by Pierce Brown
“Well done, my goodman,” I say instead.
Both Kavax and Daxo squint at the familiarity.
Worth it to see Ragnar surprise me with a smile. A broad, yellow-toothed grin.
“Do you think he could do more?” I ask.
Daxo hesitates. “What do you mean?”
“Could he lead absent a Gold?”
Daxo and Kavax share a worried glance. “What would be the benefit in that?” Daxo asks.
“I could send him places I could not send Golds.”
“There is no such place.” Kavax crosses his arms. I go too far.
I smile to placate them. “Of course. Just a theory. The mind wanders from time to time.” I clap Kavax on the shoulder and they depart together for their own ship.
“You overstepped,” Orion says.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have ears.”
I look down, searching the pale blue tattoos on her dark skin as if the math there held the key to understanding her mind. “You’re observant for a Blue.”
“Because I know how the world works outside my digital sync? Comes from working the docks, dominus. When you’re at the bottom, you have to notice everything.”
“Which docks?” I ask.
“Phobos. Father was a Docker, born outside the Sects. Died when I was small. A young girl has to be on her toes if she wants to grow big in the Hive dock cities. It’s the only way to beat the monsters.”
“It’s not the only way,” I say.
“No?” she asks, surprised.
“You can always become a monster too.”
Orion turns from the viewport to look up at me. Fierce intelligence burns behind her arctic eyes. “And there’s the beauty of space. A billion paths to choose.”
I’m spared from replying when the comBlue calls from the pit.
“Dominus, we’ve an assault shuttle inbound. It’s Virginia au Augustus.”
31
Coup
“Father is captured,” she says to me as she storms down the ramp from her smoking ship. She’s flanked by several Obsidian bodyguards in battle-scarred armor. A dozen Grays exit the shuttle behind them. Sun-hwa from Luna amongst them. They’re all lurcher mercenaries, plain and dangerous. The Jackal’s hunters. They salute smartly.
Around us, hundreds of ripWings and a dozen storks sit parked the bay—large enough a place to swallow all of Lykos’s Common and her townships. Oranges and Greens clamor about the craft, preparing maintenance checks before the eventual invasion of Mars.
I greet Mustang with my own coterie—Lorn, Sevro, the Howlers, Victra, and Ragnar. Roque did not respond to my summons. I want to rush forward to embrace Mustang, but she’s in a rage. Spittle flying out of her mouth. Dark circles ringing angry eyes. Exhaustion pulls at her face.
“Pliny has begun a coup. He arrested my brother. My aunt is dead, and her children murdered along with six of our Praetors. More than twenty of my father’s bannermen have sworn new oaths of fealty. And we’ve lost control of the fleet.”
I ask Mustang if she’s injured.
“Injured?” She sneers the word. “As if that could matter. They killed my men. We came upon the Academy in stealth, and as soon as I launched my leechCraft toward the space station and the training ships, a Bellona fleet emerged from behind an asteroid and destroyed every one of my leechCraft. Ten thousand men. Dead. They didn’t have to do it. They had enough guns on us that we could do nothing but surrender. It was merciless.”
“Sounds like Karnus,” I guess.
She nods. “And Pliny. They didn’t lead the Bellona on a goose chase. They led them straight into my operation.”
“Why didn’t Pliny just kill you?” Sevro asks.
“A man like Pliny craves legitimacy,” Lorn says from my side, nodding in greeting to Mustang. If she thinks his presence here strange, she doesn’t let on. “It’s his nature. He came to you beforehand, didn’t he?”
Mustang shares a disgusted look with my mentor.
“The Pixie had me put under guard in my quarters as he took my captured fleet to Hildas. During the journey, he came to me and showed me the holo footage of my father’s failed raid on Ganymede.” She shudders in anger. “And he said that though my house had fallen to ruin, he would not see my bloodline ended. The Sovereign and he had come to an arrangement. If he could provide her with peace, then she would provide him with position, legitimacy, and a prize of his choosing. So he batted his pretty lashes at me as my father’s ships burned on the holo and said he would divorce his wife and allow me the honor of taking his hand in marriage.”
