Chapter 19 #2
I settle into the uncomfortably hard wooden chair, and don’t have to pretend to the unease that would surely be expected of me. “What is this about?” The implements for taking my blood are on the table. Emissa was telling the truth.
“First, your signature.” He pushes a piece of paper across the table with a single finger. It scratches in the silence.
I scan it. “A Silencium?”
“It covers everything that may pass here.” Quaestor leans forward and gives the sheet a single, slow tap. “And it will be enforced.”
It’s not as if there’s much choice in the matter, though the dusty certainty in the man’s voice gives me pause. A trip to the Sappers is the consequence of breaking a Silencium. And I’ve been through the Aurora Columnae, now. I’m as vulnerable to them as anyone else.
Excessive, for what we are about to do. But I sign the document. Quaestor tucks it away with slow, deliberate motions. Then he picks up the scalpel. Behind his low-perched glasses, black floods his eyes. “Hold out your arm.”
I do so, not showing any of the reluctance I feel.
“The burns on your hand.” He observes them as he makes a small incision and blood begins dripping into the obsidian vial. “They look recent.”
“Boiling soup. One arm.” I flex the injury with a grimace. It’s red and raised in a line from the knuckle of my thumb to the back of my hand. A hair off blistered.
“Hm.” He doesn’t look convinced, or suspicious, or even particularly interested.
An absent question, nothing more. That’s good.
Anyone with smithing experience would probably be quick to guess at the real cause, and while I have done nothing technically wrong, it will be far more useful to keep what I’m doing hidden.
A few tense seconds pass as Quaestor frowns, his attention now on the obsidian vial. My stomach twists as weariness drives my anxiety, heightens it. I’ve been assuming that my ceding will satisfy this test. But I only have Veridius’s relayed word for it.
The old man’s eyes clear from their brief darkness, and he uses a bandage to cover the small wound. “Thank you.”
I ensure my face shows more confusion than relief. “That’s it?”
“That is a beginning.” Quaestor finishes my dressing and clears his implements with unhurried motions, then reaches into a drawer. Pulls out something and places it between us.
“A Foundation board?” No need to fake confusion, this time.
“I assume you know the rules.” He starts taking the red and white pyramid stones from a leather bag and placing them in their starting positions. Every movement slow and deliberate as he sets stone against stone. Click. Click.
“Uh. Yes. Of course.” I hate the slowness of thought that comes with being an Octavii. “You … want a game?”
“To pass the time, while you answer a few questions.” Click. Click. “There. You may have the first move.”
I stare at the completed board. Foggier than I want to be. Is this part of Placement, now?
Nothing I can do about it. I make an opening play.
The craggy-faced man observes the board for an unnervingly long time, then swivels and sweeps his arm at the banners behind him. “Do you recognise any of these? Look closely.”
My brow furrows, but I bite my tongue and obey. The patterns on the banners are dizzying to the eye, all sharp corners and interwoven lines, similar and yet somehow distinct from one another. None of them mean anything to me. “No.”
Quaestor picks up a pen, dips it in the inkwell on the table, and writes. Slowly. The scratching of words being committed to parchment fills the room.
Then he moves his first stone. Click.
“What was the last thing you wished to do on your own?”
I blink. “Pardon?”
Quaestor looks up. His eyes are a faded grey over the rims of his glasses. “What was the last thing you wished to do on your own?”
“Um.” It’s a strange question, but one I don’t particularly see any benefit to avoiding. “I suppose … pay my respects to my friend.” A lump in my throat accompanies the answer.
Head back down, revealing a liver-spotted pate. More scratching. “Make your move.”
I do. He looks up. Studies it. Makes his own again, slow and measured. Click. “If the sea is the sky, what does that make a shark?”
I resist the urge to make him repeat the question. Repress my confusion. “Uh. An eagle, I suppose?” I shift a stone before he asks, this time. The first few moves are always easiest, and he’s playing a standard opening.
He writes again. Stops. Click. “Can a man go a hundred days without sleep?”
I pretend to study the board, this time. My foggy mind trying to discern what these questions could possibly signify. I answer as I push the next stone. “No?”
Click. “Today I feel the colour of a blue sky. What does that mean to you?”
I turn a disbelieving chuckle—the man’s grim delivery is starkly at odds to his statement—into an awkward cough. “I suppose that you’re happy?” I can’t help but pose my answers as questions in and of themselves.
