Soon Lorn, Tactus, and I are left alone in the basement.
Lorn looks over to us. “Now that the children are gone, consequences.” His hands flash faster than a hummingbird’s wings. An ionDagger appears, lurches forward four times into Tactus’s armpit, where the armor is the weakest. I rush to stop Lorn, but it’s already done. He twists like he’s wringing a towel, severing the artery, an old man killing a young one. Tactus’s ruined face wrenches with pain; and he gasps, as though he knew justice would finally find him in the end.
Lorn leaves. And I hold my friend as he dies, his eyes fading to some distant place, where perhaps he’ll find that peace Roque always wished for him.
30
Gathering Storm
“How long till we reach the rendezvous?” I ask Orion on the command deck. Except for our attendants, we are alone in front of the viewports of the Pax, watching my ships cross through space. The newest additions to our fledgling armada are painted white and carry Lorn’s angry-faced purple griffin. With them fly the black and blue and silver warships captured from Kellan au Bellona above Europa. Oranges and Reds crawl over the exteriors of the metal monsters, mending the holes made by leechCraft and preparing them for the siege of Mars.
“Three days till Hildas Station. The other ships will have beaten us there, dominus.”
Kavax and Daxo approach from behind. I turn to them and gesture out the repaired windows to the ten ships of Kellan au Bellona.
“Thank you for the presents,” I say.
“Your plan, your spoils,” Kavax declares.
“With us taking a percentage, naturally,” Daxo adds, smooth as ever, raising his swirling golden eyebrows. “Fifty percent finder’s fee.” I glance at him with amusement. “Well, thirty percent, because Pax liked you.”
“Ten percent!” Kavax booms.
I cock my head. “You’re a poor negotiator, Praetor.”
He shrugs amiably and points in joy to jelly beans on the ground. He tosses Sophocles at them, encouraging him to vanquish them all.
“Twenty.” Daxo splays his hands, his movements always seeming to belong to a thinner, more bookish man. “That is fair, no? We lost a hundred and sixty house Grays and thirteen Obsidians.”
“Then thirty percent to compensate you. For friends.”
“Three ships! What a haggle!” Kavax proclaims. “What a haggle. Sometimes a man needs a good haggle.” He claps me on the back, making the joints crack again. “If only we had caught Aja. That’d be a spoil to divide!”
“She fled into the sea, unfortunately.” I gesture to Ragnar, who stands at the edge of the bridge. “Heard he did well.” Pale and tall, he continues looking at me from behind his beard and runic tattoos, appearing as devoid of emotions as Kavax and Daxo are full of them.
“The leader of his boarding party got killed. So did the lieutenants. Lots of heads smashed. They ran into some of Kellan’s friends,” Kavax says dourly as he rummages through his pockets for his impatient fox, who clawed at his leg for more jelly beans. “I don’t have any more, my little prince.” He smiles up at me hopefully. “Do you have any jelly beans?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Ragnar there took command. Did himself well,” Daxo says.
“Took command?” I ask.
Kavax explains. “There was a kill squad of Peerless. Half a dozen Bellona blade dancers, real noble boys, carved up all our Golds and most of the Obsidians. The Stained there collected the surviving Grays and a few Obsidians and managed to get the ship.”
“Any of these blade dancers survive?”
“No.”
Ragnar looks at the ground again, as if expecting a reprimand.
“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.”