I wait until they’re gone and rush for the brig gate. Detecting my Sovereign implant, its mass sinks into the floor. The brig is empty of guards. For obvious reasons, emergency evacuation does not include high-security prisoners. I push in and decloak. A bank of cells glows in the dimness. Inside, their residents watch me approach with my bags.
Sixty-three of them are Obsidian braves found guilty of treason against the Republic. These are the Alltribe cast-outs too guilty and too high profile to pardon. I pass brute after brute until I land upon the dread prize in a cell twice as thick as the rest. The Golds call him Sky Bastard. I know him as Valdir the Unshorn. He lies on his bed with his hands behind his back.
I do not like this man, not one bit.
Valdir was already a teenage butcher by the time he watched Darrow give Ragnar the razor in the mud of Agea. That moment left an impression on young Valdir. He fell in love with my husband. And I mean the sort of love Patroclus had for the son of Peleus. Not exactly versed in Ovid, Valdir expressed his love in the language he knew best: making Darrow’s enemies into stains. He grew bitter, as those whose love is unrequited do, when Darrow paired him up with Sefi as a power alliance to unite the Obsidians.
At least that’s my theory.
Taller and younger than Darrow, Valdir reeks of demigod petulance. He is troublingly handsome, especially for an Obsidian. His eyes are deep and surly. His cheeks are gaunt and patterned with freckles. He is corded with ropelike muscle and stained with tattoos.
His famously long valor tail is gone. He said he shaved it himself the day before we found him in one of Mars’s most expensive brothels covered with Pinks and drunk as a Red. But he’s a liar, so who knows. He should be ashamed. He betrayed the Republic for the Alltribe, and now the Alltribe has disintegrated, its best troops and all its ships stolen by Volsung Fá. I wonder if he wishes he was with Fá and his Volk brothers savaging our outer Belt depots instead of rotting here in this cell.
He looks as happy to see me as I am to see him. We are not strangers. Too many times Darrow brought him to dinner in the Citadel. I thought him a bad influence on Pax. Maybe I’ve underestimated my son. Maybe he was a good influence on Valdir. Pax sees worth in Valdir, as he did in Lyria. So here I am. A Sovereign with her hat out to a traitor.
Kind words will not affect this man, so I lay down a challenge.
“You’re able to look me in the eye,” I say. “I wonder. Will you look Darrow in the eye when he gets home?”
“Tyr Morga is dead, Gold. The Free Legions are dead,” he says, soulless. He does not stir from the bed. “Sefi is dead. My…heart is dead. I am dead.”
Certainly not lacking in drama, this one. You’d think his cell bed was a fainting couch.
“Darrow is not dead, Obsidian,” I say. “He is on his way back to Mars as we speak.” Valdir looks over at me. A timid fire builds in his coal-dark eyes. I give that fire a good gust of wind. “You don’t care about me. You don’t care about honor, or the Republic, or even that these sirens mean the Society is taking Phobos and Golds will come in here and kill you like a dog. But I know you care about what Darrow thinks of you. So do you want to die here, and be remembered by him as a cheap traitor? Or do you want to look him in the eye as I tell him: Valdir is worth forgiving. Valdir helped protect the Republic, his Sovereign. Valdir may be bald, but he has valor still.”
Valdir sits up. His eyes narrow at the damage to my armor. He may not be brilliant, but he has the kind of low cunning I need. “The Bastion has fallen and you are cut off? That razor score on your greaves is thick.” I didn’t even realize I had one. “Falchion made.”
“It was the Minotaur’s.” Valdir’s lips twist. “My bodyguards are trapped not far from here. I need you to help me save them. I need all of you, or I will never see my son again.” I upend the bag of ghostCloaks, optics, and razors. “Your answer, Valdir? They are dying as we waste wind.”
He looks down in contemplation. “What is in it for my brothers?”
“If we escape, freedom. If we don’t, a good death.”
“I want armor.”
“Fresh out. But the halls are dark and nearing a hundred degrees.” I poke the ghostCloaks with my toe. “I hear you used to call that hunting weather in the Rat War.”
He considers for an exhausting moment, then looks up with a terrifying smile.
* * *
—
GhostCloaks are worthless when the enemy has thermal optics. But in the dark when the air is as hot as the human body, the last thing anyone wants to encounter is eighteen fresh Obsidians with razors and nothing to lose, all of them chosen and led by Valdir the Unshorn. I don’t have to create a diversion. I don’t have to do anything. I offered to help. He said, “Rear echelon belongs in the back.” I told him where my Lions were and which direction I needed cleared. Then he went off to do it.
I know how it will be done. I made the mistake once of asking Darrow how a griffin rider was useful in the tunnel fights of the Rat War. He told me over dinner. My appetite waned with each sentence.
“It is very hard to break armored infantry groups without artillery or machines,” Darrow explained as if detailing how to clean a rifle. “So you don’t target them. You target their psyche. You target their groupthink.
“First you send in a man like Sev or Valdir with their best ghouls—that’s what we call them. If you can’t plant the ghouls ahead of time, they should sneak deep as possible into the enemy ranks before hunkering down.
“Then you kill a scout on the outskirts. Badly. The more screaming the better. That’ll draw curiosity and a heavy squad. The squad will investigate. If you can, make them disappear in silence. You want the rest of them using their imagination. You want the commander wondering if he should send another squad, maybe even a century.
“Then you confirm their worst fear. Give them a death chant—we carry recordings when we don’t have Obsidians. You want anticipation. You want them preparing to face a known fear, physically, mentally. That’s when your ghouls awaken and start killing the command chain.
“Then you have your main force close in silence at a fast pace and hit them as hard as you possibly can. Groups can hold a line together. Groups will make last stands. But alone, rarely. It’s very hard for the human mind to accept dying alone. No matter their number, if you summon enough chaos they will feel alone. Especially with anonymity, especially in the dark. Once the first breaks, the rest will feel like they have permission to follow.”
When Darrow saw the look in my eye, he didn’t say what he was going to: when they break, that’s when the real killing starts. He didn’t say much else that night. Neither did I. His eye was on the past and all he’d seen. Mine was on the future and all we yet might.
Valdir had learned from the best.
Waiting in the dark, I think back on that night as I hear the first scream in the distance. The scream goes on for half a minute. Then silence. Gunfire. Silence. Barked commands. Metal boots running. Cicero shouting orders. Then the death chant of the Obsidians. Apollonius exhorting his men to be brave. Cicero calling reinforcements. Then the ghouls must have awakened because the real chaos starts. It doesn’t sound like battle. It sounds like a nightmare.