Relic (The Books of Eva I) (19 page)

Jasper’s win should make things easier for me if there is a backlash. After all, my father just wants me to return home alive. Lukas won’t be too disappointed that I didn’t always follow his advice. I try to repress my worries and focus on the comforts that await.

The mood in the camp is lighter, and not just for me. All the Testors have sent their Chronicles back. The Testing Site will remain open for only this last
sinik
. Spring is coming fast, and the warming brings instability to the ice crevasse. So no more climbing and digging. We’re all happy to be going home. All except for Tristan and Anders, of course, and I’m guessing we all try hard not to think about them.

I spend the morning and afternoon bells of our last
sinik
packing up and preparing my dogs for the journey. We linger over dinner instead of racing back to igloos like we’ve done for so many
siniks
. Technically, The Lex still prohibits talking among Testors, but tonight the Scouts have turned a blind eye to quiet chatter. I guess they figure there’s not much collusion we can spawn or advantages we can give each other now. Even still, no one has really bothered to talk to me, so I just sit back and listen to the boys’ banter. So far, it consists of a lot of bragging and very little else—but it entertains after so much silence.

Only Jasper is as quiet as I am. Until he pretends to head back to his igloo and whispers as he passes: “Meet me at the crevasse after dinner?”

For a tick, I wonder whether I should risk The Lex to meet
him. But I want to know where we stand before we head home and he is lost in the victory celebrations and Chief Archon preparations. I try to tell myself that I’m happy he’ll be taking my father’s place at the end of his term. He is the next best thing to Eamon in my family’s eyes. Perhaps even in mine. I nod, and after a respectable numbers of ticks, I get up and start walking in the direction of the Testing Site. Casually, I think.

“Testor, where are you going?” one of the Scouts calls out to me.

Why did I think anyone would let me slink off? Even now? “To clear out my gear from the Testing Site, sir.”

The Scout pauses, probably figuring there’s not much more damage I can do at this stage. Except to myself, which Scout Okpik and possibly some others wouldn’t mind. Mercifully, Okpik’s been ignoring me for the past few
siniks
. Since Aleksandr and Neils’ find, really. “Shouldn’t you have done that earlier?”

“Yes, sir.”

He sighs. “All right. Just be back before last light.”

“Yes, sir.”

The light is still bright enough to make the landscape blue and purple instead of unnavigable black, and I make it to the crevasse easily enough. Two Boundary Climbers still patrol the perimeter—to protect the Site from the Testors, or the Testors from the Site, I’m not sure which. The white-haired Climber is one of the two on duty, and I busy myself with collecting gear so I won’t have to look him in the eye.

In a quarter bell, Jasper arrives. Kneeling down nearby, he makes a show of packing up his dig equipment as well. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, so I let him speak first.

“Feels like we’ve been beyond the Ring a long time, doesn’t it?” he whispers, keeping his eyes fixed on his Claim.

“The Aerie almost seems like a dream,” I whisper back. I don’t tell him how changed I feel. How Elizabet has altered me in ways I could have never imagined. How sitting here next to Jasper—a genderless Testor with an unsure future instead of a Lex-guarded Maiden—I feel as exposed as Elizabet must have felt onstage. As naked as I might feel on my wedding eve. And how Elizabet has made me as eager to win the Archon Laurels as any Gallant entering the Testing, so much so that I wrote a Chronicle as if I were Elizabet herself.

He moves closer to me. The air grows warmer around us. When he starts talking, I can sense his breath on me. It makes me feel funny, and I almost can’t concentrate on his words.

“Things are going to be different when we get back, Eva. They might get really busy for me.” He hesitates, as if he shouldn’t say what comes next, “You know that I found a small worship tablet to the false god Apple.”

“I know,” I whisper back.

