Red Rising

34
The Northwoods

There is agony.

And claustrophobia.

I am sick and wounded.

The pain is in dreams.

It is in darkness. In the pit of my stomach.

I wake up and scream into a gentle hand.

I glimpse someone.

Eo? I whisper her name and reach up. My muddy hand smears her face. Her angel’s face. She’s come to take me to the vale. Her hair has turned Golden. I always thought she could be Golden. Her Colors are golden wings. No Red Sigil on her hands. It took death.

I sweat despite the rains and snows that come. Something shelters me. I shiver. Clutch my scarlet headband. Mud in my hair. Eo washes it away. Tenderly strokes my brow. I love her. Something inside me bleeds. I hear Eo speak to herself, to someone. I haven’t long. Have I time at all? Am I in the vale? There is mist. There is sky and a great tree.

I shiver and sweat. Rot in hell, Cassius. I was your friend. I might have killed your brother, but I had no choice. You did. You arrogant slag. I hate him. I hate Augustus. I see them hanging Eo together. They mock me. They laugh at me. I hate Antonia. I hate Fitchner. I hate Titus. I hate. I hate. I am burning and mad and sweating. I hate the Jackal. The Proctors. I hate. I hate myself for all I’ve done. All I’ve done. For what? To win a game. To win a game for someone who will never know about anything I do. Eo is dead. It isn’t as if she will ever be coming back to see all I have done for her.

Dead.

Then I wake. The pain is there in my gut. It goes through me. But I no longer sweat. The fever is gone, and the angry red lines of infection have faded. I’m in a cave’s mouth. There’s a small fire and a sleeping girl just inches away. Furs cover her. She breathes softly the smoky air. Her hair is tousled and gold. She isn’t Eo. Mustang.

I cry silently. I want Eo. Why can’t I have her? Why can’t I will her back into life? I want Eo. I don’t want this girl beside me. It aches worse than the wound. I can never fix what happened to Eo. I couldn’t even run my army. I couldn’t win. I couldn’t beat Cassius, not to mention the Jackal. I was the best Helldiver; I’m nothing here. The world is too big and cold. I am too small. The world has forgotten Eo. It has already forgotten her sacrifice. There’s nothing left.

I sleep again.

When I wake, Mustang sits by the fire. She knows I’m awake but lets me pretend otherwise. I lie there with my eyes closed, listening to her hum. It’s a song I know. It is a song I hear in dreams. The echo of my love’s death. The song sung by the one they call Persephone. Hummed by an Aureate, an echo of Eo’s dream.

I weep. If ever I’ve felt there was a God, it is now as I listen to the mournful chords. My wife is dead, but something of hers lingers still.

I speak to Mustang the next morning.

“Where did you hear that song?” I ask her without sitting up.

“From the HC,” she says, blushing. “A little girl sang it. It’s soothing.”

“It’s sad.”

“Most things are.”

It has been four weeks, Mustang tells me. Cassius is Primus. Winter has come. Ceres is no longer under siege. Jupiter’s soldiers sometimes come into the woods. There are sounds of battle between the two superpowers of the North, Jupiter and Mars. Jupiter to the west, Mars to the east. Since the river froze, they’ve been able to cross and raid one another. Our buzzards have risen out of their winter gulches. Hungry wolves howl at night. Crows flock from the south. But Mustang really knows very little, and I grow impatient with her.

“Keeping you breathing was a little distracting,” she reminds me. Her standard lies underneath a blanket near my feet. She’s the last of House Minerva. Yet unbridled. And she didn’t enslave me.

“Slaves are stupid,” she says. “And you’re already a gimp. Why make you stupid too?”

It is days before I’m able to walk. I wonder where those nifty medBots are now. Tending someone the Proctors like, no doubt. I won Primus and they never gave it to me. Now I know why the Jackal will win. They are getting rid of his competition.

Mustang stalks with me through the woods during the next weeks. I move stiffly through the thick snow but my strength is returning. She credits medicine she found lying conspicuously under a bush. A friendly Proctor placed it there. We pause when we spot the deer. I draw the bow, but I can’t get the string to my ear. My wound aches. Mustang watches me. I try again. Pain deep inside. I let the arrow fly. We eat leftover rabbit that night. It tastes funny and gives me cramps. I always have cramps now. It’s the water too. We have nothing to boil it in. No iodine. Just snow and a little creek to drink from. Sometimes we can’t have fire.

“You should have killed Cassius or sent him away,” Mustang tells me.

“Would have thought you nobler than that,” I say as I skin the rabbit we caught.

“I like to win. Family trait. And sometimes cheating is in the rulebook.” She smiles. “You get a merit bar every time you recapture your standard. So I arranged for it to be lost to House Diana by someone else several times. Then rode out to capture it. Got to Primus in a week.”

“Tricky. Yet your army liked you,” I say.

“Everyone likes me. Now eat your damn rabbit. You’re skinny as a cadaver.”

The winter grows colder. We live in the deep north woods, far north of Ceres, northwest of my former highlands. I have not yet seen a soldier of Mars. I don’t know what I would do if I did.

“I’ve hidden from everyone but you,” Mustang says. “It keeps me alive and ticking.”

“What’s your plan?” I ask.

She laughs at herself. “To be alive and ticking.”

“You’re better at it than I am.”

“How do you mean?”

“No one in your House would have betrayed you.”

“Because I didn’t rule like you,” she says. “You have to remember, people don’t like being told what to do. You can treat your friends like servants and they’ll love you, but you tell them they’re servants and they’ll kill you. Anyway, you put too much stock in hierarchy and fear.”

“Me?”

“Who else? I could spot it a mile away. All you cared about was your mission, whatever it is. You’re like a driven arrow with a very depressing shadow. First time I met you, I knew you’d cut my throat to get whatever it is you want.” She waits for a moment. “What is it that you want, by the way?”

“To win,” I say.

“Oh, please. You’re not that simple.”

“You think you know me?” The rabbit hisses out fat over the fire.

“I know you cry in your sleep for a girl named Eo. Sister? Or a girl you loved? It is a very offColor name. Like yours.”

“I’m a farplanet hayseed. Didn’t they tell you?”

“They wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t get out much.” She waves a hand. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. All that matters is that no one trusts you because it’s obvious you care more about your goal than you do about them.”

“And you’re something different?”

“Oh, very much so, Sir Reaper. I like people more than you do. You are the wolf that howls and bites. I am the mustang that nuzzles the hand. People know they can work with me. With you? Hell, kill or be killed.”

She’s right.

When I had a tribe, I did it right. I made every boy and every girl love me. Made them earn their keep. I taught them how to kill a goat as if I knew how. I gave them fire as if I had created the matches. I shared a secret with them—that we had food and Titus didn’t. They saw me as their father. I remember it in their eyes. When Titus was alive, I was a symbol of goodness and hope. Then when he died… I became him.

“Sometimes I forget that the Institute is meant to teach me things,” I say to Mustang.

I must learn better than them, not simply beat them. That is how I will help Reds. I am a boy. I am foolish. But if I learn to become a leader, I can be more than an agent of the Sons of Ares. I can give my people a future. That is what Eo wanted.

The wolves are hungry now. They howl in the night. When Mustang and I make a kill, we sometimes have to scare them off. But when we kill a caribou at dusk, a pack descends from the northlands. They come from the trees like dark specters. Shadows. The biggest of them is my size. His fur is white. The fur of the others is gray, no longer black. These wolves change with the season. I watch how they surround us. Each moves with individual cunning. Yet each moves as part of a pack.

“This is how we should fight,” I whisper to Mustang as we watch the wolves approach.

“Could we talk about this later?”

We take down the pack leader with three arrows. The rest flee. Mustang and I set to skinning the big white brute. As she slips her knife along beneath the fur, she looks up, nose red from the cold.

“Slaves aren’t part of the pack, so we can’t fight like them. Not that it matters. The wolves don’t have it right either. They take too much from their pack leader. Cut off the head, the body retreats.”

“So the answer is autonomy,” I say.

“Maybe.” She bites her lip.

Later that night, she elaborates. “It’s like a hand.” She sits close and cozy, leg touching mine. Close enough for guilt to crawl along my spine. The caribou roasts, filling the cave with a fine, thick aroma. A blizzard rages outside and the wolf fur dries over the fire.

“Give me your hand,” she says. “Which is your best finger?”

“They are all better at different things.”

“Don’t be obstinant.”

I tell her my thumb. She has me try to hold a stick with only my thumb. She easily pulls it from my grasp. Then she has me hold it without my thumb and only the other fingers. With a twist, the stick is free.

“Imagine that your thumb is your Housemembers. The fingers are all the slaves you have conquered. The Primus or whoever is the leader is the brain. It all works pretty gory seamlessly. Yeah?”

She can’t pull the stick from my grip. I set it down and ask her the point.

“Now try to do something beyond simply grabbing the standard. Just move your thumb counterclockwise and your fingers clockwise except your middle.”

I do it. She stares at my hands and laughs incredulously. “Ass.” I ruined her demonstration. Helldivers are dexterous. I watch her hands as she tries to do it too. Of course she fails. I understand.

“A hand is like the Society,” I say.

It is the structure of the armies at the Institute. The hierarchy is good for simple tasks. Some fingers are more important than others. Some are better at certain things. All fingers are controlled by the highest order, the brain. The brain’s control is effective. It makes your thumb and fingers work together. But the single brain’s control is limited. Imagine each one of the fingers had a brain of its own that interacted with the main brain. The fingers obey, but they function independently. What could the hand do then? What could an army do? I twirl the stick along my fingers in intricate patterns. Exactly.

Her eyes linger on mine, and her fingers trace along my palm as she explains. I know she wants me to react to her touch, but I force my mind to be lost on other things.

This idea of hers isn’t part of the Proctors’ lesson.

Their lesson is about the evolution from anarchy to order. It is about control. About the systematic accumulation of power, the structure of that power, and then its preservation. It is a model to show that the Rule of Hierarchies is the best. The Society is the final evolution, the only answer. She just slagged that rule, or at least showed its limitations.

If I could earn the voluntary allegiance of the slaves, the army created would look nothing like the Society. It would be better. Like if the Reds of Lykos thought they could actually win the Laurel, they would be so much more productive. Or if a Praetor on board his starcruiser could utilize not only his own genius, but that of his crew of Blues.

Mustang’s strategy is Eo’s dream.

It’s like an electric shock jolts through me.

“Why didn’t you try it with the slaves you captured?”

She pulls her hand away from mine after I don’t respond to her touch.

“I tried.”

She’s quiet the rest of the night. Near morning, she develops a cough.

Mustang takes sick over the next few days. I hear fluid in her lungs and feed her broth made from marrow and wolf and leaves boiled in a helmet I found. She looks like she will die. I don’t know what to do. We’re low on food, so I hunt. But the game is scarce and the wolves are hungry. Prey has fled these woods, so we survive on small hares. All I can do is keep her warm and pray a medBot descends from the clouds. The Proctors know where we are. They always know where we are.

I find human tracks in the woods the next week. A set of two. I follow them to an abandoned campsite, hoping they might have food I can steal. There are animal bones and embers still hot. No horses, though. Probably not scouts then. Oathbreakers, the Shamed who have broken their vows after being enslaved. There’s plenty of them now.

I follow their tracks through the woods for an hour before I grow worried. They circle back around, leading somewhere familiar, leading to our cave. It is night by the time I return. I hear laughter from the home I share with Mustang. The arrow feels thin in my fingers as I nock it on the bowstring. I should kneel to gather my breath. My wound aches. I pant. But I can’t give them more time. Not if they have Mustang.

They cannot see me as I stand at the edge of the frozen caribou skin and hard-packed snow that walls off our cave from sight and elements. The fire crackles inside. Smoke seeps out through vents Mustang and I took a day in making. Two boys sit together eating what’s left of our meat, drinking our water.

They are dirty and ragged. Hair like greased weeds. Stained complexions. Blackheads. Once beautiful, I’m sure. One boy sits on Mustang’s chest. The girl who saved my life is gagged and in her undergarments. She shivers from the cold. One of the boys bleeds from a bite wound on his neck. They are planning on making her pay for that wound. Knives heat till red in the fire. One boy obviously enjoys the sight of her nakedness. He reaches to touch her skin as though she’s a toy meant for his pleasure.

My thoughts are primal, wolflike. A terrifying emotion sweeps over me, one that I did not know I had for this girl. Not till now. It takes a moment to calm myself and stop my hands from shaking. His hand is on the inside of her thigh.

I shoot the first boy in the kneecap. The second I shoot as he reaches for a knife. I’m a bad aim. I get his shoulder instead of his eye socket. I slide into the shelter with my skinning knife, ready to finish the boys off as they howl in pain. Something in me, the human part, has turned off, and it’s only when I see Mustang’s eyes that I stop.

“Darrow,” she says softly.

Even shivering, she is beautiful—the small, quicksmiling girl who brought me back to life. The bright-eyed soul who keeps Eo’s song alive. I shudder with anger. If I had been ten minutes later in returning, this night could have broken me forever. I cannot bear another death. Especially not Mustang’s.

“Darrow, let them live,” she says again, whispering it to me as Eo would whisper she loved me. It cuts to my core. I can’t take the sound of her voice, the anger inside me.

My mouth doesn’t work. My face is numb; I can’t lose the grimace of rage that controls it. I drag the two boys out by their hair and kick them till Mustang joins us. I leave them moaning in the snow and return to help her dress. She feels so fragile as I pull her animal skins around her bony shoulders.

“Knife or snow,” she asks the boys when she’s dressed. She holds the knives heated in the fire in her trembling hands. She coughs. I know what she’s thinking. Let them go and they kill us as we sleep. Neither will die from their wounds. The medBots would come if that were the case. Or maybe they won’t for Oathbreakers.

They choose snow.

I’m glad. Mustang didn’t want to use the knife.

We tie them to a tree at the edge of the woods and light a signal fire so that some House will find them. Mustang insisted on coming along, coughing all the way, as if she were worried I wouldn’t do as she asked. She was right to think that.

In the night, after Mustang has gone to sleep, I get up to go back and kill the Oathbreakers. If Jupiter or Mars finds them, then they will spill where we are and we will be taken.

“Don’t, Darrow,” she says as I pull back the caribou skin. I turn. Her face peers out from our blankets.

“We will have to move if they live,” I say. “And you’re already sick. You’ll die.”

We have warmth here. Shelter.

“Then we will move in the morning,” she says. “I’m tougher than I look.”

Sometimes that is true. This time it is not.

I wake in the morning to find that she shifted in the night to curl into me for warmth. Her body is so frail. It trembles like a leaf in the wind. I smell her hair. She breathes softly. Salt tracks mark her face. I want Eo. I wish it were her hair, her warmth. But I don’t push Mustang away. There’s pain when I hold her, but it comes from the past, not from Mustang. She is something new, something hopeful. Like spring to my deep winter.

When morning comes, we move deeper into the woods and make a lean-to shelter against a rock face with fallen trees and packed snow. We never find out what happened to the Oathbreakers or our cave.

Mustang can barely sleep, she coughs so much. When she sleeps curled into me, I kiss the nape of her neck softly, softly so that she will not wake; though I secretly wish she would if just to know that I’m here. Her skin is hot. I hum the Song of Persephone.

“I can never remember the words,” she whispers to me. Her head lies in my lap tonight. “I wish I did.”

I have not sung since Lykos. My voice is raspy and raw. Slowly the song comes.

“It is strange,” she says.

“What is?”

“Father told me that there would be riots because of that song. That people would die. But it is such a soft melody.” She coughs blood into a pelt. “We used to sing songs by the campfire, out in the country, where he kept us out of…” coughs again “… of the public… eye. When… my brother died… Father never sang with me again.”

I know she will die soon. It’s only a matter of time. Her face is pale, her smiles feeble. There’s only one thing I can do, since the medBots haven’t come. I will have to leave her to seek out medicine. One of the Houses might have found some or received injectables as a bounty. I’ll have to go soon, but I need to get her food first.

Someone follows me that day as I hunt alone in the winter woods. I wear my new white wolfcloak. They are camouflaged as well. I do not see whoever it is, but he is there. I pretend my bowstring needs fixing and steal a glance back. Nothing. Quiet. Snow. The sound of wind on brittle branches. They still follow as I move along.

I feel them behind me. It’s like the ache in my body from my wound. I pretend to see a deer and pass quickly through a thicket only to scramble up a tall pine on the other side.

I hear a pop.

They pass beneath me. I feel it on my skin, in my bones. So I shake the branches under my legs. Gathered snow tumbles down. A distorted hollow in the shape of a man forms in the snowfall. It is looking at me.

“Fitchner?” I call down.

His bubblegum pops again.

“You may come down now, boyo,” Fitchner barks up. He deactivates his ghostCloak and gravBoots and sinks into the snow. He’s wearing a thin black thermal. My layered fatigues and stinking animal skins don’t keep me half as warm.

It’s been weeks since I last saw him. He looks tired.

“Going to finish what Cassius started?” I ask as I hop down.

He looks me over and smirks. “You look horrible.”

“You do too. The soft bed, warm food, and wine giving you trouble?” I point up. We can just barely see Olympus between the skeletal branches of the winter trees.

He smiles. “Readout says you’ve lost twenty pounds.”

“Baby fat,” I tell him. “Cassius’s ionSword carved it off.” I pull up my bow and point it at him. I wonder if he’s wearing pulseArmor. It’ll stop anything short of pulseWeapons and razors. Only recoilPlate can gird off those weapons—and even then, not well. “I should shoot you.”

“You wouldn’t dare. I’m a Proctor, boyo.”

I shoot him in the thigh. Except the arrow loses velocity before it hits the invisible pulseShield, which flickers iridescent, and the arrow bounces to the ground. So they wear it at all times, even when they don’t wear pulseArmor.

“Well, that was petulant.” He yawns.

PulseShield, gravBoots, ghostCloak, looks like he has a pulseFist too, and a razor. Snow melts as it touches his skin. He saw me in the tree, so I’m guessing his eyes have injected optics. Certainly thermal scopes and night vision. He has a widget and an analyzerMod too. He knew my weight. Probably knows my white blood cell count. What about spectrum analysis?

He yawns again. “Little sleep these days on Olympus. Busy days.”

“Who gave the Jackal the holo of me killing Julian?” I ask.

“Well, you don’t dally away time.”

He did something just as I spoke, and the sound around us localizes. I can’t hear anything beyond an invisible five-meter bubble. Didn’t know they had toys like that.

“The Proctors gave it to the Jackal,” he tells me.

“Which ones?”

“Apollo. All of us. Doesn’t matter.”

I don’t understand. “I assume it’s because they favor the Jackal. Am I right?”

“As usual.” His gum pops. “Unfortunately, you’re just not allowed to win, and you were gaining momentum. Sooo…”

I ask him to explain. He says he just did. His eyes are ringed and tired despite the collagen and cosmetics he now wears to cover his fatigue. His stomach has grown. Arms are still skinny. Something worries him, and it isn’t just his appearance.

“Allowed to?” I echo. “Allowed to. No one can be allowed to win. I thought the gorydamn point was to carve our own ladder to the top. So if I’m not allowed to win, that means the Jackal is.”

“Pegged it.” He doesn’t sound very happy.

“Then that doesn’t make any lick of sense. It corrupts the entire thing,” I say hotly. “You broke the rules.”

The best of Gold is supposed to rise, yet they already have chosen a winner. Not only does this ruin the Institute, it ruins the Society. The fittest reign. That’s what they say. Now they’ve betrayed their own principles by taking sides in a schoolyard fight. This is the Laurel all over again. Hypocrisy.

“So this kid is what? A predestined Alexander? A Caesar? A Genghis? A Wiggin?” I ask. “This is slagging nonsense.”

“Adrius is the son of our dear ArchGovernor Augustus. That’s all that matters.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that, but why is he supposed to win? Simply because his father is important?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Be more specific.”

He sighs. “The ArchGovernor has secretly threatened and bribed and cajoled all twelve of us till we came to agree upon the fact that his son should win. But we have to be careful in our cheating. The Drafters, my real bosses, watch every move from their palaces, ships, et cetera. They are very important people as well. And then there’s the Board of Quality Control to worry about, and the Sovereign and Senators and all the other Governors themselves. Because, though there are many schools, any of them can watch you whenever they like.”

“What? How?”

He taps my wolf ring.

“Biometric nanoCam. Don’t worry, it’s showing them something else right now. I threw down a jamField, and anyway, there’s a half-day delay for editing purposes. All other times, any Drafter, any Scarred, can watch you to see if they would like to offer you an apprenticeship when this is over. Oh, do they like you.”

Thousands of Aureates have been watching me.

My insides, already cold, tighten.

Demetrius au Bellona, Imperator of the Sixth Fleet, father of Cassius and Julian, Drafter of House Mars, has watched me kill one son and deceive the other. It takes the wind out of me. What if I had told Titus that I knew he was a Red because I was a Red? Did they notice him say “bloodydamn”? Did I say he was a Red out loud or was that just in my head?

“What if I take the ring off?”

“Then you disappear, except for the cameras we have hidden in the battlefield.” He winks. “Don’t tell anyone. Now, if the Drafters discovered the ArchGovernor’s scheme… there will be hell to pay. Tension between the school Houses, certainly. But more importantly, there could be a Blood War between the Augustuses and Bellonas.”

“And you’ll be in trouble if they find out about the bribery?”

“I’ll be dead.” He fails in trying a smile.

“That’s why you look like hell. You’re in the middle a shit storm. So how do I fit into this?”

He chuckles dryly.

“Many Drafters like you. Those of House Mars get to offer you your first apprenticeships, but you can entertain offers outside the House. If you die, they will be very unhappy. Especially the Sword of House Mars. His name is Lorn au Arcos; no doubt you’ve heard of him. He is prime good with his razor.”

“How. Do. I. Fit. In?” I repeat.

“You don’t. Stay alive. Stay out of the Jackal’s path. Otherwise, Jupiter or Apollo will kill you and there will be nothing I can do to stop it.”

“So they’re his guard dogs, eh?”

“Amongst others, yes.”

“Well, if they kill me, the Drafters would know something is wrong.”

“They won’t. Apollo will use other Houses to do it or we’ll do it ourselves and edit out the footage from the nanoCams. Apollo and Jupiter are not stupid. So don’t fiddle with them. Let the Jackal play and you’ll have a future.”

“And so will you.”

“And so will I.”

“I understand,” I say.

“Good. Good. I knew you’d see sense. You know, many of the Proctors like you. Minerva even does. She hated you at first, but since you let Mustang go, she’s been able to stay around on Olympus. Much less embarrassing that way.”

“She’s allowed to stay around on Olympus?” I ask innocently.

“Naturally. It’s the rules of the Institute. Once your House is defeated, the Proctor heads home to face the music and explain what went wrong to the Drafters.” Fitchner’s smile contorts when he sees the sudden glimmer in my eyes.

“So if their House is destroyed, they have to leave? And it was Apollo and Jupiter who want me dead, you say?”

“No…,” he begs, suddenly hearing the menace in my voice.

I tilt my head. “No?”

“You… can’t!” he sputters, confused. “I just told you, the Sword of the damn House Mars wants you as an apprentice. And there are others—Senators, Politicos, Praetors. Don’t you want a future?”

“I want to rip the Jackal’s balls off. That’s all. Then I will find my apprenticeship. I imagine it will be an impressive one if I do that.”

“Darrow! Be reasonable, man.”

“Fitchner, my friends Roque and Lea died because of the ArchGovernor’s meddling. Let’s see how he likes it when I make his son, the Jackal, my slave.”

