“ULCISCOR.” THE MAN IN THE white cloak strides over and wraps Ulciscor in a fierce embrace. “It’s been a while.”
“Too long.” Ulciscor’s pensive demeanour melts away as he pounds Veridius on the back a couple of times before breaking away again. He jerks his head toward the door. “The guard was a bit much.”
“Sorry. My assistant. He’s been rather security-oriented, recently. Nothing to do with Vis here, or you.” His cheer slips to something more apologetic. “A long story.”
I watch the exchange. Genuinely confused. Veridius. The man I’m supposed to be spying on. The man in charge here.
“You two know each other?” I ask a question with an obvious answer, mostly to cover my surprise. Trying to look curious rather than terrified as I replay what I’ve just revealed. I was being careful. Not nearly as careful as I might have been, though.
“We do. Veridius here is actually head of the Academy,” Ulciscor tells me, a small smile on his lips. Acting as if he’s revealing a remarkable truth.
“What?” I play the part, looking at Veridius in shock. “I’m so sorry, Principalis. I thought you were…” I indicate his cloak, giving a nervous and contrite half laugh.
Veridius chuckles genially. “No apology necessary, Vis. I should have introduced myself, but I know my presence for prospective students can cause more stress than comfort sometimes. Given the circumstances, I thought it might be better that we simply focus on your injury. Which I am trained to tend,” he assures me. “Ulnius usually heads up the infirmary here, but I step in when needs be. He asked me to look in on you while he attended someone else.”
“That makes sense. I appreciate it.” My mind’s still racing. Veridius says it all so smoothly, amiable and warm and effortless. He radiates affable charm. And yet as I replay our conversation, there’s no doubt he was poking for information.
Doing it well, too. Another minute, and I may well have dug myself too deep a hole.
Ulciscor vacillates, then glances at me. “You mentioned that you were applying, then?”
I’m blank, then inwardly curse as I realise. “No.” Another mistake. I’m off-balance.
“We had the manifest transcribed over from Letens. I just assumed, when I saw you’d adopted him,” supplies Veridius to Ulciscor. He claps me gently on the back. “I know Ulciscor wouldn’t choose just anyone—not with all the history his family has here. The application was always just a formality, and I’m glad to accept it. If your mettle after that attack is anything to go by, I’m looking forward to seeing how you fare.”
“Thank you, Principalis.” I don’t know what else to say.
“There will be some paperwork for Ulciscor to fill out, so if you’re well enough, perhaps you would like a tour of the facilities while he—”
“I wish we could stay, Veridius, but we need to get to Caten,” Ulciscor interrupts. “Quartus Redivius and the others will have already heard about what happened, and… well. You can imagine. Thank you for admitting him. I’ll send the forms along as soon as I can.” He’s brisk, acting as if it’s important we get moving. “Can he travel?”
Veridius hesitates, so briefly that I’m not sure it isn’t my imagination. “He’ll be fine.” He turns to me. “Just make sure you rest as much as you can, and see a physician regularly over the next week or so to get the bandages changed.” That same gentle, genuinely concerned demeanour. If it’s an act, it’s near perfect.
“I will.”
Ulciscor steps forward before Veridius can say more. “Then we should go.”
“You’ll need this at the gate.” Veridius hands Ulciscor a thin, triangular stone tile, not much larger than a Foundation piece.
Ulciscor accepts it and then the two men embrace again, for all the world looking as though they’re old friends. “It was good to see you, even if it’s been brief.”
“If Vis is coming here, I have no doubt our paths will cross again soon.”
“I hope so.” Ulciscor says it cordially, then heads for the exit. I bid my farewell to Veridius and trail after the Magnus Quintus.
“Ulciscor.”
We stop just short of the door, and Ulciscor turns. Completely casual, but I swear his eyes go a shade darker.
“Is this the first time you’ve been back?”
“Yes.” Quiet. That darkness in his eyes isn’t my imagination. We’re away from the window, though, so I don’t think Veridius will be able to see it in the dim.
“His memorial is over past the quadrum, just to the west. Facing the sunset.” Veridius’s smile has vanished, replaced by unaffected sadness. “If you were interested.”
Ulciscor stares, and for just a second it looks like the mask is going to slip. His throat tightens. Breath shortens. He responds with a stiff nod, then whirls and walks away.
Not before I see the darkness completely flooding his eyes, though.
