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He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
—“The Eagle,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ulciscor knows something is wrong from the moment Diogenes opens the huge double doors, takes one look at Ulciscor, and hugs him.
Diogenes has served his parents since before Ulciscor was born. He has watched both Ulciscor and Caeror grow from infancy, tutored them as young boys, waved goodbye as each of them set off for the Academy. But as much affection as he knows Diogenes has for him, the old man would never broach the traditional boundaries between servant and master like this.
Not unless something had happened.
“Where are my parents?” All of Ulciscor’s irritation at being summoned from the city in the middle of the week vanishes.
“They’re well.” Diogenes says it quickly, releasing Ulciscor suddenly. Perhaps remembering himself.
“Are they here?” Ulciscor pushes past Diogenes into the atrium.
“Yes, but you have a visitor first.” Ulciscor turns to Diogenes, opens his mouth to speak, but the Dispensator raises both palms in defense. “Their request. Not mine.”
“I have a visitor,” Ulciscor repeats slowly. “And I have to talk to this visitor before I can see my parents.”
“Yes. You’ll understand when—” He breaks off. His eyes well up with tears, and Ulciscor’s heart drops into his stomach.
“Diogenes,” he says. Takes a step forward. “What happened?”
But Diogenes turns his face away. He covers his mouth with one hand and waves the other toward the entrance to the peristylum. Ulciscor turns on his heel and strides over to the marble arch, his heart beating faster with every step. If his parents are alive and healthy, what could have happened to bring the stoic old Dispensator to tears?
Ulciscor barely notices the lush green trees and neat rows of blooming flowers as he enters the courtyard gardens, scanning the peristylum for his visitor.
There. A young man, about Caeror’s age, with dirty-blond hair sits on a polished white bench among the flowers. His elbows are propped on his thighs, torso hunched forward, palms digging into his scrunched-up eyes. The stranger doesn’t seem to notice his visitor’s approach, not even when Ulciscor is nearly close enough to reach out and touch his shoulder.
Ulciscor clears his throat.
The young man starts. He dashes a hand over his eyes, rises quickly, and offers Ulciscor a small smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Hail, Ulciscor,” he says. And for the second time that day, someone steps unexpectedly forward and wraps Ulciscor in a tight embrace. Ulciscor stiffens instinctively, but worry drowns out any other feeling. He coughs, as delicately as he can, and the stranger pulls away.
“And you are…?” Ulciscor asks.
“Sorry,” the young man says. “It’s just…I’ve heard so much about you that I feel like I already know you.”
Pieces click into place. A young man about Caeror’s age. The Iudicium finished sometime in the last week. Results expected any day now.
All the blood in Ulciscor’s body freezes.
“I’m Veridius.” There’s genuine warmth in his voice, but it’s filtered through some strong emotion—something Veridius is clearly working very hard to restrain. “I don’t know if Caeror mentioned me.”
Even through his fear, Ulciscor wants to retort no, actually, Caeror didn’t mention you. Even though it would be a lie. The sting remains from the Festival of Ancestors, when Caeror came home from the Academy bubbling over with excitement over his new friends. Especially Veridius. He couldn’t stop talking about him. Like a brother, Caeror said.
“Where’s Caeror?” Ulciscor asks. “Did something happen?”
“Please,” Veridius says softly. He gestures down at the bench. “Would you sit down?”
Ulciscor’s breath catches in his throat. He takes a step backward. “Where’s Caeror?” he repeats.
“This will be easier for both of us if you sit down.”
“No,” Ulciscor says. “No. Where’s my brother?”
The Iudicium is over. Veridius had enough time to travel all the way back from Solivagus. Veridius is here. Why isn’t Caeror?
“There was an accident,” Veridius says. “Caeror thought—he thought he’d killed another student—he was grief-stricken, terrified of ending up in a sapper—”
“No.”
“We were right by the cliffs—I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t—”
“You couldn’t what?”
“He jumped,” Veridius says. “He fell at least a hundred feet.”
***
“ULCISCOR!”
The shriek starts down the hallway and gets louder and louder. Ulciscor groans and drags the blankets back over his head, but even the thick comforter can’t drown out the pounding on the door.
“Go away.” Either Ulciscor mumbles it too quietly for anyone to hear, or Caeror ignores it, because the door flings open and hits the wall with a bang. A moment later, the small pudgy hands of his seven-year-old brother are yanking the blankets back from his head.
“Why are you still in bed?” Caeror demands. “It’s almost noon!”
“Leave me alone.” Ulciscor rolls over to face the wall.
