XXI

OFTEN, RECENTLY, I HAVE FOUND myself thinking of the month Emissa and I trained together on Suus. She would beat me at so many things. Again, and again. Despite all I’d achieved until that point, I would struggle to keep pace, and through even the joy of her company, knowing just how much I needed to improve would so often weigh heavy.

One day on the golden beach below my ancestral home, she came upon me lost in a moment of bleak introspection. Saw the expression on my face before I could hide it. “Are you alright?” Our friendship strong enough to ask. Our romance too new for anything but a tentative enquiry.

I gave a grin that was mostly unforced, thanks to the sight of her. “Just respecting the work ahead.”

“ ‘Respecting.’ Of course.” Her eyes reflected both her smile and her empathy. She sat next to me in the soft, warm sand. Hip and shoulder to mine. “None slower than the impatient, you know.”

“What?”

“Sorry.” She gave a deprecating half laugh at herself. “Just something my tutor used to say. Usually after my father passed through for his weekly critique. He used to tell me that I was so worried about being good enough, it was distracting me. That I was so focused on where I needed to be, I couldn’t see the space in between. ‘Improvement is not a destination,’ and all that.” She shrugged. Light and casual and dismissive of her own wisdom. “I don’t think that’s you. But it doesn’t hurt to be reminded, now and then, either.”

We sat for a while after, and I stared out across the glittering Aeternum in contemplation and memory. Then we went back to training, and though she had not said anything I did not already know, she was right. Step-by-step is the only way to progress. I felt calmer for the reminder.

Gods. Long hours in that perfect sun with her. They passed so quickly. They felt like they were never going to end.

The Qabran twilight strains its last grey rays across the hollow tombs. Caeror and I sit side by side on a stair, the toxic waterfall hissing its way into the darkness a hundred feet away. Tash has already departed for the day. Stoic as always in his abjuration of both comfort and dignity. I admire him more with each passing session.

“Thinking of home?” I glance across at Caeror’s question, and he smiles remorsefully at obviously having guessed right. “I’ve worn that look too often not to recognise it.”

I chuckle. Breath, as always, slightly too sharp in my chest. “Truth.”

He stares out over the gloom again. “You know, it was always the thing that struck me most, that first year. How often I found myself wishing I’d appreciated what I had.”

My humour fades.

“Truth,” I repeat softly.

Silence as we think about things that might have been, and then I stir. “How long until you think I should go?”

He doesn’t react. Plays absently with the Instruction Blade, takes a couple of casual swings at the air in front of him. “A Cataclysm every three hundred years, and it’s been three hundred and three now. I won’t send you off just to die, Vis. Everyone in there thinks Ka is a god, so you will only be able to depend on yourself. But I don’t think we can wait until you’re guaranteed success, either.” He exhales. “Not long.”

I inwardly agree, even as the expected admission punches me in the stomach. His candour, his directness, makes all the difference in these discussions. “I went back to the mutalis door, last night.”

“Really?” Caeror brightens. Understands how big a step that is, for me. “Did you touch it?”

“I got interrupted. The girl—Nofret? She told me not to. Said it was cursed. Something about it unleashing the end of the world.” I make it a question. “I would have asked more, but a very angry young man dragged her away before I could.”

“Her brother, I imagine.” Caeror laughs, amused rather than concerned. “Gods. She talked to you? Apparently I need to work on my charm. You’ve been here a month, and I didn’t get a word from anyone for at least six.” He subsides. Waves his hand. “Look, if that’s what stopped you, I wouldn’t worry. Nofret is a child, and the warnings Yusef used to give her would have scared anyone. Gods, they scared me. I can’t imagine she knows anything we don’t.” He sees my hesitation. “But, no harm in being sure, either, I suppose. Ask her. It’ll be a good excuse to have the others see you two talk. They dote on her, so if she’s warming up to you, they may just follow.” A hint of familial affection to the last.

I nod. Vaguely relieved. I’d assumed much of what Caeror just said, but when it comes to the mutalis, there’s no benefit to leaving anything to chance. “You really think that will be enough to stop them being so afraid of me?”

