Dark Age
Page 83
There is a sudden flurry of firing in the Mound. I had no doubt Darrow would make a last stand. But with the introduction of advanced weapons to the battle, it is a certain affair. One knight kitted by our age is worth a thousand on horse. Perhaps more.
I run my hands along the hilt of his broken blade and feel confused by what it elicits. He threw me down in the desert. I broke him here. But neither was a true test against the other. The fate of each battle was decided before we met. Mine by the broken chaos of the Rain. His by a series of calamities which put him in a corner. I did not beat the Reaper. I simply hit him when he was down. I hold no illusions of martial supremacy, my victory was against a broken host and a bedraggled man. The legends of our age die one by one, like autumn leaves; and when they are gone, will we be lesser for their absence?
It seems cheap.
With his death imminent, the worlds feel emptier. Almost as cavernous as they did when Cassius fell. One by one, the titans of my youth disappear, and freed from their shadow, I do not feel liberated. I feel bereft.
Nothing is permanent. No one escapes.
“The bill comes at the end,” I whisper.
Rhone asks what I said, but I grow distracted when gunfire crackles on the Mound. Something has happened. I frown and stand up. The milling ranks in the courtyard point upward as ripWings dive from the sky.
Bwaaaowwww.
We take cover. The light is tremendous as a particle beam sheaves through the legs of the god Helios, who towers over the Mound. With a groan, he teeters over and crashes down into the sea. By Jove…How does Darrow have electronics? Anything within the city was fried. Unless we weren’t the only ones to have reinforcements.
Sure enough, Gold knights tear from the Mound in pursuit of a lean, battered ship that emerges from the debris. It rockets low over the ranks of soldiers filling the courtyard.
I know that ship.
A knight fills the open garage bay. It is not Darrow. His armor is brilliant white. His helmet like that of a rising sun. It retracts to reveal his face, and for a moment our eyes meet.
Cassius…
The door closes. The Archimedes ripples translucent from a cloaking device far more advanced than any technology she possessed when I called her home. She ruptures the air with a sonic boom and races toward the sky, pursued by the Ash Legions.
Diomedes lied. Cassius is alive. And Darrow has slipped the noose.
My true heart is laid bare, awash with exultation, clouded with confusion, pure with purpose. The war goes on.
ULYSSES IS BURIED ON MARS in a rose garden between Victra’s ancestral home and the sea. Across the water, the Julii city of Hippolyte splashes out into the emerald archipelagos. Victra stands just across the grave from me, but looks as distant as her city. She wears only green. I like it far better than mourning black. It reminds me of the emerald hills they say wait for us in the Vale.
I wish I could take away her pain, but all I can do is stand here and watch her suffer behind that stony face. I know the teeth of this pain wound not with their sharp bite, but with their slow grinding. Her fearsome daughter bends over the grave, whispers something to her brother, and then stands protectively at her mother’s side. She knows best. There are no words to soothe the wounded heart of a Julii.
Only five attend the funeral. The two Julii, the Reaper’s son, Volga, and me. Our retinue feels pitifully small next to the void his loss has carved. And still I cannot help but feel I do not belong.
After Ephraim came, Victra and I went to the fishing village to retrieve her son’s body from Maeve’s house. Victra washed him herself in Attica, but refused to bury him there. “He’ll sleep at home,” was all she said to me before boarding her ship.
“And now you sleep,” Victra whispers to the grave, and then turns away to walk to the coast. Pax moves to follow. Electra grabs him and he stops to watch Victra’s shoulders shake as she wades into the water and swims out to sea toward the setting sun.
When she is almost out of sight, Electra jerks her head for us to follow her down to the coast. We help her make a fire from a pile of driftwood. Everything inside feels very still as Volga and I sit beside the children in the sand. As soon as the sun is gone, Electra speaks.
“I am equal parts of my father and mother. But we Julii have a tradition. If family blood spills by your debt, you swim to the sun. You may look back when it is gone. If no light appears onshore to welcome you home, you swim on.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Some never turn to look back.”