“You’re mad as a Red!” he says with a shake of his head. “You’re screwing with the Proctors’ livelihoods. None are content with their current station. They are all looking to ascend as well. If you threaten their futures, Apollo and Jupiter will come down and they will cut off your head!”

“Not if I destroy their Houses first.” I frown. “Because don’t they have to leave if I do that? Someone reliable told me those were the rules.” I clap my hands together. “Now, I have another friend who is dying and I’d like some antibiotics. It’d be prime if you could give me some.”

He gawps at me. “After this why would I?”

“Because you’ve been a piss-poor Proctor up until now. You owe me bounties. And you have your own future to look after.”

He snorts a defeated laugh. “Fair enough.”

He takes an injectable from a medcase on his leg and hands it to me. I notice how the pulseArmor doesn’t hurt me when his hand touches mine. So they can turn it off. I thank him by clapping his shoulder affectionately. He rolls his eyes. The armor is turned off over the entire body. Then it’s back. I hear the microhum at his waist where the contraption sits. Now that I’ve got Proctors for enemies, it’s a good thing to know.

“So what will you do?” Fitchner asks.

“Who is more dangerous? Apollo or Jupiter? Be honest, Fitchner.”

“Both are monsters of men. Apollo is more ambitious. Jupiter is simple—he just enjoys playing god here.”

“Then House Apollo first. After that, I’ll crush Jupiter. And when they are gone, who will protect the Jackal?”

“The Jackal,” he laughs.

“Then we’ll see if he really does deserve to win.”

Before I go, Fitcher tosses a small package on the ground.

“Not that it matters now, but this was given to me. I was told to say that you’re to know that your friends have not forsaken you.”

“Who?”

“I cannot say.”

Whoever gave it to him is a friend, because inside the box is my Pegasus, and inside that is Eo’s haemanthus blossom. I put the Pegasus necklace about my neck.

35
Oathbreakers

My friends are with me. What would they mean by that? Which friends? The Sons of Ares? Or was the mystery friend being more general, alluding to those who support my chances at the Institute? Do they know the significance of the Pegasus? Or were they simply reuniting me with something she thought I might miss?

So many questions; none of them matter. They are outside the game. The game. What else is there but the game? All the true things in the world, all my relationships, all my aspirations and needs, are wrapped up in this game, wrapped up in me winning. To win, I’ll need an army, but it cannot be made of slaves. Not again. I now need, as I’ll need at the head of a rebellion, followers, not slaves.

Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.

A week after I inject Mustang and her fever fades, we set off to the north. Her strength grows the more we move. Her cough is gone and her quick smile returns. Sometimes she needs a rest, but soon she comes close to outpacing me. She lets me know it too. We make as much noise as possible when we move to draw our prey to us. On the sixth night of setting obnoxiously large fires, we get our first nibble.

The Oathbreakers come along a stream, using its sounds to mask their approach. I like them immediately. Were our fire not a trap, they would have caught us unawares. But it is a trap, and when two step into the light, we almost spring it. Yet if they are smart enough to come along the stream, they are smart enough to leave someone in the dark. I hear an arrow nock on a bowstring. Then there’s a yelp. Mustang takes the one in the dark. I take the other two. I stand up from my snowpile, my wolfcloak shedding snow, and knock them down from behind with the flat of my bow.

Afterwards, the one Mustang struck nurses his swollen eye by our fire as I speak with their leader. Her name is Milia. She’s a tall willow with a long horseface and a slight hunch to her shoulders. Rags and stolen furs cover her bony frame. The other uninjured one is Dax. Short, comely, with three frostbitten fingers. We give them extra furs and I think that makes all the difference in the conversation.

“You understand we could make you slaves, yes?” Mustang asks, brandishing her standard. “So you’d be twice Oathbreakers and twice shunned once this game is over.”

Milia doesn’t seem to care. Dax does. The other just follows Milia.

“Could give a rat’s prick. No difference between once and twice,” Milia says. They all bear the slave mark of Mars. I don’t recognize them but their rings say they are from Juno. “Rather bear shame than bruise my knees. Do you know my father?”

“I don’t care about your father.”

“My father,” she persists, “is Gauis au Trachus, Justiciar of the southern Martian hemisphere.”

“I still don’t care.”

“And his father was—”

“I don’t care.”

“Then you are a fool,” she drawls. “Twice a fool if you think to make me your slave. I will cut you in the night.”

I nod to Mustang. She stands suddenly with the standard and puts it to Milia’s head. The mark of Mars becomes that of Minerva. Then she erases the Minerva mark and Milia’s forehead is only dirt and gold. Dax’s eyes widen.

“Even if I free you?” I ask Milia. “You’re still going to cut me?”

She doesn’t know what to say.

“Mily,” Dax says quietly. “What are you thinking?”

“No slavery,” I elaborate. “No beatings. If you dig a shit pit, I dig a shit pit for the camp too. If someone cuts you, I cut them. So, will you join our army?”

“His army,” Mustang corrects. I look over at her with a frown.

“And who’s he?” Milia asks, her eyes not leaving my face.

“He’s the Reaper.”

It takes a week to gather ten Oathbreakers. The way I look at it is those ten already made it clear they don’t want to be slaves. So they might like the first person who will give them purpose, food, furs, who is not demanding that they lick a bootheel. Most of them have heard of me, but all are disappointed that I don’t have the famous slingBlade I used to beat Pax. Apparently he’s become quite the legend. They say he picked up and threw a horse and rider into the Argos as Mars’s slaves fought Jupiter’s.

As we grow, we hide from the larger armies. Mars may be my House, but with Roque dead and Cassius an enemy, only Quinn and Sevro are left as friends. Pollux perhaps, but he’ll go whatever way the wind blows.

I cannot be with my House. There’s no place for me there. I may have been their leader, but I remember how they looked at me. And now it is crucial they know I am alive.

Despite the war between Mars and Jupiter, stalwart Ceres stands unconquered by the riverside. Behind their high walls, bread smoke still rises. Mounted warbands from both armies roam the plains around Ceres, crossing the frozen Argos at will. They carry low-charged ionSwords now, so they can electrocute and maim one another with a brush of metal. MedBots scream over the battlefield when skirmishes break into pitched frays, healing wounded students as they bleed or moan from broken bones. The champions of each army wear ionArmor to protect themselves against the new weapons. Horses smash together. IonArrows fly. Slaves mill about hitting each other with older, simple weapons across the wide plain that separates the highlands from the great river Argos. It is a spectacular thing to see—but foolish, so foolish.

I watch with Mustang and Milia as two armored warbands of Mars and Jupiter streak toward each other across the plains in front of Phobos Tower. Pennants flap. Horses trample the deep snow. It’s a clash of armored glory when the two metal tides collapse into one another. Lances spark with stunning electricity on broad shields and armor. Dazzling swords slam other blades like their own. HighDrafts battling highDrafts. Slaves run in scores to smash into each other, pawns in this giant chess match.

I see Pax in a rusty bulk of crimson armor so ancient it looks like a frysuit. I laugh as he tackles a horse. But if ever there was a picture of a perfect knight, it would not be Pax. No, it’d be Cassius. I see him now. His armor glows as he stuns opponent after opponent, galloping through the enemy, his sword humming left and right, flickering like a tongue of fire. He can fight, but I’m shocked at how foolishly he chooses to—diving nobly into the enemy’s gut with a force of lancers, capturing enemies. And then the surviving troops regroup and do the same to him. Over and over, neither side taking substantial advantage.

“What idiots,” I say to Mustang. “All that pretty armor and swords blind them. I know. Maybe if they slam into one another three or four more times, it may just work.”

“They’ve got tactics,” she says. “Look, a wedge formation there. And a feint there that’ll turn into a flank sweep.”

“Yet I’m right.”

“Yet you’re not wrong.” She watches for a moment. “Like our little war over again, except you’re not running around howling at people like a moontouched wolf.” Mustang sighs and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Ah, the good old days.”

Milia watches us with a wrinkled nose.

“Tactics win battles. Strategy wins wars,” I say.

“Oooo. I am Reaper. God of wolves. King of strategy.” Mustang pinches my cheek. “You are just too adorable.”

I swat her away. Milia rolls her eyes.

“So, what is our strategy, milord?” Mustang asks me.

The longer I draw out any conflict with an enemy, the more chances the Proctors will get to ruin me. My rise must be meteoric. I don’t tell her this.

“Speed is our strategy,” I say. “Speed and extreme prejudice.”

The next morning, House Mars’s warband finds their bridge across the Metas blocked by trees felled in the night. As expected, the warband turns around and rides back to the castle, fearing some sort of trap. Their watchmen in Phobos and Deimos cannot see us; they peer down and send smoke signals that there is no enemy in the barren deciduous woods around the bridge. They do not see us because we have been bellydown in the same position in the woods fifty yards from the bridge since black dawn. Each of my Oathbreakers has a white or gray wolfcloak now. It took a week to find the wolves, but perhaps that was for the better. The hunt created a bond. My ten soldiers are a scrappy lot. Liars, wicked cheats who would rather ruin their futures than be slaves in this game. So a proud, practical but not very honorable lot. Just the sort I need. Their faces are painted white with bird dung and gray clay, so we’ve the look of spectral winter beasts as breath billows from our grinning maws.

“They like being valued by someone fearsome,” Milia told me the night before, her voice as cold and brittle as the icicles hanging from the aspen trees. “As do I.”

“Mars’ll take the bait,” Mustang whispers to me now. “Not so much brainpower left in the House.” Not with Roque gone. She chose a place close to me in the snow. So close that her legs stretch along mine, and her face, twisted sideways as she lies on her belly, is only inches from my own underneath our white cloaks. When I inhale, the air is already warm from her breath. I think this is the first time I’ve thought of kissing her. I chase the thought away, and summon the sight of Eo’s mischievous lips.

It is midday when Cassius sends troops—mostly slaves, for fear of an ambush—to clear the felled trees from the bridge. In fact, Cassius plays too clever a game. Since he believes he is fighting Jupiter, his assumption is that the ambush will be a sudden cavalry charge once the bridge is clear. So he has his horses go around the river, south through the highlands, and loop around on the far side of the bridge near Phobos to spring an ambush on the cavalry he assumes will come from the Greatwoods or the plains. Milia, the shifty girl, brings me news of this movement of horse in the form of a howl from her perch nearly a mile off, where she serves as lookout in the high pines. It is time to move.

We do not howl or shout as we eleven sprint through the leafless woods toward the toiling slaves. Four highDrafts sit on horses watching the work. One is Cipio. We sprint faster. Faster through the barren trees, coming from their flank. They do not see us. We fan out. Racing one another to make the first strike.

I win.

Jumping five meters forward in the lowGrav, I fly out of the woods like a demon possessed and take Cipio at the shoulder with a blunted sword. He spills from the saddle. Horses whinny. Mustang takes down another highDraft with her standard. My troops swarm forward, silent and shadowed with white and gray. Two more of my Oathbreakers leap onto the highDrafts’ horses and bludgeon the riders with clubs and blunted axes. I ordered no killing; it’s over in four seconds. The horses don’t even know where their riders went. My troops flow past the horses into the slaves as they clear the bridge of the felled logs. Half don’t even hear us till Mustang has turned six into Minerva slaves and ordered them to help us subdue the rest. Then there’s shouting and the Mars slaves turn their axes against my troops.

Those from Minerva recognize Mustang and are set free when she clears away the mark of Mars. It’s like a shifting tide. Six slaves are ours. They tackle Mars’s other slaves and pin them down as Mustang runs over and converts them. Eight, by the same process. Ten. Eleven, till only one offers trouble. And he’s the prize. Pax. He doesn’t have his armor, thank God. He’s here for labor, but it still takes seven of us to take him to the ground. He’s roaring and screaming his name. I dive at him and take a fist to the face. I’m spitting and laughing as we pile on till there’s twelve of us holding the genetic monster down. Mustang frees him of the mark of Mars and his roars become laughter so high pitched, it sounds like a girl’s.

“Freeeeeedom!” he roars. He jumps up, looking for someone to maim. “Darrow au Andromedus!” he shouts at me, ready to break my face till Mustang shouts him down.

“He’s on our side,” Mustang says.

“The truth?” Pax asks. His giant face splits into a smile. “What news!” And he’s got me in a bear hug. “Freeeedom, brothers… and sisters! Sweet freedom!” We leave Cipio and the other highDrafts moaning on the ground.

The smoke signals plume up from Phobos and Deimos as we sprint through the vale’s woods into the dwarf mountains to the north before the horsemen of Mars can loop back around the blocked bridge to assail us. The watchmen saw it all. And they must be horrified. It happened in less than a minute. Pax won’t stop laughing like a girl.

House Mars will be confused by the sudden depletion of their ranks. But I need more than that. I need them to replace the vision they have of me, one of a flawed leader, with something supernatural, something beyond their understanding. I need to be like the Jackal—nameless and superhuman.

That night, I slither through the snow north of Castle Mars. Riders patrol the glen. Their hooves are soft on the grass in the night. I hear their bridles clinking in the darkness. I do not see them. My wolfcloak is white as the falling snow. I’ve pulled its head up, so I look like a guardian creature from the colder levels of hell. The rock face is steeper than I remember. I nearly fall as I pull myself along the snowy vertical. I reach the castle wall. Torches flicker on the ramparts. Wind whips the flames about. Mustang should be about to light the blaze.

I strip away my cloak and ball it up. My skin is coated in charcoal. I push the metal tongs into the spaces between the stones. It is like climbing my drill again except I’m stronger and I’m not wearing a frysuit. Easy. The Pegasus bounces against my chest as I pull myself up. I’m not even panting when I reach the top six minutes later.

My fingers cling to the stone just beneath the ramparts. I hang, listening to the passing sentry. Of course it is a slave. And she’s not stupid. She sees me as I pull myself over the rampart and shoves a spear against my throat. I flash my Mars ring and hold my finger to my lips.

“Why should I not call out?” she asks. She was once of Minerva.

“Did they tell you to guard the wall for enemies? I’m sure they did. But I’m of House Mars. The ring says so. I can’t be an enemy then, yes?”

She frowns. “The Primus told me to watch the walls for intruders and to kill or call out…”

“This is my home. I am of House Mars. I am your master and I demand you continue to watch the wall for intruders. It is imperative.” I wink. “I swear Virginia would be happy if you followed your orders to the letter.”

She cocks her head at Mustang’s real name and looks me over.

“My Primus is alive?”

“House Minerva has not fallen,” I say.

The girl’s face almost breaks she smiles so hard. “Well… then… I suppose this is your home. Can’t stop you from entering it. Bound by oath to obey, I am. Wait… I know you. They said you were dead.”

“Thank your Primus that I draw breath.”

I learn from her that the Housemembers sleep while the slaves guard the fortress at night. That is the problem with slaves. They are so willing to find a way around their duty, and so excited to share secrets. I leave her behind and steal into the keep using a key she accidentally dropped into my hand.

Sneaking through my home, I am tempted to pay Cassius a visit. But I’m not here to kill him. Violence is the fool’s way out. Sometimes I’m the fool, but tonight I’m feeling smart. I’m also not there to steal the standard. They will be guarding that. No. I’m there to remind them that they once were afraid of me. That I am the best of them all. I can go where I please. Do what I please.

I stay in the shadows even though I could use the same argument on every slave guard they have. Instead, I carve a slingBlade on every door in the keep. I slip into the warroom and carve a slingBlade into the huge table there to create the myth. Then I carve a skull into Cassius’s chair and drive a knife deep into the back of the wood chair to create the rumor.

As I leave the way I came, I see the hillside north of the castle erupt in flame. The brush stacked in the shape of the Reaper’s slingBlade burns hot in the night.

Sevro, if he is still with Mars, will find me. And I could use the little bastard’s help.

36
A Second Test

In order to have an army, I must be able to feed it. So I will take the ovens of Ceres that Jupiter and Mars both lust over, and I will take them with speed and supreme aggression.

The new members of our band from House Minerva find it perfectly reasonable to accept my authority. I don’t fool myself. Yes, they were impressed by me hiding my Howlers inside dead horses months ago, and they remember me defeating Pax. But it’s only because Mustang trusts me that they obey. We leave those of House Diana as slaves for now. I need to earn their trust. Tactus, oddly, is the only one who seems to trust me. Then again, the laconic youth was all smiles when I told him I’d be sewing him inside of a dead horse over a month ago. There are two more of Diana that I sewed away. The others call them the DeadHorses, and they each wear braids of white horsehair. I think they’re a bit mental.

If there is anything in the woods and highlands, it is an abundance of wolves. We hunt them to train our new recruits in my way of fighting. No glamorous cavalry charges. No damn lances. And certainly no stupid rules of engagement. Everyone gets cloaks, which are smelly things as they dry and we peel away the rot. Everyone except Pax. They haven’t yet made a wolf big enough for him.

“House Ceres is no stranger to siege,” Mustang says. She’s right. At night, they seem to have more soldiers awake than in the day. They watch for sneak assaults. Blazing bundles of tinder light the base of their walls at night. Somehow, they have dogs now. Those prowl along the battlements. The way from the water is guarded ever since I tried sending Sevro in through the latrines long ago during a sneak attack I arranged when we were at war with Minerva. He barely forgave me for that one. The Ceres students come out no longer. They’ve learned the risks of battling stronger Houses on open ground. They’ll hole up for winter, and when the cold and hunger has weakened the other Houses, they’ll emerge from their fortress in the spring—strong, prepared, and organized.

But they’ll never make it to the spring.

“So we attack during the day?” Mustang guesses.

“Naturally,” I say. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother speaking. She knows my thoughts. Even the mad ones.

This idea is an especially mad one. We practiced it in a clearing in the Northwoods for a whole day after flattening out the wood with axes. Pax makes the plan possible. We hold competitions to see who has the best balance on the wood. Mustang wins. Horsefaced Milia is second, and she’s spitting bitter that she doesn’t beat Mustang. I’m third.

As we did when springing the trap on House Mars, we sneak as close as we dare the night before and bury ourselves in the deep snow. Again, Mustang and I pair off, huddling tight with one another under the snow. Tactus tries pairing with Milia, but she tells him to go slag himself.

“If you look at it properly, I was trying to do you a favor,” he mutters over at Milia as he huddles down under Pax’s smelly armpit. “You’re about as pretty as a gargoyle’s wart. So when else would you get a chance to snuggle with the likes of me? Ungrateful sow.”

Mustang and the other girls snort their derision. Then the quiet of night and the chill of the open ice plain bite into us and we grow silent.

Come morning, Mustang and I shiver into one another, and a new snowfall threatens to ruin our plan, burying us even deeper in the plain. But the wind is manageable and the flakes do not bury us too deep as they spin through the air. I’m first up, though I do not move. And soon after I yawn away the last vestige of sleep, my army wakes organically, one student stirring and grumbling into another till there’s a snake of sniffing and coughing Golds buried together in a shallow tunnel beneath the snow’s surface. I can’t see them, but I hear their waking despite the sound of the snowstorm’s wind.

Ice formed around me in the night outside my thick cloaks. Mustang’s hands are inside my pelts, warm against my side. Her breath heats my neck. As I stir, she yawns and straightens, pulling a little away as she stretches, catlike, under the snow. Snow crumbles in between us.

“Gory hell, this is miserable,” Dax, Milia’s companion, mutters. I can’t see him in our snow tunnel.

Mustang nudges me. We can just barely see Tactus curled into the hollow of Pax’s armpit. The two men snuggle together and wake like lovers, only to flinch away from one another when their ice-crusted eyelids flutter open.

“Wonder which is Romeo,” Mustang whispers, her throat raspy.

I chuckle and carve a hole in the roof of our tunnel to see that my band of twenty-four is alone in the plains except for early morning horse scouts in the distance. They will not be a problem. Wind rolls in from the north river, biting deep into my face.

“You ready for this?” Mustang asks me with a grin as I bring my head back into our shelter. “Or are you too cold?”

“It was colder in the loch when we I first tricked you,” I say, smiling. “Ah, the old days.”

“All part of my master plan to win your trust, little man.” She smirks mischievously. She sees the worry in my eyes, so she grips my thigh and comes close so the others can’t hear. “Think I’d be squatting here with you in the snow if this plan could go belly up? Negative. But I’m freezing my balls off and the wind is dying, so let’s go, Reaper.”

I give the countdown and we’re up, snow crumbling around us, wind biting our face, and sprinting the hundred meters across the plains to the walls. All twenty-four of us. Silent again. The wind comes in fits. We carry the long tree between us, huddling tight to it as we did in the night when it shared our tunnel with us. It’s heavy, but we’re twenty-four and Pax’s parents gave him the genes to knock over bloodydamn horses. Panting. Legs burning. Gritting as the wood weighs down our shoulders in the deep snow. It’s a trudge. A shout comes from the wall. A lonely, hollow call that echoes over the still winter morning. More shouts. Still few. Barks. Confusion. An arrow whistles past. Then another. It’s amazing how quiet the world is as the arrows sail, carrying death. The wind has faded again. Sun peaks from behind a cloudlayer and we’re bathed with morning warmth.

We’re at the wall. Shouts spread beyond the stone fortification, from their towers. A signal horn. Barking of dogs. Snow falls from the parapets as archers lean over the stone battlements. An arrow shivers in the wood by my hand. Someone goes down bloodylike, Dax. Then Pax roars the word and he, Tactus, and five more of our strongest take the long wood beam we cut from the tree trunk and shove the tip as hard as they can into the wall. They hold it there at an angle. They are roaring from the burden. It’s still five meters short of the top of the wall, but I’m already sprinting up the thin slope. Pax grunts like a boar as he heaves against the angled strain. He’s shouting, roaring. Mustang is right behind me, then Milia. I almost slip. My balance and Helldiver hands keep me scrabbling up the knotted wood. In our fur, we look like squirrels, not wolves. An arrow hisses through my cloak. I’m against the wall at the top of the wobbling beam. Pax and his boys roar gutturally from the exertion. Mustang is coming. I cup my hands. She stirrups her foot at the run and I hurl her up the last five meters to clear the battlements. Her sword slashes and she screams like a banshee. Then Milia launches the same way off my hands, and the rope she has tied to her waist dangles after her. She anchors up top as I use it to pull myself up the last five meters. The wooden beam crashes to the ground behind me. My sword is out. It’s mayhem. House Ceres was caught unaware. They’ve never had an enemy on the battlements. And there are three of us, screaming and slashing. Rage and excitement fill me and I begin my dance.

They only have bows. It’s been months since they’ve used swords. Ours aren’t sharp or fused with electricity, but cold durosteel is nasty to take in any form. The dogs are the hardest to manage. I kick one in the head. Throw another one off the battlements. Milia is down. She bites a dog in the neck and punches it in the balls till it whimpers off.

Mustang tackles someone off the battlements. I slidetackle one of the archers as he levels his bow at her. Outside, Pax shouts for me to open the gates. He’s actually crying for combat.

I follow Mustang down into their courtyard, jumping from the parapets down to where she fights a big Ceres student. I end the boy with my elbow and take my first glimpse of the bread fortress. The castle is an unfamiliar design, a courtyard leading to several buildings and a huge keep where the bread bakes, making my stomach rumble; but all that matters to me is the gate. We rush to it. Shouts from behind us. Too many for us to fight. We get to the gate just as three dozen House Ceres students run at us across the courtyard from their keep.

“Hurry!” Mustang shouts. “Uh, hurry!”

Milia shoots arrows at the enemy from the parapets.

Then I open the gate.

“PAX AU TELEMANUS! PAX AU TELEMANUS!”