“Probably not. But I’m going to hope anyway.” He shrugs. “I’ve been here for seven years, Vis. They’re family. Backward and frustrating sometimes, but… family. I’d like them to be able to at least make eye contact with the man who’s trying to save them.”

I chuckle. “It’s alright. I’m not offended.”

“I know. But I am. You’re family too, you know.” He grins ruefully, then dips his head at the gathering dim. “Come on. We should get back before the light goes.”

We stand. Start walking. The hiss of tainted water rushing by withers into the darkness behind, leaving only our muted footsteps as I think about our conversation. About the work still to be done.

And about the fact I’m asking my friend to weigh my preparedness for a task that will leave millions dead if we wait too long, and me if we go too soon.

“Caeror?” He looks at me. “You will tell me when I’m ready, won’t you.”

He nods slowly, hearing the real concern in my voice. Chews his lip as he studies me. “There’s an old saying, Vis. The young know they will die—”

“But only the old believe it,” I finish. “I know. And I’m old enough. I am. I don’t want to go unprepared; gods, I don’t want to do it at all. But we both know that this needs to happen.”

Silence, and then he nods again. “I’ll tell you, Vis. Truly.” We walk on, and after a few seconds, he chuckles. “After you got out of the Labyrinth back on Res, I really hope you and Ulciscor made amends.”

I glance across at him. “Why?”

“Because I know him and no matter what he forced you to do, I’d gods-damned bet he likes you.”

He slaps me on the back, and we head on into the last of the light.

MY TOMB, AND QABR BEYOND its entrance, is still utterly black when I wake to one hand clamping my shoulder and the other my mouth. I lurch from sleep to panic, writhing and twisting futilely against the cold stone until the soft, urgent voice penetrates. “Vis. It’s me. Quiet. Quiet.”

I constrain myself to Caeror’s warning; a moment of stillness and then the pressure is cautiously lifting from my mouth. I sense it hovering, ready to stifle a yell, before finally being withdrawn.

“What’s going on?” I manage to keep it to a weary whisper. It feels like only an hour or two since I fell asleep.

“Gleaners.”

The single breathed word banishes any lassitude. I sit up, panic pounding through my chest before I force a steadying breath. “Where?”

“They’re going tomb by tomb. A couple of dozen of them.” A pause. “Half from the entrance. The others flew past toward the Channel. I’m guessing they’re sweeping from the opposite direction.”

Vek. “They know we’re here.”

“Yes.”

I’m on my feet. “Can we get to the garden?” Our first point of refuge, in the event of a Gleaner incursion. The symbols to open the door shouldn’t be known to the Concurrence.

“Maybe. But we need to go now. They’ve lit their blades, so they’ll be easy to spot.” Scuffling in the darkness, and then someone positioning me, guiding my hand to a shoulder. Then a hand gripping my own shoulder. “Let Tash lead. He grew up here, doesn’t need to see to get around.”

“Tash is here?” The iunctii quarters are a distance away, in the opposite direction of the garden.

“He’s the only other one who knows what you can do.”

I swallow. Of course.

Tash moves beneath my touch, and I follow.

We walk out into the utter darkness, only Tash’s sharp turn and the vaguest sense of open space to my left suggesting that we’ve left my tomb. We’re on the third level up, and I find my heart hammering not just from the threat Caeror has woken me to run from. A fall from this height will kill as surely as a Gleaner.

We make our way with excruciating caution down steps and along the rocky, uneven floor. I count my steps but even after months living here, it’s impossible to tell how far we’ve come. I hold my breath, half the time. Ears and eyes straining. None of us talk.

And then faintly, ahead, the symbol-covered walls bleed into view. A crimson, flickering light, its source still hidden by the natural twists and turns of the chasm. Tash stops. Silhouetted now.

“They can’t have cleared all the tombs to here,” I mutter back to Caeror.

“Advance scout,” he agrees in my ear, grip steady on my shoulder.

We take refuge in the nearest of the tombs as the reflected light grows rapidly brighter, pressing backs against the cold stone by the door. There’s no sound as the shadows sharpen and direct light spills briefly through the doorway before sliding on.

I’m in a better position; Caeror nods to me and I move with breathless caution, peering out.

