“Imposter,” Thraxa sneers. “They fled Mars? Unshorn too?”
Char looks overwhelmed by our inquiries.
“Never mind that,” I snap. “What about Sevro?” Thraxa makes a sound of contempt, far more interested in the Obsidians. “Where is he?”
Char doesn’t answer. There’s distance between us. Blame. “I thought you were dead. They said you were dead—the smugglers that got us off Mercury. Everyone thinks you are dead,” he says. “You look halfway there.”
I feel a pang of sorrow. Like I’ve been left behind. Outmoded, forgotten.
“I wasn’t sure anyone else made it off Mercury,” I murmur. I search behind him. “I don’t see Rhonna with you.”
“No.” A lump forms in my throat. The last time I saw my niece, Lysander had broken her face after shooting Alexandar in the head. I look down. How will I tell Kieran I left his daughter behind? ArchGovernor Kieran.
“Her shuttle didn’t make it to the Morning Star before the EMP went off,” Char says. “She went down in the city. Only reason we escaped is because some of the assault shuttles in the Star were shielded from the EMP by the hull. We couldn’t make it to orbit, so we hid in the mountains until we hired iron smugglers to sneak us off-planet. We stole the torchShip from the smugglers, who stole it from the Votum fleet. She’s more battered than she looks. Half her guns are gone. Her armor’s patchy. But she has a Votum transponder and she flies like a bat out of hell. Should be enough to get us home.”
“How many are you?” Harnassus asks.
“Two thousand and eleven. All I could get out of Heliopolis. There’s room for more on the torchShip. But we’re packed pretty tight. Hoping you have food.”
“Old MREs,” I say. “Lots.”
His eyes search the tunnel passages at the rear of the hangar. “Is this all your people?” When I nod, he doesn’t look disappointed. He looks angry. I feel the weight of his indictment.
“You were on Mercury for weeks…” I begin. “The rest of the legions. The ones who couldn’t get out. What happened to them?”
He surveys my face. “Do you care?” It’d have hurt less if he stabbed me.
Thraxa jabs a finger in his chest. “Your ArchImperator asked you a question, Char.”
We’re two different tribes now. My eyes narrow. How bad does he want our food?
“Butchery.” Char looks away, and that common grief indicts my narrowed eyes. “Those who didn’t starve to death inside the Morning Star or weren’t eaten by Atalantia’s hounds were impaled by Atlas. From Heliopolis all the way to Tyche. The rest they sent to the Votum iron mines. I saw it from the air. The road they made.”
From Heliopolis to Tyche. I should have killed Atlas when I had him in my grasp. Just as I should have killed Lysander. Does no mercy go unpunished?
“No cheer for the hero of the hour or the helium he’s purloined?” a patrician voice calls from the umbilical. Thraxa mutters a choice curse. With his golden curls shining in the grim hangar light, the bloodydamn Bellona enters and poses like a gallant razormaster entering the Bleeding Place to the amorous cries of fawning Pixies. When only silence greets him, he sighs his disappointment and waltzes toward me with four canisters of processed warship-grade helium balanced on his shoulders. They’re stamped with the Bellona eagle.
Despite the fact that Cassius is offensively handsome, over seven feet tall, built like a highGrav boxer, and resplendent in his gray traveler’s cloak, all eyes drift toward the dusky woman behind him. Though she wears filthy crewman overalls and carries a pistol, Aurae is as out of place amongst us rude soldiers as an orchid in a munitions belt, and not just because she and Cassius still have hair.
Aurae is a rare Pink. Not a cheap thrill with angel wings or horns or a silky tail waiting for a client in a Pearl club. Nor a Helen of Troy either—the type of flashing thoroughbred as might be seen on the arm of Atalantia or Apollonius. Aurae is a Raa hetaera. A beauty of shadow and dust with autumnal tragedy written in her features. Her face is long. Her skin is a shade darker than olive. Her thick hair is wavy and blue-black and never seems to be the same color or in the same braid twice. It is impossible to guess her age. Some have guessed forty, some thirty, some twenty. It’s her eyes that make that last one impossible. They are wide set, dark pink, and ancient.
My troops may gossip and cast aspersions, but when they see Aurae’s slender arms straining under the weight of a single canister of helium-3, a dozen men and half again as many women rush to help her. Thraxa shoves them all away and takes the canister. Harnassus tries to pretend he’s not jealous of the soft smile Aurae gives Thraxa.
Used to the reaction, Cassius rolls his eyes and sets down his four canisters with flair. He pops a foot atop one and leans on his knee. My eyes drift to the helium, and I imagine embracing Virginia the moment I step off the Archimedes in Agea.
“My goodmen, the finest Martian helium-3 available, courtesy of my mother’s smuggling operations on Starhold. Always did love filching from her purse. Behold. Your zephyr wind home.” His eyes narrow. “Provided you haven’t molested my ship beyond repair.” He glances at Colloway, who watches him with beleaguered resentment. “Did you tell him, Char? No of course not, it’s all on me. Typical.”
“Tell me what?” I ask.
Cassius sighs. “It’s Sevro. He’s not dead. Worse, in fact. A sordid affair. He’s been sold at a high-society Syndicate auction.”
“Sold,” I repeat. “To whom?”
Cassius winces. “That’s the part you’re really not going to like.”
4
DARROW
The Sordid Affair
THE HOLOGRAM FILLS THE greater half of my quarters.
A man hangs suspended in the air of the Syndicate auction house. The man is naked, scrawny, and smeared with tattoos and scars. His head is covered by a giant helmet in the shape of a wolf’s head. When the pale-eyed Syndicate auctioneer waves a hand, the helmet detaches and floats into the air to bare an ugly, cantankerous face that means more to me than my own flesh.
Sevro.
Love has seldom caused me such physical pain.
There is a moment of confusion in Sevro’s Red eyes. The same eyes Mickey the Carver took from me and exchanged for my Gold ones. Then agony as he realizes where he is. He hangs his head in shame, then lolls it back and forth. Even with his broken nose more crooked than a lightning bolt, his hair wild, his ears masticated, and his lips tattered, even with ten years of war and what happened to him on Luna wracking his body, I can only see the weird little wolfchild who saved me and Cassius from freezing to death in a loch. The teenage menace who used to stare at me from beneath a stinking pelt, half ready to run, half aching for a hug, desperate to prove he’s worth a damn.
The boy inside the warrent man pants in fear. It breaks my heart to watch his eyes search the auction floor as the enemy bids on him. They’re anonymous, the bidders. Holographic projectors conceal their identities, beaming absurd avatars of beasts and gods from their starships or inner sanctums into the auction house. Sevro is unwilling to even look his tormentors in the eye.
I have never seen him so beaten.