LV

MY SISTER AND I USED to play a game as we walked through our family’s palace, trying to imagine the builders’ aims for each room. Function for the kitchen, intimacy for the lounge. Warmth and light for the guest quarters, sealed-off intimidation and power for the Great Hall. Every stone, we were told by our tutors, every corner and every crevice had a purpose. A design. The best buildings were made to speak to their occupants. The best rooms, you understood what they were the moment you entered, no matter their furnishings.

This is a room where decisions are made, and men die, and empires fall.

The three-sided chamber is massive. One wall is consumed with a gilded Hierarchy symbol set into polished obsidian, the entire thing shining and reflecting the light from the fire that sits dramatically beneath it in a long, straight line. On a second sits an enormous plate of bronze onto which is inscribed a massive, intricately detailed map. Stones of various colours and sizes are affixed to points on it everywhere. Will-based tracking for ships and armies and everything in between, if I had to guess.

The third wall—containing the great archway through which we have just walked—is covered in a frieze that is as lifelike and stunningly crafted as anything I have seen in the Forum, the temples, or anywhere else. A great battle, chariots and legionnaires clashing with some enemy in violent, visceral, glorious combat.

I take it in at a glance, but as the men sitting at the triangular table rise as one at our intrusion, it is the massive stone circle on the floor that commands my attention. Nine sections. Six numbered with a III, two with a II, and the last with a I. It’s the source of the low grinding sound, the entire thing slowly turning.

To my mind, it glows like the sun.

“Who are you?”

“What is the meaning of this?”

“How did you get in?”

A stunned pause to both the surprised cries and the movement of the circle as I send several shards of sharpened metal to hover threateningly in front of them. Ostius takes advantage of the silence, sauntering into the centre of the room. Enjoying this as much as I am not. “Gentlemen!” he says, issuing a calming motion. “How very nice to see you all again. Please. Don’t get up on our account.”

“Ostius?” It’s the man I know straight away is the Princeps, though I have not before seen him in the flesh. Tall and broad-shouldered, his square jaw depicted surprisingly accurately on every gold coin, with images of the other Princeps on either side of him. He is at least seventy. He looks closer to forty. He’s staring at Ostius with an immediate, plain shock that I don’t think I’ve ever seen from a Catenan politician.

The name seems to stir some remembrance in most of the other men too; they refocus on Ostius, really examining him. I use the moment to edge behind Ostius and lightly touch the first stone segment of the circle with my bare foot. Will quivers beneath my toes.

I focus. Brace myself. Taking on this much Will, just holding it all within myself, is going to be a shock.

It only takes a second; I can barely prevent a gasp as the concentrated power shivers out of the stone and into my control. I don’t self-imbue it—I’m not even sure how my body would react to so much at once—but its sense of availability, as if it had been freshly ceded to me, is abruptly there. Surging through me. Making my perception of everything around me almost painfully sharp.

“It’s so very nice to see you again, Uncle. How long has it been? Nine years?”

The words hang and I’m distracted from the exhilarating, sick thrill, glad of the metal hiding my face.

“Ostius, by all the gods we thought you were dead! What are you doing here? And who is this?” Exesius is flummoxed, though to his credit it already sounds a more controlled, measured confusion. “I’m so glad to see you again, lad. But perhaps we should have this reunion in private.”

Not smiling, either, despite his words. Something in his eyes as he looks at Ostius.

All the attention is on them, even my threatening, hovering blades temporarily forgotten. I take two steps to the next stone segment set into the ground. Power shudders through me, another heady rush but not as much a shock as the first time. Two. No outcry. No sign anyone has noticed anything.

“Nonsense!” Ostius smiles broadly. He strolls over to the wall, where the symbol of the Hierarchy glimmers. Casually drawing their attention farther from me. “I am certain everyone will want to hear how you sent me to Solivagus before anyone thought it had value, so that our family alone could make the most important decision to be made in three hundred years. Or how you let Princeps Pitorius outmanoeuvre you—not to do the same, but to try and avoid that decision and save everyone?”

Three. Four. I make my movements small and casual. Every nerve firing, so unbearably energised that the terror is somehow secondary.

“You’re not making any sense, Ostius.” Exesius says it gently, and outwardly he appears unconcerned, but he’s off-balance. Too eager to muzzle his apparent nephew. “I don’t know what’s happened to you or where you’ve been these past years, but my boy, let’s—”

“I would like to hear more,” says Dimidius Quiscil suddenly. A glint in his eye. “Your nephew has found his way past guards and security measures and seems to know quite a bit, Exesius.”