OUR FOOTSTEPS ECHO AGAINST THE hewn granite walls of the empty hallway. Morning light spills through tall archways onto the stone. The corridor we’re walking is set into the side of a cliff; the view is of a vast, forested island to the north, and swelling water everywhere else.
I stumble at the sight of the latter, heart wrenching. The peaks of waves glitter. Sparkle. I can smell the salt. A series of massive white stone monoliths jutting from the blue, perhaps a mile from the shore, mars the view. But otherwise, it’s all light and clean colours and open horizons down there.
I haven’t seen the sea in almost two years.
“We’ll talk once we’re away.” Ulciscor’s eyes have cleared again, returned to their thoughtful deep brown. As if that repressed, low-burning fury was never there.
It takes only a couple of turns before we’re climbing spiralling stairs and emerging into a massive hall, grand marble columns supporting a curving roof above. Floor-to-ceiling arches on one side reveal that we’re at the very top of the cliff. Several doorways opposite branch out into separate rooms, and a smattering of students mill and chatter just outside them, congregating in small groups.
Ulciscor doesn’t pause, angling for the main entrance. We catch several stares as we pass, particularly me with my stiff gait. A trail of hushed, curious murmurs forms our wake.
“So this is the Academy?” I ask the question mostly to distract myself from the pressure of everyone’s eyes.
“This is the Curia Doctrina. The main assembly hall.” We exit the building and Ulciscor motions back behind us, up at the yawning archway we’ve just walked through.
I turn to see friezes carved with lavish intricacy across it. Etrius with his famed wingblade; the capture of the fortress Orun Tel; the forming of the first Triumvirate. Other instantly recognisable glories from Catenan history.
It takes me a moment, but I realise that the pictures all flow into one another, combining with remarkable artistry to spell out words. STRONGER TOGETHER.
“Mawraur, bacpidyn,” I murmur to myself, without really thinking.
Ulciscor gives me an appraising look. “Cymrian?”
I nod, surprised by his recognition of the language: it’s not just rare, but officially considered dead by the Hierarchy. The only reason I know it is that my mother’s father was from the icy Cymrian wastelands, and despite the nation’s fall more than twenty years before Suus’s, she insisted I be tutored in it. The man she chose for the job, Cullen, used to delight in teaching a young prince the most foul phrases his native tongue had to offer. Not that I was ever an unwilling student.
“What does it mean?”
I cough. “It’s, ah… something about using extravagance as… compensation for other deficiencies.”
“Ah.” Ulciscor eyes the frieze. “Yes. Mawraur, bacpidyn,” he concedes with a smirk.
There are more students out the front of the Curia Doctrina, though fewer of them take note of us as we descend the sweeping white stairs. We’re entering an enormous open square, easily more than three hundred feet in both length and width. Buildings rise on each edge—temples, a gymnasium for training, a Bibliotheca, even what looks like a set of baths—and people come and go from almost all of them. Despite the sun being barely above the horizon, the space is brimming with activity.
“Hm.” Ulciscor cocks his head to the side. “I’ve heard you use vek. An Aquirian curse?”
“That’s right.” Suus and Aquiria mostly shared a tongue; the dialects were different, but only native speakers would know the difference.
“What about guiro thanat?”
My brow furrows. I must have said that in front of him at some point. “Sytrecian. It’s more of an insult. The rough translation is someone who could ‘brighten a room with their absence, or dazzle it with their corpse.’ ” I smile slightly. I’ve always liked that one.
“All that in two words?”
“Apparently so.”
“I’ve studied a little Sytrecian and Cymrian, and never heard either of those phrases.”
“I guess you didn’t study hard enough.” I wave off his penetrating look. “I had a Cymrian tutor, back in Aquiria. He was the one who taught me a little Vetusian, too—he always said I had a knack for languages. And I picked up Sytrecian from the crew of the ship that got me to Tensia, after…”
I trail off. Deliberately, carefully let memories of my real family flood my mind. Let the grief in, just briefly.
Ulciscor watches me, then nods and lets the matter drop. He steers us off to the left, away from the bright white of the square and down a narrow, garden-lined path. A chill breeze whips in off the ocean. I breathe in salty air and aching nostalgia.
“Alright.” Ulciscor glances behind us. “I came as soon as I heard you were awake. How much did Veridius get out of you?” An uneasy edge still to his tone, even if he thinks we’re safe to talk.