Though Volga weeps soundlessly beside me for Ulysses, in a way she buries two today. She still has not forgiven Pax for asking Ephraim to go back to Sefi. She waited at the landing pads for twelve hours before somehow duping the Julii guards and stealing a ship. I tried to follow, but Victra herself intervened.
* * *
—
Julii military and aid ships were the first to descend on Olympia three days later when Fá and the Obsidians left it in a heap of rubble and corpses. Even my camp’s destruction couldn’t prepare me for Olympia. I’ve never seen so many crows or wild dogs before in all my life. I thought the stench was more than I could bear, but then we found Volga sitting on the steps of the high city, cradling Ephraim. She tried holding him together, but his body fell apart when she stood up. I will never forget the look on her face. It has chiseled away the stone of my heart, leaving a wound of empathy I haven’t the ken to mend.
There were no witnesses to tell us what happened to that doomed city save a mad Obsidian with both his eyes gouged out. We found him at the base of a throne swatting at the crows that came too close to a body covered with a cape. Pax and Electra knew the mad Obsidian, and the body he protected.
He somehow fled the Sol Guard who were to take him back to a medical shuttle, and disappeared into the dead city, never to be found. Pax couldn’t say who killed Ephraim, but we know who killed Sefi and sacked the city. The same monster who attacked the Pandora.
Volsung Fá.
The name is like a curse to us. A curse that deepens the more Pax explains just what his control of the Obsidians might mean for Mars. What city will they sack next? Could the Republic survive the man who took down Julii, Sefi, Valdir, and the Valkyrie in just two weeks?
I fear Volga’s name will soon be added to that list.
She wants revenge for Ephraim. It will bring her nothing but more heartache. Though my vengeance on Harmony is sated, I feel no more whole. What peace will I find if even that cannot mend me?
I did not like Ephraim but he was like a father to Volga. I saw how she looked at Victra. The slow smiles when Victra would fire a particularly clever insult her way. Her eyes focus on the dark water as she prays under her breath to the Allmother for Victra to return. She loves far too easily.
But her prayers are answered.
Six hours after Victra set out, she returns. Her dress was lost in the sea. Her legs fail her as she stumbles up the beach like a scarred ghost and sits amongst us by the fire. She ignores Pax’s offer of his cloak and sits naked until finally taking Electra’s riding cape. When her teeth stop their chattering, she looks around at us.
“One bill is paid. Debts are due.” She looks at Electra and Pax. “I swore a life oath to both of you the first time I saw you. I renew that oath here and now.” Her eyes flick to me and Volga. “To you two, I swear it for the first time. Let your enemies be my enemies. Let your errors be my errors. Let your life be my life. I do not tell lies. If ever you call, House Barca will answer.”
“Me too, for you,” Volga says.
“I agree,” I say.
Pax leans forward. “Technically you’re to say, ‘You are never in my debt,’ and she will say—” Electra hits him in the side of the head. He shuts his gob.
“What will you do now?” I ask Victra. “Go to your daughters?” She still hasn’t said where they are.
“Atalantia,” Electra murmurs in solidarity.
“My brothers are on Mercury,” I say.
“You require a ride?” Victra asks.
“No. I’m going to Earth with Volga.” Volga looks over in surprise. It hasn’t been discussed, but I know where she wants to bury him. “Ephraim wouldn’t want you getting killed going after them that did him.”
“Say his name,” she says.
“You don’t know who did it.”
“Say his name.”
“Fá,” Electra answers for me.
“Ephraim wouldn’t want you dyin’ on his accord,” I say. “You know that. I’m gonna go find my nephew, and you’re gonna bury Ephraim in South Pacifica like you said he’d want.” She does not reply. “Victra, I’ll need a ship.”
“Can you fly?” Victra asks skeptically.
I look at Volga. “I hope so.”