Five. Six. The shock is less again. So much Will already at my fingertips that adding even this preposterous amount is more jostle than dazing blow to my senses, now.

“Thank you, Dimidius.” Ostius gives a casual salute to Indol’s father. Then he spins and gestures to the Hierarchy symbol on the wall. “Why don’t you start by telling them what this really represents, Uncle?” He traces the lines in the air, almost absent in the motion. Seven. “We say it is for the three pillars of the Senate. But it has two other meanings. The first, and oldest, I will not go into right now as I know how confusing it will be.” He smiles condescendingly over his shoulder at the assembled senators. “But the second? The real reason this is the symbol of the Catenan Republic?” Eight.

“Ostius, stop.” Exesius’s muscles are tensed. Silence hangs, suspended.

Ostius smiles, and opens his mouth.

Nine.

Exesius moves. Eyes black as he leaps at Ostius.

It’s so easy. I self-imbue my entire body, using the tiniest fraction of a fraction of what I now have at my disposal. Glide forward. Catch his downward strike and expect resistance of some kind, but instead Exesius screams in stunned, horrified pain and I can see from the way his hand dangles at the wrong angle that his wrist is broken.

“Three Princeps,” finishes Ostius quietly, face inches from his uncle’s, gazing into his eyes as if nothing had happened. “All ceding to the man who is planning to kill us.”

I release Exesius’s wrist, letting him slump to the floor. The other senators’ eyes have gone black as well. Insane to think that even after all the Will they’ve imbued, they still have more in reserve. But it’s nowhere near enough to face me. Not now.

Quiscil and Werex are first to act, diving not for me or Ostius but for the stone circle. They skid to their knees, each with a hand pressed against one of the stones marked with II.

Their expressions go from grimly triumphant, to confused, to horrified.

Exesius sees it too and seems to understand. His shoulders slump. “The Cataclysm is necessary, Ostius. You know that.” He’s dropped all pretence. A desperate man now, as he gasps it between groans, still clutching his dangling wrist. “I sent you because it can be us who decides, or it can be him. But we can’t—”

“What in all the gods’ graves, Exesius?” It’s a shaken interjection from Dimidius Werex, quickly echoed by the others. They’ve joined him and Quiscil in trying to take back their Will. Wear identical, almost comically lost expressions. I almost feel the same myself, even as the inordinate amount of Will running through me steadies my mind. The Princeps are ceding? Ostius has to be lying. It’s contrary to everything I know about the Republic. To everything everyone knows. “Is he telling the truth?”

“Always, Dimidius. Always!” Ostius smiles at the man still on his knees with hand against cold stone, as if hoping the process of regaining his Will was simply taking longer than it should. “Trust. Trust! Such a difficult thing. I imagine he just felt a little awkward telling you. Seeing as it involved you all dying, and so on.”

“Ostius. Please. We just voted for peace.” Exesius gestures to the stone circle. “Nothing is more important than preventing bloodshed right now. I know you to be a gentle man, and—”

“ ‘A gentle man’?” The lightness, the casualness, the humour has fled from Ostius’s eyes. Only the ice of his rictus smile remains, and he leans back and kicks his uncle in the face; there’s a spray of blood and a groan from around the room as the Princeps of Military flails backward, his cry somewhere between a shout and a squeal. “Gentle men are the products of love and protection, Uncle.” Another kick, cold and powerful and brutal. I hear something crack. “They are the offshoots of shelter and naïvety.” Another to the face, and this time the cry is more of a wheezing gasp. “If there are gentle men in our family, Uncle, it is because you have not yet met them.”

He raises his foot again, as if to stomp down.

“Stop!” I shout it because, apparently, none of the senators will. Ostius pauses, foot hovering in mid-air. He hops to balance, almost comically, as the madness retreats once again behind that jovial, too-casual façade. The senators across the room just stare. Frozen in their abject fear. My razor-sharp iron shards still between them and us. None move to help their moaning leader.

Through my own horror, my own disorientation and disgust, I am ashamed to say that I feel some flicker of satisfaction at the helplessness of their expressions.

“But. Speaking of trust,” continues Ostius, digging into his robes and pulling out some paper with a flourish, as if the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened. “I have names! All the names. Well. All the ones who matter. Details about those names, too. All the things they did. All the ways in which they helped with the attacks on the naumachia and Solivagus.” He makes a show of reading. “Hmm. Yes. Yes. Your names are on here! Wonderful. Even yours, Uncle. I included it as an addendum about the cover-up, after you found out what they’d done.” He addresses the last to the still-groaning, bloodied man on the floor. “Now all I need is for you all to sign it, seal it, and we can be on our way.”

