My eyes are already flooded with darkness, but I risk diverting some Will from my legs to my arm. Ignore the agony and take three falsely confident strides over to her. Pick her up by the shoulder and use my very real fury to slam her against the wall, eliciting a gasp of pain. Not so different from what Decimus did to me less than an hour ago.
“I don’t havetimefor this, Septimus,” I snarl in her face. Her eyes are wide with abrupt fear. I don’t know what the other Septimus is doing, but I have to trust he’s cowed rather than planning to attack me, because weak as I am, I doubt I can actually beat these two. “I know your business tonight. I know what you’re going to do. And Princeps Laurentiusrequiresthe information these people have.Now. You really think he and Quartus Kanifer would send me if they had better, more official, options? We are atwarand the normal rules do not apply. So you can let me through, or I can kill you both. Whichever is easiest.”
She must see something in my eyes. The rage and torment and heartbreak that’s bubbling beneath the surface. Any fight she might have had leaks from her. “Of course, Quintus. Ofcourse. Apologies. Apologies. I wasn’t thinking.”
I grunt and let her slide down the wall, affecting disgust. Wait impatiently for the man to unlock the door with a trembling hand. Snatch up the candle waiting just inside, and start down the stairs without looking back.
As soon as I hear the door close, I collapse against the damp stone wall, allowing a soft hiss between gritted teeth. Carefully sit to take the added pressure off my body. Just for a few moments. Just until I can get my breathing back under control.
Then I press on.
LXXII
I WAS EIGHT WHEN THE SHIP MY UNCLE WAS ON WAS LOSTto a storm, killing all aboard. I remember my father’s immense sorrow well, but my own was a strange thing. There, certainly—but more confused, almost uncomprehending, and so something I instinctively tried to push aside until it went away.
Then, weeks after, I found a toy my uncle had given me. A stone horse figurine that I had grown out of so quickly that it had sat on a shelf behind books, forgotten, until that day. And when I happened upon it, when I remembered his happiness in the giving of the gift, I wept anew. Wept more freely than I had at his funeral. Unprepared for the sudden realisation of aching, complete absence.
My father found me like that, and we talked a while. About life, and death, and the way we deal with them. When I told him I didn’t want to feel sad anymore, he gave me a smile that wished it could take my pain. Grief, he explained to me gently, is a process that has only a beginning. We work through it, not get over it. And so attempting to just ignore its ache is inevitably a pointless exercise.
Tonight, though, I don’t have an option.
I feel no fear as I make my way carefully downward into the depths of South Caten Prison. No anxiety. I am focused on the task at hand, but the fiercely suppressed grief and anger is there, thick, muting everything else. I consider my actions in a hollow, detached way, as though none of these events are real. I suppose that is what my mind is doing. Pretending this is all some nightmare, until such time comes that I can afford to accept otherwise.
Like many things, Caten builds their prisons using a uniform layout, and it’s an uncomfortably familiar journey descending the stairs. I’m about halfway down when the smell first hits. I hold my sleeve over my nose and mouth immediately. It shouldn’t be this bad. Not this far up.
I press on. Reach the bottom of the first stairwell, the air thick and rancid, clogging my lungs. Lanistia’s meant to be on this level, past the Sappers meant for shorter-term punishments. I should find her first.
My light touches the first open chamber, and I freeze, bile filling my throat.
“Gods. Rottinggods.” Sticky brown blood coats the white stone. Has dribbled down into the gutter and clogged it. The naked man currently on the Sapper is alive and seemingly uninjured, skin wan and breath rasping. A replacement for whoever was killed here, then. Done in a rush. No care for cleanliness, no thought of preventing the onset of any sickness.
Probably some Octavus or Septimus unfortunate enough to have originally belonged to a Military pyramid. I doubt he even did anything wrong.
I stumble on, shakiness as much from horror as my legs, my gait requiring less focus now I’m on level ground again. One in every three or four Sappers shows signs of bloody execution. All the prisoners on them are dirty, emaciated. Not just uncared for but dangerously close to abandoned down here.
I limp through the stench and misery, and try to coldly assess. In my experience, most Sappers are devoted to Military pyramids, so if the killings were to do with the current conflict—a reasonable assumption—then they were targeting Governance and Religion. Military were in charge of the prisons, prior to the festival. When they withdrew, they must have done exactly what Governance and Religion are planning to do tonight.
And it was Military who staffed these places, too. Had the expertise to properly run them. Organised the supplies of food and water. Knew what was needed to keep prisoners healthy and clean.
I press on, between the smeared memory of the dead and the rasping misery of the rest, and it’s with no small amount of relief that I finally pass the last wheezing horror and into the hallway of true prisoner cells. By the time I reach the one Lanistia was listed as being in, I’ve endured desperate calls for help or information, studiously ignored, from a multitude of them. Hers, though, is silent.
“Lanistia?” I say her name low through the thick iron bars into the darkness. Nothing, and I shift uneasily, pressing closer and calling louder. “Lanistia? It’s me. Vis.”
A rattling of chains in the black. A shifting of shadows.
“About gods-damned time.”
My concern breaks to a relieved sigh as Lanistia’s form shuffles into the dim light afforded by the narrow slits of her cell. She’s haggard and thin, her voice croaking. Movements evidently painful. A ghost of the health she was in only a couple of months ago.
But the expression on her face is grim, not broken. Physically weakened, but she’s still the same woman.
“If I get those chains off you, can you walk?” I use the jailor’s key to unlock her door. Swing it wide. The motion one of bravado to myself; she’s no threat in her current state, but I have to believe she won’t be one regardless.
“Walk? Yes.” She shuffles another step toward me. Tentative. Left arm outstretched to brace herself. “Though you may recall, getting the direction right might be trickier. What in the rotting gods’ names has been going on? They were meant to put me in a Sapper two weeks ago, and that night there was a lot of yelling in the distance and then nothing else. I’ve had three, maybe four bad meals since then, and the last few days I’ve had to ration my washing water for drinking.”
I wince, even if being an Octavus and locked away like this is probably what’s saved her; with everything else going on, easier to not bother with her than to relocate her to a Sapper. And I’d already taken into account that she wouldn’t have access to Will.
Though, I’d also assumed Aequa would be with me for this part.