* * *
—
In the morning Volga and I load the coffin containing Ephraim’s remains onto a Julii racing ship that Victra has given us for the journey. Victra watches Volga secure the coffin inside. “It isn’t proper,” Victra says. “Keeping her from her revenge when you have had your own.”
“Haven’t you seen enough of that?” I ask.
“Not while Atalantia breathes. Not while Fá breathes. They cost me my son.”
“You wanna lose the rest of your children?”
Her eyes swivel down to me, and in a second I’m reminded of who she is, and who I am. “Careful, Blister.”
This woman owns cities and fleets, but I let her alone out of respect for her loss more than fear of all her legions’ and ships’ might. When it came down to it, she was just a mother on her own.
A Sol Guard rushes up to Victra and whispers something I can’t hear. She frowns. “Let them in.”
“All of them?”
“It’s the Reaper’s gorydamn brother. What do you think?”
Five minutes later, ten Republic shuttles crowd the landing pad, and the ArchGovernor of Mars walks out. Not Rollo. Somehow in all this mess, the Vox put him down in a firefight in the Citadel. Instead it is now Kieran O’Lykos. You wouldn’t even think he was the same species as his brother. He’s barely bigger than I am. And his is the kind of face meant for laughter and Laureltide dances. But he ain’t laughing as he strides toward Victra with two hundred Sons of Ares at his back. He looks like he’s gonna puke.
The Sol Guard nod in respect to their allies.
I haven’t seen that spiked helmet painted on armor in years. It really does chill the blood. The ArchGovernor greets Victra with a hug and casts a look at Volga before swooping Pax and Electra up—as much as he can, them being as big as he is. He garlands them with kisses, and then turns back to Victra with a somber look.
“Is there someplace we could speak in private?” he asks. She motions him to the shoreline. The two groups of soldiers chat across the lines as Victra and the ArchGovernor walk along the water. Pax watches intently. “What are they saying?” Volga asks.
“My hearing isn’t that good,” he replies.
“Nor your judgment,” she says point-blank. Pax looks up at her and is about to say something when she turns her back on him. Only eleven years old, and already sending men to their deaths. If Volga thought it didn’t weigh him down, she’d be dead wrong. He is in agony.
Ephraim must’ve gotten under his skin.
He was good at that, wasn’t he?
There’s a shout from Victra at something the ArchGovernor says. She wheels away from him and stalks back to us. “Volga, get in the ship,” she says. Her guards look as confused as Volga. The ArchGovernor catches up.
“It is this or another Olympia,” he calls.
“Since when do we kneel to monsters?” Victra snaps, stalking back toward the tiny man. “Since when do we abandon our own?” She jams a thumb against her chest. “I am Victra au Barca. I do not sacrifice my friends.”
The Reaper’s brother does not back down. “Heliopolis has fallen.” My heart sinks. My brothers…But he’s not done. “The Free Legions were slaughtered to a man. More than two million were impaled. My brother is dead.”
His brother.
It’s like watching wind move meadow grass. Grown men’s knees buckle across the landing pad. The Sons of Ares did not know. The Sol Guard did not know. Victra did not know. He hadn’t told her yet. She looks as if she is dying as she glances at Pax. The boy watches with a tremble in his hands. Whatever anger Victra had when she stormed away from the ArchGovernor crumples.
I feel something break inside myself. I don’t know what it is. I long ago gave my brothers up for dead. It’s for the Reaper, this emptiness. I guess I held some weird belief he couldn’t die. Some thought that as long as he lived, the Society could never come back.
But now it all seems possible. The Reaper is dead.
And they have killed something in all of us.
“By noon, all of Mars will know,” the ArchGovernor says. “Victra, my brother is dead. I know Virginia told you she sent a man. He’s been dark since he got to Mercury. Whatever happened, there were no survivors. And the Heir of Silenius has returned.” Victra stiffens. “Atalantia will sail on Luna. If the Vox don’t see reason…Earth won’t be able to hold. It will just be Mars that’s left. We can’t afford to fight the Obsidians with what’s coming. You know that.” Something goes unspoken between them. Something they can’t let us know. “Old debts are coming due.”
