Chapter XLIII
XLIII
MY TORCH CRACKLES AND FLICKERS, CASTING A SHIFTing red across the clearing.
A stiff sea breeze sweeps chill air up through the trees, rustling leaves and rubbing creaking branches together.
Aequa, Eidhin, and I stand in roughly the centre of the open space, my two friends peering uneasily into the shadows ahead.
“We’re close?” asks Aequa.
“He should be able to hear me.” I focus on my sense of the alupi. Not more than a few hundred feet away, I think. “Diago!”
The other two flinch at my call. “Him and half the Academy,” Eidhin mutters.
“We’re far enough away.”
Eidhin, I suspect, wishes we weren’t. Tense as he peers around. “And we are not imbuing ourselves?”
“We are not.”
“Why, again?”
“Diago doesn’t like it.” I check my sense of the alupi, but he doesn’t seem to be moving.
“Hm.” Eidhin looks at Aequa.
“Hm,” agrees Aequa sympathetically, watching the forest as cautiously as he is. Not quite as dubious as my redheaded Cymrian friend, but not far from it. She glances at me. “You’re sure about this?”
“He saved my life. Multiple times.” I make the assurance absently; this is a conversation we’ve already had.
Veridius conceded earlier that alupi were smart and loyal enough that, perhaps, my history with Diago could have accounted for his fending off the iunctii after the Labyrinth.
But given everything since then … “And I can sense him. I don’t know why I have this connection to him, but if it’s something to do with what happened in the Labyrinth … ”
“I know. You want to chase every lead you can, no matter what the Principalis says. You can’t stop a Cataclysm if you’re dead, though,” she reminds me.
“We jumped the wall so I wouldn’t have to have this conversation,” I note, a little tetchily. Veridius hasn’t bothered putting the tracker bracelets on us again, but I know he’d deem what I’m doing too dangerous.
Silence as we wait. A lot of that, since I got back from the dormitory. We spoke briefly during dinner, but for the most part, we’ve all been largely lost in thought. Trying to come to grips with everything we’ve learned today.
“We could tell everyone, you know,” Aequa says suddenly. “Make what Veridius told us public. Leave all of this to the Republic. It doesn’t have to be you.”
“We could.”
“The Senate would listen to you. As absurd as that is,” adds Eidhin.
I give him a crooked smile. “They might.”
Neither of them are actually suggesting it, though.
Not really. It’s just something that had to be spoken aloud, the obvious idea we all need to make sure we’ve agreed to discard.
In a perfect world, revealing the impending danger pulls the Senate together.
They put all their time and resources into figuring out what’s coming and how to stop it, without bias or hesitation.
Without even a thought as to who might benefit most, during or after the crisis.
There is a reason Veridius hasn’t told them.
Aequa sighs. “So we’re going to do exactly what the Principalis has been doing,” she concludes quietly. “Keep the end of the world a secret?”
Still no motion from Diago; I take a moment to encourage him toward us again, my shout vanishing into the swaying trees, then exhale heavily.
Nod. “I suppose so.” Still hard to wrap my mind around the concept.
The end of the world. Even now, the thought fills me with a disconnected sense of unease more than the genuine panic I know it should.
As if something so vast and terrifying can’t be real, is so impossible to imagine that it cannot be properly feared. “Gods.”
Grim silence, and then Aequa rubs her face. “You know, it’s not the Cataclysm, so much,” she observes. “It’s more that you might be our only hope of stopping it.”
I gesture rudely as Eidhin shakes his head. “That is barely a concern—”
“Thank you, Eidhin.”
“Barely a concern next to the fact there are apparently three of him now.”
“Gods. I’d almost forgotten that part,” says Aequa.
“Proof that evil powers are at play,” adds Eidhin gloomily. I glare at him. He holds my stare for a long, long second. Expression unchanging. “Three of you. By all the dead and rotting gods.”
Aequa finally breaks and laughs as I snort, unable to contain a small grin of my own.
Some sense of relief washing through me at the gentle mocking.
No different to yesterday. They’re not looking at me strangely, not being careful or cautious about how they’re treating me.
I’m glad. I don’t know if I could have taken that, on top of everything else.
I make another gesture in Eidhin’s direction and then turn back to the forest. There’s movement from Diago now. Pace languid, though he’s clearly heading toward us. “He’s coming.”