The Gleaner is already thirty feet away, its back to me. It floats silently along the middle of the chasm, bladed arms at its side. Both swords seem to smoulder, deep red casting a bloody illumination that retreats as the iunctii glides around the next bend. Caeror’s told me it’s how they navigate at night—some sort of coating on the blade that burns for hours. This is the first time I’ve seen it in person, though.

“It’s gone.” My whisper shakes. “What was it doing?”

“Probably checking for ambushes. Communicating about what’s ahead to the others.” He motions, barely visible now in the rapidly vanishing glow. “Hopefully everyone else realised the same; as long as they didn’t get spotted when it passed, they should be waiting for us in the garden. Let’s move.”

We venture once again into the dark, our progress as fast as the lack of visibility allows. Five minutes. Ten. Even adjusted as they are, my eyes make out only the blackest of shadows, the vaguest of outlines that suggest where walls might be. My heart never ceases to pound.

And then more light ahead. Too soon.

We slow, but this illumination doesn’t seem to be coming toward us so we creep forward, hugging the wall. Caeror wordlessly directs Tash to wait in the nearest tomb—the iunctus’s entire body is trembling, a miracle he’s made it this far—and then slips past me, peering around the rocky corner of the next chasm bend.

“Oh, gods.” He whispers it. Sinks back against the stone for support, white. There’s agony in his voice.

He motions desolately with his head for me to see. Heart dropping, I carefully position myself and then peek. Parallel red lines near either wall provide much of the light, the substance from the Gleaners’ blades inscribed somehow onto the chasm’s floor for at least a hundred feet. Clearly showing everything in their radius.

The bodies are arranged neatly between the two.

There are at least a few dozen of them; it has to be the majority of the Qabrans, maybe all of them. We’re close enough to see the glistening crimson patches on their robes, the angry slices across their faces and arms. I recognise most by sight, though I do not know their names.

A half dozen Gleaners hover thirty feet up, motionless as they keep guard. Facing away from us, standing on the ground amongst the corpses, is another. As I watch, it raises its red-pulsing blades. Brings them both down sharply into a woman’s chest.

She gasps, and bucks against the burning stone piercing her body, and begins to talk.

I shudder and pull back. Look at Caeror. He is staring into nothing. For the first time since I’ve met him, the light utterly gone from his eyes. I don’t know what to say to him.

“We can’t get to the gardens.” Every part of me wants to show my empathy but we don’t have time to dwell, not now. “They’re waiting right outside.”

“Some of the Gleaners must have come straight here. They knew. Someone got caught. They knew.” Caeror breathes the words into the void, and then seems to come back to himself. Blinks and clenches his fists and straightens. “Gods. We’re trapped.”

We huddle back into the shadows of the nearest tomb, though it will do us little good. Doing our best to think through the fear. “You’re sure there’s no other way out?”

Caeror nods, grimly certain. I risk another look around the corner. The Gleaner has moved on from the woman, now listening impassively to a man twitching and moaning his secrets as the blades skewer him clean through. “What will happen to them?”

“Same as anyone they catch, I assume,” says Caeror hollowly.

“So they’ll take them back to Duat.”

He looks at me. “They’ll spear them with their Vitaeria, to make sure they’re still viable after the journey. Carry them back with a blade through the heart.” He’s seen what I’m thinking. “It won’t work, Vis.”

“It might if I can command one before it tries.” My mind races. Sick to my stomach, terrified at what I’m suggesting even as I say it. “I take control of the Gleaner, and I get it to take me. It’s not that different from what we were thinking.”

“The Gleaners will all fly back together. As a swarm. It’s why we planned to separate one out. The others will notice you being carried.”

“Not if I get it to stab me too.” Kadmos’s lessons often involved medicine and the body, those months leading up to the Academy. “A chest wound won’t kill me, not if it’s from a Vitaerium sticking through me. I just need to make sure nothing vital gets hit. Which I can tell the Gleaner to do, if I’m controlling it.”

“Rotting gods, Vis. It will be agony. And you’d have to pretend to be dead. The entire time.”

“I know.”

We stare at each other, and I can see him wanting to tell me no. But he has no answers. No alternatives. In the end, silence becomes his affirmation.

