“There’s a cure for that,” he says and produces a bottle from his pack. He pours a generous helping for himself, tosses it back, and pours another. “Why didn’t you tell me about Alexandar and Rhonna?”
“Didn’t seem relevant,” I reply. “Do you need something?”
After a moment, he clears his throat. “Before all this. When Olympia was a beacon and my father’s star was on the rise, he had time to spend on me. So he decided to take me for my first hunt—”
“Cassius, I’m glad you’re here. Truly. But I’m not interested in lessons right now.”
“I seem to remember teaching you one of your very first,” he replies.
I turn around. “I beg your pardon?”
“Left you in the mud with a hole in your gut…” He pours some liquor into another cup and pushes it across the table to me. I drink the liquor down. “Because I’m a duelist, and you never have been. Not really.”
“How’s the arm? You know. The one I chopped off at the gala,” I say.
He smiles. “You see, on my first hunt I had so many expectations. A thirty-six-point ivory stag had wandered onto our estate.” I sigh and let him get on with it. “In the stalk, I imagined how it would fall to me. I would look at the stag, and it would look at me, and I would feel something transcendent, a mutual agreement for a great chase. The stag would flee, fast and wily. I would pursue. I’d release my arrow on the run. It would catch the stag mid-leap, true and in the heart. And I would feel exultant because I had met the stag on equal footing and given it the splendid,nobledeath it deserved. And for his part, the stag would feel at least some measure of satisfaction in being felled by a predator equal to his own majesty.
“Instead, I ambushed it at a watering hole. I misjudged the wind and the shot was ruinous. My stag bolted into the woods, maimed but not yet dying. We tracked it and found it eight hours later dragging itself across volcanic rocks. It had gotten three kilometers over them. Youcould see the bones of its ribs where the skin had flayed off. I’ll never forget my father’s face.”
Aurae’s eyes open, disliking the tale. Cassius doesn’t notice. Her eyes shift to me and pierce right through me, studying.
“Point is, you think you have the Minotaur’s respect. You believe that respect entitles you to certain privileges. That stag had my respect. I still slit its throat and nailed its head to my wall. Apollonius might dream of a great duel, but your head is his ticket back into Gold favor. He’ll take it however he can.”
“Six years in Deepgrave will change a man,” I reply. “The experience is the point for Apollonius, not the result. I’m a cherished peer. That stag was not your peer. Anyway, doesn’t matter. I’m destined for Mars.” He nods along, patronizing. “I’m destined for Mars, Cassius.”
“You should be, but you’re not,” he says.
“You’ve been gone ten years. You don’t know me like you think you do.”
He eyes Sevro. “Some things never change. You’re going to try and sneak off when everyone’s sleeping. After Mercury you don’t want to spend any more lives. Darrow, I know guilt better than most people. I know you’re afraid to go home. But I won’t let you go get yourself killed, not even for Sevro.”
“Let me?” I ask.
He smiles. The room grows chilly. “Kavax told me to bring you home. Virginia is waiting for her Imperator…and her husband.”
I bristle at that. “You said you came back to—”
“Fight in your war. Yes. Die in a suicide mission? No.”
“Who says it’s a suicide mission?” Aurae asks. Her voice sounds as if it comes from an oracle’s cave. She’s not looked away from me since she opened her eyes. “Tell him your reasons, Darrow.”
Cassius spares her a quizzical look. “Do you know something I don’t?” he asks.
“Tell him your reasons, Darrow,” she says again. “If you have more than one.”
I do, I realize. Far more than one. They make up the current that’s drawing me this way. Part of me feels the urge to fight that current, fight Aurae’s smug look and the words ofThe Path to the Vale. But it’s hard to hold on to petulance when you’re wasting away.
“I have five. One: it’s Sevro, and I owe him. Two: those dockyards arethe heart of the Gold war industry, and if I can’t save Sevro I can at least slag them up and buy Mars time. Three: when I appear there, I’ll draw all eyes to Venus. It’ll clear a path home for the rest of you. Four: the Minotaur respects me more than he respects his fellow Golds. Odd as it sounds, I might be able to turn him. Five. The Republic needs a spark. I would rather go home, Cassius. Trust me on that. But”—
—“the path leads to Venus,” Aurae murmurs. I glance at her.“The wind is oblivious to the obstacles though her path would not be the same without them.”She smiles. “So my book is intact after all, it seems?”
I hesitate again, unwilling to give credit to a book written by people I don’t know given to me by a woman who, while she’s had my life in her hands, I don’t exactly trust.
“It’s not toilet paper yet, no,” I mutter.
Cassius is confused by the exchange. “Were you two in touch these last weeks? You’re acting like you share a secret language all of a sudden.”
“Isn’t that always the case with those who’ve read the same books?” Aurae says with a little mischief. “My people believe only the dust knows the weight of Golden boots better than Reds and Pinks. You know Ares was a hero to my people, Cassius. So is his son. Which is why I will be coming with you, Darrow.”
