I FINISH MY MORNING LAPS in the pool on the fourth deck of the Nessus in the early morning. The swimming is part of the physical therapy to recover from the razor through the arm I suffered in the fight with the Republic Wardens. My body is a history of aches and pains. Not even in my mid-thirties, I’ve already had three cartilage replacement surgeries for my knees alone.
The swimming makes the arm ache like hell, but also helps displace the feeling of claustrophobia that has crept in during our second week in deep space in our push toward Society territory. That and razor training with Alexandar help keep my mind from my family.
After dressing in my stateroom, I find Sevro in his quarters. He’s lying on his bed watching a video of Electra when she was a baby. The little girl floats in the air above him, silent and dour even as an infant, as Victra dresses her in a high-collared vest. Sophocles’s tail swishes in the air, blocking the camera’s view. I hear Kavax laugh in the background. It’s been two weeks without communication to the outside world. It’s eating at Sevro.
“You still not out of bed?” I ask. “Lazy bastard.”
He squints over at me, eyes still swollen with sleep. “What’s the rush?”
“Apollonius. We agreed to talk to him this morning.”
“Oh, that.” He looks one last time at his daughter and turns off the holopad. “Sure we can’t keep him on ice a few weeks longer?”
“I wish. We’ll be in Gold territory in five days. Time to see if he’s on board.”
“And if he’s not?”
“Then you get to space him. And we burn for Mercury.”
Pebble finds us in the hall on our way to the chute down to the fourth deck. She looks tense. “We have a problem.”
We find Colloway hovering over a holoDisplay in the sensor room on the second deck. Clown stands behind him with his arms crossed, foot nervously tapping. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“Tell him what you told me,” Pebble says.
Colloway rubs his temples. For as much sleep as the man gets lazing around on the recreation room’s couch and playing immersion games, he looks exhausted. “So, you know this ship has an internal monitoring system that detects our thermal signatures.”
“Sure.”
He brings up the blueprint of the ship. Human-shaped figures glow red amongst the decks. I see Winkle’s cool signature on the bridge, Thraxa’s hot signature as she trains endlessly in the gymnasium. Sevro chuckles and points to two thermal signatures side by side in one of the staterooms. “Looks like someone’s going to Bone City. Who is that?”
“There’s twenty-four of us,” Colloway continues, counting off the figures one by one. Many are still in their bunks. “Ten Golds in the cells.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Sevro asks. “We got shit to do.”
“Last night I couldn’t sleep…”
“You mean you were perving on people.”
“So I synced into the ship and I saw this.” He rewinds the blueprint to the middle of the night. “Count them.”
“There’s twenty-five.” Sevro squints. “Shit. How did you just notice this?”
“There’s no reason for me to sync when we’re on autopilot. It’s a waste of my time,” Colloway says in annoyance. “It looks like they’re masking their signature, staying near the engines or wearing a thermal blanket.”
“They could have been on the ship before it was stolen,” Pebble says. “Could be a dockworker or one of Quick’s servants.”
“If it’s a docker, then they could sabotage our life support systems or melt down the helium core,” Colloway says. “That would be—and I say this as understatement—cataclysmic.”
“A gorydamn grandma in the com center would be as dangerous as a Stained,” Clown says. “If they transmit on our coms, the whole gory system will know where we are. Society and Republic. We’re slagged! They’ll find us, obliterate us, and our molecules will drift through space for ten million years.”
I turn to Clown. “You done?”
“Not really.”
“You’re done. Get Alexandar and Thraxa and meet me in the armory.”
Ten minutes later, Clown, Alexandar, Thraxa, Sevro, and I shoulder our multiRifles. I toss them green clips of ammunition. “Spider only,” I say. “I want the stowaway alive.”
