Текст книги "Golden Son"

Автор книги: Brown Pierce

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51

GOLDEN SON

Today is my Triumph.

The day is crisp. Sky robin’s-egg blue, stars peeking through the atmosphere. I stand dripping in gold, purple sash across my chest, head naked and waiting for the laurel wreath at the end of the procession. By the end of the day, I will be given a Triumph Mask created by Violets in honor of my victory.

My chariot rumbles under me. Wooden wheels pulled over pavement. Over rose petals. Over haemanthus blossoms. Over a hundred thousand flowers thrown from the open windows of the skyscrapers that stand sentinel to either side of the grand avenue. Hands flourish in the air. Arms reach out. Faces peer down, beaming smiles. So many Colors. They’re on the street too, surrounding the parade route. Cheering for the things that went before me, the wonderful floats. The fire breathers. The dancers. The griffins and drakes and zebracores. The few remaining Bellona prisoners. The heads of Imperator Bellona and his brothers and sisters adorn pikes. For all Augustus’s personal austerity, he knows the importance of grandeur. RipWings zip overhead. Storks buzz through the air.

But he knows the importance of brutality too. Flies buzz about the heads. And they nip at the four white horses that pull my chariot from the grand boulevard into the white-stoned Field of Mars that stretches before the Citadel’s grounds.

I wave to the crowd, holding up my slingBlade. Mania grips them. Fathers hold up their children, pointing to me and telling them that they’ll be able to tell their own children that they saw my Triumph in person. They throw fig leaves and cheer wildly, climbing the Field’s martial statues and marble obelisks to see me better.

“You are but a mortal,” Roque whispers in my ear, riding his horse alongside the chariot, as per tradition.

“And a whorefart,” Sevro calls from the other side.

“Yes,” Roque agrees solemnly. “That too.”

I wish Mustang were here to ride with me. Her quiet strength would make all these eyes easier to bear, all these cheers more pleasant to stomach. Reds applaud in the crowd. They scream and cheer and laugh, perfect victims of the Society’s entertainment divisions. They believe the lie of glorious war and glorious Golds. Millions will have relived the holo experience of my fall in the Iron Rain, at least until the EMP knocked my camera out. But Fitchner kept the footage of my slaying of Karnus.

The parade is a dream. A false thing conjured. I flow through it, knowing how little it means. My friends are behind me, at my side. All those I’d call lieutenants. They grin at me. They love me. And I lead them to a hopeful ruin. It all seemed worth it once. But after we take the war to Luna, what then? More lies. More deaths. More impossible schemes.

And what will Mustang do? She has not returned to Agea since she turned and walked away from me in the mines. Fitchner is beside himself with worry. She is an axe above my head. At any moment, she could sign my death. She might already have. Perhaps this is some grand ruse. Perhaps her father already knows.

The Jackal noted her absence from the Citadel when he came last night for the Triumph. I told him we had a fight about their father.

“Not surprising,” he said with a sigh. “Just don’t let the man come between you two as he came between her and me as children.” He clapped my shoulder familiarly and poured us both enough drinks to give me the dull headache that now pulses behind my left eye. I swear to myself I’ll never drink again.

Victra rides beside Roque and Lorn, languidly looking around, soaking in the sunshine and festivities. She’s brought her mother into the Augustus fold, along with Antonia, who apparently aided in taking Thessalonica from Bellona hands. It’s hard to keep track of what side they’re on. But Victra, for her part, has been as loyal as anyone. She blows me a kiss.

The Howlers trot behind her, half their original number, though the Telemanuses have promised to bring them fresh recruits. Behind these lieutenants are the dozens of Praetors and Legates who led the army. And behind them walk thousands upon thousands of Grays, who, with embarrassing affection, sing ribald songs at my expense. Behind them come legions of Obsidians. It’s a furiously grand affair, not only for me, but because it signifies the beginning of a new era—a Solar System led by Mars, not Luna.

