Looking at Mutang, I understand that reason now, and it breaks my heart.
She stands slowly, walking to the window as if fleeing the decision. She stares out at a ship passing in the distant fog. “When Mother was alive, he used to ride with me through the forest. We’d stop at this wildblossom clearing and lay in the red flowers, arms out, pretending we were angels. That man is dead. Do with the new one as you like.”
17
What the Storm Brings
The Obsidians escort me to new quarters, Fitchner trailing along behind, pacing jovially on the marble floors. When we reach my door, he takes my hand.
“Well played, boyo. Good reading on her—knowing she wants what she can’t have. Gorydamn clever. Warms my heart to finally see you playing the game and winning, you little pisser.” He slugs my shoulder. “Tomorrow, we’ll go to market and buy you a servant. Pinks. Blues. Obsidians of your very own. For now … I left you a present.” He gestures into my room where a lithe Pink lies on the bed. “Enjoy.”
“You don’t know me at all. Do you?”
“This is the hand life has dealt you. It’s not a bad hand. Imagine the things you can do as a personal emissary of the Sovereign. She makes your Governor look like a small-town slumlord. You have your girl. You have opportunity. Embrace your new life.”
The door slams.
A new life, but is it worth the cost? I don’t know what’s happening with the Sons. That’s something I can’t affect. But he expects me to let Roque die? To let Tactus and Victra and Theodora perish to Praetorian death squads?
I walk around my suite, ignoring the Pink. Luna’s night clouds sprawl far as the eye can see beyond the huge bank of windows that comprises the suite’s north wall. Buildings puncture the clouds like glittering spears.
I am trapped by opulence.
Rain continues to pour. The storms of Luna are enigmatic creatures. For a man of Mars, it is a slow rain. Lethargic. As though the drops tire of their own fall in this low gravity. But the winds that come are gales. There are no cracks in the Citadel’s windows through which the wind can whistle. I miss the moans of my old castle on Mars. Miss the laments of the deepmines. Those moments when the drill cooled and I sat there touching my wedding band through my frysuit, thinking of how soon it would be that I had her lips to mine, her hands on my waist, her body drifting light as dust over my own.
I cannot think only of the Red girl. When I see the moon, I think of the sun: Mustang burns in my thoughts. If Eo smelled of rust and soil, then the Golden girl was of fire and autumn leaves.
Part of me wishes I would only remember Eo. That my mind belonged to her, so I could be like one of those knights of legend. A man so in love with one lost that he closes his heart to all others. But I am not that legend. In so many ways, I’m still a boy, lost and afraid, seeking warmth and love. When I feel dirt, I honor Eo. And when I see fire, I remember the warmth and flicker of the flames across Mustang’s skin as we lay in our chamber of ice and snow.
I examine the empty room, which smells neither of leaves nor soil, but cardamom. The room is too vast for my taste. Too rich. There is ivory on the walls. A sauna. A massage parlor adjacent to a pleasureChamber. There’s a commChair, a bed, a small swimming pool. These are my chambers now. I see on a dataFile that I’ve been given a fifty-million-credit stipend to choose my attendants. They left me an additional ten million to populate my harem. This is the price they pay me for betraying my friends. It is not enough.
My eyes now fall on the Pink who lies on my bed. Naked, covered only by a blanket. I threw it on her to mask her form, thinking of poor Evey when I first saw her. But the longer I look at this new girl, the harder it is to remember Evey, to remember Eo or Mustang. That’s what Pinks are for, to help you forget. So effective they even make you forget their own sad plight. When she grows old, she’ll be sold off from the Citadel staff to some high-class brothel. And a few more lines will form and she’ll be sold down the ladder and down the ladder till she has nothing more to give. It happens to men. It happens to women. And, I’m beginning to realize, it happens to Golds.
The Pink asks me to join her. To let her soothe what ails me. I don’t reply. I sit on the edge of the windowsill, my hands kneading my thighs, waiting. I don’t have my razor. Obsidians guard the hall outside. The glass window won’t break by any means I have at my disposal, but I do not worry. I sit watching the storm, feeling it brew inside myself.
