“No. If we give them matches, then Titus will have even more power.”
“Does it matter at this point? They are going to get sick if they keep eating raw meat. They already are sick!”
“So they shit their pants,” I grunt. “There are worse things.”
“Tell me, Darrow. Would it be worse to have Titus in power and have Mars strong or for Darrow to be in power with Mars weak?”
“Better for whom?” I ask petulantly.
He only shakes his head.
“Let them rot their gory bellies,” is Cassius’s opinion. “They made their beds. Now let them shit in them.”
My army agrees.
I am fond of my army, the dregs, the lowDrafts. They aren’t as entitled or well-bred as the highDrafts. Most remember to thank me when I give them food—at first they didn’t. They don’t prance off after Titus on midnight axe-raids simply because it gets their jollies off. No, they follow us because Cassius is as charismatic as the sun and, in his light, the shadow I cast looks like it knows what it’s doing. It doesn’t. It, like me, was born in a mine.
Still, it does seem like I have some strategy. I have us make maps of our territory on digislates we found in a waterlogged cellar at the bottom of a ravine, but we still have no weapons other than my slingBlade and several knives and sharpened sticks. So whatever strategy we have is based in acquiring information.
Funny thing is, only one tribe has a silvershit’s idea what is going on. And it’s not ours. It’s not Antonia’s. And it sure as hell isn’t Titus’s. It’s Sevro’s, and I’m nearly certain he’s the only member in that tribe, unless he’s adopted wolves by now. It is hard to say if he has or hasn’t. Our House does not have family dinners. Though occasionally we’ll see him running along the hillsides at night in his wolfskin, looking, as Cassius put it best, “like some sort of hairy demonchild on hallucinogens.” And once Roque even heard something, not a wolf, howling in the shrouded highlands. Some days Sevro walks around all normalish—insulting everything that moves, except for Quinn. He makes an exception for her, delivering meats and edible mushrooms instead of insults. I think he’s sweet on her even though she’s sweet on Cassius.
We ask her to tell us stories about him, but she won’t. She’s loyal, and maybe that’s why she reminds me of home. She’s always telling good stories, most all of them certainly gilded lies. A life spark is in her, just like the one that was in my wife. She is the last of us to call Goblin “Sevro.” She’s also the only one who knows where he lives. Even with all our scouting, we can’t find a trace of where he sleeps. For all I know, he’s out taking scalps beyond the highlands. I know Titus has sent scouts to stalk him, but I don’t think they are successful. They can’t even follow me. I know that rubs Titus raw.
“I think he’s wanking off in the bushes,” Cassius chuckles. “Just waiting for us to all kill each other.”
It’s when Lea comes limping back to the castle that Roque seeks Cassius and me out.
“They beat her,” he says. “Not bad, but they kicked her in the stomach and took her day’s labor.”
“Who?” Cassius bristles. “Who’s the slagger?”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is they are hungry. So stop playing at an eye for an eye. This can’t go on,” Roque says. “Titus’s boys are starving. What do you expect they’d do? Hell, the big brute is hunting Goblin because he needs fire and food. If we just give that to him, we can unite the House, maintain civility. Maybe even Antonia will bring her tribe to reason.”
“Antonia? Reason?” Cassius asks, guffawing.
“Even if that happens, Titus will still be the most powerful,” I say. “And that’s not the cure for anything.”
“Ah. Yes. That’s something you can’t abide, someone else having power. Fine then.” Roque tugs at his long hair. “Talk to Vixus or Pollux. Take away his captains if you must. But heal the House, Darrow. Otherwise, we’ll lose when another House comes knocking.”
On the sixth day I take his advice. Knowing Titus is out raiding, I risk seeking Vixus in the keep. Unfortunately, Titus returns earlier than expected.
“You’re looking lively and spry,” he says to me before I can find Vixus in the keep’s stone halls. He blocks my path with his large body—shoulders nearly spanning the width of the wall. I feel another in the hallway behind me. Vixus and two others. My stomach sinks a little. It was stupid to do this. “Where are you going, if I may ask?”
“I wanted to compare our scouting maps to the main map in the command room,” I lie, knowing I have a digislate in my pocket.
