“So that was your chaff I’d be dodging deep.”
He grins. “Helldivers, always lookin’ themselves in the eye.” He makes a lewd motion with his hands. “Someone’s gotta teach you to look up.”
We laugh. “How much did it hurt?” he asks, nodding to me. At first I think he’s asking about what the Jackal did. Then I realize he’s referring to the Sigils on my hands. The ones I’ve tried to cover with my sweater. I unveil them now. “Manic shit, that.” He flicks it with his finger.
I look around, suddenly aware that it’s not just Vanno watching me. It’s everyone. Even on the far side of the room in the burn unit Reds push themselves up in their beds to look at me. They can’t see the fear inside. They see what they want. I glance at Ragnar, but he’s busy speaking to an injured woman. Holiday. She nods to me. Grief still very much at home on her face for her lost brother. His pistol is on her bedside, his rifle leaning against the wall. The Sons recovered his body during the rescue so he could be buried.
“How much did it hurt?” I repeat. “Well, imagine falling into a clawDrill, Vanno. A centimeter at a time. First goes the skin. Then the flesh. Then bone. Easy stuff.”
Vanno whistles and looks down at his missing legs with a tired, almost bored expression. “Didn’t even feel this. My suit injected enough hydrophone to knock out one of them.” He nods to Ragnar and draws air through his teeth. “And least I still got my prick.”
“Ask him,” a man beside him urges. “Vanno…”
“Shut up.” Vanno sighs. “Boys have been wonderin’. Did you get to keep it?”
“Keep what?”
“It.” He looks at my groin. “Or did they…you know…make it proportionate?”
“You really want to know?”
“I mean…not for personal reasons. But I’ve got money riding on it.”
“Well.” I lean forward seriously. So do Vanno and his bedmates nearby. “If you really want to know, you should ask your mother.”
Vanno stares at me intensely, then explodes into laughter. His bedmates laugh and spread the joke to the far edges of the room. And in that tiny moment, the mood shifts. The suffocating sterility cut through with amusement and crude jokes. Whispering suddenly seems ridiculous here. It fills me with energy to see the shifting tide and realize it’s because of a single laugh. Instead of retreating from the eyes, from the room, I move away from Ragnar down the lines of cots to mingle more with the injured, to thank them, to ask where they’re from and learn their names. And this is where I thank Jove that I’ve a good memory on me. Forget a man’s name and he’ll forgive you. Remember it, and he’ll defend you forever.
Most call me sir or Reaper. And I want to correct them and tell them to call me Darrow, but I know the value of respect, of distance between men and leader. Because even though I’m laughing with them, even though they’re helping heal what’s been twisted inside me, they are not my friends. They are not my family. Not yet. Not until we have that luxury. For now, they are my soldiers. And they need me as much as I need them. I’m their Reaper. It took Ragnar to remind me. He favors me with an ungainly grin, so pleased to see me smiling and laughing with the soldiers. I’ve never been a man of joy or a man of war, or an island in a storm. Never an absolute like Lorn. That was what I pretended to be. I am and always have been a man who is made complete by those around him. I feel strength growing in myself. A strength I haven’t felt in so long. It’s not only that I’m loved. It’s that they believe in me. Not the mask like my soldiers at the Institute. Not the false idol I built in the service of Augustus, but the man beneath. Lykos may be gone. Eo may be silent. Mustang a world away. And the Sons on the brink of extinction. But I feel my soul trickling back into me as I realize I am finally home.
—
With Ragnar at my side I return to the command room where Sevro and Dancer are hunched over a blueprint. Theodora’s in the corner exchanging correspondences. They turn as I enter, surprised to see the smile on my face and to see that I’m now standing. Not on my own, but with Ragnar’s help. I left the chair in the hospital and had him guide me back to the command room I fled only an hour prior. I feel a new man. And I may not be what I was before the darkness, but perhaps I’m better for it. I have humility I didn’t have before.
“I’m sorry for how I acted,” I say to my friends. “This has been…overwhelming. I know you’ve done the best you can. Better than anyone could, given the circumstances. You’ve all kept hope alive. And you saved me. And you saved my family.” I pause, making sure they know how much that means to me. “I know you didn’t expect me to come back like this. I know you thought I’d come back with wrath and fire. But I’m not what I was. I’m just not,” I say as Sevro tries to correct me. “I trust you. I trust your plans. I want to help in whatever way I can. But I can’t help you like this.” I hold up my thin arms. “So I need your help with three things.”
“Always so dramatic,” Sevro says. “What are your demands, Princess?”
“First I want to send an emissary to Mustang. I know you think she betrayed me, but I want her to know I’m alive. Maybe there’s some chance it’ll make a difference. That’s she’ll help us.”
Sevro snorts. “We already gave her the opportunity once. She almost killed you and Rags.”
“But she did not,” Ragnar says. “It is worth the risk, if she will help us. I will go as emissary so she does not doubt our intentions.”
“Like hell,” Sevro says. “You’re one of most wanted men in the System. Gold have shut down all unauthorized air traffic. And you won’t last two minutes in a space port, even with a mask.”
“We’ll send one of my spies,” Theodora says. “I have one in mind. She’s good, and a hundred kilograms less conspicuous that you, Prince of the Spires. The girl’s in a port city already.”
“Evey?” Dancer asks.
“Just.” Theodora looks my direction. “Evey’s done her best to make amends for the sins of the past. Even ones that weren’t hers. She’s been very helpful. Dancer, I’ll make the arrangements for travel and cover, if that’s all right with you.”
“It’s all right,” Sevro says quickly, though Theodora waits for Dancer to nod his agreement.
“Thank you,” I say. “I also need you to bring Mickey back to Tinos.”
“Why?” Dancer asks.
“I need him to make me into a weapon again.”
Sevro cackles. “Now we’re talking. Get some man-killing meat on your bones. No more of this anorexic scarecrow shit.”
Dancer shakes his head. “Mickey’s half a thousand clicks away in Varos, working on his little project. He’s needed there. You need calories. Not a Carver. In the state you’re in, it could be dangerous.”
“Reap can handle it. We can get Mickey and his equipment here by Thursday,” Sevro says. “Virany has been consulting with him anyway about your condition. He’ll be tickled Pink to see you.”
Dancer watches Sevro with strained patience. “And the last request?”
I grimace. “I have a feeling you’re not gonna like this one.”
I find Victra in an isolated room with several Sons guarding the door. She lies with her feet sticking off the edge of a medical cot, watching a holo at the foot of her bed as Society news channels drone on about the valiant Legion attack on a terrorist force that destroyed a dam and flooded the lower Mystos River Valley. The flooding has forced two million Brown farmers out of their homes. Grays deliver aid packages from the backs of military trucks. Easily could have been Reds who blew up the dam. Or it could have been the Jackal. At this point, who knows?
Victra’s white-gold hair is bound in a tight ponytail. Every limb, even the paralyzed legs, is cuffed to the bed. Not much trust here for her kind. She doesn’t look up at me as the holo story kicks over to a profile on Roque au Fabii, the Poet of Deimos and the newest heartthrob of the gossip circuit. Searching through his past, conducting interviews with his Senator mother, his teachers before the Institute, showing him as boy on their country estate.