“Look!” All at once, something stuffed and fuzzy is being shoved into Ulciscor’s face. He’s smothered. All he can see is yellow and orange. “Look what Mother got me! She saw it in the market this morning and brought it home!”
Ulciscor is only ten, but he’s stronger than his little brother. He throws a blind punch, hears a sharp ow!, and the thump of someone crashing to the floor. Ulciscor blinks, and he can see again. Caeror looks up at his brother with a huge grin from where he lies in a heap of limbs next to the bed.
“Look!” Caeror repeats, and brandishes a little stuffed lion.
“Nice,” Ulciscor says without any enthusiasm.
“I named him Caeror!”
“You named him after yourself?”
“No, no, no. Not Caeror. See-Roar. You know, roar? Like a lion?”
“Oh.”
Caeror jumps up and vaults over an armchair in the corner. He dangles backward off the seat, head hanging upside down as he holds out the stuffed animal and gazes at it lovingly. When he gets bored, he slides off the chair, tries to climb the bookshelf for no apparent reason, then slips and tumbles back down to the floor.
“Boys!” their mother calls sharply from downstairs. “Don’t make me come up there!”
“Stop it,” Ulciscor hisses. “You’ll get me in trouble.”
Caeror dances around the room, laughing, hugging the lion to his chest. After a while, he stops and turns to Ulciscor, who has made no effort to get out of bed. For a moment, Caeror studies his brother’s face. Suddenly, Caeror’s whole expression changes. “Are you okay?”
Ulciscor shrugs. Rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling.
“Is it bad again?” Caeror asks softly.
After a moment of hesitation, Ulciscor nods. Caeror sets the lion carefully down on the chair. Then he pads over to Ulciscor’s bed and crawls up next to his brother. Wraps his arms around Ulciscor.
“That’s okay,” he says. “We can work on the code.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Would it make you feel worse?”
Ulciscor considers this for a moment. “No,” he admits.
Caeror reaches across the bed and grabs a notebook and pen from Ulciscor’s desk. Nestles himself comfortably against his big brother and opens to the next blank page.
“Okay,” Caeror says. “What did we decide last time? Every third word? Fourth?”
Ulciscor shifts so that he has a better view of the notebook. “I don’t know. It still feels too easy.”
“Easy?”
“If someone noticed one or two odd words,” Ulciscor says, “something that feels out of place, it wouldn’t be a big jump from there. They’d just have to count.”
“But they’d have to be looking for a code.”
“Yeah,” Ulciscor mutters. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Caeror takes one look at Ulciscor’s face and shakes his head vehemently. “No, no, no. You’re right. It’s too easy to crack. What about…” He screws up his face in concentration. Thinks for a while. Then: “What about every third or fourth word after a specific word? One we agree on ahead of time?”
“That could work,” Ulciscor says slowly. “As long as the word isn’t too unusual, because that would give us the same problem as before.”
“Or too common,” Caeror agrees. “It has to be a word that would be natural for us to use pretty often, but not for most people.”
They slip into silence, both thinking hard.
“Telimus?”
“Military?”
“Estate?”
“Brother?” Ulciscor finally suggests.
Caeror’s eyes light up. “Yes! Perfect!”
Ulciscor watches Caeror scribble out the rules in his childish handwriting. Caeror is Diogenes’s favorite, which doesn’t bother Ulciscor—Caeror is everyone’s favorite, including Ulciscor’s. Add that to the fact that Caeror excels at almost everything he tries, and the result is that Caeror doesn’t get reprimanded for much. His handwriting is the one exception.
“Do you feel any better now?” Caeror asks, still scratching out the code in the notebook.
Ulciscor never knows how to answer that question. The darkness always comes quietly, suddenly, unpredictably. One day, the sky is blue and life stretches out ahead like an easy road. The next, all the color is sucked out of the world and nothing matters anymore.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Did something happen?” Caeror asks. “Something that made you sad?”
But it isn’t sadness, though sometimes it feels like sadness. It is numbness. It is the fact that he sees no reason to get out of bed. No reason to do anything at all.
“No,” Ulciscor says. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Did I do anything?”
Automatically, Ulciscor pulls his little brother a little closer. “No,” he says again. “No, no. Of course not.”
***
“I just don’t see why you have to go alone.”
