He lets the silence answer.
“I knew it was my duty to my own legend to survive this trial. But I was still crippled by my own devices. Imagine me as a great fully-rigged man-of-war. Four masts, great bulwarks of oak and five score cannon. All my life I have sailed smooth seas and waters that parted for me by virtue of my own splendor. Never tested. Never riled. A tragic existence, if ever there was one.
“But at long last: a storm! And when I met it I found my hull…rotten. My planks leaking brine, my cannon brittle, powder wet. I foundered upon the storm. Upon you, Darrow of Lykos.” He sighs. “And it was my own fault.”
I war between wanting to punch him in the mouth and surrendering into my curiosity by letting him continue. He’s a strange man with a seductive presence. Even as an enemy, his flamboyance fascinated me. Purple capes in battle. A horned Minotaur helmet. Trumpets blaring to signal his advance, as if welcoming all challengers. He even broadcast opera as his men bombarded cities.
After so much isolation, he’s delighting in imposing his narrative upon us.
“My peril is thus: I am, and always have been, a man of great tastes. In a world replete with temptation, I found my spirit wayward and easy to distract. The idea of prison, that naked, metal world, crushed me. The first year, I was tormented. But then I remembered the voice of a fallen angel. ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’ I sought to make the deep not just my heaven, but my womb of rebirth.
“I dissected the underlying mistakes which led to my incarceration and set upon an internal odyssey to remake myself. But—and you would know this, Reaper—long is the road up out of hell! I made arrangements for supplies. I toiled twenty hours a day. I reread the books of youth with the gravity of age. I perfected my body. My mind. Planks were replaced; new banks of cannon wrought in the fires of solitude. All for the next storm.
“Now I see it is upon me and I sail before you the paragon of Apollonius au Valii-Rath. And I ask one question: for what purpose have you pulled me from the deep?”
“Bloodyhell, did you memorize that?” Sevro mutters.
The man before me is not the man I saw before the tribunal all those years ago. His vanity has remained, but now it is a hardened, sharpened sort. Once, he was a vulture of the Society. Instigating duels for fun. Throwing orgies that would last for days. He and Karnus au Bellona were even longtime drinking companions. He’d been looking for a reason to exist, to escape the nihilism of tedium. Then war came.
“You say you have dissected your mistakes,” I say. “Let’s put that to the test.”
“I welcome all tests.”
“Goryhell, do you ever shut up?” Sevro asks. “Just let us get a verb in.”
Apollonius folds his hands in his lap, waiting patiently.
“Tell me, if you can, how you found yourself in Deepgrave,” I say.
“The man who thought himself a king discovered he was but a pawn. I angered the wrong man. Magnus au Grimmus. The Ash Lord. But you know that, don’t you?”
“I was curious if you did.”
He smiles to himself. “I was the first Martian to fire at Lilath au Faran’s ship over Luna, you know. I helped save Luna from nuclear holocaust. And I brought him ships, legions, and, along with the other great Martian houses, political capital to offset House Saud on Venus. But he resented me because I would not bend the knee like those Pixie Carthii. I was his ally, not his servant.
“I never saw the knife coming. When he proposed a mission to cut off the head of the Rising, I volunteered eagerly. He let me lead a division of my knights; one century of ten that were to penetrate the Citadel and kill you and your families. With the Carthii we were to be a thousand Peerless Scarred. What a sight it would have been! Not had such a pure force been assembled for a single mission since the Battle of Zephyria. It was to be a coordinated attack.
“My century infiltrated Luna. But it wasn’t until we were pressing through the Citadel that I realized we were alone. No other century was on the grounds, let alone the moon. We’d been played as fools by the Ash Lord. By the Carthii. Our support did not answer on the coms, but the Ash Lord’s voice did speak. It was a prerecorded message….” He pauses, modulates his voice to a baritone rumble, “?‘The seed of Valii-Rath will die with you and your brother. You will be forgotten. Lost to the stars. Farewell, Minotaur.’ I knew I was to die, so I made the effort to do so in glory by taking your head. I failed.” Apollonius shrugs. “But you knew much of this. You interrogated me, my men. So, again, I ask, why liberate me?”
“Is it not obvious by now to your supreme intellect?” I ask. “There is only one thing you and I share. A common devil. I’ve pulled you from your prison to offer you the most precious thing I can offer a man like you: revenge.”
“Revenge? Do tell.”
“Like you, I seek the head of the Ash Lord. The difficulty is parting it from his body. In that, I require your assistance.”
He’s suspicious. “I have no army, no weapons, nothing left to give but blood and bone. How can I benefit you, Darrow?”
“It’s not what you have. It was what was stolen from you.” My smile is cold and hard. “Part of what I told you in the cell was true. The Ash Lord did not kill your brother. Tharsus is alive.”
Apollonius is stunned. “How…”
“You know the answer. You’ve wondered if it was possible. Tharsus sold your life for your title of paterfamilias of House Valii-Rath. For your monies. Your men. Your ships.”
“I see.” The charm of the man vanishes. “If I agree to help you…what trust can there be between devils?”
“This isn’t about trust. It’s about leverage. That bandage on the back of your head is from a particular procedure involving a cranial drill. There’s a quarter ounce of high-grade explosive embedded in your gray matter as well as a neural chip to stimulate your ocular nerve.” I activate the detonation timer on my datapad. Numerals appear on my datapad, but also in Apollonius’s vision, via Winkle’s biomod. A ten, then a nine, then an eight…“You have seven seconds to give me an answer. Yes or no.”
Six. Sevro grins.
Four. Apollonius stares blankly.
Two. I back away from the glass.
“Very well.” Apollonius smiles, though his anger has not abated. “I accept your proposal. But I have demands.”