The Strength of the Few by James Islington - 71

CATEN IS COVERED BY AN ethereal, ray-streaked smoky haze, thick winter clouds bleeding from gold to orange as the sun peeks through and touches the horizon. There are few people on the street between my concealed rooftop vantage and South Caten Prison. Few people out at all, as far as I can tell. Uneasiness coats the city, chokes its streets and stills its usual conversations. Not everyone has been told about the attack coming tonight—in fact, its knowledge has been kept relatively contained—but it’s in the air anyway.

A prescient, ugly mood as the sun burns through smoke and the mutters of the hungry drift upward. Surreal, how quickly this place has eaten itself alive.

I shift my gaze once again back to the prison across the way. Not the one Lanistia was held in last time, but it will inevitably be much the same layout. On the surface it looks identical, just a squat building with one barred window to view anyone arriving. A slot for papers and an impossibly thick stone door, which is meant to open only with a Will key or seal from Quartus Kanifer. No one posted outside.

Five men emerged ten minutes ago, and they admitted only two replacements. Probably the only guards, this evening. Not that they should have reason for more. Catenan prisons are designed to hold off an army, regardless of their staff.

“You look comfortable.” Aequa grins as I start at her voice by my ear, then lies prone on the rooftop next to me, shoulder to shoulder. “Hail, Vis. Nice and alert for tonight, I see.”

“I was focusing,” I grumble, though I allow a small smile of greeting in her direction.

“Been here long?”

“Faustus kept me occupied for about an hour. Figured it was safer to disappear earlier rather than later, before I got called in to do something I couldn’t get out of.” Her smirk widens as I roll my eyes. “So, yes. Long.”

“No Diago?”

I shake my head. I considered it. But if something goes wrong, if we’re caught, I can’t have him deciding to kill someone from Religion to protect us. That would turn a relatively minor incident—if disastrous for Aequa and me—into something far more destructive. “Domus Telimus is along our way to the docks. We’ll pick him up after this.”

She gives a cheery nod to my confident assumption of success here. “Guards?”

“Five out, two in. It should be all they need for tonight.”

Her upbeat demeanour finally falters at that, and she nods again, this time grimly. There may be only two people in there, but those two are doubtless prepared for some bloody work.

“We should go in soon, then,” she observes quietly.

I eye the sun dipping below the buildings. “One of us should check the street before we do. Given what they’re planning, there’s a chance they have someone extra on watch. You want to go, or me?”

She leans playfully against my shoulder, indicating me. “I’ll let you stretch your legs before the fun starts.”

I get to my feet, arrange my somewhat dishevelled toga and stare at her. “Gods’ graves. You’re actually looking forward to this, aren’t you?”

She rolls onto her side, lounging as she gazes up at me. “A prison break with the great Catenicus? Rotting gods, yes. Eidhin is going to be so jealous , and I am going to bring it up constantly .”

I cough a soft laugh, nudge her in mock reproval with my foot, and head down the stairs. The street is expectedly empty and quiet; it takes only a few minutes and a cursory tour to determine that no unwanted surprises are lurking. I take the stairs back up two at a time. Energised. I’ve had a fresh dose of Kadmos’s tea, and don’t even feel my various injuries. For all the horrors I know are coming, I have a plan. A narrow path through the darkness ahead.

I’m still thinking, and almost to the top again, when I hear the voices.

“It’s just me.” Aequa, and though she’s doing her best to hide it, she’s uneasy. She says it loudly, though. Clearly a warning. “I came to do Vis a favour and watch the prison. He’s not here.”

“Watch? I don’t believe you.” A familiar voice. Male. “And for your sake, let us hope he comes to find you soon.” I take a second to place it, heart sinking when I do.

Tertius Decimus.

I pause there on the stairs, frozen in place. For all his lack of aggression toward me at meetings, Iro’s father is no supporter of mine and won’t hesitate to try and stop me from freeing Lanistia. Is that why he’s here?

“Release me, please, Tertius.” Aequa is keeping remarkably calm, but there’s something more to her voice now. “You’ve no authority to detain me. I’m not doing anything—”

She cuts off with a low, pained cry, and my decision is made.

