Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney sweepers come to dust
“Per aspera, ad astra,” my Golden friends whisper, even Sevro. And with a press of a button, Roque disappears from our lives to begin his last journey to join Ragnar and generations of fallen warriors in the sun. I remain behind. The others leave. Mustang lingers with me, eyes following Cassius as he’s escorted away.
“What are your plans for him?” she asks me when we’re left alone.
“I don’t know,” I say, angry she would ask that now.
“Darrow, are you all right?”
“Fine. I just need to be alone right now.”
“OK.” She doesn’t leave me. Instead, she steps closer. “It’s not your fault.”
“I said I want to be alone.”
“It’s not your fault.” I look over at her, angry she won’t leave, but when I see how gentle her eyes are, how open to me they are, I feel the tension in my ribs release. The tears come unbidden. Streaking down my cheeks. “It’s not your fault,” she says, pulling me close as I feel the first sob rattle my chest. She wraps her arms around my waist and puts her forehead into my chest. “It’s not your fault.”
—
Later that night my friends and I have supper together in the stateroom I’ve inherited from Roque. It’s a quiet affair. Even Sevro doesn’t have much to say. He’s been quiet since Victra left, something gnawing in the back of his mind. The trauma of the past few days weighs heavy on all of us. But these few men and women know where we travel, and it’s that knowledge that adds even more weight than the regular soldier carries.
Mustang wants to stay behind with me, but I don’t want her to. I need time to think. So I quietly click the door shut behind her. I am alone. Not just at the table in my suite, but in my grief. My friends came to Roque’s funeral for me, not him. Only Sefi was kind about his passing, because over the course of our journey to Jupiter she learned of Roque’s prowess in battle and so respected him in a pure way the others can’t. Still, of my friends, only I loved Roque as much as he deserved in the end.
The Imperator’s stateroom still smells like Roque. I leaf through the old books on his shelves. A piece of blackened ship metal floats in a display case. Several other trophies hang on the wall. Gifts from the Sovereign “For heroism at the Battle of Deimos” and from the ArchGovernor of Mars for “The Defense of Aureate Society.” Sophocles’s Theban Plays lies open on the bedside. I’ve not changed the page. I’ve not changed anything. As if by preserving the room I can keep him alive. A spirit in amber.
I lie down to sleep, but can only stare at the ceiling. So I rise and pour three fingers of scotch from one of his decanters and watch the holoTube in the lounge. The web is down thanks to the hacking war. Creates an eerie feeling being disconnected from the rest of humanity. So I search the old programs on the ship’s computer, skimming through vids of space pirates, noble Golden knights, Obsidian bounty hunters and a troubled Violet musician on Venus, till I find a menu with recently played vids catalogued. The most recent dates to the night before the battle.
My heart thumps heavily in my chest as I sort through the vids. I look over my shoulder, like I’m going through someone else’s journal. Some are Aegean renditions of Roque’s favorite opera, Tristan and Isolde, but most are feeds from our time at the Institute. I sit there, my hand in the air, about to click on the feed. But instead I feel compelled to wait. I call Holiday on my com.
“You up?”
“Now I am.”
“I need a favor.”
“Don’t you always.”
—
Twenty minutes later, Cassius, chained hand and foot, shuffles in from the hall to join me. He’s escorted by Holiday and three Sons. I excuse them. Nodding my thanks to Holiday. “I can take care of myself.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, that’s not exactly a fact.”
“Holiday.”
“We’ll be right outside, sir.”
“You can go to bed.”
“Just shout if you need anything, sir.”
“Ironclad discipline you have here,” Cassius says awkwardly after she’s left. He stands in my circular marble atrium, eying the sculptures. “Roque always did dress up a place. Unfortunately he’s got the taste of a ninety-year-old orchestra first chair.”
“Born three millennia late, wasn’t he?” I reply.
“I rather think he would have hated the toga of Rome. Distressing fashion trend, really. They made an effort to bring it back in my father’s day. Especially during drinking bouts and some of the breakfast clubs they had back then. I’ve seen the pictures.” He shudders. “Dreadful stuff.”
“One day they’ll say it about our high collars,” I say, touching mine.
He eyes the scotch in my hand. “This a social occasion?”
“Not exactly.” I lead him into the lounge. He’s slow and loud in the forty kilogram prisoner boots they’ve sealed his feet inside, but is still more at home in the room than I am. I pour him a scotch as he sits on the couch, still expecting some sort of trap. He raises his eyebrows at the glass.
“Really, Darrow? Poison isn’t your style.”
“It’s a cache of Lagavulin. Lorn’s gift to Roque after the Siege of Mars.”
Cassius grunts. “I never was fond of irony. Whisky, on the other hand…we never had a quarrel we couldn’t solve.” He looks through the whisky. “Fine stuff.”
“Reminds me of my father,” I say, listening to the soft hum of the air vents above. “Not that the stuff he drank was good for anything more than cleaning gears and killing brain cells.”
“How old were you when he died?” Cassius asks.
“About six, I reckon.”
“Six.” He tilts his glass thoughtfully. “My father wasn’t a solitary drinker. But sometimes I’d find him on his favorite bench. Near this eerie path on the spine of the Mons. He’d have a whisky like this.” Cassius chews the inside of his cheek. “Those were my favorite moments with him. No one else around. Just eagles coasting in the distance. He’d tell me what sort of trees were on the hillside. He loved trees. He’d ramble on about what grew where and why and what birds liked to roost there. Especially in winter. Something about how they looked in the cold. I never really listened to him. Wish I had.”
He takes a drink. He’ll find the spirit in the glass. The peat, the grapefruit on the tongue, the stone of Scotland. I can never taste anything but the smoke. “Is that Castle Mars?” Cassius asks, nodding to the hologram above Roque’s console. “By Jove. It looks so small.”
“Not even the size of the engines on a torchShip,” I say.
“Boggles the mind, the exponential expectations of life.”
I laugh. “I used to think Grays were tall.”
“Well…” He smiles mischievously. “If your metric is Sevro…” He chuckles before growing serious. “I wanted to say thank you…for inviting me to the funeral. That was…surprisingly decent of you.”
“You’d have done the same.”
“Hmm.” He’s not sure of that. “This was Roque’s console?”
“Yeah. I was going through his vids. He’s rewatched most of these dozens of times. Not the strategies or the battles against other houses. But the quieter bits. You know.”
“Have you watched them?” he asks.
“I wanted to wait for you.”
He’s struck by that, and suspicious of my hospitality.