“Ah. Yes. That’s something you can’t abide, someone else having power. Fine then.” Roque tugs at his long hair. “Talk to Vixus or Pollux. Take away his captains if you must. But heal the House, Darrow. Otherwise, we’ll lose when another House comes knocking.”
On the sixth day I take his advice. Knowing Titus is out raiding, I risk seeking Vixus in the keep. Unfortunately, Titus returns earlier than expected.
“You’re looking lively and spry,” he says to me before I can find Vixus in the keep’s stone halls. He blocks my path with his large body—shoulders nearly spanning the width of the wall. I feel another in the hallway behind me. Vixus and two others. My stomach sinks a little. It was stupid to do this. “Where are you going, if I may ask?”
“I wanted to compare our scouting maps to the main map in the command room,” I lie, knowing I have a digislate in my pocket.
“Oh, you wanted to compare scouting maps to the main map … for the good of Mars, noble Darrow?”
“What other good is there?” I ask. “We are all on the same side, no?”
“Oh, we are on the same side,” he says. Titus booms an insincere laugh. “Vixus, if we are on the same side, don’t you think it would be best if we shared his little maps with one another?”
“It would be for the very best,” Vixus agrees. “Mushrooms. Maps. All the same.” So he assaulted little Lea. His eyes are dead. Like raven eyes.
“Yes. So I’ll take a look for you, Darrow.” Titus snatches the scouting maps from me. There’s nothing I can do to stop him.
“You’re welcome to them,” I say. “So long as you know there are enemy fires to the far east and likely enemies in the Greatwoods to the south. Raid all you like. Just don’t get caught with your pants down.”
Titus sniffs the air. He wasn’t listening to me.
“Since we are sharing, Darrow.” He sniffs again, closer to my neck. “Perhaps you’ll share with us why you smell like woodsmoke.”
I stiffen, not knowing what to do.
“Look at him squirm. Look at him weave a lie.” Titus’s voice is all disgust. “I can smell your deceit. Smell the lies dripping from you like sweat.”
“Like a woman in heat,” Pollux says sardonically. He shrugs apologetically at me.
“Disgusting,” Vixus sneers. “He’s a vile thing. A wretched, womanish thing.” I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to turn him on Titus.
“You’re a little parasite,” Titus continues. “Nibbling away at morale because you will not come to heel; waiting for my noble boys and girls to starve.” They’re closing in on me from behind, from the sides. Titus is huge. Pollux and Vixus are cruel, nearly as big as I. “You’re a wretched creature. A worm in our spine.”
I shrug casually, trying to let them think I’m not worried.
“We can fix this,” I say.
“Oh?” Titus asks.
“The solution is simple, big man,” I counsel. “Bring your boys and girls home. Stop raiding Ceres every day before some other House comes in and slaughters you all. Then we’ll talk about fire. About food.”
“You think you can tell us what to do, Darrow? That the thrust of it?” Vixus asks. “Think you’re better because you scored higher on a stupid little test? Because the Proctors chose you first?”
“He does,” Titus chuckles. “He thinks he deserves Primus.”
Vixus’s hawkish face leans close to mine, lips sneering each word. Handsome in repose, his lips peel back cruelly now, and his breath stinks as he looks me over, measuring me and trying to make me think he’s not impressed. He snorts a contemptuous laugh. I see him shifting his head to spit on my face. I let him. The glob of phlegm hits and drips slowly down my cheek toward my lips.
Titus watches with a wolfish smile. His eyes glimmer; Vixus looks to him for encouragement. Pollux comes closer.
“You’re a pampered little prick,” Vixus says. His nose nearly brushes mine. “So that’s what I’m gonna take from you, goodman—your little prick.”
“Or you could let me leave,” I say. “You seem to be blocking the door.”
“Oho!” he laughs, looking at his master. “He’s trying to show he’s not afraid, Titus. Trying to avoid a fight.” He looks as me with those golden, dead eyes. “I’ve broken uppity boys like you in the dueling clubs a thousand times.”
“You have?” I ask incredulously.
“Broken them like twigs. And then taken their girls for sport. What embarrassments I’ve made them in front of their fathers. What weeping messes I make of boys like you.”
“Oh, Vixus,” I say with a sigh, keeping the tremble of anger and fear out of my voice. “Vixus, Vixus, Vixus. There are no boys like me.”
I look back at Titus to make sure our eyes are joined when I casually, as if I were dancing, loop my Helldiver hand around and slam it into the side of Vixus’s neck at the jugular with the force of a sledgehammer strike. It ruins him, yet I hit him with an elbow, a knee, my other hand, as he falls. Had his legs been anchored better, the first strike might have snapped his neck in half. Instead, he cartwheels sideways in the low gravity, going horizontal and shuddering from my raining blows as he hits the ground. His eyes go blank. Fear rises in my belly. My body is so strong.
Titus and the others are too startled by the sudden violence to stop me as I spin past their outstretched hands and run down the halls.
I did not kill him.
I did not kill him.
24
TITUS’S WAR
I did not kill Vixus. But I killed the chance of uniting the House. I sprint down the keep’s winding stairwells. Shouts behind me. I pass Titus’s lounging students; they’re sharing bits of raw fish they managed to spear from the river. They could trip me if they knew what I’ve done. Two girls watch me go by and, hearing their leaders shouts, are too late in moving. I’m past their hands, past the keep’s lower gatehouse and into the main square of the castle.
“Cassius!” I call up at the gatehouse to the castle where my men sleep. “Cassius!” He peeks his head out the window and sees my face.
“Oh. Shit. Roque!” he shouts. “It happened! Raise the Dregs!”
Three of Titus’s boys and one of his girls chase after me across the courtyard. They’re slower than I, but another is coming from her post on the wall to cut me off, Cassandra. Her short hair jingles with bits of metal she’s woven in. Effortlessly, she hops down the eight meters from the parapet, an axe in hand, and races to intersect my path before I reach the stairs. Her golden wolf ring glimmers in the ebbing light. She’s a beautiful sight.
Then my entire tribe pours out of the gatehouse. They bring their makeshift packs, their knives and the beating sticks we carved from felled branches taken from our woods. But they do not set toward me. They are bright, so they crank open the huge double gates that separate the castle from the long sloping path leading down to the glen. Mist seeps through the open gate and they disappear into the murk. Only Quinn is left behind.
Quinn, the fastest of Mars. She bounds along the cobblestone like a gazelle, coming to my aid. Her beating stick twirls in the air. Cassandra doesn’t see her. A long golden ponytail flops in the chill night air as Quinn winds up, a smile on her face, and blindsides Cassandra from the flank, hitting her full-force in the knee with her beating stick. The crack of wood on strong Gold bone is loud. So is Cassandra’s scream. Her leg doesn’t break, but she flips onto the cobblestone. Quinn does not slow her stride. She swoops in beside me, and together we leave Titus’s pack behind.
We catch up with the others in the bowl of the glen. Setting across the rugged hills, we aim toward our northern fort in the deep mist-shrouded highlands. Vapor clings to our hair, dripping off in pearls. We reach the fort well past midnight. It is a cavernous, barren tower that leans over a ravine like a drunken wizard. Lichen covers the thick gray stone. Mist swaddles its parapets and we make our first meal of the birds in the eaves of the single tower. Some escape. I hear their wings in the dark night. Our civil war has begun.