He shoves me aside. He’s shirtless, massive, muscled, screaming. His hair is painted white and spiked with sap to form two horns. A piece of wood as long as my body serves as his club. The House Ceres students flinch back. Some fall. Some stumble. A boy screams as Pax thunders close.

“PAX AU TELEMANUS! PAX AU TELEMANUS!”

He wants no nickname as he charges forward like a minotaur possessed. When he hits the mass of House Ceres students, it is ruin. Boys and girls fly through the air like chaff on reaping day.

The rest of my army sprints in behind the mad bastard. They begin to howl, not because I told them to, not because they think they are Sevro’s Howlers, but because it was the sound they heard when my soldiers cut their way out of horse’s bellies, the sound that made their hearts sink as they were conquered. Now it’s their turn to howl as they turn the battle into a mad melee. Pax screams his name, and he screams mine as he conquers me the citadel almost single-handedly. He picks a boy up by the leg and uses him as a club. Mustang drifts about the battlefield like some Valkyrie, enslaving those who lie stunned on the ground.

In five minutes, the ovens and citadel are ours. We shut their gates, howl, and eat some bloodydamn bread.

I free the House Diana slaves who helped me capture the fortress and take a moment with each to share a laugh. Tactus sits on some poor boy’s back, braiding the prisoner’s hair in girlish pigtails, till I nudge him to get off. He slaps at my hand.

“Don’t touch me,” he snaps.

“What did you say?” I growl.

He stands fast, his nose coming only to my chin, and speaks very quietly so only we can hear. “Listen, big man. I am of the gens Valii. My pure blood goes back to the Conquering. I could buy and sell you with my weekly allowance. So you don’t demean me in this little game like all the others, you schoolyard king.” Then louder so others can hear: “I do as I like, because I took this castle for you and slept in a dead horse so we could take Minerva! I deserve to have some fun.”

I lean close. “Three pints.”

He rolls his eyes. “Whatever are you growling about?”

“That’s how much blood I’m about to make you swallow.”

“Well, might makes right,” he chuckles, and turns his back on me.

Then, mastering my anger, I tell the members of my army that they will never be slaves in this game again, so long as they wear my wolfskin. If they don’t like that notion, they can clear out. None do, but that’s expected. They want to win, but to follow my orders, to understand that I don’t think I’m some high and mighty emperor, their proud hearts need to feel valued. So I make sure they know they are. I pay each student a specific compliment. One they remember forever.

Even when I am ruining their Society at the vanguard of a billion screaming Reds, they will tell their children that Darrow of Mars once clapped them on the shoulder and paid them a compliment.

The defeated students from House Ceres watch me free my army’s slaves and they gape. They don’t understand. They recognize me, but they don’t comprehend why there isn’t a single other Mars student, or why I’m in power, or why I think it is allowed to free slaves. While they are still gaping, Mustang enslaves them with the symbol of House Minerva, and they become doubly confused.

“Win me a fortress, and you get your freedom too,” I tell them. Their bodies are different from ours. Softer from much bread and little meat. “But you must be starving for some venison and wild meat. Some protein is missing in your diets, I think.” We brought plenty to share.

We free several slaves taken by House Ceres months prior. There are few, but most are House Mars or Juno. They find this new alliance strange, but it is an easy pill to swallow after months of toiling in the ovens.

The night ends on a sour note as I am woken an hour into sleep. Mustang sits on the edge of my bed as my eyes flutter open. When I see her, I feel a spike of terror in me, assuming she’s come for a different reason, that her hand on my leg means something simple, something human. Instead, she brings me news I wished never to hear again.

Tactus flouted my authority and tried to rape a Ceres slave during the night. Milia caught him, and Mustang barely stopped her from cutting Tactus a thousand different ways. Everyone is up in arms.

“It’s bad,” Mustang says. “The Diana students are in their wargear and are about to try and take him back from Milia and Pax.”

“They’re mad enough to fight Pax?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get dressed.”

“Please.”

I meet her in the Ceres warroom two minutes later. The table is already carved with my slingBlade. I didn’t do it, and it’s much better work than I could have managed.

“Thoughts?” I fall into the seat opposite Mustang. We’re a council of two. It’s times like this when I miss Cassius, Roque, Quinn, all of them. Especially Sevro.

“When Titus did this, you said we make our own law, if I remember right. You sentenced him to death. So are we still doing that? Or are we doing something more convenient?” she asks me as though she already thinks I’m letting Tactus off the hook.

I nod, surprising her. “He’ll pay,” I say.

“This… it just pisses me off.” She takes her feet off the table and leans forward to shake her head. “We’re meant to be better than this. That’s all Peerless are supposed to be—transcendent of the urges that”—she holds up ironic airquotes—“enslave the weaker Colors.”

“It isn’t about urges.” I tap the table in frustration. “It’s about power.”

“Tactus is of House Valii!” Mustang exclaims. “His family is ancient. How much power does that asshole want?”

“Power over me, I mean. I told him he couldn’t do something. Now he’s trying to prove he can do whatever he wants.”

“So he’s not another heathen like Titus.”

“You’ve met him. Of course he’s a heathen. But no. This was tactical.”

“Well, the clever shit has put you in a tight spot.”

I slap the table. “I don’t like this—someone else picking the battles or the battlefield. That’s how we will lose.”

“It’s a no-win, really. We can’t come out ahead. Someone is going to hate you either way. So we just have to figure out which way is the least damaging. Prime?”

“What about justice?” I ask.

Her eyebrows float upward. “What about winning? Isn’t that what matters?”

“You trying to trap me?”

She grins. “Just testing you.”

I frown. “Tactus killed Tamara, his Primus. Cut her saddle and then rode over her. He’s wicked. He deserves any punishment we give him.”

Mustang raises her eyebrows as if this is all to be expected. “He sees what he wants, and he takes it.”

“How admirable,” I mutter.

She tilts her head at me, lively eyes going over my face. “Rare.”

“What’s that?”

“I was wrong, about you. That’s rare.”

“Am I wrong about Tactus?” I ask. “Is he wicked, really? Or is he just ahead of the curve? Does he just grasp the game better?”

“No one grasps the game.”

Mustang puts her muddy boots on the table again and leans back. Her golden hair falls past her shoulders in a long braid. The fire crackles in the hearth, making her pupils dance in the night. I don’t miss my old friends when she smiles like that. I ask her to explain.

“No one grasps the game, because no one knows the rules. No one follows the same set of rules. It is like life. Some think honor universal. Some think laws binding. Others know better. But in the end, don’t those who rise by poison die by poison?”

I shrug. “In the storybooks. In life there’s no one left to poison them, often.”

“They expect an eye for an eye, the House Ceres slaves. Punish Tactus, you piss off the Diana kids. They get you a fortress and you spit on them for it. Remember, as far as they are concerned, Tactus hid in a horse’s belly half a day for you when you took my castle. Resentment will swell like a Copper bureaucracy. But if you don’t punish him, you’ll lose all of Ceres.”

“Can’t do that.” I sigh. “I failed this test before. I put Titus to death and thought I was meting out justice. I was wrong.”

“Tactus is an Iron Gold. His blood is as old as the Society. They look at compassion, at reform, as a disease. He is his family. He will not change. He will not learn. He believes in power. Other Colors are not people to him. Lesser Golds are not people to him. He is bound to his fate.”

Yet I’m a Red acting like a Gold. No man is bound to his fate. I can change him. I know I can. But how?

“What do you think I should do?” I ask.

“Ha! The great Reaper.” She slaps her thigh. “When have you ever cared what anyone thinks?”

“You’re not just anyone.”

She nods and, after a moment, speaks. “I was once told a story by Pliny, my tutor—a ghastly fellow, really. And a Politico now, so take this all with a shipload of salt. Anyway: On Earth, there was a man and his camel.” I laugh. She keeps going. “They were traveling across this grand desert full of all sorts of nasties. One day, as the man prepared camp, the camel kicked him for no reason. So the man whipped the camel. The camel’s wounds grew infected. It died and left the man stranded.”

“Hands. Camels. You and metaphors…”

She shrugs. “Without your army, you’re a man stranded in a desert. So tread carefully, Reaper.”

I speak with Nyla, the Ceres girl, in private. She’s a quiet one. Smart as a whip, but not physical in any way. Like a shuddering songbird, like Lea. She has a bloody swollen lip. It makes me want to castrate Tactus. She didn’t come in wicked like the rest. Then again, she got through the Passage.

“He told me he wanted me to rub his shoulders. Told me to do what he said because he was my master because he spent blood taking the castle. Then he tried… well… you know.”

A hundred generations of men have used that inhuman logic. The sadness her words create in me makes me miss home. But that happened there too. I remember the screams that made the soup ladle tremble.

Nyla blinks and stares for a moment at the floor.

“I told him I was Mustang’s slave. House Minerva’s. It’s her standard. I didn’t have to obey him. He just kept pushing me down. I screamed. He punched me, then he just held my throat till things started to fade and I barely smelled his wolfcloak anymore. Then that tall girl, Milia, knocked him off, I guess.”

She didn’t mention that there were other Diana soldiers in the room. Others watched. My army. I gave them power and this is how they use it. It’s my fault. They are mine but they are wicked. That will not be fixed by punishing one of them. They have to want to be good.

“What would you like for me to do to him?” I ask her. I don’t reach out to comfort her. She doesn’t need it, even though I think I do. She reminds me of Evey too.

Nyla touches her dirty curls and shrugs.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing isn’t enough.”

“To fix what he tried to do to me? To make it right?” She shakes her head and her hands clutch her sides. “Nothing is enough.”

The next morning, I assemble my army in the Ceres square. A dozen limp; few Aureate bones can really be broken because of their strength, so most of the injuries suffered in the assault were superficial. I smell the resentment from Ceres students, from Diana students. It’s a cancer that’ll eat away at the body of this army, no matter who it is focused toward. Pax brings Tactus out and shoves him to his knees.

I ask him if he tried to rape Nyla.

“Laws are silent in times of war,” Tactus drawls.

“Don’t quote Cicero to me,” I say. “You are held to a higher standard than a marauding centurion.”

“In that, you’re hitting the mark at least. I am a superior creature descended from proud stock and glorious heritage. Might makes right, Darrow. If I can take, I may take. If I do take, I deserve to have. This is what Peerless believe.”

“The measure of a man is what he does when he has power,” I say loudly.

“Just come off it, Reaper,” Tactus drawls, confident in himself as all like him are. “She’s a spoil of war. My power took her. And before the strong, bend the weak.”

“I’m stronger than you, Tactus,” I say. “So I can do with you as I wish. No?”

He’s silent, realizing he’s fallen into a trap.

“You are from a superior family to mine, Tactus. My parents are dead. I am the sole member of my family. But I am a superior creature to you.”

He smirks at that.

“Do you disagree?” I toss a knife at his feet and pull my own out. “I beg you to voice your concerns.” He does not pick his blade up. “So, by right of power, I can do with you as I like.”

I announce that rape will never be permitted, and then I ask Nyla the punishment she would give. As she told me before, she says she wants no punishment. I make sure they know this, so there are no recriminations against her. Tactus and his armed supporters stare at her in surprise. They don’t understand why she would not take vengeance, but that doesn’t stop them from smiling wolfishly at one another, thinking their chief has dodged punishment. Then I speak.

“But I say you get twenty lashes from a leather switch, Tactus. You tried to take something beyond the bounds of the game. You gave in to your pathetic animal instincts. Here that is less forgivable than murder; I hope you feel shame when you look back at this moment fifty years from now and realize your weakness. I hope you fear your sons and daughters knowing what you did to a fellow Gold. Until then, twenty lashes will serve.”

Some of the Diana soldiers step forward in anger, but Pax hefts his axe on his shoulder and they shrink back, glaring at me. They gave me a fortress and I’m going to whip their favorite warrior. I see my army dying as Mustang pulls off Tactus’s shirt. He stares at me like a snake. I know what evil thoughts he’s thinking. I thought them of my floggers too.

I whip him twenty brutal times, holding nothing back. Blood runs down his back. Pax nearly has to hack down one of the Diana soldiers to keep them from charging to stop the punishment.

Tactus barely manages to stagger to his feet, wrath burning in his eyes.

“A mistake,” he whispers to me. “Such a mistake.”

Then I surprise him. I shove the switch into his hand and bring him close by cupping my hand around the back of his head.

“You deserve to have your balls off, you selfish bastard,” I whisper to him. “This is my army,” I say more loudly. “This is my army. Its evils are mine as much as yours, as much as they are Tactus’s. Every time any of you commit a crime like this, something gratuitous and perverse, you will own it and I will own it with you, because when you do something wicked, it hurts all of us.”

Tactus stands there like a fool. He’s confused.

I shove him hard in the chest. He stumbles back. I follow him, shoving.

“What were you going to do?” I push his hand holding the leather switch back toward his chest.

“I don’t know what you mean…” he murmurs as I shove him.

“Come on, man! You were going to shove your prick inside someone in my army. Why not whip me while you’re at it? Why not hurt me too? It’ll be easier. Milia won’t even try to stab you. I promise.”

I shove him again. He looks around. No one speaks. I strip off my shirt and go to my knees. The air is cold. Knees on stone and snow. My eyes lock with Mustang’s. She winks at me and I feel like I can do anything. I tell Tactus to give me twenty-five lashes. I’ve taken worse. His arms are weak and so is his will to do it. It still stings, but I stand up after five lashes and give the lash to Pax.

They start the count at six.

“Start over!” I shout. “A little rapist cur can’t swing hard enough to hurt me.”

But Pax bloodywell can.

My army cries in protest. They don’t understand. Golds don’t do this. Golds don’t sacrifice for one another. Leaders take; they do not give. My army cries out again. I ask them, how is this worse than the rape they were all so comfortable with? Is not Nyla now one of us? Is she not part of the body?

Like Reds are. Like Obsidians are. Like all the Colors are.

Pax tries to go light. But it’s Pax, so when he’s done, my back looks like chewed goatmeat. I stand up. Do everything I can to prevent myself from wobbling. I’m seeing stars. I want to wail. Want to cry. Instead, I tell them that anyone who does anything vile—they know what I mean—will have to whip me like this in front of the entire army. I see how they look at Tactus now, how they look at Pax, how they look at my back.

“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.”

I motion Tactus to come toward me. He wavers, pale, confused as a newborn lamb. Fear marks his face. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the pain I willingly bore. Fear when he realizes how different he is from me.

“Don’t be afraid,” I tell him. I pull him forward into a hug. “We are blood brothers, you little shit. Blood brothers.”

I’m learning.

37
South

“Shit on a pike!” I yelp as Mustang puts salve on my back in the warroom. She flicks my back with a finger. “Why?” I moan.

“The measure of a man is what he does when he has his power.” She laughs. “You mock him for Cicero and then spit out Plato.”

“Plato is older. He trumps Cicero. Ow!”

“And what was that about blood brothers? That means absolutely nothing. You might as well have said you were pinecone cousins.”

“Nothing binds like pain shared.”

“Well, here’s some more of that.” She pulls a bit of leather out of a wound. I yelp.

“Pain shared…” I shudder. “Not inflicted. Psychotic… ow!”

“You sound like a girl. Thought martyrs were tough. Then again, you could be barking mad. Fever when you were stabbed, probably. You traumatized Pax, by the way. He’s crying. Good work.”

I actually hear Pax’s sniffles from the armory.

“But it did work, eh?”

“Sure, Messiah. You made yourself a cult,” she mocks dryly. “They’re building idols to you in the square. Kneeling in supplication of your wisdom. O mighty lord. I will laugh when they find out they don’t like you and can have you flogged anytime they do a naughty. Now hold still, you Pixie. And stop talking. You annoy me.”

“You know, when we graduate, maybe you should look into being a Pink. Your touch is so tender.”

She smirks. “Send me to a Rose Garden? Hah! Now, that would tickle my father pink. Oh, stop squealing. The pun wasn’t that bad.”

The next day, I organize my army. I give Mustang the duty of choosing six squads of three scouts each. I have fifty-six soldiers; more than half are slaves. I make her put a Ceres in each group, the most ambitious. They get six of the eight commUnits I found in Ceres’s warroom. The things are primitive, crackling earpieces, but they give my army something I’ve never had—an evolution beyond smoke signals.

“So I’m assuming you have a plan besides just going south like some Mongol horde…,” Mustang says.

“Of course. We’re going to find the House of Apollo.” True to my promise to Fitchner.

The scouts strike out that night from House Ceres, fanning out to the south in six directions. My army follows at dawn, just before the winter sun rises. I will not squander this opportunity. Winter has forced the Houses into fortresses. Deep snows and hidden ravines make heavy cavalry sluggish, less useful. The game has slowed, but I won’t. Mars and Jupiter can battle it out for all I care. I’ll come back for both later.

At nightfall on the second day of our move south, we see the fortress of Juno, already conquered by Jupiter. It lies to the west on a tributary to the Argos. Mountains frame it. Beyond that are the wintry six-kilometer-high walls of the Valles Marineris. My scouts bring me news of three enemy scouts, cavalry, in the fringes of the woods to the east. They think it is Pluto, the Jackal’s men. The horses are black, and the hair of the riders is dyed the same. They wear bones in their hair. I hear that they rattle like bamboo windchimes as they ride.

Whoever the riders are, they never come close. Never fall into my traps. A girl is said to lead them. She rides a silver horse draped with a leather mantle sewn with unbleached bones—apparently the medBots are not so good in the South. Lilath, I think. She and her scouts disappear south as a larger warband appears from the southeast and skirts along the Greatwoods.

These are now real armies of heavy horse.

A single rider comes forward from the larger warband. He carries the archer pennant of Apollo. His hair is long and unbraided, his face hard from the winter winds that roll in from the southern sea. A cut on his forehead nearly claimed both his eyes, eyes that stare now at me like two burning coals set in a face of hammered bronze.

I walk forward to meet him after telling my army to look as weathered and pathetic as humanly possible. Pax manages poorly. Mustang makes him go to his knees so he looks relatively normal. She stands on his shoulders for comic relief, and starts a snowball fight as the emissary comes near. It’s a rowdy, foolish affair, and it makes my army look wonderfully vulnerable.

I fake a limp. Toss away my wolfcloak. Fake a shiver. Make sure my pathetic durosteel sword looks more a cane than a weapon. Bend my long body as he approaches and I spare a look back at my playing army. My look of embarrassment is almost split in half with a laugh. I swallow it down.

His voice is like steel dragged over rough stone. No humor to him, no recognition that we’re all teenagers playing a game and that the real world still flows on outside this valley. In the South, things have happened to make them forget. So when I offer him a self-effacing smile, he does not return it. He is a man. Not a boy. I think it is the first time I’ve seen someone fully transformed.

“And you are but a ragged remnant from the North,” the Apollo Primus, Novas, scoffs. He tries guessing the House we hail from. I’ve made sure the Ceres standard is the one he sees. His eyes flicker. He wants it for his own glory. He also happily notices that more than half my army of fifty-six is enslaved. “You will not last long in the South. Perhaps you would like shelter from the cold? Warm food and bed? The South is harsh.”

“I can’t wager it will be worse than the North, man,” I say. “They have razors and pulseArmor there. Proctors turned their favor from us.”

“They are not there to favor you, weakling,” he says. “They help those who help themselves.”

“We helped ourselves as best we could,” I say meekly.

He spits on the ground. “Little child. Do not whine here. The South does not listen to tears.”

“But… but the South cannot be worse than the North.” I shudder and tell him of the Reaper from the highlands. A monster. A brute. A killer. Evil, evil things.

He nods when I speak of the Reaper. So he has heard of me.

“The Reaper of yours is dead. A shame. I would have liked to test myself against him.”

“He was a demon!” I protest.

“We have our own demons here. A one-eyed monster in the woods and a worse monster in the mountains to the west. The Jackal,” he confides as he continues with his pitch. I would be allowed join Apollo as a mercenary, not a slave, never a slave. He would help me defeat the Jackal, then retake the North. We would be allies. He thinks me weak and stupid.

I look at my ring. The Proctor of Apollo will know what I say here. I want him to know I am going to ruin his House. If he wants to try to stop me, this is his invitation.

“No,” I say to Novas. “My family would shame me. I would be nothing to them if I joined you. No. I’m sorry.” I smile inside. “We have enough food to march through your lands. If you let us, we will brook no—”

He slaps me across the face.

“You are a Pixie,” he says. “Stiffen your quivering lip. You embarrass your Color.” He leans toward me over his saddle pommel. “You are caught between giants, and you will be crushed. But make a man of yourself before we come for you. I do not fight children.”

It is then that Mustang throws a snowball at his head; naturally, her aim is true and her laugh is loud.

Novas does not react. All that moves is his horse beneath him as it wheels to take him back to his roving warband. I watch the man go, and feel disquiet seep into me.

“Ride on home, little archer!” Tactus calls out. “Ride home to your mommy!”

Novas rejoins his thirty heavy horse. Our only cavalry is our scouts. They cannot stand against ionBlades and ionLances at full tilt, even with the deep snowbanks to muddle the heavier horses. Our weapons are still durosteel. Armor no better than duroplate or wolfskin. I don’t even wear armor. I don’t plan on fighting a battle where I need to for a while. We’ve not had a bounty after capturing Ceres’s fortress and their standard. The Proctors have forsaken me, but the weather has not. Normally, infantry falls like dry wheat to cavalry, but the snow and its treacherous depths protect us.

We camp on the western bank of the river that night, nearer the mountains, away from the open plains in front of the dark Greatwoods. Apollo’s heavy cavalry now has to cross the frozen river in the darkness if they want to raid our camp as we sleep. I knew they’d try when they thought us weak, ripe for the taking. They fail miserably. Arrogants. As dusk settled, I had Pax and his strongmen take axes out to soften the thick ice of the river bordering our camp. We hear horse screams and plunging bodies in the night. MedBots whine down to save lives. Those boys and girls are out of the game.

We continue south, aiming for where my scouts guess Apollo’s castle lies. At night we eat well. Soups are made from the meat and bones of animals my scouts bring back. Bread is kept stored in makeshift packs. It is the food that keeps my army content. As the great Corsican once said, “An army marches on its stomach.” Then again, he didn’t fare so well in the winter.

Mustang walks beside me as I lead the column. Though she’s swaddled with wolfcloaks as thick as my own, she hardly comes up to my shoulder. And when we walk through deep snow, it’s almost a laugh to see her try to keep apace with me. But if I slow, I earn a scowl. Her braid bounces as she keeps up. When we reach easier ground, she glances over at me. Her pert nose is red as a cherry in the cold, but her eyes look like hot honey.

“You haven’t been sleeping well,” she says.

“When do I ever?”

“When you slept next to me. You cried out the first week in the woods. After that, you slept like a little baby.”

“Is this you inviting me back?” I ask.

“I never told you to leave.” She waits. “So why did you?”

“You distract me,” I say.

She laughs lightly before drifting back to walk beside Pax. I’m left confused both by my response and by her words. I never thought she’d care one way or the other if I left. A stupid smile spreads on my face. Tactus catches it.

“Smitten as a lovebird,” he hums.

I hurl a handful of snow at his head. “Not a word more.”

“But I need another word, a serious word.” He steps closer, takes a deep breath. “Does the pain in your back give you a hard-on like it gives me?” He laughs.

“Are you ever serious?”

His sharp eyes sparkle. “Oh, you don’t want me serious.”

“How about obedient?”

He claps his hands together. “Well, you know I’m not prime fond of the idea of a leash.”

“Do you see a leash?” I ask, pointing to his forehead, where his slave mark could be.

“And since you know I don’t need a leash, it may do to tell me where we are bound. I would be more… effective that way.”