I feel the anxiety of the others beside me and I can’t help but shift apprehensively myself, casually placing myself between them and him. I truly don’t believe he’ll attack me, but that confidence doesn’t extend to anyone else, just yet.
A few more seconds and the massive alupi stalks from the shadows into the orange of my torchlight. His dark eyes assess the three of us, and I can see Eidhin’s muscles bunching. Can hear Aequa’s breathing suddenly stop. All of us frozen, tensed in anticipation.
Diago huffs, then turns in an unhurried circle and lies down on the grass.
Aequa and Eidhin exchange relieved looks, and I feel the tautness leaving my own limbs. “See?” I take a step forward. Hold out my hand with one of the scraps of meat I took from the kitchen. Wave it enticingly. “Come here, Diago …”
Diago watches the meat disinterestedly, and doesn’t move.
“Fine.” I take a few steps closer. He observes me, but aside from a slight swishing of his tail, seems unperturbed. I get a few feet from him and gently toss the meat in front of his nose. He sniffs it, then gives me a look that could only be described as disdainful.
I crouch beside the massive wolf and gradually stretch my hand out, ready to draw it back at any sign of aggression. After a moment he presses forward so that his head is beneath my palm.
I beam. Exhale, sit, and scratch behind his ears. He grunts contentedly.
“So he didn’t eat you straight away,” calls Aequa. “Now what?”
“Now what?” I repeat to Diago affectionately. I study the alupi. He’s so big. “Do you two want a pat?” I call over my shoulder.
“No,” they reply in near unison.
I give Diago another absent scratch. Thinking. “They’ll change their minds,” I murmur to him, getting to my feet.
We spend the next half hour experimenting.
Becoming comfortable around the alupi, and letting him become comfortable around us—though the latter barely seems necessary.
Aside from a couple of initial wary rumbles at Eidhin and Aequa as they first approached, Diago has taken to their attentions just as happily as mine.
More, in some cases. The fourth or fifth time I call him, only for him to pad straight over to Aequa and butt his massive head into her side until she relents and scratches under his chin, I give up.
Glower down at the animal as he flops to the ground and rolls, begging her to rub his stomach.
“You are an ass,” I tell the wolf irritably. He wriggles violently with his back on the grass, then pauses and stares back at me implacably as Eidhin guffaws. Everyone infinitely more relaxed than when we started.
“Now,” I say, stepping back and considering as Diago resumes his happy squirming. “We need to make sure he can be alright around imbuing, otherwise Caten will be out of the question.”
There’s a long silence. The other two have stopped what they’re doing.
“Caten?” repeats Aequa faintly, straightening.
I nod with feigned confidence. I hadn’t really decided, before just now.
“He can stay mainly in Domus Telimus. There are precautions I’ll take to restrain him, but I want to understand this connection I have to him, and it’s not as if I can stay around here to do it.
” I shrug at their looks. “Only if he seems willing to come. And if he’s unhappy, I’ll bring him back.
But you all keep saying I need protection, so … ”
“This was not what we meant,” rumbles Eidhin.
“Plenty of other families keep dogs for security.”
“Dogs he will eat,” observes Eidhin.
“Families he will eat,” adds Aequa.
Diago huffs again, rolling onto his side and stretching lazily before looking up at us.
Sharp intelligence in those grey eyes of his.
He’s more human than animal in a lot of his responses.
Clearly understands what’s being asked of him, but when he obeys it’s also clearly accession rather than compulsion.
Food, such as the meat I brought, doesn’t seem to motivate him at all.
“I’ll find a way to make it safe. But it’s irrelevant if he can’t be around people using Will,” I point out impatiently. “So perhaps we should back away, to start with?”
Diago watches with indolent curiosity as we retreat a small way across the torchlit clearing. I stand in front of the other two and carefully, slightly, self-imbue.
The alupi is on his feet, faster than I could have imagined. Teeth bared. Eyes flashing. A low, threatening rumble drifts across the grass to us.
“Gods’ graves,” murmurs Aequa shakily.
I hold steady. Self-imbue a little more, and a little more, until I’m using all my Will. The amount doesn’t seem to make any difference.
“Easy, Diago.” I croon it gently. The name a little more comfortable on my tongue now, even if I still wish I hadn’t accidentally revealed it. It won’t mean anything to anyone, surely isn’t dangerous so many years removed from Suus. “Easy.”
I stretch out my hand to show I mean no harm, and move slowly forward.