“I’ll be at the Academy in three weeks.” Ulciscor folds another tunic and tucks it into the bag that sits on his bed. “Everything’s going to change after that. I’ll get placed in a pyramid, move out, probably have to start worrying about finding a wife, carrying on the family legacy…”
“That doesn’t explain—”
“Look, Caeror.” Ulciscor spins to face his brother. Leans back against the bed. At fourteen years old, Caeror is already starting to look more man than boy—at least in his build, in his lean and earnest face. But his expressions, his mannerisms, are still child-like. In Ulciscor’s mind, he is still the little boy who sleeps every night with a stuffed lion. Maybe he always will be.
“I just need to think,” Ulciscor says. “By myself. And the sea is a good place to clear my head.”
Caeror doesn’t have to say that he doesn’t understand—it’s written on his face. Caeror always thinks out loud. He can’t think any other way. Ulciscor, on the other hand, never knows what he thinks until he’s sorted it out inside his own head first.
“Are you sure you’re feeling fine?” Caeror asks. “You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“Not like this. Not to me.”
“I have a lot on my mind.” No sooner has Ulciscor snapped the words than he regrets it. He crosses over to Caeror and grasps his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Everything is all right.”
“You’ll already be gone at the Academy for so long.” Caeror’s looking down at his feet, carefully avoiding Ulciscor’s gaze. “You only have a couple more weeks at home. I don’t want you to spend them away.”
“I’ll be back in a week,” Ulciscor promises. “There’ll be a few more days after that before I have to head out to the Academy. That’s plenty of time.”
He lets go of Caeror’s shoulder and shifts his attention back to packing. His cheeks burn, and he fears that his face has turned bright red.
He isn’t used to lying. At least not to Caeror.
***
A gust of wind blows over the cliff, and Ulciscor shivers. He isn’t wearing a cloak. He isn’t wearing much of anything except a plain tunic and sandals. His feet are damp, freezing in the long grass. He takes a shaky step forward and looks down.
A hundred feet below, the sea crawls over the rocks.
Ulciscor closes his eyes. Draws a breath. Another. He feels as though he is watching himself from somewhere far away. The chest that aches is not his chest. The pounding heart is not his heart. The decision is no longer a decision. It’s not his to make—or at least, it’s already been made.
Caeror will hate you, he thinks. It’s almost enough to stop him. Almost enough to keep him from inching a little farther forward.
But he can’t do this anymore.
He can’t.
He takes one last deep breath. Sucks so much salty air into his lungs that they hurt, feels the wind whip his hair around his face, and—
“Rotting gods, Ulciscor—”
Someone barrels into him from the side. Ulciscor isn’t expecting it, and he goes flying. Hits the ground with a thud. All the air whooshes out of his lungs.
“Caeror,” he tries to gasp, but the air won’t come.
“You idiot—you asshole—you—you—”
Caeror climbs on top of him, straddles him with his knees. Ulciscor turns to look at his brother and is immediately met with a fist to his jaw. He cries out in pain.
“Does that hurt?” Caeror yells. “Good!”
“Caeror, please—”
But Caeror pummels him with his fists. Lands blows on every part of Ulciscor that he can reach. Frantically, Ulciscor lifts his arms to shield his face.
“You lied—you lied—”
“I’m sorry…” Ulciscor’s still struggling to catch his breath. “I’m…sorry…I…”
“I hate you,” Caeror screams. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”
Ulciscor realizes his little brother is sobbing. Then, only a moment later, he realizes that tears are streaming down his own cheeks. Awkwardly, Ulciscor fights to sit up. To catch Caeror’s flying fists.
“Stop,” Ulciscor begs. “Please, stop—”
All at once, Caeror falls forward like a puppet whose strings have been cut. He melts into his brother’s arms. Ulciscor hugs him tightly, fiercely, as if he never plans to let go.
“I don’t understand,” Caeror sobs. “I don’t…understand…”
For a long time, Ulciscor is silent. He waits until his brother has wept himself dry. Only then does he sit up the rest of the way, gingerly extracting himself from Caeror’s arms. Caeror looks at him with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks.
“You promised me,” he says. Accusatory.
“I know.”
“You lied.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Caeror—”
“Why?”
Ulciscor sighs. Glances over at the cliff. Shivers. Caeror sees it, and scoots closer, and the heat that radiates off his body helps to ward off the cold of the wild wind.
“You know how I get.” Ulciscor knows this isn’t good enough. He knows he needs a better explanation. But he doesn’t have the faintest idea how to start, and he hopes blindly that Caeror might accept it, even though Ulciscor knows better.
“But you’ve never…tried before.” Caeror’s voice trembles, and a fresh wave of guilt washes over Ulciscor. “Why now? What happened?”
