TO MY CONFUSION, DISGUST, AND delight, I wake to a lungful of Diago’s snuffling breath.
The alupi is still sprawled on the ground beside me, but his eyes are open, his breathing regular and unhindered. He twitches away warily when he sees me stirring, stumbles to his feet, and backs away. Considers me. No growling, no teeth bared, just impassive.
Then he turns and limps into the forest.
I watch him go, worried the creature’s wounds will still overcome him, but knowing there’s not much I can do about it. Diago might be injured, but I am too—not critically, I think, but enough to make contending with an uncooperative alupi too daunting a prospect. The bite on my arm has mostly stopped bleeding, but I’m unwilling to peel back the blackening strip of cloth that’s sealing it. The whole limb aches, burns, and tingles. I just have to hope that it’s not infected, and that the exertion I’m about to undergo over the next two days won’t break the wound open again.
The cuts from the instructions on my forearm have stopped seeping, at least; the sleeve of my tunic is a congealing mess, but I can wash it off in the river. I’ve no desire to try and explain those injuries to the others.
I gaze at the words etched into my skin for longer than I should. One more mystery to add to the list. Someone helped me get out of there. Somehow stopped the way to Obiteum, or Luceum, or wherever it was supposed to go, from opening—if what I read about it was even true—and then cleared that room so that I could escape. But after all of it, I’m not even sure I know more than before the night began.
I can only hope that what I do know, will be enough for Ulciscor.
I shuffle to my knees and then my feet, vaguely surprised to find myself less sore than expected, less exhausted. After the battering I took from fleeing the dome, I should be barely able to move. But I feel… fine, as I flex and stretch my legs. Not energetic, exactly, but strong enough to push on.
The sun’s doing more than peering over the horizon now, helping me orient myself. I trudge back toward the river. Twice, I think I hear something following me and whirl. I never see anything. I don’t know for sure that Diago and I killed all the human-shaped husks that escaped the dome. It could equally be Diago himself, I suppose, trailing along behind me. Or some other wild animal.
I strip off and swim the river, though I stop on the other side to build a fire and scrub my tunic. The smoke will be visible, but it’s hard for me to care. Nobody will be close enough to come for me in the next hour or so. And the Iudicium seems… not irrelevant, but a laughably small concern compared to what I just went through.
I sit on a log, near naked as my clothing dries. Dig through my satchel for some damp food, my stomach not allowing me to go any farther before satiating it. My hand brushes the bottom of the bag and I pause. I can only feel a couple of the stones that should be in there.
I open it properly this time, drawing out the stolen tracking device. Almost all the stones have reattached themselves; when I try to move them or pull them off, they refuse to budge. Nor do they shift when I rotate the circular plate, still don’t seem to react to different orientations at all—but it’s something.
I eat the last of my sodden bread, dress, and start the journey back east to rejoin Callidus and Aequa.
“WHAT IN ALL THE ROTTING hells happened to you?”
Callidus is staring pointedly at the tattered, still somewhat bloodied wreckage of my tunic, while Aequa examines me with what I suspect is a hint of worry, too. I smile and shrug, doing my best to convey that I’m alright.
“Alupi.” It’s the best explanation I could come up with, given the obvious wound in my upper arm. “Did enough to scare it off.” If I’d killed it, they would have expected me to bring back some meat.
“Ah.” Callidus sounds vaguely disappointed. “Need us to take a look at that arm?”
“It’ll be fine.” I don’t want him looking too closely at the toothmarks.
“No it won’t.” Aequa speaks for the first time, sharp and authoritative. I open my mouth to protest but she muzzles me with a glare. “No. No. I’m not going to let us lose because you’re too heroic to accept some help. That needs cleaning and bandaging, or it will get infected.” She’s already digging through her pack, looking for something to do exactly that.
I sigh. She’s right, of course; I did my best with the wound after I swam the river, but it’s still oozing blood and in an awkward position. I’m surprised it hasn’t affected me more, in fact.
I sit while Aequa carefully peels away my tunic, hear her sharp intake of breath as she takes in the full extent of the injury. “Rotting gods, Vis. You idiot,” she mutters, the curse a surprise coming from her mouth. “When did this happen?”
“This morning.” I only allow her to take the tunic half-off, still managing to cover the writing lower down on my arm.
Callidus peeks over her shoulder, then immediately pales and backs away. “Right. Well,” he says, looking a little sickly.
I frown and then twist awkwardly, trying to see past my shoulder and down, but it’s an impossibility. From the feel of it, I know the skin’s torn up and raw down there, and the reflection I could make out in the water indicated it was a large gash. “Is it really that bad?”
