The siblings screamed as they fell. Gemma wondered for an instant if she had been wrong about her older brother's skills. Then the silvery whine of promenia surrounded her, and the air gathered around her limbs, stalling her fall.

Beneath them, the ground teemed with clivias, which shifted to and fro around the receding waystation like tides washing up against a rock. Only this ocean teemed with vicious pearl-white and crystal-blue waves, which began to swell as the creatures took to the air.

"Here they come," Gemma said, her voice choking with fear.

This was not what she had imagined her first assignment as a fully-trained forgeholder would be like. Repair some aqueducts on the border, Cerasus said. Not that close to the night-side and its vicious bestias, he assured her. Protected by the Trellis, which her own foster brother held in his capable hands, her Praetor claimed.

And Epileus, strutting about like he thought he was a seasoned worldholder after only a year out in the field, had told her the assignment would be a breeze. "Our Praetor values Empowered like us," he had said. "We won't be put in any more danger than a Trueborn would be. This will be easy. Some other slaves receive way worse work than this. The dirtiest, dreariest, or most dangerous jobs."

"Any other 'D' words you can think of there, Leus?" she had asked with a teasing smirk.

"Sure. Demeaning, detestable..."

If they lived through this, she would make Epileus eat his earlier words. Afterward, she would exchange a few words of her own with Daedalus about his horrendous job maintaining the Trellis.

"Now what?" she asked Epileus, shouting to be heard over the song of the promenia holding them both aloft. The magical particles were not audible, but their vibration through the mind resembled sound enough to confuse a person's sense of hearing.

He glared at her but reached out a hand, and she found herself speeding through the air until she flew at his side. Growling under his breath, Epileus looped his arm around her waist and tugged her close, and their speed increased again. "This is easier."

"Can we outrun them?" she asked, gulping as she peered down below.

The clivias floated up into the air after them, slow for now, but that would soon change. The creatures were far deadlier in flight than they were on land and gained speed after a few seconds of spreading their wing-like appendages to the sky.

"I'm not sure why the Trellis is damaged here," Epileus said. "But I sense its intact edge a few miles from here. If we get back under its light fast enough, I don't think they will be able to bypass the protections there."

"Yes, but can we get there fast enough?"

A moment later, as her older brother cast her an uncertain glance, she wished she had kept her mouth shut. "I'll try," he said, but his voice sounded grim and doubtful.

Gemma gulped. Beneath them, the erratic throbbing pulses of the clivias grew louder, and she did not need to glance down to know the night-side creatures were gaining on them. "Please try harder."

Just in case, she gathered promenia around them and whispered to the particles in the silence of her mind of heat and pressure. If those creatures caught them, she would take out a few with a fireball long before any got a chance to engulf her.

She avoided thinking too much about whether it would be best to save a fireball or two for herself and Epileus.

"Stop messing with it," Valens told his alumna. The two stood with a crowd of Trueborn and Empowered in Cerasus's salutatio hall, where the Praetor summoned them early that morn.

The boy scowled up at him and kicked the bottom hem of his ankle-length tunica again. He seemed incapable of walking in the thing without his legs getting tangled in the fabric. Valens would have found it entertaining if it were not so pathetic. "I can't help it." Domi flicked his paenula aside with a glare down at the draped fabric. "How do you wear such uncomfortable clothes?"

"A lifetime of experience. And it is not that uncomfortable, you're just used to wandering around half-naked in that sorry excuse for a tunica."

Domi rolled his eyes but settled and eyed the gathered Promethidae, who murmured to one another in soft voices as everyone waited for Cerasus to arrive. "Why are we here?"

"If I knew that, don't you think I would have told you?"

"You never tell me anything," the youth said, kicking the bottom of his tunica again with a frustrated growl. Valens cast him a quelling glare. The boy ignored him.

Several feet away, Serenitas observed them out of the corner of her eye with an arched brow. He met her gaze, and she strode over. Sighing, Valens nudged his alumna to get the boy to straighten up and stop acting like a fool in public.

"I see you two are getting along well," the other worldholder said, her voice dry as she glanced from one of them to the other.

Arcus Eminere, the starholder who taught at the three curia schools, chuckled. "Valens is talking to someone for once. That's progress for him."

"We're all here. Even the older alumnas," Valens said. He frowned at the crowd. About thirty kids around Domi's age loitered about the hall, excitement in their hushed voices at having been summoned. Students did not typically attend the Praetor's salutatio until after they graduated from the conservatory, and then only while in Urbs Hostiae. Most received work assignments elsewhere. "What's going on?"

"We're about to find out," Arbita said as the hall's doors opened. She straightened and placed her palm over her laurel.

"May the Eyes pass over you," Cerasus said, his words brisk as he, his wife Damma, and his lover Ros swept into the chamber.

"And you also, Dominus," the crowd responded, save Valens, who didn't bother, and Domi, who didn't know how to behave in public.

"I won't keep you waiting," the Praetor said. Stress lined his face as he sat in his chair. "You're all going to the border." Cerasus held up a hand as everyone spoke at once. "Hush," he snapped. "Yes, all of you." He glared as Valens glanced at Domi. "Yes, Valens, including him."

"He's like an untrained puppy," Valens pointed out. Domi scowled at him, but it was not as though he said anything untrue. "He's going to make a mess of everything."

"My understanding is he can't be left unsupervised," Cerasus said, eying the boy with distaste. "And I need you on the border, Valens." He turned to address the whole group. "You leave in two hours, so listen up. Our Princeps Worldholder, may the Eternal Radiance hold him forever, sent instructions. He encountered a problem yesterday while reinforcing the Trellis against a bestia threat on our border and dissolved the promenia in that part of the Trellis. So he orders you to—"

"The Princeps Worldholder dissolved part of the Trellis?" Ros gasped. It appeared the mindholder had not been brought into his lover's confidence yet on the matter.

"He's new to the position," Arbita said.

"The Trellis didn't dissolve back when all his predecessors died in a terrorist attack and his mother inherited the Throne of Solitude without any training," Ros said, shaking his head.

"It did," Valens corrected. "A little. But still." He cast Cerasus a sour glance. "So, let me guess. We get to clean up the Princeps's mess."

"Yes," the Praetor said. He gripped the armrests of his chair, white-knuckled. "The clivia incursion penetrated a mile wide and about fifty miles long into our borderlands before the remaining outer edge of the Trellis protections stopped their progress. They are terrorizing several frontier villages in the unprotected zone. You are all being sent to rehabilitate the region, repair the Trellis, and deal with the clivias."

"What do you want us to do with them?" Ros asked. "Kill them, or...?"

Cerasus shrugged. "Kill them, drive them out, or capture them for the textile farms, I don't care. But be quick about it. The loss of life in our border villages..." The breath caught in his throat, and he shook his head, eyes sad. A silence descended over the room, the Praetor rose to his feet and swept a hand toward the door. "Two hours, people. Get moving."