“Tertius Decimus.” I step up onto the roof and immediately prepare myself to imbue, though it will be pointless against the man. Decimus’s eyes are completely black and he is gripping Aequa’s shoulder with evident force. She’s keeping still, but I can see the discomfort in her eyes as she gives me a reproving look. Thinks I should have stayed hidden, clearly. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“ Telimus .” Decimus’s smile broadens to something disconcerting and wholly false. A gleam in his dead eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here. I wanted to make sure you understand this.”

“Understand what, sir?” I keep my unease in check and take a mildly confused, acquiescent tone. Decimus is on edge. There’s no benefit to angering him.

“Loss.” His manic grin fades until he’s just staring at me. Aequa still held in his iron grip. “Helplessness and loss.”

My heart clenches. He knows why I’m here. He’s planning to stop me.

“Vis already understands those things, Tertius. Truly.” Aequa, speaking up quietly before I can find a response. “His parents were murdered when he was young. His friend died in his arms at the Iudicium. He was at the naumachia when—”

“The naumachia .” Decimus cuts her off and Aequa’s wince shows she sees the mistake, though I would have made the same one. “You were both there, weren’t you? And you saved her while thousands died. While my daughter died. Trapped in there like an animal.” He shakes Aequa as he says “her,” though his dark eyes never leave mine. She’s a Quintus, and self-imbuing, but still powerless to stop the effortlessly violent motion. “And now here you both are again. Here to rescue your… what? Former tutor? Though she is our enemy. Prioritising the personal over the many yet again.”

I see it then. Something in the way he spits it, sending a genuine chill down my spine. I see all of the grief and hatred he’s been keeping hidden as we meet, day after day.

Chained in the dark, as my mother once described it.

“Lanistia’s my friend, Tertius. She’s my friend and of no tactical importance, and if she’s in a Sapper, they’re going to kill her just in case she’s ceding to the wrong person.” Vek . Even if he wasn’t holding Aequa so threateningly, I cannot think of a way I can get past him, let alone beat him. If he imbues something, then maybe I can get to it. Adopt his own power and use it against him. But he’s self-imbuing. I confirmed months ago that I can’t take Will directly from other people, and the weapons I have at my disposal—the metal triangles sitting beneath my tunic—will do little more than dent themselves against him, and then give me away in the process. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t act sooner at the naumachia. I’m sorry Iro got injured—”

“Iro is dead.” Decimus’s lifeless voice cuts through anything else I might have said. Stills me to hollow silence. “He died three days ago. The Vitaerium wasn’t enough. He just couldn’t breathe anymore.” Fist clenching and unclenching. The words coming out so calm, and yet every inch of the man screams of pain and violence. “They knew it was coming. But I couldn’t go to him. I couldn’t be there to say goodbye because I. Had. Responsibilities .”

He takes me in. Shifts his grip so that his hand rests on Aequa’s head. “At least I am giving you the chance to say goodbye, Telimus.”

“What?” I freeze, hold up my hand as I see the sudden panic on Aequa’s face. She beats at him, tries to twist away but his grasp on her head is firm. No. This is a test. A means of extracting more from me. “Whatever you want from me, Tertius. Anything you want. Just let me know.” Test or not, I won’t risk it.

“I want my children back,” says Decimus softly. “Or in lieu of that, I want you to say goodbye.”

“It’s alright, Vis.” Aequa’s shaking. Stopped struggling, I think because it was hurting her as much as getting nowhere. But somehow, she still forces a smile at me. “It’s alright. Whatever happens, neither of us can—”

Decimus tightens his grip.

Aequa’s head caves in.

I just stand there. Limbs weak, heart stopped, breath gone. There is the cracking of bone and then an ugly squelching. This cannot be happening. My friend’s face is crumpled between his fingers. Her dark, straight hair molten with crimson in the dying light of the day. Decimus releases her. Flicks blood and brain off his hand as her body crumples to the ground, watching me the entire time.

A wordless cry. I am flying at him. All of my shock and rage a thin tunnel, unable to even process what I am doing as I am doing it. I hit him across the face, and he smiles at my pain as my fist near shatters in its meeting the immovable object. I try to force him backward over the edge, forgetting that it will take far more than twenty or so feet to kill him. He doesn’t budge. My throbbing hand around his throat. He doesn’t even blink.

Then he gestures. Disdainful. The backhand slams me ten feet into the far wall, raining rubble down on my head. My self-imbuing the only difference between pain and death.

