I do not find Roque’s body, so I do not know what has become of him. Is my friend dead?
I feel a ghost as I pick my way along the highlands, circling around the castle to avoid Antonia’s henchmen. I put myself in the path Cassius will take in returning from the Greatwoods, hiding beneath shrubs to stay from sight. It is midday when he returns at the head of a small column of horse and slaves. He kicks his horse forward to greet me as I come from the shrubs.
“Brother!” he calls. “I brought you a gift!” He hops off and gives me a hug before pulling out one of Diana’s tapestries and wrapping it about my shoulders. He pulls back from me. “You’re as pale as a ghost. What’s the matter?” He picks a leaf out of my hair. Maybe that’s when he sees the sadness in my eyes.
Sevro rides up behind him as I tell them what has happened.
“The bitch,” Cassius murmurs. Sevro is silent. “Poor Lea. Poor Lea. She was a sweetheart. Do you think Roque is dead?”
“I don’t know.” I say. “I just don’t know.”
“Gorydamn.” Cassius shakes his head.
“A Proctor must have given Antonia nightOptics,” Sevro speculates. “Or the Jackal bribed her. It fits.”
“Who cares about that?” Cassius cries, flinging out his arm. “Roque may be wounded or dead out there, man. Don’t you register?” He grips the back of my neck and brings my forehead to his. “We’ll find him, Darrow. We’ll find our brother.”
I nod, feeling a numbness spreading in my chest.
Antonia never returned to our castle. Neither did her henchmen, Vixus and Cassandra. They failed to kill me and must have fled. But to where?
Quinn flings her hands up in the air and shouts at us as we come through the gate.
“I didn’t know where the goryblazes anyone was! The slaves outnumbered us four to one till you got back. But it’s fine. It’s fine.” She grips Cassius’s hand when we tell her what’s happened. The tears well in her eyes for Lea, but she refuses to believe Roque is dead. She keeps shaking her head. “We can use the slaves to search for Roque. Probably wounded and hiding out there. That’s it. That has to be it.”
We do not find him. The entire army searches. Not a sign. We convene in our warroom around the long table.
“He’s probably dead at the bottom of a ditch,” Sevro says that night. I almost hit him. But he’s right.
“The Jackal did this,” I mutter.
“Tough shit,” he says.
“Come again?”
“Doesn’t matter if he did it, is what Sevro means. We can’t do anything against the Jackal now. Even if he tried to take your life, we’re not in a position to hurt him,” Quinn declares. “Let’s deal with our neighbors first.”
“Stupid,” Sevro mutters.
“What a surprise. It looks like Goblin disagrees,” Cassius snaps. “Speak up if you got something in your craw, pygmy.”
“Don’t talk down to me,” Sevro sneers.
Cassius chuckles. “Don’t piss on my foot because you only come to my knees.”
“I’m every bit your equal.” The look on Sevro’s face is such that I lean forward suddenly, frightened a knife will suddenly appear in Cassius’s eye.
“My equal? At what? Birth?” Cassius grins. “Oh, wait, I meant height, looks, intelligence, money? Shall I stop?”
Quinn kicks his chair hard with her foot.
“What the hell is your problem?” she snaps at him. “Never mind. Just shut the hell up.”
Sevro looks at the ground. I have the sudden urge to put a hand on his shoulder.
“What were you saying, Sevro?” Quinn asks.
“Nothing.”
“Come on.”
“He said nothing.” Cassius chuckles.
“Cassius.” My voice alone shuts him up. “Sevro, please.”
Sevro sighs and looks up at me, cheeks flushed with anger. “Just thought we should not pick our butts here while the Jackal does whatever he wants.” He shrugs. “Send me south. And let me cause trouble.”
“Trouble?” Cassius asks. “What you going to do, kill the Jackal?”
“Yes.” Sevro looks quietly at Cassius. “I’ll put a dagger in his throat and then carve a hole till I see his spine.”
The tension is enough to make me uneasy.
“You can’t be serious,” Quinn says quietly.
“He’s serious.” Cassius’s forehead creases. “And he’s wrong. We’re not monsters. Not you and I, at least, Darrow. Bellona Praetors aren’t knives in the night. We have five hundred years of honor to guard.”
“Piss and lies.” Sevro dismisses him with a wave.
“It’s in the breeding.” Cassius elevates his nose ever so slightly.
Sevro’s mouth twists cruelly. “You’re a Pixie if you buy all that. Think your papa cut his way up to Imperator by being honorable?”
“Call it chivalry, Goblin,” Cassius sneers. “It wouldn’t be right trying to murder someone in cold blood, particularly not at a school.”
“I agree with Cassius,” I say, breaking my silence.
“Small wonder.” Sevro stands to leave very suddenly. I ask him where he is going.
“You obviously don’t need me. Have all the advice you can handle.”
“Sevro.”
“I’m gonna search the ditches. Again. Bet Bellona wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t get his precious knees dirty.” He bows mockingly to Cassius before leaving.
Quinn, Cassius, and I remain in the warroom until Cassius yawns something about catching a bit of REM before the dawn hits in six hours. Quinn and I are left alone. Her hair has been cut short and jagged, though the bangs hang just over her narrow eyes. She slouches boyishly in her chair and picks at her nails.
“What are you thinking on?” she asks me.
“Roque … and Lea.” I hear the gurgle in my mind. With it echoes all the sounds of death. Eo’s pop. Julian’s silence as he twitched in his own blood. I am the Reaper and death is my shadow.
“Is that all?” she asks.
“I think we should grab some sleep,” I reply.
She says nothing as she watches me leave.
33
APOLOGIES
Cassius wakes me in the middle of the night.
“Sevro found Roque,” he says quietly. “He’s a mess. Come.”
“Where?”
“North. They can’t move him.”
We gallop away from the castle under the light of twin moons. An early winter snow fills the air with dancing flurries. Sucking sounds come from the mud as we head toward the north Metas. No sounds but the gurgling of the water and the wind in the trees. Wiping sleep from my eyes, I look over to Cassius. He has our two ionSwords, and suddenly a pit opens in my stomach as I realize what’s what. He doesn’t know where Roque is. But he knows something else.
He knows what I’ve done.
This is a trap I cannot ride away from. I guess there are those times in life. It’s like staring at the ground as you fall from a height. Seeing the end coming doesn’t mean you can dodge it, fix it, stop it.
We ride for twenty more minutes.
“It was no surprise,” Cassius says suddenly.
“What’s that?”
“I’ve known for over a year that Julian was meant to die.” The snow falls silently as we move together through the mud. The hot horse moves between my legs. Step by step through the mud. “He made a mess of his test. He was never the brightest, not in the way they wanted. Oh, he was kind and bright with emotions—he could sense sadness or anger a klick away. But empathy is a lowColor thing.”
I say nothing.
“There are feuds that do not change, Darrow. Cats and dogs. Ice and fire. Augustus and Bellona. My family and the ArchGovernor’s.”
Cassius’s eyes are fixed ahead even as his horse stumbles and his breath makes fog in the air.
“But despite what it portended, Julian was excited when he received the acceptance letter stamped with the ArchGovernor’s personal seal. Didn’t seem right to me or my other brothers. Never thought Julian would be the sort to make it in. I loved him, all my brothers and cousins did; but you met him. Oh, you’ve met him—he wasn’t the keenest of mind, but he wasn’t the dullest; he wouldn’t have been the bottom one percent. No need to cull him from the stock. But he had the name Bellona. A name which our enemy loathes. And so our enemy used bureaucracy, used his title, his duly appointed powers, to murder a kind boy.