Familiar standards wave there above the long tables—Volk standards. Braves scatter as I pursue Fá into their fire-lit feast grounds. Their moon-pale faces blur together in a sea of stained beards, agape mouths. I hound Fá through their ranks.
I am no stranger here. For ten years I led these tribes and these men. On Luna, Earth, Mars, and Mercury. For ten years they trudged with me through the ruins of Gold cities. Through rain and sleet and mud and desert heat and mining tunnels, we marched together toward victory. They do not mistake me now as I battle Fá from one end of their feast to the other, whipping him before me like a beast of burden. He stumbles. He roars for aid. None comes. They see the paint of ashvar on our armor. They see the curve of my blade. Tyr Morga has come, and the Volk seem ashamed of being found here by me like this.
This time, I let Fá go when he realizes there is no shelter here under the protection of the Volk. He takes to the air yet again and mistakes the spectators trailing my hunt for allies in his fight. He flies to them, and they shoo him away and shout, “Ashvar.” Sevro and Cassius kill those few who try to intervene, but most have just come to watch the hunt.
In his desperation, Fá heads for the next island on the archipelago chain. The braves on the ground stare at me in awe and bewilderment. I pitch my head back and howl again. Amplified by the speakers in my armor, joined by Sevro’s and Cassius’s, the howl resounds over the feast and is picked up by many of the spectators in the sky. I follow after Fá and give the man no respite.
By the time he makes it to the next island, I am in his shadow. He steals a pulseFist and fires to no avail. Across the feast, I pursue him. His death is already written. All he can do is draw it out.
I harry him island to island, over rock-built citadels and elegant moonlit shrines, through dark upland groves and fire-lit plateaus where standards of Volk tribes wag in the evening breeze, hunting him, mocking him, whittling away the warlord’s myth until he becomes a disgusting, limping grotesquerie so all can see the craven heart of the man who killed Queen Sefi just to call himself king.
75
LYRIA
Prove It
VOLGA FLIES LOW OVER the sea to the island farthest from Fá’s favor. There, she sets us down on a beach beside strange contraptions aimed at the sky. They look like railguns. She pulls me along as she heads for them.
“Stop pulling on me!” I yell at her.
“It’s not safe here,” she says and drags me toward a pod fit into the firing chamber of a railgun. “The crews must have gone to watch. We can still use the guns, I think. They will fire at us between the gaps in the shield and out into space. Fá keeps escape vehicles on autopilot in orbit—”
“Stop it!” I shout and wrench my arm free.
She turns back in anger. “Lyria, get in the pod.”
I stare at her. “You ain’t saving me. You’re trying to run away,” I say, shocked. “Oh, is that the freelancer in you? Or is that Fá? Society special forces always have a way out?” I ask.
“He did not confess—”
“But you know the truth. They do too. He played you all like fools.”
“Fá is all that protected me. The braves may revere my blood, but the jarls call me unnatural. A lab freak. They will kill me.”
“Then they kill you.” She looks so afraid, but I’m spitting mad. “You don’t get to run away anymore, Volga. I’m glad you didn’t tear out my heart and throw it in a fire. Really. Thanks. I’m glad you didn’t have that in you. But you killed thirteen people before me. Thirteen, woman! What the fuck?” She looks at the pod. “Look at me!” I throw a handful of sand at her. “Look at me!” She does. “You killed Sigurd. He was trying to help his people get free of a liar, a Gold tool. You might not be broken, but you got stains on your hands. If you run away now, you always will. Don’t you think that’s what Ephraim would tell you?” I point back behind us where tiny shapes make a trail over the islands. “You have to face what you’ve done. You said your people are here. Prove it.”
“This is insane,” she protests with wide eyes. “He hid in a leviathan. Darrow—”
“Is apparently a werewolf who eats warlords and shits nightmares. But he likes me. He trusts me. I should be nothing to him. A rat. But he saw my worth. He let me come after you because I begged him. I told him you were brave. I told him you were kind. I told him you were my friend!”
I find power in realizing I have convictions. Deep ones. My voice finds its edge.
“If you go in that pod, you go on your own. You’ll have no people, Volga. Not me, not the Obsidians, not the Republic. I ain’t friends with rats who jump ship after they dined on all the cheese.” I point behind me as a roar of the crowd rolls in across the sea. “Or you go back. You face the fathers whose kids you kidnapped. The jarl whose son you killed. You face the stains you put on your hands. You choose accountability. You choose your people. You choose me. That’s the kinda person worthy of my friendship. Ephraim, Ragnar, Fá. Don’t pin it on all the daddies. This is it. Who are you, Volga?”
Even now, her every instinct is to run. To survive. It’s what the worlds taught her. Frightened, she looks out at the Pandora beneath which more pods are bursting up from the sea. It looks like the Daughters and Diomedes are storming the low-flying ship. Then she looks at the crowd of flying lunatics following Darrow and Fá to the next island on the chain, and makes her decision to face her mistakes.
“I will go back. You stay here,” she says.
“Negative, dumbass.”
“You are tiny. This is insanity. You will get hurt. The Ascomanni, the Obsidians…”
“Then protect me from the giants, and I’ll protect you from the wolves,” I say. A single laugh escapes her, and she looks at me like I’m ten feet tall. That doesn’t last long. She comes to pick me up. I shove her hands away. “I’m not a child. I fly on your back.”
76
DARROW
By the Laws of the Ice
THE THRONG GATHERING IN the wake of my hunt grows island by island. Thousands trail us now. On and on I chase Fá over the archipelagos until we reach the island of Hades, a rocky home to the feast for the braves farthest from Fá’s favor. I chase him through groves of wild fig trees bent inland by the wind. To my left and right, Sevro and Cassius shatter gnarled boughs laden heavily with swollen fruit. Pulp and splinters smear our armor until the grove gives way to slate rock formations covered with orange moss. Fá winds through them and emerges on a headland where hot bubbling wellsprings belch steam. He sets down there at the terminus of a spring. There is nowhere left to run. The sea is all that lies ahead.
He looks out at it as Sevro and Cassius find perches on the rock behind me. Fá’s tattered armor rises and falls with his breath. Blood weeps from the many punctures and gashes. It stains the blue paint his shaman applied to his armor and trickles into a puddle around his boots. His warsaw is now a millstone too heavy to even lift.
“I’ve called Diomedes. He’s leaving Athena the battle. He’s on his way,” Cassius says.