By eliminating the known thermal signatures one at a time, Colloway manages to track the signature of the intruder back from the galley to the engine room. The open room spans all four decks at the back of the ship. Metal walkways switchback down from the top and extend out amongst the machinery. The lights won’t turn on. Thraxa and Clown guard the bottom exit while the rest of us come down from the top, searching level by level. Our helmet floodlamps chase the shadows away as we comb through the machinery. Sevro signals me as he kneels. He shows me a wrapper for a Venusian noodle bowl. There’s more litter in an alcove on the third level, along with a holoVisor and a bundle of blankets.
There’s a patter of feet on the level below. “Rat?” Sevro says with a grin.
“Go,” I say. Sevro and Alexandar jump off the side of the metal walkway and land on the one below. There’s a thump and a laugh.
“Darrow, you better come down here,” Sevro calls up.
“It’s definitely a rat, a bloodydamn big one with freckles,” Alexandar adds. I take the stairs and find Alexandar and Sevro standing over a small woman who sits on her haunches. Her face is illuminated by their floodlamps.
“Rhonna?” I sputter.
My niece grins up at me. “Sorry, Uncle, got lost on the way to the shuttle. Is this New Sparta?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Stowing away,” she says. “Can I stand or are you going to shoot me?” She looks in annoyance at Alexandar’s rifle. Unlike Sevro, he still points it at her. She stands.
Sevro chuckles. “Got some big iron balls on you, don’t ya?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“I gave you an order,” I say, trying to calm myself down as Thraxa joins us.
“Yeah. You can put me in the brig if you want, but I think the cells are all filled up. Or you can let me do my job. If Sir Pukealot here can have your back, so can I.” Alexandar glowers in embarrassment. “By my count we’re two weeks in. No way to turn back now, Uncle. You’re stuck with me.” She’s right.
“You think this is about me?” I ask. “You just broke your father’s heart.”
Her jaw tightens. “It’s my life. Now, can I join the rest of the crew and get to—”
“Alexandar. Shoot the dumbass,” Sevro says.
Alexandar grins. “With pleasure.”
Her eyes widen. “No, not him. Anyone but—”
Alexandar grins and fires his spider poison round into her thigh. She spins down, grunting in pain. Her fingers curl as the paralytic spreads. “Ouch.”
“Leave her,” Sevro says when Thraxa tries to pick her up. “You’ll be able to move by tonight, shithead. Clean up your filth and find a bunk. Tomorrow you scrub the latrines in every bathroom. Starting with mine. Real shame for you because curry is on the menu tonight.” He bends down. “You sad because you ain’t with a Drachenjäger squad? A mechman? Please, we eat those little bitches for breakfast. You’re lucky to be in our glorious presence.” He leans in even closer. “You want respect? Earn it.”
“The nerve of her,” I mutter as we head out into the hallway.
“Least she didn’t come through the viewports.”
“Poor Kieran. You should have seen him ask me to leave her behind.”
“Was a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Thraxa says, catching up to us.
Sevro grins. “Listen, Thraxa, kids are like dogs. Some whimper, some bark, some growl. You just gotta find the right language and then speak it back at them.”
Alexandar smirks. “You can speak to dogs?”
“I talk to you, don’t I?”
Min-Min lounges in the brig guard post forward of the cellblock with her rifle leaning against the wall when Sevro and I arrive to talk with Apollonius. Her bandy metal legs are up on the console, a coffee cup balanced precariously on her hydraulic joint as she watches a holo comedy about a Red moving in with a Violet and Gray in Hyperion City; hijinks ensue. She scratches the coarse whiskers on her neck and looks back at us. “ ’Lo, bosses.”
“How are the little devils today?” I ask.
“Quiet as mice.” Min-Min keeps one eye on the projection and laughs as the Red tries to reach the top cabinet in their apartment’s kitchen to get the whiskey the others hid from him. “That’s some racist shit,” she says. “We’re not all alcoholics.” The smell of whiskey wafts up from her coffee. “Tongueless is on his conjugal visit again.” I look down the hall to see the old Obsidian sitting cross-legged looking into one of the cells.
