“Your good friend Siamun. The one you very rudely left locked up a few minutes ago.” I take a playful, chiding tone. Convey control, despite being surprised. She knew this wasn’t an Overseer. “You never gave me a chance to negotiate.”
An odd mixture of relaxing, additional tension, and excitement from Netiqret. She adjusts one of the rings on her fingers as she studies me. “This is very dangerous, Siamun,” she says eventually. “If Ka should realise one of his Overseers has wandered away, he will see my face.” Still perfectly calm.
“You didn’t leave me with much choice.”
“True.” Her hawklike brown eyes study me hungrily. “You are controlling this iunctus directly?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I know, in that moment, that I have her. Given what she does, given her need for secrecy and the immense benefit this ability of mine would give her … she sees the power of it immediately.
“I would prefer to talk about that face-to-face, if you don’t mind. We can come to you,” I add cheerfully.
She coughs a half-rueful, half-impressed chuckle this time. Glances againat the small child by her side, whose braids swing as she shakes her head at some unvoiced question. “You’re right. Perhaps I acted in haste. A face-to-face meeting is in order. But first, we must make the circumstances a little safer.” She smiles at me. Steps forward. “I shall wait for you here, Siamun.”
Before I can instruct the iunctus to react, her blade is flashing upward.
XXXIII
I, WHO REST HERE, WAS NAMED BELLI. A CHILD WHO LOVED LEARNing and competing, and excelled at both. Taken through violence by the enemies of my beloved Catenan Republic. Proconsul Volenis erected this monument to his dearly departed daughter.
The fields of the dead stretch around me. Silent and still in the cool summer morning, the looming crypt-dotted mountainside of the Necropolis to my left. The Eternal Fires crackle in the distance as I read the words on the six-foot-high tombstone again. Let my gaze linger on the familiar face intricately Will-carved beneath, near lifelike curls framing it. Belli looks back at me proudly.
“Thought I might find you here.”
I don’t turn at Emissa’s quiet voice from behind. “I missed their funerals.”
“You were unconscious. Nearly dead.”
I nod. We both know why.
Silence again. The corners of my vision are filled with other tombstones. Pristine too. Covered with names and stories I know too well.
Seventeen, in all. Buried together in a place of honour.
And these were only the ones whose families don’t have mausoleums.
“She would be so angry to know you ended up in Governance anyway.”
I breathe a soft laugh. “She would say I did it to avoid the competition.” I still to this day feel a little guilty, using her like that. Her desire to remove me as a rival beyond the Academy—not to mention the benefit in goodwill her father would have seen in Sytrece, where he is nominally Military, but depends heavily on Governance favour to operate—was too easy to exploit. “I saw her, you know. When I ran the Labyrinth during the Iudicium.” I rise to my feet, gaze finally turning to Emissa. “It wasn’t the Anguis.”
She’s staring at Belli’s carved face too. Composed, but I know her too well, can read her eyes.
Grief and guilt, just below the surface.
“Come on,” is all she says, eventually tearing herself away. “We don’t have long.”
We’re alone in the sun as gravel crunches beneath our slow footsteps. “Whyare we here, Emissa?” It’s been almost two months since Placement. I sent her a message as soon as it was over, letting her know that I was ready.
She sent three words of response.Festival of Jovan. And a Will-imbued stylus, which had lain motionless atop a blank wax tablet for weeks until a few days ago. With tensions close to exploding in the city, despite the ongoing festival—events breaking out into bursts of violence more often than not, now—I’d genuinely started wondering whether I was ever going to hear from her.
When I pushed through the crowds and got on the Transvect this morning, though, this was the last place I expected it to stop.
“I told you in my message. To talk to the Anguis prisoner.”
I go to express my disbelief, then hesitate. Military’s control over Agerus has always seemed a little strange to me. “They have cells here?”
