I meet her in the Ceres warroom two minutes later. The table is already carved with my slingBlade. I didn’t do it, and it’s much better work than I could have managed.
“Thoughts?” I fall into the seat opposite Mustang. We’re a council of two. It’s times like this when I miss Cassius, Roque, Quinn, all of them. Especialy Sevro.
“When Titus did this, you said we make our own law, if I remember right. You sentenced him to death. So are we still doing that? Or are we doing something more convenient?” she asks me as though she already thinks I’m letting Tactus off the hook.
I nod, surprising her. “He’ll pay,” I say.
“This … it just pisses me off.” She takes her feet off the table and leans forward to shake her head. “We’re meant to be better than this. That’s all Peerless are supposed to be—transcendent of the urges that”—she holds up ironic airquotes—“enslave the weaker Colors.”
“It isn’t about urges.” I tap the table in frustration. “It’s about power.”
“Tactus is of House Valii!” Mustang exclaims. “His family is ancient. How much power does that asshole want?”
“Power over me, I mean. I told him he couldn’t do something. Now he’s trying to prove he can do whatever he wants.”
“So he’s not another heathen like Titus.”
“You’ve met him. Of course he’s a heathen. But no. This was tactical.”
“Well, the clever shit has put you in a tight spot.”
I slap the table. “I don’t like this—someone else picking the battles or the battlefield. That’s how we will lose.”
“It’s a no-win, really. We can’t come out ahead. Someone is going to hate you either way. So we just have to figure out which way is the least damaging. Prime?”
“What about justice?” I ask.
Her eyebrows float upward. “What about winning? Isn’t that what matters?”
“You trying to trap me?”
She grins. “Just testing you.”
I frown. “Tactus killed Tamara, his Primus. Cut her saddle and then rode over her. He’s wicked. He deserves any punishment we give him.”
Mustang raises her eyebrows as if this is all to be expected. “He sees what he wants, and he takes it.”
“How admirable,” I mutter.
She tilts her head at me, lively eyes going over my face. “Rare.”
“What’s that?”
“I was wrong, about you. That’s rare.”
“Am I wrong about Tactus?” I ask. “Is he wicked, really? Or is he just ahead of the curve? Does he just grasp the game better?”
“No one grasps the game.”
Mustang puts her muddy boots on the table again and leans back. Her golden hair falls past her shoulders in a long braid. The fire crackles in the hearth, making her pupils dance in the night. I don’t miss my old friends when she smiles like that. I ask her to explain.
“No one grasps the game, because no one knows the rules. No one follows the same set of rules. It is like life. Some think honor universal. Some think laws binding. Others know better. But in the end, don’t those who rise by poison die by poison?”
I shrug. “In the storybooks. In life there’s no one left to poison them, often.”
“They expect an eye for an eye, the House Ceres slaves. Punish Tactus, you piss off the Diana kids. They get you a fortress and you spit on them for it. Remember, as far as they are concerned, Tactus hid in a horse’s belly half a day for you when you took my castle. Resentment will swell like a Copper bureaucracy. But if you don’t punish him, you’ll lose all of Ceres.”
“Can’t do that.” I sigh. “I failed this test before. I put Titus to death and thought I was meting out justice. I was wrong.”
“Tactus is an Iron Gold. His blood is as old as the Society. They look at compassion, at reform, as a disease. He is his family. He will not change. He will not learn. He believes in power. Other Colors are not people to him. Lesser Golds are not people to him. He is bound to his fate.”
Yet I’m a Red acting like a Gold. No man is bound to his fate. I can change him. I know I can. But how?
“What do you think I should do?” I ask.
“Ha! The great Reaper.” She slaps her thigh. “When have you ever cared what anyone thinks?”
“You’re not just anyone.”
She nods and, after a moment, speaks. “I was once told a story by Pliny, my tutor—a ghastly fellow, really. And a Politico now, so take this all with a shipload of salt. Anyway: On Earth, there was a man and his camel.” I laugh. She keeps going. “They were traveling across this grand desert full of all sorts of nasties. One day, as the man prepared camp, the camel kicked him for no reason. So the man whipped the camel. The camel’s wounds grew infected. It died and left the man stranded.”
“Hands. Camels. You and metaphors …”
She shrugs. “Without your army, you’re a man stranded in a desert. So tread carefully, Reaper.”
I speak with Nyla, the Ceres girl, in private. She’s a quiet one. Smart as a whip, but not physical in any way. Like a shuddering songbird, like Lea. She has a bloody swollen lip. It makes me want to castrate Tactus. She didn’t come in wicked like the rest. Then again, she got through the Passage.
“He told me he wanted me to rub his shoulders. Told me to do what he said because he was my master because he spent blood taking the castle. Then he tried … well … you know.”
A hundred generations of men have used that inhuman logic. The sadness her words create in me makes me miss home. But that happened there too. I remember the screams that made the soup ladel tremble.
Nyla blinks and stares for a moment at the floor.
“I told him I was Mustang’s slave. House Minerva’s. It’s her standard. I didn’t have to obey him. He just kept pushing me down. I screamed. He punched me, then he just held my throat till things started to fade and I barely smelled his wolfcloak anymore. Then that tall girl, Milia, knocked him off, I guess.”
She didn’t mention that there were other Diana soldiers in the room. Others watched. My army. I gave them power and this is how they use it. It’s my fault. They are mine but they are wicked. That will not be fixed by punishing one of them. They have to want to be good.
