our friends are here with blessings for tomorrow. But there was no Eva to bless!” My mother adds a laugh as she picks at the embroidered sleeve of her gown. I know that I should’ve been here, waiting for Jasper and his family to arrive, as well as respecting my own relatives. What excuse would a Maiden offer? I stammer a bit, trying to think of the perfect answer. One befitting my station. One acceptable to my mother.

Jasper comes to my rescue. Ever the Gallant. Faultless in his brown tunic, trousers, and fur mantle, he rushes to my side with an easy laugh. With his fair Nordic looks, it’s hard for me to imagine that one day our parents’ shared dream of a Union might actually come true. He seems too perfect. Although, of course, the decision about a Union belongs to our parents and the Triad.

“Were you hiding on the turret, Eva? You naughty Maiden! I can’t believe you forced poor Lukas out onto those slick stairs on a frigid night.”

Jasper says it in jest, not realizing the truth of his words. The tension breaks, and our guests break into smiles and chuckles. Jasper always knows the right thing to say, especially in front of my mother. I’m thankful for it, but worried Lukas has heard Jasper talking about him that way. I scan the row of Attendants for sign of him, but then I catch my mother standing with her mouth agape. She realizes that I was actually on the turret, even though The Lex mandates that Maidens must be indoors after the None Bell for their protection. I brace myself for her reaction.

“The turret?” My mother’s voice slips into Lady-pitch, as if her high whisper with its perfect adherence to The Lex somehow makes up for my recent lapses. I wish she’d relax her standards and leave me alone for just one night, or at least not publicly hint at her complaints. It’s humiliating. But no matter how furious she is with me for my errors, she’s careful not to accuse me; she has worked too hard to mar the image of our Lex-perfect family now. Even Eamon’s death hasn’t shaken her resolve.

To my great surprise, my father answers for me. “Eva will be Testing in the days to come, Margret. I don’t think we should worry about The Lex tonight.”

“But Jon …” Her voice has that Lady-pitch again.

My father is insistent. “No more, Margret. Tonight is the Feast of the Testing. I am Chief Archon. And we have a Testor in our family.”

My mother quiets; she has no choice. The Lex clearly states that a wife follows her husband’s commands. That goes triply for the wife of a Triad Chief.

My father gestures to an Attendant along the wall to bring forth a tray of goblets. It’s my own Boundary Companion, Katja. Once each guest and family member has received the mead from Katja’s tray, my father raises his own goblet.

I look around at the circle of extended family, mine and Jasper’s, all with their cups lifted high.

To the left is my mother’s family—her sister, husband, and two children, and her brother and his wife—so distinctive with their white-blonde Nordic hair and pale blue eyes. In my mother’s mind, their pure Nordic blood almost makes up for the fact that her brother and sister aren’t Lord and Lady, but mere Gentleman and Gentlewoman. Neither is a Keeper or married to one; neither was as shrewd as my mother, or lucky enough; her brother is just a Steward to another Keep and her sister married a Steward as well. To the right stands my dad’s family—his brother, his brother’s wife, and their young son—so like my dad with the inky hair, pale skin, and narrow eyes of the Russian people. Still, my mother affords them the respect they deserve, as my father’s brother is a Keeper. Only the Triad of New North leaders—the Lexors, Archons, and Basilikons—rank higher than Keepers. And the Three Chiefs rank highest of them all during their terms of service.

With our auburn hair and green-blue eyes, Eamon and I used to tease each other that we belonged to another family, maybe even random Boundary parents. My mother couldn’t tolerate jokes that we might come from any stock other than pure Founding; after insisting that we were a throwback to a rarer bloodline, she’d banish us to our bedrooms for nasty talk.

Scattered throughout the group are Jasper’s family: his parents, his sister, and an uncle with his wife. They are a more mixed group than mine with a strong North American streak, but still pure Founding stock all, and not only Keepers in their mix but a Chief Lexor too, Jasper’s uncle Ian, and his wife. Even though the circle consists of eighteen people, it seems small and incomplete without Eamon. Especially since Jasper was always Eamon’s friend, not mine.

I hold my breath. I can’t imagine what my father will say.

“In the morning, the Testing begins. Our children, Eva and Jasper, will be among the Testors. The competition will demand much, more than we have already sacrificed.” My father pauses uncharacteristically—he’s usually so comfortable and smooth in his speeches—and the room is absolutely still. Everyone understands exactly what he means by that sacrifice.

His voice takes on a commanding Chief Archon tone, the one I’ve heard so many times in the Aerie town square. Suddenly, he sounds like he’s giving a speech to New North instead of initiating the Feast of the Testing. It seems out-of-place at first, but then I realize that he might break down over Eamon if he doesn’t act the Chief Archon instead of a father. This Feast was always meant for Eamon. Not me. And the Feast was meant to secure the Gods’ blessings that Eamon return not only with the Archon Laurels, but also with a Chronicle worthy of the Chief Archon position when my father’s term ends later this year.