Fitchner is not here. He should be. I look for him at the top of the colossal white stairs that lead to the Citadel grounds. The ArchGovernor and his entourage stand there with dozens of our allies, and a skeletal, bald White who holds my laurel crown.

Leaving my chariot behind, I ascend the stairs, flanked by my lieutenants. Silence claims the plaza. My purple cape catches in the wind behind me. The city smells of roses and horse manure. Augustus steps forward.

“An Iron Rain was called,” he proclaims.

“And the call was answered,” I reply, amplified words echoing like thunder over the city. A great roar rises from all who fell in the Rain. The White steps forward, face haggard from her many years of giving sentence to criminals. Milky eyes lost in past histories blink with gentle care.

“Son of Mars,” her voice warbles dreamily. “Today you wear purple, as did the Etruscan kings of old. You join them in history. You join the men who broke the Empire of the Rising Sun. The women who dashed the Atlantic Alliance into the sea. You are a Conqueror. Accept this laurel as our proclamation of your glory.”

She sets it upon my head. Sevro snorts beside me.

The White continues, winding flowery paths with her words, taking the better part of the afternoon, so that it is dusk when her words begin to run their course. I’ve come to understand why all this spectacle exists. Why all these speeches and monuments. Tradition is the crown of the tyrant. I eye all the Golds in their badges and Sigils and standards, all worn to legitimize corrupt reign, and to alienate the people. Make them feel they watch a species beyond their comprehension. The Jackal seems to read my thoughts, for he rolls his eyes at the farce. The closing words come soon after.

“Per aspera …” the White warbles, body shaking from effort. Augustus raises his hand and the crystal obelisk commissioned for the siege of Mars rises from its place on the Field via gravLifts in its base. Groaning into place, it floats there fifty meters above the ground, and will continue to float until another Triumph claims its place. Then it will join those others on the ground. Towering tombstones for the million fallen.

“… ad astra!” the crowd roars.

I remain on the steps as the festival swings into motion below on the Field of Mars. The Golds disperse onto Citadel grounds, heading for our private feast. Augustus watches from my side. Behind us, the bronze sun sets on his city, stretching our shadows over the lowColors below.

“Walk with me,” he commands.

We walk, surrounded by bodyguards. Unease spreads through me as I see them cluster tight about us. He’s spoken to his daughter. He knows. Of course he knows. I have my razor, no gravBoots. Just ceremonial armor. How many of the Obsidians could I kill before I’m overwhelmed? Not many.

Then I realize where he’s taking me and I nearly laugh at myself for being foolish.

The throne room burns with sunlight. Ceiling all of glass, marble columns stretching a hundred meters high. The expanse buzzes with noise. IonSaws, hammers, and the delicate thrum of seven ionScalpels on a lump of onyx twice my height.

“Out,” Augustus demands.

The Violets slide from their perches on the onyx and disperse with the Orange masons and Red laborers. Augustus’s bodyguards leave us as well. Our boots click against the floor, lonely sounds for such a room.

So he’s not going to kill me after all.

“They’re making you a throne,” I say, going to touch the onyx. I breathe out the tension. A lion’s paw takes shape near the base of the throne. To the left, its tail curls around the other side.

“You have broken the law, Darrow,” he says behind me. “You gave Obsidians razors. The weapon of our ancestors in the hands of the only Color to ever rise against us.”

“Is that all?” I ask in relief. “I did what I needed to do.”

“An Olympic Knight was killed by your bodyguard. This is public.”

“If Ragnar didn’t take the wall, we would have lost, and you, my liege, would be in chains, or executed. You’d know better than I. Ragnar had my warrant.”

“My father taught me it is weak to ask others what they think of you,” he says, clasping his hands behind his back. “But I must. Do you think I am a cold monster?”

I turn to examine him.

“Without a doubt.”