The fact that Aequa’s not answering, instead concentrating on cleaning the area—which doesn’t sting as much as I think it should, oddly enough—is concerning, but I choose to let it go and just wait patiently for her to finish. Callidus sits opposite me, still looking green. “So. I assume other than the gaping hole in your arm, everything went as expected? The Sextii certainly seemed… miffed, from what little I heard before I decided it was time to leave.”
“They were.” I force some joviality against Aequa’s touch. “By the way, your little ballad was quite something.”
Callidus gives a tiny bow. “So we have a tracker?”
“Yes and no.” I lean forward to get the tracking plate from my satchel, drawing a reproving growl from Aequa. I pass it to Callidus while trying not to move my arm. “The stones are Will-bound to the plate. But they don’t seem to react to anything.”
Callidus rotates the thin, circular stone experimentally. “They’re not anchored around the plate itself, then. That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“It’s more efficient, at least. You only need the medallions to be Will-locked to a central point, rather than to each and every plate. That central point holds the state of everyone’s positions, and broadcasts it back.”
“Hm.” He’s right; I’m mildly annoyed I didn’t think of that earlier. “So what’s the central point?”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Aequa absently from behind me, most of her attention still taken with her task. “All you need is the alignment.”
“Exactly,” concurs Callidus. “The plate just needs to be pointed in the correct direction—probably using this mark up here.” He indicates a thin line scored onto one edge of the circle. “North is most likely, I’d imagine.”
I nod slowly. “And the stones aren’t moving—or don’t appear to be moving—because it’s covering such a wide area. An inch is probably an hour’s travel.”
“Agreed.” Callidus is squinting up at the sun, then turning himself so he’s facing north. “We’re not far from the western boundary, so you’d have to imagine that this is us here. The little square one probably represents the tracking plate itself. And your stone’s missing a half, because you don’t have the tracker in your stomach anymore.” He nudges the leftmost group of small stones on the slate, one a distinct black semi-circle with marbled white streaks. “Which would mean the closest team to us is… miles away.”
“If you’re right,” I add, more to remind him it’s not confirmed than to suggest he isn’t.
“I’m right.”
We continue to study the plate, but the longer I look at it, the more I’m convinced of Callidus’s theory. Most of the other groups are clustered around the centre of the island. Around the golden stone, which surely represents the Heart of Jovan. A quick test—aligning the slate, then using the tracking marble we were originally given—backs up the idea, with both of them indicating the same direction.
“This has to be Indol,” says Aequa, pointing to a grouping of four stones around a unique white one, which itself is made of two tightly connected halves. All the distinctively coloured ones are the same in that respect. “He’s the only one who could have convinced another two Fourths to switch sides this early.”
“Iro’s gone,” notes Callidus thoughtfully.
“Belli and Felix, too.” Aequa frowns as she makes the observation, pointing to the clear area near us. “Belli must have got back not long after I left, then—I was worried the safety team might get there before her. She went to scout ahead sometime last night, but she still wasn’t there when I left this morning.”
My stomach twists, but I push past the memory. “Looks like another Third’s been eliminated, too.” Aside from the Heart, there are only four unique stones left on the board.
“Speaking of which. You should have this back,” says Aequa suddenly, briefly stopping her ministrations to unhook the white medallion from around her neck and loop it around mine.
“Anything else we need to know about last night?” asks Callidus.
I think, then between gritted teeth from Aequa’s continued attention, tell them how Borius tried to stop me when I took the tracking plate. And then about the blood on the cloak I found. I’d almost forgotten about the latter, amid everything else.
“Surely he was just trying to scare you out of hiding,” says Aequa. “The blood could be from hunting, or from an injury one of them got hiking around after us.”
“It could have been,” I admit.
“I’d probably have thrown some trees around, too, if I’d just been humiliated by one of the students I was supposed to be protecting.” Callidus is grinning.
I let it go and the discussion moves on to Aequa’s and Callidus’s time since we were last together, but their reports are brief and dull. Callidus never came close to being caught and made it here without incident. Aequa left Iro’s team under the guise of acting as a decoy with my medallion. For them, everything went very much according to plan.
We spend a while after that deciding what to do next: the tracking plate gives us not just a new breadth of viable options, but ones the other teams won’t know we have. In the end, though, we agree on caution. I’m injured, and while I can move fast enough, I’m probably not going to be as useful in a fight. And it’s smarter if we let one of the others try to take the Heart from the Sextii guarding it, anyway. Hopefully more teams will be eliminated before we’re forced to act.
Aequa shifts behind me. “Done.” It’s taken longer than I’d expected—ten minutes, I think, from beginning to end. Mostly painless, though, which I’m not sure whether to be concerned about. I roll my shoulder experimentally, feeling a renewed pull, and she slaps me lightly on the side of the head. “Don’t do that, idiot. Give it as much rest as you can.”
