Chapter I

ANNUAL GAMES ORDINANCE, AUC 2750

§ I — Command Warrants and Notice

The Council shall issue three temporary command warrants for the Ludi Troiani. Their precedence and method of selection, the constitution of the armies, and the conditions of the contest shall be entered in the public schedule before the first name is called. No command shall be altered by private arrangement once selection begins.

I

Rome chooses three commanders tomorrow. I have already chosen my engineers.

The woman in the window seat is still asleep as the shuttle starts its second circuit over Carthage, waiting for permission to land. Her head rests against the cabin wall, her hands folded over the travel case in her lap. My tabula lies across my knees.

I pause the Sixth Londinium Engineers just before their score begins to fall. In one corner of the recording, the western power exchange’s status marker flickers amber and clears. Londinium’s repair crawler is halfway through its assigned work on a damaged launch rail.

Their commander turns it west.

I drag the recording back nine seconds.

The marker flickers. The crawler leaves the rail. Only after it has cleared the repair site does the formal failure alert appear.

The rail clock keeps running. Launches wait. Londinium falls from first to fourth. The crawler reaches the exchange before the outage and locks into place. The relay grid stays live. The casualty station keeps its power. Beyond the ridge, two formations keep moving.

The judges place Londinium first in integration and fourth overall. I understand why. Three formations completed their assigned work faster.

The recording cannot tell me whether Londinium’s commander noticed the amber flicker or acted on something this academy copy does not preserve. It shows me that she moved before the alert and preserved the larger force.

I move Londinium above the three faster formations in my private list and add: Accepts local delay to preserve the larger force. First engineering choice.

The engine note deepens. A smooth bank presses my shoulder toward the aisle, and the cabin floor tips into descent.

Permission.

I fold the tabula and look past the sleeping woman’s shoulder.

Carthage rises beneath the wing, white terraces climbing from the gulf. Sun flashes from the modern port. The old military harbor lies dark inside its ring of stone.

Beyond the preserved city, the academy holds the southern ridge. Its walls fill the window for three breaths before our descent carries them away.

Then the woman wakes.

She turns toward the glass and finds only the landing field beneath us.

“Oh,” she says. “I missed Carthage.”

She presses closer to the window as if the city might come back.

I say nothing.

The landing gear locks. Our shadow sweeps over the maintenance sheds, and the wheels strike in two clean beats. The engines reverse. Everyone leans against their restraints at once.

The time band above the aisle rolls to eleven.

Before the shuttle has finished turning toward the terminal, half the passengers have their hands on their buckles. The release tone sounds. The aisle fills from both ends. The woman beside me stands immediately, forcing me to draw my knees aside while she drags her case from beneath the seat.

Four rows ahead, a man turns his luggage crosswise and traps it between two seatbacks. The people behind him keep advancing until no one can move. Advice begins from three directions. None of it helps.

I remain seated.

A black crescent marks the skin beneath my right thumbnail.

Grease.

It must have worked out from the feed assembly my father and I opened on my last morning in the shop. I washed before leaving Anahuac and checked again during the layover. Still, the dark line sits precisely where I failed to find it.

I scrape at it with my other thumbnail. It smears along the cuticle.

The luggage comes free. The compressed line lurches forward.

I wait until the woman disappears into it, then take my case from the rack and follow.

The first washroom beyond the gate is crowded with passengers changing clothes, quieting children, and redistributing the contents of overfilled bags. I find a basin at the far end. Warm water and soap loosen the grease slowly. Gray traces the creases of my thumb and vanishes into the drain.

I scrub once more, dry my hand, and hold it beneath the light.

Clean.

Outside, announcements overlap above the concourse. A linked train of luggage cuts across my path beneath an arrivals wall shifting through landing fields and surface lines. I wait for it to pass. Hot oil from a food counter hangs beneath the sharper smell of disinfectant.

Bronze eagles mark the southern concourse.

I follow them.

At each junction, part of the civilian crowd falls away. By the time the Academy checkpoint appears behind glass, I can hear the wheels of my case cross the seams in the floor.

A regional formation crosses in front of me behind a row of long equipment cases. I pull my case against my leg and wait. The last handler stops at the lane marker instead of following the others. I take the gap.

I raise my wrist Tessera. The barrier matches it to my face and opens. At station eighteen, my case goes onto the belt and my palm onto the biometric plate. My name appears. The final-day authorization turns green.

“Proceed, Herrera.”

My case reaches the other side. I take it and keep moving.

The Academy Line runs beneath the checkpoint. A band above the descending passage gives me two minutes until the next departure.

I descend into the platform. A regional formation is settling its equipment near the forward cars. Camilla Domitia Lepida waits alone in the fourth boarding area, one hand on the extended handle of her case.

A rearing gold warhorse fills the case’s deep-green panel, framed in gold. The warhorse is enough. It usually is.

Camilla turns before I reach her.

“Herrera.”

“Lepida.”

“How was Anahuac?”

“Good. The shop was busy.”

“You worked?”

“Most mornings.”

“Only mornings?”

The arrival band changes to one minute.

A pressure wave moves through the tunnel before the train appears. The platform doors remain sealed while it settles. Arriving passengers clear the marked lane, and our doors open.

Camilla boards beside me. We brace our cases between our boots and take opposing handholds near the doors.

The doors seal, and the train pulls us into the ridge.

For several seconds, the windows hold our reflections.

“And the afternoons?” Camilla asks.

“Mars Trials.”

“All sixty-six?”

“Everything I could find.”

“More than once?”

“Most of them.”

She watches me in the glass. “Which twenty?”

I meet her eyes there. “You have yours, then.”

The corner of her mouth moves. She does not answer.

The tunnel releases us into daylight.

Carthage drops below the line, the gulf silver beyond it.

“And Narbo?” I ask.

“Loud.”

“Family?”

“My grandfather spent the month choosing my first House command.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Games first.”

“Did that stop him?”

“No.”

Six years ago, I spent this entire climb with my face near the window.

I still turn toward it when the academy comes into view: the pale outer wall, dark towers, and hangars running inland. Above them rises the bronze dome of the Hall of Standards.

Tomorrow, three names will be called inside it.

Camilla looks toward the dome. My fingers close around the folded tabula until its edge bites my palm. I loosen them before she looks back.

There is no fourth.

The train enters another cut in the ridge, and the Hall disappears.

Conversation fades as we slow. By the time the brakes press me toward the doors, the only sound is the low rush beneath the carriage.

We settle beside the underground platform.

Camilla retrieves her case. I wait for the cadets nearest the door to clear, then fall into step beside her. Directional lights guide us toward the far end, where a single broad stair rises toward daylight.

The air changes halfway up. Filtered cool gives way to warmth, then salt wind.

At the top, the eastern gate stands across the open approach.

The academy sigil crowns the arch. The stone beneath remains in shadow. Cadets ahead of us cross in ones and twos and vanish through the gate.

Camilla and I walk toward it together.

The inscription emerges as the angle changes—first the depth of the carving, then darkness inside the letters, then the full line beneath the sigil.

DISCIPLINA · HONOR · VICTORIA

Discipline. Honor. Victory.

Camilla reaches the arch half a step before I do.

Then I pass with her beneath the sigil and through the eastern gate.

Six years ago, she did not know my name.

Tomorrow, I hope all of Rome does.