“I did. And I watched as he ate without complaint and even asked for seconds. Old Kavax was sitting there all quiet-like, though. You could tell he was nervous. And then a month later, after the trade talks were complete and we all felt a little slutty about making Augustus richer than Jove, he sends this young man. A lancer. One of those Martian war machines. You know the type, Kalindora. The sort that made sure you were no spring flower by the time you got to Luna. Killing in their veins. Huge. Not the biggest man I’d ever seen, mind you, that was Magnus’s slaveknight—Pale Horse or whatever his name was—but his anger was like heat off a tank barrel. His manners were flawless, for an upstart, still you could hear that Martian war-drum heart beating along with Nero’s silent boast. Look at my fresh crop. I have more of these. In his hands, that big killer carried the most delicate, beautiful box. Carved ivory with lions in all sorts of dramatic poses. ‘Compliments of Mars,’ breathed the man and away he went back to a gorydamn destroyer with helium to burn.”
“What was in the box?” Kalindora asks. “A head?”
“Grapes. Only grapes. And a little note. ‘Work in progress.’ Father went white as the box and didn’t sleep for a week. Mother had to buy five new Stained and a whole new fleet of courtesans before Father would even use his harem again.”
Kalindora grins down at her ration bar wrapper. “Now, that is cold.”
“None colder than old Nero,” Cicero replies. “Want to hear the best part? Guess who the lancer was?”
“Darrow,” I rasp through my tattered lips.
“That’s right,” Cicero says with a squint. “We had him here. I think it was sixteen years ago. Just after the Institute. One of his first missions. Seventeen, a lackey to a god, and ticking, ticking, like a time bomb.”
Later, after Kalindora has gone to sleep, Cicero slides over to me. “So much for Atalantia’s bagwoman.” In the darkness, Kalindora looks less like a warrior. Peaceful in a way, as peaceful as a woman with a cauterized stump for a left arm can look while suffering radiation sickness. Maybe it was foolish to meet the Reaper in open battle. But I cannot erase the pride I felt when she nodded to me at my decision to stay. Still, how many Praetorians lie in the dust for that valor? How many men and women drowned in the sea? Cicero eyes the rancid stump where her left arm used to be. “Think she’ll die of infection?”
“Not before rad poisoning,” I say. “Or thirst.”
He eyes the soiled bandage on my face. “How much does it hurt?”
“Enough.”
“You knew that story,” he says. “How?”
“You mean how did I know about the Storm Gods?” I reply, intuiting his real question. “Nero had his helium. You have your metals. Octavia had her information.”
“Information, yes. Speaking of information…” His voice lowers. “I’ve some information an erudite mind like yours has no doubt already deduced. Based on our water requirements, and our likely rate of consumption, we’ll run out several days from Erebos. We don’t have enough to get all of us there. The Grays will have a trial in this next stretch. It’s straight desert for several hundred klicks. If a patrol doesn’t find us, or we don’t get lucky with civilians…”
“No,
” I say.
“You couldn’t stop me. You can barely walk,” he says flatly.
“If that’s the man you want to be, go on then,” I say, with every intention of killing him in the night if I suspect he intends to kill my Grays.
“You think I want to do it for myself? You think I’m that venal? I’m not a Venusian or a Lunese sucking others dry,” he says in disgust. “We Votum are builders. You don’t know me at all. What I’ve had to watch.” I don’t say anything to that. “Darrow might have broken our planet, but Atalantia and her father have been raping it for years to feed their war. It’s a lonely feeling when you realize your father, despite his many triumphs, is an invertebrate. I’ll tell you that. My brother and sister stood up to Atalantia, but they were at Tyche. And that storm…” He looks north and doesn’t finish the sentence. “Father can’t handle her on his own.”
“What do you want from me?” I ask. “Permission to abandon good men? You won’t have that.”
“You abandoned yours,” he says. “Watched them fly right away to Heliopolis. Including Rhone ti Flavinius himself. So who are you angry at, me or yourself?”
He’s right, and he knows it. Still, it’s the principle. And if I give up that, I’ll have nothing left. “I might not be able to stop you. But if you go for the Grays, you’ll have to kill me too.”
He mutters something to himself as he edges away to find a place amongst the rocks. Soon he is fast asleep. Kalindora opens her eyes. She’s been listening.
“I’ll take watch,” she whispers. “Try and get some sleep.”
I’M WOKEN IN THE EARLY MORNING by a presence. A lean man moves through my room. He stands by the edge of the bed with his hands hidden. But I no longer sleep in beds, not even here in the center of my army. From the bathroom, upon the thin campaign mattress, I watch with my hand clutched around a pistol. How did he get past the guards? I aim for the base of his skull. A sliver of light from a passing ship illuminates his face as he turns. It is Screwface.
I clear my throat and he turns, jumping a little as he sees the gun.
“What is it?”
“I want to show you something, boss.”
I’ve nearly died that way before. When Cassius took me down to the river to stab me, and Lea led me into Antonia’s trap at the Institute.
“Just tell me here,” I say.