Chapter LXXII
LXXII
I WAS EIGHT WHEN THE SHIP MY UNCLE WAS ON WAS LOST to a storm, killing all aboard. I remember my father’s immense sorrow well, but my own was a strange thing. There, certainly—but more confused, almost uncomprehending, and so something I instinctively tried to push aside until it went away.
Then, weeks after, I found a toy my uncle had given me.
A stone horse figurine that I had grown out of so quickly that it had sat on a shelf behind books, forgotten, until that day.
And when I happened upon it, when I remembered his happiness in the giving of the gift, I wept anew.
Wept more freely than I had at his funeral.
Unprepared for the sudden realisation of aching, complete absence.
My father found me like that, and we talked a while.
About life, and death, and the way we deal with them.
When I told him I didn’t want to feel sad anymore, he gave me a smile that wished it could take my pain.
Grief, he explained to me gently, is a process that has only a beginning.
We work through it, not get over it. And so attempting to just ignore its ache is inevitably a pointless exercise.
Tonight, though, I don’t have an option.
I feel no fear as I make my way carefully downward into the depths of South Caten Prison.
No anxiety. I am focused on the task at hand, but the fiercely suppressed grief and anger is there, thick, muting everything else.
I consider my actions in a hollow, detached way, as though none of these events are real.
I suppose that is what my mind is doing.
Pretending this is all some nightmare, until such time comes that I can afford to accept otherwise.
Like many things, Caten builds their prisons using a uniform layout, and it’s an uncomfortably familiar journey descending the stairs. I’m about halfway down when the smell first hits. I hold my sleeve over my nose and mouth immediately. It shouldn’t be this bad. Not this far up.
I press on. Reach the bottom of the first stairwell, the air thick and rancid, clogging my lungs. Lanistia’s meant to be on this level, past the Sappers meant for shorter-term punishments. I should find her first.
My light touches the first open chamber, and I freeze, bile filling my throat.
“Gods. Rotting gods.” Sticky brown blood coats the white stone.
Has dribbled down into the gutter and clogged it.
The naked man currently on the Sapper is alive and seemingly uninjured, skin wan and breath rasping.
A replacement for whoever was killed here, then.
Done in a rush. No care for cleanliness, no thought of preventing the onset of any sickness.
Probably some Octavus or Septimus unfortunate enough to have originally belonged to a Military pyramid. I doubt he even did anything wrong.
I stumble on, shakiness as much from horror as my legs, my gait requiring less focus now I’m on level ground again. One in every three or four Sappers shows signs of bloody execution. All the prisoners on them are dirty, emaciated. Not just uncared for but dangerously close to abandoned down here.
I limp through the stench and misery, and try to coldly assess.
In my experience, most Sappers are devoted to Military pyramids, so if the killings were to do with the current conflict—a reasonable assumption—then they were targeting Governance and Religion.
Military were in charge of the prisons, prior to the festival.
When they withdrew, they must have done exactly what Governance and Religion are planning to do tonight.
And it was Military who staffed these places, too. Had the expertise to properly run them. Organised the supplies of food and water. Knew what was needed to keep prisoners healthy and clean.
I press on, between the smeared memory of the dead and the rasping misery of the rest, and it’s with no small amount of relief that I finally pass the last wheezing horror and into the hallway of true prisoner cells.
By the time I reach the one Lanistia was listed as being in, I’ve endured desperate calls for help or information, studiously ignored, from a multitude of them. Hers, though, is silent.
“Lanistia?” I say her name low through the thick iron bars into the darkness. Nothing, and I shift uneasily, pressing closer and calling louder. “Lanistia? It’s me. Vis.”
A rattling of chains in the black. A shifting of shadows.
“About gods-damned time.”
My concern breaks to a relieved sigh as Lanistia’s form shuffles into the dim light afforded by the narrow slits of her cell. She’s haggard and thin, her voice croaking. Movements evidently painful. A ghost of the health she was in only a couple of months ago.
But the expression on her face is grim, not broken. Physically weakened, but she’s still the same woman.
“If I get those chains off you, can you walk?” I use the jailor’s key to unlock her door. Swing it wide. The motion one of bravado to myself; she’s no threat in her current state, but I have to believe she won’t be one regardless.