“Honesty.” He looks up at the ceiling. “You’d think it would echo differently than all the other horseshit. What I am, Darrow, is a necessity. I am the force that corrects those who err. Tell me, why do you give an Obsidian a razor? Why do you urge lowColors to rise up? Why do you let a Blue run your ship when she should merely take orders and fly it?”

“Because they can do things I cannot.”

He nods as if I’ve proven his point.

“And that is why I exist. I know that Blues can command fleets. I know Obsidians can use technology, lead men. That the quickest Orange could, if given a proper chance, be a fine pilot. Reds could be soldiers, or musicians, or accountants. Some few—very few—Silvers could write novels, I wager. But I know what it would cost us. Order is paramount to our survival.

“Humanity came out of hell, Darrow. Gold did not rise out of chance. We rose out of necessity. Out of chaos, born from a species that devoured its planet instead of investing in the future. Pleasure over all, damn the consequences. The brightest minds enslaved to an economy that demanded toys instead of space exploration or technologies that could revolutionize our race. They created robots, neutering the work ethic of mankind, creating generations of entitled locusts. Countries hoarded their resources, suspicious of one another. There grew to be twenty different factions with nuclear weapons. Twenty—each ruled by greed or zealotry.

“So when we conquered mankind, it wasn’t for greed. It wasn’t for glory. It was to save our race. It was to still the chaos, to create order, to sharpen mankind to one purpose—ensuring our future. The Colors are the spine of that aim. Allow the hierarchies to shift and the order begins to crumble. Mankind will not aspire to be great. Men will aspire to be great.”

“Golds aspire to be great, and we force the Colors to war,” I say, taking a perch on the black lion’s paw. Augustus has not moved from his place at the center of the floor.

“Yet there are men like me,” he replies so sincerely I nearly believe him. “I do not truly fight because I want to be king or Emperor or whatever word you slap above my name in the history texts. The universe does not notice us, Darrow. There is no supreme being waiting to end existence when the last man breathes his final breath. Man will end. That is the fact accepted, but never discussed. And the universe will continue without care.

“I will not let that happen, because I believe in man. I would have us continue forever. I would shepherd us out of the Solar System into alien ones. Seek new life. We are barely in our infancy as a species. But I would make man the immutable fixture in the universe, not just some passing bacteria that flashes and fades with no one to remember. That is why I know there is a proper way to live. Why I believe your young ideas so dangerous.”

His mind is vast. Worlds beyond my own. And perhaps for the first time, I really understand how this man can do what he does. There is no morality to him. No goodness. No evil intent when he killed Eo. He believes he is beyond morality. His aspirations are so grand that he has become inhuman in his desperate desire to preserve humanity. How strange to look at the rigid, cold figure he casts and know all these wild dreams burn inside his head and heart.

“What about all you said? What about the things you’ve done?” I ask, thinking of his first wife, whose mouth he stuffed with grapes. “You take advice from creatures like Pliny. You bomb innocent civilians, who haven’t broken any laws. You embrace a civil war … and you say you’re trying to save humanity?”

“I do what I need to do to protect the greater good.”

To defend himself. To benefit himself. “To protect mankind,” I echo.

“Yes.”

“Eighteen billion draw breath across this empire. How many would you kill to protect mankind? A billion? Ten?”

“The number doesn’t change the necessity.”

“Fifteen billion?” I ask. Red, Gold, every part of me is shocked.

“Someone must make these choices,” he says. “The rest of our race grows sicker by the day. The Pixies chase pleasure instead of achievement, while the Peerless have grown so hungry for power that our Sovereign is a woman who cut off the head of her own father in order to take his throne. They must be ruled.”

“By you.”

“By us.” His unblinking gaze does not waver. “By us,” he repeats. “I treated you poorly, because I feared your brashness, your impudence. But I promised I would make amends, and so I will, because you have shown the capacity for growth, for learning. Become my heir. Not my Praetor. I have enough lords of war. What I need … what I want is a son.”