“How many is that?”
“Comes every day.”
Our collection of “escaped prisoners” is a motley assortment of devils. Half are men and women the Howlers labored to capture personally over the last ten years—all ten are Venusian. It seems a blasphemy that we’ve been the ones to free them. I feel the silent anger in the Howlers at mess, in the ship’s gymnasium, even when they pass in the hall. Not anger toward me or our mission, but as though this is some grand joke that existence plays on us. We circle around again to see the same faces, the same ships, the same battles. Again and again. Around and around. It’s the very reason I need to kill the man at the axis of the cycle, around which this all spins.
Tongueless sits on the floor of the hall, the warden’s dog asleep in his lap, watching Apollonius play his phantom violin through the one-way glass. The old Obsidian has cut his hair short and trimmed his beard to a fine goatee. He looks an altogether different man, sophisticated even in the military fatigues. His dog wakes and growls as we approach. Quieting only when Tongueless strokes him behind the ears.
Apollonius is naked in the dim light of his cell. His clothing folded neatly on the floor. It disturbs me, watching him rocking there playing his phantom instrument, his golden hair pouring down his shoulders, eyes closed, face a monklike mask of concentration. A bandage is affixed to his head over a shaved patch from Winkle’s surgery.
I want him dead. Gone from the worlds. He’s taken two people I love and tormented another as a boy. The thought of setting him loose again makes me sick.
“Do you fancy the evil violinist, Tongueless?” Sevro asks.
The Obsidian looks up at us with his dark eyes and shakes his head. He makes a motion of the violin and points to one of the tattoos on his arm of an old man with a long beard and a harp in his hands. It is the Norse god of music, Bragi. “Is he that good?” I ask.
Tongueless nods. He taps his ear and then his heart, as if to say he wishes he could hear him play again. “Not happening,” Sevro says. Tongueless nods, accepting that, and stands to leave us alone with Apollonius.
I watch him go and wonder what he’d say had he a tongue. He’s unique amongst the Obsidians I’ve met. The way he moves is elegant, cultured, like he’s accustomed to finer things. He’s quickly become a new favorite in my pack, owing to his craft in the kitchen. Men don’t ask questions if you feed them well. But I’m beginning to suspect there’s more to the story about how he ended up in an Omega cell than simply getting on the wrong side of the warden’s temper.
“Why does he always have to get naked every time?” Sevro mutters, drawing me back to Apollonius. “Go on. Let’s get it over with.”
I deactivate the opacity on Apollonius’s side of the glass so that he can see us in the dimly lit hall. He’s nearing the end of his song. Rocking and thrashing out a crescendo, then a slow, silent denouement. And when he has finished, he leans back to look at us, an amused smile on his lips.
“Did you like my sonata?” he asks, not waiting for us to answer. “Much approbation is granted Paganini as the great violin virtuoso of the pentadactyl period. Well, before the coming of Virenda, of course. But for sheer Orphian transcendental rigor, I’ve long maintained a true master must attempt Ernst’s Variations on ‘The Last Rose of Summer.’ The fingered harmonics and left-hand pizzicato are facile enough, but the arpeggios are a Herculean labor.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Sevro says.
“A pity for you to have such narrow concerns.”
“You’re dying to tell us when you first played it, aren’t you? I know you folks can’t resist a little brag,” Sevro mutters. “Well, go on. Impress us, Rath.”
“I mastered it when I was twelve.”
“Twelve? No!” Sevro claps his hands. “What genius! Reap, did you know that we had a psychotic virtuoso aboard?”
“I had no idea.”
“The mastery of music is its own reward,” Apollonius says. “The process by which one’s heart is entwined with masters of old. You do not know the toil, nor could you suffer it, and so you will never know the reward of understanding it.” He leans forward with slit eyes. “But by all means, dismiss it if you cannot comprehend. Art survived the Mongols. I wager it will survive you.”