“Walk? Yes.” She shuffles another step toward me.
Tentative. Left arm outstretched to brace herself.
“Though you may recall, getting the direction right might be trickier. What in the rotting gods’ names has been going on?
They were meant to put me in a Sapper two weeks ago, and that night there was a lot of yelling in the distance and then nothing else.
I’ve had three, maybe four bad meals since then, and the last few days I’ve had to ration my washing water for drinking. ”
I wince, even if being an Octavus and locked away like this is probably what’s saved her; with everything else going on, easier to not bother with her than to relocate her to a Sapper. And I’d already taken into account that she wouldn’t have access to Will.
Though, I’d also assumed Aequa would be with me for this part.
I ruthlessly force down the surge of emotion, and focus on Lanistia.
“I’ll explain on the way out, but I’m going to need your help.
Give me your hand.” I need her to be able to see, and probably to carry Ulciscor.
In a better world, I would have found something imbued down here and Adopted it to bolster my own supply, just temporarily.
But I’ve seen nothing and even if I had, I’m not sure I have the acuity to manage the extra mental load, right now.
She goes still. “Are you sure?”
“Of gods-damned course not. And just so you know, I’m a little injured myself.
So I may have to take it back sooner rather than later.
” I managed the Harmonic imbuing well enough as a Sextus, and even with half of my Will as Quintus, I’ll still be well ahead.
I grasp her outstretched wrist before I can change my mind.
Carefully reduce my self-imbuing, gritting my teeth against the extra strain, until I’m confident I’m not using more than half of my capacity. “I freely give my Will.”
She gasps as the energy pours out of me and into her; even braced for it as I am, I can’t help but reel from the shock of it. My legs immediately scream, and I stagger.
Lanistia catches me. Pulls me upright. When I take her in again, she seems taller. Still thin, far from hale, but it’s as if the abuses of the past few months are surface deep rather than worn into her bones.
“Good to see you again,” I mutter through a grimace.
“You too.” She casually snaps the chains holding her wrists together. “That’s better.”
“Good. Let’s move.”
Her focus turns to me. Hearing the short words escaping through gritted teeth.
“We’re in danger, I take it? You sound tense.
Even for you.” She smiles wearily and briefly, and then cocks her head to the side.
Releases a sudden hiss of breath. “Rotting gods. A little rotting gods-damned injured, Vis? What’s going on? ”
A lump in my throat. I force it down. “It’s ugly out there, Lanistia.
Civil war. Military’s Princeps, Dimidii, and Tertii are all dead; Religion and Governance are in control of Caten, for now, and they’ve endorsed Quartus Laurentius as the new Princeps.
But there are three pretenders with more legions than him, and they’ve all burned tradition and restructured their pyramids to actually make themselves Princeps, too.
” I’d forgotten that her unique vision would be able to see the metal supporting me.
See the swollen wreckage of my legs, otherwise hidden beneath the folds of my toga.
But I can’t bring myself to tell her the details.
“Redivius is going to attack tonight. Anyone in the Sappers still ceding to Military is going to be killed when that happens.”
Lanistia absorbs the information as quickly as ever. Expression flickering from understanding to disgust to determined gratitude as she realises why I’ve come, despite my condition. “I suppose we should go, then.”
“Ulciscor’s here too. Deep cells. I’ll need you to help him out.”
Dismay, briefly, then a breath and a nod. “Lead the way.”
We head back, through the rancid stench, lantern pushing against the miserable darkness.
There are shouts again as my light passes cells that remain locked tight, and though we ignore them, I resolve again to ensure the people down here are looked after properly.
The part of me that worked in Letens Prison for so long, especially, mourns what they’re being put through.
But at least they will survive beyond tonight.
The people in the Sappers are a different story.
Lanistia, I think, senses my hesitation as we start past the first of them. “You can’t save them all,” she says softly.
“They shouldn’t need saving.”
She nods soberly. Hears my hatred of the fact we have to leave them, and shares it. “So this was what all the shouting was about.”
My stomach turns again as we pass yet another blood-soaked Sapper. “I don’t know who’s worse. The men who did it, or the ones who gave the orders.”