by Pierce Brown
“What odds did you give him?” I ask.
At first I think she doesn’t hear me and might be listening to the pilots and commandos on her internal com, then I realize she’s just ignoring me.
“I don’t gamble,” she says after a moment.
“Course you don’t.”
“Ephraim won’t die,” she says.
“He blessed or something? Touched by the Vale?”
“No. Not blessed,” she says distantly. “He used to work for the Sons, you know. Joined after my brother died.” Her voice is slow and robotic. “Served as a recruiter before becoming a scar hunter. Back before House Lune fell, before the Battle of Ilium even. When the Society’s agents owned this moon, he brought in people like you. Like me. He taught them how to fight. How to survive so they could take back just some of what’d been taken from ’em. After Luna fell to the Rising, he was given a mission in Endymion to find a Gold who was organizing raids. It was a trap. They interrogated his men in front of him. Skinned them alive and made him watch. By the time we got there, he was the only one left. The Gold was captured with the peeling knife in hand.” She pauses, disliking the memory. “But…the Gold had information the Sovereign needed, information he exchanged for a full pardon. Ephraim watched the man who skinned his friends walk free.” She looks at me. “Point is, Ephraim wants to die, but he can’t. That’s his curse.”
“That’s why you took the Obsidian,” I say. “Because he couldn’t watch another friend die?”
She shrugs. “I know where to hurt.”
There’s no regret in her eyes. She seems a person made all of flint and iron, one who came into the world full-born, without mother or father or past or future. Less a woman than shovel or an axe. If there is more than that to her, she would never show it to me. “What sort of person does that make you?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer immediately.
She points east to the New Forum on the far side of the Citadel grounds. The domed building is pale in the night and rises out of the trees around it like a hill of snow, stark in contrast with the brutal lines of the pyramid forum the Society used. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I nod. She stares on at it. “You think clean hands built it?”
—
The Sovereign is in conference with Theodora and Daxo when we join them. I keep my distance from both Pink and Gold, my arm still itching from the torture. Above the table, a map shows the progress of the squadron toward the stolen shuttle. The Sovereign watches it coolly as she converses with Theodora, but I can sense the underlying tension in her. Her eyes are bloodshot and heavy bags have formed under them. Coffee cups and the remnants of a meal litter the table. How long can a Gold go without sleep?
“…could not have done this alone,” Daxo is saying to Theodora. He cuts short when he sees me enter the room with Holiday.
“Continue,” the Sovereign says.
Daxo hesitates for a moment with me in the room. “The Syndicate is working with someone. I recommend we conceal this from the Senate until we know more. My spies will have names by the morning. Heads by the end of the week.”
“Theodora?” the Sovereign asks.
“You know my thoughts,” she says. “The longer we hold this from the Senate, the more it discredits the transparency you promised them. Senator Caraval is already inquiring about the unusual traffic over Hyperion.”
“It’s stupid to go before them until my son is safe here, by my side,” the Sovereign says. “I won’t have those men saying a mother can’t govern when her child is in danger. They’ll smear me and call a referendum to make me step down before the vote. With Caraval and the Coppers lost, we’re going to lose six to seven. My veto is all that can stop this absurd peace process.”
“Who would replace you?” Theodora asks.
“The Senate would vote. Majority rules until next election,” Daxo answers.
“Until we know who did it, there will be suspicion that this is a ploy to delay the vote…” Theodora says.
“I already know who did it,” the Sovereign replies. Theodora and Daxo exchange confused glances. “The Syndicate was hired. But by whom? Who has the most to gain?” She waits for an answer. None comes. “It was the Ash Lord. He can’t beat our legions, so he’s after our Senate. Darrow was right. This happened because I was weak, because I was tired. I never should have let the Vox chase him away.”
She focuses back on the holo of her son’s ship making its way back to Hyperion, her long fingers tapping her side.
