“The one for whom you have been calling.” The man speaks in crisp, formal Vetusian, and it takes me a moment to recognise and translate it.
I stare. Not saying anything, thinking furiously. It’s hard to make out features but the silhouette is unsettlingly still.
No doubting who he’s saying he is, though.
I finally hold up my hands, relieved to find they are not visibly shaking. “Then I wish to negotiate.” I say it in Vetusian too, though mine isn’t as smooth or elegant. The notion still ludicrous as it leaves my mouth, but we’re here now. “I believe we may be able to help each other.” I itch to move, to do anything to feel less vulnerable. But I have to trust Eidhin will find a good position to act, should things turn violent.
“An interesting proposition, from the man who has ruined so much.” The shadow shifts. “How do you believe we can do this, Carnifex?”
“You need a replacement for Princeps Exesius, and an end to this war.” I say it as if it is not a guess. I peer at him, then, reluctantly, let my metal mask and arm melt away. “My name is Quintus Vis Telimus Catenicus, and I can give you both. I have the legitimacy and the popularity to bind these pretenders beneath me. But to do that, I need something that will force them to the table, regardless of their legions.” I close my eyes. Gods help me. “Something that will make them fear me enough to temper their ambitions.”
Another long silence. A complete lack of motion from the shadowed figure.
“You decided upon this course only hours ago,” he says eventually.
I frown. “I have been thinking about it all week, but … I suppose.”
“Why?”
“Because my options were limited.”
“Yet you evidently knew I was already looking for you. Intending to kill you, given the chance. Just as, I assume, whoever so clumsily dangled you intended to kill me.”
I swallow. Thrown by the strange and unsettling veer in conversation. “They werereallylimited options.”
“Undoubtedly.” Still an absence of emotion, but I imagine dry amusementin the response, this time. “Even so. When a man is Synchronous, sometimes things bleed through. Small things. Inexplicable impressions, instincts you may not normally have. A whisper of the memory of knowledge. And I think, perhaps—unless the coincidence is extraordinary—this is why we are speaking now.” Another pause. Face still shadowed. “Do you know my purpose, Catenicus?”
“To cause another Cataclysm.” No point in pretending.
“No. That is means, not purpose.” The dark shape shifts. “More than nine in every ten dead, in this world. It is a horror and heartbreak that cannot be explained in numbers or words. But that sacrifice is to save the one in ten. It is to prevent the obliteration of two worlds, and the enslavement of whichever remains.” A pause. “And as of a few hours ago, you are now the only man alive who can fulfil that purpose.”
He steps forward out of the shadows, and the flickering light of the distant fires reveals a man in his thirties, haggard and unkempt, with shoulder-length black hair. A crooked nose. Dirty and unremarkable. “I will help you. I will give you what you need. This iunctus will guide you—and your friend lurking in the shadows, if he wishes—to where you need to go, while I prepare. All I ask in return is that you truly hear what I have told you. A choice of many lives, or all of them, Catenicus. That will be your burden, now.”
There’s a scream from a few streets over. Echoing and hollow and haunting as it drifts through the hush and then cuts off abruptly. To my right, Eidhin slowly emerges from the darkness.
I feel light-headed. Nauseous. Another deception? I can’t see its purpose. It’s not something I am going to believe without proof, and a lot of it.
But I have not been asked for anything except my attention. Not yet.
And he has that, now.
“I’m listening,” I eventually say quietly.
THE FIRST BRIGHT RAYS OF DAWN KISS THE UPPERMOSTtombs of Agerus as Eidhin and I trudge wearily behind the iunctus, the Necropolis and its thousands upon thousands of graves stretching away across fields divided by the flickering orange of the Eternal Flames. Beautiful, and utterly desolate. No sign of the Military personnel who would normally be here.
It took almost an hour for the iunctus to guide us to the docks through the burning and blood of Caten’s fracturing. Ka seemed to relinquish his control of the dead man before we could ask anything more; since Alta Semita our guide has been completely unresponsive to both conversation and command, calm and mechanical as he steered us unerringly around blockades and patrols and, finally, onto an empty bireme that immediately began gliding into the darkness of Caten’s harbour.
It was hours before our ship angled toward the shore again. Despite my weak protests, Eidhin spent much of the start of the journey checking my wounds and then applying fresh makeshift bandages, padding everything so that the discomfort of my crutches would not be so bad when I did have to walk again. He brushed off my gratitude with a familiar, dismissive grunt before finally tending to himself.
After that, I dozed fitfully, carefully prone, metal bracing rearranged to best ensure the shape of my legs. Too exhausted to fully stay awake. Too angry, and anxious, and heartbroken, and in pain, to sleep for long. I would slumber and then wake with a jolt to the gentle motion of the boat, and remember Aequa, and all of the helpless injustice would come thundering back, and I would lie there and stare at the night sky and let the rage that pounded my heart lend me more of its determination, second by second.
Eidhin, I think, did not even try to sleep. I often stirred to find him nearby at the bow, leaning against the railing and watching as the inky waves of the Sea of Quus broke silver against our passage. In my waking times, we talked occasionally. About what Ka said, whether it could possibly be true. About what might come next. But mostly we gazed in silence. Captives of our own thoughts and worries and grieving furies. The sharing of heavy burdens in each other’s company, even if neither of us said them aloud.
And now as we trail the dead man past graves and mausoleums, I know where we are headed. Only confirmed as we turn down the almost invisible path into the mountain and pass beneath the archway, its writing barely visible in the early dim.
Death is the door to life.
“This is where Emissa took me, when we came to see the prisoner,” I tell Eidhin grimly.
