The Will of the Many (Hierarchy Book 1)

THE WATER’S RISING FASTER THAN I’d anticipated. I struggle against it. I can’t let myself lose my balance—I haven’t swum in years. Not since Suus. But it’s up to my knees. Stronger, faster, more violent as it batters me. Everything it touches is numb. It’s up to my thighs. My waist. I slip. Somehow catch myself against the slick stone of the sewer wall. Press on.

Then I’m out, dragging myself up the stairs, gasping and hacking as water splashes high enough to inhale. Behind me, there’s a gurgling crash as a torrent floods past, frothing so high it’s almost submersing the entrance. Somewhere, the path between the lake and these tunnels has cracked opened.

There’s no getting out this way until the Arena is dry, now.

I take precious seconds to catch my breath and rip off my sodden toga, rescuing the stylus from its folds. The stone sliver feels warm against my hand. Then I’m hauling myself up the narrow stairs, back into the mausoleum of the Arena’s outer ring. Dashing around raw flesh and trickling blood as I climb into the main stadium again.

The screams are ominously fewer. More grieved than horrified, hopeless rather than panicked. Fainter and sporadic. I stop short as I emerge into the red-coated stands, hit by that hot, thick, cloying smell. The lake has started to drain; the jagged pathways Estevan created jut from the water, decorated by the dark wreckage of ships draped with the dead. Flames still burn everywhere, though lower now, a darker orange. But it’s enough to illuminate the sole man out in the centre, cross-legged, looking as calm as when I left.

My gaze switches to the stands, and something breaks in my chest. There are fewer people than there were before. Significantly fewer. The remainder are cowering, hiding behind one another, bunched around where the exits should be like frightened animals. Whole swathes of the stadium are empty. Impossible to tell from this distance and in this light, but it’s not hard to conjure images of the same hideous, slick carnage that’s all around me.

I start for where Estevan’s jetty meets the seats. It’s not far. It feels like miles. I keep one eye on Estevan, but either he doesn’t notice me or he’s ignoring me.

I reach the intersection where smooth, Will-cut stone meets the haphazard path stretching across the Arena. It’s only a few feet wide, slick with water overlayed with sporadic red where Estevan detonated his attackers. The stylus in my hand is getting warmer.

“Idiot,” I mutter to myself as I clamber over the barrier and step out onto the narrow bridge. “Vek. Idiot. Vek.”

The water’s draining fast, and I’m elevated here. Precarious. I won’t die if I slip and fall into the dark swells below, but there won’t be an easy way to climb out, either. My sandals are well-made and give me a decent footing, at least. I press forward, step after gradual step, clutching the stylus like a totem against Estevan’s power.

I’m about fifty feet away when I start to see the distortion in the air.

It’s almost invisible, at first. A tremor, a trembling vibration that I attribute to some mixture of encroaching darkness and fear. But every step brings it into sharper relief against the background of the far stands. A jagged visual warping with Estevan firmly in its centre. My father’s former adviser is little more than a silhouette, still sitting, head bowed. The blurring agitation in the air makes him look like he’s phasing in and out of existence a hundred times a second.

The stylus in my hand is hot now. Close to burning my skin and buzzing against my terrified grip, trying to worm its way free. I don’t let it.

Estevan still has his back to me; I’m tempted to call out, to plead with him to stop, but the images of the men who approached him before, their fates, are etched on my mind. I’m numb, and not only because my tunic still clings cold and sodden to my skin. What am I doing? The air feels thicker here, hotter and hard against my face. Dread flows through my veins. I step forward. Again. Again. If I stop moving, I won’t be able to start again.

I take a clumsy, desperate run at the last few feet, skidding to my knees and breathlessly grabbing Estevan, the sharp tip of my stylus at his neck.

As soon as I touch him, everything flickers.

For a moment—not even a second—we’re not in the Arena anymore. I’m still on jagged stone, the spoke-like pattern jutting from the earth. But the water is gone. The surrounding walls, the stands beyond, are gone.

Caten is gone.

It’s too brief for more than an impression. The purple-and-orange bruise of smoky, lightning-cracked sky. Some sort of impossibly vast pyramid, surface smooth and black and mirrored, its base stretching for miles. The harbour with a vast, lit bridge dividing it, lined by statues that must stand a hundred feet high. Waves, monstrous curling whitecaps, towering over them. Exploding against them.

Pain accompanies the sight. Rippling through my body, a burning from the inside out. I’m screaming. Blind. My blood boiling, my flesh peeling, every muscle and joint drawn inexorably, mercilessly apart.

Then I’m back, breath coming in ragged sobs, barely aware enough to keep my grip on the stylus. Estevan is still in front of me. We’re still kneeling in the semi-darkness against slick, torn rock, surrounded by dark stone and death. Only the memory of that place, and the agony that accompanied it, remains.

“So you came.” It’s Estevan. He sounds unsurprised. He hasn’t moved, though he must feel the point against his neck. His voice is cracked and sombre.

“Stop whatever you’re doing, Estevan.” He’s calm enough, but I’m in no state to be the same. I push the stylus harder against his throat, dizzy from the echoes of what just happened. The air is heavy and charged, buzzing. The stone in my hand almost too hot to grip. “Please. Don’t make me do this.”

“I’m not. You can still walk away.” The pulsating vibration around us beats faster, harder. Building.

“No, I can’t.” I grit my teeth. “Come on, Estevan. We’re on the same side. We’re not monsters.”

Estevan tilts his head up and to the side, enough so that I can see his face. His eyes are red. Tears leak from them. “We are what they make us, Diago.”

“We don’t have to be.”

He laughs, a hollow sound against the ethereal moans of terror still echoing to us over the water. “That’s the power of the Hierarchy—we do, because there is no standing apart. You fight the tyranny of the many, or you are one of them.” He hangs his head again. Tired. “Silence is a statement, Diago. Inaction picks a side. And when those lead to personal benefit, they are complicity.”

It’s a strangely melancholic statement, delivered without malice. I still feel its accusation.

Energy continues to build around us, vibrating against my skin. I can feel Estevan’s muscles begin to tense beneath my grip. “Maybe you’re right, but there has to be a better way. If we do this, then what do we deserve?” My voice is shaking. The stylus has broken his skin, a thin line of blood wending its way down his neck. “I’ll help you, if that’s what it takes. I’ll help the Anguis if you just stop.”

“No, you won’t. Sedotia was right about you.” Estevan sighs. Still staring at the ground, he slowly, gently, reaches up, clasping my hand where it’s holding the stylus. A comforting gesture. “But a broken blade can still cut, Diago.”

His grip abruptly tightens.

Then in one savage, sharp motion, he’s twisting and thrusting the stylus upward, through his neck and deep into his brain.