“Lyria,” she says, eyes boring into me. I don’t bow my head this time, but stare back at her, knowing this is when the axe falls. Yet her tone surprises me. “You made a dire mistake, girl. One that should end your service to me, to anyone. But without you, we would not have found this Volga and…” She spares a glance to Holiday. “…Ephraim. Soon my boy will be back with me, because you were brave enough to own your mistakes. I must now own mine.” How could she ever understand what her mistakes cost me? She’s lost her son for a few days and she thinks she knows. She’ll never know the mud. The flies.
“You lost your family,” she says. “You trusted the Republic and we broke that trust.” Then I’m struck dumb. She goes to a knee. Her eyes on the ground. “I do not deserve it, nor must you give it, but I ask, all the same: Will you forgive us? Will you forgive me for not doing better?”
Forgive her?
I don’t understand the idea. Nor do her councilors. They gawp down at her, as off-footed as I am. Her golden braids are even with my eyes. There’s loose strands. The faint, earthy smell of oil and the coffee from her breath. I hear the air enter her mouth and fill her lungs and whistle out her nose, see her shoulders rise and fall. The power is shed, her naked soul there in front of me. She’s just a woman. Just a mother with more children than any other. Maybe she does know my pain. Before this, she was a freedom fighter. A soldier. It’s easy to forget that. She’s seen mud, and now I think she remembers it.
I can’t hold on to the anger or the pettiness or the pain. I want only to help her, to protect families like mine. Letting go of that anger doesn’t spit on the memories of Ava or Tiran or the children. It honors them. And for the first time I can remember, I feel hope.
With a trembling hand, I reach and touch her head.
She stands afterwards. “Thank you.” I nod, unable to put what’s inside me into words that don’t sound stupid. “A storm is coming to the Republic,” she says softly. “This was just the first breath. You still have a part to play in all of this.”
“What could I ever hope to do?” I ask.
“You have a voice, don’t you? When I go before the Senate, I will need you as a witness. Your testimony will save lives. It will bring the men behind this to justice. Will you help me, Lyria of Lagalos?”
“If you promise me that Liam will be looked after, and his eyesight given to him. I know there’s a way. But I don’t have the money.”
She looks down in amusement. “Are you negotiating with me?”
“I won’t help you if you don’t help him.”
“Very well. It’s agreed.”
I spit in my hand and stick it out to her. She looks down at it in surprise, then shakes my hand.
I’m guided by Holiday to the door. There, I turn back around. “I wonder…could I see Kavax?”
“No,” the Sovereign says. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea right now.”
I nod and follow Holiday out of the room.
At the doorway to my room, I stop. “Could you tell Liam I’m all right?” I ask her. “He must have been worried.”
“He was told you were on an errand for Kavax,” she says. “He wasn’t worried.”
“All the same. Could I see him? I won’t say a thing to him.”
“I’m sorry, it was risk enough bringing you to speak with Ephraim. We can’t have any more security risks.” She watches my face fall without sympathy. Then a sigh escapes her thin lips. “What if I take him candy or a little cake or
something and say it’s from you? Would that cheer you up?”
“You’d do that?”
She shrugs. “What’s his favorite flavor?”
“Chocolate.”
“All right.” I wait expectantly, looking up at her. “What? You want a hug? Get inside.” She shoves her fingers against the opening mechanism. The door slides into the wall.
“Oh,” I say, and step in. “Thank you for the—” The door shuts in my face. “Fucking Grays,” I mutter. The room is not grand, but it’s clean and has a full water bathroom. Exhausted, I turn on the water to the shower till steam rises. I wriggle out of my borrowed clothes, awkward with the shoulder sling, and stand under the stream of hot water thinking of how lucky I am to be alive. To not be on the run.
You’d be proud of me, Ava. Ma. I know that. And there’s more I can do. Help the Sovereign till this is through, and maybe we can bring all those bastards down. But it wasn’t the Syndicate who killed my family. Whatever happens here, those Red Hand butchers will go unpunished. How can that be fair? How can it be right?