Silence. If there was any doubt, it is washed away in that moment. The shifting of their eyes, the slow horror dawning. There is no surprise. No outrage or shock or denial.

Each of them knew.

I feel my hands shaking, even through the numbing power of Will. I clench them into fists.

“Don’t be foolish, Ostius.” Quiscil finally scoffs it into the dismay. “Why would we do that?”

“Because it is the truth, of course!” Ostius smiles too widely. Gathering ink and quill, sealing wax and a candle from the triangular table. “Oh. And of course it means I won’t kill you. This way, you all get… what? The night, I suppose, to get out of Caten?” He emphasises the crushing inevitability of their choice with another savage kick to his uncle’s midriff; the man’s breath explodes from his lungs and he doubles over again with a defeated gasp.

No one speaks. Horrified acceptance amidst their fury. They know there isn’t an option. “What is to stop you from killing us anyway?” asks Dimidius Werex eventually.

“You haven’t been listening, Werex. My word. You have my word. You have to trust me.” He crouches beside Exesius. Places the paper beside him on the floor and then props him up gently, pressing the quill into his hand. “Just down there, Uncle. That’s it! You can check it over if you like, if I’ve made mistakes I can… no? You trust me? Wonderful.” He watches as the Princeps of Military signs the confession, then snatches up the paper and springs to his feet, letting the man collapse back to the floor. “Who’s next?”

And so they sign. One by one. Anger and defiance and shock and regret in every stroke. Evil men seeing their power ripped away. There is, I quickly learn, no sadder or more gratifying sight.

Despite that, my mind is finally catching up to the madness of these events and I try to plot out their consequences. A civil war that ensures Military is divided? That seems most likely, and in fact, I suspect the senators are gradually coming to the same conclusion. See them sliding from stunned to calculating. Ostius is right; they’ll be able to leave before anyone can take action—exiles, but exiles who still command formidable loyalties. The armies swear their oaths to Exesius as much as they do the Republic. They’ll claim they were working for the good of Caten, or maybe recant and say they signed under duress. All is not lost for them.

The blood drains from my fingers, I squeeze my fists so tight. I get my names, but not necessarily justice. These men killed my friends. They killed thousands. That much will soon be public.

And there’s still a gods-damned chance they will get away with it.

Quiscil is the last. He signs with a disgusted flourish and presses his ring into the wax; Ostius examines the signature and then nods absently, as if he was not now holding a document that could tear the Catenan Republic apart.

“Very good. Very good. Thank you,” he says, blowing on the ink to dry it. “I think… yes! I think that is all, from me.” He turns to me. “They are all yours, my boy.”

There’s silence as he steps back. The senators turn to me, puzzled. Not understanding.

I do.

The hush stretches, the senators’ uncertainty eliciting shuffling feet and anxious looks. The stolen Will within me hums. They are completely within my power. They are pitiful and they are dangerous and they most certainly deserve to die for their confessed crimes. My hatred boils. My rage trembles.

And yet, through it, my father’s voice echoes. The power to protect is the highest responsibility.

Ostius wants me to kill them. That alone says I should not.

The rage remains but I force it down, chain it somewhere deep and dark. Just like I always do. Make myself think it through. These men are prisoners. It will be a mental strain, but I could hold on to their Will until they were stripped of it. Get their confession to Quartus Corenius and maybe Ulciscor as well, who between them would know who to trust. An agreement between Military’s unimplicated Quartii and the rest of the Senate might be struck. And then to consummate the union and prove to everyone that the rot in the Republic has been dealt with, these men would undoubtedly be placed in Sappers.

A lot of ifs. A lot of things needing to go right. A lot of trusting others.

But it could still end in a world where the horrors of a Will-fought war are never realised, and the worst of those who would have brought it are gone.

“We need a way to tie them up.” I breathe it. Expel it as if it were my fury. “Until the trial.”

Ostius frowns. Nonplussed. Then he turns to the senators. “Gentlemen, I’ve been rude. Please allow me to introduce the man you know as Sextus Vis Telimus, or Catenicus if you’re feeling nostalgic. Though his birth name is Diago, son of Cristoval. Prince of Suus. I believe some of you hanged his parents and sister?”