“We need to lure one away. It won’t work if one of the others sees,” I note quietly. Dazed that this is really happening, but aware I don’t have time to second-guess myself. “We need to do it now, before any of the ones still out there get back.”

“I can do that.” Caeror exhales. Grim and reluctant, but he sees the necessity of it as clearly as I. He indicates a tomb. “Hide in here. Tash and I will draw it past into the next one. You’ll have to imbue it, and tell it not to communicate anything is wrong, before it realises you’re there.”

I give him a look; we’ve discussed how I might control a Gleaner more than anything else since I arrived. He gives me a wry, nervous grin. Claps me on the shoulder. “Alright. Alright. Luck, Vis.”

He pauses as if to say more, then grimaces and ducks away.

I conceal myself in the darkness of the tomb Caeror indicated; there’s a minute as he presumably informs Tash of what is happening, and then a cough. Not loud, even in the emptiness of Qabr. But enough to faintly echo.

Nothing for five seconds. Ten.

Then red light creeps across the entrance by my feet.

My heart drums a painful beat. Only one Gleaner, I’m fairly certain; no overlapping shadows to indicate different sources of light. The illumination slows and then pauses, as if the thing outside is looking around.

The lightest scuffling of foot against stone from the tomb next to me. The light moves again, darting this time. Brightens considerably as it narrows to a sliver, angle sharp. The Gleaner moving into the entrance of the next tomb.

No time to waver. I stride out soundless and purposeful. A broad figure stands just inside the doorway, scanning the room, blades burning by its sides. Caeror and Tash will be hiding behind the sarcophagus. Certain to be discovered as soon as the creature proceeds.

Three steps. No hesitation. Grasp its shoulder.

It’s not easy. This is not like practicing on a calm and compliant Tash. The muscle beneath my grip immediately tenses and it’s all I can do to hang on as it flinches, twists. But my constant practice this past month, all my hard work at the Academy and my training at Villa Telimus before that, pays off. I push through. Imbue it and do all I can not to see it as a monster, but a man. Just another man, surprised.

Connection.

The Gleaner is there. I can’t sense its thoughts—I never could with Tash, either—but I am aware of it, in a way that is uncomfortably personal. Its senses are all there, if I want them.

“Don’t do anything that could draw attention to us. Stay where you are.” I choke out the words in a whisper. Jerk my hand away once I’ve said them. Stumble back, fear menacing my focus as I wait with pounding blood and held breath for any sign that my attempt has been unsuccessful.

The Gleaner just stands there. Motionless.

I exhale. Are you still connected to the other Gleaners? Nod for yes. I think the words as if I were saying them out loud. Imagine I’m directing them at my mental image of the creature. It’s harder, to send these nonverbal instructions as clear thoughts. But prudent.

It nods.

Do you have a name? Tell me softly, if so. Knowing, having a word that the iunctii identifies as itself, seems to help.

It opens its mouth, and a faint, wavering groan comes out. I clench my fists. I can’t risk looking, but it sounds as though it has no tongue.

Then, to my wary surprise, it uses its burning obsidian blade to illuminate something on the nape of its neck. A tattoo. Neat and small and black. I look closer.

Duodecim is your name? I grimace as it nods. Written out rather than the number, but it means “twelve” in Vetusian. I doubt it’s a birth name. Check the next few tombs without looking at me, Duodecim. Do it as slowly as you can without arousing suspicion. I can’t risk it laying eyes on us in case Ka is watching through them.

I wait until Duodecim has moved obediently away before whispering into the renewed darkness. “It worked.”

Caeror and Tash’s silhouettes emerge from behind the sarcophagus, and I feel as much as hear my friend’s excitement as he grips my shoulder in enthusiastic celebration. “Well done.”

“Now we just need you two safe. I could tell the Gleaner to distract the others in front of the garden, draw them away so you can—”

“No.” Caeror’s interruption is gentle. The creature in the tomb over finishes its checking quicker than I’d have liked and emerges, red light temporarily splaying over us as it moves to the next. Caeror’s expression is taut but sure as the darkness reclaims it. “Too risky. They’ll know something’s wrong, and you getting into Duat is too important.”