With a hiss, the door opens. I turn, a smile already cracking my face.
“Mustang, I—”
Through the door slips a demure male Pink with white hair and eyes that’d break a thousand hearts in Lykos. It breaks mine now. I was wrong.
“Who are you?” I ask.
He sets a small onyx box down on my bed in front of the other Pink.
“Who is it from?” I demand.
“You’ll see, dominus,” he says. Daintily, he extends a hand to the other Pink, who, confused, takes it and follows him from the room. The door closes. I’m just as confused as the Pink. I rush to the box, opening it, and find a small holoCube. I activate it.
Mustang’s face appears, glowing. “Take cover,” she says.
The power goes out and the door locks by default. The room is plunged into darkness. Lightning lashes through the clouds outside; thunder rumbles. And I hear something. A howling. It is not the wind.
Another flash of lightning and he appears, floating in the bitter storm like the ugliest angel ever shit out of heaven. A wolfpelt hangs from his shoulders, whips in the wind. His black metal helmet is that of a wolfshead, and he’s armed to the bloody teeth.
Sevro has come, and he’s brought friends.
Lightning. Thunder again and this time it illuminates his slash of a smile and the eight floating killers behind him. Nine Howlers in all. Small, cruel little devils waiting in the darkness, silhouetted by the crackling of the storm’s electricity. Long-legged Quinn is there too.
I duck into the sauna as Sevro touches the glass with a pulseFist after setting up a jamField to absorb the sound. The glass ruptures inward. The distorted sound of the storm follows them as they thump down onto the carpeted marble floor. Wind whips at my bedsheets and tapestries. One by one they kneel—pudgy Pebble, cruel Harpy, spindly, open-faced Clown, and all the others.
“Friends. Get up!” I bellow. “You’re already short enough.”
They laugh and rise. Pebble and Clown rush forward and weld shut my metal door with plasma torches.
Water drips from Sevro’s hook nose as he nods toward me, his helmet absorbed into his armor. Hair buzzed in the shape of dragons. Quiet, and so full of derision, he hefts a huge, heavy bag in his other hand. And when he walks, he moves with disdain for this low gravity. As though it were a thing for weaklings and fools.
“Lord Reaper. You look like a Pixie ponce in this lady-den.” Sevro sweeps into a theatrical bow after he places the bag at my feet. “Perhaps that’s why Mustang believed you were in dire need of your gorydamn pack.”
“She brought you back from the Rim?”
“All of us,” Quinn says. “We’ve been here several weeks on standby. She needed men she knew wouldn’t be loyal to the Sovereign.”
An insurance policy. I can’t believe I ever doubted her.
In no world would Mustang help kill her father. I realized during my conversation with the Sovereign that it had to be why she’s here in first place—to infiltrate the Sovereign’s family like I infiltrated the Golds. As she entered the Sovereign’s suite, I remembered how before the duel she mentioned having her own plans. Now it finally clicks into place. They were both playing their own games, but I helped reveal the Sovereign’s hand.
The Sovereign wasn’t worried about me knowing anything, else why play the game? But as soon as Mustang entered the room, the paradigm altered. She should have concluded the game then and there. But her pride got the better of her.
As for Mustang, I knew she was with me as soon as she took the gold horse
ring I gave her from her pocket and slipped it onto her finger. My heart leaped in that moment, and I knew she’d find our way out of this.
“Sevro.” I smile and clasp his hand. “Our ArchGovernor is—”
“I know. Mustang briefed us.”
“Come here, you tall devil.” Quinn steps past the others and slips her thin arm around my waist and kisses my cheek. She smells like home. I have missed these people. The wind howls as it passes through our jamField. Sevro’s bionic eye glitters unnaturally in his pale face. Quinn has brought me gravBoots, ebony in color. I slip them on.
“Mustang might have brought us from the Rim. But we didn’t come for her. We didn’t come for Augustus. We came for you, Reaper,” Sevro snarls. Quinn frowns as Sevro spits on the pretty carpet. “We saw what you did to Cassius. And we want what you’re trying to make.”
“And that is?” I ask, more than a little confused.