“You have a son.”

“I have a parasite that wants my power. That’s all. He has no use for it. No plan once he gains it. He simply hungers as our Society has taught him to hunger.” His face shows a flicker of intrigue. “Yet, remarkably, this was his idea. You have his blessing.”

I don’t doubt I have his blessing. Knowing my ally, I merely wonder what it’s going to cost me. He’s a businessman. He’ll want return on his investment. Especially this investment. He should have told me.

“What about Virginia? You don’t need your heir to be male.”

“But I want it to be. And I want you for her. A husband fitting her mind.”

“You’re using me,” I say suddenly, seeing through his scheme. “I tie her to you. Especially if we marry. We both know you don’t want reform.”

Even now Reformers from across the Society flock to Mars to rally behind the man who said he would give them the Senate when he defeats Lune and her allies.

“The Reformers are cancer,” he says.

“But you’re promising them that you will—”

“Promises were necessary to gain their support. When we have defeated Octavia, I will put the Reformers in prison, or execute them for treason.”

“Mustang will never forgive you. She believes you’re changing. Whatever conversation you had with her, whatever you promised her, you gave her hope in you.”

Maybe she won’t forgive either of us.

“You will make her understand once you’re part of the family, Darrow. By then, I suspect you’ll be married, and she won’t abandon you even if she hates me. Our family will stay strong, as we must. But you must always be mine. Answering to me. Not my children.”

He takes a step toward me.

“Octavia steers humanity to slow decline. The Reformers, like the Sons of Ares, would slam us into the ground at a thousand kilometers a second. We must protect our species. Help me.”

He is a noble man doing what he thinks best for humanity.

Damn him.

We never asked to bow. Who is he to say Reds and Browns toiling to death is for the greater good? Who is he to say Pink children being harvested for rape, Obsidians and Grays for battle, is a necessity? How can he sit there and say that he alone knows what is best for me, for my family? It is not his right. Just as it was not his right to come into my world and take Eo. And if he thinks might makes it his right, then it’s my bloodydamn right to cut off his head right now.

Instead I stand and cross the distance between us. Kneeling, I take his hand and kiss his bloodydamn ring. “As you will it, my liege.”

His hard lips curl into a predatory smile. “Call me Father.”

“Try not to look so damn pleased with yourself,” Lorn says to me.

We stand amid the white-pathed gardens of the Citadel. A breeze stirs the bells that hang in the trees. It is a simple affair, not like the gross spectacle of Luna. Small tables sit beneath ivy-covered boughs. Pink attendants clear them of the feast. On green grass and white paths, Peerless stand laughing and impressing one another while cradling flutes of champagne. You can sense the Jackal’s hand in the planning. He’s a tastefully modest creature.

More dignitaries came to the dinner than to the ceremony. So there are many Augustus and I had to greet. They came to us in a line based upon hierarchy, of course. I soon grew tired of glad-handing and sought Lorn near the base of a thin white tree. His arms are crossed, face all stormy and scowling at the champagne in his hand. He tosses it into a shrub.

“I hate this sort of thing too,” I say. “Soon as I get my Mask, Augustus wants me to cozy up to some of the Moon Lords. Then it’s bed for me.” Without Mustang here, there’s no real joy to be had.

“Alone it seems. Where is your girl?” He squints around. “Been looking high and low.”

“Don’t know.” Has everyone noticed?

“Ah.” He grunts. “Lovers’ quarrel? Well, I won’t pour advice in your ear except to say, swallow your pride. She’s a gem if you can keep her.”

If.

“I’m glad you came,” I say. “Even if your advice is shit.”

He laughs gruffly and nods to the Jackal, who speaks with Roque and several Politicos from Ganymede. “Your friend made it possible. Augustus somehow forgot to invite me, even though my men won him a planet. Manners are so conditional these days. Speaking of, how long do you think I have to stay before it’s not rude to leave?”

