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Tell them Tyr Morga has come to challenge Volsung Fá to single combat. Tell them Tyr Morga has come to lead you home as Ragnar would have wanted. But most of all, tell Fá to expect me.”
I head away from them, knowing I’ve just opened Pandora’s box, but enough is enough from this Obsidian fraud.
“She’s not a freak,” I snap. He smiles, a little sad. “We are all freaks,” he says and shows his sigils. “They made us so.”
I know magic isn’t real. I know it’s all science. But if I don’t know the science, it might as well be magic.
“I flew the Archimedes on Io. I—” “My goodlady, I mean this with all my heart. That was not flying. That was just ‘not crashing.’
Swear to me, we will talk before you do anything stupid or agree to anything stupid. Darrow is good at getting people to agree to do stupid things.”
Now, get thee hence, foul ragamuffin. I hear the Deep is gloomy and dour as a Moonie’s sonnet. You won’t want to miss it.”
I stop in the rain and jog back to him. He smiles, a little confused. I say in a rush, “What you did on Io. Why you did it. It’s just…” I look down, feeling stupid, knowing he doesn’t need compliments from me. “I dunno. I just think you’re a good man and you have a huge heart and I don’t think people say that enough. Just wanted you to know that I see it, Bellona.” For once, he doesn’t have anything ironic to say. His eyes glitter, and he bends, looks into my eyes, and kisses me on the cheek.
“You’re a gas miner, yeah? From one of the floating rigs on Jupiter?” I ask. “You a silk spinner? A spider breeder? Ain’t that what Red lasses do on Mars?” she replies. “They also sing,” I say. “And serve on the front lines.” “Just right, lass. Just right. We’re more than the utility they made us for,” she says.
“Cyaxares,” I murmur. “What you know about that monster?” Cheon says. I shrug. “He might be on the menu soon. The dragon eaters are coming.”
“Is that why you did not struggle in the submarine?” “I did not struggle because I smelt rust on the breeze. I believed—still believe—that I am amongst friends.”
I have never been Red. Nor Gray nor Gold. I am a human being. You may look at me with the eyes of the masters, but you will not sort me according to their inhuman labels.”
Diomedes stands chained. Aurae watches him with pained eyes. “It’s love then?” I ask.
Show them what you showed me. Show them who you are. A traveler on a path,” she says softly.
And my mission is not to get ships, not to slay Fá, not even to save Mars, it is to make sure that the light does not go out.
Lyria leans forward, her face open. She is my audience. Those I uplifted only to abandon.
I was afraid that I could not save my people and your people at the same time. So I chose mine. That was the folly, pretending we were separate.
Do not take the short route through shadow. You know your path. If you think you are alone on it, just look to your right, look to your left, look across the solar system, and see what I see. A tide of one people who want only one thing: liberty.”
A handsome man with a black eye and a burn from a stun weapon on the left side of his neck. “Oh, it’s you,” I say to Cassius. “Hello.” He waves politely, both hands shackled together.
“You talked forever,” Diomedes mutters at me. “And looked weak.” “You basically told them to slag off and shoot you,” I snap.
“My goodmen, it’s uncivilized to do anything but laugh in the face of death. Why do you think I’m always so jaunty these days?”
He honored his word and was truly a noble man. Had I to grant the credit for that, it would not be to Octavia.” He touches Cassius’s knee. “I mourn the loss of his light.”
Sound and light, even my own hands disappear. Then the voice of Ares, destroyer of men, stormer of ramparts, growls. “I am the kneeling son. I am the broken daughter. I am the widow and her trembling fist. I am the sum of the tyrants’ debris. I am the whipped, the bent, the broken, the enslaved. I am the meek, the gentle, the humble, and all their silent rage. By taking your voice, Gold has given me mine. I am you. I am we. I am Ares, breaker of chains.”