Ulciscor rubs his eyes with his palms. Now that the initial adrenaline has passed—the terror of impending death, the overwhelming rush of being unexpectedly saved—he finds that his primary emotion is shame. He shouldn’t feel this way. He is a Telimus. Wealthy, adept, with a good family and a good reputation. Three quarters of the Catenan Republic would kill to have what Ulciscor has.
What the hell made him so weak?
“I don’t want to go to the Academy,” Ulciscor confesses.
“What?” Caeror’s forehead crinkles in confusion. “Why?”
Ulciscor buries his head in his hands. “Listen,” he says, the words muffled through his fingers. “When it’s bad, it’s really bad. It makes it hard to move, hard to breathe. It takes the life…the joy…out of everything.”
“I know,” Caeror says softly. “You’ve told me.”
“But I’m supposed to go to the Academy.” Ulciscor is speaking more quickly now, the words tumbling out. “You know I’m terrible at making friends. What if it gets bad while I’m there, and I’m alone, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it?”
“Write to me,” Caeror says. “Write in the code. That way Mother and Father don’t have to know.”
“But after that,” Ulciscor says, “I’ll have to go through placement and join a pyramid. I’ll have to move away. Then you’ll go to the Academy, and you’ll make your own life, and I don’t…I don’t know what I’ll do without you.” These last words come out in a rush, tripping over one another.
For a few seconds, there is no sound but the wind and the waves crashing against the rocks below.
“Ulciscor,” Caeror says. “You’ll always have me.”
“That’s easy for you to say now. But when we grow up, when we’ve both graduated from the Academy, then—”
“Then nothing,” Caeror says firmly. “You’re never getting rid of me.”
“How?”
“Rotting gods, Ulciscor, who knows?” Caeror shrugs. “We get to decide, don’t we? We can live in the same neighborhood if we want. Even the same estate. Work in the same pyramid. There’s no rule that says we have to grow up and live separate lives.”
It’s nothing more than childish assurance, Ulciscor knows. Of course they have to grow up and live separate lives. If they’re going to fulfill their duty to the Telimus family, to the Republic, they will need to get married. Start their own families. Besides, most people don’t get to choose where they end up serving Caten.
“That’s not…” Ulciscor closes his eyes. “It’s fine if we don’t end up in the same pyramid. We don’t—I mean—” He pauses for a few seconds. This is his first time thinking any of these thoughts, which makes them almost impossible to express out loud. “I don’t want you to be burdened by me. I don’t want you to feel like you’re taking care of me. Like you can’t live your own life.”
Caeror stares at him. Bewildered. “Ulciscor,” he says, “you’re the one who takes care of me.”
Ulciscor blinks. “I…do?”
“Remember when I saw that Pliny girl in the city and fell head over heels in love? And I wanted to sneak out that night and bring flowers to her window, but you made me stop and at least get her name first? And it turned out that she was six years older than me and already betrothed?” He laughs. “I’ve never been good at thinking before I jump. You keep me from jumping off things I shouldn’t.”
“But what if I never get better?” Ulciscor protests. “What if I get like this every few months for the rest of my life?”
“So? We’ll keep looking after each other. That’s what brothers do.”
For the first time in months, a flicker of hope lights inside Ulciscor’s chest. “You believe that?”
“Of course I do. But listen.” Caeror’s expression is fierce. Determined. “You’re not allowed to die. Do you hear me? You’re not allowed.”
“Okay.”
“You have to promise me.”
“I promise.”
“You promise what?”
“I promise not to die.”
“And I promise I’ll be there for you,” Caeror says. “No matter what. I’m your best friend for life. Okay?”
“Okay.”
***
“No.” Ulciscor shakes his head. “He didn’t.”
“I understand,” Veridius murmurs, the words laced with terrible compassion. “I wouldn’t have believed it either. But I saw it.”
“No!” Ulciscor’s voice rises to a shout. “You’re wrong. He didn’t. He never would have jumped. Never.”
“Ulciscor—”
“Shut up!” Ulciscor stumbles backward, away from Veridius, away from his gentle manner and soothing voice. “Shut up, shut up!”
“Please,” Veridius says. Rotting gods, there are actual tears in his eyes. “I know you’re in more pain than I can possibly imagine, but please know that Caeror was like a brother to me, I loved him too—”
“You don’t know a godsdamned thing about him!” Ulciscor screams. “Not if you think he killed himself! I knew him, and he never would have—he promised me—”
And that’s when Ulciscor sees it. Veridius’s mask cracks. As if Ulciscor has caught him off guard. For just a moment, a spasm of fear crosses Veridius’s face.