“What poor killers always want. War,” he growls. “And all its spoils.”
“What of your father? He has a high place now.”
“Fitchner is a shiteater,” he sneers. “He’s made his bed. Let him sleep in it while we burn the house down.”
“Well, if you want war, if you want spoils, we better move. The ArchGovernor’s the one with an army.”
Quinn nods. “And Roque’s down there. And Tactus.”
“Tactus,” Sevro mutters, though I know the sneer on his face is for Roque. He watches Quinn, eyes sad for the smallest moment, before adjusting his armor.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask as I pull on the gravBoots and take the razor Pebble tosses me.
Sevro and Quinn look at each other and laugh. “Mustang’s fetching a ship. She said you’d figure the rest out,” Quinn says.
Just then the door behind me shudders and glows with a dilating pupil of red-hot metal. I slip the boots on, and as I do, I notice something. The bag that Sevro threw down. It moves.
Sevro smiles at me. I know that smile.
“Sevro?”
“Reaper.”
“What did you do?”
“Mustang brought us a package. Let’s just say”—Quinn grins at my shoulder—“it’s not their cook.”
I unzip the bag and gawk.
“Are you mad?” I ask him.
He just howls.
18
Bloodstains
Father once told me that a Helldiver can never stop. You stop and the drill can jam. The fuel burns too quickly. The quota might be missed. You never stop, just shift drills if the friction gets too hot. Caution comes second. Use your inertia, your momentum. That is why we dance. Transfer movement into more movement. Uncle Narol always told me to stop. He was wrong. Blew so many drill bits because of him.
Then again, Narol lived longer than Father, so maybe he has a point.
My Howlers jump with me out the window and we don’t stop when we dive into the black storm. We freefall, piercing the clouds without the use of our gravBoots. Like black rain screaming toward the ground. I’m first. I feel them behind me. My Howlers. The oxygen is thin at first. I hold my breath. My eyeballs nearly freeze in their sockets. Tears trickle out. My body shivers as the cold wind bites me.
We use our gravBoots now to cut across the Citadel. Skirt amongst the clouds to keep from sight. Villas beneath. Buildings, gardens, and parks. Barracks and statued plazas. A ripWing cuts through the sky. We slide behind a spire and stick there like spiders till our scanners say he’s passed. I shiver amidst my armored friends. Then we float down again. A kilometer from the villa. Weed carries Sevro’s present now. Slung around his back, it weighs him down a bit.
I land on the wall that surrounds the villa and separates it from the other compounds where the other notable families hunker in fear of what the night brings.
It’s warmer now we’re lower to the ground. Howlers land around me, looking like gargoyles on the wall. Darkness claims the villa’s grounds.
“We’re early?” I wonder. No signs of fighting. But the lights are out.
“Or late,” Sevro says, “if they were murdered in their beds.”
“They’re not stupid,” I say. “They wouldn’t just wait to be killed. This is to look like a Bellona massacre. The Sovereign won’t want to be implicated.” But what does that even mean? The Bellona would come with Grays, Obsidians, Golds, and despite all their vaunted honor, they would destroy every last woman and child with any means at their disposal. You do not let your foot off the throat of an enemy and remain powerful, as they have, for hundreds of years.
The killing will be silent, though. The Sovereign may control the Citadel, but chaos would bring unwelcome eyes, unwelcome variables, and it would make her look weak. Better to have the act done. Better to say the Bellona did it and damn what anyone thinks. With the Augustans dead, what is the point to mourning them? That’s how Golds think. But if they are alive having escaped assassination … well, that’s another thing entirely.
“Quinn.” I lean close so I can hear her whisper.
“Visual is too clear. If they have optics, they’ll spot us up on the wall.” She points to the roof. “We can make an incursion there. Sweep down level by level.” I hear the worry in her voice.
“We’ll get Roque,” I say. “Promise.” I pat her arm. “Sevro, how long till we have the shuttle?”
“Mustang is ten out,” Sevro says.
I pop my neck and rub the rain between my fingers. “Per aspera ad astra.”
“Through the thorns to the stars,” Sevro snickers. “You fancy little fart. Omnis vir lupus.” Everyone a wolf. The Howlers flash smiles to one another, and we rip away from the wall.