He’s not challenging me, because he speaks quietly. After the whipping we both received, he’s taken to me in a frighteningly loyal way. Despite all the smiles and sneers and laughs, I have his obedience. And his question is sincere.

“We’re going to ruin Apollo,” I tell him.

“But why Apollo?” he asks. “Are we merely checking off the Houses at random, or should I know something?”

The tone in his voice makes me cock my head. He’s always reminded me of some kind of giant cat. Maybe it’s the frighteningly casual way in which he lopes along. Like he’d kill something without even tensing his muscles. Or maybe it’s because I can imagine him coiling up on a couch and licking himself clean.

“I’ve seen things in the snow, Reaper,” he says quietly. “Impressions in the snow, to be specific. And these impressions are not made by feet.”

“Paws? Hooves?”

“No, dear leader.” He steps closer. “Linear impressions.” I get his meaning. “GravBoots flying very low. Do tell me, why are the Proctors following us? And why are they wearing ghostCloaks?”

All his whispers mean nothing because of our rings. Yet he doesn’t know that.

“Because they are afraid of us,” I tell him.

“Afraid of you, you mean.” He watches me. “What do you know that I don’t? What do you tell Mustang that you don’t tell us?”

“You want to know, Tactus?” I’ve not forgotten his crimes, but I take his shoulder and bring him close like he’s a brother. I know the power touch can have. “Then knock House Apollo off the gorydamned map and I will tell you.”

His lips curl into a feral smile. “A pleasure, good Reaper.”

We stay away from the open plains and cling to the river as we move farther south, listening to our scouts relay news of enemy holdings over the comms. Apollo seems to control everything. All we see of the Jackal are his small bands of scouts. There’s something strange about his soldiers, something that chills the heart. For the thousandth time, I think of my enemy. What makes the faceless boy so frightening? Is he tall? Lean? Thick? Fast? Ugly? And what gives him his reputation, his name? No one seems to know.

The Pluto scouts never come near despite the temptation we offer them. I have Pax carry the banner of Ceres high, so that every Apollo cavalryman in the surrounding miles can see it glimmer. Each realizes the chance for glory. Parties of cavalry dash into us. Scouts think they can pry our pride away and gain themselves status in their House. They come stupidly in threes, in fours, and we ruin them with the Ceres archers or Minerva’s spearmen or with buried pikes in the snow. Little by little, we gnaw at them as the wolf gnaws at the elk. Always we let them escape, though. I want them angry as hell when I arrive on their doorstep. Slaves like them would slow us down.

That night, Pax and Mustang sit with me by a small fire and tell me of their lives outside the school. Pax is a riot when you get him going—a surprisingly energetic talker with a penchant for complimenting everything in his stories, including the villains, so half the time you don’t know who is good and who is bad. He tells us of a time he broke his father’s scepter in half, and another time he was mistaken for an Obsidian and nearly shipped off to the Agoge, where they train in space combat.

“I notion you could say I always dreamt of being an Obsidian,” he rumbles.

When he was a boy, he would sneak from his family’s summer manor in New Zealand, Earth, and join the Obsidians as they performed the Nagoge, the nightly necessity of their training, in which they looted and stole in order to supplement the paltry diet they were given at the Agoge. He would scrap and fight with them for morsels of food. He says he would always win, that is until he met Helga. Mustang and I lock eyes and try not to bust out with laughs as he waxes grandiloquent on Helga’s ample proportions, her thick fists, her ample thighs.

“Theirs was a large love,” I tell Mustang.

“A love to shake the earth,” she replies.

I’m woken the next morning by Tactus. His eyes are cold as the dawn’s freeze.

“Our horses have decided to run away. All of them.” He guides us to the Ceres boys and girls who were watching the horses. “None of them saw a thing. One minute the horses where there; the next they were gone.”

“Poor horses must be confused,” Pax says sorrowfully. “It was stormy last night. Perhaps they ran for safety to the woods.”

Mustang holds up the ropes that held the horses during the night. Pulled in half.

“Stronger than they looked,” she says dubiously.

“Tactus?” I nod my head to the scene.

He looks over at Pax and Mustang before answering. “There are foot tracks…”

“But.”

“Why waste my breath?” He shrugs. “You know what I’m going to say.”

Proctors pulled the ropes apart.

I do not tell my army what happened, but rumor spreads quickly when people huddle together for warmth. Mustang does not ask questions even though she knows I’m not telling her something. After all, I did not simply find the medicine I gave her in the Northwoods.

I try to look at this newest kink as a test. When the rebellion begins, things like this will happen. How do I react? Breathe the anger out. Breathe it out and move. Easier said than done for me.

We move to the woods to the east. Without horses, we’ve no more play to make in the plains near the river. My scouts tell me the castle of Apollo is near. How will I take it without horses? Without any element of speed?

As night falls, another kink reveals itself. The soup pots we brought from Ceres to cook over our fires are cracked through. All of them. And the bread which we kept so securely wrapped in paper in our packs is full of weevils. They crunch like juicy seeds as I eat a supper of bread. To the Drafters it will look an unfortunate turn of events. But I know it is something more.

The Proctors warn me to turn back.

“Why did Cassius betray you?” Mustang asks me that night as we sleep in a hollow beneath a snowdrift. Our Diana sentries watch the camp’s perimeter from the trees. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I betrayed him, actually,” I say. “I… it was his brother that I had to kill in the Passage.”

Her eyes widen. And after a moment she nods. “I had a brother die. It’s not… it wasn’t the same thing. But… a death like that, it changes things.”

“Did it change you?”

“No,” she says, as though she just realized it. “But it changed my family. Made them into people I don’t recognize sometimes. That’s life, I suppose.” She pulls back suddenly. “Why did you tell Cassius that you killed his brother? Are you that mad, Reaper?”

“I didn’t tell him slag. The Proctors did through the Jackal. Gave him a holocube.”

“I see.” Her eyes go cold. “So they are cheating for the ArchGovernor’s son.”

I leave her and the warmth of the fire to piss in the woods. The air is cold and crisp. Owls hoot in the branches, making me feel watched in the night.

“Darrow?” Mustang says from the darkness. I wheel about.

“Mustang, did you follow me?” Darrow. Not Reaper. Something is amiss. Something in the way she says my name, that she says my name it all. It is like seeing a cat bark. But I can’t see her in the darkness.

“I thought I saw something,” she says, still in shadow, voice emanating from the deeper woods. “It’s just over here. It’ll blow your mind.”

I follow the sound of her voice. “Mustang. Don’t leave the camp. Mustang.”

“We’ve already left it, darling.”

Around me, the trees stretch ominously upward. Their branches reach for me. The woods are silent. Dark. This is a trap. It is not Mustang.

The Proctors? The Jackal? Someone watches me.

When something watches you and you don’t know where it is, there is only one sensible thing to do. Change the bloodydamn paradigm, try to even the playing field. Make it have to look for you.

I break into movement. I sprint back toward my army. Then I dash behind a tree, scramble up it and wait, watching. Knives out. Ready to throw. Cloak curled about me.

Silence.

Then the snapping of twigs. Something moves through the woods. Something huge.

“Pax?” I call down.

No response.

Then I feel a strong hand touch my shoulder. The branch I crouch in sinks with the new weight as a man deactivates his ghostCloak and appears from thin air. I’ve seen him before. His curly blond hair is cut tight to his head and frames his dusky, godlike face. His chin is carved from marble, and his eyes twinkle evilly, bright as his armor. Proctor Apollo. The huge thing moves again below us.

“Darrow, Darrow, Darrow,” he clucks over at me in Mustang’s voice. “You were a favorite puppet, but you’re not dancing as you ought. Will you reform and go north?”

“I—”

“Refuse? No matter.” He shoves me off the branch, hard. I hit another on the way down. Fall into the snow. I smell dander. Fur. And then the beast roars.

38
The Fall of Apollo

The bear is huge—bigger than a horse, big as a wagon. White as a bloodless corpse. Eyes red and yellow. Razor black teeth long as my forearm. Nothing like the bears I’ve seen on the HC. A strip of red runs along its spine. Its paws are like fingers, eight on a hand. It’s unnatural. Made by the Carvers for sport. It’s been brought to these woods to kill, to kill me in particular. Sevro and I heard them roaring months back as we went to make peace with Diana. Now I feel its spittle.

I stand there stupid for a second. Then the bear roars again and lunges.

I roll, run. I sprint faster than I ever have in my life. I fly. But the bear is faster, if less agile; the woods shudder as it crashes through brush and trees.

I run beside a massive godTree and dive through bramble. There the ground creaks beneath my feet and I realize, as leaves and snow crumble under my feet, where I stand. I put the place between myself and the bear and wait for the bear to tear through the underbrush. It bursts clear and lunges for me. I jump back. Then it is gone, shrieking as it plummets through the trap floor onto a bed of wooden spikes. My joy would have been longer lived if I didn’t dance back and step into a second trap.

The earth flips. Well, I do. My leg snaps upward and I fly into the air on the end of a rope. I dangle for hours, too frightened to call to my army for fear of Proctor Apollo. My face tingles and itches from the blood rushing to my head. Then a familiar voice cuts the night.

“Well, well, well,” it sneers from below. “Looks like we’ve two pelts to skin.”

Sevro smirks when I tell him I’ve allied with Mustang. At camp, where Mustang was preparing search parties to send out for me, his reputation precedes him amongst the northerners. The Minervans fear him. Tactus and the other DeadHorses, on the other hand, are delighted.

“Why, if it isn’t my belly buddy!” Tactus drawls. “Why the limp, my friend?”

“Your mother rode me ragged,” Sevro grunts.

“Bah, you’d have to stand on your tiptoes to even kiss her chin.”

“Wasn’t her chin I was trying to kiss.”

Tactus claps his hands together in laughter and draws Sevro in for an obnoxious hug. They are two very peculiar people. But I suppose snuggling in horse corpses gives a bond—makes twins of a morbid sort.

“Where were you?” Mustang asks me quietly to the side.

“In a second,” I say.

Sevro has only one eye now. So he is the one-eyed demon the Apollonian emissary warned me about.

“I always wondered what sort of mad little fellows you Howlers were,” Mustang says.

“Little?” Sevro asks.

“I—didn’t mean to offend.”

He grins. “I am little.”

“Well, we of Minerva thought you were ghosts.” She pats his shoulder. “You’re not. And I’m not a real mustang, if you were wondering. No tail, you see? And no,” she interrupts Tactus. “I’ve never worn a saddle, since you were going to ask.”

He was.

“She’ll do,” Sevro mutters sideways to me.

“I like them,” Mustang says of the Howlers a few moments later. “Make me feel tall.”

“Perrrfect!” Tactus picks up the bloodback pelt with a grunt. “Looky look. They found something in Pax’s size.”

Before we join the group at the large fire that Pax stokes, Sevro pulls me aside and produces a blanket. Inside is my slingBlade.

“Kept it safe for you after finding it in the mud,” he says. “And I made it sharper; time for using a dull blade is over.”

“You’re a friend. I hope you know that.” I clap him on the shoulder. “Not a game friend. A real friend now, when we’re out of here, et cetera. You know that, yes?”

“I’m not an idiot.” He blushes all the same.

I learn from him around the campfire that he and the Howlers, Thistle, Screwface, Clown, Weed, and Pebble—the dregs of my old House—stayed no longer than a day after I disappeared.

“Cassius said the Jackal took you,” Sevro says through a mouthful of weevily bread. “Delicious nuts.” He eats like he hasn’t seen food in weeks.

We sit fireside in the Greatwoods, bathed in the light of crackling logs. Mustang, Milia, Tactus, and Pax join us in leaning on a fallen tree in the snow. We’re all bundled like animals. I sit close with Mustang. Her leg is entwined with mine beneath the furs. The bloodback fur stinks and crackles over the fire. Fat drips into the flames. Pax will wear it when it dries.

Sevro sought the Jackal after Cassius fed him the lie. My small friend doesn’t get into details. He hates details. He just taps his empty eye socket and says, “The Jackal owes me.”

“You saw him then?” I ask.

“It was dark. I saw his knife. Didn’t even hear his voice. I had to jump off the mountain. It was a long fall back to the rest of the pack.” He says it so plainly. Yet I did notice his limp. “We couldn’t stay in the mountains. His men… everywhere.”

“But we took some of the mountains with us,” Thistle says. She pats the scalps on her waist with a motherly smile. Mustang shudders.

It’s been chaos in the South. Apollo, Venus, Mercury, and Pluto are all that’s left, but I hear Mercury has been reduced to a force of roving vagabonds. A pity. I was fond of their proctor. He almost chose me in the Draft, would have if he could have. Wonder how things would have gone then.

“Sevro, with that leg, how fast can you run, say, two kilometers?” I ask.

The others are puzzled by the question, but Sevro just shrugs. “Doesn’t slow me. Minute and a half in this lowGrav.”

I make a note to tell him my idea later.

“We have more important things to discuss, Reaper,” Tactus smiles. “Now, I heard you were dangling upside down in the woods from this one here’s trap.” He pats little Thistle on her thigh; she smiles as he lets his hand linger. It’s the scalp collection that draws his affection. “You didn’t think you’d sneak out of telling the tale, did you?”

It’s not so funny a thing as he might suspect.

I finger my ring. Telling them would be signing their death warrants. Apollo and Jupiter listen to me now. I look at Mustang and feel hollow. I’ll risk losing her just to win their rigged game. If I were a good person, I would keep the ring on. I would hold my tongue. But there are plans to make, gods to undo. I take my ring off and set it on the snow. “Let us for one moment pretend we are not from different Houses,” I say. “Let’s all of us talk as friends.”

Without horses, without mobility, I have no advantage over my enemy in the surrounding lands. Another lesson to be learned. I make an advantage for myself, a new strategy. I make them fear me.

My tactics are ones of fragmentation. I split my army into six pieces of ten under myself, Pax, Mustang, Tactus, Milia, and, due to a surprising recommendation from Milia, Nyla. I would have given Sevro his own unit, but he and his Howlers will not leave my side again. They blame themselves for the scar on my belly.

My army sets into Apollo’s holdings like starving wolves. We do not assail their castle, but we raid their forts. We bring fire to their supply stores. We shoot arrows into their horses. We foul their water supplies and tell prisoners false news and let them escape. We murder their goats and pigs. We hack their riverboats with axes. We steal weapons. I do not allow prisoners to be taken except if they are students from Venus, Juno, or Bacchus enslaved by Apollo. All others we let escape. The fear and legend must spread. This my army understands better than anything else. They are dogmatic. They tell each other tales of me around the campfires. Pax is their ringleader; he thinks I am myth made man. Many of my soldiers begin carving my slingBlade into trees and walls. Tactus and Thistle carve slingblades into flesh. And the more industrious members of my army make standards of stained wolfpelts that we take into battle on the end of spears.

I split the slaves of House Ceres and the other captured slaves from one another to integrate them into the various units. I know their allegiances are shifting. Bit by bit. They begin to refer to themselves not as Ceres or Minerva or Diana, but by their unit name. I place four Ceres soldiers, the smallest, with Sevro in the Howlers. I do not know if the bakers will make for elite warriors as Mars’s dregs did, but if anyone can carve off their baby fat, it’s Sevro.

Fear gnaws at Apollo for a week. Our ranks swell. Theirs diminish. Freed slaves tell us of the terror in the castle, the worry that I will appear from the shadows with my bloody wolfcloaks to burn and maim.

I do not fear House Apollo; they are lumbering fools who cannot adjust to my tactics. What I fear is the Proctors, and the Jackal. To me, they are one and the same. After Apollo’s failed attempt on my life, I fear they will be more direct. When will I wake with a razor in my spine? This is their game. At any time, I could die. I must destroy House Apollo now, get Proctor Apollo out of the game before it is too late.

My lieutenants and I sit around our fire in the woods to discuss the tactics of the next day. We are less than two miles from House Apollo’s castle, but they dare not attack us. We are in the deep woods. They huddle in fear of us. We also don’t attack them. I know Proctor Apollo would ruin even the cleverest of night assaults.

Before we can begin, Nyla asks about the Jackal. Sevro’s voice is quiet as he tells what he learned in the mountains. It grows louder as he realizes we are all listening.

“His castle is somewhere in the low mountains. Subterranean, not in the high peaks. Just near Vulcan. Vulcan got off to a prime start. Fastlike. They blitzed Pluto on the third day. Efficient turds. Pluto wasn’t ready. So the Jackal took control, had them retreat into their deep tunnels. Vulcan came howling in with advanced weapons from their forges. It was all going to be over. The Jackal would have been a slave from the first week on. So he collapsed the tunnel—no plan, no way out—in order to preserve his chance to win the game. Killed ten of his own House, tons of highDrafts. MedBots couldn’t save anyone. Stranded forty of the rest in the dark caves. Plenty of water, no food. They were there for nearly a month before they dug their way out.” He smiles and I remember why Fitchner called him Goblin. “Guess what they ate?”

If a Jackal is caught in a trap, it will chew off its own leg. Who told me that?

The fire crackles between us. I would have expected Mustang to shift uncomfortably, but instead what I see from her is anger as the details are relayed. Pure anger. Her jaw flexes and her face loses a shade. I grip her hand beneath the blanket, but it does not grip back.

“How did you find all that out?” Pax rumbles.

Sevro taps one of his curved knives with a fingernail, allowing a soft ding into the night air. It echoes into the woods, bouncing off trees and returning to our ears like a lost phrase. Then I can hear nothing from the woods, nothing beyond the fire. My heart leaps into my throat and I catch Sevro’s eye. He’ll have to find Tactus.

A jamField envelops us.

“Hello, children,” a voice says from the darkness. “Such a bright fire is dangerous at night. And you’re like little puppies, all snuggled together; no, don’t get up.” This voice is melodious. Frivolous. Eerie to hear after so many months of hardship. No one’s voice sounds like that. He strolls in lightly and plops down beside Pax. Apollo. This time he brought no bear, only a grand spear that drips purple sparks along its business end.

“Proctor Apollo, welcome,” I say. Sentinels perch above us in the trees, their arrows pointed at the Proctor. I wave the trap away and ask the Proctor why he is here, as if we’ve never met. His presence sends a very simple message: my friends are in danger.

“To tell you to return home, my dear nomads.” He opens up a flagon of wine and passes it around. No one drinks, except Sevro. He holds on to the flagon.

“Proctors aren’t supposed to interfere with things. It is in the rules,” Pax says in confusion. “By what right do you come here? This is dirty play.”

Mustang seconds his question.

The Aureate sighs, but before he can say anything, Sevro stands and belches. He begins walking off.

“Where are you going?” Apollo snaps. “Don’t walk away from me.”

“Going to piss. Drank all your wine. Rather I piss here?” He cocks his head and touches his small stomach. “Maybe shit, too.”

Apollo wrinkles his nose and looks back to us, dismissing Sevro.

“Influencing is hardly dirty play, my giant friend,” he explains. “I merely care for your well-being. I am here, after all, to guide you in your studies. It would be best for you all to return to the North, that is all. Better strategy, let’s say. Finish your battle there, consolidate your power, then expand out. It is the rules of war: Do not expose yourself when weak. Do not push your enemy to fight when you are inferior. You have no cavalry. No shelter. Meager weapons. You are not learning as you ought.”

His grin is welcoming. It slashes through his beautiful face like a crescent moon as he twirls the rings on his finger, waiting for our response.

“It is kind of you to consider our well-being,” Mustang replies in mocking highLingo. “I do say, very kind! Warms my bones. Paying special attention, no less, to the fact that you’re from another House. But tell me, does my Proctor know you are here? Does Mars’s?” She nods over to silent Milia. “Does Juno’s? Are you doing a naughtynaughty, good sir? If you’re not, then why the jamField? Or do others watch?”

Apollo’s eyes harden, though his smile remains.

“To be quite frank, your Proctors don’t know what you children are playing at. You had your chance, Virginia. You lost. Don’t allow yourself to be bitter. Darrow here beat you fair and sound. Or did your winter together blind you to the fact that there can only be one winning House, only one victorious Primus? Were all of you truly so blinded? This… boy can give you nothing.”

He looks around at each of them.

“I shall repeat, since you are a rusty lot: Darrow’s win will not mean you win. No one will offer you an apprenticeship, because they see him being the key to your success. You merely follow—like General Ney or Ajax Minor, and who remembers them? This Reaper does not even have his own standard. He is using you. That is all. He is embarrassing you and ruining your chances for careers beyond this First Year.”

“You’re quite annoying, all due respect, Proctor,” Nyla says without her usual kindness.

“And you’re still a slave.” Apollo points to her mark. “Fit for all sorts of abuse.”

“Only till I earn the right to wear one of those.” Nyla gestures to Mustang’s wolfcloak.

“Your loyalty is touching, but—”

Pax interrupts. “Would you let me whip you bloody, Apollo? Darrow did. Let me whip you, and I’ll obey like a Pink. Promise on the graves of my ancestors, those of Telemanus and the—”

“You’re nothing more than a bureaucratic Pixie,” Milia hisses. “Do us a favor and piss off.”

My lieutenants are loyal, though I shudder to think what Tactus or Sevro would have said had they been around the fire with us. I lean forward to stare down Apollo. Still, I must provoke him.

“Do us solid, eh? Take your advice, shove it up your ass, and piss off.”

Someone laughs in the air above us, a woman’s laugh. Other Proctors watch from inside the jamField. I see silhouettes in the smoke. How many watch? Jupiter? Venus, maybe, by the laugh? That would be perfect.

The fire flickers over Apollo’s face. He is angry.

“Here is the logic I know. The winter could get colder, children. When it gets cold outside, things die. Like wolves. Like bears. Like mustangs.”

I have a reply and it is perfectly longwinded.

“I wonder, Apollo, what happens if the Drafters find out that you are arranging to have the ArchGovernor’s son win? If you were, say, rigging the game like a bazaar crime lord.”

Apollo freezes. I continue.

“When you tried killing me in the woods with that stupid bear, you failed. Now you come here like the desperate fool you are to threaten my friends when they do not slaver at the idea of betraying me. Will you really kill us all? I know you can edit what you like from the footage the Drafters see. But however will you explain to all our Drafters how we all died?”

My lieutenants feign their shock.

I go on.

“Say an Imperator of a fleet, say a Legate, say any of the Drafters of any of the other Houses, found out that the ArchGovernor was paying the Proctors to cheat, to eliminate the competition so that his son would win and their children would lose. Do you think there would be consequences for the Proctors being bribed? For the ArchGovernor? Do you think they might care that their children are dying in a rigged game? Or that you’re getting paid to ruin the meritocratic system? The best shall rise. Or is it the best connected?”

Apollo’s jaw tightens.

He looks up to the other Proctors. They wisely stay invisible. He must have drawn the short straw to come down here and be the face of their cheating. My lieutenants stay silent as he speaks.

“If they did find out, children, then there would be consequences for everyone,” Apollo threatens. “So feel free to guard your tongues while you have them.”

“Or what?” Mustang asks violently. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

“You of all people should know,” he says. I don’t understand his point, but this charade has run its course. I’ve counted the seconds since Sevro left. The Proctors have not. I turn to Mustang.

“How fast can Sevro run two kilometers?”

“A minute and a half, in this gravity, I do believe. Though he’s a little liar, so likely faster.”

“And how far is Apollo’s castle?”

“Oh, I’d say three kilometers, maybe a little more.”

Apollo jumps to his feet, looking around for Sevro.

“Splendid,” I say. “Say, Mustang, do you know what I like most about jamFields?”

“That no sound can get out?”

“No. That no sound can get in.”