I feel, maybe for the first time, that he has found the same conviction in this part of his life as he does in being a father. It is like both sides of him, Sevro Barca and the Goblin, have finally melded together. I watch him with so much pride.
We need our builders.” He looks at Athena. “We need our shields.” He points to the Daughters. “We need putrid, spoiled allies late to the fray.” He glares at Cassius. “And we need our Reaper to tell us all how we’re gonna break this ugly-ass army, because that’s his job.”
“You make it sound so easy,” she says. “He always does,” Sevro says. “It’s part of his charm.”
If we are to be allies in war, we must know we will be peers in peace.”
“You want me to become your…kept Gold…your agent?” “No. We’d have you be our Virginia Augustus, Diomedes,” Aurae says. “Not a ‘kept Gold.’ A visionary. A champion for the downtrodden.”
Look me in the eye, Diomedes, and tell me I should serve you.” She raises her eyebrows. “Tell me you matter more because of the sigils on your hands. Tell me I am less than you.”
“Lady Bellona didn’t invest in an endeavor. She invested in me. Remember that, Pallas.”
“Cassius, go,” I say. “Go.” He strides to me, kisses the top of my head, and his armor turns dark as the night.
We must return to the sun, and the smiles of our mothers. We must have a queen. I tire of kings.”
“So, what did that butcher’s butcher do when his chains were broken? Did Ragnar make himself a crown from the shards? Try his hand at empire? Naw. That was beneath him. Your father built shields for the old, the small, the gentle, the low. That’s what he chose to be. A shield.
“And, Lyria, if you’re listening to this before giving it to Volga, you’re a nosy little shit but I hope you don’t die. Barca out.”
“I am not a monster,” she says. “Must be your conscience you heard, because I didn’t call you one.”
Human history is proof of one thing: violence builds empires.
“You afraid now, Lyria?” “I been afraid since I can remember. But I ain’t giving up.”
The demon lifts a black, curved blade, dripping gore and effluence. His helmet slithers back. Firelight bathes Darrow’s face as he cocks back his head and howls.
I am Darrow of Mars, ArchImperator of the Republic, Tyr Morga of the Volk, and I have been wronged! You have waged war on my planet. You have enslaved my Red people. You have sullied the name of my brother Ragnar. You have killed my sister Sefi. You have taken my army like a thief in the night to corrupt their honor. I claim holy vendetta against YOU! I claim ashvar!”
To a warrior race banished from the sun by Gold, I am a natural celebrity, and my arrival via the leviathan is a religious experience.
I was Apollonius’s prey over Venus, and it terrified me. I will make Fá feel that same feeling for what he did to Sefi. For the perversion he has made of Ragnar’s dream.
A low chuckle comes from Fá as the poison races through my veins. “And now you are dead. The rest is all theater. I’ll chew your meat slow.”
The stone breathes as it always has. “The path directs itself to the Vale.” The words escape my mouth before I realize I’ve recalled them. “Same as our breath rejoins the deepmine wind.”
And this is where that art is found: where my breath meets the wind my blades make, the wind up from the stone, the wind of Fá as he flees my attacks.
My mistakes become new opportunities, each flowing together like a drunken dance with Eo on the dirt-packed Laureltide floor.
Others snickered and said she was mad standing there with her weird little smile. I thought her brave and beautiful, darkness all about her, red hair whipping my heart into tangles. It’s taken me all this time to understand that smile. She was not afraid because she was not thinking of the dark. She was enjoying her moment alone with the deepmine wind. That wind becomes sacred to me with that realization.
When I die, whenever that day comes, I will hear the wind that howls like a wolf and know I am home.
The look of fear in his eyes is total. It’s a fear you can only know if there’s ever been a man who wants to kill you more than he wants anything else in all the worlds, a man relentless and without pity, a man you are too tired to stop.
If not for me, you’d be as I found you. Maggots digging tunnels in dead stone.” “Stone breathes too,” I tell him.
It’s bedlam—my old friend.