Then the mask smooths back into place. The whole thing takes less than a second, but the damage is done. Ulciscor saw it. And though many people—Diogenes, his parents, acquaintances in the Senate—will try to tell him over the next few months that he was only imagining things in his grief, no one will ever convince Ulciscor that he did not see it.
“You’re lying,” Ulciscor says. “He didn’t jump. You’re lying.”
“Ulciscor, please—”
“Did you do it?” The thought occurs to him like a lightning strike. Ulciscor takes a step toward Veridius, who shrinks back. “Did you push him off the cliff? To get an advantage in the Iudicium?”
“Never,” Veridius says. Horrified. “I would never have hurt Caeror, not for anything.”
“Who’s Domitor?”
“What?”
“Who won the Iudicium? Who’s Domitor?”
There is a short pause. A breath.
“I am,” Veridius says.
Suddenly Veridius is on the ground, blood trickling out of his nose. Ulciscor looks down at his clenched fist. Veridius is weeping now, really weeping, but Ulciscor’s cheeks are bone dry.
“I swear I didn’t hurt him,” Veridius chokes out. “I wish it could have been me…more than anything…I wish I could have taken his place…”
Ulciscor lunges at Veridius again, but a pair of arms grab his elbows and haul him back. Diogenes is shouting, but the blood in Ulciscor’s ears is boiling and he can’t hear anything else. Not his parents when they join Diogenes in dragging Ulciscor back from Veridius. Not Veridius’s pleading as he sits up, palms raised in surrender.
“I’ll find out,” Ulciscor is screaming as his family hauls him out of the peristylum. “I’ll find out what you did to him. I’ll make you pay. You’ll burn for this.”
The next few hours suck Ulciscor in like a whirlpool, an endless spiral down and down and down. His parents only manage to calm him down because they are sobbing, distraught, and they need him. So he bottles up his rage and sets it aside so that he can comfort them.
Caeror. Their beloved boy. Their pride and joy. He has always been their favorite, the brightest of their two sons, the one with the most political promise, the one with the best chance of becoming Princeps of the Military Pyramid someday.
And Ulciscor holds them. Whispers soothing words without hearing them. Dries their tears while his eyes remain dry.
Long hours later, after the sun sets and the sky gets dark, Ulciscor finally convinces his parents to go to bed. He takes them up the stairs, supports his sobbing mother as she walks, makes sure they have everything they need.
Now Ulciscor is standing in the dark hallway outside his parents’ closed door. Slowly, dream-like, he makes his silent way to his own room. He crawls onto his bed without changing out of his clothes. He lies on his back, arms stretched out on either side, and stares blankly up at the ceiling.
Sleep does not come.
Over half the night has passed, and Ulciscor still lies awake on top of the blankets. He waits for oblivion. It does not find him.
He bolts upright. A sudden pang grips his heart. He claws at his chest, unable to breathe for a moment. He gasps. Swallows hard. Struggles to suck in a painful breath.
Ulciscor rises. Throws the blanket around him like a cloak. He steals down the hallway to his little brother’s room and creaks the door open. Without stopping, he strides across the rug and opens a trunk that lies beneath the window, silver in the moonlight.
He digs around in the trunk. Old books that Caeror lost interest in, clothes he outgrew. Ulciscor fishes deeper, shoving things aside. Finally, his hand closes on something soft and fuzzy.
One button eye is missing. Most of the mane has fallen out. A bit of stuffing peeks out of a loose seam. The battle wounds that come from being squeezed in a little boy’s arms every night for five years straight.
On Caeror’s twelfth birthday, he stuffed the toy in the bottom of a trunk and declared privately to Ulciscor that he was too old now to sleep with a stuffed animal. No one has seen it since.
Now, Ulciscor kneels next to the trunk and hugs the lion to his chest. He buries his face in the soft fur.
Then he gets shakily to his feet. Clutching the toy, he stumbles down the hallway and back to his room. He climbs into bed, wraps himself in the blanket, and curls around the stuffed animal. Suddenly, without warning, his eyes sting for the first time that day. He tries to blink the tears away. It’s no good. His breath hitches once. Then again.
Ulciscor Telimus is two weeks from his twenty-first birthday. He is already a member of a prestigious pyramid. Everyone says he will be a Magnus Quintus before long. He is not quite a man, and yet no longer a child. A few months from now, he will be almost unrecognizable. Harder, harsher, bolder. A man with a mission that he will confide in no one except the woman his brother loved—and then, one day, the boy who will remind him so much of Caeror that it hurts.
But tonight in the darkness of his bedroom, cradling a stuffed lion, Ulciscor Telimus sobs himself to sleep.