Apollo disengages the jamField and we hear the howls. They come from the distance, two miles away. From ramparts. From Apollo’s castle. MedBots wail toward the cries, streaking across the distant sky.

“Venus! Were you not watching them? You stupid…” Apollo snarls at the empty air.

“The little one took off his ring,” an invisible woman cries. “They all took off their rings! I can’t see anything without their rings on, and not in a jamField!”

“But they’re all back on by now,” I say. “So pull up your datapad and tell me what you see.”

“You little…” Apollo’s hands clench. I flinch back. Mustang steps between us, as does Pax.

“Uh-oh,” Pax booms, thumping his huge axe against his chest. The armor beneath his wolfcloak thumps rhythmically. “Uh-oh!”

Snow flies as Apollo soars out of the woods, the other Proctors on his heels. They will be too late. Edit all they like, interfere all they like, the battle for House Apollo has begun, and Sevro and Tactus have claimed the ramparts.

My lieutenants and I arrive at the battle in time to see Tactus climbing the highest tower, a knife in his teeth. There, standing on the edge of the hundred-meter parapet like some careless Greek champion, he pulls down his pants and pisses on the banner of House Apollo. He’s crawled through shit to earn that banner. The slaves we captured throughout the week told us of the castle’s weaknesses—large latrine holes—and so Tactus, Sevro, and the Howlers exploited them in dreadfully efficient time. House Apollo’s soldiers woke to demons covered in dung. Oh, how terribly my conquering soldiers smell as they open the gates for me. Inside, it’s a mass of chaos.

The castle is tall, white, ornate. Its plaza stands round and has six grand doorways that lead to six grand, spiraling towers. Sheep and cows crowd makeshift pens on the far side of the plaza. Apollo guards have retreated there. More of their allies stream from the tower doorways behind them. My men are outnumbered three to one. But mine are freemen, not slaves. They will fight better. Yet it is not numbers that threatens to turn the tide against my invading army. It’s the Apollo Primus, Novas. The Proctor gave him his own pulseWeapon. A spear that glimmers with purple sparks. Its tip touches one of the DeadHorses from Diana, and the girl flips ten feet backwards, like a broken toy convulsing on the ground as its gears fall off their tracks.

I gather my forces near the gatehouse, just inside the plaza. Many are still in the towers like Tactus. I’ve got Pax, Milia, Nyla, Mustang, and forty others at my back. The enemy Primus marshals his own forces. His weapon alone could ruin us.

“Mustang, ready with that standard?” I ask. I feel her hand on the small of my back, just beneath my breastplate. I wear no helm. My hair is bound by leather. My face is dark with soot. My right hand carries my slingBlade. The left, a shortened stunpike. Nyla carries the standard of Ceres.

“Pax, we’re the scythe. Girls, you’re the pickers.”

My men in the towers howl as they sprint and jump down from their perches to join the battle, streaming into the plaza from all angles. Their stained wolfcloaks reek. The cobblestones between my band and Apollo’s lie thick with ankle-high drifts of snow. Proctors glint in the air above, waiting for the pulseSpear to make short work of my army.

“Take their Primus,” Mustang whispers in my ear. She points to the tall, hard boy and smacks my butt. “Claim him.”

“Twenty meters and stop, Pax.” He nods at my command.

“The Primus is mine!” I roar to my army and to theirs. “Novas, you gorywhore. You are mine. You pisseating snail. You foul piece of shit.” As the tall, mad invader with the slingBlade screams at their Primus, Apollo’s forces shirk instinctively away. “Enslave the rest!” I howl.

Then Pax and I charge.

The rest stream after, trying to catch my heels. I let Pax overtake me. He’s screaming with his war axe and charging at Novas and his band of bodyguards—heavily armored boys and girls with crimson handprints on their helmets. They lead the charge of the enemy host, going straight at Pax, lowering their spears to stop his mad charge. These are the tall sort, the dashing killers who have long since grown too arrogant to understand they are in danger or to feel fear as they make plans to meet Pax in arms.

Then Pax stops.

And without breaking stride, I jump forward so his hand catches my foot; I push off and he launches me ten meters forward into the air. I’m howling the entire way, like a thing torn from bloodydamn nightmares, until I smash into the bodyguards. Three go down. A random spear catches my stomach and scrapes along my ribs, spinning me just as a trident pierces the air where my head had been. I gain my feet, swing horizontally, sweeping legs. I spin away from a thrust and hack down diagonally as I come from my spin, shattering someone tall at the collarbone. Another spear comes at me; I slap it to the side and run along its length, jumping to bury my knee into the face of an Apollo highDraft. He falls back, taking me with, my knee stuck in his helmet’s visor. I slash madly as I go from the high vantage, stunning three other highDrafts with looping blows till I teeter down to the ground.

We hit the snow. The highDraft’s nose is broken and he’s unconscious, but my knee is numb and bloody from the impact as I jerk it out of his helmet. I roll away, expecting spears to fillet me. They don’t. I shattered the head of the Apollo army in one mad charge; Pax and my army sweep in like an iron curtain till I’m left with Novas in the center of the chaos. He’s tall and strong. A sweeping arc from his spear shatters a Howler’s shield. He blasts Milia backwards and catches Pax in the arm with the spear, knocking him to the ground like a toy. I’m taller and stronger.

“Novas, you little girl!” I shout. “You sniveling Pink.”

His eyes flash when he sees me coming.

The battle takes a collective breath as he wheels toward me like an elk turning on the leader of a wolfpack. We stalk toward one another. He lunges first. I dodge and spin along the length of the spear till I’m behind him. Then with one massive swing, like I’m hacking down a tree with my slingBlade, I break his leg and take his spear.

He moans like a child. I sit on his chest, smug with the satisfaction that I did not moan like this when my legs were broken and rewoven in Mickey’s carveshop. I make a show of yawning despite the chaos swirling around me.

Mustang takes the reins of battle.

Only one member of House Apollo escapes. A girl. A fast girl, but an unimportant member of their House. Somehow, she jumps from the highest tower and simply floats down to the ground with her House’s standard. Almost like magic. But I see the distortion around her. Proctor Apollo preserves his position in the game. The girl finds a horse and rides away from my horseless army. Pax hurls a spear at her from a distance. His aim is true and would have pinned the horse to the turf through the neck, but a freakish wind miraculously knocks the spear wide. In the end, it’s Mustang who takes a horse from the Apollo stables and chases the girl down with the Howlers Thistle and Pebble. She brings her back bent over her own horse’s neck, spanking her butt with the standard as they gallop back.

My army roars as Mustang trots into the conquered castle square. We’ve already freed the House Ceres slaves; they’ve earned their place in my army. I wave down at Mustang from my perch beside Sevro and Tactus on the high ramparts; our feet dangle carelessly over the edge. House Apollo has fallen in less than thirty minutes despite Apollo’s interference with the pulseSpear.

Proctor Apollo confers with Jupiter and Venus in the sky. They glitter in the dawn light as though nothing has happened. But I know he will have to leave the game; the standard and castle are taken. He cannot hurt me any longer.

“You’re through!” I taunt at Apollo. “Your House has fallen!” My army roars once more. I bask in the sound and the winter air as the sun peaks over the western lip of the Valles Marineris Most of those voices would be slaves. Instead, they follow willingly. Soon even those of House Apollo will follow me.

I laugh wildly; the fire of victory is hot in my veins. We have beaten one Proctor. But Jupiter can still hurt us. His House is unbent, unbroken far to the north. A quick rage overtakes me along with another, darker passion—one of arrogance, furious, mad arrogance. I grab the pulseSpear, cock my arm, and hurl the weapon as hard as I can at the gathered Proctors. My army watches this act of impudence. The three Proctors scatter after the pulseSpear goes through their shielding. They turn to look at me. Fire glitters in their eyes. But the passion in me was not quenched by a mere spear throw. I hate these scheming fools. I will ruin them.

“Jupiter! You are next. You are next, you piece of dog shit!”

Then Pax bellows my name. And then Tactus’s voice echoes it, then Nyla from a far tower. And soon a hundred voices chant it throughout the conquered castle—from the courtyard to the high parapets and towers. They beat their swords and spears and shields, and then they throw them at the Proctors. A hundred missiles thump harmlessly into pulseShields and many of my army must scatter so that they are not impaled by the falling weapons, but it is a sweet sight, a sweet sound of metal rain on cobbled stone. And again they take up my name. They chant and chant the name of the Reaper at the Proctors, because they know whom we now fight.

39
The Proctor’s Bounty

My army sleeps well into the morning. I have no need of rest, though I keep company with Sevro and half a dozen others on the ramparts. They stand close, as though any space might present the Proctors an opportunity to kill me.

Sevro has freed five Mercury students from the Apollo slave groups. They cluster around him on the ramparts playing games of speed, slapping each other’s knuckles to see who can move the fastest. I don’t play, because I win too easily; best to let the children have their fun. After the taking of the castle, even though Sevro and Tactus did the heavy lifting, my boys and girls think that makes me some sort of marvel. Mustang told me it is a rare thing.

“It’s as if they think you’re something out of time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Like you’re one of the old conquerors. The ancient Golds who usurped Earth, destroyed her fleets, and all that. They use it as an excuse not to compete with you, because how could Hephaestion compete with Alexander, or Antonius with Caesar?”

My insides knot. This is but a game, and they love me this much. When the rebellion comes, these boys and girls will be my enemies, and I will replace them with Reds. How fanatical then will those Reds be? And will that fanatacism matter a lick if they have to stand against creatures like Sevro, like Tactus, like Pax and Mustang?

I watch Mustang slink toward me along the rampart. She limps ever so slightly from a sprained ankle, yet she’s all grace. Her hair is a nest of twigs; circles ring her eyes. She smiles at me. She is beautiful. Like Eo.

From the ramparts, we can see over the Greatwoods and glimpse the beginnings of Mars’s highlands to the north. The mountains glower at us from the west, to our left. Mustang points to the sky.

“Proctor incoming.”

My bodyguards tighten around me, but it’s only Fitchner. Sevro spits over the ramparts. “Our prodigal parent returneth.”

Fitchner descends with a smile that tells a tale of exhaustion, fear, and a little bit of pride.

“May we talk?” he asks me, looking about at my scowling friends.

Fitchner and I sit together in the Apollo warroom. Mustang stokes the fire. Fitchner eyes her skeptically, disliking her presence. He has an opinion on most things, like someone else I know.

“You’ve made such a mess of things, lad.”

“Let’s agree that you won’t call me lad,” I say.

He nods. There’s no gum in his mouth. He doesn’t know how to say what he wants to tell me. It’s the worry in his eyes that cues me in.

“Apollo has not left Olympus,” I say.

He stiffens, surprised at my guess. “Correct. He is still there.”

“And what does that mean, Fitchner?” Mustang comes to sit beside me.

“Just that,” Fitchner answers, looking at me. “He has not left Olympus like he ought. It’s all a mess. Apollo was getting a juicy appointment if the Jackal won. Same with Jupiter and some of the others. There was talk of one of the Praetor Knight positions opening up on Luna.”

“And now that choice is slipping away,” Mustang says. She glances over at me with a smirk. “Because of a boy.”

“Yes.”

I laugh. The jamField makes the sound echo. “So what is to be done?”

“You still want to win, yes?” Fitchner asks.

“Yes.”

“And that is the point of all this?” he asks me, though it’s clear there’s something else in his head. “You’ll get an apprenticeship no matter.”

I lean forward and tap my finger on the table. “The point is to show them that they can’t gorywell cheat in their own game. That the ArchGovernor can’t just say his son is best and should beat me just because he was born lucky. This is about merit.”

“No,” Fitchner says, leaning forward. “It’s about politics.” He glances at Mustang. “Will you send her away already?”

“Mustang stays.”

“Mustang,” he mocks. “So, Mustang, what do you think about the ArchGovernor cheating for his son?”

Mustang shrugs. “Kill or be killed, cheat or be cheated? Those are the rules I’ve seen Aureates follow, especially Peerless Scarred.”

“Cheat or be cheated.” Fitchner taps his upper lip. “Interesting.”

“You should know about the cheating part,” she says.

“You need to let me and Darrow have a word, Mustang.”

“She stays.”

“It’s okay,” she mutters cryptically. She squeezes my shoulder as she leaves. “I’m bored of your Proctor anyway.”

When Mustang is gone, Fitchner stares at me. He reaches to his pocket, hesitates, then pulls something out. A small box. He tosses it on the table and gestures for me to open it. Somehow I know what is inside.

“Well, you bastards do owe me a few bounties,” I laugh bitterly as I slip Dancer’s knifeRing onto my finger. I flex the joint and a blade pops out, extending along the top of the finger eight inches. I flex the joint again and it slithers home.

“The Obsidians took it from you before you went through the Passage, yes? I was told it was your father’s.”

“Someone told you that?” I pick at the warroom table with the blade. “How very inaccurate of them.”

“You don’t need to be snide, lad.” My eyes flick up to look into Fitchner’s. “You came here to win an apprenticeship. You’ve done that. If you keep pushing the Proctors, they will kill you.”

“I seem to remember us already having this conversation.”

“Darrow, there is no slagging point to what you are doing! It is reckless!”

“No point?” I echo.

“If you beat the ArchGovernor’s boy, then what? What does that achieve?”

“Everything!” I snap. I shudder with anger and stare at the fire till my voice finds control again. “It proves I am the best Gold in this school. It shows that I can do whatever they can. Why should I even speak to you, Fitchner? I’ve done all this without your help. I don’t need you. Apollo tried to kill me and you did nothing! Nothing! So what exactly do I owe you? Maybe this?” I let the blade slither out.

“Darrow.”

“Fitchner.” I roll my eyes.

He slaps the table. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a fool. Look at me. Look at me, you condescending little twit.”

I look at him. His stomach paunch has grown. His face is haggard for a Gold. His hair yellow and slicked back. He’s never been handsome—less now than ever.

“Look at me, Darrow. Everything I have, I’ve had to fight for. I was not born to an ArchGovernor’s household. This is as far as I could ever go, yet I should go so much further. My son should go further, but he can’t and he won’t. He’ll die if he tries. Everyone has a limit, Darrow. A limit they can’t skip past. Yours is higher than mine, but it’s not as high as you’d gorywell like. If you go past it, they’ll knock you down.”

He stares away as if ashamed, glowering at the fire. His son. It’s in their coloring, in the face, in the disposition and the way they speak to one another. I’m a fool for not saying it out loud sooner.

“You’re Sevro’s father,” I say.

He does not respond for some time. When he does, his voice is pleading. “You make him think he can climb higher than he can. You’ll kill him, boyo. And you’ll kill yourself.”

“Then help us!” I urge him. “Give me something I can use against Apollo. Or better, fight them with me. Gather the other Proctors and we will take the battle to them.”

“I can’t, boyo. I can’t.”

I sigh. “No, I thought you wouldn’t.”

“My career would be over in a pinch if I helped you. All I’ve slaved for, all the many things, would be risked. For what? Just to prove a point to the ArchGovernor.”

“Everyone is so frightened of change,” I say before smiling sincerely at the broken man. “You remind me of my uncle.”

“There will be no change,” Fitchner grumbles as he stands. “Never is. Know your damn place or you won’t make it out of this, boyo.” He looks like he wants to reach and touch my shoulder. He doesn’t. “Hell, the trap’s already set for you. You’re walking right into it.”

“I’m ready for the Jackal’s traps, Fitchner. Or Apollo’s. It makes no difference. They won’t be able to stop what’s coming for them.”

“No,” Fitchner says, hesitating a moment. “Not their traps. The girl’s.”

I answer him in a way he will understand. “Fitchner. Do not play me for a fool with vague, annoying references to duplicity. My army is mine, won in heart and body and soul. They can no more betray me at this point than I can betray them. We are something you have not seen before. So stop.”

He shakes his head. “This is your fight, boyo.”

“Yes. It is my fight.” I smile. Now is the time I’ve been waiting for. “Fitchner, hold up,” I say before he reaches the door. He stops and looks back. I kick back my chair and stride over to him. He eyes me curiously. Then I stick out my hand. “Despite everything, thank you.”

He clasps it. “Good luck, Darrow,” he says. “But take care of Sevro. The little shit will follow you anywhere, no matter what I say.”

“I’ll take care of him. I promise.” My Helldiver grip tightens on his hand.

For a moment, if only a moment, we are friends. Then he winces at the pressure my hand is putting on his. He laughs at first, then he understands and his eyes widen.

“Sorry,” I say.

That’s when I break his nose and slam my elbow into his temple till he no longer moves.

40
Paradigm

“Fitchner left?” she asks me.

“Through the window,” I say.

I watch Mustang across Apollo’s white warroom table. A blizzard has risen outside, no doubt meant to keep my army inside the castle around their warm fires and hot pots of soup. Her hair coils about her shoulders, held by leather bands. She wears the wolfcloak like the others, though hers is streaked with crimson. Muddy boots with spurs are kicked up on the table. Her standard, the only weapon she really favors, leans on a chair beside her. Mustang’s face is a quick one. Quick to mocking smiles. Quick to pleasant frowns. She gives me the smile and asks what is on my mind.

“I am wondering when you will betray me,” I say.

Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re expecting that?”

“Cheat or be cheated,” I say. “Echoed by your own lips.”

“Are you going to cheat me?” she said. “No. Because what advantage would you gain? You and I have beaten this game. They would have us believe one must win at the cost to all the rest. That isn’t true, and we’re proving it.”

I say nothing.

“You have my trust, because when you saw me hiding in the mud after taking my castle, you let me escape,” she explains thoughtfully. “And I have your trust, because I pulled you from the mud when Cassius left you for dead.”

I do not respond.

“So there is the answer. You are going to do great things, Darrow.” She never calls me Darrow. “Maybe you don’t have to do them alone?”

Her words make me smile. Then I bolt upright, startling her.

“Get our men,” I order.

I know she was looking forward to resting here. I was too. The smell of soup tempts me. So does the warmth and the bed and the thought of spending a quiet moment with her. But that is not how men conquer.

“We’re going to surprise the Proctors. We’re going to take Jupiter.”

“We can’t surprise them.” She taps her ring. The jamField Fitchner had is gone. We’d ditch the rings completely, but they are our insurance. The Proctors may be able to edit out a few things here and there, but common sense dictates that they can’t tamper with the footage too much or the Drafters will get suspicious.

“And even if we make it through this storm, what will taking Jupiter accomplish?” she asks. “If Apollo didn’t leave when his House lost, Jupiter won’t either. You’re just going to provoke them into interfering. We should go after the Jackal now!”

I know the Proctors are watching me plan this. I want them to know where I’m going.

“I’m not ready for the Jackal,” I tell her. “I need more allies.”

She looks at me, eyebrows pinched together. She doesn’t understand, but it doesn’t matter. She will soon enough.

Despite the blizzard, my army moves swiftly. We bundle ourselves in cloaks and furs so thickly that we look like animals stumbling through the snow. At night, we follow the stars, moving despite the mounting winds and the piling snow. My army does not grumble. They know I will not lead them purposelessly. My new soldiers press themselves harder than I would have thought possible. They have heard of me. Pax makes sure of that. And they are desperate to impress me. It becomes problematic. Wherever I walk, the procession around me suddenly doubles their efforts so that they overtake those in front or outpace those behind.

The blizzard is vicious. Pax always stands close to me and Mustang, as though he means to block us from the wind. He and Sevro are always stepping on each other’s toes to be nearest me, though Pax would likely want to light my fires and tuck me in bed at night if I let him, while Sevro would tell me to pick my own ass. I see his father in him every time I look at him now. He seems weaker now that I know his family. There’s no reason that should be the case; I guess I just supposed he really did spring from the loins of a she-wolf.

Eventually, the snows cease and spring comes fast and hard, which confirms my suspicions. The Proctors are playing games. The Howlers make sure all eyes are to the sky in case Proctors decide to harass us as we make our way. None do. Tactus keeps an eye out for their tracks. But it is quiet. We see no enemy scouts, hear no war trumpets in the distance, see no smoke rising except to the north in Mars’s highlands.

We raid provision stores in burnt and broken castles as we push toward Jupiter. There are jugs from Bacchus’s castle that Sevro was disappointed to discover full of grape juice instead of wine, salted beef from Juno’s deep cellars, molding cheeses, fish wrapped in leaves, and bags of the ever-present smoked horsemeat. They keep us full as we march.

In four rugged days, I have reached and besieged Jupiter’s triple-walled castle in the low mountain passes. Snow melts swiftly enough to make the ground soggy for our horses. Streams flow through our camp. I do not bother devising a plan of action. I simply tell Pax’s, Milia’s, and Nyla’s divisions that whoever gives me the fortress will win a prize. The defenders are very few and my army takes the outer fortifications in a day by making a series of wooden ramps under intermittent arrow barrages.

My other three divisions scout the surrounding territory en force in case the Jackal decides to stick his nose into this. Jupiter’s main army, it seems, is stranded across the now-thawed Argos laying siege to Mars’s castle. They did not expect the river to thaw so quickly. Still there is no sign of the Jackal’s men or of the Proctors. I wonder if they have found Fitchner locked in one of the Apollo Castle cells yet. I left him food and water and a face full of bruises.

On the third day of the siege, a white flag is flown from Jupiter’s ramparts. A thin boy of middling height and timid smiles slips out Jupiter Castle’s postern gate. The castle lies on high, rocky ground. It is sandwiched between two huge rock faces, so its three-tiered walls bow outward. Soon I would have tried sending men down the rock faces. It would have been a job for the Howlers—but they’ve had enough glory. This siege belongs to the soldiers captured when we fought Apollo.

The boy walks tentatively in front of the main gate. I meet him there with Sevro, Milia, Nyla, and Pax. We are a fearsome lot even without Tactus and Mustang, though Mustang could never really be called fearsome in appearance—maybe spirited, at best. Milia looks like something out of a nightmare—she’s taken to wearing trophies like Tactus and Thistle. And Pax has cut notches along his huge axe for each slave he has taken.

In front of my lieutenants, the boy shows his nervousness. His smiles are quick, almost as if he’s worried we might disapprove of them. The ring on his finger is that of Jupiter. He looks hungry, because it barely fits on him any longer.

“Name is Lucian,” the boy says, trying sounding manly. He seems to think Pax is in charge. Pax booms a laugh and points to me and my slingBlade. Lucian flinches when he looks at me. I think he well knew I was the leader.

“So we here to swap smiles?” I ask. “What’s your word?”

“The word is hunger,” he laughs piteously. “We’ve not eaten anything but rats and raw grain in water for three weeks.”

I almost pity the boy. His hair is dirty, eyes teary. He knows he’s giving up a chance at an apprenticeship. They’ll shame him for surrendering for the rest of his life. But he is hungry. So are the seven other defenders. Oddly, all are of Jupiter, not slaves. Their Primus left their weak instead of the slaves behind.

The only condition they have in surrendering the castle is that they must not be enslaved. Only Pax grumbles something honorable about them needing to earn their freedom like all the rest of us, but I agree to the boy’s request. I tell Milia to watch them. If they act seditious, she’ll make trophies of their scalps. We tether our horses in the courtyard. The stone is cobbled and dirty. A tall, angular keep stretches up and into the cliff’s wall.

Darkness seeps through the clouds. A storm is coming to the mountain pass, so I bring my force into the castle and bar the gates. Mustang and her troop stay beyond the walls and will return later in the evening from scouting with Tactus. We speak over the commUnits and Tactus curses us for having a dry roof over our heads. The night’s rain is heavy.