“It’s not even nine. Aren’t you presenting the Mask in a few minutes?”

“I was, but it’s tedious statecraft. I asked your friend Roque to do it, if that’s fine with you. Actually, he asked me. Same difference.”

“No. No, that’s better actually.” It’ll be good for Roque to be included as much as possible. There’s mending that needs doing. Public displays of friendship are a good place to start.

Lorn props his back against the tree. “My old bones creak at night. I’m going to check on security so I don’t have to talk to any of these slippery people.” He watches a ripWing pass high overhead.

“Let someone else do that.” A Pink hands Lorn the tumbler of whiskey I ordered. His favorite label. He sniffs, subdued. “I only get to see you in armor. Act the proper mentor and stay with me. We have two bottles of the Lagavulin for you.”

“Back to your old tricks. Two bottles for an extra two hours of training, wasn’t that the deal? Should have charged more. Ha!”

He limps off with his whiskey to play tag with his grandchildren in the trees. I watch the Pink who delivered his drink slip back into the crowd, her movement vaguely familiar.

A woman loops her arm in mine. I turn excitedly only to find Victra. She doesn’t notice my disappointment.

“I do hope the Violets put lions instead of a pegasus on your Mask.” She laughs at my expression. “Yes, the rumor is already aflight. Darrow au Augustus.” She shivers playfully. “The women will come running.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh, shut up.”

“Make me.” She slides her hand along my low back. “It’s a shame you already settled down.” Nodding to a group of young Peerless from the Gas Giants, she leans close. “But does it mean you can’t play?”

“Do you just enjoy trying to make me blush?”

She pulls the laurel wreath from my head and places it on her own, curtsying foolishly. “You’ve found me out. Where is your little Mustang anyway?”

“Why is everyone so damn curious?”

“Darrow.” Roque joins us, holding an ivory box large enough for the Triumph Mask. He’s sleek in a black Praetor’s uniform, hair slicked back. “I believe we’re supposed to gather for the Mask presentation. Do you know where? I’m a bit confused about this whole affair.”

Victra frowns. “Citadel staff is still discombobulated. The Bellona had the place for a month. Adrius had to comb through the Pinks for spies. Especially after what happened in Attica. He’s got his men everywhere tonight. Oh, hell. It’s starting.” She sets my laurel wreath back on my head and pulls me toward the clearing where the Golds assemble. Sevro cuts across my path, stopping us.

“Darrow,” he says quickly, then, looking to Victra, “move along.” She scrunches her face and leaves.

“You like her,” I tease. “I can tell.”

He ignores me. “He’s still not here.”

“Fitchner? You call his datapad?”

“Isn’t going through. The bastard said he was coming. So if he isn’t here, something important must be happening. I should check.”

“Check.” I grab his arm. “But call Ragnar. And be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

It’s strange watching him leave. Like watching my shadow depart and realizing its destiny may be separate from mine. Perhaps in the end, he’s more important than I. Truly a child of two worlds.

I follow the crowd through the trees. Little lanterns make homes in the branches, bathing the clearing in a warm white glow. There are no Whites present. No formalities here. It’s as understated as the Triumph was grand. The crowd parts for me. I walk onto the white cobblestones where Lorn sits with his grandchildren on the edge of a dolphin fountain. Augustus motions me to stand by him near a statue of a blind maiden holding a scale and a sword. It drowns in ivy. The Jackal joins us.

“I hear we’re going to be brothers,” I tell him.

“Well, who says you can’t choose family?” He glances distractedly at his datapad. “Better you than that bastard Cassius.”

“Something the matter?” I ask.

“More gorydamn requisition orders.” He looks up from his datapad. “Sorry. All’s prime on Mars, my goodman. Just wish my sister were here. You still wouldn’t know where she is, would you?”

I shake my head. With each mention, Mustang grows a little more distant. I held out hope she’d appear. Make a grand entrance and I’d know all was well. But some fantasies don’t come true.

