The silence grows to terrible length.
“On my honor, I’ll send the proper combination,” Cassius lies. He’d rather die than let them have their war.
“Your honor.” Bellerephon laughs at a private joke. “Be thankful we do not peel you like tank shrimp.”
“They are guests,” Diomedes says sternly. “They have eaten our bread, supped at our table. No guest in the history of our house has been violated. Not even Fabii and the Reaper. Not even the Ash Lord after the Burning of Rhea. Do not disrespect your ancestors.”
Bellerephon rolls his eyes at his cousin and turns to his aunt. “Aunt Dido, we don’t have time for this. Vela is already rallying legions at Karath.” If Vela escaped, then Cassius is right again. The coup is not concluded. “The Codovan will be coming too. Our allies are nervous. Some won’t stand by us if Vela attacks. We need the evidence.”
Dido opens her hands to us. “You see my predicament. There is no time for your proposal. One option remains, and that is to trust me. Have I not been a good host? Have I not shown honor?”
Does she think we’re so stupid?
Cassius smiles. “You have my terms.”
Seraphina looks to me. “Castor, no harm will come to you…”
“My brother speaks for the both of us,” I reply.
Dido leans back in her chair and nods to a Brown by the door. “Tell Pelebius to bring in his pet.”
“Have you a new creature for the children?” old Gaia asks in delight. Her wrinkled neck cranes in anticipation as an old Violet with a black mustache limps into the room. “Oh. Vile.” She frowns as he carries in a glass jar filled with noxious yellow liquid. Something stirs within, but I can’t yet make it out. The Violet stands ominously at the end of the table.
“It is said that a life is made great by sorrow and joy.” Dido stares at me, then Cassius. “But you men are cursed. You will never really understand life because you do not know what it is to bear a child. To push a life from your flesh. To have two hearts beating inside you at once.” She looks at the empty seat beside Seraphina. She takes the flower there between her fingers. “To have had seven hearts beating beyond you, carrying your hopes, your dreams. And when one of those hearts stops…you feel it as if it were your own.”
She crushes the flower in her slender hand and lets the mangled petals drift free one by one to settle on the barren bones of her fish.
“The story of their life ends. All those dreams gone. And you begin to forget them. You begin to loathe yourself for time ill-spent with them. For your grief stealing the joy their life brought as their memory begins to fade.”
More Obsidians enter the room and stand behind us.
“My daughter, my Thesalia, was not made in my image or Romulus’s,” Dido whispers. “She was a birth of air. A sweet girl. A vessel of all my joy. Eleven years ago Thesalia went with her grandfather Revus to see Mars and attend Augustus’s summit. She wanted to see the Valles Marineris. The Olympus Mons. Eleven years ago she watched her grandfather die and felt fear as her head was caved in by a Martian boot. My joy vanished that day, and as a family, we swore vengeance upon all those responsible. Roque au Fabii, Lilath au Faran, Aja au Grimmus, Adrius au Augustus. Antonia au Severus-Julii. Octavia au Lune.” Dido’s lips curl. “And Cassius au Bellona.”
CASSIUS BURSTS FROM HIS SEAT, diving across the table to try to reach the access pad on the safe. The Obsidians grab him and wrench him back. I lunge for one of the knives on their belts, but Bellerephon stands and in one fluid movement whips his razor diagonally across the table. The thin black metal snaps around my arm. He jerks me sideways and I spill down, set upon by Obsidians. Bellerephon’s fingers move over the hilt of his razor to recall the whip to rigid form. He’ll take my arm.
“Bellerephon,” Seraphina snaps. “Not that one.”
He says nothing but flicks his whip free of my arm and recalls it back across the table. It slithers like a snake across plates and spilled rice. The Obsidians shove me into my seat. They’ve wrestled Cassius back to his. “If you hurt him, I won’t give you the combination,” I say quickly. “Seraphina, he saved your life. You’re in his debt and he’s under your promise of hospitality.”
“Void because of your lie,” Dido says.
Diomedes, who has sat like some paragon statue this whole time, watching the drama unfold, now frowns. “Mother. I know the face of Bellona as well as any man. That is not him.”
“Oh, but it is…” she says. “The razor of a Bellona is in that safe. Concealed under a shell of titanium.”
I look to Seraphina, hiding my horror as I realize what gave us away. When she opened the razor to hide her evidence inside it, she must have discovered the false cover and seen the eagles on the handle underneath. She knew all along.
“Did you think we do not know the technology of our enemies?” Dido asks Cassius, gesturing at her own face. “You may keep your Silver-spawned enlightenment; here we have masters of the old ways, of flesh and bone.” She gestures to the Violet and his jar. “You may begin.”
The Violet shuffles up to the table and, with a pair of tongs, reaches into his jar. From the yellow liquid he draws a tiny horror. A hideous spider-legged slug with corpse-pale skin and a belly riddled with small, hungry apertures. “This is a gruesli,” Dido says. The creature squeals like a burning worm and writhes in the air over Cassius’s face. He flinches away. From its apertures, thin tentacles push past layers of pallid flesh toward his face. “The gruesli eats masks, you see. You are not the first spy to breach the Gulf.”
The Violet lowers the creature onto Cassius’s face. Black stingers spurt from the tentacles into his skin. It wraps its legs around his head and sucks, shuddering with an orgiastic sigh as my friend gurgles beneath its flesh. I watch in cold terror as the creature feeds till it is engorged and lethargic and the Violet pulls it back up with tongs, to reveal, under a mess of puncture wounds and thin trails of blood, the swollen face of my handsome friend. He blinks through the layer of grime up at Dido as the Obsidians haul him up to face our hosts. Blood and milky fluid drip into his beard.
“The truth, at last,” Dido says.
Cassius laughs and rebelliously spits blood from his mouth. “Cassius au Bellona…at your service.”
I look to Seraphina for help, but there’s no ally left in the room. She loathes Cassius as much as the rest of them.
“You didn’t just take my daughter. You took my brother,” Dido says.
“Marcus,” Cassius says. “The Joy Knight.”
“Your sworn brother. Your fellow Olympic. You cut him down before you killed Octavia.”
“He was a bastard.”
“Yes. But he was my blood,” she whispers. “I will give you one last chance to open the safe.”
Cassius grunts. “So you can have a war that will send mankind back to the dark ages? Funny. You don’t look stupid.”