“Oh, you wanted to compare scouting maps to the main map … for the good of Mars, noble Darrow?”
“What other good is there?” I ask. “We are all on the same side, no?”
“Oh, we are on the same side,” he says. Titus booms an insincere laugh. “Vixus, if we are on the same side, don’t you think it would be best if we shared his little maps with one another?”
“It would be for the very best,” Vixus agrees. “Mushrooms. Maps. All the same.” So he assaulted little Lea. His eyes are dead. Like raven eyes.
“Yes. So I’ll take a look for you, Darrow.” Titus snatches the scouting maps from me. There’s nothing I can do to stop him.
“You’re welcome to them,” I say. “So long as you know there are enemy fires to the far east and likely enemies in the Greatwoods to the south. Raid all you like. Just don’t get caught with your pants down.”
Titus sniffs the air. He wasn’t listening to me.
“Since we are sharing, Darrow.” He sniffs again, closer to my neck. “Perhaps you’ll share with us why you smell like woodsmoke.”
I stiffen, not knowing what to do.
“Look at him squirm. Look at him weave a lie.” Titus’s voice is all disgust. “I can smell your deceit. Smell the lies dripping from you like sweat.”
“Like a woman in heat,” Pollux says sardonically. He shrugs apologetically at me.
“Disgusting,” Vixus sneers. “He’s a vile thing. A wretched, womanish thing.” I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to turn him on Titus.
“You’re a little parasite,” Titus continues. “Nibbling away at morale because you will not come to heel; waiting for my noble boys and girls to starve.” They’re closing in on me from behind, from the sides. Titus is huge. Pollux and Vixus are cruel, nearly as big as I. “You’re a wretched creature. A worm in our spine.”
I shrug casually, trying to let them think I’m not worried.
“We can fix this,” I say.
“Oh?” Titus asks.
“The solution is simple, big man,” I counsel. “Bring your boys and girls home. Stop raiding Ceres every day before some other House comes in and slaughters you all. Then we’ll talk about fire. About food.”
“You think you can tell us what to do, Darrow? That the thrust of it?” Vixus asks. “Think you’re better because you scored higher on a stupid little test? Because the Proctors chose you first?”
“He does,” Titus chuckles. “He thinks he deserves Primus.”
Vixus’s hawkish face leans close to mine, lips sneering each word. Handsome in repose, his lips peel back cruelly now, and his breath stinks as he looks me over, measuring me and trying to make me think he’s not impressed. He snorts a contemptuous laugh. I see him shifting his head to spit on my face. I let him. The glob of phlegm hits and drips slowly down my cheek toward my lips.
Titus watches with a wolfish smile. His eyes glimmer; Vixus looks to him for encouragement. Pollux comes closer.
“You’re a pampered little prick,” Vixus says. His nose nearly brushes mine. “So that’s what I’m gonna take from you, goodman—your little prick.”
“Or you could let me leave,” I say. “You seem to be blocking the door.”
“Oho!” he laughs, looking at his master. “He’s trying to show he’s not afraid, Titus. Trying to avoid a fight.” He looks as me with those golden, dead eyes. “I’ve broken uppity boys like
you in the dueling clubs a thousand times.”
“You have?” I ask incredulously.
“Broken them like twigs. And then taken their girls for sport. What embarrassments I’ve made them in front of their fathers. What weeping messes I make of boys like you.”
“Oh, Vixus,” I say with a sigh, keeping the tremble of anger and fear out of my voice. “Vixus, Vixus, Vixus. There are no boys like me.”
I look back at Titus to make sure our eyes are joined when I casually, as if I were dancing, loop my Helldiver hand around and slam it into the side of Vixus’s neck at the jugular with the force of a sledgehammer strike. It ruins him, yet I hit him with an elbow, a knee, my other hand, as he falls. Had his legs been anchored better, the first strike might have snapped his neck in half. Instead, he cartwheels sideways in the low gravity, going horizontal and shuddering from my raining blows as he hits the ground. His eyes go blank. Fear rises in my belly. My body is so strong.
Titus and the others are too startled by the sudden violence to stop me as I spin past their outstretched hands and run down the halls.
I did not kill him.
I did not kill him.