“Your pardon! My goodmen!” Augustus announces, cutting through the murmur of conversation. “Thank you.” He clears his throat and extends a welcome to Mars’s many guests, tipping his head to the ArchGoverness of Triton. “Though our glasses sparkle and bellies are full, this night will not last.” He peers through his guests, voice firm and dry in the damp air. Fireflies glow among the trees.

“We know that this is only the beginning. War will require much from us. But let us not be so hasty as to pass over a victory such as the one we saw just a few weeks ago. A triumph of will, loyalty, strength.

“All that grandeur of the parade was for them. Quiet moments like these are for us.” He taps his facial scar once. “Where we, despite our differences, can nod our heads and raise our glasses to a unique accomplishment of will. It was not done alone. But the Rain was called by one man. So, Darrow au Andromedus, we salute you.”

“Hail, Reaper!” Lorn calls, mocking me only slightly.

The glasses rise through the clearing as voices murmur agreement. And they drink. It feels so hollow looking to my left and seeing the Jackal instead of Mustang. To smile feels so false, knowing all this will soon crumble. Victra seems to sense my mood, and so she winks, tilting her glass to me.

Augustus motions Roque, who comes forward with the large ivory box cradled in his arms. He sets the box in my hands and puts one of his atop so I can’t yet open it.

“You and I have seen much together.” His voice is calm and even. “The night I first met you, you were on the floor of Mars Castle looking at the blood on your hands. Do you remember what I said?”

His other hand touches my right wrist, the tenderness something out of the past, when our hands had fewer calluses, fewer scars.

“Of course. ‘If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown. So keep swimming,’ ” I recite. “I’d never forget.”

“How far we’ve come.” His eyes survey my face, taking note of its lines, its imperfections. I tilt my head, wondering what he’s looking for. “I would have paid a hundred times what your contract was worth to protect you.”

“I know, Roque.”

“I would have died for you a thousand times more, because you were my friend.”

Were. Something in his voice makes me look around. Over his shoulder, I see Victra whisper something humorous to Antonia and their skeletal mother. Lorn serves his grandchildren little plates of cake brought by a short Pink. But it’s after the server turns that I freeze inside. He turns haughtily. Ruthlessly. Unlike any Pink ever born. Breaking character only for half a second. I know that turn. I know that man. It’s Vixus. It has to be. My eyes dart to the Pink who brought me Lorn’s whiskey. Lilath. The Jackal’s girl who wore bones in her hair. Who allied with the Bellona. They’re dressed as Pinks. Golds with fleshMasks. Contacts.

Wolves playing lambs.

I pull back from Roque, about to shout, when I feel his grip tighten, and I realize he was saying goodbye. A needle from his ring pricks my wrist. Gentle, like the kiss he now plants on my cheek.

“And thus go liars, with a bloodydamn kiss.”

One word shatters a thousand lies.

Face colder than the marble statue behind us, Roque draws back and opens the ivory box’s lid. With the gentle creak of silver hinges, my world ends. Augustus gasps in horror at what’s inside the box. And a foot away, the Jackal, eyes full of long-dormant hate, smiles at me and cocks his head back like an animal to loose a manic, mocking howl.

A signal of the end.

Victra reaches for her razor. Antonia steps back. Pulls a scorcher from a waiter’s tray and fires two rounds into Victra’s spine. Two more into her mother’s neck before any can move.

“ARCOS!” Augustus screams, whipping out his razor. “TO ARMS!”

“HOWLERS TO ME!” Lorn roars, pushing back his grandchildren. “Protect the Reaper!”

Too late. Even as Lorn stands, Lilath pulls a pulseDagger from under her tray and sweeps it across his throat from behind. Lorn shoves his hand between throat and blade. Four fingers fall to the ground. He angles his body, strains against her, grasping her wrist with his bloody arm. Blade humming. Grunting. Intimate horror as chaos reigns across the clearing.

