My stomach tightens.
“He already killed Julian’s murderer. Apparently you weren’t watching.”
“Of course. Of course. Mercury thinks you brilliant. Apollo thinks you’re uppity. He really does not like you, you know.”
“I could give a piss.”
“Oh, you should care much more than that. Apollo’s a peach.”
“Right. So what do you think? You are my Proctor.”
“I think you are an ancient soul.” He watches me and leans against the rampart. The night is misty beyond the castle. From its depths, a wolf howls. “I think you’re like that beast out there. Part of a pack but deeply sad, deeply alone. And I can’t puzzle out why, my dear boy. This is all so much fun! Enjoy it! Life doesn’t get better.”
“You’re the same,” I say. “Lonely. You’re all japes and snide comments, just like Sevro, but it’s just a mask. It’s because you don’t look like the others, isn’t it? Or are you poor? Somehow you’re an outsider.”
“My looks?” He barks a laugh. “What does that matter? Think I’m a Bronzie because I’m not an Adonis?” He leans forward, because he really does care about what I’m going to say.
“You are ugly and you eat like a pig, Fitchner, but you chew metabolizers when you could just go to a Carver and fix yourself to look like the others. They could take care of that paunch in a second.”
Fitchner’s jaw muscle flickers. Is it anger?
“Why should I have to visit a Carver?” he hisses suddenly. “I can kill an Obsidian with my bare hands. An Obsidian. I can outwit a Silver in parlance and negotiation. I can do math Greens only dream of. Why should I make myself look any different?”
“Because it is what holds you back.”
“Despite my low birth, I am of note. I am important.” His hatchet face dares me to contradict. “I am Gold. I am a king of man. I do not change to suit others.”
“If that’s true, why do you chew metabolizers?” He does not answer. “And why are you only a Proctor?”
“Becoming a Proctor is a position of prestige, boy,” Fitchner snaps. “The Drafters voted me to represent the House.”
“Yet you’re no Imperator. You lead no fleets. You’re not even a Praetor in command of a squadron. Nor are you any sort of Governor. How many men can do the things you say you can do?”
“Few,” he says very quietly, face all anger. “Very few.” He looks up. “What is the bounty you desire for capturing the Minervan standard?”
“Isn’t that Sevro’s deal?” I say, understanding the conversation is nearing its end.
“He has passed it to you.”
I ask for horses and weapons and matches. He agrees curtly and turns to leave before I can ask him one last question. I grab his arm as he starts to ascend. Something happens. My nerves fry. Like needles in acid through my hand and arm. I gasp. My lungs can’t function for a second.
“Goryhell,” I cough out, and fall to the ground. He wears pulseArmor. I can’t even see the generator. It’s like a pulseShield, but inlaid in the armor itself.
He waits without a smile.
“The Jackal,” I say. “You mentioned him. The Minervan girl mentioned him. Who is he?”
“He’s the ArchGovernor’s son, Darrow. And he makes Titus look like a blubbering child.”
Large horses graze in the fields the next morning. Wolves try to take down a small mare. A pale stallion trots up and kicks one of the wolves to death. I claim him. The others call him Quietus. It means “the final stroke.”
He reminds me of the Pegasus that saved Andromeda. The songs we sang in Lykos spoke of horses. I know Eo would have liked a chance to ride one.
I do not realize till days later that when they named my horse Quietus, they were mocking me for my part in Titus’s death.
30
HOUSE DIANA
A month passes. In the wake of Titus’s death, House Mars becomes stronger. The strength comes not from the highDrafts but from the dregs, from my tribe and the midDrafts. I have outlawed the abuse of slaves. The Ceres slaves, though still skittish around Vixus and a few of the others, provide our food and fires; they are good for little else. Fifty goats and sheep have been gathered in the castle in case of a siege; so too has firewood been stockpiled. But we have no water. The pumps to the washroom shut off after the first day, and we have no buckets to store water inside in case of a siege. I doubt it was an accident.
We hammer shields into basins and use helmets to bring water from the river glen below our high castle. We cut down trees and carve them hollow to make troughs in which to store the water. Stones are pulled up and a well is dug, but we cannot dig far enough to get past the mud. Instead, we line the well with stone and timber and try to use it as a tank for water. It always leaks. So we have our troughs, and that is it. We cannot let ourselves be besieged.
The keep is cleaner.
After seeing what happened to Titus, I ask Cassius to teach me the blade. I’m an unreasonably fast study. I learn with a straight. I never use my slingBlade; it already is like part of my body. And the point is not to learn how to use the straight blade, which is much like the razors, but to learn how it will be used against me. I also do not want Cassius to learn how to fight the curved blade. If he ever finds out about Julian, the curve is my only hope.
I am not as proficient in Kravat. I can’t do the kicks. I learn how to break tracheas, though. And I learn how to properly use my hands. No more windmill punches. No more foolish defense. I am deadly and fast, but I do not like the discipline Kravat requires. I want to be an efficient fighter. That is all. Kravat seems intent on teaching me inner peace. That is a lost cause.
Yet now I hold my hands like Cassius, like Julian, in the air, elbows at eye level so I am always striking or blocking downward. Sometimes Cassius will mention Julian and I will feel the darkness rise. I think of the Proctors watching and laughing about this; I must look like an evil, manipulative thing.
I forget that Cassius, Roque, Sevro, and I are enemies. Red and Gold. I forget that one day I might have to kill them all. They call me brother, and I cannot but think of them in the same way.
The battle with House Minerva has broken down into a series of warband skirmishes, neither side gaining enough advantage over the other to ever score a decisive victory. Mustang will not risk the pitched battle that I want, nor can they really be goaded. They are not so easily tempted as my soldiers are to bouts of glory or violence.
Still the Minervans are desperate to capture me. Pax turns into a madman when he sees me. Mustang even tried offering Antonia, or so Antonia claims, a mutual defense compact, a dozen horses, six stunpikes, and seven slaves in exchange for me. I don’t know if she is lying when she tells me this.
“You would betray me in a heartbeat if it got you to Primus,” I tell her.
“Yes,” she says irritably, as I interrupt her fastidious nail maintenance. “But since you expect it, it shan’t really be a betrayal, darling.”
“Then why didn’t you accept the offer?”
“Oh, the dregs look up to you. It would be disastrous at this point. Maybe after you have failed at something, yes, maybe then when momentum is against you.”
“Or you’re waiting for a higher price.”
“Exactly, darling.”
Neither of us mentions Sevro. I know she’s still afraid he’ll cut her throat if she touches me. He follows me now, wearing his wolfskin. Sometimes he walks. Sometimes he rides a small black mare. He does not like armor. Wolves approach him at random, as though he were one of their own pack. They come to eat deer he kills because they’ve grown hungry as we lock away the goats and sheep. Pebble always leaves them food at the walls whenever we slaughter a beast. She watches them like a child as they come in fours and threes.