I say nothing. The Howlers rumble discontentedly.
“And your response?” Victra asks.
Mustang ignores her. “He said he always had his eye on me.” She reaches into her pocket, pulls something out, and drops it onto the floor. “So I took one of his.”
Sevro cackles with Harpy. Lorn makes a sound of disapproval. Like he has any ground to stand on in matters of cruelty.
“It is good to see you again, Rage Knight,” Mustang says. “I’m sorry you were drawn into this. But we need you now more than ever.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
“Where’s your brother?” I ask Mustang, looking up from the eye.
“Captured. There’s more that should be said.” She glances at the Oranges and the Grays in the hangar. “In private.”
“Of course. We’ll continue in the warroom—” I begin.
“In due time, Darrow.” Grandfatherly concern spreads across Lorn’s face as he turns to Mustang. “My lady, you’ve been through a trial. Perhaps you should find rest and we could—”
The Howlers and I back away from Lorn.
“Rest?” Mustang’s voice rises. “Why would I need rest?”
“My mistake,” Lorn says politely.
“Theodora,” I call. She slips forward. “Coffee, stims, and food in the warroom. Enough for ten.” I remember the two Telemanuses. “Make it twenty.”
She laughs accidentally. “Yes, dominus.” She steps aside to call her staff.
Mustang jerks her head at her ship. “Just going to let it sit there?”
“Chief!” I call to the Orange in charge of the hangar deck. Grease stains his beard. He saunters up, wiping burly hands on his orange greasers. “Put that ship out the airlock.”
“It can be salvaged,” the Orange says.
I look to Mustang. “Did you escape, or did they let you escape?”
“I don’t know. My brother was the one who saved me. The Grays are his mercenaries. His own ship was caught helping mine escape.”
The Jackal is full of surprises.
“What if there is a bomb in it?” Sevro asks, staring at the ship uncomfortably.
“It won’t be a bomb,” I say.
“Pliny wants me still, and he wants Darrow for the Sovereign. But more so, he wants your fleet, Darrow. When it didn’t show up at Hildas, he must have realized that you’d been warned or that you were waiting for a code confirmation that he didn’t know.”
“And he figured if anyone would know where I was, it’d be you.”
“So tracking me is how he will find this fleet,” Mustang says.
Lorn looks back and forth at us. “When did you two discuss this?”
“Just now,” Mustang says, confused at the question.
Sevro claps Lorn on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’re not senile. They’re just odd.”
Lorn stares at Sevro’s dirty hand. The fingerless glove is covered with mashed potatoes and brown gravy. Sevro’s broad smile fades and he sheepishly withdraws his hand.
I turn back to the Orange. “Put it out the airlock. Fastlike.” He seems hesitant. Keeps rolling onto the balls of his feet. “Unless you’ve a better idea?”
He scratches his head, looking worried with all the Gold faces staring at him. The deckhands watch the exchange furtively.
“Out with it,” Sevro barks.
“Sure. Well
, I could put it out the lock, dominus. Or, I mean, I could find the scanners and the radiated material, if they went that route. We got some clever nuts and bolts here. Could find ’em out, and I could put ’em all in a long-range scout, no problem. Might do nice to let Pliny’s hounds go barking in the wrong direction, yeah?”
“What is your name and world?” I ask.
“Dominus … uh.” He blinks heavily. “Cyther’s my name. Luna. Three girls. Wife works in the Center for Automotive Development, so we have—”
I cut him off. “Do this right and we’ll bring them to Mars and put them up on the Citadel staff, Cyther. You have ten minutes.”
He wheels to his men excitedly.
I lead Mustang and my coterie to the lifts.
“Pliny said he killed you,” she whispers as we walk.
“Aja and a Bellona fleet waited for us, like we thought they would.” I grin sideways at her, then pull up my datapad. “Orion, take command of the fleet. I want us far from this sector before we have more company. Sevro, summon the Telemanuses. I want them in the … Sevro?” I look around for him. He’s loitering around Pliny’s eyeball some twenty meters back. We turn to look at him and he shuffles his feet awkwardly.