I stagger to my feet and run and swing again through the tears in my eyes, but he moves as if I’m a child, avoiding the blow and then gripping my shoulder. He holds me up, feet dangling, so that my face is level with his. Soulless eyes examining mine.

“You think your children would be proud of this?” I pant the words. The only thing I can use to hurt him before I die. “ Gods . Now I see you for who you are, Decimus, be grateful I made sure they never had the chance.”

I see it hit, though he tries to hide it. The twitch of his lip. The shortening of breath, the shaky exhalation. I stare at him boldly. I won’t go cowering. Not to this man.

He tosses me to the ground and, before I can move, grabs my lower left leg in both hands.

I scream as he snaps it.

Decimus drops the skewed limb calmly, despite my thrashing easily securing my right leg and doing the same. I writhe, and moan, and try to crawl away but he places a single boot on my back.

“I am going to leave you here, Telimus. Just like this.” His voice is somehow both conversational, and utterly dead. “Perhaps you can drag yourself down to the street with that one hand of yours, but even if you do, you will not be able to save anyone inside that prison tonight. You will leave, or you will be taken away, and you’ll know what is happening when it happens.” He looks down on me as I weep. For the broken and bloody mess I can see from the corner of my vision. For the agony I’m feeling. For Lanistia, and Eidhin, and the powerlessness of it all. “And then, you will understand how I have felt. You will understand the impact that you have had on my life.”

I can barely think straight. I want to goad him, to hurl insults, to do something . The rage almost chokes me to it.

Some distant part of my mind is screaming at me to keep my mouth closed, though. I don’t know whether it’s fear, or calculation, or both. But Decimus doesn’t know about the tea, numbing the pain to something merely awful rather than crippling. He doesn’t know about Carnifex or Adoption. I could provoke him into killing me, and part of me wants to, simply because my rage screams for an outlet.

But dead, my other friends are too. So instead I weep and let him see me wholly broken, as he wants me to be. As I almost, almost am.

“The interesting thing will be to see what you tell everyone. Because even if you think you can convince Governance of what happened here, will you try? Will you continue to be selfish and sacrifice the lives of thousands? You know Religion will side with me. And if anyone comes for me, I won’t surrender.” He spits to the side. Onto Aequa’s body. A fresh flood of rage wracks me and I thrash at him, but his heel keeps me pinned to the stone. “Men will die, and then more men will die because those men weren’t there to defend against Military. You may even damn Caten to one of the pretenders out there. So if you do come after me, it will only prove what I already know.”

“You’re a coward.” I wheeze it. Mind just clear enough to know he needs to hear it. Needs to hear me rail helplessly, throw pointless insults at him. Silence will only provoke. “And you’re wrong. Nobody’s going to protect a Tertius who breaks Birthright like this. With his own allies .”

He chuckles. Grabs my toga, pulling me up so that he can see my face. “Have you been in Caten these past weeks, Telimus? Sextii hunting Septimii and Octavii, every night. People value only one thing now, and it is the same thing they have always valued. What is it they say, again? The needs of the many will always be loud.” He leans forward. Hooked nose inches from mine. “But in the end, it is only the strength of the few that matters.”

He drops me again, so that my head hits stone. Black eyes disgusted.

Leaves.

I LIE THERE FOR MINUTES, unable to move. pain both physical and emotional crippling me. Kadmos’s tea means the agony of my legs is blunted, but I still feel it. Nothing can dull the ache of Aequa’s shattered form lying a few feet from me, though. She was just here. Just here . Smiling, joking with me in the dwindling afternoon light. The sun has only just set.

Eventually, the knowledge of what’s coming across the street intrudes on my anguish, and I allow my helpless, festering fury to bubble over the top of it. To compel some focus. Decimus was right: I could drag myself down there but to what purpose? The guards will not believe a man who cannot stand has been sent to fetch a prisoner. And using force—even as a Quintus against two Septimii—is an uncertain proposition right now. If nothing else, there are alarms they could easily trigger before I can deal with them.

And if I am caught, if I am stopped, then I cannot get to Eidhin, either.

I feel the metal armour beneath my tunic again. Months of constant practice the only reason I haven’t lost the imbuing there. It absorbed a lot of the impact, probably saved me from a broken back when Decimus threw me against the wall.

Decimus had to have assumed my injuries, awful though they are, were even worse. And he had no idea about my Harmonic imbuing.