“You’re hardly a patron of the arts, from what I’ve heard,” I say. “You broke Tactus’s violin when he was a child. Not very inclusive of you.”
“So full of nuance, families. Would I understand your relationship with your brother?” He gently plucks out several strands of hair and uses them to tie the wild of his mane into a ponytail. “Have you pulled me from my cage just to put me in another? Seems a cruel irony for a man who prides himself on breaking chains.”
“I hardly think your suite on Deepgrave was a cage,” I say. “Did well for yourself.”
“Not so stark as your prison was, I admit. The Jackal was a bizarre creature, pregnant with pain, wasn’t he? Much like his sister.”
“You’re lucky we haven’t spaced you, after what you’ve done,” Sevro sneers. “But talk about Virginia again. Go on. We’ll see how good your violin sounds in vacuum.”
Apollonius sighs. “My goodmen, enemies we may be, but let us not pretend we are bands of troglodytes warring over fire. We are sophisticated creatures who met in conflict under the agreed-upon terms of total war.”
“You’re not sophisticated. You’re a monster wearing a man-suit,” Sevro says. “You boiled men alive.”
“My brother boiled men alive. I am a warrior. Not a torturer.”
“Your brother, you. What’s the difference?”
Sevro looks at Apollonius and reduces him to a gestalt of all the men who have hurt him over the years. He has suffered the likes of Apollonius his entire life.
He forgave Cassius for me, once, because he knew the hope of our rebellion balanced on the fragile notion that a man could change. I suspect he’s worried that I believe the same for the man before us. The Goblin stands close to me now, as if to protect me from the prisoner, despite the sheet of duroglass.
But the deepspine truth is that he’s really trying to protect me from myself. That’s why he came.
He need not worry: I will never trust this man. Cassius was a man who lived for an ideal; Apollonius is too bright and too narcissistic to live for anything but himself. But even that can be useful.
Apollonius sighs. “Please don’t insult me by claiming you still labor under the notion that you alone in history are an innocent army. War summons the demons from angels. I’ve seen Gold scalps hanging from Obsidian battle armor. City blocks naught but powder and meat. Or would you have me forget the atrocities you wrought on Luna? On Earth and Mars? Hypocrisy is not becoming of either master or hound. Especially ones who ally themselves with Obsidians.”
“The men who did that were punished,” I say, knowing that it isn’t true. It was two whole tribes that sacked Luna after Octavia’s death and ravaged its citizens—low- and highColor alike. Too many to prosecute without losing Sefi. Compromises were made. Always compromises.
“I was an agent of war, like you,” Apollonius continues. “We played the same game. I lost. I was caught. Punished. And I used the devices nature and nurture provided me to lessen the blunt impact of incarceration. The great hilarity is that, in many ways, I owe you a debt of thanks.” Sevro grunts at that. “Solitude can be the best society. You see, I encountered a perilous choice when I faced your tribunal and received the terms of my sentence. A choice that helped me define myself.
“After life imprisonment was handed down with clean white gloves, a syringe was left for me in my cell by which I was to erase myself from existence. Left by you, Sevro? No matter. The more cowardly examples of my kind did choose this expedient death, finding the shame of losing an empire more than their hearts could bear. Your late friend Fabii, for example. They caved to their own despair. Do any now sing their songs? Does anyone speak their glory?”
He lets the silence answer.
“I knew it was my duty to my own legend to survive this trial. But I was still crippled by my own devices. Imagine me as a great fully-rigged man-of-war. Four masts, great bulwarks of oak and five score cannon. All my life I have sailed smooth seas and waters that parted for me by virtue of my own splendor. Never tested. Never riled. A tragic existence, if ever there was one.
“But at long last: a storm! And when I met it I found my hull…rotten. My planks leaking brine, my cannon brittle, powder wet. I foundered upon the storm. Upon you, Darrow of Lykos.” He sighs. “And it was my own fault.”