I make sure our veterans get the first beds in Jupiter’s dormitories before we eat. My army may be disciplined, but they’ll shiv their own mothers for a warm bed. It’s the one thing most of them never got used to—sleeping on the ground. They miss their mattresses and silk sheets. I miss the small cot I used to share with Eo. She’s been dead now longer than we were married. I’m surprised how much it hurts to realize that.

I think I’m eighteen now, Earth metric. Not rightly sure.

Our bread and meats are like heaven to the starved defenders of Jupiter. Lucian and his lot, all skinny, tired-looking souls, eat so fast that Nyla is fussing about them ripping their guts. She runs around telling them each that the smoked horsemeat isn’t galloping off anywhere. Pax and his BloodBacks occasionally throw bones at the meek lot. Pax’s laugh is infectious. It booms out of him and then turns something feminine as it continues past two seconds. No one can keep a straight face when he gets rolling. He’s talking about Helga again. I look for Mustang so we can laugh about it, but she’ll be away for hours more. I miss her even then, and I swell a little inside my chest because I know she will curl into my bed this night and together we’ll snore like Uncle Narol after Yuletide.

I call Milia to the head of the table. My army lounges around Jupiter’s warroom; they are easy in conquest. Jupiter’s map is destroyed. I cannot make out what they know.

“What do you think of our hosts?” I ask Milia.

“I say put them under the sigil.”

I cluck my tongue. “You really don’t like to keep promises, do you?”

She looks very much like a hawk, face all angles and cruelty. Her voice is of a similar breed. “Promises are just chains,” she rasps. “Both meant for breaking.”

I tell her to leave the Jupitareans alone, but then loudly command her to fetch the wine we scavenged on our trek to Jupiter. She takes some boys and brings up the barrels from Bacchus’s store.

I stand foolishly on the table. “And I order you to get drunk!” I roar to my army. They look at me like I am mad.

“Get drunk?” one says.

“Yes!” I cut him off before he can say more. “Can you manage that? Act like fools, for once?”

“We’ll try,” Milia cries. “Won’t we?” She’s answered in cheers. Some time later, as we drink Bacchus’s stores, I loudly offer some to the Jupitareans. Pax stumbles up in protest at the idea of sharing good wine. He’s a good actor.

“Are you contradicting me?” I demand.

Pax hesitates but manages to nod his giant head.

I draw my slingBlade from its back scabbard. It rasps in the humid warroom air. A hundred eyes go to us. Thunder rolls outside. Pax wobbles forward with a giant inebriated step. His own hand is on his axe’s hilt, but he does not draw it. After a moment, he shakes his head and goes to a knee—he’s still almost my own height. I sheathe my sword and pull him up. I tell him he’s to run patrols.

“Patrols? But… in the storm and rain?”

“You heard me, Pax.”

With a grumble, the BloodBacks wobble after him to go about their punishment. They’re all smart enough to have figured out their parts even if they don’t know the play. “Discipline!” I brag to Lucian. “Discipline is the best of mankind’s traits. Even in big brutes like that.”

In Pax’s absence, I make a show of giving ceremonial wolfcloaks to the slaves of Venus and Bacchus who earned their freedom in taking this fortress—ceremonial because we don’t have any time to find wolves. There is laughter and lightness. Merriment for once, though no one discards their weapons. Nyla is coaxed into singing a song. Her voice is like an angel’s. She sings at the Mars Opera House and was scheduled to perform in Vienna until a better opportunity came along in the form of the Institute. The opportunity of a lifetime. What a lark.

Lucian sits in the corner of the warroom with the other seven defenders watching our soldiers make a show of falling asleep atop tables, in front of the fire, along the walls. Some slink away to steal beds. The sound of snores tickles my ears.

Sevro stays close to me, as though the Proctors could rush in and kill me at any moment. I tell Sevro to get drunk and leave me be. He obeys and is soon laughing, then snoring atop the long table. I stumble over my sleeping army to Lucian, a smile across my face. I have not been drunk since before my wife died.

Despite Lucian’s meekness, I find him curious. His eyes rarely meet mine and his shoulders slump. But his hands never go to his trouser pockets, never fold to guard himself. I ask him about the war with Mars. As I thought, it’s almost won. He says something about a girl betraying Mars. Sounds like Antonia to me.

I must move quickly. I don’t know what will happen if my House’s standard and castle are taken even though I have my independent army. I could technically lose.

Lucian’s friends are tired, so I give them leave to go try to find beds. They won’t be a problem. Lucian stays to talk. I invite him over to the warroom table. As Lucian’s friends file out, I hear Mustang in the hall. She waltzes into the room. Thunder rolls outside. Her hair is damp and matted, wolfcloak soaked, boots tracking mud.

Her face is a model of confusion when she sees me with Lucian.

“Mustang, darling!” I cry. “I fear you’re too late. Went straight through Bacchus’s stores already!” I gesture to my snoring army and wink. Maybe fifty remain, sprawled out and in various states of sleep across the large warroom. All drunk as Narol on Yuletide.

“Getting shitfaced seems a prime idea at a time like this,” she says strangely. She looks back to Lucian, then to me. She doesn’t like something. I introduce her to Lucian. He mumbles how nice it is to meet her. She snorts a laugh.

“How did he convince you not to make him a slave, Darrow?”

I don’t know if she understands what game I’m playing.

“He gave me his fortress!” I wave my clumsy hand to the half-destroyed stone map on the wall. Mustang says that she will join us. She begins to call some of her men in from the hall, but I cut her off. “No, no. Me and Lucian here were becoming prime friends. No girls. Take your men and go find Pax.”

“But…”

“Go find Pax,” I say.

I know she’s confused, but she trusts me. She murmurs goodbye to me and Lucian and closes the door. The sound of her bootheels slowly fades.

“Thought she’d never leave!” I laugh to Lucian. He leans back in his chair. He really is very slim, nothing excess to him at all. His blond hair is clipped plainly. His hands thin and useful. He reminds me of someone.

“Most people don’t want pretty girls to leave,” Lucian says, smiling sincerely. He even blushes a little when I ask if he really thinks Mustang is pretty.

We talk for nearly an hour. Gradually, he lets himself relax. He lets his confidence grow and soon he is telling me of his childhood, of a demanding father, of family expectations. But he’s not pitiful when he does this. He is realistic, a trait I admire. It’s no longer necessary for him to avoid my eyes when we talk. His shoulders don’t hunch quite so much, and he becomes pleasant, even funny. I laugh loudly half a dozen times. The night grows late, but still we talk and joke. He laughs at the boots I wear, which are swaddled in animal furs for warmth. They are hot now that the snows melt, but I need to wear the pelts.

“But what of you, Darrow? We gab and gab over me. I think it’s your turn. So tell me, what is it that’s taken you here? What pushes you? I don’t think I’ve heard of your family…”

“Not people you would care to hear about, to tell it true. But I think it comes down to a girl, that’s all. I am simple. So are my reasons.”

“The pretty one?” Lucian blushes. “Mustang? She hardly seems simple.”

I shrug.

“I told you everything!” Lucian protests. “Don’t be a vague Purple on me. Cut to it, man!” He raps the table impatiently.

“Fine. Fine. The whole story.” I sigh. “See that pack beside you? There’s a bag inside it. Reach and grab it for me, will you?”

Lucian pulls the bag out and tosses it to me. It clinks on the table.

“Let me see your hand.”

“My hand?” he asks with a laugh.

“Right, just put it out, please.” I pat the table. He doesn’t react. “Come on, man. There’s this theory I’ve been working on.” I pat the table impatiently. He puts his hand out.

“How does this tell your story or theory?” His smile is still on.

“It’s a complicated one. Better to show you.”

“Fair enough.”

I open the bag and dump out its contents. A score of golden sigil rings roll across the table. Lucian watches them roll.

“These all come from the dead kids. The kids the medBots couldn’t save. Let’s see.” I shuffle through the pile of rings. “We have Jupiter, Venus, Neptune, Bacchus, Juno, Mercury, Diana, Ceres… and we have a Minerva right here.” I frown and rummage around. “Hmm. Odd. I can’t find a Pluto.”

I look up at him. His eyes are different. Dead. Quiet.

“Oh, there’s one.”

41
The Jackal

He jerks back his hand. He is fast.

I am faster.

I bury my dagger through his hand, pinning it to the table.

His mouth gasps open at the pain. Some weird sort of feral exhalation hisses from his mouth as he jerks at the dagger. But I am bigger than him and I drove the dagger four inches into the table. I hammer it down with a flagon. He can’t pull it out. I lean back and watch him try. There’s something primal to his initial frenzied panic. Then something decidedly human in his recovery, which seems more brutally cold than my act of violence. He calms himself faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. It takes a breath, maybe three, and he leans back in his chair as though we were at drinks.

“Well, shit,” he says tightly.

“I thought we should become better acquainted,” I say. I point to myself. “Jackal, I am Reaper.”

“You’ve the better name,” he replies. He takes a breath. Another. “How long have you known?”

“That you were the Jackal? A hopeful guess. That you were up to no good? Before I entered the castle. No one surrenders without a fight. One of your rings didn’t fit. And hide your hands next time. Insecure sobs always hide or fiddle with their hands. But really you had no chance. The Proctors knew I was coming here. They thought to make it a trap to ruin me by telling you I was coming. So you would sneak in here, try to catch me with my pants down. Their mistake. Your mistake.”

He watches me, wincing as he turns to look at my sober-as-day soldiers rising from the ground. Nearly fifty of them. I wanted them to see the ruse.

“Ah.” The Jackal sighs as he realizes how futile his trap has become. “My soldiers?”

“Which ones? The ones that were with you or the ones you hid in the castle? Maybe in the cellars? Maybe beneath the floor in a tunnel? I don’t wager they’re smiles and giggles right now, man. Pax is a beast and Mustang will be helping him just in case.”

“So that’s why you sent her away.”

And so she wouldn’t accidentally ask why we were pretending to be drunk on grape juice.

Pax will have found their hiding place. Thunder still rolls. I hope the Jackal sank a large size of his force into this ambush. If he didn’t, it’ll be a hassle, because if he has Jupiter’s castle, he probably has Jupiter’s army, which has Juno and much of Vulcan, and soon Mars’s. His army will be twice the size of mine and we will be the only two left. But I have him here.

The Jackal is pinned, bleeding, and surrounded by my army. His ambush undone. He has lost, but he is not helpless. He is no longer Lucian. It’s almost like his hand isn’t impaled. His voice doesn’t waver. He is not angry, just pissinyourboots scary. He reminds me of me before I go into a rage. Quiet. Unhurried. I wanted my soldiers to see him squirm. He doesn’t, so I tell them to leave. Only the ten Howlers, old and new, stay.

“If we’re to have a conversation, please take this dagger out of my hand,” the Jackal says to me. “Believe it or not, it hurts.” He is not as playful as his words suggest. Despite his resolve, his face is pale and his body has begun to tremble from shock.

I smile. “Where is the rest of your army? Where is that girl, Lilath? She owes my friend an eye.”

“Let me go and I will give you her head on a platter, if you want. If you lend me an apple, I’ll even put that in her mouth so she looks like a pig at feast. Your choice.”

“There! Now, that’s how you got your name, isn’t it?” I say with mocking applause.

The Jackal clicks his tongue regrettably. “Lilath liked the sound of it. It stuck. That’s why I’ll put the apple in her mouth. Wish I could have been something more… regal than Jackal, but reputations tend to make themselves.” He nods to Sevro. “Like the Little Goblin there and his Toadstools.”

“What do you mean, ‘Toadstools’?” Thistle asks.

“That’s what we call you. Toadstools for Reaper and Goblin to squat on. But if you would like a better name beyond this little game, you need simply kill big nasty Reaper here. Don’t stun him. Kill him. Drive a sword into his spine, and you can become Imperators, Governors, whatever. Father will be happy to oblige. Very simple stuff. Quid pro quo.”

Sevro pulls out his knives and glares at his Howlers. “Not so simple.”

Thistle doesn’t move.

“Worth a try,” the Jackal sighs. “I confess, I am a politico, not a fighter. So if we’re to converse, you must say something, Reaper. You look like a statue. I don’t speak statue.” His charisma is cold. Calculating.

“Did you really eat your own Housemembers?”

“After months in darkness, you eat whatever your mouth finds. Even if it’s still moving. It isn’t very impressive, really. Less human than I would have liked, very much like animals. And anyone would have done it. But dredging up my foul memories is no way to negotiate.”

“We aren’t negotiating.”

“Humans are always negotiating. That’s what conversation is. Someone has something, knows something. Someone wants something.” His smile is pleasant, but his eyes… There is something wrong with him. A different soul seems to have filled his body since the time he was Lucian. I have seen actors… but this is different. It is as though he is reasonable to the point of being inhuman.

“Reaper, I will have my father give you whatever you like. A fleet. An army of Pinks to screw, Crows to conquer with, whatever. You’ll have prime placement if I win this little year of schooling. If you win, there’s still more schooling. Still more tests. More hardship. I hear your family is in debt and Shamed—it will be difficult for you to rise on your own.”

Almost forgot I had a fake family.

“I will make my own laurels.”

“Reaper. Reaper. Reaper. You think this is the end of the line?” He makes a clicking sound of disgust with his tongue. “Negative. Negative, goodman. But if you let me go, then hardship…” He makes a brushing motion with his free hand. “Gone. My father will become your patron. Hello, command. Hello, fame. Hello, power. Just say goodbye to this”—he gestures to the knife—“and let your future begin. We were enemies as children. Now let us be allies as men. You’re the sword, I’m the pen.”

Dancer would want me to accept the offer. It would guarantee my survival. Guarantee my meteoric rise. I would be inside the halls of the ArchGovernor’s mansion. I would be near the man who killed Eo. Oh, I want to accept. But then I would have to let the Proctors beat me. I’d have to let this little whorefart win and let his father smile and feel pride. I’d have to watch that smug smile spread across his bloodydamn face. Slag that. They’ll feel pain.

The door opens and Pax ducks into the room. A smile splits his face.

“Goryfine night, Reaper!” he laughs. “Caught the little turds in the well. Fifty. Seems they had long tunnels down there. Must be how they took the castle.” He slams the door and sits on the edge of the table to gnaw on a piece of leftover meat. “It was wet work! Ha! Ha! We let them come up and it was dandy fine carnage, I tell you. Dandy fine. Helga would have loved it. They are all slaves now. Mustang is making them as we speak. But ohhh, she’s in an odd mood.” He spits out a bone. “Ha! This him then? The Jackal? He looks pale as a Red’s ass.” He peers closer. “Shit. You nailed him down!”

“I think you’ve taken bigger shits than him, Pax,” Sevro adds.

“Prime have. More colorful ones too. He’s drab as a Brown.”

“Guard your tongue, fool,” the Jackal tells Pax. “It may not always be there.”

“Neither will your prick if you keep sassin’! Ha! Is it as small as you?” Pax booms.

The Jackal does not like being mocked. He stares silently at Pax before flicking his eyes back to me as a serpent might flick its tongue.

“Did you know the Proctors are helping you?” I ask. “That they’ve tried to kill me?”

“Of course,” he says with a shrug. “My bounties are… above average.”

“And you don’t mind cheating?” I ask.

“Cheat or be cheated, no?”

Familiar.

“Well, they’re not helping you anymore. It’s too late for that. Now it’s time you help yourself.” I stab another knife down into the table. He knows what it’s for.

“I once heard that if a Jackal becomes trapped, it will chew off its own leg to free itself. That knife might be easier than using teeth.”

His laugh is quick and short, like a bark. “So if I cut my hand off, I can leave? Is that really it?”

“There’s the door. Pax, hold the knife down so that he doesn’t cheat.”

Even if he ate others, he won’t do it. He can sacrifice friends and allies, but not himself. He will fail this test. He is an Aureate. He is no one to fear. He is small. He is weak. He is just like his father. I find his Pluto ring in his boot and put it around his finger so his Drafters and father can watch their pride and joy give up. They will know I am better.

“The Proctors may be nudging me, but I still have to earn it, Darrow.”

“We’re waiting.”

He sighs. “I told you. I am a something different than you. A hand is a peasant’s tool. A Gold’s tool is his mind. Were you of better breeding, you may have realized this sacrifice means so very little to me.”

Then he starts to cut. Tears stream down his face as the blood first wells. He’s sawing and Pax can’t even watch. The Jackal is halfway done when he looks up at me with a sane smile that convinces me of his complete insanity. His teeth chatter. He is laughing, at me, at this, at the pain. I’ve not met anyone like him. Now I know how Mickey felt when he met me. This is a monster in the flesh of a man.

The Jackal is about to break his own wrist to make the job easier when Pax curses and gives him an ionBlade. It will go through in a single stroke.

“Thank you, Pax,” the Jackal says.

I don’t know what to do. Everything inside me is screaming sense. I should kill him now. Put a blade through his throat. This is someone you do not let go. This is someone you do not piss on and then send back into the wild. He is so far beyond Cassius it makes me want to laugh. Yet I told him he could leave if he cut, and he’s cutting. Dear God.

“You’re gory mad,” Pax breathes.

The Jackal mutters something about fools. It’s just a hand, he says. My hands are my everything. To him, they are nothing.

When he has finished, he sits there with a mostly cauterized stump. His face is like snow, but his belt is fastened into a tourniquet. There’s a shared moment between us where he knows I am not going to let him leave.

Then I see a distortion move through an open window. The Proctors came as I hoped, but I am distracted, unprepared. And when I see a small sonic detonator clatter onto the table and the Jackal grab it with his one hand, I know I’ve made such a mistake. I gave the Proctors time to help him. Everything slows, yet I can only watch.

With the same hand that holds the tiny detonator, the Jackal lashes upward with Pax’s ionBlade. He sticks the blade into my big friend’s throat. I shout and lunge forward just as the Jackal presses the detonator’s button.

A sonic blast rips out from the device, throwing me across the room. The Howlers slam into the walls. Pax flips into the door. Cups, food, chairs, scatter like rice in the wind. I’m on the floor. I shake my head, trying to gain my bearings as the Jackal comes towards me. Pax staggers to his feet, blood dripping from his ears, from his throat. The Jackal says something to me, holds up the blade. Then Pax launches himself forward, not onto the Jackal, but onto me. His weight crushes me, and his body covers mine. I can barely breathe. I do not see what happens, but I feel it through Pax’s body. A shudder. A spasm. Ten impacts as the Jackal stabs at Pax trying furiously to get at me like some rabid animal digging in the dirt, digging through Pax to kill me while I’m down.

Then there is nothing.

Blood drips onto my face, warms my body. It is my friend’s.

I try to move Pax. I manage to squeeze out from under him. The Jackal has fled and Pax is bleeding to death. A banshee wails in my ears. The Proctors are gone as well. The Howlers stumble to their feet. When I look back to Pax, he is dead, his mouth pulled into a quiet smile. Blood slithers along the stone. My own chest tightens and I fall to a knee sobbing.

He had no last words. He had no goodbye.

He threw himself upon me. And was savaged.

Dead.

Loyal Pax. I clutch his huge head. It hurts to see my titan fallen. He was meant for more. Such a soft heart in such a hard form. He will never laugh again. Never stand on the bridge of a destroyer. Never wear the cape of a knight or carry the scepter of an Imperator. Dead. It shouldn’t have been this way. It is my fault. I should have just ended things quickly.

What a future he could have had.

Sevro stands behind me, face pale. The Howlers are up and seething. Four weep silent tears. Blood trickles from their ears. The world is soundless. We cannot hear, but a pack of wolves does not need words to know that it is time to hunt.

He killed Pax. Now we kill him.

The Jackal’s trail of blood leads to one of the keep’s short spires. From there, it disappears into the courtyard. Rain has washed it away. We jump in a pack of eleven from the spire to a lower wall, rolling as we hit. Then we’re down in the courtyard and Sevro, our tracker, leads the way through a postern gate into the rugged low mountains.

The night is hard. Rain and snow sweep sideways. Lighting flashes. Thunder rumbles, but I hear it as though in a dream. I run with the Howlers in a staggered line. We roll over dark crags, along precipitous drops in search of our quarry. My swaddled boots slow me, but they must be covered. My plan can still work, even after all this.

I do not know how Sevro guides us. I’m lost in the chaos. My mind is on Pax. He shouldn’t have died. I cornered a Jackal and let him chew his way out. I remember how Mustang looked at him. She knew who he was. She knew and she wanted to talk to me in private. Whatever their connection, her loyalty was mine. But how does she know him?

Sevro takes us into the high mountain passes where snow still stacks knee-high. Tracks here. Snow flurries around us. I’m chilled. My cloak is soaked. The slingBlade bounces on my back. My shoes squish. And blood dots the snow. We sprint uphill through a snowy pass between two rugged peaks. I see the Jackal. He’s stumbling one hundred meters distant. He goes down in the snow, then he’s up again. He’s iron to have made it this far. We will catch him and we will kill him for what he did to Pax. He didn’t have to stab my titan. My pack begins to howl sorrowfully. The Jackal looks back and stumbles on. He will not escape.

We sprint up the snowy incline. Night and darkness. Wind sweeps sideways. I howl, but it is muffled after the sonic blast, like the sound has been swaddled in cotton. Then something strange distorts the flurries in front of us. A shape. An invisible, intangible shape outlined by the falling snow. A Proctor. A stone sinks down into my stomach. This is where they kill me. This is what Fitchner warned me about.

Apollo deactivates his cloak. He smiles at me through his helmet and calls something. I cannot hear what he says. Then he waves a pulseFist and Sevro and the Howlers scatter as a tiny sonic boom blows five of our pack back down the hill. My eardrums wail. They may never be the same. PulseFist again. I dive away. Pain lances my foot. Spins me. Then the pain is gone. I’m up and sprinting at Apollo. His fist flickers a distortion of force at me. I dodge three blasts. Spinning, turning like a top. I jump. My sword comes down on his head and stops cold. PulseArmor, when activated, cannot be penetrated by anything but a razor. I knew this. But there has to be some showmanship.

Apollo watches me, impervious in his armor. My pack has been blasted back down the hill. I see the Jackal struggling on the mountainside. He seems stronger now. A distortion follows him. Some other Proctor giving him strength. Venus, I think.

I scream out the rage that’s been building in me since I went under Mickey’s knife.

Apollo says something I can’t hear. I curse him and swing my blade again. He catches it and tosses it into the snow. The invisible layer of pulseShield around his fist strikes my face—never touching, yet sending agony into the nerves. I scream and fall. Then he picks me up by my hair and we rise into the storm. He soars on gravBoots till we’re three hundred meters up; I dangle from his hand. The snow swirls around us. He speaks again, adjusting some frequency so my damaged ears can hear.

“I will use small words so that you are sure to understand. We have your little Mustang. If you do not lose in your next encounter with the ArchGovernor’s son so all the Drafters can bear witness, then I will ruin her.”

Mustang.

First Pax. Now the girl who sang Eo’s song by the fire. The girl who pulled me from the mud. The girl who curled beside me as the smoke swirled in our little cave. Brilliant Mustang, who would follow me out of choice. And this is where I led her. I did not expect this. I did not plan for this. They have her.

My stomach sinks. Not again. Not like Father. Not like Eo. Not like Lea. Not like Roque. Not like Pax. They will not kill her too. This son of a bitch will not kill anyone.

“I’m going to rip out your bloodydamn heart!”

He punches me in the belly, still holding me by my hair. His face is strange as he tries to place the word. Bloodydamn. We’re floating in the air now, high. Very high. I dangle like a hanging man as he hits me again. I moan. But as I do, I remember one thing I learned from Fitchner as I clapped his shoulder in the woods. If Apollo is holding my hair and I do not feel his pulseShield, then it is turned off. And it is turned off over his entire body. He has physical recoilArmor everywhere else, except one place.

