The Will of the Many: Hierarchy, Book 1 recap

The Catenan Republic runs on Will: every citizen cedes a share of their own strength and vitality up a strict pyramid of ranks, so that those at the top are far beyond ordinary human capacity and the Republic's machines run on the surplus. Vis, an orphan in the city of Letens, refuses to cede and fights in an illegal pit for money. He is secretly Diago, the last survivor of the royal house of Suus, an island kingdom the Republic destroyed three years earlier. The senator Ulciscor Telimus adopts him in exchange for a task: win a place at the Catenan Academy on Solivagus and investigate the ancient ruins where Ulciscor's brother Caeror died, which Ulciscor believes the Academy's revered Principalis, Veridius, is responsible for. Vis gets in, climbs the school's brutal rankings, makes real friends and one real attachment, and is pressured in turn by Ulciscor, by the rebel Anguis and by Veridius himself. In the end he is betrayed, his secrets come apart, and he completes the labyrinth beneath the ruins, learning that the Will the Republic collects does not stop at its rulers.

The Catenan Republic runs on Will. Every citizen cedes a measured portion of their own strength and vitality to the person above them in a strict pyramid of ranks, so that those near the top are physically and mentally far beyond ordinary human capacity, and the Republic's lights, vehicles and machines run on the surplus. Refusing to cede leaves a person Unranked, with no legal protection and no prospects at all. Vis, a young man in an orphanage in the provincial city of Letens, is Unranked by choice, and fights in an illegal pit to earn money for the children he lives with. He is not what he appears to be. Three years earlier he was Diago, the heir of the island kingdom of Suus, which the Republic conquered and whose royal family it destroyed. He is the only one left, and he has told nobody. His refusal to cede is personal, since the system that took Suus is the system he is being asked to feed, but it is also conspicuous, which is how he comes to the attention of people he would much rather have avoided.

Vis is offered a way out by Ulciscor Telimus, a senator of the Republic, who adopts him into the Telimus family. The price is an assignment. Vis is to win a place at the Catenan Academy, the school on the island of Solivagus that produces the Republic's rulers, and once inside, investigate the ancient ruins on its grounds. Ulciscor's brother Caeror died there years ago; Ulciscor believes the Academy's Principalis, Veridius, killed him, and that whatever Caeror found in the ruins is the reason. Vis accepts, because the arrangement gives him a name, a family and a legitimate reason to be somewhere he could otherwise never reach. He is trained for the entrance examinations and for Catenan society by Lanistia, a blind woman of Ulciscor's household who knew Caeror well, and he has to conceal both his origins and the fact that he still cedes nothing to anyone.

Vis's preparation is compressed and punishing, and the Academy's selection process is designed to exclude anyone without either a pedigree or exceptional ability. He gets in, and discovers that his position is worse than he anticipated. At a school where standing is everything, the adopted son of a minor senatorial house has almost none, and the internal rankings are contested continuously rather than settled once. He also has to manage the central lie of his situation, since the Academy assumes its students cede and Vis cannot. The first part of the book closes with him arriving on Solivagus, committed to an investigation he does not believe in, on behalf of a man he does not trust, in a place where being noticed at all is dangerous for him.

At the Academy Vis begins climbing the class rankings, which are decided by public contests of strategy, combat and scholarship, and learns quickly that ability alone will not carry him: the school's politics run on family, patronage and the shared assumption that the Republic's hierarchy is natural and correct. He acquires the beginnings of a circle. Callidus, a sardonic student from a fallen family, is the first to treat him as a person. Emissa is unaccountably willing to be seen with him. The relentless Aequa and the highly ranked Indol regard him as an intruder, and Eidhin is hostile for reasons of his own. Vis also starts looking, cautiously, at the ruins and at Veridius, who is admired by the entire school and who takes an interest in Vis that Vis cannot explain.

Vis's two lives begin pulling against each other. Ulciscor presses for progress on the ruins, the Academy demands total commitment to its rankings, and the Anguis, the rebel organisation that opposes the Hierarchy and is hunted by it, makes contact and applies pressure of its own that Vis can neither accept nor safely refuse. He learns that the ruins on Solivagus contain a labyrinth of pre-Republic origin, that Caeror and Veridius explored it together, that Caeror died inside it, and that Veridius has never stopped trying to reach its end. Vis's own past intrudes as well: people capable of recognising Diago of Suus exist, and the Republic's interest in Suus did not finish with the conquest.

Vis rises far enough in the Academy's rankings to be a contender rather than a curiosity, which makes him a target for everyone who assumed the top places were already spoken for. He gets into the ruins, confirms that the labyrinth is real and that it is a structure with rules rather than a collapsed building, and satisfies himself that Veridius's interest in it is not antiquarian. His relationships complicate the assignment badly: Callidus is a friend rather than an asset, and his attachment to Emissa is genuine, which is a liability for someone whose safety depends on being unreadable. The second part of the book ends with Vis committed to the Academy's final competition, the Iudicium, and with the question of what Caeror actually found no longer an academic one.

The Iudicium is run as a public contest and Vis is at the centre of it. The competition works against him as much as for him: what he can do without ceding is difficult to explain innocently, and the further he advances the more visible he becomes to exactly the people he has spent three years avoiding. Pressure arrives from every direction at once, from Ulciscor's demands, from the Anguis, from the Academy's own factions, and from Veridius, whose attention on him has become impossible to write off as coincidence. People close to Vis are hurt as a direct consequence of his being there, and the cost of Ulciscor's investigation stops being something Vis can treat as abstract.

The last stretch runs as a cascade. Vis is betrayed by someone he had come to depend on: Emissa was placed close to him deliberately and had been reporting on him from the start, and the deceptions on every side come apart together. He goes into the labyrinth beneath the Academy's ruins and completes it, which nobody has managed in living memory and which is what Veridius wanted from him all along. What he finds there answers Ulciscor's question about how and why Caeror died, and a much larger question besides. The Will that the Republic's citizens cede upward does not stop at the top of the Hierarchy. The whole structure of ranks and ceding exists to gather that Will and deliver it onward, and the Republic's account of itself as a civic order that rewards merit is the cover for that function. Vis ends the book alive and, in the Academy's terms, successful, but with his cover destroyed among the people best able to act on it, bound to parties he did not choose, and holding knowledge that makes him valuable to everyone and safe with no one.

Vis reaches the labyrinth beneath the Academy's ruins and completes it, which nobody has done in living memory, and which is what Veridius manoeuvred him toward from the moment he arrived on Solivagus. The arrangements Vis had been living inside collapse around the same event. Emissa's closeness to him was deliberate from the beginning and she had been reporting on him throughout. Ulciscor's real use for him is exposed. His own identity as the last of Suus's royal house stops being a secret he controls. He does get the answer Ulciscor sent him for, what happened to Caeror in the ruins and why, but it arrives attached to a far larger one. The Will that the Republic's citizens cede upward, rank by rank, does not terminate with the Hierarchy's rulers. The entire apparatus of ranks and ceding is a mechanism for gathering that Will and delivering it onward, and the Republic's account of itself as a meritocratic civic order exists to keep that function running unquestioned. Vis ends the book alive and, in the Academy's own terms, successful, but with his cover gone among precisely the people best placed to act on it, obligated to parties he did not choose, and holding knowledge that makes him valuable to everyone and safe with nobody. The Republic he set out merely to survive turns out to be a much larger problem than the one he thought he was hiding from.