I war between wanting to punch him in the mouth and surrendering into my curiosity by letting him continue. He’s a strange man with a seductive presence. Even as an enemy, his flamboyance fascinated me. Purple capes in battle. A horned Minotaur helmet. Trumpets blaring to signal his advance, as if welcoming all challengers. He even broadcast opera as his men bombarded cities.
After so much isolation, he’s delighting in imposing his narrative upon us.
“My peril is thus: I am, and always have been, a man of great tastes. In a world replete with temptation, I found my spirit wayward and easy to distract. The idea of prison, that naked, metal world, crushed me. The first year, I was tormented. But then I remembered the voice of a fallen angel. ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’ I sought to make the deep not just my heaven, but my womb of rebirth.
“I dissected the underlying mistakes which led to my incarceration and set upon an internal odyssey to remake myself. But—and you would know this, Reaper—long is the road up out of hell! I made arrangements for supplies. I toiled twenty hours a day. I reread the books of youth with the gravity of age. I perfected my body. My mind. Planks were replaced; new banks of cannon wrought in the fires of solitude. All for the next storm.
“Now I see it is upon me and I sail before you the paragon of Apollonius au Valii-Rath. And I ask one question: for what purpose have you pulled me from the deep?”
“Bloodyhell, did you memorize that?” Sevro mutters.
The man before me is not the man I saw before the tribunal all those years ago. His vanity has remained, but now it is a hardened, sharpened sort. Once, he was a vulture of the Society. Instigating duels for fun. Throwing orgies that would last for days. He and Karnus au Bellona were even longtime drinking companions. He’d been looking for a reason to exist, to escape the nihilism of tedium. Then war came.
“You say you have dissected your mistakes,” I say. “Let’s put that to the test.”
“I welcome all tests.”
“Goryhell, do you ever shut up?” Sevro asks. “Just let us get a verb in.”
Apollonius folds his hands in his lap, waiting patiently.
“Tell me, if you can, how you found yourself in Deepgrave,” I say.
“The man who thought himself a king discovered he was but a pawn. I angered the wrong man. Magnus au Grimmus. The Ash Lord. But you know that, don’t you?”
“I was curious if you did.”
He smiles to himself. “I was the first Martian to fire at Lilath au Faran’s ship over Luna, you know. I helped save Luna from nuclear holocaust. And I brought him ships, legions, and, along with the other great Martian houses, political capital to offset House Saud on Venus. But he resented me because I would not bend the knee like those Pixie Carthii. I was his ally, not his servant.
“I never saw the knife coming. When he proposed a mission to cut off the head of the Rising, I volunteered eagerly. He let me lead a division of my knights; one century of ten that were to penetrate the Citadel and kill you and your families. With the Carthii we were to be a thousand Peerless Scarred. What a sight it would have been! Not had such a pure force been assembled for a single mission since the Battle of Zephyria. It was to be a coordinated attack.
“My century infiltrated Luna. But it wasn’t until we were pressing through the Citadel that I realized we were alone. No other century was on the grounds, let alone the moon. We’d been played as fools by the Ash Lord. By the Carthii. Our support did not answer on the coms, but the Ash Lord’s voice did speak. It was a prerecorded message….” He pauses, modulates his voice to a baritone rumble, “ ‘The seed of Valii-Rath will die with you and your brother. You will be forgotten. Lost to the stars. Farewell, Minotaur.’ I knew I was to die, so I made the effort to do so in glory by taking your head. I failed.” Apollonius shrugs. “But you knew much of this. You interrogated me, my men. So, again, I ask, why liberate me?”
“Is it not obvious by now to your supreme intellect?” I ask. “There is only one thing you and I share. A common devil. I’ve pulled you from your prison to offer you the most precious thing I can offer a man like you: revenge.”
“Revenge? Do tell.”
“Like you, I seek the head of the Ash Lord. The difficulty is parting it from his body. In that, I require your assistance.”
