The interior of the cellblock is a globe with a central communal area and the cells in three levels accessed by walkways and a stairwell. Sevro pushes past the warden. “What the blazing shit…”
It’s not a prison. It’s an improvised paradise. Thick layers of expensive carpets cover the steel floors. The walls are painted eggshell white. Golden roses and ivy grow along the walkways and crawl along the guardrails, fed by UV lights that hang from the ceilings. The cell doors are open. Three cells are filled floor to ceiling with books and datacubes, another with bottles of wine, another with camisoles and robes, another with a refrigerator and a portable generator and a stove, another with a garden of tomatoes, garlic, and carrots, another with hulking iron dumbbells and tension bands.
The communal floor is one great lounge. Hookahs stand like emerald scarecrows amidst a sea of pillows and blankets. Two collared Pink prisoners, a slender woman and muscular man, sprawl there naked, bruises mottling their bodies. Empty bottles and other casualties of debauchery litter low tables. And amongst all this, a powerful man sits in a chair with his back to us, playing a violin with feverish hummingbird strokes, bathed in the light of a UV lamp, naked but for the dull metal prisoner collar. He skin is tawny, darker than that of his younger brother. His golden hair is long and coiled and splays down his broad back. Lost in reverie, he does not hear us enter.
“Apollonius au Valii-Rath,” I say.
The man stops playing and turns around. If he’s surprised to see us, he doesn’t show it. It’s as if we materialized out of the fever of his song. For me, there is pain in seeing him sitting there twisted around, the equine nose, the sensual lips, the dark eyelashes and hot-coal eyes. He is a twisted simulacrum of his younger brother, Tactus—a man I cared for despite his darkness because I saw in him a glimmer of something good. But this is not my friend, no matter what blood they share. If there ever was light in this man, it was long ago snuffed by the hungry shadow inside him.
“What’s this?” he says, eyes searching our masked faces. His amused baritone smooth and quick as thick wild honey down a hot knife. “A deputation of devils come to my acropolis with calamity on their heels? Have you come to kill me, fiends?” He twirls the violin to hold it by its neck like a weapon, his voice becoming pugilistic. “I venture you’ll not find it pleasant.”
“He’s bloody mad,” Sevro says over our coms. The man was always touched, a lover of violence and vice, but there is a mania behind his eyes more precarious than was there when I last saw him standing bruised and proud before a Republic court.
“Apollonius,” I say again. “We’ve come to take you home.”
The war criminal’s eyes narrow. “At the behest of whom?”
“Your brother.”
“Tharsus?” His eyes widen as he slides out of the chair like a grand saltwater crocodile and faces us without any shame for his nakedness. Long white scars from razors cover the lean muscles of his torso. The two nearest his heart are from me when we met in the hallway outside my bedroom in the Citadel. “Tharsus is alive?”
“He’s waiting for you on his flagship, my lord,” I lie. “We’ve come to ferry you to your fleet.”
Apollonius looks down at the ground and a shudder of boyish joy goes through him. He looks up with a predatory smile. “Magnificent. Soon we will join him. But first, debts.” He glides toward the warden. Thraxa takes a protective step up to my side. “Warden, warden, warden. Recall for me, for my memory has a tide unto itself, did I not promise you something upon the genesis of my incarceration here?”
“I’ve done what you asked,” the warden says to me. “Honor your end of the bargain.”
“I speak to you, warden, not my brother’s minions.”
“I do not recall what you said, prisoner. I receive many threats.”
“Lies! A punctilious race such as yourself does not forget. You squirrel facts away like nuts in winter. Never too many nuts for a meticulous little creature…”
“I’ve helped you, dominus.”
“Ah. Now you say dominus….”
“If it weren’t for me, you’d still be in the hole sucking algae from a pipe.”
“Sucking from a pipe.” He smiles. “A vibrant thought, that.” He strokes the man’s face. Sweat beads along the warden’s receding hairline. He’s terrified of Apollonius. “You should choose your words with more care, frail creature.” He takes the man’s sweat from his brow and tastes it. “As I suspected. You taste like coins.”
“He’s going to kill him,” Thraxa says over my com, her worry bleeding through.
“Serves the dog-kicker right,” Sevro mutters. The Obsidian leans against the doorframe, his head motionless but his eyes darting back and forth between us as if he knows we are speaking on private coms.
“Lord, we need him alive,” I say.
“Why?” Apollonius asks neutrally.
Because he will keep this quiet, you psychopathic shit. “He has a biometric monitor on his heart. He dies, the whole place locks down,” I lie. “We’re on a timetable before their drone systems reactivate. Yalla. We need to go.”
Apollonius steps close to me and stares into my mask. I wave Thraxa back.
“What is your name?” he asks.
“Artullius au Vinda.”
“I do not know an Artullius,” he says. “Take off your mask.”