Cassius squares up and shakes his fists out. “Stay down.” He grins like his old self. The rotten self I thought he’d outgrown. “It’s not my fault you weren’t there when your wife needed you most.”
I must be missing something because it’s like Sevro’s been hit with a block of ice. He goes pale, and glances at Lyria with a look so wounded I realize there’s something I don’t know. Something terrible. Lyria is horrified.
“Cassius, stop—” she begs.
Sevro rushes Cassius in silence. He jukes sideways and under another of Cassius’s kicks and puts his shoulder into Cassius’s groin. They go down. Sevro clambers atop Cassius, and tries to bite his face. Cassius uses a kravat counter-leverage move to roll the two of them toward us. Sevro’s teeth snap at empty air. He ends up behind Cassius, raining blows on the back of Cassius’s head.
Lyria springs at them.
I grab for the scruff of her neck, but she’s oily from working on the ship and slips my grip. Shit. I jump up. Neither man sees her coming. Cassius thrusts back against Sevro with his hips, throwing Sevro off balance, and inverts their positions. As he does so, he brings back his fist to pound Sevro’s exposed face. But his elbow cracks right into Lyria’s face on his backswing. She reels back as if kicked by a sunblood.
She’s snoring before she hits the ground.
I shout for them to stop. Cassius glances over his shoulder to see Lyria twitching on the floor. Her nose smashed flat. Blood pours out. A second vile snore rattles out of the small Red girl. Cassius’s face falls. “No no no no no no.”
Sevro isn’t done. He scrambles to his feet and rushes Cassius. I slip from the box and kick him under his left shoulder so hard he’s lifted clean in the air and sent crashing into cargo boxes. He stumbles up oozing blood from his face, his left eye hidden beneath a mass of swollen, purpling tissue.
“Enough,” I demand.
He heaves for breath, ugly as the monster all children think lurks in their closet, but he sees the look in my eye, Lyria snoring like a drunk, and he sinks against a box. Cassius cradles Lyria in his arms. She’s still snoring. “Neuro unit. MedBay, Cassius.” He doesn’t hear me. I swat his head. “MedBay!”
Cassius stumbles and rushes out of the cargo bay with Lyria in his arms. I’m left alone with Sevro. “Happy?” I ask him. “Got your belly full of hate? You stuffed now? Got enough to last you to Io or do you need to provoke everyone before you’re full?”
Sevro mutters something inaudible and spits blood. Woozy, he makes his way past me and out the cargo bay. He juts a finger after Cassius. “Liability.” He points at me. “Drowning man.”
“So what’s that make you?” I ask.
“Goblin.”
He doesn’t seem happy about that. He is miserable. It’s a different tone than I’ve seen from him. He looks lost. Like he’s about to puke.
I soften my voice. “What did he mean about Victra?”
He blinks. Distant. Empty of anger. Empty completely. “Sevro.”
“It was a boy,” he rasps. “Our baby. It was a boy, named Ulysses. That was the name we chose. Harmony killed him on Mars. Nailed him to a tree. I wasn’t there.” The sense of hope I’d been nursing since leaving the Marcher shrinks to the size of a candle’s flame. The wind howls in my heart, black, cold. The candle flickers and almost goes out. I don’t know what to say. Sevro is beat. He looks at his feet.
“Sevro, I’m sorry.” A half minute goes past. “Gods, I am so sorry. When did you learn this?”
“The stowaway spilled the beans. At Quick’s.”
Now it all makes sense.
“Shouldn’t you be home?”
“I wasn’t there.” Sevro stares off, vacant. “How can I go home? How can I face her? Victra. What she went through, on her own? She was probably there. With Virginia. Didn’t want to talk to me. I tried to be a da. But it ain’t what Barcas do. We can be nightmares. That’s what we can do. Make the enemy scared. Goblin’s what they need. Out here. Goblin gets shit done.”
“So does Sevro,” I say.
“Naw. That’s what I learned on Luna, see. The Abomination reminded me of something I’d always known deep down, but had forgotten. Kids. Wife. Money. Fame. Victory. All that soft shit; it ain’t for me. I’m not allowed to have it. Sevro craves all that. Sevro is weak. Sevro slags up. Sevro wants the family and the peace and the quiet. That’s how the clone got me. Sevro needs. Not the Goblin. Goblin eats nails, shits fire. He can do what Sevro can’t.”
“Bullshit.”
“What?”
“You heard me. That’s bullshit, Sevro. It wasn’t the Goblin who held the Sons of Ares together when I was in the Jackal’s box, when your da was dead. It was you. Sevro Barca.”
“I got people killed. If it wasn’t for Rags and Dancer, it all would have burned down. If you and Victra hadn’t joined up…”
“So what you’re saying is, without your friends, you’d be slagged and the Rising would be ashes?” I scoff. “Welcome to the club, asshole. Where do you think I’d be without you? Without our friends? Dead in a ravine, that’s where. We hold each other up. We always have. That’s not weakness. That’s the only strength we’ve got. More than anyone, you’ve been there for me. You’ve been my engine for half a life. My turn.” I set both hands on his shoulders. “Look at me, Sevro.”
His eyes peer out at me from a pit of sadness.
“I know there is nothing I can say that will make this right. I know that the worlds have been cruel to you. That they’ve ripped your guts out one too many times. This will hurt forever. I cannot imagine losing Pax. I am your best friend. I would die for you, Victra, any of your kids. So trust me when I say this: we are not here for ourselves. So if you cannot pull yourself out of your pain, if you cannot contribute the way you know you can, then there is the airlock: please see yourself out.”
He stares at me in shock.
He’s not used to this. I’ve always accommodated his turbulent temper, his volcanic anger and petty slights. I know the Goblin is a part of him, but if he doesn’t understand there are expectations, if he isn’t called out, he’ll see himself to ruin, and maybe take us down with him.
“Piece o’ pie,” he says bitterly. “Didn’t even know the kid. Turn the page on my da too. Forget that son of a whore Bellona—”
“I beat his brother to death with my bare hands. Cassius’s twin. I cut his older brother in half. Our friends killed his da. And on and on and on!” I’m shouting now, but dammit, he needs perspective. “And despite all of that fucking murder, Sevro, all that murder—Cassius is here, with us, right now, fighting for our future. Fighting for you, and for your family back on Mars. Despite the horrors of the camps, where that little Red in the medBay saw her entire family butchered, Lyria is here, with us, right now. And despite my betrayal of the Sons on the Rim all those years ago, where thousands were executed because I turned my back on them, Aurae is here now. They are all fighting for your kids, for mine.”