Sevro floats up to inspect the head. It’s big enough to fit four men Sevro’s size in its mouth. “Abraxes,” Aurae murmurs and looks back at Diomedes. We have not taken his helmet off or unbound him, so his expression is hidden. “The sigil-beast of the Raa herd. It was his grandfather’s dragon.”
“Wonder where the body is,” Sevro says when he returns from his inspection.
“The Garter?” I suggest.
He grunts. “Think they ate it?”
“It would make sense, wouldn’t it?” I say.
“Wait, why would they eat it?” Cassius asks.
“Old religious rite. Their way of absorbing the power of a defeated foe. Would happen in tribal wars on Mars’s poles back in the day. Fá ate Sefi’s heart, according to the briefings. Seems he’s reigniting the practice.”
We move on. The defenders made a last stand only a few levels down the Spine—Gray, Green, Orange, Red, Brown. Their corpses lie together, equal in death if not in life. I feel exposed seeing the bodies twisted together. So many of the problems I’ve caused are because I’ve valued some lives over others. The Core over the Rim. The people of Mars over the people of Mercury. Seeing what Fá has done to Io, seeing the dead of a city I planned to “liberate” one day fills me with guilt and dread in equal measure. But there is something else there: an urge to right these wrongs.
I know that’s folly. I no longer have my army, and the Volk have abandoned the dream of Eo and Ragnar, and I know much of that is my fault.
It is vain to think I can do anything out here, but my eyes wander to Diomedes and I wonder what he’s thinking behind that helmet.
No one is sorry to leave the Spine behind for the promenade level. When we reach the pedestrian juncture where the tunnels to the government district and the market divide, I tell my companions that we are separating. “Sevro carry on with Aurae and Cassius to the market and light the omega torch.” I hesitate. “I’ve got business with Diomedes.”
Sevro doesn’t even pause. He keeps walking toward the market. “You sure you don’t want me with you?” Cassius asks.
“No. I need you two to work together. Can you?” I ask.
He looks after Sevro. “Maybe. He left me a bottle of moonswill.”
“Huh?”
“I think he’s been making it in the machine shop. Lyria can vouch. It’s decent stuff.”
“She has a head injury, Cassius.”
“She only had a dram! It was an olive branch, I think.”
Aurae and Cassius follow Sevro down the tunnel toward the market, leaving me alone with Diomedes for the first time. He is not as tall as I am, but he is broader and I remember the scars on his body and the calluses on his hands. I approach him carefully and wonder if I’m being a fool—trying to redeem my sin against the father by treating with the son. Yet I take off his helmet. His mane of dark hair falls out. When I see his eyes, I feel his bottomless sorrow. They are shot red from crying and panicked like a child’s. I imagined a stoic warrior beneath the helmet. Instead I see a man whose world is in tatters and his home filled with ghosts.
I do not have to feign the sympathy in my voice. “Diomedes, I am sorry for your loss. I’m told you had kin here.” He does not reply. “You gave your parole to Cassius, but I need you to look me in the eye and give it to me. If you do, we can search for your kin together.”
He looks me in the eye, like I’ve spoken a foreign tongue. Then he blinks, understanding, and gives me a solemn nod. I motion him to turn. His feet shuffle and I unlock his cuffs.
53
DARROW
Eyes of Stone
THE RAA FAMILY COMPOUND was once a place of humble beauty, I’m sure. Defiled is too slight a word to describe what has been done to it by Fá’s troops. Bodies decompose in the entry grotto. The subterranean spring that runs throughout the home is murky and smells of rot. The winding halls, once painted with images of fables and histories, have been defaced with curses and phalluses traced in blood. I breathe a sigh of relief to see the language is neither Nagal nor Common. The Ascomanni sacked this place.
Knowing what awaits Diomedes, I let him search the home for his kin on his own. The liberty is also a litmus test for the man’s honor. As he searches, I inspect the bodies of five Peerless knights who tried to make a last stand. Their bones are broken and their bodies covered with puncture wounds. I sample the flesh around those wounds to take back to the Archi and compare to the poison we found in those spines in Diomedes’s hands.
Then I wait in the grotto.
I feel sick looking at the bodies that fill the stream. Was it really twelve years ago I sat with Romulus in his garden in the Wastes of Karrack? I remember being amused by his daughter Seraphina and wondering what her future would hold. I try to picture her going off to war. All I can see is a little girl sealed inside a starShell. Did she die at Kalyke? Here? Phobos? Earlier in the war?
I feel old, and older still when I hear Diomedes’s moan coming down the corridors. In it, I hear the grief I fear I’ll one day feel. How on that day I might think back on this moment now and wonder what I could have done differently to avoid my loved ones’ destruction.
I crave distraction from my emotions, but my time with The Path anchors me in my own body. Breathe out, then in. Find the self, lose it again. I repeat the mantra until all I feel is the breath in my lungs, the cool cavern air on my skin, the weight of armor on my shoulders, the distant deepmine wind of Mars.
When I’ve found my center, I watch Sevro’s helm feed as he and Aurae enter the market to find the perfumery. They secure the shop, a stone building carved like a teardrop, and crunch their way over broken vials to the back where Aurae pricks her finger on a needle hidden in the wall. The stone trembles and reveals a hidden long-range coms station. Her omega torch. She sends her message, and the three of them settle in to wait for a reply.
When I think Diomedes has had enough time to mourn, I seek him out. I find him kneeling in the Raa’s ancestral sanctum. The faces of his dead ancestors are carved into the chilly black stone of the vestibule. There are hundreds. Many have been smashed or melted by energy weapons.
Water from a crack in stone high above drips onto Diomedes’s shoulders. He hunches over two headless bodies. A child and what looks like a teenager. I feel for the man. Out of respect I stay silent and sit down in a recessed bench. The stone eyes of his ancestor watch him with less pity than I do. In time, I ask: “Who were they?”
Diomedes lowers his hands, exhausted from grief. “My brothers, Marius and Paleron.”
“All of your kin?” I ask.
“What?”
“Was that all your kin you thought to find here?” I ask.
“My sister Thalia. I could not find her. Nor my grandmother Gaia, nor my aunt Vela.”
“I’m sure there are bunkers?” He nods. “Shall we search for them there?” He doesn’t even look like he can stand. “If you give me the coordinates, I could have Cassius look.” For a moment I’m not sure he heard me. Then he nods again. I hail Cassius and in a dead voice Diomedes tells him the bunkers where the rest of his kin might be found. With nothing to do but wait with Aurae in the perfumery for Athena to respond to our message, Sevro doesn’t complain. Diomedes nods in gratitude as Cassius sets off.