“You are a stupid little puppet, I realize now,” he says idly. “A mad, angry little puppet. You won’t do as I say, will you?” He sighs. “I’ll find another way. Time to cut your strings.”

He drops me.

And I float there, inches from his outstretched hand.

I go nowhere, because beneath fur and cloth, I’m wearing the gravBoots I stole from Fitchner when I assaulted him in Apollo’s warroom. And Apollo’s shield is down. And he’s pissed me off. He gawks at me, confused. I flex the knifeRing’s blade out and punch him in the face, jamming the blade through his visor into his eye socket four times, jerking upward so that he dies.

“I’m no puppet!” I scream at him as he fades. All the rage I’ve felt swells in me, blinding me, and fills me with a pulsing, tangible hatred that seeps away only as Apollo’s boots deactivate and he tumbles down through the swirling storm.

I find my Howlers around his body. The snow is red. They stare at me as I descend, my knifeRing wet with the blood of a Peerless Scarred. I had not intended to kill him. But he should not have taken her. And he should not have called me a puppet.

“They took Mustang,” I tell my pack.

They look on silently. The Jackal no longer matters.

“So now we take Olympus.”

The smiles they give one another are as chilling as the snow.

Sevro cackles.

42
War on Heaven

There is no time to waste in going back to the fortress. I have the boys and girls I need. I have the hardest of all the armies. The small, the wicked, the loyal and quick. I steal Apollo’s recoilArmor. The golden plate coils around my limbs like liquid. I give his gravBoots to Sevro, but they are ludicrously large on him. I strip off my own boots, his father’s, so he can wear them; they jammed my toes something awful. I put on Apollo’s boots instead.

“Whose are these?” Sevro asks me.

“Daddy’s,” I tell him.

“So you guessed.” Sevro laughs.

“He’s locked in Apollo’s dungeons.”

“The stupid Pixie!” He laughs again. They have an odd relationship.

I keep Apollo’s razor, his helmet, his pulseFist, and his pulseShield along with his recoilArmor. Sevro gets the ghostCloak. I tell him to be my shadow. And then I tell my Howlers to tie their belts together.

GravBoots can lift a man in starShell as he carries an elephant in each arm. They are easily strong enough to lift me and my Howlers, who hang from my arms and legs on belt harnesses as I carry us through the swirling snowstorm up and up to Olympus. Sevro carries the others.

The Proctors have played their games. They pushed and pushed for so long. They knew I was something dangerous, something different. Sooner or later, they had to know I would snap and come to cut them down. Or perhaps they think I’m still a child. The fools. Alexander was a child when he ruined his first nation.

We rise through the storm and fly over the slopes of Olympus. It floats nearly a mile above the Argos. There are no doors. No dock. Snow covers the slopes. Clouds mask its glittering peak. I lead the Howlers to that bone-pale citadel at the top of the steep incline. It strikes up out of the mountain like a marble sword. Howlers unfasten their belts in pairs, dropping down on the highest balcony.

We crouch on the stone terrace. From here we can see the misty lands of Mars, the rocky hills and fields of Minerva, the Greatwoods of Diana, the mountains where my army garrisons Jupiter. I would be down there. The fools should have left well enough alone.

They shouldn’t have taken Mustang.

I wear recoilArmor of gold. It is a second skin. My face alone is exposed. I take ash from one of the Howlers and streak it across my cheeks and mouth. My eyes burn with anger. Blond hair is wild to the shoulders, unbound. I pull my slingBlade and clench the shortwave pulseFist in my left. A razor hangs from my waist; I don’t know how to use it. Dirt under my nails. Frostbite on my pinky and middle finger of the left hand. I stink. My cloak stinks like the dead thing it is. It hangs limp behind me. White stained with a Proctor’s blood. I pull up the hood. We all do. We look like wolves. And we smell blood.

The Drafters better enjoy this or I’m a dead man.

“We want Jupiter,” I tell my Howlers. “Find me him. Neutralize the others if we come across any. Thistle, you take my gravBoots and fetch reinforcements. Go.”

Barefoot, I blow open the doors with my pulseFist. We find Venus lying in bed in a silk shift, her armor dripping snow from its stand by the fire; she’s only just returned from helping the Jackal. Grapes, cheesecake, and wine are on a nightstand. The Howlers pin her down. Four, just for effect. We tie Venus to the bedposts. Her golden eyes are wide with shock. She can hardly speak.

“You cannot! I am Scarred! I am Scarred!” is all she can manage. She says this is illegal, says she is a Proctor, says we’re not allowed to assault them. How did we get here? How? Who helped us? Whose armor am I wearing? Oh, it’s Apollo’s. It’s Apollo’s. Where is Apollo? A man’s gentle clothing is in the corner. They are lovers. “Who helped you?”

“No one helped me,” I tell her, and pat her shining hand with a dagger. “How many other Proctors are left?” She has no words. This is not supposed to happen. It has never happened. Children do not take Olympus, not in history on all the planets was this even thought of. We gag her anyway and leave her tied, half naked, window open so she gets a taste of the chill.

The Howlers and I slink through the spire. I hear Thistle bringing reinforcements. Tactus will be here to bring his own breed of wrath. And Milia will come. Nyla soon. My army rises for Mustang. For me. For the Proctors who cheated us and poisoned our food and water and cut free our horses. We go room to room. Searching frigidariums, calderiums, steam rooms, ice rooms, baths, pleasure chambers filled with Pinks, holoImmersion tanks, for the Proctors. We take down Juno in the baths. Howlers splash in to wrestle her out. She has no weapons, but cloaked Sevro has to stun her with a stolen scorcher after she breaks Clown’s arm and starts drowning him with her legs. Apparently she did not leave like she ought to have either.

Vulcan we find in a holoImmersion room, a fire crackling in the corner. He doesn’t even see us come in till we turn off the machines. Vulcan was watching Cassius stand at the edge of a battlement as flaming missiles etch a smoky sky. They gave them fragging catapults. There was another screen showing the Jackal stumble through the snow into a mountain cavern’s mouth. Lilath greets him there with a thermal cloak and a medBot.

I ask the Proctors where Mustang has been taken. They say to ask Apollo or Jupiter. It isn’t their concern. And it shouldn’t be mine. Apparently my head is going to roll. I ask them what they will swing. “I have all the axes.”

My army binds the Proctors and we take them with us as we descend, flowing down to the next level and the level after that like a flood of mad half-wolves. We run across highReds and Brown servants and housePinks. I pay them no mind, but my army in their rabid excitement sets upon any they see. They knock down Reds and absolutely obliterate any Grays that make the mistake of trying to fight us. Sevro has to choke out a Ceres boy who sits on a Red’s chest, bludgeoning in his face with scarred fists. Two Greys are killed by Tactus when they try to fire on him. He dodges their scorchers and breaks their necks. A squad of seven Greys try to take me down. But my pulseShield protects me from their scorchers. Only if they concentrate fire and the shield overheats will I suffer. I dodge their fire and bring them down with my pulseFist.

My army trickles in, slowly at first. But more are coming every six minutes. I’m nervous. It isn’t fast enough. Jupiter could destroy us, as could Pluto and whoever else is left. My army is exultant because they have me; they think me immortal, unstoppable. Already they’ve heard that I killed Apollo. I hear nicknames rippling like currents through the army as we swarm through the gilded, vast halls. Godslayer. Sunkiller, they fancy me. But the Proctors hear these things too. The ones we’ve captured, even the ones a little bemused by the idea of students invading Olympus, now stare at me with pale faces. They realize they’re part of the game they thought they escaped many years ago, and that there are no medBots directed toward Olympus. Funny thing, watching gods realize they’ve been mortal all along.

I send out dozens of scouts through the palace, telling them what I need. Already I can hear my plan being unwound in the halls beneath me. Jupiter, Pluto, Mercury, and Minerva remain. They are coming for me. Or am I coming for them? I do not know. I try to feel like the predator, but I cannot. My rage is calming. It is slowing and giving way to fear as the halls stretch on. They have Mustang; I remind myself of the smell of her hair. These are the Scarred who take bribes from the man who killed my wife. The blood pumps faster. My rage returns.

I meet Mercury in a hall. He is laughing hysterically and calling out bawdy drinking songs from the HC as he faces down a half dozen of my soldiers. He wears a bathrobe but is dancing like a maniac around the swordthrusts of three DeadHorses. I’ve not seen such grace beyond the mines. He moves as I mined. Fury balanced with physics. A kick, a crushing elbow, an application of force to dislocate kneecap.

He slaps one of my soldiers in the face with his hand. Kicks another in the groin. And does a flip over one, grabs her hair when he is upside down, lands and slams her into the wall like a rag doll. Then he knees a boy in the face, cuts off a girl’s thumb so she can’t hold her sword, and tries backhanding me before dancing away. I’m faster than him, and stronger, despite his incredible gift with the razor; so as his hand goes at my face, I punch his forearm as hard as I can, cracking the bone. He yelps and tries to dance back, but I hold onto his hand and beat his arm with my fist till it breaks.

Then I let him spin away, wounded.

We’re in a hall, my soldiers sprawled around him. I shout the rest back and heft my slingBlade. Mercury is a cherub of a man. Small, squat, with a face like a baby. His cheeks flush rosy. He’s been drinking. His coiled golden hair droops over his eyes. He flips it back. I remember how he had wanted to pick me for his House but his Drafters had objected. Now he flourishes his razor like a poet with a quill, but his off hand is useless after I punched it.

“You’re a wild one,” he says through the pain.

“You should have picked me for your House.”

“I told them not to push you. But did they listen? No no no no no. Silly Apollo. Pride can blind.”

“So can swords.”

“Through the eye?” Mercury looks at my armor. “Dead, then?” Someone shouts for me to kill him. “My, my. They are hungry. This duel may be fun.”

I bow.

Mercury curtsies.

I like this Proctor. But I also don’t want him to kill me with that razor.

So I sheathe my sword and shoot him in the chest with my pulseFist set to stun. Then we tie him up. He’s still laughing. But farther down the hall behind him, I see Jupiter—a titan of a man in full armor—storming forth with a crooked pulseShaft and a razor. Another armored Proctor is with him, Minerva, I think. We retreat. Still, they decimate my force. They come at us straight on in the long hall, knocking boys and girls down like boulders rolling through grain. We can’t hurt them. My soldiers scamper back the way we came, back up the stairways, back to the higher levels, where we run over new packs of reinforcements. We scramble over each other, falling on the marble floor, running through golden suites to flee Jupiter and Minerva as they come up the stairs. Jupiter bellows laughter as our simple swords and spears ping off his armor.

Only my weapons can hurt him. It isn’t enough. Jupiter’s razor goes through my pulseShield and slips my recoilArmor on the thigh. I hiss with pain and shoot the pulseFist at him. His shield takes the pulse and holds, but barely. He flicks a razor at me like a whip. It grazes my eyelid, nearly taking my eye. Blood sheets from the small wound, and I roar in anger. I fly at him, past Minerva, breaking my pulseFist against his jaw. It ruins my weapon and my fist, but it dents his golden helmet and sends him reeling. I don’t give him time to recover. I scream and hack in swirling arcs with my slingBlade even as I stab clumsily with my razor. It’s a mad dance. I take him through the knee with the unfamiliar razor. He cuts open my thigh with his own. The armor closes around the wound, compressing it and administering painkillers.

We’re at the end of a circular stairwell as I push him back. His blade goes limp, then slithers around my leg like a lasso, about to constrict and slice my leg off at the hip. I push fast as I can into him. We go down the stairs. Then he rolls up and stands. I tackle him backward. Armor on armor.

We smash into a holoImmersion room. Sparks fly. I keep screaming and pushing so he cannot rip off my leg with the razor, still limp and looped around flesh and bone. He’s backpedaling, off balance, when I take him through a window and we spill out into the open air. Neither of us have gravBoots, so we plummet a hundred feet into a snowbank on the mountain’s side. We roll down the steep slope toward the one-mile drop, toward the flowing Argos.

I catch myself in the snow. I manage to stand. I can’t see him. I think I hear his grunt in the distance. We’re both muddled in the clouds. I crouch and listen, but my hearing still hasn’t recovered from Apollo.

“You’ll die for this, little boy,” Jupiter says. It comes as if from underwater. Where is he? “Should have learned your place. Everything has an order. You’re near the top. But you are not the top, little boy.”

I say something pithy about merit not meaning much.

“You can’t spend merit.”

“So the Governor is paying you to do this?”

I hear a howl in the distance. My shadow.

“What do you think you’re going to do, little boy? Going to kill all us Proctors? Going to make us let you win? It’s not the way things work, little boy.” Jupiter looks for me. “Soon the Governor’s Crows will come in their ships, with their swords and guns. The real soldiers, little boy. The ones who have scars you can’t dream of. The Obsidians led by Golden Legates and knights. You’re just playing. But they’ll think you’ve gone mad. And they will take you and hurt you and kill you.”

“Not if I win before they get here.” That is the key to everything. “There may be a delay on the holos before the Drafters see them, but how long a delay? Who is editing the gorydamn holos while you fight? We’ll make sure the right message gets out.”

I take my red sweatband off of my head and dab away the sweat on my face, then wrap it around my head once more.

Jupiter is silent.

“So the Drafters will see this conversation. They will see that the Governor is paying you to cheat. They will see that I am the first student to invade Olympus in history. And they will see me cut you down and take your armor and parade you naked through the snow, if you surrender. If not, I will throw your corpse from Olympus and piss golden showers down after you.”

The clouds clear and Jupiter stands before me in the white. Red drips from his golden armor. He is tall, lean, violent. This place is his home. It is his playground. The children his playthings till they get their scars. He is like any other petty tyrant of history. A slave to his own whims. A master of nothing but selfishness. He is the Society—a monster dripping in decadence, yet seeing none of his own hypocrisy. He views all this wealth, all this power, as his right. He is deluded. They all are. But I cannot cut him down from the front. No, no matter how well I fight. He is too strong.

His razor hangs from his hand like a snake. His armor shines. Morning breaks as we face one another. A smile splits his lips.

“You would have been something in my House. But you are a little stupid boy, angry and of House Mars. You cannot yet kill like I can, yet you challenge me. Pure rage. Pure stupidity.”

“No. I can’t challenge you.” I toss my slingBlade down at his feet and throw my razor with it. I can barely use the razor anyway. “So I’ll cheat.” I nod. “Go ahead, Sevro.”

The razor slithers up from the ground, stiffens, and goes through Jupiter’s hamstrings as he wheels about. His slash goes two feet too high. He’s used to fighting men. Invisible, Sevro wounds Jupiter’s arms and takes the man’s weapons. The recoilArmor flows into the wounds to stop their bleeding, but the tendons will need more work.

When Jupiter is silent, Sevro winks off Apollo’s ghostCloak. We take Jupiter’s weapons. His armor wouldn’t have fit anyone except Pax. Poor Pax. He would have looked dashing in all this finery. We drag Jupiter back up the slope.

Inside, the tide of the battle has shifted. My scouts, it seems, have found what I told them to seek. Milia runs up to me, a content grin on her long face. Her voice, as ever, is a low drawl when she tells me the good news.

“We found their armory.”

A host of Venus Housemembers, only just freed from slavery, thunders past. Their pulseFists and recoilArmor shimmer. Olympus is ours and Mustang has been found.

Now we have all the axes.

43
The Last Test

I find her asleep in a suite beside Jupiter’s own. Her golden hair is wild. Her cloak dirtier than my own. It hangs brown and gray, not white. She smells like smoke and hunger. She’s destroyed the room, upturned a dish of food, buried her dagger into the door. The Brown and Pink servants are scared of her, and me. I watch them skitter away. My distant cousins. I see them move, alien things. Like ants. So void of emotion. I feel a pang. Perspective is a wicked creature. This is how Augustus saw Eo as he killed her. An ant. No. He called her a “Red bitch.” She was like a dog in his eyes.

“The food was laced with something?” I ask one of the Pinks.

The beautiful boy murmurs something, looking at the ground.

“Speak like a man,” I bark.

“Sedatives, lord.” He does not look at me. I don’t blame him. I’m a Gold. A foot taller. Worlds stronger. And I look positively insane. How wicked he must think me. I tell him to go away. “Hide. My army does not always listen when I tell them not to toy with lowColors.”

The bed is grand. Sheets of silk. Mattress of feathers. Posts of ivory, ebony, and gold. Mustang sleeps on the floor in the corner. For so long we have had to hide where we sleep. It must have felt so wrong lying in perfect comfort, even with sedatives in her. She tried breaking the windows too. I’m glad she didn’t. It’s a far drop.

I sit beside her. The breath from her nose stirs a single coil of hair. How many times I’ve watched her sleep with a fever. How many times she’s done the same. But there’s no fever now. No cold. No pain in my stomach. Cassius’s wound has healed. Winter is ended. Outside, I saw the first of the flowers blossoming. I picked one on the mountainside. It’s in the hidden compartment of my cloak. I want to give it to Mustang. Want her to wake with the haemanthus by her lips. But when I take it out, a dagger slips into my heart. Worse than any metal blade. Eo. The pain will never go away. I don’t know if it is supposed to. And I don’t know if this guilt I feel is owed. I kiss the haemanthus and tuck it away. Not yet. Not yet.

I wake Mustang gently.

Her smile spreads before she even opens her eyes, as though she knows I am beside her. I say her name and brush the hair from her face. Her eyes flutter open. Golden flakes spiral there in the irises. So strange next to my calloused, dirty fingers with their cracked nails. She nuzzles my hand and manages to sit up. A yawn. She looks around. I almost laugh as I see her digest what has happened.

“Well, I was going to tell you about a dream I had about dragons. They were purple and pretty and liked to sing songs.” She flicks my armor with a finger. It rings. “Way to upstage me. Jerk.”

“It happens.”

She groans. “I’ve become the maiden in distress, haven’t I? Slag! I hate those girls.”

I tell her the news. The Jackal is split. His forces besiege Mars as he and Lilath hide in the deep mountains. We’ll be able to find him easily.

“If you want, you can take our army and root the bastard out.”

“Done,” she smirks, and raises an eyebrow. “But can you trust me? Maybe I’ll want to be big Primus of this weird army.”

“I can trust you.”

“How do you know?” she says again.

This is when I kiss her. I cannot give her the haemanthus. That is my heart, and it is of Mars—one of the only things born from the red soil. And it is still Eo’s. But this girl, when they took her… I would have done anything to see her smirking again. Perhaps one day I’ll have two hearts to give.

She tastes how she smells. Smoke and hunger. We do not pull apart. My fingers wend through her hair. Hers trace along my jaw, my neck, and scrape along the back of my scalp. There is a bed. There is time. And there’s a hunger different from when I first kissed Eo. But I remember when the Gamma Helldiver, Dago, took a deep pull from his burner, turning it bright but dead in a few quick moments. He said, This is you.

I know I am impetuous. Rash. I process that. And I am full of many things—passion, regret, guilt, sorrow, longing, rage. At times they rule me, but not now. Not here. I wound up hanging on a scaffold because of my passion and sorrow. I ended up in the mud because of my guilt. I would have killed Augustus at first sight because of my rage. But now I am here. I know nothing of the Institute’s history. But I know I have taken what no one else has taken. I took it with anger and cunning, with passion and rage. I won’t take Mustang the same way. Love and war are two different battlefields.

So despite the hunger, I pull away from Mustang. Without a word, she knows my mind, and that’s how I know it’s in the right. She darts one more kiss into me. It lingers longer than it should, and then we stand together and leave. We hold hands till the door, then I turn to her.

“Fetch me the Jackal’s standard.”

“Yes, Lord Reaper.” She gives a mock bow and a little wink. Then she is gone.

The place is a madhouse of looting. In all the chaos, Sevro has found the holoTransmitter. It has our sensorial experiences stored in its harddrives and is queued to send them back to the Drafters wherever they may be. It is not a streaming feed, so the Drafters do not yet have today’s events. There is a half-day delay. That is all it will take. I give Sevro instructions and have him get to work splicing out the story I want told. I would trust no one else.

I have Fitchner brought up from Castle Apollo’s dungeons. He reclines in a chair in Olympus’s dining hall. His face is purple from when I hit him. The floor is made of condensed air, so we are suspended above a mile vertical drop. His feet are on the table and his mouth twists into a smile.

“There’s the manic boy,” he calls, fingering his chin. “I knew I liked your odds.”

I give him a greeting with my middle finger. “Liar.”

He returns the finger. “Turd.” He reaches for my hand. “Don’t tell me you’re still bitter about the poisoning, the sicknesses, the setup with Cassius, the bears in the woods, the shitty tech, the terrible weather, the assassination attempts, the spy.”

“The spy?”

“Messing with you. Ha! Still a child. Speaking of which, where are your soldiers? Running around, eating themselves stupid, showering, sleeping, screwing, playing with the Pinks? This place is a honey trap, my boy. A honey trap that will make your army worthless.”

“You’re in a better mood.”

“My son is safe,” he says with a wink. “Now what are you up to?”

“I already sent Mustang to deal with the Jackal. And after this, I go to Mars. Then it will all be over.”

“Ooo. Except it won’t be.” Fitchner pops a familiar gumbubble and winces. I did a number on his jaw. It makes me laugh. I’ve felt like laughing since Sevro took down Jupiter. My leg throbs with pain from that blasted man. Even with the painkillers, I can hardly walk.

“No riddles. Why isn’t it over?”

“Three things,” Fitchner says. His hatchet face examines me for a moment. “You’re a peculiar creature. You and the Jackal both. Everyone always wants to win. But you two stand apart, freaks. Golds won’t die to win. We value our lives too much. You two don’t. Where did it come from?”

I remind him he’s my prisoner and he should answer my questions.

“Three things are not finished. Here’s what’s what. I’ll tell you what they are if you answer my question: what drives you.” He sighs. “The first thing, good man, is Cassius. He will simply have to duel you until one of you little sods keels over and dies.”

I was afraid of that. I answer Fitchner’s question.

I tell him the Jackal wanted to know the same thing. What drives me. The right-off answer is rage. From point to point, it is rage. If something happens, and if I was not anticipating it, I react like an animal—with violence. But the deepspine answer is love. Love drives me. So I must lie a bit to him.

“My mother had a dream that I could be greater than anyone in my family. Greater than the name Andromedus. The name of my father.” Fake father. Fake family. Point still the same. “I am not a Bellona. Not an Augustus. Not an Arcos.” I smile wickedly, something he can appreciate. “But I want to be able to stand above them and piss on all their gorydamn heads.”

Fitchner likes that. He’s always wanted the same, but he’s found that without the pedigree, merit takes you only so far. That frustration is his condition.

“The second thing that is not finished is this.” Fitchner waves his hands about. I got the crust of this deal—he’s making no revelations. I killed a Proctor. I have evidence that the ArchGovernor bribed others and threatened more so that his child could win. Nepotism. Manipulation of the sacred school. This is not idle news. It will shatter something. Perhaps even remove the ArchGovernor from office. Charges. Punishment? The Drafters will want blood. “And the ArchGovernor will want yours. This will embarrass him, and potentially make room for a Bellona ArchGovernor.”

Fitchner asks me why I trust the soldiers in my army who were slaves.

“They trust me because they’ve seen how they would have done in all this had I not come along. You think they want the Jackal as their master?”

“Good,” Fitchner says. “You trust them all. Splendid, then there is no third complication. My mistake.” I press him for what he means, so he sighs and relents. “Oh, only that you sent Mustang and half the army to deal with the Jackal.”

“And?”

“It’s really nothing. You trust her.”

“No. Tell me. What do you mean?”