He’s suspicious. “I have no army, no weapons, nothing left to give but blood and bone. How can I benefit you, Darrow?”
“It’s not what you have. It was what was stolen from you.” My smile is cold and hard. “Part of what I told you in the cell was true. The Ash Lord did not kill your brother. Tharsus is alive.”
Apollonius is stunned. “How…”
“You know the answer. You’ve wondered if it was possible. Tharsus sold your life for your title of paterfamilias of House Valii-Rath. For your monies. Your men. Your ships.”
“I see.” The charm of the man vanishes. “If I agree to help you…what trust can there be between devils?”
“This isn’t about trust. It’s about leverage. That bandage on the back of your head is from a particular procedure involving a cranial drill. There’s a quarter ounce of high-grade explosive embedded in your gray matter as well as a neural chip to stimulate your ocular nerve.” I activate the detonation timer on my datapad. Numerals appear on my datapad, but also in Apollonius’s vision, via Winkle’s biomod. A ten, then a nine, then an eight…“You have seven seconds to give me an answer. Yes or no.”
Six. Sevro grins.
Four. Apollonius stares blankly.
Two. I back away from the glass.
“Very well.” Apollonius smiles, though his anger has not abated. “I accept your proposal. But I have demands.”
Thirty minutes later, we watch Apollonius devour a two-kilogram steak in the Nessus’s officers’ dining room with the patience and manners of a well-bred crocodile. Each bite-sized piece is dipped into the jus and chewed laboriously before being washed down with a thick Bordeaux from our stores. When he has finished, he leaves several ounces of the steak unattended, as well as a thumb of the red wine, and has only a spoonful of the iced lemon dessert that he requested made for him by Tongueless. He leans back in his chair and blesses my lieutenants with an expansive smile as Alexandar takes his plate away. Apollonius levels his gaze at Alexandar.
“You’re a pureblood-looking boy. What is your name?”
“Alexandar.”
Apollonius eyes him with interest and then gestures to Sevro and Colloway. “Does it not rankle you to serve such genetic inferiors, Alexandar?”
“I’ve now seen sharks fly and lions bark.” Alexandar laughs. “A lecture over genes from a Valii-Rath.” He leans forward, Apollonius’s plate still in his hands. “It would have been a severe pleasure to see my grandfather educate you on the merit of your genes.”
“And whom do you call kin, Alexandar?” Apollonius asks.
“Lorn au Arcos.”
“Well now! A griffin in the flesh.” Apollonius is impressed. “Blood of the Conquerors still in your veins makes you an endangered species. You must have been there when my baby brother was gutted by your grandfather on Europa. You would have been in the seed of youth. Eight, nine? Tell me, did the violence excite you?”
“It educated me on how to kill Valii-Rath. In that, it proved most satisfactory.”
“One could say we have a blood feud between us, young man.”
“Please,” Alexandar says with another laugh. “I wouldn’t give your lowly house the dignity of my attention.” The insult finds its mark. Sevro shoos him out of the room with a fraternal slap on the backside.
“Apollonius,” I say quietly. “If you insist on provoking my men, we will have a problem.”
“Provocation is the nature of predators like us, Darrow.” He looks around. “But of course, where are my manners? Apologies for offending you.” He waves his hand to the walls. “This is not your moonBreaker. Nor a dreadnought or a destroyer. The officers’ mess is much too small. A torchShip perhaps? Smaller?”
He’s a sharp one. “It’s a frigate. Xiphos-class.”
“So they’re finally deployed. What a curious ship for a warlord, and custom tables…What a curious exodus from Deepgrave. If one didn’t know better, a sagacious intellect might suspect that something is foul in the state of the Republic.”
“This is a black ops mission,” I say. The less he knows, the better. “The Morning Star is a little less than discreet.”
“Indeed,” he says. “Now, I think it is time you tell me about my brother and what has befallen my house in my absence.”
