“I will use small words so that you are sure to understand. We have your little Mustang. If you do not lose in your next encounter with the ArchGovernor’s son so all the Drafters can bear witness, then I will ruin her.”
Mustang.
First Pax. Now the girl who sang Eo’s song by the fire. The girl who pulled me from the mud. The girl who curled beside me as the smoke swirled in our little cave. Brilliant Mustang, who would follow me out of choice. And this is where I led her. I did not expect this. I did not plan for this. They have her.
My stomach sinks. Not again. Not like Father. Not like Eo. Not like Lea. Not like Roque. Not like Pax. They will not kill her too. This son of a bitch will not kill anyone.
“I’m going to rip out your bloodydamn heart!”
He punches me in the belly, still holding me by my hair. His face is strange as he tries to place the word. Bloodydamn. We’re floating in the air now, high. Very high. I dangle like a hanging man as he hits me again. I moan. But as I do, I remember one thing I learned from Fitchner as I clapped his shoulder in the woods. If Apollo is holding my hair and I do not feel his pulseShield, then it is turned off. And it is turned off over his entire body. He has physical recoilArmor everywhere else, except one place.
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“You are a stupid little puppet, I realize now,” he says idly. “A mad, angry little puppet. You won’t do as I say, will you?” He sighs. “I’ll find another way. Time to cut your strings.”
He drops me.
And I float there, inches from his outstretched hand.
I go nowhere, because beneath fur and cloth, I’m wearing the gravBoots I stole from Fitchner when I assaulted him in Apollo’s warroom. And Apollo’s shield is down. And he’s pissed me off. He gawks at me, confused. I flex the knifeRing’s blade out and punch him in the face, jamming the blade through his visor into his eye socket four times, jerking upward so that he dies.
“You reap what you sow!” I scream at him as he fades. All the rage I’ve felt swells in me, blinding me, and fills me with a pulsing, tangible hatred that seeps away only as Apollo’s boots deactivate and he tumbles down through the swirling storm.
I find my Howlers around his body. The snow is red. They stare at me as I descend, my knifeRing wet with the blood of a Peerless Scarred. I had not intended to kill him. But he should not have taken her. And he should not have called me a puppet.
“They took Mustang,” I tell my pack.
They look on silently. The Jackal no longer matters.
“So now we take Olympus.”
The smiles they give one another are as chilling as the snow.
Sevro cackles.
42
WAR ON HEAVEN
There is no time to waste in going back to the fortress. I have the boys and girls I need. I have the hardest of all the armies. The small, the wicked, the loyal and quick. I steal Apollo’s recoilArmor. The golden plate coils around my limbs like liquid. I give his gravBoots to Sevro, but they are ludicrously large on him. I strip off my own boots, his father’s, so he can wear them; they jammed my toes something awful. I put on Apollo’s boots instead.
“Whose are these?” Sevro asks me.
“Daddy’s,” I tell him.
“So you guessed.” Sevro laughs.
“He’s locked in Apollo’s dungeons.”
“The stupid Pixie!” He laughs again. They have an odd relationship.
I keep Apollo’s razor, his helmet, his pulseFist, and his pulseShield along with his recoilArmor. Sevro gets the ghostCloak. I tell him to be my shadow. And then I tell my Howlers to tie their belts together.
GravBoots can lift a man in starShell as he carries an elephant in each arm. They are easily strong enough to lift me and my Howlers, who hang from my arms and legs on belt harnesses as I carry us through the swirling snowstorm up and up to Olympus. Sevro carries the others.
The Proctors have played their games. They pushed and pushed for so long. They knew I was something dangerous, something different. Sooner or later, they had to know I would snap and come to cut them down. Or perhaps they think I’m still a child. The fools. Alexander was a child when he ruined his first nation.
We rise through the storm and fly over the slopes of Olympus. It floats nearly a mile above the Argos. There are no doors. No dock. Snow covers the slopes. Clouds mask its glittering peak. I lead the Howlers to that bone-pale citadel at the top of the steep incline. It strikes up out of the mountain like a marble sword. Howlers unfasten their belts in pairs, dropping down on the highest balcony.