24
TITUS’S WAR
I did not kill Vixus. But I killed the chance of uniting the House. I sprint down the keep’s winding stairwells. Shouts behind me. I pass Titus’s lounging students; they’re sharing bits of raw fish they managed to spear from the river. They could trip me if they knew what I’ve done. Two girls watch me go by and, hearing their leaders shouts, are too late in moving. I’m past their hands, past the keep’s lower gatehouse and into the main square of the castle.
“Cassius!” I call up at the gatehouse to the castle where my men sleep. “Cassius!” He peeks his head out the window and sees my face.
“Oh. Shit. Roque!” he shouts. “It happened! Raise the Dregs!”
Three of Titus’s boys and one of his girls chase after me across the courtyard. They’re slower than I, but another is coming from her post on the wall to cut me off, Cassandra. Her short hair jingles with bits of metal she’s woven in. Effortlessly, she hops down the eight meters from the parapet, an axe in hand, and races to intersect my path before I reach the stairs. Her golden wolf ring glimmers in the ebbing light. She’s a beautiful sight.
Then my entire tribe pours out of the gatehouse. They bring their makeshift packs, their knives and the beating sticks we carved from felled branches taken from our woods. But they do not set toward me. They are bright, so they crank open the huge double gates that separate the castle from the long sloping path leading down to the glen. Mist seeps through the open gate and they disappear into the murk. Only Quinn is left behind.
Quinn, the fastest of Mars. She bounds along the cobblestone like a gazelle, coming to my aid. Her beating stick twirls in the air. Cassandra doesn’t see her. A long golden ponytail flops in the chill night air as Quinn winds up, a smile on her face, and blindsides Cassandra from the flank, hitting her full-force in the knee with her beating stick. The crack of wood on strong Gold bone is loud. So is Cassandra’s scream. Her leg doesn’t break, but she flips onto the cobblestone. Quinn does not slow her stride. She swoops in beside me, and together we leave Titus’s pack behind.
We catch up with the others in the bowl of the glen. Setting across the rugged hills, we aim toward our northern fort in the deep mist-shrouded highlands. Vapor clings to our hair, dripping off in pearls. We reach the fort well past midnight. It is a cavernous, barren tower that leans over a ravine like a drunken wizard. Lichen covers the thick gray stone. Mist swaddles its parapets and we make our first meal of the birds in the eaves of the single tower. Some escape. I hear their wings in the dark night. Our civil war has begun.
Unfortunately, Titus is not a stupid enemy. He does not come for us as we thought he would. I had hoped he would come try and lay siege to our northfort, that his army would see our fires inside the stone walls and smell the meat as it sizzled in fat. The sheep we gathered earlier would have lasted us weeks, months if we had water. We could have feasted every night. They would have broken then. They would have left Titus behind. But Titus knows of my weapon, fire, so he avoids us so that his boys and girls cannot see what luxuries we have.
He does not let his tribe alone long enough to think. Frenzy, war, numb the sense in man. So they raid House Ceres from the sixth day on, and he creates trophies for acts of bravery and violence, giving boys and girls marks in blood on their cheeks that they bear proudly. We slink along watching their war parties from the brush and the tall grasses of the plains. Sometimes we gain a vantage on the southern highland peaks near Phobos. From there we witness the siege of House Ceres.
Around House Ceres, the smoke rises in a sullen crown. Apple trees are hewn down. Horses stolen. Titus’s raiders even lasso a torch from one of the Ceres ramparts in an attempt to bring fire to Mars’s castle. Ceres horsemen ride them down with pails of water before they reach home. Titus shrieks in rage when this happens and the Ceres horses fly by, dashing the flame with water before circling home. With his best soldier, Vixus, he upends one of the horses with a tree branch fashioned like a pike. The rider spills from the saddle and Pollux is on her. They take two more slaves that day and Titus takes the horse for himself.
It is on our eighth day in the Institute that I watch the siege with Cassius and Roque from the highlands. Today, Titus rides the captured horse beneath the wall of House Ceres with a lasso, daring their archers to shoot their arrows at him and his horse. One poor girl leans her head out to get a better angle with her bow. She draws the arrow back to her ear, aims, and just before she is about to loose the arrow, Titus hurls his lasso upward. It flails through the air. She jerks back. Not fast enough. The lasso loops her neck and Titus kicks his horse away from the wall, tightening the lasso. Her friends scramble to grab her. They hold tight but are forced to let go before her neck snaps.
