“Maybe they sent them,” Sefi hazards.
“Romulus would rather die than ally with Obsidians,” Pax says.
“He allied with your father.”
“Romulus would never ally with Obsidians.”
“Men change.” She shrugs, probably thinking of Valdir.
If Sefi arranged this to kill Freihild, she’s putting on an elaborate show. “I believe it time to consult with your mother, Electra,” Sefi says. Electra keeps prodding the fire. “Republic must think we are strong, we cannot ask them. Will she aid us if we need assistance?”
“It’ll cost you one of us,” Electra says. “She’ll ask for me. You’ll say no. She’ll block your calls until you’re attacked. She’ll call and ask for me again. You fear you won’t have leverage if you give me. So you’ll give Pax—with his parents likely dead he means less in the macro. But it’s Pax she wants, because she’ll put Darrow and Virginia over herself and Da, and because it is moral.”
“Well, that was brutally succinct,” I mutter.
She just glowers at the fire, stooped and unhappy. The door bursts open. Braga, Pax’s chief bodyguard, and one of Sefi’s wingsisters, stand with tears in their eyes.
* * *
—
The stone stairs up to the griffi
ns’ aerie are covered with feathers and dander. There’s sobbing from above. Blind Obsidian stablemasters weep into their hands. When we arrive at the roost, we are greeted with a scene of carnage.
Sefi staggers past pools of blood and half a dozen butchered stablehands toward the pale mass of her griffin. Godeater lies on the floor, her neck hacked to the bone. Her huge eyes stare wide and terrified at the ceiling as she twitches in agony. The rest of the griffins are gone. I can barely make out their silhouettes against the moonlight over Olympia as they fly toward Loch Esmeralda.
The stablemasters dare not approach Godeater. Her long claws rake against the stone in pain. Only when Sefi approaches with her throat bared does the beast still. Sefi strokes her muzzle and puts her head to its great sternum. Frowning at what she hears, she closes her eyes to look at the griffin’s spirit. Pax watches thoughtfully as she drives her razor into Godeater’s heart. Sefi breathes in the griffin’s death rattle, and wraps her arms around its neck before standing.
Several dozen Valkyrie stand sweating beyond the dead animal. The mangled corpses of three of their sisters lie broken and hacked as if by a mindless monster. Medical teams attend three survivors. The rest part for Sefi. Valdir kneels on the stable floor amidst the straw. He is drenched head to toe in blood and covered with long gashes from the griffin’s talons. Burn marks from stun weapons congeal patches of the blood. The axe he murdered Godeater and the Valkyrie with lies on the floor covered with feathers and viscera.
He pants like a dog on a hot day. Muscles twitch from residual electric shock.
“Did you love her so?” Sefi whispers.
“As much as I loved you before you became stone.” His voice morphs into a mad growl, making Sefi tilt her head. “You feared she would become queen instead of your Volga. My pathfinders found skip trace back to the Echo of Ragnar.” At first I thought I misheard him, until Pax and Electra glance at me, just as confused. Valdir’s head twitches as he twists it around. His teeth are purple and pulled back in a primal grimace. “Do you feel anything now, Sefi?”
Sefi takes the stunFist from Beildi, one of her bodyguards, and shoots him again and again and again until he steams on the floor, flat and laughing. Only when I call her name does Sefi pause, just short of killing him. She drops the stunFist and orders without a trace of emotion, “Bind this creature and throw it in the deep cells.”
In one of the stables, Pax crouches by a discarded flagon of azag. “Give that here,” I say, taking over as Valdir is dragged from the room. I signal Xenophon and several minutes later one of his aides returns with a sample kit. We feed several drops of azag in. When the readout comes, Xenophon’s hand twitches.
“What is it?” Sefi demands. Xenophon lets the kit go, and I bring it to Sefi. She takes it in her bloody hands and her face grows dark with rage. “Bring me the shaman.”
“There is no proof that it was his doing,” Xenophon intones. “I caution you against—”
“Obey, servant!”
* * *
—
Twenty long minutes later, I watch Ozgard fall to his knees, begging for Sefi to believe he did not put the fever cloud mushroom into Valdir’s azag. The Queen watches him from inside her sanctum as snow falls outside. She has not spoken since the Valkyrie dragged him in. Half of Griffinhold writhes in rumor, half in grief.
“All I have done, I have done for you, my Queen,” Ozgard begs, and I believe he thinks as much. Valdir was always a threat to him, a skeptic of his prophecies, a man who held sway over Sefi’s heart in a way he never could. I know the type. In his story to me on the ice, he seemed tragic and noble in his lies. But now the underbelly of that self-myth reveals the reptile. He finally saw his chance to end a competitor, a man he could never challenge, who mocked him daily. And he took it.
Still he bleats on. When even he runs out of words, Sefi finally looks at him.
“You brought us to Mars, Ozgard. You helped me believe in the Alltribe, and make my brother’s dream. For that, I am in your debt. Your prophecy is the andi of the tribe now. I will not sully it. But this is the last time I speak to you. For good of tribe, you will live amongst us, but you are a shadow to be seen, never heeded, never heard, never noticed. Begone.”