Pause. Write. “Malum. Terreo. Carina. Lapis. Vinculum. Luteus.” His gaze flicks up. Watching me more intently than before.
“Is that … Vetusian? Something about a stone, and … something orange?”
He grunts. Writes more. “Make your move.”
“What are these questions for?” I let irritation into my tone, in part to cover my increasing anxiety. This seems frivolous, meaningless—but it’s surely not. Not knowing its purpose means I don’t know how to answer. Don’t know what I’m revealing. The blood test, I expected. This is something else.
“Make your move,” Quaestor repeats. No change in intonation. Calm and dry.
I scowl, and do. He ignores my irritation in favour of the board. Click.
Then he moves a gnarled hand to a face-down frame next to him. Flips it over and pushes it in front of me. “Tell me what you think of this.”
It’s a painting. A city of some kind, the structures black and mirror-polished. There are people walking the streets, but to a man they appear downcast. All of them have their faces covered. Everything is tinted a garish green.
The artistry is incredible; combined with the surreal landscape, it instantly calls to mind the sketches I was shown after the naumachia last year. This feels like the same, immensely skilled hand at work. And their proximities to the blood test cannot be ignored.
“It’s very strange,” I say noncommittally. Make my next move. More slowly, this time. The game is entering its next phase. Clashes and counter-clashes, attack and reaction. I am diminished, but I’m still going to do my best.
He jots it down. Click. “Why do people enjoy competition?” That same creaking voice. That same rhythmic, almost mechanical tone.
And so it goes, and on, and on. Some questions are riddles I’ve heard before.
What can be held without touching it? Move.
Click. What is so fragile that its name will break it?
Move. Click. Some are deeply personal. Describe your earliest memory.
Move. Click. Tell me the most influential event of your life, and then describe how you feel it is affecting you right now.
Move. Click. The latter type of questions, I often have to lie. I have no idea whether he notices.
Those are interspersed with more pictures. More ancient Vetusian. More questions that could at best be described as abstract. And throughout, that dry, unsettling scratching as he records my answers. That same, slow, deliberate picking up and placing of his stones.
The interview continues interminably, the passing of time impossible to gauge down here.
I hold my nerve. Barely. Twice more I try to ask what these questions are for, what their purpose could possibly be, but I’m met with the same lack of response.
Quaestor simply moves on, the old man ignoring my confusion with infuriating, indifferent calm.
I begin to lose the game of Foundation. I am not making categorical mistakes, but the fog across my mind—not to mention the added pressure of the questions—makes it difficult to see more than a couple of moves ahead.
And Quaestor isn’t a particularly dynamic or creative player, but he is very clearly skilled.
I fall one piece behind. Then three. He plays conservatively but inexorably.
And then I am defeated, his final stone’s click as dry and precise as all the ones before. He observes the end state of the board. Scratches something more in his book.
“A final question, Vis Telimus.” He taps the board, just once. “If you had not made any mistakes, would you have beaten me?”
I shake my head slowly.
“I may have beaten you,” I tell him quietly. My father’s words echoing on my lips. “Foundation is like life. You can make no mistakes at all, and still lose.”
He studies me. Filmy grey eyes curious. “Hm.” Head down, one last note. “You may go.” He finishes, then begins packing up the board with considered, rickety care.
I stand uncertainly. Shuffle across to the door, knock, and the lock’s click quickly echoes. One of the two burly Sextii waiting outside gestures for me to leave.
I hesitate, wanting to demand answers even as some part of me knows I should obey, grateful I have apparently not stirred suspicion. Quaestor just writes, head bowed, pen scratching. He doesn’t seem to feel my glare.
I stalk past the waiting Sextii, and back out into the underground hallway.
“TERTIUS.” AN INEVITABLE EDGE TO MY VOICE AS I JOIN Tertius Ericius and his daughter in the main courtyard. The grey of the overcast morning glares down, heat reflecting off the stones underfoot despite the clouds. The interview can’t have taken more than an hour. It feels like days have passed.
The Hierarchy’s Censor dismisses the Sextii trailing me with a flick of his wrist. “Hail, Catenicus.” His gaze slides briefly from me to the compound’s entrance. Still barred. Still guarded. “I take it you’ve completed your session with Quaestor.”