He laughs a little. “I guess there aren’t any secrets out here. Anyway … in case I get swept up in all the ceremony, I wanted you to know that my feelings for you haven’t changed. If anything, they’ve gotten deeper. Watching you risk so much out here has given me …”

As Jasper speaks, it strikes me that his speech sounds rehearsed instead of heartfelt. My warm feelings start to dissipate. Instead I find myself angry at his assumptions that he’s already won—even though I’ve assumed as much myself—and that I’m nothing more than a Maiden who can be appeased with a bit of Gallant-speak. Maybe he needs a lesson. Or better yet, a bargain: my support of his Archon
victory in exchange for a spot as Lexor, just like my father and his uncle were rumored to have made. Why not? I know The Lex inside and out and it would appease me to be the only female in the Triad. It would be even better if Jasper and I do end up Betrothed.

I take a deep breath, but hesitate when one of the Climbers passes close by in his rounds.

Jasper stops talking and begins packing up his ice screws and skeins of sealskin ropes. Just to look busy, I coil a rope, too. Even though it’s not mine.

The Climber draws nearer to us. “I understand that your Chronicle is very popular,” he remarks.

Both Jasper and I look up; it’s the white-haired Climber. Jasper puffs up a little, and says, “Well, it’s been a long time since an Apple Relic has been found.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Testor. I was talking to her.”

“Me?” I ask, incredulous. I’d been praying to the Gods for a positive reaction from New North, but I’m surprised when I hear that I’ve received it. How could the Aerie populace be favoring my Chronicle? Over Jasper’s Apple find? Especially when my Chronicle breaks form?

“Yes.” The Climber smiles a little, his teeth white in the mounting darkness. “Some say it’s the most popular Chronicle ever.” Then he walks away.

Jasper slumps back into the snow. His lips twitch. He is seething, I can tell. “What did you find, Eva?” he asks without even looking at me.

I tell him about the pink pack, all its little marvels. I describe to him my connection to their owner. And I tell him the Chronicle I wrote of Elizabet’s life and her last days. I think he’ll understand.

“So your Chronicle is a story?”

“Not exactly—”

“Kind of like the fiction they used to write in pre-Healing days?”

He’s trying to hurt me. I know better than anyone that “fiction” is a dirty word in the Aerie. Outlawed by The Lex. Stories and fables and tales have been banned since the Healing. My adventurous stitching was viewed by some as “fiction” and it sentenced me to the Ark. But this is different. “It’s not fiction, Jasper. It’s a reconstruction of her life based on the Relics I found,” I say, sounding more defensive than I’d like.

“How could you do that, Eva?”

“What do you mean?”

He stands and points his finger at me. “I mean, how could you treat the Testing like this? The Lex tells us that the Chronicles are the way to teach the New North people about dangers of the pre-Healing world and to reinforce our community’s decision to live in the Golden Ages. They don’t merely serve to entertain.” He spits out the last word as if it’s blasphemy.

Perhaps he’s raised his voice to attract the attention of the Climbers again. But I no longer care if we are overheard, and I no longer feel like some unprotected Maiden awaiting the verdict of her Gallant. I stand up and face him head on. “You haven’t even read my Chronicle.”

“I can’t believe I supported your participation in the Testing. You’ve risked my success at the Testing—and our future Union—with this stunt.”

“It sounds like you’re mostly mad because I stand a chance at winning. Truly the behavior of a Gallant.”

He stares at me for a long tick, and then storms off into the darkening night.

Part of me wants to race after him and scream at him for speaking to me that way. Part of me wants to stay far away from the camp, poisoned as it is now with Jasper and his words. It’s clear that I have to sacrifice any chance with Jasper if I want to win. I also realize that—no matter what the Climber reported about the reaction to my Chronicle—many others in the Aerie may react just like Jasper.

I take a deep breath, and decide to do something else entirely. Something forbidden.

I pull out my harness from my pack, run a line through it, and thread it through my ice screw. Then I descend into the crevasse for one last visit with Elizabet.

I can hardly see. Whether it’s from the tears streaming down my face or the Sun as She fades, I’m not sure. But I don’t care. I’m not going to let Jasper—or anyone else, for that matter—ruin my possibilities. I believe in my Chronicle. Given the choice I would still pick discovering Elizabet’s belongings over an Apple Relic, with its greater certainty of winning the Tests. Even if I face reprisals. And I’m not going to let anyone rob me of a final
vale
to Elizabet or a fight for victory in honor of Lukas and Eamon.