I glance over at Aequa again, throat clogging anew. It feels wrong to just ignore her. To leave her.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her broken body.

I close my eyes, and force grief inward behind the rage, and concentrate on how I am going to ensure Decimus does not take everything from me.

If I’m going to get to Lanistia, I need to be able to walk.

The first part is the most unpleasant. I stick my right leg out, trying not to look too hard at the violent angle at which it protrudes just above the ankle. Align triangular shards around my upper leg, and wrap more around my foot.

My breath shortens, panic at the anticipation of pain. I do it quickly. Roar as I use the imbued metal to pull the leg back into place. Almost pass out.

Sobbing, I do the same for the other.

As soon as I’m done, I self-imbue my legs; it won’t allow the snapped bones to suddenly bear my weight, but it will strengthen the surrounding tissue. There’s a flash of added pain as I feel muscles forcibly aligning the bones further, and then a relative easing to a dull, angry throb.

Minutes pass. The distending lumps of skin in my legs gone, replaced by awful swelling and rapidly blushing bruises. I force back the encroaching shock, and breathe, and breathe again. Think. Kadmos used to have me read texts on Catenan battlefield medicine, back before the Academy. There were diagrams. Will-based devices for Sextii with injured limbs, constructed so that they could still fight. Imbuable scaffolding to prevent a leg from taking weight, distributing it instead across a harness to allow continued mobility.

Slowly, I try to build something similar.

A brace around each foot and beneath it, the base of the open metal boot sitting a fraction of an inch below my sole. Then a kind of harness under my armpits. Another around my thighs and waist. The Harmonic connection allows me to distribute my weight evenly across it all, and as I self-imbue into those areas, the discomfort of the metal digging into my flesh fades to mere irritation.

Gradually, shakily, I haul myself to my feet against the low wall. Let go. Wobble.

Take a cautious step. Stumble and immediately, painfully fall, biting back a gargling scream as I hit the stone.

It takes three more agonisingly awkward tries before I can clumsily move more than a few paces without falling. It’s effectively like walking using crutches as stilts, but stilts that I can shape and control at a granular level. The motion is a natural one, though; just like my false arm, once I have the basics, it’s not a mental strain to have my makeshift boots moving as if they were feet. Every step clanks as iron hits the ground, so once I’m satisfied it will work, I reposition my sandals so that they sit over the metal, as well as my foot. Once they’re retied—and with the scaffolding of metal hidden beneath my dirtied toga—there is, remarkably, no obvious sign that I’m using anything to assist my movements.

I keep practicing, knowing the need for confidence. Ten minutes. Twenty. It’s messy. Gods-damned painful where the iron cuts into my skin from the necessary tightness, as well as at the breaks. I can only imagine what it would be like if I weren’t a Quintus enjoying the added benefit of Kadmos’s tea. Throughout, I harness my seething wrath to focus on the task. Only the task. Fighting back choking breaths not from the pain, but from the constant glimpses of my friend’s motionless, ruined form. Each time I almost stop. Each time, I want nothing more than to sit beside her, and cradle her, and tell her I am sorry, and weep until I can grieve no more.

But as gloom congeals to night, I remind myself again and again that Decimus is aiming to take more from me than her alone. That Lanistia and Eidhin are still alive.

And after a half hour of tense, agonising, teeth-gritted practice, I am able to walk without being noticeably awkward.

I start down the stairs before I can change my mind. Careful and deliberate, one by one, each step anxious. It takes me at least a full minute to reach the ground. The murk of evening gathers around the empty street.

I take some deep breaths. Straighten. No telling if one of the guards might be idly looking out the window, as I so often did. I affect purposeful nonchalance and walk—slowly, still, but with barely a trace of the effort and pain it takes—over to the prison’s entrance.

No sound from within. I take out the forged document I created earlier today. The red seal is imbued with my own Will rather than Kanifer’s, but there’s no way for those inside to know that.

The outer door is familiar thick stone. I close my eyes, place my hand against it. Feel the Will holding it in place.

It becomes mine. I steady myself, and rap brusquely on the door.

“What in the rotting…” I hear a scrambling from inside, and a round, squinting face appears at the window. Bemused more than alarmed, clearly not expecting anyone. That’s good. “Who are you?”

“Catenicus.” I brandish the paper in my hand briskly. “Orders from Princeps Laurentius via Quartus Kanifer. I’m to relocate a prisoner from here immediately.”