The words stun me as much as they do the Military leadership. I feel as though I’ve been punched.

“But not his little sister. She drowned trying to escape your men, from what I understand.”

I choke. Ostius is stoking my rage. Poking and prodding at all the painful memories. The knowledge should help. It doesn’t.

There’s abrupt movement in the archway, the sudden soft clicking of claw on stone, and Diago, unprompted, as if sensing what I’m going through, as if understanding his concealment is no longer necessary, stalks into view. Gaze fixed on the suddenly breath-holding, frozen senators as they take in his massive form. He stops between us and them. Lips curling back slowly, revealing the razor-sharp, saliva-covered ivory beneath. He makes no sound. Somehow, it makes the whole thing even more threatening.

I do what I can to strip away the dazedness, grateful for the alupi’s brief distraction. Set my features into something grim, and slowly let the metal triangles depart my face. I do not flinch from the senators’ stares as they tear their eyes from Diago to take in the sight of me.

“Tell me why you invaded Suus.” My voice growls across the room, though I direct it mostly at Exesius. More powerful and forceful than it should be; the men all shift back, and even Ostius flinches. “Tell me why you killed my family.”

Exesius props himself up. As fascinated as he is in pain, now. “You don’t know?” He glances at Ostius.

“Gods. That’s what this is about? Blame your father,” mutters Werex, even as he eyes Diago warily again. “He pulled on threads he knew were better left unravelled.”

My metal shard takes him in the shoulder, and he squeals in shocked pain.

I rip it out and hover it in front of his face. Red dripping. There are low, outraged gasps from among the gathered senators. Ostius watches delightedly.

“He found out about the Cataclysms.” Exesius this time, tired and soft. “He found out, and did not believe it. So he had men seek out more. And though he kept his circle of trust excruciatingly small, he nonetheless trusted too much.”

“Who?” Hissed. Ragged. Not my own voice. “Who betrayed him?”

“Our spymasters are jealous with their secrets. I do not know the name.” Exesius is guarded. He sees how tenuous my grasp on my anger is. “But it wasn’t just his knowledge. We were warned that he had uncovered a weapon. Something not even the Republic could stop. So we acted.” His gaze bores into mine. Still sharp behind all that blood and pain. “Though surely you knew that part, Catenicus. Given the naumachia.”

I don’t disabuse him of his cynical and false assumption. I can see now how Estevan likely did what he did. But my mind is already moving on to something far more important to me. “Why kill my family?”

Exesius grimaces. Hesitates, but as he takes in my expression, he sees I will accept only the truth. “Men sometimes confide in those they trust, but they only truly unburden themselves on the ones they love,” he says softly.

I close my eyes. Killed because the Hierarchy worried my father had told them something. I believe him. Not that my father would ever have used such a weapon. Not that he would have for a heartbeat considered what these men assumed he wanted to do.

But I have always wondered at the Hierarchy’s violence in the face of Birthright. Now, I understand.

I turn to Quiscil. The eerily mute, slavering Diago still between us. “And that is what you were chasing on Solivagus.” I say it with quiet certainty, fuelled by the conversation I overheard between Ostius and Relucia on this same night a year ago. “You thought the weapon was there. That Religion were looking for it, or had found it. That’s why you were willing to kill children? Kill your own son?”

He stares back stonily. Says nothing.

“Rotting gods.” Another flash of fury at his contemptuous defiance, even faced so plainly with his evils. I put all of my disdain, all of my disgust into my words. “Do you even regret it?”

I don’t know why I ask, but I can see the answer in the way that Quiscil immediately evaluates. He’s wondering whether I’m going to prefer the lie or the truth. Wondering how much his pride is worth in the response, here in front of his peers.

“No,” he says suddenly. Angry. As if the frustration of his unfamiliar helplessness has been building inside of him, pressing against the silence until he can no longer contain it. “No, because I acted for the good of the Republic. When we arranged the attack on the Iudicium, I chose to sacrifice for something greater. Sacrifice, you gods-damned traitor. Something you will never understand.”

Diago growls now as my fury, barely contained, stirs and presses again. “My friend died because of you.”

“He was on your team, under your command, and you’re alive. Who is more to blame?”

I don’t know why he says it. A powerful man unaccustomed to not being able to speak his mind, I suppose. So used to being immune from consequences that he cannot fathom being in danger. But he puts such a sneer into it. His voice drips disdain.

Diago leaps forward.