Thank the Gods I know the crevasse so well I can belay down with my eyes closed. Which is what I do. Fighting off my instinct to focus my vision—a futile task, anyway—I let my hands and feet guide the way down to my Claim.
Within a few ticks, I’ve found my Claim stakes, still lodged in the ice wall. Only then do my eyelids flutter open.

Reaching for the
naneq
still hanging from a stake, I light it. I spot the hollow where I found Elizabet’s pink pack. I run my gloved hand along the groove where I prised her belongings from the ice, and whisper the words of goodbye.

“
Vale in aeternam
, Elizabet.”

The ice feels softer than I remember, probably from the warming spring air. My glove catches on a tiny fissure in the hollow’s ice wall, one I don’t recall seeing before. Maybe it surfaced as the upper layers melted. As I try to pull my glove out of the stubborn crack, I think I see a glint of metal. But this ice wall has played so many tricks on me over the past
siniks
, I’ve learned not to trust it.

The fissure won’t let go, and it’s getting darker by the tick. It almost feels like someone’s gripping my hand. Even though we’re not supposed to touch the Testing Site now that it’s closed, I really have no choice but to grab a small pick out of my pack with my free hand and work away at the ice that has seized my glove. After I hack away, the cloth finally comes loose. I breath a huge sigh of relief; having made it this far, I certainly don’t want to die on my final
sinik
of the Testing.

I’m about to start my climb back up, when that glimmer catches my eye again. I know I should ignore it, but I can’t.

Crawling across to the spot, I hold my
naneq
close to the disrupted ice. I don’t even need to grab a tool to dislodge the object. I can see it plain as day. My heart seizes. It’s an Apple amulet. But there’s more. It’s hangs around the neck of a skeleton.

Is it Elizabet? Deep within myself, I know it is. It’s too close to her precious pink pack to be anyone else. I start to
cry again. What in the Gods should I do? This isn’t just a skeleton; this is my Elizabet.

I scrape away the final layer of ice and caress her bony cheek. Poor, poor Elizabet, I can’t leave her down here. I can’t abandon her. But there’s no way I can get her body out of the crevasse by myself. And since The Lex says once the Site is closed no Testors are allowed in and no one can remove Relics, how am I supposed to remove her from this icy grave? I can’t.

Damn The Lex. I’m going to have to leave her here. Then it occurs to me. I don’t have to leave
all
of her here, do I?

I grab my pick again, and remove the thin, wet layer of ice covering poor Elizabet’s body. Touching her skeletal face gently, I unhook the Apple amulet off of her neck and slide it into my pack. Even if no one ever sees the amulet but me—only the Gods know what would happen to me if anyone found out I’d been here after the Site closure—I’ll have this to remember her always.

With the outer layer of ice gone, I can see more. Elizabet has a flat, metal object folded into her arms. Holding the
naneq
a little closer, I realize just what it is. A diptych altar to Apple. The one Relic above all others. Last found one hundred and fifty years ago. The Pre-Healing people stared at its blank, glass surface as they worshipped. As they prayed in desperation. Hoping that Apple will give them some message, some sign.

Pushing aside my fear—this belonged to my Elizabet, after all—I wrest it from her bony arms as gently as I can. Too scared to do much more than slide it in my pack, I tell myself I’ll look at it later. In the safety of my igloo. For now, I’ve got to get out of the crevasse before the blackness of night falls on me.

“Goodbye, Elizabet,” I say, with a final touch on her cheek.

Her eyes can no longer see, but I feel her Spirit everywhere, watching me.

I scuttle back over to the base of my rope, hurl my large pick into the ice above my head, and dig my bear-claw boots into the wall-face. But I feel the rope begin to slip. The ice screw holding my line into place on the surface has lost its grip in the melting snow. I have only a tick before it’s too late. Grabbing my
ulu
out of my belt, I unhook myself from my harness and sever the line before it falls into the bottomless crevasse, taking me along with it. The line and ice screw fly past me. In sick fascination, I watch and wait for the sound of them hitting bottom. No noise ever comes.