“Looks like you’ve got your replacement Howlers then. That makes me irrelevant. I’ll just hop out the hatch,” Sevro says but doesn’t move.
“Sevro, I love you. And I love your family. I’m not saying get over it and turn into a machine, I’m saying stop acting like an asshole and let me help you carry the pain.”
“You love the Goblin,” he says. “You love the blade that slides out of nowhere into the enemy’s throat. Like magic. Right before he’d cut you down for good. That’s my worth to you.”
“Ah. Brother,” I say with a sigh. “Do you think Victra would ever have married you if that’s all you were? You think you’d be my best friend? Shit. Valdir’s better at killing than you are, and he wanted the spot.”
He snorts a laugh. “He wanted to shag you.”
“He did not.” Sevro stares at me like I’m an idiot. “He did not.” Sevro shakes his head. The laugh brought on a small change in him. I risk touching his shoulder. He lets me. “I wish you could see what I see, man. What Victra sees, what your girls see, what millions of Red children see when we look at you. The Goblin is a holy terror, yes. He’s a useful tool, he makes the enemy scared and our people brave.”
Sevro squints at me, surprised at my sudden agreement.
“But Sevro Barca?” I ask. “Hades. He’s the stage on which the Goblin sometimes comes out for a guest appearance. He’s the man who made the Howlers. He’s the one who keeps the Reaper in check. Keeps everyone in check. He was Ragnar’s brother. Sevro’s a leader, a father, a friend. He’s the one Athena sent this message to. Not the Goblin. Not me. We need Sevro to realize how tall he stands. Because if the Golds can beat him into believing he is small, wretched, what hope do the rest of us have?”
Sevro says nothing. He stares through me, his hollow eyes drilling holes into the bulkhead behind me.
“Last thing I’ll tell you is this, old friend: neither Sevro, nor the Goblin, is of any use fighting his allies, or working against his friends. You done with the Howlers? All right. My offer still stands: I’ll do everything in my power to get you home to your family. Steal you a ship on Io and cover your escape.”
“What about the airlock?”
“We know you’re not that man.” I squeeze his shoulder, hard. “But if you’re going to run with this pack, stop chewing our legs like we’re all stuck in a trap. This mission matters because it’s the one we are on. Think on it. When we get to Io, I’m going to scout. Whether I do that alone or with Sevro isn’t my call.”
I slap him on the shoulder and head for the medBay to check on Lyria.
I wish I could do more, but I can’t go back in time to save his son. He won’t respect pity or think he deserves it. In the cold prison of our minds, we are alone with our self-hatred, our doubts, and guilt. No one more than Sevro. A friend may reach through the bars and hold our hand, but they cannot open the door for us. Only the prisoner has the key. All I can do is remind him we’re waiting for him when he gets out.
49
LYSANDER
Vae Victis
THE OBSIDIAN PROSTHETICS THAT Atlas’s carver applied to my face itch almost as much as the false beard hanging from my chin. The contacts I wear are black, and my teeth plated gold. Scalps taken from the bridge of the Dustmaker hang from a rope on my belt. They are frozen stiff and clatter against the battered thigh plate of my Obsidian armor.
My gravBike thrums beside Atlas’s over the molten riverlands of Io. A patrol of Volk bikers wave in greeting as they pass in the distance. Atlas waves back. His arms have only recently been reattached. Our three-hour ride from the Lethe’s hiding place has taxed him a pain price few could pay. But we have arrived at our destination unmolested, clad in the armor of the barbarian host, and bearing the digital warrant of the Great Fá. Though Fá pacified all but Io’s toughest strongholds over the last month—while I crossed the Gulf with Diomedes—we were still at greater risk from Rim guerillas than Fá’s forces during our journey from the Lethe.
We’ve come to Plutus to tell Fá his anticipated three-year reign over Ilium will be cut short, and to discuss the logistics of his defeat once my fleet arrives. Atlas may have absolute trust in the man, but I’m keenly aware that we will be at Fá’s mercy.
I dread that with every fiber of my being.
The battlewall of Demeter’s Garter stretches across the horizon. Behind the wall lies a temperate microclimate amidst the hellish landscape of Io. The paradome network, which holds in pressure, oxygen, and filters radiation, steams over it like the surface of a morning winter lake. It bends the light of its artificial suns so that they appear to shine silver.
The city of Plutus, the administrative capital of the Garter, is swarmed by Fá’s divisions. Above the city, two Volk dreadnaughts hover like beasts squatting over their kill. Neither one is Fá’s flagship. Though we have come to speak to the man, the Pandora is still bombarding Sungrave.
We slow our bikes as we approach the battlewall. I watch as, far above, a stream of produce transports creeps up toward a swelling orbital caravan. The ships gathering there trickle in from across Io. A coldness creeps into my heart when I realize they carry more than foodstuffs off Io. Diomedes told me slaves are the highest currency to the Ascomanni. While the Rim Armada sailed from the Core, the Ascomanni harvested the populace of Io that could not take refuge in the moon’s stronger Bastions.
The slaves are part of Atlas’s “sunk cost.” Many have been infected with disease and will take that poison back to the ants’ nests. A hideous thought.
At the battlewall, Obsidian and Ascomanni bodies are still being pulled from the wreckage of the breach by teams of Red slaves bundled thick against the climate. They make frozen heaps with the corpses of Raa soldiers. Traffic thickens near the central gate where patrols queue between cyclopean statuary to enter the city.
When we pass through the gate’s pulseField, we are greeted by warmth and elegiac light. The air is breathable, warm, and thick with smoke. The sulfur crystals gathered on my bike and armor join the steam of the other traffic. Beyond the congestion of armored infantry and war machines driven by Blues in strange metal collars, Ascomanni overseers crack long whips at Red captives. Most labor in the thousands to collect bodies from the paths of destruction, which fan out from the narrow breaches into the orchards and grain fields to either side of Plutus.
The Ascomanni are taller and lankier than the Obsidians, and either umber or gray-skinned. Their hair is coarse, straight, thick, and black. They wear glossy black armor made of onyxia, and bark at each other in an unintelligible, savage tongue. They are human, though made less so by their own arcane and perverse use of carvers over the centuries. Some of the cretins are small, like children, with demonic pug faces and surly tempers.
The Ascomanni are a stain of corruption on the face of paradise.
Plutus, a gem in the tiara of the Garter, is a garden city where farming is embraced both as a science and a philosophy. An agricultural eden with warehouses for its crops, and academies, arbors, and laboratories for its prized Brown growers. Public parks, theaters, and baths for its droves of Red fieldhands. Limitlessly powered by the tidal heating of the planet, it makes its own weather and its own sunlight—pearly or silver depending on the crop zone—and for centuries it thrived, invulnerable behind its Raa garrison, kinetic shields, and its elephantine surface-to-orbit cannons.