Victra turns to look at Volga. “I swore an oath to her.”
Volga looks around in confusion.
“What you lookin’ at her for?” I snap. “What’s going on? Victra?”
“You tell her, if you can stomach it,” Victra says to the ArchGovernor.
The man looks tired, but his voice is almost soothing. “After Volsung Fá left Olympia with more than half its citizens in chains, he sent a deputation to us. He claims to be the father of Ragnar Volarus.” Pax flinches. The ArchGovernor looks Volga sadly in the eye. “And he pledged no further acts of violence toward the Republic, and offered to give us the survivors of his massacre and depart Mars….”
“Depart Mars? For what price?” I demand.
“His granddaughter,” Victra says. Volga does not move a muscle.
I look back and forth between them. “Slag off.”
Volga’s mouth moves up and down. “But…”
“You were born in a Grimmus slave kennel,” Victra says. “You are the product of a dead Terran gladiator named Wrothga and a man I fought beside. You are the daughter of Ragnar Volarus. And if this Fá is telling the truth, you are his only living heir. Just as you were Sefi’s.”
“What?” Electra whispers. Pax closes his eyes in thought. They open just as Volga whispers.
“No…” She looks at the shocked soldiers first, as if they will save her or something, and then to her own hands. “I am a freelancer.” She looks up. “Did Ephraim…”
“No,” Pax says. “He didn’t know.” I think he’s lying.
I step in front of her, wishing I had a pistol.
“Get on the shuttle, Volga.”
She doesn’t move. She looks at Victra for guidance. “Get on the shuttle. They won’t fire through me,” Victra says.
“You’re a freelancer, Volga,” the ArchGovernor calls. “So let me put a price on it. If you go to Fá, he leaves this planet and you save millions of lives. We may beat him if you refuse, but when Gold comes after that, Mars will fall in a day. Volga, my brother is gone. We need heroes.”
That does it.
Volga straightens to her full hei
ght. I try to push her toward the shuttle, but she settles me with one hand. “Lyria,” she says. “Lyria. Promise me you will take Ephraim to South Pacifica, and that you will find your family.”
“Don’t do this.”
“I am not a slave. It is my choice.”
“You can’t. You don’t—”
“Ephraim would,” she says. “He did not raise me to be a bad woman. But he did not raise me to be good, either. Fá will bring me close, and he will pay for his evil.” She smiles down at me. “Thank you for helping me. I have never had a friend so small be so big.” She kisses me on the forehead and steps forward.
* * *
—
I watch from a tower on Victra’s estate as the Obsidian ships disappear into the evening sky. They are said to be bound for the asteroid belt, but who can be certain? Pax joins me from below. I’m too disgusted with his Republic to look at him. Mars rose up for us against the Red Hand. Gamma rose up. At just the moment when I was beginning to believe in people, they sent Volga to hell.
“I remember the first time we met,” Pax says after a while. “I was presumptuous and wounded you. I would like to ask your forgiveness, because I’ve done it again.” He waits for me to turn. I don’t.
“What did you do?”
“Victra came to me and asked some rather peculiar questions. Innocently, of course. What she asked, however, led me to believe you may have a…parasite…So, I hacked and read the doctors’ reports on your physical.”
“Your father just died, and you’re going through my physical? What? Never seen a pair of tits before?”
He goes quiet. “I recently learned my mother has come back to life.”
I glance at him. “The Sovereign’s alive?”
He nods. “She’s coming here and has ordered the Republic to summon its strength to Mars. So I believe I should be very industrious until she arrives. Especially in matters as curious as this.”
“If you read the report, you know.” I knock on my head. “Poor thing went and broke on me. Done’s done. Her people can’t figure anything, and don’t know how to extract it without killing me. Still got the orb, though, and that’s mine.”