Tharsus stares at him in abject horror.
“Ares!” one of the Golds hisses, still holding her glass. The rest stare at Sevro in confusion. In that moment, they taste a small bit of the fear their slaves endure every day. The Pinks gawp at the sight of us. Grins split two of their slender faces. They rush off, knowing what comes next.
“Take Tharsus. Kill the rest,” I say, pulling the railgun from the holster on my right thigh. I squeeze the trigger. The muscled Gold’s head explodes. Tongueless fires. The woman whose navel Tharsus drank from holds a hand up as if it can stop a toroid of superheated hydrogen moving faster than the speed of sound. Her hand disappears. The lower half of her jaw goes with it. One of the Golds charges us and Tongueless shoots him as well. A huge bloody hole opens up as the plasma eats out the other side of his chest. His body carries on. Sevro shoots his leg out and he spins sideways to the ground to mew and die.
Tharsus springs sideways into the water. “Mine,” Sevro says. He shoots his stunFist into the water to the left of Tharsus. The electricity crackles through the wet conductor and electrocutes the man. He spasms in the water and then floats to the top. The rest of my men pour onto the patio, securing it. The last Gold uses the body of the first Gold I killed as a shield and searches frantically for a weapon.
“Apollonius, stay,” I say. But he ignores me and slips forward, blocking my shot. The hiding man sees him coming and makes a break for the water of the cove. Apollonius tackles him from behind. The two wrestle on the ground until Apollonius rolls the man sideways, then snaps his neck with a single twist. He stands slowly from the corpse, watching in amusement as Sevro dives into the pool to retrieve Tharsus’s body.
With Tongueless’s help, Sevro hauls him out of the water and onto the ground.
Apollonius rejoins me. “I told you to stay,” I say.
“Would Athena stay Odysseus’s hand when he returned to Ithaca? No Color is immune from my wrath.” He pours wine over his brother’s unconscious face. “Tharsus. Run away from the light. No time for dreams. Back to the land of the weary living.”
Tharsus’s eyes open. He spits up water. “Apollonius?” he whispers hoarsely.
“Hello, brother. Did you miss me?”
AFTER THE PATIO IS SECURED, Tharsus sits with a robe around him in a chair apart from the bodies, his initial shock having given way to beleaguered contempt. “Apalling company you now keep, brother,” Tharsus hisses to Apollonius, who sits across from him.
“Means to an end, Tharsus. Means to an end.”
“And you brought them here. To my home.”
Apollonius slaps his brother gently across the face. “My home,” he corrects. “I am the heir of Valii-Rath, not you. I know you haven’t forgotten that. Or else I doubt I would have been a prisoner for so long.”
“I tried to rescue you,” Tharsus says convincingly.
“Did you, dear brother?”
“I spared no expense. Hired mercenaries, spent half my spies…”
“Sorry, Tharsus,” I say. “There was one assault made on Deepgrave, and it was not for Apollonius and not from you.”
“Slag you, halfbreed,” Tharsus says, spitting at me.
Apollonius slaps him across the face, this time so hard he tumbles out of his chair. He waits for him to find his seat again. “Manners, brother; when at the mercy of your enemies, petulance demeans your entity.”
“I reserve manners for people, not slaves,” Tharsus says. I stare down at him without pity. Apollonius has a measure of majesty about him, but Tharsus is a deviant with long eyelashes. His beautiful face no more than the evolutionary adaptation of a predator.
“You’re confused, dear brother,” Tharsus says with a manic laugh. “Lost in the tumble of your own mind without me to help you sort it right.” He smiles softly up at the bigger man. “Now, I shudder to think what they want, what they’ve promised you. But they don’t care for you as I do. When they get what they desire, they will cast you aside.” He looks at Sevro. “Mongrels without code or custom.”
“I might be a halfbreed,” Sevro says. “But at the end of the day, you’re still a bitch, and I’ve still got two ears.” He pulls the bootknife, grabs Tharsus’s hair, and cuts off his left ear. Tharsus cries out in pain and Tongueless steps toward Apollonius, but there’s no need. Apollonius watches with dispassion as Tharsus thrashes.
“Apollonius…” Tharsus hisses.
“I told you: mind your manners.”
“Mother was right. You’re mad!”
“I am not mad,” Apollonius growls, and steps forward. Tharsus reels back in sudden terror. But Apollonius’s anger dissolves as fast as it came. “I am not mad,” he says quietly, then breaks into a broad smile. “I simply lust for life and the thrill sport of war. Why should I deny myself the delight, when these two descended to offer me the ultimate play?” He sighs. “I know it is difficult for you to see me again, dear brother. Why, how easy it must have been when quarrelsome me was languishing in the abyss. But it was not easy for me. Neither the isolation nor the boredom nor the fear that my great strand of life would be cut short before the time of my glory. But do you fathom what the deepest, darkest lamentation was?” He leans forward. “Do you? It was the fear that my dearest, loving brother, my partner against the world, was complicit in my incarceration.”
“Complicit? Ridiculous.”
“Irrefutably complicit.”
“That’s a lie,” Tharsus says. “They’ve filled your head with bilious dreck.”
“Is that so?”
“Dreck. Bold and grotesque.”
“Come now, Tharsus. Do you really think I don’t know your tells by now? You could never hide them from me.”
“Apollonius, I would never betray you….”
Apollonius smiles. “You should be honor bound to a bloodfeud against Grimmus. Why would the Ash Lord keep you alive if you were not his creature? Did you think he would bring you to his side? Tharsus, the Pink drinker. Tharsus the Torturer. Tharsus the Vampire of Thessalonica? The Jackal might have treasured your cruelty, but these others see you and they laugh at you like the drunken jester you are. They think you a little nasty adolescent with blessed genetics, but, point of fact, you’re an adolescent with an army. So they kept you and let you distract yourself with idle playthings and helped themselves to that army. You let Grimmus give it to those clameater Carthii.” His lips curl back over his large teeth. “My army. The Ash Lord played you like a fool, brother. You knew. Admit it.” He leans forward. “Admit it.”
“Yes…” Tharsus says. He looks down in shame. The blood flow from his ear now a sluggish trickle. “It is true. I knew.” He looks up with hopeful eyes. “But I had no choice.”
“No?”
“I had to survive!”