My father incants the ritual language. I’ve heard this every year of my life, but never in the context of my own participation. The words are as familiar to me as my own name. “The Lex says that, on the night of the Feast of the Testing, we shall tell our children that we Test because of what the Gods did for us when we survived the Healing. Over two hundred years ago, the Healing washed over the Earth, leaving only the Gods’ chosen people alive. The Gods—our mother, the Sun, and our father, the Earth—delivered us to New North, the Gods’ chosen land. The Gods gave us a final chance to redeem mankind’s evil by living in accordance with their Word—as written down in The Praebulum and The Lex.

“The Gods told our Founders that we needed a Triad of strong leaders, ones who could teach the New North people the dangers of our past, like worshipping the false god Apple. Leaders who could show the people we must live in accordance with The Lex, which dictates mankind live as we did in the Golden Age of the Medieval era, that idyllic time before the false neon of modern advancements set mankind on a path to wickedness and lawlessness. Thus, the Gods formed the competitions for the sacred roles of Lexors, Basilikons, and Archons—among them the Testing for Archons.”

I raise my eyes and lift my hands—cup and all—toward the heavens, as my father asks the Four Sacred Questions for the Feast of the Testing.

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” he intones.

“Because, on this night, we ask the Gods to bless our Testors as they prepare for their sacred trials.” I hear myself give the ritual response, along with the rest of our guests, though my mind is with Eamon

“Why will tomorrow morning be different than all other mornings?” my father asks.

“Because, in the morning, we will ask the Gods to bless our Testors as they make the Passage and set off on their hallowed journey,” we answer in unison.

“Why will the next twenty-seven days be different than all other days?”

“Because, for each of those twenty-seven days, we will join together in the town square for the Gathering—to offer prayers for the Testors’ safety and for news of their Gods-given triumphs,” we say together.

“And why will the twenty-eighth day be different from all other days?”

“Because, on the twenty-eighth day, the Gods will choose our new Archon, a leader capable of surviving the journey to the Frozen Shores, discovering Relics that washed onto the Frozen Shores during the Healing, and writing Chronicles about the Relics that will show the New North people the rightness of our Lex-sanctified ways.”

We raise our cups. Normally, we drink together as the final step in the ritual. But tonight, it seems that my father has more to say. I wonder if he will address the end of his term as Chief. The Lex does not require it, but many Chiefs throughout the ages have made farewell speeches. If not tonight, surely he will do so another evening, though I might not be there.

“Tonight, we lift our cups to the Gods that either Jasper or Eva is chosen as the Chief Archon from this Testing. Certainly, they are both worthy of New North’s highest calling. But whether or not the Gods judge them deserving, we pray that they return home safely to the Aerie. Benigno numine.”

As I raise my goblet to my father’s, my hand shakes in relief and gratitude. My father’s words sound like a begrudging approval of my insistence that I Test. I don’t want him to mistake my trembling for fear. I’ve worked too hard these past months to secure approval for him to think I have even a moment’s hesitation.

NO ONE WAS MORE astonished than my parents when I announced my Commitment to the Testing. Eamon was heir designate; he alone had the years of physical, scientific, and historical training to withstand its rigors. In the wake of his tragic death, both my father and mother insisted that the Testing was not the place for their pretty, slender, and demure Maiden. My father had hoped I would choose a life better suited to my talents and gender—perhaps as a Master Gardener in the Ark, at least until I became the Betrothed of Jasper, our mothers’ greatest wish. Though either of those pacts had yet to be formalized.

But try as he might, my father couldn’t find anything in The Lex to stop me from Testing, even when he appealed to Chief Lexor, who also happened to be Jasper’s uncle and a close friend. Besides, I’d practically memorized The Praebulum and Lex in an effort to convince him. No amount of emotional pleading deterred me from submitting my name. Not even the persuasive, ever-logical arguments of Jasper swayed me. In the end, my father stopped resisting. He even let me train with Lukas as Eamon had, always with a proper Lady chaperone of course. My mother seethed, but this wasn’t about her. This was also something that my father knew intuitively. Because it wasn’t about me, either. It was only and always about Eamon.

My twin’s life ended on the Ring, but his dream did not. And I would never allow that dream to die.

BY THE TIME MY goblet touches my father’s, my hand is still. He nods at me. The serving horn sounds, and he, as Chief Archon, motions for our guests to follow my mother into the Feast. One by one, we dip our hands into the cool, clean water of the proffered silver wash basin.

As a Testor, I go last, right after Jasper. As my fingertips graze the water’s surface, I try to keep my eyes cast down. But I can’t. I know Lukas is holding the silver basin. I want to thank him for saving me on the turret—thank him for all he’s taught me, really—but he stands at the wall, gazing blankly in the distance like the perfect servant. As if we are both invisible.

I position myself to meet his gaze and stare straight into his eyes for a long, long moment, so he has no choice but to acknowledge me. At once, I wish that I hadn’t. In that darkness, I see something that moves me more than any pleading by my parents over fear for my safety during the Testing, or any carefully plotted arguments of Jasper. I see sadness.