I turn off the shower and stand near the exit vents so the hot air can evaporate the water from my stomach and breasts. When I open my eyes, I see a pair of white maid shoes on the wet white tile. My eyes track upward. The woman is a Brown in her mid-thirties with two great moles, a hooked nose, and a bird nest of hair. She holds a gun in her hand. At the end of it is a large hypodermic needle that she pulls out of my chest. I take a step toward her and lose my footing. I don’t even feel the ground come up to greet me. The world fogs and spins. And the last I see is the woman patting my face.
“Hello, traitor. House Barca sends their regards.”
APOLLONIUS, SEVRO, AND I cut our way through the fortress guards. It seems most of the manpower was sent to fight beyond the walls, likely to stop Apollonius’s force from ever making landfall. Those who remain offer thin resistance to our combined violence. After shattering a trio of Gold bodyguards near the gravLifts, we divide to search more efficiently for the Ash Lord. Sevro and I stick together, while Apollonius sets off on his own.
The search does not take long.
“This has to be it,” Sevro says outside a set of double doors gilded with gold.
“There will be Stained inside,” I say. “We should wait for Apollonius.”
“You need him to wipe your ass too?” Sevro asks. He kicks open the doors. “Time for your bill, Ass Lord.”
The room is quiet.
Despite the decadent floral moldings and whitewashed walls, the room is cavernous and sparse but for a large four-post bed that looks out an open balcony window to the sea. A pulseShield ripples faintly outside the windowsill. Around the bed squat a legion of hulking, polymelian forms. At first I think they are knights, but as a column of light from the outer suite illuminates the gray metal, I realize that they are not men at all, but medical machines. Small displays glow with life readings.
An old Pink in a nightgown and two Brown servants holding fire pokers guard the foot of the bed, shielding its inhabitant from us. The Browns charge, screaming at the top of their lungs. We take them down, trying not to kill them with our metal-covered fists. The Pink at the bed is wailing. “No,” she screams. “Stay away from him!”
I pull her from in front of the bed as Sevro approaches it warily. She slashes at me with her nails, breaking them against my armor. “Monsters!” Her spit sprays my face. “You monsters.” Sevro punches her in the back of the head. I catch her as she drops to the floor.
A deathly stench fills the room. Sevro stands at the base of the bed, his hand pulling back the silk curtains. His face is pale. “Darrow…” He jerks the silk curtains off the frame so I can see.
On the bed, lying in a nest of blankets, are the remnants of a giant. When I met the Ash Lord as a lancer to Augustus, he stood over seven feet in height and weighed as much as a Telemanus. At that time he was edging past a hundred. But he was still stately and spry despite his girth. That vigor he retained throughout our many bouts in the early stages of the war. And though his face has spoken on Core broadcasts over the last years, I see now that it was a ruse, and why he hides here in his seaswept citadel.
Barely a third of the man remains.
What does is emaciated and skeletal. His arms have shrunken in on themselves, the muscle withered away. The skin, once dark as onyx, is now loose and scabrous with yellow flakes, oozing pus into white bandages. His once-bright eyes are sunken into his head, which is bald, the skin tight and dry like a thin layer of scale over his titanic skull. Wires and fluid lines connect to the machines that guard his bed, cycling his blood and removing his waste. It’s as if he has been devoured from inside.
“I wondered who knocked,” he murmurs. His eyes—stained with a rotten yellow infection—watch me without malice. A hologram floats beside his bedside, showing us the battle outside. “I thought it the Saud, finally come to reclaim their planet. But now I see it ends as it should, with wolves.” The simple words brook no anger. The voice alone remembers the man. It is drum-deep, defiant and proud, even trapped as it is in his wasted body, like summer thunder captured in a tattered paper lantern.
For ten years we’ve been adversaries. Have danced across the worlds in a never-ending duel. Each move countered by the other, then re-countered in one giant game on many boards—first the metal jungle of Luna, the plains and seas of Earth and Mars, then the Core orbits, till finally the sand belt of Mercury, where I took the planet and he broke my army. Now all those vast theaters and the millions of men shrink down to this moment, to this small room on this far-flung isle, and none of it makes any bloodydamn sense.