The man’s eyes flick to my missing arm. Confusion fading to suspicion. “We weren’t told—”

“I’m telling you now, Septimus.” I roll my eyes at him. “Gods, man. I know I’m from Governance, but I have the documentation and if you have any idea what’s happening tonight, you’ll get this moving. Quietly .”

Some audible sputtering at my impatience, but he disappears and a few seconds later the small compartment next to the door slides open. I deposit the forged paper.

Heart pounding, I focus on the sliver of my Will as the compartment shuts again. It raises slightly in the room beyond as the orders are examined. A pause, a little too long, and I wonder through the pain whether this is as far as I’m getting.

Then my imbued seal moves toward the door, until it hits the left-hand side of it.

I focus on the Adopted Will in the door, and slide it smoothly open.

The guard inside is frowning as he looks between the door and its release slot, and I wonder if my timing was too far off. But either it wasn’t or, more likely, the man puts any minor discrepancy down to his imagination. I feel Will returning to me as he snaps the seal and ushers me in. “Who are you here for?”

“There’s a reason that order you’re holding doesn’t have a name. Where’s your ledger?” Impatient and authoritarian.

The woman in the corner looks displeased, but the man fetches the logbook of prisoners and thrusts it petulantly at me. They don’t like this, and under normal circumstances, even knowing who I am, I’d be detained until they could double-check my story.

But these are not normal circumstances. They know what’s planned for tonight. They say nothing as I scan through the names.

“Are these current?” I ask the question with a sort of irritable absence, though it’s an important one. Do my best not to sway as my legs scream at me and metal digs into my imbued skin in support of my weight.

“I’m not sure,” admits the woman.

So no, then. Not surprising; too many people would have been unlawfully added over the past two weeks to keep records up to date. But Indol knew about Lanistia; she should be on here at least, assuming she hasn’t been moved. Or worse.

I find her name. Not in the deep cells, to my pleasant surprise. Perhaps in the chaos of the festival, the severity of her sentence was suspended. Not that I’m going to risk leaving her here, whether the ledger is correct or not. But if she’s not suffering the effects of a Sapper, it will be significantly easier to get her out.

I almost close the ledger, doing only a cursory final scan, when my heart sinks.

Ulciscor Telimus. Deep Cells, North 79 .

Vek.

I read the name again, some part of me hoping my anxious mind was making it up. Vek, vek, vek .

“Something wrong, Quintus?” The woman. More suspicious and less intimidated than her companion.

“No.” I close the book with a snap and hand it back. “Unlock the door, please. I’ll knock when I come back.”

“We can’t let you down there alone.”

“You can and you will, Septimus.” My legs choose that moment to fire pain upward through my body and I barely restrain a chasing, obvious spasm. “And when I return, you’ll both be busy at that desk”—I nod toward the desk up against the wall—“and won’t see the prisoners’ faces.”

“I thought you said it would be just the one.”

My eyes are already flooded with darkness, but I risk diverting some Will from my legs to my arm. Ignore the agony and take three falsely confident strides over to her. Pick her up by the shoulder and use my very real fury to slam her against the wall, eliciting a gasp of pain. Not so different from what Decimus did to me less than an hour ago.

“I don’t have time for this, Septimus,” I snarl in her face. Her eyes are wide with abrupt fear. I don’t know what the other Septimus is doing, but I have to trust he’s cowed rather than planning to attack me, because weak as I am, I doubt I can actually beat these two. “I know your business tonight. I know what you’re going to do. And Princeps Laurentius requires the information these people have. Now . You really think he and Quartus Kanifer would send me if they had better, more official, options? We are at war and the normal rules do not apply. So you can let me through, or I can kill you both. Whichever is easiest.”

She must see something in my eyes. The rage and torment and heartbreak that’s bubbling beneath the surface. Any fight she might have had leaks from her. “Of course, Quintus. Of course . Apologies. Apologies. I wasn’t thinking.”

I grunt and let her slide down the wall, affecting disgust. Wait impatiently for the man to unlock the door with a trembling hand. Snatch up the candle waiting just inside, and start down the stairs without looking back.

As soon as I hear the door close, I collapse against the damp stone wall, allowing a soft hiss between gritted teeth. Carefully sit to take the added pressure off my body. Just for a few moments. Just until I can get my breathing back under control.

Then I press on.