We walk into the narrow tunnel, only the pool of our lantern’s glow lighting the way. I briefly check my sense of imbued Will. Still something I have to focus on consciously, but it’s easy enough now. Emissa’s the closest beacon, but farther ahead, there are a few more faint ones. Sextii like me, I suspect. Self-imbued people feel very subtly different to imbued objects, I’ve found, though I still can’t quite express how.
Nothing concerning, though. I ignore the sensations again. “So you said Veridius chose you?”
“He did.” She seems reluctant to keep talking, but does anyway. “After I signed a Silencium, he showed me the ruins and told me that there was another Cataclysm coming. And that I might be able to stop it.” She laughs bitterly. “I’ll leave it up to him to explain that part. But after he was done, when I asked why he’d chosen me, he said that only someone who had never been through the Aurora Columnae could do it.”
I scowl. “You still think I won’t go if you give me all the answers?”
“I know you won’t.” She shrugs in a vague, non-apologetic sort of way. “Anyway. I told him straight away what my father and I had done. He was furious, but … I still wanted to help however I could, and he’d already shown me too much. So he got me to sign and imbue another document, admitting to the illegal use of the Aurora Columnae.”
“He still has it?” When she nods, I wince. “So he’s been using you, too.”
“No. I’m helping him.” Sharp reproof in her voice. “We made sure there would be nothing to link us, and then I was supposed to pick a position in Military that could get me the sort of access he’s been missing. I was meant to figure out what they know, and what they were planning to do about it. That’s why he arranged for a few Septimii to cede to me during the Iudicium. It’s why he told me about Indol defecting, too—just in case I had to use it against him. We were counting on me being Domitor.”
“Sorry.”
She huffs at my wry tone. “As you should be.”
We start down some gently sloping stairs. The glistening walls remind me of Letens Prison. Our footsteps echo.
“One thing I don’t understand,” I say eventually. “If this threat—this second Cataclysm—is real, why in all rotting hells would he not tell anyone about it?”
She looks across at me with amused affection. “Really? You’ve been in Caten long enough. You tell me.”
I open my mouth, then shut it again. I knew the answer months ago. All I had to do was think about the powerful men and women I was busy getting to know. Imagine the chaos, the arguments. The power struggles cloaked as altruism that would result in nothing ever being achieved.
“Rotting gods-damned Senate,” I mutter.
I’m about to say more when suddenly there’s movement from the darkness ahead.
“Halt.” Red cloak and black eyes in the lantern-light. A cloud of obsidiandaggers suddenly glitters in front of our faces. I have a moment of panic. Some part of me cannot help but see the tunnels in Suus. My father and I, stopped by a Praetorian just like this one.
“Quintus Corenius and Sextus Catenicus. We’re expected.” Emissa’s voice is unconcerned.
“Authorisation?”
Emissa produces a folded sheet and hands it to the man, who vanishes into the darkness behind the unmoving daggers. I examine them warily, little else to focus on. There are more than a dozen. Not impossible for a single Praetorian, but I’d bet there are at least two more assisting from the shadows.
We wait in tense silence; I want to ask Emissa what’s going on but she seems to have expected all this, so I hold my tongue. A minute passes.
Then I’m shielding myself from abrupt light, lanterns springing to life in unison along the hallway around us and ahead. The revealed passageway ends in an open doorway about thirty feet away, the two Praetorians guarding it watching us with black eyes and unmoving intensity. The first man, just in front of them, beckons us.
The hovering cloud of obsidian parts to allow us through, then re-forms and trails us until we step into the room. The small space is nondescript, plain stone walls surrounding a single desk with a lantern, quill and ink, and single sheet of paper waiting on it. Another door sits closed opposite.
“Sign the Silencium, Catenicus, and you may proceed,” says our chaperone, gesturing. The stone door booms shut behind us, and immediately the feel of the room changes. As if the air has suddenly grown dense. My skin crawls.
“Will cage,” murmurs Emissa before I can say anything.
I roll my shoulders at the oppressive, uncomfortable feeling. The protective mesh of Harmonically imbued metal triangles that now sits constantly around my torso remains firmly in place, unaffected given I’m inside the cage too. I knew that would theoretically be the case, but I hadn’t expected it to be tested until we reached the Academy.
I hide my relief—nothing illegal to what I’ve created, but it’s not much of an advantage if people know about it—and snatch up the paper. A quick scan shows familiar, standard language. If I talk about anything I see here, Military will have the legal right to put me in a Sapper. And so on, and so on.
I sign. I’ve put my name to so many of these things that it barely bothers me now. “Just me?”
“They already have mine.”
The Praetorian examines my signature, then opens the way forward. “You know how this works?”
“I do,” says Emissa before I can respond.
