“Desperate. But you know that.”
“Revenants usually are. The dead never come back without a reason.” His eyes flick to the craft. “Beautiful hull. I admire the craftsmanship. But what have you done to it? It looks like a pauper’s shoe sewn together with nothing but good intentions.”
“Exit tax from Mercury,” I say. “Harnassus fixed it best he could.”
“Ghoulish work.”
“Well, he’s a military engineer. Staples for stitches, you know.”
“I meant Mercury.” His sigh is one of deep empathy. “I cannot imagine the horrors you faced.” Matteo surveys my injured limbs, my sun-seared-turned-sun-starved skin, my fresh scars. Instead of looking away, as most do, to preserve his image of the invulnerable Reaper, he admires my imperfections, catalogues the wounds to understand my narrative, and then loves me all the more for them. Though I can tell he doesn’t like the beard.
“I am sorry for Mercury, Darrow. That you did not get reinforcements because of the Senate’s failings. I grieve for the Free Legions.” Matteo reaches up to take my face between his hands. I try to pull back. He holds on. “I grieve for Theodora.”
Something in his eyes causes me to relent. Maybe it is because he saw me in my youth, after Eo died, at my angriest. Maybe because he taught me to dance when I was just a freshborn Gold colt on steroids. Maybe it’s because I look at him and feel seen.
“All her life Theodora was coveted, not valued. You valued her, and she loved you for it. I have never known a Pink so pure in their loyalty. She was resourceful, intelligent, but most of all she found contentment in her service to you, then to the Republic as its great spymaster. True contentment melded with purpose. Something that evades so many of us. She was a hero to our Color. All free Pinks hail her name. It was her honor to serve you, and my honor to know her.”
I’m taken off guard by the requiem.
“I grieve for Orion,” he goes on even though I flinch. “She was a shooting star, and it will be an age before mankind sees another one quite like her. I grieve for Alexandar. I know you took him on as a debt to Lorn and grew to love him, despite seeing so much of yourself in him. He was the best Gold of his generation, but he set to make himself in your image, a Red’s, and he did. When the waves came for Tyche, he proved he lived for more.”
My voice is halting. “You know about that?”
He nods.
Tears fill my eyes, unbidden, unwelcome. Everything in me wishes to harden my heart against the pain. Instead, I allow the pain, and by allowing it I honor the dead with Matteo and feel that their light was seen. Not just by me, but by this man who knows my story and the stories of those I’ve cared for. That solace I thought I’d find in Sevro, I find in Matteo.
“I grieve for Dancer.”
I don’t make a sound but hearing our old friend’s name on Matteo’s lips makes a boy of me again. I see Dancer smoking a burner watching Matteo and me practice Gold mannerisms. I see Dancer’s excitement as I chewed on the scythe card in our first meeting. His fatherly concern as I boarded the shuttle for the Institute. His fear as he choked to death on his own blood during the Day of Red Doves.
I miss Dancer more now than I miss my father, more even than I miss Eo. They were a part of my first life. Dancer gave me my second.
“I have never met a truer spirit than Dancer,” Matteo continues. “He was born a leper amongst the downtrodden and rose to become a prince of men. He was virtuous and true, the way men should be. He was stubborn, sometimes naïve, but never stupid. He adored you, the boy we helped make a man. And he adored the man too, even if he had to stand in your way sometimes.”
I nod. It’s all I can do.
“I grieve for Sevro the most—”
“Bad form,” Sevro mutters. “Mourning for what ain’t dead, yet.” Matteo’s eyes widen as he sees Sevro marching down our ship’s ramp. Apparently, Matteo and Quick don’t know everything. “Sorry I’m late. Dishes to do. But we came for metal, Matteo. Not to hump. Not to cry. Metal. So if you don’t mind, show us to your man.” He glances at me. “One of us is in a hurry.”
* * *
—
We enter Quicksilver’s study and step onto the streets of Luna. The study itself is hidden behind a life-sized hologram. Sevro mutters under his breath at the melodrama.
The hologram shows a mob of lowColors marching through Luna’s streets waving banners and chains. Skyscrapers and skyhooks crowd out the sky. A ship trails fire. Luna, just after the Day of Red Doves, is gripped with drunken, perverse revelry. The mob sings the Forbidden Song and cheers as gravBikes buzz past dragging the tattered remains of Silvers behind them. Many of the business caste wear Sun Industries emblems, but not all.
I glimpse Quicksilver through the holograms. He floats over the image of the crowd. The man is stout, bald, arrogant, and pugnacious as ever. He wears a black kimono embroidered with green, and glowing slippers.
“I thought I would take solace in the fact that they are all starving now, having traded the Republic for a cabal of maniacs, deviants, clones, Boneriders, Grimmuses, and, worst of all—socialists,” Quick says as I walk through the riot. Sevro doesn’t follow me deeper into the room. He remains at the entrance to the study, where he leans with his back against the wall, eyes restless and searching for danger. “I don’t feel satisfaction. If anything I feel…nothing.”
Quicksilver’s frown is followed by a moment of silence.
“Of course, I wonder what I could have done differently. Your constant refrain, I know, Darrow. Only difference between you and me is that you blame yourself, and I know who is really to blame: the mob.”
He glares down at the mob as if they were ants spoiling his picnic.
“So, this is what you do all day,” Sevro says.
“Ah, nothing like sarcasm from uninvited guests,” Quick replies. “You know, with that beard you truly do look like your father, Sevro. For your own safety, please refrain from any sort of violence. I didn’t have to let you two aboard. Remember that.”
“I’m sure you’ll remind us a few more times,” Sevro says. “When you come down from the cross.”
Matteo and I share a smile. Sevro and Quick have always been bastards to one another, but Quick puts up with Sevro like he’s his black sheep son. He knew Fitchner since Sevro was a baby, and watched him grow up from afar. Sevro’s always carried a chip on his shoulder for the Silver. Like he thinks it’s unfair that the money lived and the man who did all the work, his father, died.
He’s not wrong, but I think he fails to notice how no one else gets away with talking to Quicksilver quite like he does.
Quicksilver speeds up the scene, bored. The mob flows past and then the streets and people and their song dissolve into digital smoke. His slippers dim and he descends to the floor.
Quick’s study is expansive but lightly furnished. The floor is green stone. A nearly opaque window looks out at a garden. The rest of the walls are filled with screens relaying raw data. Except for one behind the desk. That wall is filled with relics of the past. Amidst ancient spears and tablets are a few items I recognize, including a black helmet with a starburst crest.