I relate what’s happened since I regained consciousness, recounting what I said as accurately as possible. Ulciscor listens intently as we emerge from the ring of buildings and strike out along a path that traces the line of the clifftop, a short stone wall providing safety without obscuring the view. The entire Academy’s built atop this high plateau, apparently.
My eyes stray to the vista beyond as I talk. The island is vast, from what I can see of it from here. It’s blanketed by verdant forest; much is also mountainous, steep cliffs vanishing into puffs of low-hanging clouds in the distance. Deep ravines form in between. I think I can see the winding glint of a river through the foliage in one of them.
To the west the sea roils, white-tipped waves smashing against bluffs that appear to form the entirety of the island’s beachless shoreline. Past my initial emotional reaction, I can see now that this place has none of the golden beauty of Suus. It’s austere. Bleak. The waves crash rather than lap; the sky is grey; the air bites where it touches skin in a way that it almost never does in the lands farther north.
“He was focusing on the attack, then. Not you specifically.” Ulciscor’s relieved as I conclude my explanation. “Probably wanted to figure out how I managed to get myself injured. Not to mention lose most of a Transvect along a route that very few people should have known we were taking.”
We’re approaching a much taller section of the stone wall, this part made of twenty-foot-long slabs of granite and spiked at the top, a clear warning against entry. Or exit, I suppose. It curves away from the cliff’s edge, dividing the Academy from the wilderness of the island. “He was certainly interested in how you got knocked out.”
“He’s not alone there.” Ulciscor half stoops to rub the back of his leg. “What did happen? I remember the men who were pretending they crashed with the Transvect. And then… nothing.”
I lick my lips, the Anguis fighter’s exploding head an indelible image.
“There was a woman hiding in the forest with a bow—she shot you, and you went down like it hit you in the head. She came out once you were unconscious, pulled her arrow out of your leg, said something to the men, and left. After that, it was pretty much what I told Veridius. They looked like they were going to kill you, so I took a chance.” I shrug uncomfortably. “Caught them by surprise, and I think they were only Octavii. Compared to the Theatre, it wasn’t hard.”
Ahead in the wall I spot an arched, covered passageway about thirty feet long and half as wide jutting from the stone. There are tall double doors set into its end, manned and closed. The Academy’s entrance, I assume.
Ulciscor eyes me. “Why not tell all that to Veridius?”
“I’m assuming there was something special about that arrow. I’ve never heard of a Quintus going down like that—maybe you have, but either way, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing you’d want me telling just anyone.”
Hardly a work of art, but given how little time I’ve had to come up with the answer, it’s not bad. Sure enough, Ulciscor nods his approval. “I’m going to have to ask around. Quietly. Hearing about a weapon like that is going to make a lot of people nervous. You’re sure they didn’t give any clue as to who they were?”
“None.”
Ulciscor looks like he wants to say more, but stays silent as we reach the gate.
There are guards standing to either side of the vaulted passageway, women wearing ankle-length tunics and stolas in sharp Catenan red. The older one with short-cropped black hair moves to block our path, albeit affably enough.
“Names?”
“Magnus Quintus Ulciscor Telimus. And Vis Telimus.” Ulciscor hands her the tile he got from Veridius.
The sun-browned woman slots the triangular stone into a thin slot in the wall. The granite doors grind aside, the sound echoing down the passageway and crashing against a matching rumble from the other end, where I can see a slit of daylight growing as an identical set opens to the forest beyond.
She signals to the other guard, who makes a note on a wax tablet. “Very good, Magnus Quintus. We’ve had word that a Transvect is on the way. It should be here soon.” She doesn’t return the stone tile.
We walk into the brief tunnel. I roll my shoulders as we enter; there’s something different about this space. An inscrutable oppressiveness. I quicken my step.
“Will cage,” Ulciscor explains, noting my discomfort. His words reverberate against the stone.
“Which is?”
“A way of ensuring nothing imbued gets into the Academy. When the doors are closed, the passage is completely encompassed by Will—a perfect seal. It cuts off any external Will connections to an object. What you’re feeling is someone else’s Will, all around you.” He looks resentfully at the surrounding granite, lowering his voice so that the guards can’t overhear. “It’s excessive. Gods-damned expensive to make and maintain.”
I try to keep the way my skin crawls from my expression. We’re soon exiting again, and I exhale, relishing the emergence. Behind us, the doors to the Academy rasp shut, a permanence in the boom of their sealing.