“Can I …” He gestures to it.
“What?” Mustang asks.
“Can I have it?”
Mustang squints at him. “Oh! Uh. All yours.”
He scoops it up and jams it in his pocket, grinning merrily. He runs to catch up. “Collecting the set, hopefully.”
32
Die Young
Mustang insisted on seeing Tactus before the meeting. Theodora guides us. We find Roque sitting by his body in the ship’s medBay. The way he sits with his hands clasped together, you’d think Tactus might still have a chance at life. Perhaps in some other world where men like Lorn don’t exist.
“He’s been here since Europa,” Theodora says quietly.
“You didn’t tell me he was down here,” I say.
“He asked me not to.”
“You’re my servant, Theodora.”
“And he’s your friend, dominus.”
Mustang nudges me. “Stop being an ass, can’t you see she’s as exhausted as he is?”
I look at Theodora. Mustang’s right. “You should get some sleep, Theodora.”
“A prime idea, I think, dominus. Always lovely to see you, domina,” Theodora says to Mustang before shooting me a cross look. “Master has been rather moody in your absence.”
Mustang watches Theodora glide out. “You were lucky with her.” She gently touches Roque’s shoulder. His eyes flutter open.
“Virginia.”
They grew close in the year we all spent in the Citadel together. Neither could ever get me to join them at the opera. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the music. Lorn simply demanded time.
She squeezes his hand. “How are you?”
“Better than Tactus.” He glances at me. I wager he’d say more if I weren’t here. He sees Mustang’s state of disarray, brow creasing in worry. “What went wrong?”
Once we tell him, he gently runs a hand through his wavy hair. “Well, that is bad. I never thought Pliny would ever be so thoroughly bold.”
“We’re meeting in ten to discuss plans,” I say.
Roque ignores me. “I’m sorry about your father and brother, Virginia.”
“They’re still alive, I hope.” She looks to Tactus and her face quiets. “I’m sorry about Tactus.”
“He went as he lived,” Roque says. “Only wish he could have lived longer.”
“You think he would have changed?” Mustang asks.
“He was always our friend,” Roque says. “It was our responsibility to help him try. Even if it was like hugging a flame.” He looks at me momentarily.
“You know I didn’t want him to die,” I say. “I wanted him to come back with us.”
“Just as you wanted to catch Aja?” Roque says, snorting at my expression.
“I told you why I did that.”
“Naturally. She kills our friend. She kills Quinn, but we let her walk away for the grander scheme. Everything costs something, Darrow. Perhaps you’ll soon tire of making your friends pay.”
“That’s not fair,” Mustang says quickly. “You know it’s not.”
“What I know is we’re running out of friends,” Roque replies. “Not all of us are as tough as the Reaper. Not all of us want to be warriors.”
Of course Roque thinks this life is a choice of mine. His own childhood was one of leisure and reading, spent going back and forth between his family estate in New Thebes and the highlands of Mars. His parents didn’t believe in enhanced learning uploads, so they hired Violets and Whites to teach him pedagogically—walking and talking in peaceful pastures and beside still lakes.
“Tactus didn’t sell the violin,” Roque says after a moment.
“The one Darrow gave him?”
“Yes. The Stratovarian. He sold it, then felt so guilty he didn’t let the sale finalize with the auction house. Made them cancel the order. He was practicing in private, shaking off some of the rust. Said he wanted to surprise you with a sonata, Darrow.”
The heaviness in me deepens. Tactus was always my friend. He just got lost in trying to be the man his family wanted him to be, when all along his friends loved the man he already was. Mustang puts a hand on my lower back, knowing what I’m thinking. Roque leans down now to kiss Tactus once on the cheek and to give him a benediction.
“Better to go into that other world in the full glory of some passion than to fade and wither with age. Live fast. Die young, my wayward friend.”
Roque walks away, leaving Mustang and me alone with Tactus.
“You have to fix that,” she says of Roque. “Fix it before you’ve lost him.”
