Before I can panic, Duodecim is descending. Claiming me. Too far away from any of the others for them to hear the low, agonised gasp that escapes my lips as he stabs me once more.
We rise into the air. My breath is short, the pain worse and I can feel consciousness slipping away, but I hold on fiercely. Close, now. This is it.
I float in a haze of torment through desolate Qabr. Am dragged through the narrow tunnel, every part of me scraping roughly over stone, and then into the icy night of the desert.
I do not know how I survive. Some part of me takes refuge behind the eyes of the Gleaner, though it does nothing to dull the pain. We move as a pack, a swarm, the sky darkened with twisted forms carrying bodies impaled by glowing red. Mostly I allow Duodecim to control its own body, but occasionally I command him to watch the others, assessing their movements, their actions. More than anything, trying to distract myself.
There is not much to see, though. They are emotionless, stare straight ahead and move as one, each motion eerily similar to their neighbour’s. Just as Caeror insisted. Reliant on human senses, but not human. Copies of one another that are predictable in action and reaction, only the various strengths of their respective bodies acting as variables.
Monotonous silver sand. Sharp chill slicing my bare torso and face. Every moment is an age in which all I want to do is move, shift to try and find some position that doesn’t leave my chest screaming in agony.
But I endure.
And then, finally, we reach the glinting, moonlit obsidian of Duat.
XXII
WILL CAN BE USED BY THE ONE TO WHOM IT IS GIVEN,and them alone. It is a foundational truth of the Hierarchy, the underpinning of almost every rule, every method and every calculation I have been taught over the past year and a half. Something mentioned only in passing even to the Sevenths at the Academy, so self-evident has its truth been since the discovery of ceding by the Catenan Republic one hundred and fifty years ago.
I’ve had much of the carriage ride here to think about what the nameless stranger told me, back at the compound. “Adoption.” The ability to not only sense other people’s imbued Will, but totakeit. Even after everything I have seen, I would have dismissed it as madness were it not for the fact that I have experienced what he described. The extrasensory perception that saved me during the Iudicium when the Anguis were hunting us. And then the same again, just before Lanistia attacked me at the Aurora Columnae.
But perhaps most importantly, on top of that tower with Emissa’s blade embedded in my stomach. I’ve tried so hard not to think about that night, that moment, that I’d almost forgotten.
Falling. Flailing desperately, instinctively, for anything to haul myself back up.
The Heart of Jovan snapping into my hand.
So over the past half hour, I’ve resolved myself to the truth. Used the awkward silence since Livia’s outburst to focus on the carriage beneath us. For the first time, really tried to recapture that sense that I first had in those nightmarish hours after running the Labyrinth.
It took a while, and it’s faint, even now.
But it’s there.
The noonday sun is blistering as I swing down onto crunching gravel. I’m greeted with a sharply sloping village that has sparkling views out over a protected bay. Our carriage has stopped on a clifftop above all the houses; beyond the white stone roofs below, the shallow water is clear and calm and a deep, vibrant blue.
Livia is stalking in the opposite direction toward the statue-lined entrance of a massive structure, clearly expecting me to follow. Carriages identical to ourown line the roadside. Some drivers nap; others call out idle conversation to one another. Darius looks to do neither, alighting and waiting for me to move. There are only a few Octavii hurrying busily ahead, but the low grumbling of a distant, unseen crowd touches my ears.
I want to call out after Livia. To say something to her, respond to her outburst earlier. But like the entirety of this painfully awkward trip, I don’t know how without making things worse, so instead I jog to catch up and pretend as if all is normal. “This is Sciacca?”
“The Circus Sciacca.” She sweeps back a stray strand of curly brown hair, staring pointedly ahead as she marches. A curt gesture up to a carved inscription over the archway ahead confirms her statement.
As we enter the grand colonnade, a man in a gold-striped toga spots us and strides over. He’s in his fifties at least, hair and neatly trimmed beard peppered with grey, deep lines in his broad, sun-weathered face. His hands are clasped behind his back. “Catenicus?”
“Yes?”
“I am Sextus Caeso Tullius, your examiner for today. You’re late.”
“Hail, Sextus. My apologies.” Contrite but direct. I don’t try to offer excuses. We’re technically the same rank now, but he’s my elder and about to test me. Best to show respect.
He grunts. Studies my empty left sleeve with open doubtfulness, then sighs and jerks his head. “Come.”
The entrance into the Circus Sciacca is unsurprisingly grand, all archways and domes, frescoes and mosaics and intricately carved reliefs. The Sextus directs Livia and Darius away up a staircase to the right, and then I’m being led through the main passageway and out the other side, into the glare of the midday sun and the reflected heat of bright sand.
I shield my eyes, and squint out at the scene before me.
The circus is easily a couple of thousand feet long and perhaps five hundred feet wide, its centre split by a long, low stone wall with two large columns at either end. It’s a familiar enough sight from the occasional race I used to watch after Victorum in Letens, though there are no chariots in sight. Instead, people dot the sandy breadth of the circuit in pairs, an observer making notes on a wax tablet while the other performs a task. A young man lifts a boulder the size of my head and hurls it thirty feet. Two plates hover in front of a woman as she’s blindfolded; a few moments later they wobble violently and then smashto the ground, accompanied by low laughs from some of the onlookers in the stands nearby. Several participants are sprinting around the outer edge of the track, not against one another, but glistening with sweat nonetheless. One comes close enough to see her completely black eyes.
There are a lot more examinees than I expected.