Sevro smiles. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Your house is a shadow,” I say. “Your brother may have bought his life. But it was at a steep price. He is a political puppet. Your destroyers and torchShips have been given to your enemies, the Carthii of Venus. Your coffers have been drained into the Ash Lord’s own pockets. Many of your legions have been disbanded, the men conscripted to serve the Ash Lord. Your house is small yet again. Everything you built on the profit of war is gone….”
“Except my name.” A great darkness has built in his eyes.
“Give it a year,” Sevro says. “Men forget.”
“How do you know all this?” Apollonius asks skeptically.
“One of your family lawyers defected several years ago.”
“And where is he now?”
“Slipped in the shower,” Sevro says. “Our people found him in thirty-four pieces. Atalantia likes her assassins to make a statement.”
Apollonius smiles pleasantly. “And what of my brother? Has he sat idle as the house of my mother and father was pillaged by that Lunese brute?”
“The lawyer said Tharsus has given himself over to vice,” I say.
“Oh, how typical of him.” He picks at his nails. “If my house has fallen to disgrace, what is my utility to you? In six years, I imagine the defenses for Venus have quite changed. I have neither information nor means.”
“No. But your brother does.”
I throw a holo of Venus into the air above the table. The verdant planet with two polar ice caps is ringed with metal and military ships. A great dark spot mars the center of one of Venus’s oceans. Starhall thinks that is where the Ash Lord resides, but his confidants are far more discreet than those of Valii-Rath.
“This is the latest image of Venus from our spy telescopes,” I say. “Unlike Luna, she is self-sustaining. Farmland, teeming oceans, and vast mineworks. But the rigors of war are demanding. All production is geared toward the war effort. There is no trade. That means no ships in or out.”
“There is trade from Mercury….”
“No longer. Mercury’s skies are mine,” I say.
Apollonius’s eyebrows float upward. “Indeed? Respect. How did you bypass the defense platforms?”
“With an Iron Rain,” Sevro says.
“What a price you must have paid. What a price.” He looks around the table. “Is that why you must risk life and limb for this desperate gambit, because you shattered your army?”
I ignore him. “As you can see, there is an extreme military presence on Venus. The engines of this ship and the stealth capabilities could conceivably run the blockade to escape Venus if we need to, but not to land there. We need you to help us land.”
“As I said—”
“Your brother may have tamed his spirit to survive. He may have bent a knee to the Ash Lord. But what is one thing that a brother Rath cannot tame?”
Sevro looks at Apollonius’s plate. “His appetite.”
“The rigors of war have forced even the wealthy to ration. But your brother has plunged himself into debt with his taste for blackmarket goods, and his appetite has not declined. Sevro…”
He pulls up his datapad. “Ninety-nine boxes of Earth wine, two hundred bottles of baiji, two hundred bottles of brandy.” He grimaces and says in a small voice, “One hundred thirty-seven bottles of Earth whiskey. Four bottles from Mars.” I look back at him, noting the low count of Martian whiskey. Sevro remains assiduously looking down at his datapad. “Two hundred bottles of arrack. Two hundred bottles of schochu. Two thousand kilograms of beef, five hundred kilograms of lamb, four hundred snails, three kilograms of hummingbird tongues, three kilograms of caviar, and twenty imaginary Pinks of Quicksilver’s personal stock.”
Slowly, Apollonius begins to clap.
“Yes. Yes! Now, that is the Reaper I remember! Tharsus will not be able to resist. Avarice is his nature. He will have a broker beyond Venus, likely Bastion station. I suppose that destination may prove inconvenient.” I nod. “Then I will need a facial construct to alter my features and a com station with access to the main antenna array to contact the broker. But landing on Venus does not kill the Ash Lord. He lives in a fortress.”
I point at the dark spot on the map. “Republic Intelligence’s working theory is that he hangs his crown in the darkzone. Can you confirm?”