The poison spreads in me.

I slump to the ground, box in my lap.

Back against the blind statue.

Paralyzed.

The Jackal glides through the midst of this melee, a reptile over ice. He watches stabbing and butchery, and finds Lorn still struggling with Lilath as she tries to cut his throat. Lorn’s managed to take a shard of broken glass from the ground and is reaching to stab Lilath’s leg, when the Jackal bends, examines Lorn for a moment, and slowly puts a blade into his belly.

“They were wrong. Your side isn’t made of stone.”

Lorn’s face pinches with fear as the Jackal pulls the blade up the old man’s body. My razormaster’s eyes jump to me, to his grandchildren. He tries to stand, tries one last ounce of fury. Tries to say something. But his body has quit him. He will never see his island again. Never pet his griffin. Never hear his grandchildren laugh or see Lysander, the grandson I promised him. I did this to him. I brought him back from that separate peace he so wanted, but knew he never deserved. And soon his eyes gaze at nothing and the Jackal retrieves his blade and Lilath finishes her work with a slow sawing motion.

I loose a long moan. It’s all I can manage. Drool slithers down my throat. Victra crawls toward me, blood leaking from her. Amid all this, Roque stands, a statue, apart.

Pulse weapons warble in the distance. Thunder rips the sky as dark shapes descend, cracking the sound barrier. They come from a stealthed ship. Something snuck in. Where are the patrols?

Obsidians and Praetorians land in the midst of the clearing, thumping down on the stone. They pursue those who fled the killing ground for the gardens, hunting them down with quiet economy. Antonia directs the slaughter, finishing heirs, clipping bloodlines half a millennium old. Taking hostages. Lilath is laughing with Vixus. They peel away electronic fleshMasks and shake free their golden hair. Behind them, Aja lands in splendor, her armor flashing in the lantern light. She surveys the carnage, face dark and content. I hardly notice her, because an old friend lands at her side. Cassius.

“Virginia?” he asks.

“Missing, I fear,” the Jackal says.

“Warned?”

“Angered. Lover’s spat.”

Victra manages to crawl to my ankle. A slick of blood shadows her path from where she was shot to the place where she now curls. Red on her lips. I can’t feel her touch.

“I didn’t know,” she whispers. “Darrow, I didn’t know.”

Aja bends over Lorn’s body, taking his razor from his waist and closing her mentor’s eyes forever. He never even drew the weapon. Cassius comes close, stopping at my feet, where he goes to a knee and watches me.

“Can he move, poet?” he asks Roque.

“No. But he can hear.”

“You killed my family, Darrow. All of them. Me, Julian, that’s one thing. But the children? How could you?” I don’t know what he’s talking about. “I’ll find Sevro. I’ll find Mustang. There will be no mercy.” He touches the enameled hilt of his razor with his new arm.

“You can’t kill him,” Roque says from behind him. “You know what he is.” Roque puts a hand on Cassius’s shoulder. “Cassius, the Sovereign’s orders were clear.”

“Dissection,” Cassius murmurs. He watches me, and it seems that there was never a time when this man called me brother. Never a hope we could ever have been what we are now. Roughly, he takes my hand. I think, for a moment, he is shaking it. But instead, he steals the ring I earned. The iron wolf I killed his brother to possess. My finger is naked without it.

He rises from his bent knee to tower over me, more a beautiful vulture than an eagle. “Julian. Lea. Pax. Quinn. Weed. Harpy. Rotback. Tactus. Lorn. Victra. They deserved better than to die for a slave.” With that, he leaves me with Roque.

The world is silent except for sobbing and the sound of sirens. At my side, Victra watches Cassius leave, her life leaking from her. Those clever eyes of hers look up at me, lost.

“We must hurry,” Aja drawls in the center of the massacre. “They know we’re here. Bring your father and let us go.”

The Jackal nods. “A moment, if you please.”