Her friends’ screams echo across the plains as she’s jerked violently down from the top of the wall and dragged by Titus back to his cheering followers. There, Cassandra kicks the girl to her knees and enslaves her with our standard. The flames from the burning crops lick up into the twilight where several Proctors hover with flagons of wine and a tray of some rare delicacy.
“And violent hearts set harshest flame,” Roque murmurs from his knee.
“He’s bold,” I say deferentially, “and he likes this.” His eyes sparkled when I struck Vixus in the throat. Cassius nods along. “Too much.”
“He is lethal,” Cassius agrees, but he means something different. I look over at him. There’s a raw edge to his voice. “And he’s a liar.”
“Is he?” I ask
“He didn’t kill Priam.”
Roque becomes quiet. Smaller than us, he seems a child as he remains on a knee. His long hair is held in a ponytail. Dirt crusts his nails, which scrabble in tying his shoes as he looks up.
“He didn’t kill Priam,” Cassius repeats. The wind moans over the hills behind us. Night comes slow today. Cassius’s cheeks sink into shadow; still, he’s handsome. “They wouldn’t have put Priam with a monster like Titus. Priam’s a leader, not a warlord. They’d put Priam with someone easy like one of our Dregs.”
I know where Cassius is going with this. It’s in the way he watches Titus; the coldness in his eyes reminds me of a pitviper’s gaze as it follows its prey. My insides turn sour as I do it, but I lead Cassius in the direction he seems to want to go, inviting him to bite. Roque tilts his head at me, noticing something strange in my interaction with Cassius.
“And they would give Titus someone else,” I say.
“Someone else,” Cassius repeats, nodding.
Julian, he is thinking. He doesn’t say it. Neither do I. Better to let it fester in his mind. Let my friend think our enemy killed his brother. This is a way out.
“Blood begets blood begets blood begets blood …” Roque’s words into the wind, which carries west toward the long plain and toward the flames that dance in th
e low horizon. Beyond, the mountains hunker cold and dark. Snow already gathers on their peaks. It’s a sight to steal one’s breath, yet Roque’s eyes never leave my face.
I find it a small pleasure that Titus’s slaves are not very effective allies for him. Far from being indoctrinated as thoroughly as a Red might be, these newly made slaves are stubborn creatures. They follow orders or risk being labeled Shamed after graduation. But they purposefully never do more or less than he demands; it is their act of rebellion. They fight where he tells them to fight, whom he tells them to fight, even when they should retreat. They gather the berries he shows them, even if they know they are poisonous, and pile stones till the pile falls over. But if there is an open gate leading to the enemy’s fortress and Titus doesn’t tell them to go into it, they’ll stand there and pick their butts.
Despite the addition of slaves and the razing of Ceres’s crops and orchards, Titus’s force, which is quite sound at violence, is pitiful when they attempt to do anything else. His men empty their bowels in shallow latrines or behind trees or in the river in an attempt to poison the students of House Ceres. One of his girls even falls in after emptying her bowels into the water. She flails around in her own waste. It’s a scene of comedy, but laughter has become seldom except from the students of Ceres. They sit behind their high walls and catch fish from the river and eat breads from their ovens and honey from their apiaries.
In response to the laughter, Titus drags one of the male slaves up in front of the gate. The slave is a tall one with a long nose and a mischievous smile meant for the ladies. He thinks this is all a game till Titus cuts off one of his ears. Then he cries for his mother like a young child. He will never command warships.
The Proctors, even House Ceres’s, do not stop the violence. They watch from the sky in twos and threes, floating about as medBots whine down from Olympus to cauterize a wound or treat severe head trauma.
On the twentieth morning of the Institute, the defenders throw a basket of bread loaves down as Titus’s men attempt to batter in the tall gate with a felled tree. The besiegers end up fighting each other for the food only to find that the bread was baked around razor blades. The screams last till the afternoon.