We’re greeted immediately by thick forest, the sole path through sloping violently downward directly ahead. Otherwise, the encroaching woodland forms walls to both sides and a thick roof above, creating the sense that we’re descending into another tunnel.
“The Transvect’s this way,” Ulciscor says, somewhat unnecessarily.
Before I can respond, I’m hit by another wave of light-headedness—something I’ve felt a couple of times since I woke—and stagger. Ulciscor notices. Steadies me with a hand on my arm and then stops, stooping to peer into my eyes.
“Did Veridius give you anything? Medicine?”
“Just the salve on my wound.”
“Too risky; he knows our own physician will be looking at it soon. Anything else? Something to eat or drink?”
“No.” I gather his meaning. “Surely he wouldn’t.”
“Nothing strong. Nothing provable. But a pinch of blackroot, maybe some ground-up wolfshem, would be enough to keep you off-balance. Would encourage mistakes in a conversation, without you necessarily noticing the effect.”
I think back uneasily. “I did have a glass of water. I think it was left by my bed. That was when the students were there, though, not Veridius.”
“You didn’t mention any students.”
I’d forgotten about them, to be honest. “There were three of them. They snuck in to find out what happened to the Transvect, but I didn’t tell them anything. I think they were just bored. We barely got a chance to speak, anyway.”
Ulciscor tugs at his sleeve. “Do you remember names?”
I wrack my brain. “Emissa, Indol, and Belli.”
“Hm. Indol would be Quiscil’s boy. Magnus Dimidius Quiscil. He’s Military,” Ulciscor extrapolates for my benefit. “I can’t imagine he did anything to you. And the other two names are familiar; I think they’re from Military families as well. Who gave you the water?”
“Emissa.”
“I’ll look into her.” He sees my expression. “Veridius is the Principalis, Vis. He’ll have a lot of sway with the students.” He makes sure I’m steady on my feet again, then releases his grip. “I’m not saying the ones you met did anything; this is probably just your body trying to catch up. The point is, you can’t discount it. You have to think of them in that light. Everyone you meet.”
“There’s something to look forward to.” Just the fact that the possibility occurred to Ulciscor is unsettling.
The big man frowns at the steep incline ahead. “Are you going to be able to manage?”
“Easier if you carried me.”
Ulciscor hesitates, then snorts. “Come on. If we miss this Transvect, it will be hours before we can schedule another.”
Despite my gentle mocking of Ulciscor’s concern, my side aches as we traverse the downward path. The surrounding brush remains green and thick, brambles and out-of-season wildberry cut back. A couple of other trails branch off into the darkness along the way. I’m too focused on my footing to wonder where they lead.
Soon enough the ground levels out, and we’re emerging onto an entirely empty platform that juts from the side of a cliff. There’s no way off it except the way we’ve just come, with a fifty-foot drop revealing itself on the three sides that aren’t hemmed by trees.
I perch beside the Magnus Quintus on one of the benches that line the two-hundred-foot-long stretch of stone. Even having spent the last minute descending, we can see almost the entire breadth of the island from here; it has to be at least twenty miles wide, maybe double that in length. Parts are still obscured, but I can’t spot anywhere that looks like a point of ingress. It reminds me of Suus’s south-eastern shore: no beaches, no gentle slopes leading onto the island itself. Nothing but cliffs and bluffs.
“Religion made it this way.” Ulciscor’s following my gaze and reading my thoughts. “It was mostly inaccessible to begin with, but three years ago they removed the remaining beaches. Activated the Seawall, too.”
“The Seawall?”
“Did you see that group of anchoring points from the Curia Doctrina? They’re part of a security measure that surrounds the island. It only allows Transvects through, and only at one specific access point.” He shakes his head. “It’s pre-Cataclysm, we think. Adapted by Veridius, somehow. But Religion isn’t exactly interested in letting us know the details.”
“Rotting gods.” I can’t even imagine how much Will that would take to work. Or how it would work. “Just for the Academy?”
“So they say.” Ulciscor gazes out at the horizon.
Neither of us speak for a while. Birdsong warbles at us. Distant, there’s the crashing of waves against cliffs.
“My little brother died out there.”
Ulciscor says the words so softly, I’m not sure I hear them correctly. I keep my eyes on the vista, then look at him questioningly.
