“You always try the ham, Darrow. Wherever you go. It’s a good barometer for the rest of the larder. Trust me.”
He throws a piece on my plate. “I’m prime.”
“PTSD because the Minotaur carved you like a pig?” he asks.
“Was that all a setup?” I ask.
“Don’t be so conceited.”
I grimace at him from across the table. He’s lost weight in his stays in the clone’s prison and then Apollonius’s. Skinny, bearded, tattooed, savage as a serrated knife, drowning in Cassius’s too-large shirt and too-large pants, he looks more like a Lunese street killer than a soldier. Except in the eyes. They’re locked in a thousand-meter stare. Then there’s the matter of his necklace of ears, which he hasn’t taken off. They stink.
“Still a little nauseous from the meds actually,” I admit.
“Pain meds are for Pixies.”
After the duel and the meatstraw, I can’t move without suffering a litany of pains. I’ve been in the Archimedes’s medBay with Aurae more than I’ve been in my own bunk.
“Be honest. It’s the ears,” he says. “I’d get rid of them, but how else could I mock the dead?” He brings an ear to his mouth. “Galerius, you still squealing like a piggy down there?”
“Galerius au Voth?” I ask. “He came to the Minotaur?”
“That’s the piggy,” he says and goes back to eating.
“Well, he certainly had it coming.”
“He was my sixth. After I got free. I was in the vents by then. Strong enough to finally gather supplies and make a real guerilla action out of it. Found him in the showers. His life wasn’t the first thing he lost.”
“I’m glad you showed restraint,” I say. He looks up, eager to take offense but not sure if there’s an angle to. “Ears. You could have chosen pricks.”
“Thought about it. Gender biased and too heavy. Golds, you know.” He’s not joking. “Once I got into an armory and got my hands on antipersonnel mines, it started getting real fun. Best one was pulling a fire alarm in the mess and seeing all those Grays run out. Got fifty-one that day.”
It’s not like Sevro to brag. Maybe like me he doesn’t know how to fill the silence. “So Galerius was there. You already told me about Tiberius and Drusilla. What about on Luna?”
He goes quiet and returns to his food. “Told you. Old crowd. Vox were puppets. Syndicate Queen was Lilath. Clone thing. Clown, Pebble, who knows where. Iron wolf. You want me to tell you Min-Min smelled like bacon when she burned? She did. So did the rest of them.”
He meant it to hurt me, but saying it hurt him too. He looks away. I told him about Mercury. He didn’t say a thing the whole time. Not a single expression either, not even when I told him about Alexandar and Rhonna. He was too mad. He didn’t say it, but I know he thinks I should have let him kill Lysander when he was a boy.
I love Sevro to death, and he is fundamentally a good friend, but he feels no need to be a good person when dealing with enemies. “There he is. Hero of the hour,” Sevro says when Cassius limps in for coffee.
“Barca, glad to see you’re making use of the larder,” he says.
Sevro gives him a wide grin. “What a host you are.” Cassius nods to me and goes for the coffee. “But of course you had practice. You and this manse hosted royalty for over a decade.” His smile grows wider. “Glad to see you left a positive impression on young Lune. Taught him all the best ways to slaughter heroes of the Rising.”
Cassius turns around, jaw locked. “I won’t make excuses for Lysander. I hear Alexandar and Rhonna were good people.”
“Good?” Sevro asks.
“We don’t have to do this,” I say.
“Do what?”
“Don’t use Alex and Rhonna, Sevro. Just don’t.”
He loses his enthusiasm, and Cassius makes his escape. I send him an apologetic grimace as he ducks back toward the cockpit. Sevro doesn’t look at all satisfied. He tosses his combat knife down and stares at nothing. “He risked his life for you,” I say.
“Yeah. But we didn’t get the Minotaur.”
“That meatstraw was a bad one. If he made it out—”
“He’s a cockroach, Darrow.” He grunts. “All this killing, man. We keep fighting. For what?” He coughs again and wipes his tattered mouth with a bony hand. “Least Orion took some of those Ash bastards with her. Went out proper. You should have let her drown the whole bloody planet. Maybe then the cockroaches wouldn’t keep coming back.”
“That wasn’t Eo’s dream,” I say. “And it isn’t mine. We’re no Ash Lords.”
“Naw. We’re Pixies. You had Atlas and you let him live. We had Lysander and we let him live. We had Apollonius and we let him live.” He snorts. “It’s like we want to lose.”
“We haven’t lost yet.”
“Orion. Harnassus. Alex. Rhonna. Daxo. We don’t know if Pax and Electra are safe. Not for certain. Maybe they’re dead. Maybe my girls are next. Maybe Victra. Maybe Virginia. Shit, we couldn’t beat the Core in ten years. Now it’s the Rim too.”
“Mars will be a hard nut for them to crack. I can break them there. I will.”
“Uh-huh.” He almost leaves it at that. “With going under the ecliptic plane Mars might not even be there by the time we get back. Ain’t gonna be a fast ride, will it? Gonna be a crawl. And they’ll be hunting us.”
“What do you want me to say, Sevro? I’ve been in the dark for eight months. You want me to say it’s all slagged? War’s lost? Our children are dead? I won’t. I can’t. We have people counting on us. My family. Your family. We don’t have the right to do anything except all we can do.”
He stares a hole in his food, lost in thought.
“She’ll have had the baby by now. Without me there. First time I wasn’t there for it. I was for the girls.” His eyes flick up. “What are you going to say to Virginia when you see her?”
“I don’t know. I’ll probably just listen. Like I should have done from the start.” He doesn’t respond, and I sense him drifting away. Closing up. “Sevro, there’s something I have to say to you. Something I told myself I’d say when I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.” I take an unsteady breath. I’ve been too afraid he’ll spit on me to say it until now. “I’m sorry.” To my surprise, he doesn’t spit. So I continue. “When we left Luna to break out Apollonius, I promised you the end was near. I know you didn’t believe it. I made you choose between me and your family. For that, for taking you for granted, for not listening to you, for all of it, I’m sorry.”
There’s an uncomfortable pause. Sevro shrugs and goes back to eating. The lack of acknowledgment says more than anything else. Wounds may scab over, but they don’t always heal completely. I don’t know what else I can say, not without making him angry or cheapening it with bigger words and more excuses.
“When I got free of Apple, you know why I didn’t steal a ship and make for Mars myself?” he asks. Cassius and I were wondering. “I knew you’d come. You’re stupid like that. It’s why I love you. But, man…we ain’t good. We might never be good.”