WE LEAVE THE OMEGA detention block behind and follow the Obsidian guard, now wearing an ill-fitting uniform he pulled off one of the subdued Grays. The pants come only to his lower calf, leaving exposed a strip of runic blue tattoos and pale skin. The jacket is a better fit. I’m wary of the man, despite his claim of being a guard. He was in that cell for a reason. Still, he’s our best option here.
Tight behind him, our heavily armed pack ascends up exposed switchbacked stairwells with precipitous drops to either side. Beyond the stairwell is a dingy coliseum where the central processing facility sprawls. Prisoners toil at conveyor belts, sorting the trash from the seafloor. Guards patrol through their ranks with stun batons. High above this, hanging in clusters from the ceiling like the rusted eggs of some giant metallic spider race, are the cellblocks.
On a newer level, we glide over metal floors buffed smooth as glass. We pass myopic cameras and closed doors and the echoing coughing of prison guards abed in their barracks. The sound of a morning news program from Old Tokyo drifts through the halls. I miss a step when I hear my wife’s voice. Just the holos.
We snuff out somnolent guards without breaking pace. The Reds and Grays don’t stand much of a chance, but the rare Obsidian guard is taken down with extreme caution. Some can fight for a minute with three rounds of spider venom in their veins. In passing, I muse how it would be easier to kill them, but then shudder afterward at my own reptilian coldness. These are my people.
The guard certainly has no qualms as we lay waste to his colleagues.
What did he do to end up tongueless and imprisoned? Something either very good or very bad.
True to his word, the Obsidian leads us to the warden’s quarters. The door is locked from the inside, beyond Winkle’s control. Sevro kneels to melt through the lock with a plasma charge. As he lays out the components to his charge, the Obsidian sighs impatiently, steps past him, knocks on the door, then steps back. Inside, a dog begins to bark.
“Shut up!” Someone on the other side of the door screams in vain at the dog. There’s a thump and a yelp. The barking stops. Behind me, Thraxa grunts. I look at the Obsidian and he motions for me to wait. Metal unlatches and the door pivots backward into the room, leaving me standing sternum to nose with a cadaverous, gecko-eyed Copper with a long-slack mouth, a cup of coffee in one hand, and the bunched folds of his black and gold silk robe clutched closed at his waist with the other. Sevro grumbles and disarms the plasma charge.
Staring at the asp-black sternum of my scarabSkin, the warden gibbers something unintelligible. His mug shatters on the metal floor and spatters coffee over his bare calves and the festive brocade of the Venusian rug that he now backs onto. I jab two rigid fingers into his right brachial plexus and then his femoral nerve to stop him from running. He stumbles back from the nerve strikes and I bend to fit under the door and follow him into the room.
A dog, some kind of terrier, barks and growls at our approach, backing away and leaving a trail of urine across the floor. Following my team in, the Obsidian walks toward the dog, crouches down, and holds out his hand. The dog approaches with its tail between its legs. When the man makes a whistling sound, the dog spurts timidly forward to lick his bony hand.
“Warden Videli cu Yancra, I presume?” My helmet’s speakers distort my voice to a gravelly rumble. The door clicks shut behind my men.
“Yes…” he says, shaking from the pain of my light assault. But he’s not a stupid man. He looks up with quick, adaptable eyes at our combat gear, at the Obsidian, where his eyes linger in fear and confusion before returning to me. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“We’re wearing masks for a reason, dumbass,” Sevro says. He walks behind the warden and pulls out a chair for the man. “Sit. Hands where we can see them, my goodman.” The warden fumbles to find a chair and sits down. Sevro takes a seat behind him on the edge of the table and puts a hand on his shoulder.
I sit across from the warden and pour him a glass of water from a decanter as Thraxa spins her hammer at the door and Alexandar waltzes about the room thumbing the warden’s possessions with a practiced eye. The warden looks to his bedside several times. The Obsidian fetches the warden’s datapad and gives it to Sevro.
“Your men aren’t coming, pleb,” I say. “And lucky they are for that.”
“What do you want?”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten how to speak to your masters.” Sevro slaps him hard on the ear. “You will address us as dominus, you quivering whelp.”
The warden looks over at the Obsidian, then back to me. I’m not sure who he is more afraid of. “I can help you, dominus. It would be my honor. Just tell me how.”
“You have a man in your charge. Prisoner 1126. He is not in his cell, even though his collar places him there. If the prisoner had been there, cuprum, we would be gone from this place and you would still be lord of your little fiefdom. But he is gone, and so I am here wondering whether to make your crown out of your toes or your fingers.” I lean forward. “Where is prisoner 1126?”
He pales at the mention of his charge.
“He’s dead. He died a year ago. Took his own life by starvation.”
Sevro and I look at the Obsidian. He shakes his head.
“You trust him?” the warden says. “Him?”
“Seems you’re the one who took his tongue,” I say. The Obsidian points at me. “So yes. Did he see something you didn’t want him to see? Say something you didn’t want him to say?”
