Sparks fly. Metal keens. A laughing demon inside me tells me he is mine. He may be stronger, faster, bigger, but I am the Willow and my rage is rekindled. I turn a set intended to draw my guard high and take my right leg before finally releasing a set of my own.
It is a mistake.
I realize it the moment he ignores my feint at his eyes and blocks the downward slash intended to take off his left ankle. His parry is the hardest I’ve ever felt. My arms rattle. His next parry numbs them both. Gods he’s strong. Pain lances through the old break in my left arm as he parries me again. I recover by leaping back, exchanging a flurry of whip strikes, and then attacking, relying on the headlong ferocity that made me the youngest Helldiver of Lykos combined with the root strikes of the Willow Way. A crimson line opens on his right thigh. Another on his left cheek just below the eye.
Then Apollonius actually begins to try.
He does it slowly, building his pace and his power in increments. Four moves a second. Five. Six. Then seven. An onset of seven is nearly impossible. It matches Lorn, Aja. Perhaps not with their innate poeticism, but he’s athletic enough to make it a close facsimile. My unconscious mind begins to panic. What’s worse is he sustains it. His conditioning is tremendous, my own feeble. A line of fire races across my right hip bone. Another across my left shoulder. Another on my forehead. And then I feel a pinch as his razor slips through my left calf, darts out, and as the pressure builds and the muscle knots, my ear stabs with pain. My right lobe flops to the ground. I meet a huge overhand and am driven to my knees. I roll away. He gives me a moment’s respite.
“What is this?” he snarls. “Where are you, Reaper?”
My blade, held in front of me, shakes like a leaf. I have felt strength like this before, from Obsidian Stained, but those blows require a sacrifice in grace.
Apollonius’s attacks sacrifice nothing.
They are tight, well-timed, and so powerful I fear he’ll break my left arm if we continue parrying at the same rate. Cassius shouts instructions down from the pulvinar, but I can’t hear him in my panic or over the roar of the soldiers. Apollonius comes on again, hungry for the kill. Unable to meet him toe to toe, I bend and bend until I have to flow away, but his onslaught denies me any chance to plant my roots—even when I do, he hammers at them with a ferocity I can’t match, pressing, pressing, always pressing.
The shock is existential and indicts not just me, but the Willow Way itself. For the first time in my life, I realize not only am I not enough, but neither is my form.
He knows it too well. He’s learned how to break it.
We’re back on the Martian dirt now. He won’t let me escape his full-frontal assault. He herds me. A dozen minor wounds already rend my flesh. My arms and legs are coated with as much blood as sweat. It’s all I can do to keep the barrage of keening metal from taking a limb. I try to go around his right, but he mirrors me, denying me his flank and forcing me back, back. Sparks fly as I parry four onsets in a row. Blood sprays as we nick one another’s knuckles and forearms until he penetrates my guard and plunges his razor into my left breast, just above the lung.
He holds me there, our bodies pressed together, my blade pinned to my side.
“Reaper, where have you gone?” Try as I might, I can’t free myself from his anaconda-grip. “Where is the king of stains I sought?” he whispers. He lets me go. Blood pulses from the wound. I stagger away from him not knowing what to do.
He follows with a swing to cut me in two. I let my body go loose and bend backward, feigning retreat. I forget the Willow Way, and use my left arm to catch my fall and push me forward like a Lykosian tumbler. The move takes me past his right knee to finally turn his flank. I slash back and stumble up. He didn’t even bother parrying my swing. He steps clear and watches me as if with a broken heart.
I fall to a knee and pant in fear and exhaustion. Blood sheets down my chest. I’ve lost speed and strength over the years, while Apollonius seems to have reached his ultimate form. Lysander did more than give him Grays and iron. He must have taught him how to beat the Willow Way. I touch the wound on my chest. My eyes dart to Cassius, to the crowd, to space above to glimpse Mars twinkling in the distance. To see home one last time. The paradise planet blocks the view. I touch the key on my chest. I’m sorry, Pax. I’m sorry, Virginia.
“Scraps,” Apollonius murmurs in disillusionment. “That is what they will say of this. Atalantia, Atlas, Lysander, left me nothing but scraps to eat.” He blinks at the ground. “Apollonius the Vulture, they will call me. Apollonius who could not beat Darrow in his prime. This is not what I deserve. Where is the struggle? Where is the glory?”
I won’t die bad. I won’t die whimpering. I can trap his blade in my body. Kill him as I die. I spit blood out of my mouth and beat my chest at Apollonius. “Come on, you bastard. Come on!”
Reluctant, he obliges. But before he’s taken three steps, he stops and looks down at the sand with a frown. It has begun to shiver. In the stands, the legions stagger and sway. A great sigh goes through the station. The sand begins to leap like water boiling in a pot. Above, Venus stretches like taffy as a shockwave warps the coliseum’s dome and a rumble goes through the station.
I glance up to Cassius. He stares back, just as confused.
That was a bomb, but it wasn’t ours.
9
DARROW
Shit Escalates
“ATOMIC EVENT DETECTED ON WEST spindle four. It was one of ours. Deterrent number eight. Preliminary reports suggest total structural and personnel loss. Damage indicated on second and third spindles. All power is lost in sectors nine through eleven. Sensors and coms non-responsive. Full damage report still pending,” reports the Blue.
Apollonius’s Golds and Gray officers have descended to gather around their commander as he listens to the report and dispatches response teams. He is the only one smiling. A dozen Grays shove Cassius down beside me in the sand. He tears off a piece of his prisoner kit to stanch the wound beneath my left collarbone. “Hold that. Darrow. Hold it.” He ties a bandage around my pierced calf. I hiss in pain as he does the same to a flap of skin on my left forearm.
“Spindle four? What’s happening?” he asks. “Aurae?”
“I don’t know,” I manage, though I have my suspicions. My wound stings. Not a single limb is without a slash. “He had a bitemark on his cheek.”
Cassius is too stressed to hear me. “Gorydamn, man. He whittled you like a stick.”
Bitemark. Bomb. Sevro?
“Only the rats know,” I murmur.
“What?” Cassius asks.
Hope stirs. Apollonius had Sevro. Sevro got loose. In the ducts? I hold on to that hope.
“I have the Eurytion. Asmodeus au Carthii is on the beam,” a Gold veteran calls to Apollonius, and projects the hologram of Asmodeus from her datapad. The eerie, ageless leader of House Carthii peers at Apollonius with slitted eyes.
“Asmodeus, you have no doubt seen the atomic detonation,” Apollonius says. “I am told your ships over the pole are mobilizing. According to the terms of the détente, Atalantia guaranteed my imperium over these docks. If you attack, you defy the Dictator’s edict, you compromise the war effort. Do not misread my intentions. I have no desire to destroy the dockyards. The detonation was an act of sabotage—”