“Well, fine. If you must know, if there’s simply no other way of going about it: she is the Jackal’s twin sister.”

Virginia au Augustus. Sister to the Jackal. Twin. An heir of the great family, the gens Augusta. The only daughter of ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus. The man who made all this happen. Kept cloistered and out of the public eye to ward off assassination attempts, just like her brother. That’s why Cassius didn’t know the daughter of his family’s archrival. But when I sat with the Jackal, Mustang knew who he was. Her brother. Had she known before of the Jackal’s identity before? Nothing can explain her silence if she knew who he was before and said nothing. Nothing except for family—which is a loyalty above friendship, above love, above a kiss in the corner of a room. I have sent half my army to the Jackal. I have given him recoilArmor, gravBoots, ghostCloaks, razors, pulseWeapons, enough tech for him to take Olympus. Dammit.

The Proctors all know. And when I pass them at a run, they are laughing. They laugh at my stupidity. The rage grows inside of me. I want to kill something. I marshal my forces. They are spread throughout the castle, eating its food, taking its pleasures. Fools. Fools. My best are where I need them. Sevro, left to his work. That is the most important thing. I order Tactus to hunt down the remnants of Venus and Mercury and enslave them, and I set Milia out to marshal the rest of my army with Lea. I need to go to House Mars now. I cannot wait for my soldiers to assemble. I need fresh bodies, because when the Augustus twins come, they will have weapons and technology to match mine, and they may have more soldiers. The game has changed. I did not prepare for this. I feel a fool. How could I have kissed her? My heart is swallowed by darkness. What if I had given her the haemanthus? I tear it to ribbons as I jump from the edge of Mount Olympus in my gravBoots and let the petals fall.

I take only the Howlers with me, passing the petals as we soar down.

We wear gravBoots and armor and carry pulseFists and pulseBlades. The snow in the land of House Mars is gone. Muddy soil churned by the feet of invaders replaces it. The highlands are swaddled in mist. The smell is of earth and siege. Our towers, Phobos and Deimos, are rubble. The catapults gifted to the besiegers have done their work there. So too have they made progress on the walls of my old castle. The front façade is in ruin and strewn with arrows, broken pottery from pitch jars, swords, armor, and some students.

Nearly a hundred strong besiege Mars. Their camp is near the treeline, but an enclosing fence has been built around Mars Castle to prevent any sallies from the fortress. It has been a long winter for both sides, though I note the solar cooking pots, the portable heaters, the nutrition packets of the Jackal’s besieging force—comprised of Jupiter, Apollo, and a quarter of House Pluto. Several crosses stand high at the bottom of the slope. They face the castle. On the crosses are three bodies. Crows tell me their state. The only sign of resistance I see from House Mars is our flag—the wolf of Mars, tattered and scorched. It hangs slack in the poor wind.

The Howlers and I come from the sky like golden gods. Our ragged cloaks flap behind us. But if the besiegers expected us to be Proctors bringing more gifts, they could not have been more mistaken. We land hard on the earth. The Howlers first, and I land at their head, and as I hit, the enemy scatter before me in utter terror.

Reaper has come home.

I let the Howlers make ruin of the enemies on our soil. This is as close as I’ve been to home, to Lykos, in months. I bend down and take a handful of House Mars soil as my men do my work around me. Mars. Home. I have flown a different banner, but I have missed my House. Enemies run to attack me. They see my blade, know who I am. I walk impervious. My pulseArmor is my shield. Sevro and the Howlers act as my sword.

I walk to the three crosses and peer up to see Antonia, Cassandra, and Vixus.

The betrayers. What did they do now?

Antonia is still alive, as is Vixus, barely. I have Thistle cut them down and take them back to Olympus for the medBots. They will have to live with the knowledge that they slit Lea’s throat. I hope it hurts them. I stand for a moment at the bottom of the hill. I call up to tell them who I am. But they already know, because the flag of Mars comes down and in its place is raised a soiled bedsheet with a hastily drawn slingBlade arching across.

“The Reaper!” they cry, as I am their salvation. “Primus!”

The defenders are ragged, dirty, and thin. Some are so weak we have to carry them from the rubble of the castle. Those who can, come to salute me or tip their heads or kiss my cheeks. Those who cannot, touch my hand as I past. There are broken legs and crushed arms. They will be mended. We ferry them back to Olympus. House Mars will not be useful in the coming battle, so I will use besiegers from Pluto, Jupiter, and Apollo. I have Clown and Pebble enslave them all with the standard of Mars. A thin boy I hardly recognize delivers it to me. But when he grabs me in a skeletal embrace, a hug so hard it hurts, I know who he is.

A silent sob echoes in my chest.

He is quiet as he hugs me. Then his body shudders like Pax’s did as he met death. Except these shudders come from joy, not pain.

Roque lives.

“My brother,” he sobs. “My brother.”

“I thought you were dead,” I tell him as I clutch his delicate frame. “Roque, I thought you were dead.” I clasp him to me. His hair is so thin. I feel his bones through his clothing. He’s like a wet rag around my armor.

“Brother,” he says. “I knew you would come back. I knew it in my heart. This place was hollow without you.” He grins at me with such pride. “How you now fill it.”

The Primus of House Diana was right. House Mars is a wildfire. And it does starve. Roque has scars on his face. He shakes his head, and I know he has stories to tell—where he was, how he came back. But later. He limps away. Quinn, one-eared and tired, goes with him. She mouths a thank-you and puts her hand along the small of the thin poet’s back in a manner that lets me know she’s left Cassius.

“He told us you would return,” she says. “Should have known.”

Pollux is still humorous when I see him. His voice is gravel and he clasps my arm. Quinn and Roque kept the House together, he says. Cassius gave up a long while ago. He waits for me in the warroom.

“Don’t kill him… please. It ate his mind up, man. Ate it all up what he did to you; we all found out. So just let him get some time away from this place, man. It does things to your head. Makes you forget we don’t have a choice.” Pollux kicks a piece of mud. “The bastards put me in with a little girl, you know.”

“In the Passage?”

“Matched me with a little girl. I tried to kill her softly… but she wouldn’t die.” Pollux grunts something and claps me on the shoulder. He tries a sour chuckle. “We’ve got it raw, but at least we’re not Reds, you register?”

Righto.

He leaves and I’m alone in my old castle. Titus died on the spot where I stand. I look at the keep. It’s worse now than it was in his time. Everything is worse now, somehow.

Bloodyslag. Why did Mustang have to betray me? Everything is dark now that I know. A shadow cast over life. She could have told me so many times. But she never did. I know she wanted to speak with me when I was with the Jackal, but likely just to tell me something idle. Some tidbit. Or would she betray her blood for me? No. If she would have done that, then she would have told me before I gave her half my army. She took her standard too, and Ceres’s. Why did she need so many except to make war with me? It feels like she killed Eo. It feels like she put the noose there and I jerked the feet. She is her father’s daughter.

I feel that little snap go through my hands. I’ve betrayed Eo.

I spit on the stones. My mouth is dry. Haven’t had anything to drink all morning. My head aches. Time to drop my balls, as Uncle Narol used to say. Time to see Cassius.

He sits with his ionBlade out on House Mars’s table. He’s in the seat I carved with my sigil. The old House flag lies across his knee. The Primus hand dangles around his neck. So much time has passed since he put that sword in my belly. The weapon looks silly now. A toy, a relic. I am so far past this room, past his blade, past his reach, yet his eyes stop my heart. The guilt is like black bile in my throat. Fills my chest and drains me.

“I’m sorry for Julian,” I tell him.

His hair is golden curls but matted with grit and grease. Fleas make their home there. He is still beautiful, still more handsome than I ever will be. But the spark in his eye has cooled. Time and space away from this place are what his soul needs. Months of siege. Months of anger and defeat. Months of loss and guilt have drained him of all that makes him Cassius. What a poor soul. I feel sorry for him. I almost laugh. After he put a sword in my belly, I pity him. He has never lost a battle. He alone of all the Primuses can say that, except for the Jackal. Yet he takes the badge and flips it to me.

“You’ve won. But was it worth it?” Cassius asks.

“Yes.”

“No hesitation…” He nods. “That’s the difference between you and I.”

He sets the standard and his sword down and walks close to me, so close I can smell the stink of his breath. I think he’s going to hug me. I want to hug him, to apologize and beg for his forgiveness. Then he pulls open a scab on his knuckles, sucks the blood from it and spits in my face, startling me.

“This is a blood feud,” he hisses in highLingo. “If ever again we meet, you are mine or I am yours. If ever again we draw breath in the same room, one breath shall cease. Hear me now, you wretched worm. We are devils to one another until one heart beats no more. Now rot.”

It is a formal, cold declaration that requires one thing of me. I nod. And he leaves. I stand trembling for a moment after he’s gone. My heart thuds in my chest. So much pain. I had thought it would be over, but not all scars heal. Not all sins are forgiven.

I take the Mars flag and pin the Primus badge to myself. I watch the map on the wall. My slingBlade banner flutters over every castle there; my men secured the rest even as Tactus makes ready Olympus for Mustang’s assault. Now those castles belong to me, not to the wolf of House Mars. My slingBlade looks like the L of Lambda. My clan. The place where my brother, my sister, my uncle, my mother, my friends, still toil. They feel a world apart, yet their symbol, a symbol of our rebellion—a working tool made into a weapon for war—flies over all the Houses of the Aureate except one. Pluto.

I leave the castle through the spire. I am a Red Helldiver of Lykos. I am Gold Primus of House Mars. And I am going to my last battle in this bloodydamn valley. After that the real war begins.

44
The Beginning

Tactus has assumed command in my absence. The man is a cruel beast, but he’s my cruel beast. And with him at my side, my forces are fit for bloodshed. Our armor glistens. Three hundred strong. Ninety new slaves. They will not have a chance to earn their freedom. There were not enough gravBoots for all. Or enough armor. But everyone has something. The DeadHorses and the Howlers group together near the edge of Mount Olympus. They stare down, a thin arc of gold, at the ground a mile below. Our adversaries are in the mountains. When Mustang and the Jackal come from the snow peaks, they will be at a disadvantage. We have the highest ground. The rest of my force—Pax’s former squad and Nyla’s—guard the golden fortress and the Proctors. The slaves are there as well. I wish Pax were by my side. I always felt safer in his shadow.

I’ve sent Nyla and Milia and a dozen others in ghostCloaks to scout the mountains for the Jackal’s movements. Who knows what intel Mustang has given her brother? He will know our weaknesses, our disposition, so I shift everything as much as possible. Whatever she knows will be useless. Alter the paradigm. I wonder if I could beat her as mercilessly as I beat Fitchner. The girl who hummed Eo’s song? Never. I’m still Red at heart.

“Hate this gory part,” Tactus sighs. He leans his wiry body past me to peer out over the edge of the floating mountain. “Waiting. Pfah. We need some optics.”

“What?”

“Optics!” he says loudly.

My hearing goes in and out. Popped eardrums are nasty things.

He says something about Mustang and cutting her thumbs off for starters. I don’t catch most of it. Probably don’t want to; he’s the sort to make braids of someone’s entrails. “There!” Then we see a golden flier pierce a cloud. Three more follow. Nyla… Milia. Mustang… and something else.

“Hold!” I call to Sevro and his Howlers. They echo the command as Mustang approaches carrying something odd.

“Lo, Reaper,” Mustang calls to me. I wait for her to land. Her boots bring her quickly to the ground.

“Lo, Mustang.”

“So Milia says you figured it out.” She looks around with a curious smile. “This must all be for me then?”

“Of course.” I’m confused. “Thought there might be a scuffle between Augustus and Andromedus.”

“No scuffle this time. I brought you a gift. May I present my brother, Adrius au Augustus, the Jackal of the Mountains, and his standard. And he’s”—she looks at me with a hard smile as she realizes I thought she betrayed me—“disarmed.”

She drops the Jackal, bound, gagged, and naked.

“Bugger my goryballs,” Tactus hisses.

I have won.

Mustang stands beside me as the dropships come to Olympus. She’s told me not to feel guilty about doubting her loyalty. She should have told me her family ties even though she doesn’t claim the Jackal as her brother. Not in spirit. Her true brother, her older brother, was killed by one of Cassius’s, a brute by the name of Karnus. Augustus and Bellona. The blood feud between the families runs deep, and I feel its riptide pulling at my legs.

Yet the question remains, is Mustang her father’s daughter? Or is she the girl who hums Eo’s song? I think I know the answer. She is what Golds can be, should be. Yet her father and brother are what Golds are. Eo never would have guessed it could be this complicated. There is goodness in Golds, because in many ways, they are the best humanity can offer. But they’re also the worst. What does that do to her dream? Only time will tell.

My lieutenants flank me—Mustang, Nyla, Milia, Tactus, Sevro, even Roque and Quinn. We leave a space for Pax and Lea. My army flanks them. There is no need to embarrass the Pluto students. I want to. But I don’t. They stand dispersed throughout my six units. We wait in a broad courtyard across from the landing pads. It is a spring day and so the snow melts fast.

Sevro is near me. In his eyes, I see a subtle difference when he looks at me. The conversation we had when he finished editing the tapes was short and frightening. It echoes in my ears.

“The audio in the storm was scrambled,” he said. “Couldn’t make out the last words you said to Apollo. So I deleted them.”

One of my last words was bloodydamn.

What does Sevro know? What does he think he knows? The fact that he deleted it it means he thinks it is important enough to cover up.

Director Clintus, ArchGovernor Augustus, and Imperators Bellona and Adriatus and a host of other dignitaries to the sum of two hundred come from the shuttles, each with a cadre of attendants. The Director surveys us and laughs at the Proctors’ condition. I have left them bound and gagged. There is no pity here. Any worry I had at punishment is swept away. Only Fitchner stands unbound. If there are any rewards given to the Proctors, he should reap them. They have seen the holoexperiences by now. Sevro made sure they were good. He knew well the story I wanted told. I only made a few adjustments.

Director Clintus is a small woman with a severe mountain peak of a face. She manages to crack a joke about this being the first time they have had the ceremony at so lofty a location. But she does think it will be the last. It is not the way the game is supposed to be played, yet it does speak to my creativity and cunning. She seems to like me very much and affectionately refers to me as “the Reaper.” In fact, they all seem to like me very much. Though some, I can tell, are wary. Rulers tend to dislike those who break rules.

“The Drafters of all the Houses are clamoring to recruit you, my boy. You’ll have a choice, though Mars has first offer. It will be up to you. So many choices for the Reaper!” Clintus titters.

Bellona and Augustus, blood enemies, both watch me as you would a snake. I killed one of their sons and embarrassed the other’s. I do believe this may become awkward.

There is little ceremony. The attendants bustle about. This is but formality. The true ceremony will take place in Agea, where there will be a grand festival, a party to set fire to the heavens, and the holopresence of the Sovereign herself. Libations, dancers, racers, fire breathers, pleasure slaves, enhancers, spikedust, politicians, or so Mustang tells me. It seems strange to think others care about what happened to us here, strange to think that so many of the Golds are vapid creatures. They know nothing of what it is to earn the mark of a Peerless Scarred. To beat a boy to death in a cold room of stone. But they will celebrate us. For a moment, I forgot whom we were fighting for. I forgot this is a race that fights like hell to earn its frivolous things because it loves those things so much. I don’t understand that drive. I understand the Institute. I understand war. But I don’t understand what is coming in Agea, or what will come after that. Perhaps that’s because I’m more like the Iron Golds. The best of the Peerless. Those like the Ancestors. Those who nuked a planet that rose against their rule. What a creature I’ve become.

When all is said and done, Director Clintus pins some badge on me. She winks and touches my shoulder. Then we disperse. Just like that. The game is through and we are told dropships are inbound for our departure to our own homes, where parents wait to give their approval or disown disappointing sons and daughters. Just like that. Until then, we mill about, feeling foolish in all our accumulated armor, all our weaponry that now means so little. I look at my slingBlade and wonder how useless it has just become. It’s as though we’re supposed to congratulate one another, cheer or something. But there is only silence. A hollow silence for victors and losers all.

I am empty.

What do I do now? There was always a fear, always a concern, always a reason to hoard weapons and food, always a quest or trial. Now, nothing. Just the wind sweeping in over our battlefield. An empty battlefield filled only with echoes of things lost and learned. Friends. Lessons. Soon it will be a memory. I feel like a lover has died. I yearn to cry. Feel hollow. Adrift. I look for Mustang. Will she still care for me? And then ArchGovernor Augustus suddenly takes me by the elbow and leads me away from the other stunned youth.

“I am busy man, Reaper,” he says, mocking the word. “So I will be direct. You have created complications in my life.”

His touch makes me want to scream. His thin mouth emotes nothing. His nose is straight. His eyes contemptuous and made from the embers of a dying sun. So peerless. Yet he is not beautiful. His is a face carved from granite. Deep cheeks. Manly, tough skin, not burnished like that of the fools on the HC or the Pixies who gallivant around the nightclubs. He reeks of power like Pinks reek of perfume. I want to make his face look like a broken puzzle.

“Yes,” is all I say.

He does not smirk or smile. “My wife is a beggar. She pleaded with me to help her son win.”

“Wait. He had help?” I ask.

His mouth slides into a soft smile. The sort reserved for simple amusements. “I’m assuming you are not sharing my involvement with others.”

I want to break him. After all that has happened, he expects my cooperation, as though it is something due to him. As though it is his right that I help him. I unclench my fists. What would Dancer have me say?

“You’re fine,” I manage. “I can’t help you on the domestic front, but I won’t tell a soul that the Jackal had help from Daddy.”

His chin rises. “Do not call him that name. The men of House Augustus are lions, not flea-bitten carrion eaters.”

“All the same, you should have put your money on Mustang,” I say, intentionally not using her name.

“Don’t tell me about my family, Darrow.” He peers down his nose at me. “Now, the question is how much you want for your silence. I accept no gifts. Owe no man. So you will be taken care of on one condition.”

“I stay away from your daughter?”

“No.” He laughs sharply, surprising me. “The foolish families worry over blood. I care nothing for purity of family or ancestry. That is a vain thing. I care only for strength. What a man can do to other men, women. And that is something you have. Power. Strength.” He leans closer, and in his pupils I see Eo dying. “I have enemies. They are strong. They are many.”

“They are Bellona.”

“And others. But yes, Imperator Tiberius au Bellona has more than fifty nieces and nephews. He has nine children. That Goliath, Karnus, the eldest. Cassius his favorite. His seed is strong. Mine is… less so. I had a son worth all of Tiberius’s put together. But Karnus killed him,” He’s silent for a moment. “Now I have two nieces. A nephew. A son. A daughter. And that is it. So I collect apprentices.

“My condition is this. I will give you what you want for your silence. I will buy you Pinks, Obsidians, Grays, Greens. I will sponsor your application to the Academy, where you will learn to sail the ships that conquered the planets. I will provide you with funds and patronage requirements. I will introduce you to the Sovereign. I will do all these things for your silence if you become one of my lancers, an aide-de-camp, a member of my household.”

He asks me to betray my name. To set aside my family for his. Mine is a false family, Andromedus, a family made for deception, yet some part of me aches.

I saw it coming. But I don’t know what to say. “One of your son’s soldiers might say something about your involvement, my lord.”

He snorts. “I’m more concerned about your lieutenants.”

I laugh. “Few of my army know the truth. And those that do will not say a word.”

“So much trust.”

“I am their ArchPrimus.” I say it simply.

“Are you serious?” he asks in confusion as though I misunderstand something as basic as gravity. “Boy, allegiances crumble as soon as we board that shuttle. Some of your friends will be spirited away to the Moon Lords. Others will go to the Governors of the Gas Giants. Even a few to Luna. They will remember you as a legend of their youth, but that is it. And that legend will brook no loyalty. I’ve stood where you stand. I won my year, but loyalty isn’t found in these halls. It is the way things are.”

“It is the way things were,” I say harshly, surprising him. But I believe what I say. “I am something different. I freed the enslaved and let the broken mend themselves. I gave them something you older generations can’t understand.”

He chuckles, irritating me. “That is the problem with youth, Darrow. You forget that every generation has thought the same.”

“But for my generation it is true.” No matter his confidence, I am right. He is wrong. I am the spark that will set the worlds afire. I am the hammer that cracks the chains.

“This school is not life,” he recites to me. “It is not life. Here you are king. In life, there are no kings. There are many would-be-kings. But we Peerless lay them low. Many before you have won this game. And those many now excel beyond this school. So do not act as though when you graduate, you will be king, you will have loyal subjects—you will not. You will need me. You will need a foundation, a supporter to help you rise. There can be none better for you than I.”

It’s not my family I would betray, it is my people. The school was one thing, but to go beneath the dragon’s wing… to let him hug me close, to sit in luxury while my own sweat and die and starve and burn… it’s enough to rip my heart out.

Both his golden children watch us. So do Cassius and his father after they embrace one another. There are tears for Julian. I wish I were with my family instead of here. I wish I could feel Kieran’s hand on my shoulder, feel Leanna’s hand in mine as we watch Mother set dinner before us. That is a family. Love. These people are all about glory, victory, and family pride, yet they know nothing of love. Nothing of family. These are false families. They are just teams. Teams that play their games of pride. The ArchGovernor has not even said hello to his children. This vile man cares more to speak with me.

“Funny,” I say.

“Funny?” he asks darkly.

I make something up. “Funny how a single word can change everything in your life.”

“It is not funny at all. Steel is power. Money is power. But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.”

I look at him for a moment. Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart. I come from a people of song and dance. I don’t need him to tell me the power of words. But I smile nonetheless.

“What is your answer? Yes or no? I will not ask again.”

I glance over at the dozens of Peerless Scarred who wait to have a word with me, no doubt to offer patronage or apprenticeships. Old Lorn au Arcos is there. I recognize him even without his Drafter’s mask. The Rage Knight. The man who sent me my Pegasus and Dancer’s ring. A man of perfect honor and leader of the third most powerful house on Mars. A man I could learn from.

“Will you rise with me?”

I look at the ArchGovernor’s jugular. His heartbeat is strong. I imagine the Fading Dirge when Eo died. But when I hang him, he will not receive our song. His life will not echo. It will simply stop.

“I think, my lord, that it would present some interesting opportunities.” I look up into his eyes, hoping he mistakes the fury there for excitement.

“You know the words,” he asks me.

I nod.

“Then you must say them. Here. Now. So all may witness that I have claimed the best of the school.”

I grit my teeth and convince myself this is the right path. With him, I will rise. I will attend the Academy. I will learn to lead fleets. I will win. I will sharpen myself into a sword. I will give my soul. I will dive to hell in hopes of one day rising to freedom. I will sacrifice. And I will grow my legend and spread it amongst the peoples of all the worlds until I am fit to lead the armies that will break the chains of bondage, because I am not simply an agent of the Sons of Ares. I am not simply a tactic or a device in Ares’s schemes. I am the hope of my people. Of all people in bondage.

So I kneel before him, as is their way. And as is their way, he sets his hands upon my head. The words creep from my mouth and their echo is like broken glass into my ears.

“I will forsake my father. I will abandon my name. I will be your sword. Nero au Augustus, I will make my purpose your glory.”

Those watching gasp at the sudden proclamation. Others curse at the impropriety, at the gall of Augustus. Does he have no sense of decency? My master kisses the top of my head and whispers their words and I do my best to cage the fury that has made me a thing sharper than Red. Harder than Gold.

“Darrow, Lancer of House Augustus. Rise, there are duties for you fill. Rise, there are honors for you to take. Rise for glory, for power, for conquest and dominion over lesser men. Rise, my son. Rise.”