We land on the roof. Silent and dark. Weed stays on the high wall with Mustang’s present squirming in the bag. Predators, we stalk over clay tiles in through a window on the villa’s seventh level, two at a time. The place is a complex. Dozens of rooms. Seven levels. Fountains running throughout. Baths. Basement. Steam rooms. Their infrared is worthless, then. Too much hot water going through pipes. It’s quiet as a crypt in here.
We creep along, checking the bedrooms, flowing like water around one another as we did at the Institute. Sevro and Thistle ghost ahead, scouting. GravBoots deactivated so the hum can’t be heard. There’s not a soul to be seen. Every room empty, beds unmade, including the ArchGovernor’s. The Augustans are not here. So where are they?
They’ve no military armaments besides some armor and razors and a few pulseFists. The bodyguards were wiped out before they even returned to the villa. Augustus and his entourage couldn’t have climbed the walls. Perhaps they flew away on gravBoots? But they would have been spotted. Shot down. We only slipped in because we’re unexpected.
“Captured?” Sevro asks.
No. For the Praetorians tonight, the only good Augustan is a dead one.
Pop.
We all look at one another. A jamField has just gone up. A big one. We’re inside it. Likely, the whole villa complex is inside it. Something’s about to happen. I glance out the window and see a shadow moving across the garden lawn. Three shadows in the rain. I duck and signal Sevro. Praetorians. GhostCloaks. My heart makes my rib cage rattle.
He moves to the window, about to jump out to try and kill them. I pull him back.
“What the hell are you doing?” I whisper.
He scowls. “I want to kill someone.”
“Not yet, dammit. We’re not an army.”
No one on the seventh level. We go down a circular marble stairwell. Their oiled armor creaks softly, echoing down the cavernous stairwell. We can see the marble of the first level more than a hundred feet beneath, but no movement. The first blood is found on the sixth level, seeping from the steam room. Pull the door open, heart throbbing into my throat, ready to see mutilated Golds. It’s a sadder sight.
More than twenty Pinks, Browns, and Violets thought to hide in this room. The Bellona and Praetorians found them. Killed them. It is a queer sight. Each death so clean. Jab wounds to the skull. Just s
hows how little chance these poor servants had. The Golds put them down like cattle. I search through them frantically, hoping not to find her. Praying. She’s not here— Theodora must be with the rest of them.
A cold rage fills me. I feel it seep into the Howlers.
We find the first dead Gold at the stairwell down to the fifth floor. An old knight of my house. His death was not pretty. We find another dead man further on by a gravLift. He fell as if defending the lift while others descended.
Out the window, I glimpse the Augustan lancer who mocked my skills with the razor on the shuttle down. She rushes from the house to the gardens. A shape coalesces out of the darkness. A Gold Praetorian with purple fringe to his black armor chases her down. Two Bellona Obsidians hem her in, forcing her to turn straight into her pursuer. He kills her with one swing. Nothing to be done. Her death is so fast. One moment she is panting, fearing, running. The next, both parts of her fall to the ground.
“These Praetorian don’t play with their food,” Sevro mutters. Quinn looks at me, her eyes tracing the absence of armor or a helmet to give me protection. She offers her own. I ignore her.
“Darrow, we didn’t come all this way to watch you die of a blow to the head.”
“Get off it,” I say to her. “Roque will write a thousand gory poems if you get so much as a bump on yours.”
“Keep the helmet, Q,” Sevro begs. “If only because I hate poems.”
I let my borrowed razor slither into my palm and move through the level. At the door of each room, my blood races. I expect to find Roque’s corpse. Expect to see Victra’s mangled body.
Sevro holds up a hand at the fourth-floor stairwell and motions me forward. I slip toward him with Quinn and peer down. Dust rises up the circular stairwell. Beyond it, on the bottom-floor landing, shadows move. But there is no noise. Sevro bends and places a piece of debris on the edge of a banister, gesturing me to watch. The Howlers cluster around, staring at it, and I stiffen. Though there is no sound, the piece of debris rocks slightly.