I don’t even have time to comprehend what’s happening before Quiscil’s scream is being cut short. Blood arcs in a fine red mist. There’s a terrible gurgling beneath the rabid snarl, barely audible amidst the panicked shrieks of the other senators who are scrambling away.

But Diago is among them.

He is among them, and caught between my own horror and white fury and the abrupt, painful loss of so much Will as men die, I do not know if I can stop him. Or if I want to.

Shouting, screaming. Desperate pleas that suddenly remind me of nothing so much as the naumachia and I recover myself enough to shout out for Diago to stop, but it’s either drowned out or ignored. A Tertius runs forward and slams his hands against the stone circle on the floor, hope fading to sheer terror as he realises his Will isn’t returning. His face explodes beneath teeth and claw, and I groan at both the horror and the painfully sudden loss of energy within me, a part of me ripped away with the kill. I am on my knees. Diago tears another throat effortlessly. Snaps a neck. He stalks around the room with deliberate, terrifying efficiency.

In the background, I can hear Ostius laughing.

It’s over in less than a minute. I kneel there, stunned. Surrounded by pooling blood and the last gasps of Dimidius Werex. The room is a crimson painting of splayed limbs and glassy stares. I half expect Diago to turn on Ostius or myself, but as soon as he’s done he simply stops. Lies down on a clean patch of floor. Red coats his muzzle.

“Why?” I gasp it from the floor at Ostius, who’s surveying the chaos with a childlike grin.

“Ask yourself, my boy! I had no hand in this. A man of my word,” he adds with a pleased nod. “Of course, I’m going to have to get a little creative now. Can’t have teeth marks. But otherwise… yes. This will do nicely.”

I barely hear him. Just watch Diago numbly. He’s never been out of control before, and he chooses now? “This is a disaster.” My voice is hoarse. I went from having more power than I could handle, to being a Sextus again and it is… like needing air. Every limb is heavy; my vision’s blurred and I can barely see from tiredness. “They’re going to think this is a coup.”

“They most certainly are. But by who? Religion and Governance? The Quartii? Who knows?” Ostius chuckles as he busies himself, dragging mangled corpses out through the archway, deep smears of red in their wake. “Speaking of the Quartii—give me a hand? Oh. Hah,” he adds, realising who he’s talking to. “We have two, maybe three minutes before at least some of them try to get in and find out what is going on. And they are rather strong now.”

Vek. He’s right. The instant these men died, all the Will that was being ceded to them would have reverted to the highest remaining points on Military’s central pyramid. I stagger to my feet. Still helplessly weak by comparison to a few seconds ago, but head clearing. “What are you doing?”

“Your wolf doing the dirty work was fun, my boy—the looks on their faces!—but it does end up being rather obvious.” He draws his blade. “Thankfully Diago left Uncle’s face alone, at least.”

With a few sharp, hacking motions he severs Exesius’s head from his body, cutting above the gaping open wound where Diago’s teeth tore out his throat. My stomach twists and heaves threateningly at the sight, but Ostius barely pauses once he’s done, grabbing the head by its hair and placing it carefully in the very centre of the stone circle on the floor. He gently arranges it so that its wide-eyed stare is directed at the entrance, and then dips his finger in the deep pools of blood and scrawls something next to it before standing back and admiring his handiwork. “Lovely.”

I stare down at the crimson Vetusian, written in an arch above Exesius’s staring head. Mors vincit omnia.

I don’t understand but I’m numb, in shock. All I know is that we don’t have time for questions. I join Ostius in dragging corpses out of the room and through the corridor beyond, to the point where we came in. They should be heavy, but I am still a Sextus and my senses are normalising. It is like shifting feathers.

Ostius grabs two. Thrum. Thrum. When he reappears, the bodies are not with him. He grabs two more. Thrum. Thrum.

Soon it is just me, and him, and Diago.

Ostius looks around at the ugly dark smears that coat the stone, nodding with the satisfaction of a man who considers his job well done. He crouches down and places a hand on Diago’s head. “Do you sense any Quartii outside yet?”

I pause. Shake my head. It’s only been minutes.

“Good. Mask back on, then, my boy. There’s an alley to the left as you leave the Basilica. I’ll meet you. Don’t get caught.”

“What?” I step forward, the motion half confusion and half panic as Ostius gives me a cheerful salute.

Thrum.

I stand there. Alone.

Seconds pass and there is only silence.

“Vek.” It’s all I can think to say. Soft and panicked. “Gods-damned rotting vek.”

I run.