“Cassius is coming with the last of the civilians. Sevro’s right behind. Watch via the cameras. Soon as he’s back, lift off and head for the volcanoes. Cass will take the stick.” I squeeze her shoulder. She’s soaked in sweat. “Good work, Lagalos.” She grins back at me, nervous. “Was that Aurae on guns?”
“Negative. The gloomy bastard. The Raa.”
A little stunned, I head back to the chute to the top gun turret. Diomedes’s face peers down.
“The children?” he asks.
“Safe.”
“Shall I return to the brig?”
I glance into the main hall. Three Daughters are carrying a charred lump of a man into the medBay. I duck my head back into the chute. “I still have your parole?” Diomedes nods. “We have guests. Stay on guns.”
By the time I make it back to the cargo bay Cassius has boarded with the last of the children. Three Pink boys cling to him. They might have held their breath against Io’s air, but the cold found them. Their fingers will be frostbitten from where they gripped his freezing armor. He is tender handing them over to Aurae. I shout for him to get to the cockpit. The ship shudders and Lyria lifts off. “Where we going?” Cassius asks as he passes me.
“I’ll find out. In the meantime, lose them in the volcanoes, and punch to orbit in one of those ash columns soon as you can.”
“These are the Daughters we came for? They’re mangled.”
“Cassius. Cockpit. Now.”
He goes. Soon as he’s gone there’s a shout as Sevro lands along with an Obsidian with kudu horns. The Daughters scramble up and level their rifles. “Dammit, Sevro. We don’t need a hostage,” I say. The ship shudders as Lyria lifts off.
Sigurd lifts his hands to show he has no weapon. Sevro steps in front of the rifles. “He came over the river and flagged me down to surrender. Figured we could use the information now that Fá knows we’re here.”
“Fá is a plague. To my people. To all peoples. I want to help you kill him,” Sigurd says. “Many of the braves believe as I do. They will rejoice to see you are alive, Tyr Morga.”
“Good thinking,” I say to Sevro. “Any of you got cuffs?”
A woman wide as an anvil throws me reinforced wire cuffs. I fit them on Sigurd. The woman stares up at the Obsidian, and I realize she must be the leader of the Daughters. Her flexible scorosuit is yellow and tan, like the wastes of Io, and bears the stitches of a significant size-down. The lower half of her face is covered with a scaled kryll, the rest wrapped with a yellow headscarf. Her eyes are hidden behind shaded goggles flecked with thawing Obsidian blood. She doffs the goggles, revealing the unmistakable scarlet eyes of a Jovian ultraheavy—Reds bred to work in punishing radiation and gravity 2.4 times that of Earth. The rarest of our breed. Big bodies. Big hearts. Short lives.
“Athena?” I ask.
“Cheon. Chiliarch of the Black Owls. Athena sent us to bring you to her,” she says.
“They weren’t expecting us. Obviously,” Sevro says. “They’ve been running ops trying to evac civilians on Io.”
“So, Cassius was on the right track,” I say to a scowl from Sevro. “Well met, Cheon. Good to see Red eyes in the fight.” I extend a gauntlet. She looks at it but does not take it.
Her voice is deep and masculine. “You let their jarl go. We had to leave our dead. I lost half my column. More in ten minutes than four weeks of fighting. And you want to shake hands?”
I withdraw my hand. “Where is Athena?” I ask. “Our pilot needs to know where to go.”
“Europa. Athena has taken the Deep,” Cheon answers.
“Which city?” Sevro asks.
“The whole bloody thing,” she says. “We know Europa’s next, after Callisto. We’re ready. The Deep is impregnable. We’ll blow the sealifts soon as they breach atmosphere. Even an Obsidian arm isn’t long enough to reach the bottom of the sea. But Fá’s welcome to drown trying.”
Aurae is confused. “And the people on the surface?”
Cheon shrugs. “That’s a question for Athena.”
57
LYRIA
Lamps in the Storm
THE SHIP SHUDDERS FROM turbulence as we descend on Europa. My mag boots clunk as I go into the Archimedes’s tiny brig. The Obsidian sits up behind the duroglass. He is Darrow’s height but a little more slender. He looks confused as I squat on the floor. The swaying of the ship makes my head ache. “I have questions,” I say in Nagal.
“Who are you? How do you speak our language?” he asks.
“You’re the one in the cell,” I reply. “I ask the questions.”
“You are the one who hacked the door and turned the camera off,” he says, nodding to the camera above. “Darrow does not know you are here. So let us be polite. I am Sigurd, son of Skarde, of the tribe of the—”
“Volga Fjorgan. This name ring a bell?” He snorts. I pull the sidearm I filched from the armory and set it on my knee. “Does her name ring a bell?” He chuckles. “What’s so funny?”
“You are saying: ‘Does this name ring my balls.’ ”
“Oh.”
“It is not your fault. We have many words for snow, ice, death, and especially balls. I can speak in Common very well, if you prefer,” he replies in Common. “You do not need that gun. I am a friend of Red.” I narrow my eyes. “You do not believe me. That is all right. I am in a cell.”
“Volga Fjorgan,” I say.
“Yes. I know the name. There are not many women Obsidian amongst us. Part of the stupidity that brought us out here was blaming them for our years of slavery. They sold us, their boys, it is true, but it was an impossible choice. Sell us or all their children die, boys and girls. Gold is good at shifting blame. But it is Volarus. Not Fjorgan.”
“What else?” I ask.
“I do not know. I am Fifth Band.” He shows five torcs made of iron on his wrist. “Not First Band. My father complains too much to be close to Fá’s favor. But warriors love gossip. I know she is the Fá’s granddaughter, but Fá calls her daughter. She follows him like a shadow—”
“She’s not imprisoned?” I ask.
He frowns. “Not that I know. She was given a command for Callisto, this much I’ve heard.”
“A command?”
“Ja. Soldiers of her own. To make this a kingdom for the Volk. A good little soldier.”
I shake my head. “That’s not true. She’d never help with this.”
He shrugs. “If you call me a liar we will have to fight.” He waits and I don’t. “There is gossip too. That she was an unnatural birth. A freak from a Grimmus tube. And—”
“She’s not a freak,” I snap.
He smiles, a little sad. “We are all freaks,” he says and shows his sigils. “They made us so.”
* * *
—
When it’s clear Sigurd knows nothing else of Volga, I seal the brig behind me and sway back to the cargo bay. We’re low now, close to the sea. Out the viewport three cities bob to the west like lonely lamps, and like lamps they wait to be blown out.