The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)

by James Islington

FEAR, MY FATHER ONCE TOLD me, is simply our realisation of a lack of control. And that is why when we are afraid, sometimes the only way we can cope—the only way to dull the edge of that lack—is to put our faith in those who appear not to suffer it.

“I suppose the war is the easiest place to begin. It started thousands of years ago, against an enemy called the Concurrence. They were bent on enslaving everyone, and from what Veridius and I could tell, at one point they were winning.” His mouth twists. “So our side split the world into three near-identical copies. Res—where we’re from; Obiteum, which is here; and Luceum.

“Physically the same, down to the last detail. But the nature of Will was what they were trying to limit. The three worlds were created because they wanted to diminish it, restrict how it could be used. Split its capabilities.” He presses on before I can ask any of my myriad new questions. “People called it the Rending. Afterward, the war continued, but the resistances on the three worlds began to have their own levels of success in the fight. Different capabilities with Will. Different choices. Everything diverged.”

“What do you know about the Cataclysm?” I pause. “As much as anyone, I suppose?” Momentarily thrown by the apparent veer in topic. “Something happened three hundred years ago that killed almost everyone. The survivors were mostly children, and the records from before that time were lost. Civilisation collapsed. There are theories about how, and why, but no one really knows much more than that.”

“That’s not quite true.” Caeror hesitates. The gentle reluctance of a man about to deliver terrible news. “Those ruins you said you visited, near the Academy? That place was built to stop a Cataclysm. One the architects knew was coming.” He rubs his face, then smiles at me in sincere, rueful apology. “They’re culls, Vis. The Cataclysms are culls by an enemy that everyone on our world has forgotten. That one those architects were trying to prevent? It was the eleventh. The eleventh in three thousand years. And even with all their knowledge, they failed.”

“They didn’t just win the war here, Vis. I think they won it everywhere.”

“They’re called iunctii. They don’t need to eat, or sleep, or breathe. They don’t age or bleed. They do still remember who they were, feel things the same as you and I—but they cannot do it without the Will of the person who brought them back.”

“Mechanically, everything works the same as on Res—ceding, self-imbuing and imbuing. Except that back home, you imbue in order to strengthen and manipulate. Here, you do it to restore and sustain.

“Those people were put in there to become a kind of interconnected machine, built to try and circumvent the security measures on Res that kill anyone who goes through the Gate. And based on what we translated, those measures were put in place by one man. A man who would remain untouchable so long as he alone was present in all three worlds, because it meant he had dominion over Will. Would be the only one who could control it as it had been before the Rending.” He glances at me. Assessing. “Synchronism, they called it.”

WILL CAN BE USED BY the one to whom it is given, and them alone. It is a foundational truth of the Hierarchy, the underpinning of almost every rule, every method and every calculation I have been taught over the past year and a half. Something mentioned only in passing even to the Sevenths at the Academy, so self-evident has its truth been since the discovery of ceding by the Catenan Republic one hundred and fifty years ago. I’ve had much of the carriage ride here to think about what the nameless stranger told me, back at the compound. “Adoption.” The ability to not only sense other people’s imbued Will, but to take it.

“We all fumble in the dark for ways to say that one man is better than another, and the Hierarchy fumble more than most. Their formulas and measurements make sense in the broad strokes; in the building of infrastructure, in the arrangement of an empire, averages are an acceptable metric. But men are still men. Strong and flawed and unpredictable, day to day. To weigh their potential without knowing their spirit… it cannot be done.” It is a truth that no matter how hard the Hierarchy strives to deny, all know.

Talent, as my father used to remind me constantly, matters only when it’s married to effort.

COMPETITIVENESS, YSABEL ONCE QUOTED PRIMLY as I celebrated beating her at Foundation, is insecurity in action. To which my smiling father immediately responded that a complete lack of it shows only apathy or arrogance.

DEATH, EIDHIN ONCE INSISTED WHILE explaining the ddram cyfraith, is our most important horizon. It matters because we need an end to what we can see. Without it we would drift, overwhelmed, nothing to orient ourselves against. Without it, we would never be able to focus on what is truly important: that which is in front of us.

ONE OF THE GREAT SYTRECIAN philosophers once argued that the concept of home is, at its core, about safety. That no matter how familiar you may become with a place, no matter how long it is your abode—if it ever loses its sense of comfort, you can no longer truly call it by that name.

Grief, my mother once told me, is love’s most honest expression. The last and hardest aspect of truly, truly caring for someone.

without grief, love would be meaningless.

Because it is impossible to truly love something that cannot be lost.

LOSS IS HARDEST, ULCISCOR ONCE told me, when it is quiet.

“The oldest argument for doing something wrong is that everyone is doing it.

“A society cannot make a man a monster, Diago. But it can give him the excuse to become one.”

“She told me that a child needs to hear and truly understand only three phrases from their father as they grow up. ‘I love you.’ ‘I will help.’ And, ‘I don’t know.’

FEAR IS A LACK OF control, realised.

Explained that it is not the absence of control itself, but the understanding of it. The true, stomach-churning grasping of the fact that we have no significant way to affect what comes next in a given situation.

A Sapper forces ceding to a particular person and—aside from all of the prisoner’s Will being given, rather than just half—that works exactly like any other ceding. Freeing someone from their Sapper does mean they go back to ceding only half their Will, but the link itself cannot be broken without it being relinquished by whoever’s on the receiving end. Or by death.

What is it they say, again? The needs of the many will always be loud.” He leans forward. Hooked nose inches from mine. “But in the end, it is only the strength of the few that matters.”

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.

“Fear is a lack of control, Eidhin,” I tell him eventually. “And I am tired of being afraid. I want to be able to see justice in the world again.”