“Nothing? I took you from an orphanage and gave you the name of one of the most powerful families in the world.Nothing?You’d be cowering in some hole or in a Sapper right now, if not for me.” Ulciscor sneers his surprised response.
“You sent me to die.”
“I sent you to find out—”
“YOU SENT ME TO DIE!” I roar the words. Abrupt and violent. Stand and swipe my near-full cup from the table next to me, sending it shattering across the floor. “You valued your dead brother’s reputation over my life!” A step forward. “Because of you, I lost a gods-damned arm!” Another step. I’m pointing at him. Hand trembling. “Because of you, I had to make decisions that ended with my friend DYING!”
Planned though the outburst is, there’s no need to fake my fury.
Ulciscor’s still seated. Shocked, I think, before he recovers enough for his own anger to respond. Broad frame looming as he rises, eyes blackening. “You think you can speak to me like this in my own house? I am a Magnus Quintus.”
“I don’t care. I never cared.” I don’t back down, but eventually I take a breath and look to the side as if calming myself. Deescalating. “I will tell you what happened, Ulciscor. I will tell you what I know because to not would be petty and cruel. And after that? I think we may still have reason for an alliance. But it will be analliance, this time, if we choose that path. Equal footing. No more orders.”
There’s grim silence as I lock eyes with him again. The illusion of power too often becomes power, my father used to say. I cannot let Ulciscor believe he has even the faintest remaining hold over me.
I can see him weighing my words, my actions, as wine spreads across the mosaic like blood. He still thinks of me as the hot-tempered youth he saw fight in the Theatre, but I’ve come a long way since Letens. My fame means Icould survive losing the Telimus name; if anything, my defection to Governance would make disinheriting me an expected move. And others would rush to fill the void.
An eternity later, Ulciscor nods. Curt but resigned. The scales of our relationship shift.
“Which one of you is being the idiot this time?”
Both of us turn and I summon a genuine grin at the sight of the lithe woman entering the atrium. Lanistia’s familiar dark glasses flash at me, reflecting the dawn’s intrusion past the hanging plants and into the courtyard. She’s more elegantly dressed than I think I’ve ever seen her be.
My smile slips a little as she approaches. She looks distinctly wan.
“Lanistia!” I move to embrace her but she stops a distance away, uncharacteristic uncertainty in the motion. I falter. “It’s good to see you.”
Ulciscor looks at her worriedly. “Did Kadmos—”
“He did. I’m fine.” Her usual, vaguely reassuring brusqueness in the response. “Don’t we have a ceremony to get to?”
Ulciscor’s mouth twists, and he exchanges a glance with me but we both just nod. He knows as well as I do the benefit of arguing with her.
“You can tell us what happened on the way there,” he says to me, gesturing to the door. “After, we can talk.”
Lanistia leads us out. She glances over her shoulder as we exit the villa into Caten’s cobblestone streets, which are already seeing plenty of bustle. “It’s good to see you too, Vis.”
We head for the Aurora Columnae.
X
AWAY FROM THE DISAPPROVING EARS OF OUR PARENTS,Ysabel and I used to sit on the western cliffs of Suus and complain about the lands across the strait from us. Who would be so stupid as to readily enslave themselves, no matter the foe? What justification could a person possibly give themselves before handing over their very Will to the nebulous control of the Republic? Everyone over there must be facile. Blind. Cowards. Probably all three.
We knew the truth, of course. Had been subjected to a hundred lectures dissecting why people submitted to the Hierarchy. Fear, naturally, played its part—but not always. Sometimes it was greed loosely masquerading as ambition. Sometimes it was misplaced faith that others would behave fairly and rightly. Or social pressure, the inevitable belief that the majority cannot be wrong. The reasons were complex and many-faceted and unavoidably varied from person to person. But we never mentioned those during our childish vents as we watched the sun set over the domain of our enemy. Easier to despise than understand. Easier to mock than empathise.
We would laugh a while, and then Ysa would eventually fall silent. Contemplative as the darkness came. Older and wiser than I.
“I’m glad we’re not like them,” she would say as she stared across the waves. Long dark hair tied neatly back, never a strand out of place. Always with a wistful smile that I never really understood.
I try to picture her face, now. It’s there but it’s a blur. Like looking through water. The absence of detail aches.
My fading memory feels almost as much a betrayal as what I’m about to do.
The Aurora Columnae towers against the clean, early morning skies of spring; everything around the Catenan Forum is grand, but it’s the obelisk at its head, cordoned off by a massive, thick chain and encircled by a dozen green-cloaked Sextii, that inevitably commands the eye. White granite stands a hundred feet tall, a single, perfectly quarried piece of stone, tapering to a pyramid at the very top. The symbols inscribed everywhere on its surface—still mysterious to the Hierarchy, despite their best efforts at translation—glow a distinct, pulsing gold.
“Have you seen it before?”
I look across at Ulciscor. Plenty of others here wearing the purple across white, but his status as a Magnus Quintus—and mine, as both Domitor of the Academy and Catenicus—has ensured that we are first in line today, despite arriving later than many. “Not this one.”
