He swallows, his tongue heavy and dry. “Did my men find you?” Sefi nods, staying hunched over her brother, her white hair flying about her in the wind. He looks to me. “Darrow, I know you think words will suffice,” Ragnar says in Aureate lingo so Sefi cannot understand. “They will not. Not with my mother.” This was what he did not tell me. Why he was so quiet on the shuttle, why he carried dread upon his shoulders. He was coming home to kill his mother. And now he’s giving me
permission to do just that. I glance over to Mustang. She heard too, and wears her heartbreak on her face. As much for my shattered, fool’s dream of a better world as for my dying friend. He shudders in pain and Sefi pulls a knife from her boot, unwilling to watch him suffer any longer. Ragnar shakes his head at her and nods to me. He wants me to do it. I shake my head as if I can wake up from this nightmare. Sefi stares at me fiercely, daring me to contradict her brother ’s last wishes.
“I will die with my friends,” Ragnar says.
I numbly let my razor slither into my hand and hold it over his chest. There’s peace at last in Ragnar ’s wet eyes. It’s all I can do to be strong for him.
“I will give Eo your love. I will make a house for you in the Vale of your fathers. It will be beside my own. Join me there when you die.” He grins. “But I am no builder. So take your time.
We will wait.”
I nod like I still believe in the Vale. Like I still think it waits for me and for him. “Your people will be free,” I say. “On my life, I promise this. And I will see you soon.” He smiles as he stares up at the sky. Sefi frantically puts her axe in Ragnar ’s palm so that he can die as a warrior, a weapon in hand, and secure his place in the halls of Valhalla.
“No, Sefi,” he says, dropping the axe and taking snow in his left hand, her hand with his right.
“Live for more.” He nods to me.
The wind whips.
The snow falls.
Ragnar watches the sky, where the cold lights of Phobos glitter on as I silently slide the metal into his heart. Death comes like nightfall, and I cannot tell the moment when the light leaves him, when his
heart no longer beats and his eyes no longer see. But I know he’s gone. I feel it in the chill that settles over me. In the sound of the lonely, hungry wind, and the dread silence in the black eyes of Sefi the Quiet.
My friend, my protector, Ragnar Volarus has left this world.
I’m numb with grief. Unable to think of anything but how Sevro will react when he hears Ragnar has died. How my nieces and nephews will never braid another bow into the Friendly Giant’s hair. Part of my soul has departed and will never return. He was my protector. He gave so many strength. Now, without him, I cling to the back of a Valkyrie as her griffin rises away from the bloody snow. Even as we soar through the clouds on great beating wings, even as I see the Valkyrie Spires for the first time, I feel no awe. Just numbness.
The spires are a twisting, vertiginous spine of mountain peaks so ludicrous in their abrupt rise from the arctic plains that only a maniacal Gold at the controls of a Lovelock engine with fifty years of tectonic manipulation and a solar system of resources could conspire to create them. Probably just to see if they could. Dozens of stone spires weave together like spiteful lovers. Mist shrouding them.
Griffins making nests on their peaks, crows and eagles in the lower reaches. Upon a high rock wall, seven skeletons hang from chains. The ice is stained with blood and the droppings of animals. This is the home of the only race to ever threaten Gold. And we come stained in the blood of its banished prince.
Sefi and her riders searched the crevasse in which Aja fell; they found nothing but boot prints. No body. No blood. Nothing to abate the rage that burns inside Sefi. I think she would have remained over her brother ’s body for hours more, had they not heard drums beating in the distance. Eaters who had mustered greater strength and intended to challenge the Valkyrie for possession of the fallen gods.
Wrath stained her face as she stood over Cassius, her axe in hand. He is one of the first Golds she’ll ever have seen without armor. Maybe the first aside from Mustang. And I think, stained with the blood of her brother, she would have killed him there on the snow. I know I would have let her, and so too would have Mustang. But she relented at the urging of her Valkyrie. Clicking her tongue to her riders, sheathing her axe and signaling them to mount. Now Cassius is tied to the saddle of a Valkyrie to my right. The arrow missed his jugular, but death might come for him even without a kiss from Sefi’s axe.
We land in a high alcove cut into the highest reach of a corkscrew spire. Slaves from enemy Obsidian clans, eyes branded into blindness, receive our griffins. Their faces painted yellow for cowardice. Iron doors groan shut behind, sealing us off from the wind. The riders jump from their
saddles before we land to help carry Ragnar away from us deeper into the rock city.