The walk back happened in complete silence. Selene walked ahead, as always, and offered nothing. Not a word, not a glance.
Emma didn't try to fill the silence. She was too busy circling something she didn't want to look at directly.
What if it happened again. Not as a question, As a certainty waiting for confirmation. What if next time I don't even notice.
It wasn't quite guilt, well, yes, a little, somewhere underneath the rest, but mostly it was that feeling of having put a finger into a crack without knowing what waited on the other side. She had planted something inside someone.
She had watched that man hit a stranger, then stare at his own hands as if they no longer belonged to him. And something inside her, something she refused to name properly, had found that interesting.
Not horrifying. Interesting.
She didn't like that at all.
They were climbing back toward the upper city when Selene stopped dead. It was such an unusual gesture that Emma nearly walked into her.
Ahead of them, a crowd.
About thirty people formed an uneven circle at the edge of the street, most of them silent, some standing on their toes to see over the shoulders of others. At the center, a man sat on what looked like a tree trunk cut into a makeshift block, a waterskin resting on his thigh, his hand still around its neck.
Exhausted in a way that went beyond simple physical tiredness, the kind of exhaustion you read on someone who has run a long way, and not only with their legs. Everyone waited, unhurried, with that particular patience of people who know that what they're about to hear deserves letting the man catch his breath first.
Not far away, tied to an iron ring set into the wall, stood the animal that must have carried him there.
Emma stopped.
Six legs. A dense brown coat, a shade darker along the spine. A mane that wound around its head in a thick crown, almost plant-like in texture. Its muzzle was long and narrow, something at once familiar and fundamentally different, not quite a horse, not quite anything else. It breathed softly through its nostrils, indifferent to the crowd, and its extra eyes, set slightly to the sides of its skull, swept the street with a placid slowness.
"What is that?" Emma asked, quietly.
"A Moribond." Selene didn't even bother to look at the animal. "An Evolved species, docile. Used for long-distance travel."
Of course.
Emma stared at the creature a moment longer. A six-legged horse. Some centuries had been enough for the world to produce a six-legged horse, and she was still standing here looking for the logic in it, as if logic were something this world owed her.
She didn't have time to follow the thought any further. The man in the circle had just set his waterskin down.
They moved through the onlookers, Selene without hesitation, Emma in her wake. No one looked at them. Every eye was fixed on the messenger.
An older man in the front row asked the question everyone had been holding back since the Moribond had stopped in front of them.
"Tell us, messenger."
The man took one last breath, the kind you take before diving.
"The investiture of Tra's new Sceau has been announced. In less than half a cycle."
A second of silence, the time it took for the words to land. Then everyone spoke at once.
"Tra? What the hell, Tra hasn't had a new Sceau since..."
"Since Halveth, yeah, twenty years at least."
"And the Capitol knows about this?"
"The Capitol was invited," the messenger said, louder, to be heard over the voices. "An official delegation."
This time the silence was different. Heavier. The kind that falls when people realize what they just heard is worse than what they thought.
"A delegation" the older man repeated, his arms slowly crossing. "Not a messenger but A delegation."
"That's never happened" said the woman beside him, her jaw tight. "Not in twenty years, not once."
"What does that even mean, a delegation?" someone asked from the back of the circle, a young voice, slightly too loud, the voice of someone who hadn't yet learned to be afraid quietly.
"It means the Capitol knew," answered a stocky man with scarred forearms, his eyes fixed on the ground rather than on the messenger. "And if the Capitol knew and still sent people out there, it's because they want something."
"Or they want to show something," the woman corrected.
"Same thing."
"No, it's not the same thing at all."
They looked at each other. Neither of them elaborated.
"And what if it's not an investiture," said the scarred man, still staring at the ground. "What if it's just the excuse."
No one answered. But no one argued either.
The messenger picked his waterskin back up, drank one last time, and got to his feet with the slowness of someone in no hurry to go anywhere in particular now that his message had been delivered. The crowd began to break apart slowly, in small groups, each one carrying off its own version of what it had just heard.
Selene said nothing for thirty seconds after the crowd started to disperse. She was still watching the messenger climb back onto his Moribond, her eyes fixed on him with an attention that didn't look like ordinary curiosity.
Emma waited.
Then Selene turned on her heel and resumed the climb toward the upper city, faster than usual. Not running, but the shift in pace was clear enough for Emma to understand that something had changed.
She quickened her pace to catch up.
"Did you know?"
"No."
The answer had come too fast, too clipped, with that particular quality of people who are telling the truth but would rather not have had to.
Emma noted the detail and filed it away.
"What is Tra?"
Selene didn't answer right away. Her steps kept their steady rhythm, and for a second Emma wondered if she was simply going to ignore the question.
"A sub-state. Like the others."
"Are there a lot of them?"
"Enough."
Emma let a silence pass. She knew by now that pushing Selene too directly produced the opposite effect. It was better to leave questions lying around, the way you leave something out hoping it will get picked up.
It worked.
"The continent is divided into independent sub-states," Selene said, without changing her pace, without looking at Emma, as if she were reciting something she was willing to share but not to comment on. "Each one governed by a Sceau. Regents normally appointed by the Capitol, answering directly to it. Their role is simple. Maintain order in their territory, guarantee peace, collect the tributes the Capitol demands. In exchange, they keep their autonomy. The Capitol doesn't interfere in their internal affairs as long as they meet their obligations."
"And Tra?"
"Tra is a state like any other." A pause, slightly too long. "Or it was."
Emma waited for more. It didn't come.
"You're saying it shouldn't be changing its Sceau?"
"Not yet. It wasn't the time. Not as far as I knew."
Not as far as you knew. Emma heard everything Selene wasn't saying in that sentence. That something had happened out there. That this change hadn't been planned. And that if Selene herself hadn't seen it coming, then either the information had been deliberately withheld, or events had moved too fast for anyone at the Capitol to prepare properly.
"Something must have happened out there," Emma said, more to herself than to Selene.
Selene didn't confirm it. But she didn't deny it either, which in her register amounted to the same thing.
They reached the Capitol through the side entrance Selene always used when coming back from training, the one where the guards never asked questions because they had learned it was better not to.
The halls were busier than usual. Not agitation exactly, but that particular density of people walking a little faster, speaking a little quieter, pausing at intersections a fraction of a second too long before choosing a direction.
The news had already arrived. It had traveled faster than the Moribond.
Selene sped up again. Emma followed her, crossing three corridors, going down one staircase, up another, until they stopped in front of a door Emma recognized, the antechamber to Agatha's office.
Selene turned to face her.
"Go back."
Emma looked at her. "I'm coming with you."
"No. You can't."
"Why?"
Selene didn't answer. She looked at her for a second, a look that held neither warmth nor cruelty, only a decision already made, and pushed the door open.
It closed behind her, leaving no room for negotiation.
Emma stayed in the corridor, hands at her sides, frustration rising with a clarity she didn't try to hold back. Something was happening in there.
Something that concerned her, she was certain of it. Otherwise why would Selene have quickened her pace, why the too-short conversation about Tra, why the door closed without explanation?
She waited ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty.
Then she moved along the wall, toward the heavy oak door locked twice over, but she couldn't hear a thing. The soundproofing was perfect.
But Emma no longer needed her ears.
She closed her eyes, pressed her palm against the cold wood, and projected her Distortion into the room, the way Selene had taught her that very morning. Refusing every obstacle, she wanted to understand, and she would.
What struck her first wasn't words, but a raw emotion, icy, swirling through the room...