“Am I not as you expected?” he asks with a smile.
“Let’s just cut his head off,” Sevro says.
“Not yet.”
“What are we waiting for? This piece of shit needs to meet the worms.”
“Not yet!” I snap. Sevro paces around the bed in agitation.
“You are precisely what I expected,” the Ash Lord says. “The destroyer of a civilization too often resembles its founders.” He wets his mouth from a water feeding tube and follows that up with a grotesque clearing of his throat. “I must apologize, Darrow. For not seeing you sooner—when you were just a boy who broke his Institute. Had I opened my eyes and noticed you, what a world we would still have. But I see you now. Yes. And you are immense.”
It’s admiration in his voice. It’s familiarity. How few people left breathing could understand this man? How many men know what it is like to give a command that kills millions? I swallow, my hatred for him quieted by the wretched thing he’s become, and my fear at heading down the same broken road.
This is not how I pictured our final confrontation.
“What happened to you?” I ask. “How long have you been like this?”
The Ash Lord ignores the question and searches my face. “I see you kept our scar. And our eyes. Then what of the Red remains?”
“Enough.”
“Ah,” he says quietly. “I suppose that is what every man must tell himself in war.” His voice rasps and he sucks again on the water tube. “That there will be an end, and when it is done, enough of himself will remain. Enough to be a father. A brother. A lover. But we know it isn’t true. Don’t we, Darrow? War eats the victors last.”
His words make a heaviness settle on me. I wish I could say I was different than him. That I will survive this war. But I know day by day the boy inside is dying. The spirit that ran through the halls of Lykos, that curled with Eo in bed, he began to die the day he watched his father dangle from a noose and did not cry.
“It’s a price I’m willing to pay to be done with you,” I say.
“That is part of your Red genetic character. Your yearning, your need to sacrifice. Brave pioneer. Toil, dig, die for the good of humanity. To make Mars green. We designed you to be the perfect slave. And that’s what you are, Darrow. A slave with many masters. Change your eyes. Take our scar. Break our reign. It won’t c
hange what you are at your core. A slave.”
Bombs rumble outside. Sevro spits at the corner, nearing the end of his patience.
“Lorn once said you were his greatest friend,” I say. “That you were once a man to be admired. Before Rhea. Before you crowned yourself with ash.”
“Rhea was a rational transaction. Sixty million lives to keep order for eighteen billion.” His shrunken lips curl. “What do you think Lorn would have done if he saw what you were? Do you really think he would have spared you?”
“No, I think he would have cut my heart out,” I say. He could walk away from his Society, but he would never let it fall. I hear a sound at the door. Apollonius enters, alone. The Ash Lord’s eyes darken with hate. But in seeing the state of his nemesis, Apollonius does not look as dismayed as he should.
“Ah, I see the Ash Lord has become most literal indeed.”
Apollonius sits on the edge of the bed and pulls back the sheets to see the cadaverous legs of the old warlord. He makes a clucking sound with his tongue and prods the flaking skin at the thigh, peeling off a small strip of the scale and grinding it between the metal fingers of his gauntlets till a fine powder sprinkles the bed. “Did the bite hurt?”
“So it was you,” the Ash Lord murmurs. “Atalantia did not believe me.”
“Even from the deep, I have teeth,” Apollonius says. “I served nobly. Without deceit or graft. But you betrayed me to steal from me. You turned my blood against me. That, my goodman, was a dire mistake.”
I feel a reptilian fear slipping into me. I back away from Apollonius. Sevro points his pulseFist at him. “You knew he was like this and you did not tell me?” I say.
“You son of a bitch,” Sevro hisses.
Apollonius smiles. “The warden did not just buy me tomatoes and whores.”
“You’re dead, shithead.” But Sevro doesn’t fire.