“What would you like for me to do to him?” I ask her. I don’t reach out to comfort her. She doesn’t need it, even though I think I do. She reminds me of Evey too.
Nyla touches her dirty curls and shrugs.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing isn’t enough.”
“To fix what he tried to do to me? To make it right?” She shakes her head and her hands clutch her sides. “Nothing is enough.”
The next morning, I assemble my army in the Ceres square. A dozen limp; few Aureate bones can really be broken because of their strength, so most of the injuries suffered in the assault were superficial. I smell the resentment from Ceres students, from Diana students. It’s a cancer that’ll eat away at the body of this army, no matter who it is focused toward. Pax brings Tactus out and shoves him to his knees.
I ask him if he tried to rape Nyla.
“Laws are silent in times of war,” Tactus drawls.
“Don’t quote Cicero to me,” I say. “You are held to a higher standard than a marauding centurion.”
“In that, you’re hitting the mark at least. I am a superior creature descended from proud stock and glorious heritage. Might makes right, Darrow. If I can take, I may take. If I do take, I deserve to have. This is what Peerless believe.”
“The measure of a man is what he does when he has power,” I say loudly.
“Just come off it, Reaper,” Tactus drawls, confident in himself as all like him are. “She’s a spoil of war. My power took her. And before the strong, bend the weak.”
“I’m stronger than you, Tactus,” I say. “So I can do with you as I wish. No?”
He’s silent, realizing he’s fallen into a trap.
“You are from a superior family to mine, Tactus. My parents are dead. I am the sole member of my family. But I am a superior creature to you.”
He smirks at that.
“Do you disagree?” I toss a knife at his feet and pull my own out. “I beg you to voice your concerns.” He does not pick his blade up. “So, by right of power, I can do with you as I like.”
I announce that rape will never be permitted, and then I ask Nyla the punishment she would give. As she told me before, she says she wants no punishment. I make sure they know this, so there are no recriminations against her. Tactus and his armed supporters stare at her in surprise. They don’t understand why she would not take vengeance, but that doesn’t stop them from smiling wolfishly at one another, thinking their chief has dodged punishment. Then I speak.
“But I say you get twenty lashes from a leather switch, Tactus. You tried to take something beyond the bounds of the game. You gave in to your pathetic animal instincts. Here that is less forgivable than murder; I hope you feel shame when you look back at this moment fifty years from now and realize your weakness. I hope you fear your sons and daughters knowing what you did to a fellow Gold. Until then, twenty lashes will serve.”
Some of the Diana soldiers step forward in anger, but Pax hefts his axe on his shoulder and they shrink back, glaring at me. They gave me a fortress and I’m going to whip their favorite warrior. I see my army dying as Mustang pulls off Tactus’s shirt. He stares at me like a snake. I know what evil thoughts he’s thinking. I thought them of my floggers too.
I whip him twenty brutal times, holding nothing back. Blood runs down his back. Pax nearly has to hack down one of the Diana soldiers to keep them from charging to stop the punishment.
Tactus barely manages to stagger to his feet, wrath burning in his eyes.
“A mistake,” he whispers to me. “Such a mistake.”
Then I surprise him. I shove the switch into his hand and bring him close by cupping my hand around the back of his head.
“You deserve to have your balls off, you selfish bastard,” I whisper to him. “This is my army,” I say more loudly. “This is my army. Its evils are mine as much as yours, as much as they are Tactus’s. Every time any of you commit a crime like this, something gratuitous and perverse, you will own it and I will own it with you, because when you do something wicked, it hurts all of us.”
Tactus stands there like a fool. He’s confused.
I shove him hard in the chest. He stumbles back. I follow him, shoving.
“What were you going to do?” I push his hand holding the leather switch back toward his chest.
“I don’t know what you mean …” he murmurs as I shove him.
“Come on, man! You were going to shove your prick inside someone in my army. Why not whip me while you’re at it? Why not hurt me too? It’ll be easier. Milia won’t even try to stab you. I promise.”
I shove him again. He looks around. No one speaks. I strip off my shirt and go to my knees. The air is cold. Knees on stone and snow. My eyes lock with Mustang’s. She winks at me and I feel like I can do anything. I tell Tactus to give me twenty-five lashes. I’ve taken worse. His arms are weak and so is his will to do it. It still stings, but I stand up after five lashes and give the lash to Pax.
They start the count at six.
“Start over!” I shout. “A little rapist cur can’t swing hard enough to hurt me.”
But Pax bloodywell can.
My army cries in protest. They don’t understand. Golds don’t do this. Golds don’t sacrifice for one another. Leaders take; they do not give. My army cries out again. I ask them, how is this worse than the rape they were all so comfortable with? Is not Nyla now one of us? Is she not part of the body?
Like Reds are. Like Obsidians are. Like all the Colors are.
Pax tries to go light. But it’s Pax, so when he’s done, my back looks like chewed goatmeat. I stand up. Do everything I can to prevent myself from wobbling. I’m seeing stars. I want to wail. Want to cry. Instead, I tell them that anyone who does anything vile—they know what I mean—will have to whip me like this in front of the entire army. I see how they look at Tactus now, how they look at Pax, how they look at my back.
“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.”
I motion Tactus to come toward me. He wavers, pale, confused as a newborn lamb. Fear marks his face. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the pain I willingly bore. Fear when he realizes how different he is from me.
“Don’t be afraid,” I tell him. I pull him forward into a hug. “We are blood brothers, you little shit. Blood brothers.”
I’m learning.