She activates Pyrphoros and scratches eleven marks in the floor in front of Cassius’s feet without leaving her stool.
“I escaped when the Raa soldiers came. Few others managed that. I fell in with pirates and sunk into my own shame. I learned to believe I was never a freedom fighter. That I was a terrorist. An animal. Then Ares found me and showed me that the elder who put the gun in my hand was alive. Alive and far from the gas mine where he sparked our uprising. Living in peace, luxury. He confessed that the uprising was a Krypteia operation from the start. Even in revolt, we were their tools.
“Thanks to Ares, I learned the truth, that Gold control is an illusion comprising fear, guilt, and distrust.” She looks back at the ships creeping over the swirling storms of Jupiter. “Atlas au Raa. Is this…genocide truly his work?”
So she was listening to us in the cell. “Yes,” Diomedes says.
“You don’t have proof.”
“No, but that is only a testament to my uncle’s skill. Nothing more.”
Athena chews on her lip before turning on me. “Ares says you can shatter Atlas’s illusion. Can you, Darrow?”
“Ares?” I ask with a frown.
Someone moves in the shadows of the war room. Then everything turns to black. Sound and light, even my own hands disappear. Then the voice of Ares, destroyer of men, stormer of ramparts, growls. “I am the kneeling son. I am the broken daughter. I am the widow and her trembling fist. I am the sum of the tyrants’ debris. I am the whipped, the bent, the broken, the enslaved. I am the meek, the gentle, the humble, and all their silent rage. By taking your voice, Gold has given me mine. I am you. I am we. I am Ares, breaker of chains.”
I know the speech. It is an old one given before I left the mines. I found it years later echoing around the holonet. I believe it is still cherished by many because it is what Ares was. Not a hero, not really. He was a consequence of empire, an empowering reflection of the shadow the Golds had cast over all our small and divided hearts.
A pupil of blinding light devours the darkness until I see Sevro standing in front of us wearing the Twilight Helm. It shimmers like a star then fades molten red. So that’s what it does.
“Neptune’s prick. I thought I just died,” Cassius mutters.
Sevro takes off the helmet and it fades to black. He’s shaved his beard and has his old goatee back. He grins at his little drama. “Savage, right? Thank Hades it has a manual in its software.”
“Sevro, what’s what?” I ask.
He hops onto a console and dangles his feet. “Well. It’s like this. After they put you idiots away, I thought I should have my own little speech. It’s easy to make Da shiny in death. But we forget Da was a mess of a man. More broken than any of us. That’s why he chose Athena here. Why he chose Dancer, Harmony, Darrow.” He pokes the helmet at me. “He took the broken people because he knew he could reforge them stronger.
“He was a dreamer, Da, but he wasn’t an idealist. Naw. He woulda chosen a sweeter god to play if he was. Ares is the bloody truth behind the shine of the Golds. He is the shadow of their glory, and that shadow belongs to us. It is the trauma that made us mad enough to not just go along.
“Da chose you all for different reasons. Dancer was a builder, like Athena here. She’s showed me what she’s done these last years—the network she’s built.” He casts her a look of unreserved admiration. “You, Darrow, he chose to be his breaker. But you’re more than that. He told me that before he died. You could be both, if only he could keep you on the right path. He died too soon, I think. Left us to our own wicked devices. We weren’t ready, but we did what we could.”
He nods to Athena and the Daughters in the room.
“That’s what I told the Daughters when I marched up there with his helmet. Da slagged up too. Athena cited me half a dozen times just off the top of her head. But he always got back up, dusted himself off, and stuck with it. I told the Daughters no one’s done that more than you, boss, maybe not even Da, and each time you try to change. Try to be better.”
It’s the first time he’s called me boss in a long time. The Daughters and even Athena herself listen to him with pride in their eyes, as if they’d all watched him grow up. I feel, maybe for the first time, that he has found the same conviction in this part of his life as he does in being a father. It is like both sides of him, Sevro Barca and the Goblin, have finally melded together. I watch him with so much pride.
“You got messy, you know,” he says to me with a sigh. “Said it yourself. You cut corners because you wanted that light at the end of the dark. You forgot your own words. That’s what’s pissed me off the most.” I cock my head at him. “Years ago, was twelve? Thirteen? We were standing over Ragnar’s body and you told me we gotta stop waiting for the light, because we’re it.” He looks around the room. “We’re it. But our light is fading. Why, I asked them.”
He holds up a finger and glares around the room.
“Da was one person. One pissed-off human being whose only power was realizing he could unlock the tide. He gave us permission to fight our way out of the cell they made us.” He nods to Athena. “Then he was two. Then three. Now he is Mars. He is the Daughters. He is billions. So why are we fading? Because we don’t wanna be here. We wanna be on the other side of this shit. We’re waiting to live. But this is it. This is our life until we change it. That’s all right. Like Darrow said, it’s a blessing. It is our privilege to fight. So let’s stop eating ourselves, chewing on each other’s legs. It’s stupid. It’s endless. We got more to do.”
He pats the helmet. “We need Ares. We need our builders.” He looks at Athena. “We need our shields.” He points to the Daughters. “We need putrid, spoiled allies late to the fray.” He glares at Cassius. “And we need our Reaper to tell us all how we’re gonna break this ugly-ass army, because that’s his job.” He looks over at Athena. “Right?”
Athena darkens as she turns to me. “Your plan?”
I glance between her and Sevro. “Your ships—”
“Off moon,” she says. “And too far away.”
The hard path then. “Fá’s horde is a wheel that will roll over anything in front of it,” I say. “But the axle of any Obsidian wheel is its champion. Kill Fá, the wheel breaks. I can kill Fá—if I have the right people.”
Athena crosses her arms, wary.
“Fá is surrounded by an army. Do you have a plan to reach him? To deal with his army after it breaks apart?” she asks. “Hundreds of thousands of marauders loose in Ilium isn’t exactly a victory.”
“Judging by Sevro’s face, he has an idea about that,” I say.
“A real classic. You’re gonna hate it,” he says.
“What’s to stop Fá from just killing you if you do reach him?” Athena asks.
“I challenged him to an ashvar. A duel of honor. Gossip like that goes through an army faster than the clap.” Aurae, Cassius, and Athena wrinkle their noses, but Diomedes nods along like it’s common wisdom. “The Ascomanni are a warrior culture. They’ll have heard of me. And I still have sway with the Obsidians.”