“I know,” I say. “Soon as I fix a hundred other things.”
We sit in the warroom in full council around a grand wooden table. Coffee cups and trays of food litter it. Mustang sits at my side, boots up on the table, as ever, while she explains what went wrong with her father’s mission. Kavax leans forward precariously in his seat, terrified at the idea of Augustus suffering defeat. He wrings his hands nervously, so distressed that Daxo takes Sophocles from his lap and hands her to an uncomfortable Victra. Mustang’s voice fills the room and the holo Pliny gave her comes to life above the table. A brigade of corvettes rockets silently through space toward the famed shipyards of Ganymede that ring the industrial planet mottled green, blue, and swirling white.
“He dispatched a lurcher squad of Grays concealed in the belly of two tankers. They disabled three of the defensive platform’s nuclear reactors. Then my father came in hard with his ripWings and corvettes, as is his way—burning engines and dropping munitions before curling back around.
“It was a treasure trove—some seventeen destroyers and four dreadnoughts in dry dock, most near or at completion. Supposing the ships to be manned by skeleton crews, he boarded them simultaneously. He even commanded the leechCraft that boarded the moonBreaker with his two Stained. But the ships were not manned by skeleton crews. There were no crews at all. Instead, they were loaded with Praetorians, Gray lurcher squads. And Olympic Knights.”
“And he … surrendered?” Kavax asks in panic.
Mustang laughs. “My father? He nearly cut his way free. He killed the Hearth Knight, then he ran into some of our old friends.”
The holo shows Augustus flowing through twelve Grays, like a man wading through stalks of high, dry grass. His razor sings and shrieks, sparking against the walls, sliding through men and armor till he meets another man in armor the shade of flame. The Hearth Knight. There’s a flurry of tight lunges and then red mist. A head thumps to the ground. Then two men appear. One in a sun-crested helm, the other Fitchner in his wolfhead helm. Together, the men kill the Stained and put Augustus bleeding on the ground.
Lorn looks over at me. “Lady … Mustang, who was the man in the sun-crested armor?”
> She’s silent.
“That’s the armor of the Morning Knight,” I answer. “Cassius. They must have mended his arm. Or given him a new one.”
Mustang continues. “Julii ships were also there.” She looks at Victra. “They finished my father’s forces off.”
Sevro glares at Victra, taking Sophocles from her as though she couldn’t even be trusted with the fox. “Do you feel awkward? You should.”
“We’ve been over this,” Victra says, sounding quite bored with the accusations. “My mother was threatened by the Sovereign. She’s not political. She cares about money and little else.”
“So she doesn’t care about loyalty?” Mustang asks. “Interesting.”
“Pfah. Agrippina’s a wicked bitch,” Kavax grumbles. “Always has been.”
“Careful, large one,” Victra warns. “She’s still my mother.”
Kavax crosses his burly arms. “Apologies. That she is your mother.”
“And how do we know you’re not in collusion with them, Victra?” Daxo asks softly. “Perhaps you spy? Perhaps you wait. How do you trust her loyalty, Darrow? She could easily have sent word …”
Mustang looks at me. “I was wondering that myself.”
“Why do I trust you, Daxo, or you, Kavax?” I ask. “Either of you would be in prime shape, earn pardons, earn more territories and monies if you delivered my head to the Sovereign.”
“And your heart to Cassius’s mother,” Sevro reminds me.
“Thank you, Sevro.”
“Here to help!” He grabs a drumstick off the table’s spread and feeds it to Sophocles. Considering, he takes a bite himself, saying something quietly to the fox.
“I trust Victra for the same reason I trust any of you—friendship,” I say, managing to look away from Sevro.
“Friendship. Ha.” Mustang sets her coffee cup down loudly. “I’ll be blunt. I don’t trust a Julii further than I could throw one.”
“That’s because you’re intimidated by me, little girl.”
Mustang sits up straighter. “‘Little’?”
“I have a decade on you, darling. One day you’ll look back at yourself and laugh. Was I really so foolish, so simple? Additionally, you’re not very tall. So I’ll call you little.”