I growl, rubbing my ear. “How bad is it?” She and Callidus exchange a glance. “I need to know.”
“I think it’s infected,” Aequa admits. “The whole arm’s looking bad. I’ve cleaned and bound it as best I can, but you’ll need to see someone as soon as we finish.”
I nod reluctantly, wondering how I’m going to explain away the bite marks to anyone who knows what they’re looking at. Not to mention the writing on my skin.
After a light meal we start moving again; Aequa and Callidus both suggest I rest at various points, but eventually my disdainful glares stop their prodding. My arm does hurt, and under normal circumstances I’d want nothing more than to stop for a few hours and close my eyes. But I’ve already done the hardest part, exactly as Ulciscor wanted—I don’t think he’ll throw me to the wolves now, even if his questions about Caeror remain unanswered. All I need to do from here is provide myself a path to that embassy position in Jatiere.
I’m so close, I don’t think I’ll be able to make myself rest until it’s over.
We angle directly for the nearest team, though Aequa estimates they’re the better part of a few hours away. Callidus keeps a close eye on the stone plate, after a while announcing in somewhat smug fashion that he was right: pointing the tablet north, our progress tracks perfectly with the black and white half-stone, small square stone, and accompanying two grey ones.
We push on through thick forest, over streams, and across ravines, at one point having to skirt a bog of some kind for almost a mile. It’s tiring, dreary work, requiring enough focus that conversation is all but impossible. There are a few times I think I hear rustling leaves or cracking twigs behind us, and part of me wonders whether Diago has somehow swum the river and continued to trail after me. I don’t mention it to the others. I’m not sure how I’d even explain the possibility to them without sounding insane.
The sun’s beginning to sink when Callidus swats away another tree branch, peers at the tracking plate, and holds up a hand. “We’re getting close. Maybe an hour away.”
“Already?” He’s been giving us updates throughout the day, but I’m still surprised. We’ve been moving as fast as we can, but given that we’re rarely following established trails, I didn’t think we would get here so quickly.
“They’re not moving. Everyone’s watching the Heart, waiting for someone else to take it.” He shakes his head, frowning. “That tracker is still spinning, too. I’d have thought one of the safety teams would be there by now.” One half of the blue stone fell off the plate not long after we set out, and its corresponding semi-circle began gradually revolving. Callidus’s hypothesis is that it indicates a Third’s elimination, but that a safety team hasn’t collected them yet.
“Assuming your theory about how the plate works is right,” says Aequa.
“Of course it’s—” Callidus starts to snap an answer back at her but then looks up, seeing our matching smirks. We’ve been wheedling him for a while about this. He narrows his eyes at us. “Yes.”
We come to a halt, Callidus showing us the plate.
“Indol won’t know we’re coming for him,” I say, pointing to the white stone with the four grey ones clustered around it. There are another four clustered around the other remaining Third now, too—at least one a defection from blue’s elimination, we think. “We’ve been heading in a straight line for him, and he only knows our direction, not how close we are. He probably thinks we’ve stopped somewhere. But whoever else is left will realise we’re getting closer. We need to split up.”
We’ve been talking about this—arguing about it—for a while, and Callidus and Aequa’s nods are still more reluctant than I’d like. One of us needs to take our trackers ahead, not too far from the Academy itself, as if we were positioning ourselves to wait for the Heart to be taken. It’s what we would have done without the tracking plate. And it means that we can both maintain the element of surprise here and now, and force any team that does get away with the Heart into a slower, more oblique course as they skirt our supposed ambush.
“So who’s going?” I trust them both. I don’t want to lose either of them.
They look at one another. They’ve each spoken at length about why they should be the one to stay.
“We’ll flip for it.” Aequa produces a bronze triangle from her pocket. Balances it on her thumb, then points it at Callidus. “Call.”
“Heads.”
Aequa flicks the coin into the sky, then catches neatly and displays it. “Pyramid. I choose to stay with Vis.”
I hold my tongue. She’s the better fighter.
Callidus scowls but accepts the result, reluctantly taking my medallion and then Aequa’s. I hand him the golden marble to track the Heart, too. “Keep an eye on this, and give yourself a good view,” I remind him. “I doubt anyone will go out of their way to try and eliminate me if the Heart’s already on its way to the Academy, but you can’t be too careful.”
“I know.” Callidus pockets them, then sighs. “Look after yourselves. If something happens, no one will be able to find you.”
Aequa snorts dismissively. I force a grin. He’s thinking about the deaths from the past few Iudicia—deaths I’m almost certain were caused because Veridius, for some reason, has been sending students into that accursed dome. There’s nothing to worry about on that account, at least. “We’ll be fine. I’ll find you once we have the Heart.”
Callidus pauses again, as if he wants to say more, then returns the grin.
He slaps me on the back, and disappears into the forest.
