“So what do you propose?” Priya asked. “Letting Gaius die while one of us drags Empra back to the ship by force?”
“Maybe not that.” Far’s cousin made a face. “Farway and his father look so much alike that Aunt Empra called him Gaius in the Library of Alexandria. Perhaps there’s a way to fool her back onto the Ab Aeterno.”
The footage of his father was gone, but Far kept seeing him: curls splayed against the stones, ready to fight until the end. The image reframed his entire childhood. Seven years with his mother and her mourning, she didn’t want to leave Gaius, she’d always regretted it….
The Code of Conduct lay open before him, title down. Far could see where ink from Gram’s illustration had bled through—arrows and cracks, a picture in pieces. The stick man didn’t appear on this side of the page.
He knew what he had to do.
“I’ll take my father’s place. If I claim Gaius’s spot in the arena, the lanista won’t think my father escaped when one of you takes him to meet my mom. Empra can say good-bye to Gaius, and she’ll leave in time to create a pivot point.”
“You? A gladiator? Are you out of your hashing mind?” Imogen’s shout supernovaed through the common area. “Farway, these guys live and breathe slaughter. A few fencing lessons at the Academy won’t mean squat when you step into that ring.”
Yeah, he’d figured. Far had never been that great at swordplay anyway, as the scar on his biceps reminded him. “I don’t have to win the match. I can’t. The Fade’s present is linked with mine, right? My death won’t stop my past from being erased, but it’s the best chance this new universe has at living. It’s the only thing that might prevent the countersignature from passing through the pivot point. Cut the string, end the signal before the Ab Aeterno takes off, stop the echoes of my wrong birth before I’m born right again.”
Priya became a statue, leg rigid against his. Far wasn’t sure he could bear her expression, so he stared at the ceiling instead. The ship’s skeleton pipes were too easy to see through the thinning wardrobe. Why the Hades would he wear such an eye-gougingly bright flash-leather suit?
His next question was a footnote: “What’s a little extra blood in the scheme of things?”
“It’s awful!” Imogen cried. “It’s awful and you’re being too hashing heroic to see straight! If you die before the Fade finds our present, where does that leave us? With a pile of clothes and no minds to call our own? Playing pincushion will only make a mess! Tell him, Gram!”
“I can’t.” The Engineer cleared his throat, and again, harder, as if to dislodge some hidden feeling there. “I mean, I don’t like it, but Far’s theory about the countersignature has merit. For all of Ackerman’s horribleness, the man was right. The Fade must be contained, and this is the cost.”
“It doesn’t have to be sad.” There wasn’t much left to Far—his memories shedding like autumn leaves, time sliding in the wrong direction—but his fate was yet in his hands. More fates, still. He looked around at his crew: Imogen, Eliot, Saffron, Gram, Priya. Priya… “If we succeed, the pain won’t even be a distant dream.”
Stone, all stone, stayed her lips. No words left them, nor did they tremble.
“I’m with Far,” Eliot said. “We’ll find a way to free Gaius—”
“How?” asked Imogen. “He’ll be locked up in his cell at the ludus.”
Eliot held up her wrist; a seam between dimensions shimmered against hairless skin. “This pocket universe doesn’t just hold clothing and sundries. I can carry Far into the cell and take Gaius out. If I intercept Empra on her way to the Colosseum and redirect her to the Ab Aeterno, they’ll have a chance to say good-bye.”
“I can be on the ground,” Gram volunteered. “Something as important as this requires a second set of hands.”
Far’s cousin walked over to the clothing pile and dug the toga from the bottom. “If this is really what we’re doing, we’ll need another toga. As for three live datastreams… Gram might be able to keep up with that many screens, but I’ll be overloaded.”
“It’s okay, Imogen. I can get to the arena without comm support. You shouldn’t have to watch…” My death, the silence said, and Far faltered. How could he give himself over to the sword when he couldn’t even form the words? Talking talk, thinking thoughts was easy. But to stand where his father had stood, to feel the years wasting behind, the ones ahead sliced short…
“I’ll manage your comm.” Priya reached for his hand. “Through lights and time and whatever else comes our way. Even this.”
Her palm filled his with warmth, the kind that seeped through pores and lit a path to the heart. Fortitude? No. Bravery? No. Hope? In any other circumstance, Far might have said so. But as the saying went: Dum spiro spero. Hope could not outlast the breather. Love, however… Love was something not even death could conquer, because at the end of everything, even life, he was hers. If Far could wield his father’s trident, wear his father’s wounds, claim his father’s quietus, this last might give way to next.
Maybe not for him—blade and Fade, dead and done.
Maybe not for her—past lost forever at best.
But for them.
Blood or none, it was a chance worth seizing.
39
DENTAL HYGIENE IS THE MAIN CONCERN
INVICTUS SHIP’S LOG—ENTRY 6
OUR UNIVERSE IS COLLAPSING. WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO BUT MAKE A NEW ONE? RAGE, RAGE, AND ALL THAT. AT LEAST I GOT KISSED BEFORE MY UNTIMELY SPIRAL INTO SENILITY. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS. IMOGEN MCCARTHY AND GRAM WRIGHT KISSED. A HAPPILY EVER MOMENT, WORTH DECLARING BEFORE THE AFTER PART JOINS THE PARTY.
HERE ARE SOME BRAIN YOGA EXERCISES: ARE YOU YOU WITHOUT YOUR MEMORIES? IF NOT, WHO DO YOU BECOME? IF SO, ARE YOU ALSO YOU IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE?
I HAVE TO STOP WRITING IN THIS LOG AND MAKE A TOGA. STAY TUNED FOR MY TAKE. TO BE HONEST, YOU’LL BE WAITING AWHILE. TO BE HONEST, HONEST, YOU DON’T EXIST, BECAUSE NO ONE IS READING THIS. RIP SPIRIT OF THE INVICTUS.
THE SHEETS WERE A THOUSAND THREAD count, so soft that kings might weep to sleep on them. Imogen herself had spent many a slumbering hour in the bedding—as evidenced by the neon streaks on her pillowcase. She tossed this aside. Nuclear Green + Taylor Pink + Aquamarine were not shades common to Ancient Roman fashion. Neither was cotton woven with a high-speed automatic air-jet loom, but options for craft-your-own-toga fabric were slim at the moment. Using bedsheets wouldn’t be the end of the world—HA.
(Sardonic humor must be genetic, huh? Dominant McCarthy trait.)
Even Imogen’s seamstress tools were makeshift. From the infirmary: curved needles and surgical thread. There was dental floss, too, in case she ran out. Floss upon unused floss. Some of the Invictus crew members must’ve been lying to their dentist-droids.