“No, he—”
“Liar, liar, prick on fire,” Sevro says into his ear, and lowers his multiRifle to rest on the warden’s groin.
“Prisoner 1126 is dead!”
“My goodman, if he had died, then you would have simply entered it into your logs and his cell would be filled with another deviant. So, pray tell, why was his beacon there?” I pat his leg. “I’ll answer for you. It was there in case you were visited by Republic inspectors. It was there to cover up your graft.”
“No,” the warden says sharply. “I would never…”
“Be able to afford a carpet like this on a warden’s salary?” Alexandar asks. He toes the carpet. “Venusian silk. Dyed with crustacean extract. Really ties the room together. Perilously fine taste, my goodman.”
“What’s the price on something like that?” Sevro asks.
“At least forty thousand credits,” Alexandar answers.
Sevro coughs. “No shit?” He takes the pot of coffee on the warden’s table and dumps the coffee inside on the carpet. If the man is angered, he hides it well. “Oops.”
“Warden, warden, make it stop,” Alexandar moans.
“A little cuprum weasel like you might fancy yourself a special sort of conniving,” I say. “An entrepreneur harvesting an inefficiency in the system. What a waste it must seem to have Aureate sons and daughters locked in little metal coffins, with all their hidden bank accounts and vaults languishing out there in the worlds. What a waste that someone should not profit.”
The warden looks up at me tactically, searching for some angle. He will see a giant in black armor and stare at a reflection of himself in the pitiless, insectoid eyes of the helmet. Submission is his only option, and it wounds his pride. It’s no backwater bumbler who finds himself warden of Deepgrave. This is a high post.
“Prisoner 1126 paid you to leave solitary, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” the warden says smoothly. “He made improved arrangements for his incarceration. The Omega Block is…”
“A dungeon,” Thraxa says.
“…taxing on the psyche. But he is still here.”
“Your testicles thank you for that,” Sevro says, nudging his gun deeper into the man’s groin. The warden flinches. “Ya hara,” Sevro coos—Venusian argot for “poor thing.” “Does that hurt?” he adds. The theater is for the warden so there is no doubt in his mind that we are from Venus. That it was Society operatives who broke out one of Deepgrave’s most hated charges. At the very least, I hope it throws a wrench into the peace talks. Mustang may puzzle it out, but if it gets back to the Ash Lord, he can’t know I was here.
“I wonder, what if we were to report your graft to the noble Republic after our departure?” I ask the warden. “No matter how clever your Copper accounting, your actions will be discovered. Your trial will be a public farce, to set an example of how their Republic is intolerant of corruption.” Sevro snorts at that. “To proclaim the circularity of justice, you will be sent here to serve your sentence.”
“How long do you think you will last on the other side of the bars, pennyfingers?” Sevro asks. “How will you sleep, how will you shower, how will you eat knowing the monsters you once lorded over are now watching, waiting?”
I lean forward, allowing his imagination to work its worst magic. His composure falters for a moment and I see my chance: “When they come for you in your cell, I want you to think back on this day when I sat here before you and I want you to wonder if there was not something you could do to erase it all.” I lean forward. “Because, warden, I’m here to tell you that there is something you can do.”
His eyes light up. “Name it, dominus.”
“Take us to prisoner 1126, and then, when we escape, carry on with your life. Do not report the escape or our presence here to the Republic. Do this, and it will be our little secret. What do you say?”
“I’d say yes if I were you, goodman,” Alexandar says, leaning back in a divan. “A life as an Obsidian’s pet is no life at all.” As if on cue, the old Obsidian bends to pet the dog again. I’m beginning to like the skinny man.
“I’ll take you to the prisoner,” the warden says uneasily.
The dog follows us, keeping its wary distance but never letting the Obsidian out of its sight as the warden leads us to a newer part of the facility. From a guard station, he extends the ramp over the divide to a suspended cellblock. We cross, and as the great doors to the block open, music trickles out.
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.”
“Can I shoot him?” Sevro asks.
“Then we’ll have to carry him with this Terran grav,” Alexandar says.
“I’ll carry the shitheap,” Thraxa replies.
“He’s not supposed to be this big,” Alexandar mutters. “Bastard was supposed to be eating algae for the last six years. He looks like he’s been eating whole cows. Musta put on fifty kilograms of muscle.”
“I’m going to shoot him, Reap,” Sevro says. “He’s on to us. And he’s a pervert.”
“Don’t shoot him,” I say.
I close the remaining distance so that Apollonius and I are eye to visor. He’s slightly shorter than I am. “Six years is a long time for new men to make their mark,” I growl out of my mask. “I’ve been paid for your breathing body. And I will deliver it to your brother. Hardly matters to me if you’re unconscious and drooling or traipsing about like a gorydamn Pixie. So, shut up. Get dressed. Or I break your nose and drag you in like the Martian dog you are.”
He stares at me for three pumps of the heart and then breaks the spell with a pleasant laugh. “Venusian?” he asks.
