“You don’t say,” Loki murmurs. “And is it in one piece, or lots of little itty-bitty pieces, child?”
It is risky saying we saw a ship fall. But I knew no other ruse that would draw the Golds away from their holo screens in the middle of a rebellion, past their security systems and Gray garrison to meet me here. They’re Peerless Scarred, trapped here on the frontier as their world shifts beyond these walls. Once, this post would have been considered glamorous, but now it’s a form of banishment. I
wonder about what crimes or failings brought these Peerless Scarred here to babysit the wastes.
“The bones of the ships litter the mountain, Sunborn,” I explain, looking back at the ground so they do not insist I take away the riding mask that covers my face. The more groveling I do, the less curious I am. “Broken like a fishing boat laid upon mid-stern by a Breaker. Splinters of iron, splinters of men upon the snow.”
I think that’s a metaphor the Obsidians would use. It passes muster.
“Splinters of men?” Loki asks.
“Yes. Men. But with soft faces. Like seal skin in firelight.” Too many metaphors. “But eyes like hot coals.” I can’t stop. How else did Ragnar speak? “Hair like the gold of your face.” The Golds’ metal masks remain impassive, communicating to one another over the coms in their helmets.
“Our priest claims you have a weapon of the gods,” Freya says leadingly. Sefi produces the seal cloth once more, body tense, wondering when I will dispel the magic of the gods as I promised. Her hands tremble. Both Golds move closer, the slight ripple of pulseShields evident. I touch them and I fry. They have no fear. Not here on their mountain. Closer. Closer, you dumb bastards.
“Why did you not take this to the leader of your tribe?” Loki asks.
“Or to your shaman?” Freya adds suspiciously. “The Way of Stains is long and hard. To climb all
this way just to bring this to us…”
“We are wanderers,” Mustang says as Freya bends to look at the blade. “No tribe. No shaman.”
“Are you, little one?” Loki asks above Sefi, voice hardening. “Then why are there blue tattoos of
the Valkyrie on the ankles of that one?” His hand drifts to the razor on his hip.
“She was cast out from her tribe,” I say. “For breaking an oath.”
“Is it marked with a house Sigil?” Loki asks Freya. She reaches for the weapon’s hilt in front of me when Mustang laughs bitterly, drawing her attention.
“On the handle, my goodlady,” Mustang says in Aureate lingo, remaining on her knees as she strips
off her mask and tosses it onto the ground. “You will find a Pegasus in flight. Sigil of the House Andromedus.”
“Augustus?” Loki sputters, knowing Mustang’s face.
I use their surprise and slip forward. By the time they turn back to me I’ve snatched the razor out from under Freya’s hand and activated the toggle so it is the curved question-mark shape that has burned on hillsides, been cut into foreheads, and killed so many of their kind. The same they would have seen on the holoDisplays as I made my speech.
“Reaper…” Freya manages, pulling up her pulseFist. I hack her arm off at the shoulder, then her
head at the jaw before hurling my razor straight into Loki’s chest. The blade slows as it hits his pulseShield, frozen in midair for half a second as the shield resists. Finally the blade slips through.
But it’s slowed and the armor beneath holds. It embeds itself in the pulseArmor plate. Harmless. Until Mustang steps forward and swivel-kicks the hilt of the razor. The blade punches through the armor and impales Loki.
Both gods fall. Freya to her back. Loki to his knees.
“Mask off,” Mustang barks as Loki’s hands wrap around the blade sticking from his chest. She slaps his hands away from his datapad. “No coms.” Holiday strips the razor from the man’s hip as his pulseShield shorts. I take Freya’s razor from her corpse. “Do it.”
Sefi and her Valkyrie stare wide-eyed from their knees at the blood pooling beneath Freya. I remove Freya’s helmet from her head to reveal the mangled face of a middle-aged Peerless Scarred
woman with dark skin and almond-shaped eyes.
“Does this look like a god to you, Sefi?” I ask.
Mustang snorts a dark little laugh when Loki removes his mask. “Darrow. Look who it is. Proctor
Mercury!” The pudgy, cherub-faced Peerless Scarred who endeavored to recruit me into his own house at the Institute before Fitchner stole me away. When last we saw each other five years ago, he tried to duel me in the halls as my Howlers stormed Olympus. I shot him in the chest with a pulseFist.
He smiled all the while. He’s not smiling now as he stares at the metal in his chest. I feel a pang of pity.
“Proctor Mercury,” I say. “You have to be the least lucky Gold I’ve ever met. Two mountains lost to
a Red.”
“Reaper. You have to be shitting me.” He shudders in pain and laughs at his own surprise. “But you’re on Phobos.”