Cassius lies handcuffed to the rails of the reinforced medical gurney in the center of the Sons of Ares infirmary. The same place I watched my people die from the wounds they suffered to save me from
his clutches. Bed after bed of injured rebels from Phobos and other operations on the Thermic fill the expanse. Ventilators whir and beep, men cough. But it’s the weight of the eyes that I feel most. Hands reach for me as I pass through the rows of cots and pallets lying on the floor. Mouths whisper my name. They want to touch my arms, to feel a human without Sigils, without the mark of the masters. I let them as well as I can, but I haven’t time to visit the fringes of the room.
I asked Dancer to give Cassius a private room. Instead, he’s been set smack in the middle of the main infirmary among the amputees, adjacent to the huge plastic tent that covers the burn unit. There he can watch and be watched by the lowColors and feel the weight of this war the same way they do. I sense Dancer ’s hand at work here. Giving Cassius equitable treatment. No cruelty, no consideration, just the same as the rest. I feel like buying the old socialist a drink.
Several of Narol’s boys, a Gray and two weathered ex-Helldivers, slump on metal chairs playing
cards near Cassius’s bedside. Heavy scorchers slung around their backs. They jump to their feet and salute as I approach.
“Heard he’s been asking for me,” I say.
“Most the night,” the shorter of the Reds answers gruffly, eying Holiday behind me. “Wouldn’t have bothered you…but he’s a bloodydamn Olympic. So thought we should pass the word up the chain.” He leans so close I can smell the menthol of the synth tobacco between his stained teeth. “And the slagger says he’s got information, sir.”
“Can he talk?”
“Yeah,” the soldier grumbles. “Doesn’t say much, but the bolt missed his box.”
“I need to speak with him privately,” I say.
“We got you covered, sir.”
—
The doctor and the guards wheel Cassius’s gurney to the far back of the room to the pharmacy, which they keep guarded under lock and key. Inside, among the rows of plastic medication boxes, Cassius
and I are left alone. He watches me from his bed, a white bandage around his neck, the faintest pinprick of blood dilating between his Adam’s apple and the jugular on the right side of his throat.
“It’s a miracle you’re not dead,” I say. He shrugs. There’s no tubes in his arms or morphon bracelet. I
frown. “They didn’t give you painkillers?”
“Not punishment. They voted,” he says very slowly, taking care not to rip the stitches on his neck.
“Wasn’t enough morphon to go around. Low supplies. As they tell, the patients voted last week to give the hard meds to the burn victims and amputees. I’d think it noble if they didn’t moan all night from pain like lonely little puppies.” He pauses. “I always wondered if mothers can hear their children weeping for them.”
“Can yours?”
“I didn’t weep. And I don’t think my mother cares much for anything other than revenge. Whatever
that means at this point.”
“You said you had information?” I ask, to business because I don’t know what else to say. I feel an ironclad kinship with this man. Sevro asked why I saved him, and I could aspire to notions of valor and honor. But the deepspine reason is I desperately want him to be a friend again. I crave his approval. Does that make me a fool? Disloyal? Is it the guilt speaking? Is it his magnetism? Or is it that vain part of me that just wants to be loved by the people I respect. And I do respect him. He has honor, a corrupted sort, but true honor nonetheless.
“Was it her or was it you?” he asks carefully.
“What do you mean?”
“Who kept the Obsidians from boiling out my eyes and taking my tongue? You or Virginia?”
“It was both of us.”
“Liar. Didn’t think she’d shoot, to tell the truth of it.” He reaches up to feel his neck, but the manacles jerk his hands to a halt, startling him back into the room. “Don’t suppose you could take these off? It’s dreadful when you’ve got an itch.”
“I think you’ll live.”
He chuckles as if saying he had to try. “So, is this where you act morally superior for saving me?
For being more civilized than Gold?”
“Maybe I’m going to torture you for information,” I say.
“Well, that’s not exactly honorable.”
“Neither is letting a man put me in a box for nine months after torturing me for three. Anyway, what the hell ever made you think I give a shit about being honorable?”
“True.” He frowns, creasing his brow and looking startling, like something Michelangelo would have carved. “If you think the Sovereign will barter, you’re wrong. She won’t sacrifice a single thing to save me.”
“Then why serve her?” I ask.
“Duty.” He says the words, but I wonder how deeply he means them any longer.