“There was talk of a cloaking device to absorb radio and lightwaves,” Apollonius says. “I see our engineers have made progress. That is the location of Gorgon Isle, his fortress. It is four hundred kilometers from my island. But you will need an army to breach his defenses.” He looks again at the narrow lines of the room. “And something tells me you have no army.”
“But you still do,” I say. “The Ash Lord couldn’t have taken all of your men. And I wonder. What do you think will happen when we land on your island and your legionnaires see that Apollonius au Valii-Rath, the Mad Minotaur himself, has come home? He does not return as a prisoner of the Rising, but with a platoon of loyal commandos.”
I take his Minotaur helm from a bag and slam it on a table.
“I am not mad,” he growls.
“The indomitable Minotaur,” Sevro tries.
“Better.” He strokes his helm. “You would put me at the head of a legion?”
“No,” Sevro says, dangling the bait Apollonius cannot resist. “Think bigger, Rath.”
“A coup…” Apollonius says suspiciously.
“Tharsus will give us the information we need, then your legion and my men will launch a joint attack on the Ash Lord’s fortress. When he dies, Carthii and the Saud will scramble to take his throne for themselves.” His lips curl at the mention of his Carthii enemies. “But to the Conqueror go the spoils. Your Praetors will return to fight for you. Your men will defect en masse when they hear you are alive. And in these cells beside you are ten blood family members of Houses Saud and Carthii, five from each. You will use them as bargaining chips in the ensuing struggle. We will leave Venus, but you will stay and once you have consolidated control and crowned yourself Tyrant in the Ash Lord’s stead, you will contact the Sovereign of the Republic and issue a conditional surrender.”
“And what do you believe the terms of this surrender would be?”
“You agree to end the war, to give us your rivals, including Atalantia au Grimmus, to be tried in Republic courts for war crimes. You give orders for the legions on Mercury to surrender. You rule Venus for the rest of your life—as you see fit.”
“And what would stop the Republic from killing me when it’s all over?”
“Me—and you can hold your own people hostage with the Saud atomic arsenal.”
“Well, this is magnificent for you. Isn’t it? A coup with minimal Republic loss. Enemy gutted from the inside, and the only cost is that I betray my species.”
“Species?” I ask. “You’re one of a kind, Apollonius,” I purr.
“The Gold betrayed you, Apollonius. The Carthii helped the Ash Lord put you to rot. And because of that, you’re a footnote. A man in another man’s army. I’m offering you a chance at revenge against those who sent you to your death. And a chance to dwarf the Ash Lord in the memory of humanity. We both know you don’t care about Gold. So let me help make you the last legend of a crumbling age. The Minotaur of Mars.”
“And Venus,” he says with a smile, picking up his war helm.
Sevro and I linger in the conference room after Apollonius is escorted back to his cell. “Do you think he knows that they’ll never unite behind him?” Sevro asks.
“No. He’s insane. The Golds all know it. Saud and Carthii might have bent a knee to the Ash Lord, but they’ll never surrender their homeland to a Martian brute. But if we set him loose, he’ll tear Venus apart from the inside. We will descend on a fractured Venus. The Ash Lord wanted to give us a civil war. Fine, I’ll give the bastard one right back.” I take a sip of the wine he left behind. “And if, somehow, Apollonius is able to unite them, we release the video of this little conference and his own men might just kill him for working with me.”
Sevro grimaces. “Pops would be proud of this one.”
At the mention of his father, I touch Pax’s key under my shirt.
“What’s that?” Sevro asks.
I take it out. “Pax gave it to me.”
“What’s it for?”
“A gravBike he made. When I said goodbye, he told me I wouldn’t be coming back.” I look over at him. I know I should have put words to my regrets sooner. “I’m sorry I made you leave your girls. About Wulfgar.”
“You didn’t make me do a damn thing.” He pats my leg. “Let’s just make sure all this is worth the price we’re paying.”
“It is,” I tell myself. “It has to be.”