“Then what?”

“I have an idea, but we don’t have time for explanations. Every second we wait is one that the other Gleaners might notice this one’s missing.” He unloops his Vitaerium from his arm, presses it into my hand. “You’re going to need this.”

I shove it away. “So are you.”

“There are a couple of spares past the garden. And if I can’t get in there in the next hour, I’m dead anyway. But if you want to survive what you’re planning…”

I hesitate, caught between the need to argue and the frustration of knowing I can’t. I conceal his Vitaerium and then mine by strapping them to my thigh, shivering at the fresh flush of power. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I’ll take my job over yours.” He chuckles shakily. As terrified as I feel. His rictus grin briefly lit crimson again as the Gleaner slides to the next tomb over. “And Vis? What you’re about to do? It’s all that matters. You have a chance to save the people we love. You have a chance to save worlds, and if there was anyone I would choose to give that responsibility to, it is you.”

He embraces me briefly and fiercely, then rips himself away and retreats with Tash into the darkness of Qabr.

I am left alone in the shadowed archway, and though I know what I have to do next, fear arrests me.

A pain promised is often worse than pain itself, my mother used to say. Dread anticipation makes me vacillate, red light ebbing and receding as Duodecim moves on yet again. I surely don’t have long before its absence becomes suspicious.

I retreat into the tomb. Focus on the link in my mind.

Come back and search the first tomb again, Duodecim. I crouch down behind the sarcophagus. Look thoroughly, and when you find me, act as you normally would, but stab me so that I survive. Make sure it looks to anyone watching that you’ve killed me. I convey the spot on my chest I think it should aim for. Missing lungs and arteries. Not obviously far from my heart. Then put me with the other bodies and when it is time, make sure to get me to Duat alive.

Seconds pass. Then red light slinks into the room. Creeps across the stone. I huddle farther into the shadows of the sarcophagus, despite myself. Mouth dry. Breath painfully short. I am living a nightmare from which there is no waking.

The Gleaner fills my view, its red blades blinding. I scramble back. Fiercely resist the urge to change my mind, to command it just to leave and hope I can find another way. Caeror is gone and everyone else here is dead. This is my only chance not just of getting into Duat, but survival.

It strides forward and I put my hands out in an instinctive defence; it bats them away, slicing deep, leaving stinging gashes across my arms that match the wounds of those I saw earlier.

Then it raises its granite blade and with a smooth, swift motion, spears it into me.

I try with everything I can not to react and yet still release an agonised, shocked shriek. Fire pulses through my chest. I taste blood as I bite down on my tongue, reducing the sound to a low moan. True panic clouds my mind along with the pain. This won’t work. This won’t work.

I am being picked up by my skewer; the blade cuts deeper and a soft moan escapes my lips. Every muscle screams against the instinct to bunch up, to shift and try to ease the injury the blade through me is doing. But I do all I can to school myself to stillness. Take a shaky, shallow breath, though even that allows the razor edge of the stone to cut new slices in my flesh. The pain is still there but it’s encroached upon. Not fading, but more overwhelmed by the rush of fresh vitality that flows from the blade into me. Through me. Pooling around the injury, in particular, and sealing it as best it can. The worst of the agony suddenly washes away, even if the burning remains a searing discomfort.

I allow myself to go limp. Let me see through your eyes, Duodecim.

The stomach-churning twist of vision, the disconnect between what I’m seeing and what my body is doing. But I’ve practiced this too. I watch as the Gleaner dispassionately delivers my bloodied form to the line, pulling its burning blade from my chest and then rising, rejoining its peers in guarding the space again.

I lie there. Seeing myself distant below. My Vitaeria keep me awake, keep the wound from being fatal. Every breath is cautiously shallow and strained and agonising. At least one rib is cracked. Cuts that are smaller only relative to the chest wound cover my arms. Bright red lines that refuse to bleed, thanks to the imbued Will in me.

I feel obvious, but none of the other Gleaners even glance at me, their questioning of the dead apparently done with for now. There is pain for longer than I can say, and then movement. Other Gleaners, collecting some of the far forms.

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.