“What is?”
“Everyone is so loud these days. But you, you’re silent when you’ve all the right to scream. Luna isn’t made for silence. Neither am I.” I say nothing. With him I don’t feel a need to, and maybe that’s why I told him about my family. It was a secret I wanted to hold close because I didn’t want the pity. I don’t want to demean their deaths or prostitute them for attention. “What do you see?” he asks of the statue.
“Rust.” I pause. “And shadows.”
We walk to the train depot in silence. Steam from the heat of the friction on rails billows from the tracks. “Thank you,” I say, “for everything.”
“The pleasure was all mine, Lyria of Lagalos.” He pauses, considering his words carefully. “I know Hyperion may seem too big to reckon. And the people here grander than you. But don’t let them make you feel small.” He pokes my chest and smiles wryly. “You are a world entire. You are grand and lovely. But you have to see it before anyone else does.” He smiles at me, a little embarrassed. “You have my pad number. Don’t be a stranger, little rabbit.” He kisses my forehead paternally and turns into the rain. “Till we meet again.” He hops twice like a rabbit before his bad knee buckles comically. He grins back at me. I can’t help but laugh.
In my bunk back in the Citadel, with the covers tight around my neck, I curl up, too tired to pull up the holo of Mars, and think it marvelous to have finally made a friend.
WE EXTRACT OUR PRIZES from Deepgrave without incident, taking ten other high-value prisoners from the bowels of the station with us in our submersible. Even though they’re paralyzed and bound, the press of their bodies and the stink of their unwashed flesh, stacked in the back of the cramped cabin, is nearly more than I can bear. Stealing only Apollonius would have broadcast our intentions. Now, if the warden doesn’t live up to his end of the bargain, the Ash Lord and the Republic will think it a general jailbreak. I only hope our nonlethal methods and our access into their system doesn’t give us away too quickly.
Despite the success of the mission, I feel trapped. Imprisoned by the proximity of the scum. Apollonius lies atop the pile of fallen warlords in his kimono, like some dread corpse king. In my chest, my heart is made heavier by the dark, silent eyes of my friends hunched in the red light of the submarine—knowing they feel the same weight, that we are all party to some unspeakable deed. Thraxa, who has always held overwhelming guilt for the evil works of her own Color, stares balefully at the prisoners. Were this to go wrong, were these Golds to stand again at the head of their legions, all their evil would rip fast as a wildfire back into the world.
“Sir…I want to apologize,” Alexandar whispers carefully to me so the others can’t overhear. “I was already seasick, from the waves on the trawler, and when I saw the eyes go…well, it was mawkish of me. Not to the level I hold myself, and I hope you don’t think lesser of me for it.”
“Ragnar would puke in null gravity,” I say. “Nothing to apologize for.”
He nods, not hearing me. It must be a heavy burden, being the eldest grandchild of Lorn au Arcos. An impossible standard to follow.
Sevro wonders why I like the youth. For all the entitlement, all the arrogance, a deep vein of insecurity runs through Alexandar, and I feel a powerful protective instinct toward him. He wants to be good. If only he didn’t want to be famous as well.
He reminds me only too much of Cassius.
“Sir, I know it is base to ask. But I wonder if we could keep it between us?”
“You worried about Rhonna mocking you?” I ask. “Trust me, Alex. It’s not her you have to worry about.” I look over to Sevro, who is eavesdropping on the conversation with a nasty little smile for Alexandar. From the back of the submersible there comes a bark. I wheel around to see the skinny Obsidian smiling down at his lap. A small snout pokes through his fingers.
“Don’t tell me you brought the warden’s dog,” Sevro mutters. The Obsidian grins wickedly and opens his bony hands to show us the terrier hidden between his legs. “Dognapping? Careful, mutts, Tongueless here is a bad, bad man.”
When we surface back at the trawler, I struggle to hide my agitation and wait for my men to exit first and help load out the prisoners one by one before exiting at the last to gulp down fresh air. Yet even the brine of the sea and the cool wind of the Atlantic cannot wash away the feeling that I’ve made some irrevocable mistake.
I can’t let the Howlers see my doubt, so I emerge out of the submersible with a grand smile, and laugh to Rhonna at our catch of the day as they lay the prisoners lengthwise on the deck and shackle their hands and feet together under a clear and endless sky. “…and he puked over my boots,” Sevro says, finishing his story of Alexandar’s embarrassment to Rhonna and the support crew’s delight. Alexandar tries to laugh it off, but his cheeks are bright red. “And then we kidnapped a dog! Did you meet Tongueless? He’s a riot. Tongueless, come say hello!”
After loading up the Golds onto Colloway’s pelican, we cut open the door previously sealing the crew in, and leave the crab hauler via the pelican, flying north to our departure base in the frozen wilderness of Baffin Island. There, the Nessus, a stolen Society Xiphos-class frigate of war, lies cold and quiet under camouflage tarps in the shadow of granite escarpments. As we made our preparations for Deepgrave in Greenland, my brother Kieran hid here with the rest of the Howlers, getting ready for our departure.
They wait for us out in the snow in thermal cloaks to help load up the prisoners, watching the parade of blindfolded Golds with the solemnity of funeral mourners. I share their disgust. This dirties all of us. Compounded with the death of Wulfgar, it has darkened the mood perceptibly. I don’t imagine it will brighten as we near Venus.
On the snow, Sevro and I look up at the Nessus. Painted snow white the entire length of her hundred-meter hull and crested on her starboard and port with the winged heel of Quicksilver, she’s got some of the prettiest lines ever to dart between spheres.
“This beauty puts a rocket in my pocket,” Sevro says. “What’d Quick want for her?”
“Nothing.”
“Man doesn’t get that rich asking for nothing.” His eyes follow the last of the prisoners up the ramp. “We should keep the youngbloods away from them. Half those rich shits could talk their way out of a black hole. Especially Rath.”
“They were sentenced to solitary. Solitary is what they’ll get.”
Sevro nods to Tongueless, who is standing near the ship’s portside battery, wriggling his bare feet in the snow, arms spread wide. His spirit eyes stare off into the wilderness as a storm gathers its breath.
“What you want to do about that box of fun?”