“Yes. Well. From what I hear, Alexandar died being a bit more than a lancer,” Cassius says. “Don’t give me that shrug as if I don’t know. Sevro told me some things about him. More than just the Tyche bit.” I frown. “Yes, Sevro and I are capable of exchanging information when you’re not around. Gods. You really are so arrogant. Anyway.” He sits on a god’s face. “I only knew Lorn from afar, but I think he would be flattered if people said you were a reflection of him.”
I wince at that.
“Even without the beard?” I ask.
“Even in the asteroid belt we heard stories about you. Not all worldbreaker ones either. That time you had Pax whip you at the Institute? I was pouting in Castle Mars at the time. Then eight years later some pirate in an asteroid cantina tells me about it in the middle of an unbidden lecture on leadership. Gods, she rambled on. Point is, students are always a reflection of the teacher, Darrow. Fá was for Atlas. You are for Lorn. Alexandar was for you.”
I nod. Seeing his point. “Colloway is that for Orion. And Lysander is for you,” I say, knowing he needs someone to say it and clear that last ledger for him. “In the end.” He leans back and breathes out. “Does Diomedes strike you as a man in the habit of giving compliments?” I ask.
“Gods. Not even with a gun to his head. Whatever does Aurae see in him?”
“Truth,” I say. “I’ve never met a man who means what he says more than that one. So when he says Lysander was a man of honor, that he cared about the Rim, that he saved Diomedes’s life and sacrificed his own, do you think that’s a reflection of Octavia or you?”
He grins. “Well, me, obviously. I’m famously selfless.”
“You’re actually getting that way,” I say. “It’s not unnoticed.”
“What? Did somebody compliment me?” he asks. “It’s the jawline. Isn’t it selfless, really. I take the pressure off everyone else. They don’t have to worry about being the most handsome in the room. They can just be. Ah. Heavy is the chin that sets the bar.” He tilts his head. “Do you hear that?”
“A ship,” I say.
Our radios squawk a moment later. It’s Lyria. Cassius brightens up.
“…this is Lyria. Howler One, Eagle One, do you read?”
Cassius holds up a hand to me. “Who?”
“Lyria. Requesting—”
“Who?”
Her radio crackles. “Truffle Pig to Eagle One, requesting hot drop and perimeter cruise—”
She’s hilariously formal on the radio. “Oh, Truffles! Come on in.” He smiles as the roar of the ship grows louder. “Oh. Darrow. I remembered. No more Truffle Pig. She hates it. Says it’s demeaning to her other contributions and athletic stature.”
“Uh-huh. Well. She doesn’t get to choose her own callsign.”
“Of course not. I was thinking Strawberry Lass. No? Crow Whisperer? Red Rabbit?”
“We’ll figure it out later.” I have a thought. “What do they call baby eagles?”
He acts like he’s just seen a puppy. “Eaglet. Oh gods. She’ll die.”
We wait in the grotto as Lyria performs a dramatic arrest overhead to impress Cassius. She almost hits the building. “Shit,” she mutters over the radio.
“Still on janitorial, Eaglet One,” he says into his com.
“What?”
“Nothing. Yet.”
He literally acts like he’s twelve around her.
Volga jumps out the back of the ship and makes a beeline toward me. Her head is down under the wash of the ship’s engines. She glances at Cassius. She does a double take. He’s staring dramatically out to sea now, either thinking about Lysander or posing for a coin. She’s so captivated by him her foot clips an uneven stone. He doesn’t look over at me, but draws a finger along his jaw. Idiot.
Volga blushes as she comes to a stop. “You shouldn’t be off the islands,” I say.
“Sevro said Lyria’s a Howler,” Volga says. “Counts as my escort.”
“Did he?” I say. “You should be campaigning.”
“That is done. The votes are being cast. Can we talk? Alone?”
“Cassius,” I say.
He sighs. “Are the services of a hero required?”
“Go up these stairs, around to the left. There’s a garden. I saw some tide pools there.” He stands and checks his razor. “Admire your reflection for ten minutes, and come back.”
“Funny. I think I’ll hop up and talk to the young eaglet instead. I hope I don’t open any wounds in my exertions. Oh wait. I have none.” He jumps upward after Lyria’s shuttle. Volga watches him go. When he’s gone, she wheels on me, angry.
“Why did you let me kill Fá?” she asks.
“Is there a problem?”
“People are trying to make me queen.”
“And you’re telling them not to?” I ask.
“Yes, I am telling them not to.”
“Oh, that is a problem,” I say. “Skarde and Fjod must not know what to do.”
“Braves keep seeking me out to tell me they will vote for me. The jarls are angry. I cannot escape them. I do not want to be your puppet queen. I do not want to be your Fá, but you made me that when you had me kill him.”
“That was your choice. Did you not want to kill him?”
“He had to die. And yes. I wanted to kill him,” she says. “That’s not the point.”
I sit down on the stone with a wince. I wave for her to join. She doesn’t, then grows awkward standing over me, and sits. For the first time I really look at her. She is not as callused in the face as most Obsidians. She has deep lines on her forehead, scabs from a few cuts, a nose that’s been recently broken. But it’s her eyes that are the most captivating. They seem too young for her face, and can’t meet mine without glancing away. “We’re not gonna talk about Ephraim or Ragnar or Fá. We’re going to talk about the future. Fá said something before he died that made think about this place. My mentor once told me, ‘Death begets death begets death.’ That’s the sickness that eats the Golds. It’s the sickness that ate the Red Hand.
“Fá said your people were an ouroboros. Do you know what that is?” She shakes her head. “It’s a circular symbol of a snake eating its own tale. It represents infinity. The Golds created for your culture a cycle of violence that can never be escaped, Volga. I think you see that in the Ascomanni. How deep a culture can sink if it gets trapped in that loop.” She nods. “We’re seeing it with this war everywhere now.
“Part of that is the fault of our enemy, and part of that is my fault. Especially when it comes to the Volk. I promised your father I would build a future for the Obsidian. I didn’t. I just took the handle the Golds made on their Obsidian axe and used it like they did. Sefi saw that, so did others, like Atlas and Fá. Sefi began to resent it and look at me the same way you’re looking at me now. With suspicion. Resentment.
“Sefi really was a great woman, Volga. A visionary, I think, who will never get the credit she deserves. She knew that to have a future, the Obsidians must escape the ouroboros that is war. She tried to change how others saw them, how they saw themselves, to give them an identity beyond war. She thought she could make education a bridge to the modern world.