He doesn’t turn from the deep forests of Solivagus. “His name was Caeror. He was in the same class as Veridius. We think he was killed to cover up whatever they’re hiding.” He draws in a precarious breath, then finally meets my gaze. Sad and grave. His expression brooks no follow-up. “This is a bad place, Vis. Dangerous. You can still back out, but this is your last chance to do it. Is this opportunity worth it? Is it worth your life?”
I study him as he hunches forward and looks over the jagged island again. A light sheen of sweat covers his dark pate, glinting in the sun. A few more things about the man click into place.
“I need to hear you say it,” he adds quietly.
This, or running forever at best. “Yes. It’s worth it.”
He gives a vaguely sorrowful smile, still gazing out into the distance. “They say that young men know they will die, but only old men believe it. For some reason, I don’t think that’s true of you, Vis. I hope it’s not.” He sighs. “Alright. There are two sites you’re going to need to look into when you’re here, locations we believe are important from years of investigation. The first is about a mile east of the Academy. Ruins that Religion are actively working on, but we don’t know any more than that.”
“Why can’t we just go and look at it now?”
“Don’t for a second think that because we’re alone out here, they’re not watching us. Besides, there will be alarms if it’s not actively guarded. And I don’t know its exact location.”
I feel a prickle along the nape of my neck at the suggestion of eyes on us, and nod.
Ulciscor subtly motions north and slightly westward. “See the large natural arch over there? Coming off the side of the cliff.”
I spot what he’s talking about, at least halfway across the island.
“There are significant ruins, about a mile farther, around the other side of the mountain. That’s the second site. For the past three Iudicia, that entire section of Solivagus has been kept off-limits. Religion’s hiding something out there.”
The rocky outcropping is miles away, across terrain that looks all but impossible to traverse. I’m perfectly capable of surviving in the wilderness—I’ve had the requisite training and plenty of experience in the forests of Suus—but a trip there and back would take a couple of days, minimum. “You want me to actually go to these places.”
“Unless you think you can investigate some other way.”
I consider what I’ve already seen of the Academy. The security Ulciscor’s already described. “How, though?”
Ulciscor shrugs. “You’re here for your ability to solve problems, Vis.”
The sea of treetops stretching out below ripples in gusts that streak across the island, an undulating green ocean between us and the arch.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I say eventually.
Ulciscor accepts the statement as if it’s exactly the response he was expecting. Perhaps it was.
Silence falls between us again, comfortable at first, but then weighed with a sense of anticipation from Ulciscor. He’s waiting for me to speak. To broach something else with him.
I stare out across the carpet of forests. I don’t think he wants to talk about his brother; there was too much pain in the revelation, a distinct effort to move the conversation on. I have concerns about it—Ulciscor’s stake is far more personal than it first seemed—but this isn’t the time to raise them.
There’s really only one other thing that’s looming over us.
“You killed him.” I say it quietly, but there’s only the sounds of nature around us. No doubt that Ulciscor can hear.
Ulciscor’s thoughtful gaze out over the vista doesn’t waver for a few seconds. Then he sighs. Regret in the act, though no remorse that I can see. “I did.”
“What about Birthright?”
He finally looks at me. Curious. “Do you think I did the wrong thing?”
I resist the urge to be honest. To tell him that Birthright has always existed not for any moral reason, but as a means of maximising the Hierarchy’s power. To be applied only at their convenience. There’s a heartbeat where I see my father’s bloodied form as I fall, my sister’s ghostly hair in the water. The old rage stirs.
“I suppose you didn’t necessarily break the law.” It’s what he wants to hear, if not exactly an answer. “You could argue that killing a man intent on destruction is a net gain for life. That letting him live could easily have resulted in more deaths.” The loophole. My lungs are tight just thinking about it.
“I could. I would.” It’s that simple to him. “Is that a problem?”
“If it was, I would have mentioned it to Veridius.”
Ulciscor pauses, then grunts an acknowledgment. My point’s been made. I won’t press the issue, but I don’t for a second believe it would be ignored if others knew.
And I’m not alright with him just killing people.
There’s silence again, and I stew, though I’m careful not to show it. Birthright. The protection of every human life. Not the Hierarchy’s only hypocrisy, but one of their greatest. And Ulciscor treats it as blithely as any of his countrymen.
I wonder again whether I should have listened to Sedotia. Whether I’m in over my head here.
Too late now.
I examine the rocky curvature of that distant arch, and wait for the Transvect to take me into the heart of Deditia.