“Venusian,” I confirm.
“I hate Venusians. Are you Carthii?”
“Saud.”
Beside me, Thraxa’s hand has settled on her hammer.
“Then you live the day.” He smiles. “How I’ve missed my people, even you clam eaters. Gold has an unyielding manner, no?” He sniffs the air, throwing the Obsidian a disdainful look, and turns to rummage through the pillows till he pulls out a white kimono brocaded in purple and gold. This he ties around the waist with a silk sash and bends to kiss his sleeping Pinks farewell. They do not stir, likely under the effects of some narcotic. He brings his violin with him and returns to us barefoot.
“Shall we?”
We prepare to leave the warden behind in the cellblock, having no more use for him. Alexandar and Sevro open the cellblock door and go through. Thraxa and I follow with Apollonius. Then he lunges backward away from us.
By the time I turn around, he’s already standing with the warden, his huge hands wrapped around the smaller man’s head, tilting it back and forth, exploring its contours with his fingers. The warden is frozen in his grasp. Apollonius looks over at me with the bored insolence of a dog taking a shit on a carpet. The warden screams as Apollonius presses his hands against his eyeballs. Apollonius’s muscles ripple. His veins engorge. Before I can rush to separate the two, there’s a meaty squelch. Blood sprays Apollonius’s face as the warden’s eyes puncture and explode in their sockets. Alexandar gags. Apollonius lets the warden fall to the ground and looks blithely up at me as the man screams and paws at his face. The Gold brings a bloodied thumb to his tongue.
“Just like coins.”
I stare at the squirming warden, appalled.
“Sevro, shoot him.”
A fusillade of darts hiss past my shoulder. Two hit Apollonius in the face. He laughs and pulls them free from under his cheek. Sevro and Alexandar shoot again and Apollonius swats the darts with his hand, where they stick in the meat. Silent, he charges Sevro like a joyous, blood-soaked bison. I lower my shoulder and tackle him from the side, hitting him just under the ribs and lifting him off the ground, arms gripped behind his knees. We crash to the carpets. He’s a better wrestler than I am and I’m caught off guard by his immense strength. He rolls around me like an anaconda till I’m on all fours and the back of my head is against his sternum as he stands, pushing from the ground with his legs, cranking on my neck, straining my spinal cord as his thumb knuckles try to dig up into my Adam’s apple. I choke, unable to breathe, but claw up at his face and stick my thumb into his nostril and try to bury it up his nasal cavity. His grip doesn’t slacken. I’m going to pass out. Then the Obsidian guard is there. He hits Apollonius in the side of the head with a hookah and I manage to wrench myself free. My scarabSkin mask comes off in the Gold’s vise hold and he crumples to the carpet as I stand, winded and red-faced over him.
Looking up at my naked face, Apollonius begins to laugh again, slow drunken sounds from his diaphragm as the venom finally overwhelms his body. He spreads his arms wide on the ground, covered in dark blood like some evil primordial squid. Sevro runs up and punts him in the temple, more for good measure, and the man’s eyes roll behind his heavy eyelids as he drifts into blackness.
I stand panting over Apollonius.
“Thank you,” I say to the Obsidian. His eyes search my face, knowing now who I am. He shrugs in amusement and looks back at the warden. For a moment I think he’s going to take his revenge and bash the Copper’s skull in. Instead, he tosses the bent hookah to the ground.
“Bloodyhell,” Sevro says. “The warden?”
Thraxa’s standing over the man. “Unconcious, lucky for him.”
“Corrupt, now blind.” I grunt. “Something tells me he’s got the money for a new pair.”
“Goldilocks, you prime?” Sevro asks. Alexandar hunches at the door. He wavers, then lurches to undo his mask, managing to get it off before he throws up inside it.
Sevro jumps away. “Idiot.”
“Sorry,” Alexandar says, face pale. He avoids looking at the mangled warden and puts his mask back on.
“The Minotaur, felled by a hookah.” Sevro kicks the hookah and pats the Obsidian on the shoulder. “Wicked swing. Looks like our deal with the warden’s off….”
“Why? Blind or not, he wakes up and reports this to the Republic, he spends the rest of his life in a cell. Something tells me he’s gonna bite the bullet.”
“Hell of a gamble,” Sevro says. “His men might go around him….”
“You think they’re not on the take? When in doubt, depend on self-interest. Take Thraxa and Alexandar and double back to the Omega Level to help Pebble and Clown transport the other prisoners. Thraxa and I will take this piece of shit to the sub. Go.”
He pauses, looking darkly down at Apollonius. “This is shit,” he mutters so only I can hear.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I won 6–3. Time comes, I kill the prick.” He jerks his head at the Obsidian. “What do we do with…hey! What’s your name?” The Obsidian stares at him in annoyance and points to his mouth. “Nevermind. Tongueless it is.” Sevro looks back at me. “He’s seen your face.”
The Obsidian waits patiently as I look him up and down. “Want a ride?”