At our cautious pace, the Galilean moons are still days away; Io, Ganymede, and Callisto are hidden behind the Gas Giant. Europa flickers, a midnight blue mote in the eye of Jupiter as she swings on her orbital path before disappearing behind Jupiter’s mass.
Haunted by the unanswered questions at Kalyke, I seek out Sevro in the machine shop. With any vibration a danger to us all, he listens to his music on headphones. He is working on his main suit of pulseArmor. When I get him to finally take off his headphones, he shakes his head at me. “Gods, could you be more jealous,” he says when I ask him what he thinks of Kalyke.
“I’m not jealous,” I say, annoyed.
“Jealous. You can’t handle the fact that Fá destroyed the Rim Armada, and you didn’t and don’t understand how he did. Like I said. Jealous. Or Colorist. Like Bellona. Can’t reckon an Obsidian’s your equal in space.”
“If one was, it would be Ragnar’s da,” I say.
He snorts. “So now you’re thinking it is his da.”
“Can I just talk it out without you shitting on my every word?” He shrugs, noncommittal, and continues sculpting wolf embellishments into the armor. I lean against the metal smelter and watch him detail an incisor on the helmet. “What doesn’t make sense is even if Fá guessed Helios and Dido were ghost sailing, and Kalyke was their ghost point, we should have seen more dispersion in the debris. And we should have seen more Volk and Ascomanni ships in the ruins. You don’t inflict that kind of damage on Rim Praetors without taking a good licking yourself. You just don’t. It was too lopsided. He should have lost half his fleet, at least, even in a perfect ambush. How was it so clean? How did they get so completely surprised? Why didn’t they run? Their ships are faster.”
He finishes the incisor and sets the scalpel down. “Honor, dipshit. The Rim and Cassius have something in common. They’re new to this war. They don’t know what we know. Honor, if it ever existed, was the first casualty.”
47
LYSANDER
The Bringer of Darkness
The door to myroom opens with a creak of well-worn hinges. Instead of the mute Gorgon who has brought my meals over the last ten days, Rhone enters. He looks tired and smells of soap. The skin beneath his eyes is cracked and red. Just the area left exposed when one wears a kryll breathing aparatus and goggles.
“You’ve been out,” I note.
“Gorgons had a mission. Thought we’d pitch in. You know I don’t like being idle.” He spares me a cautious smile. I remain reclined on the room’s small bunk. “May I sit?”
“It seems you don’t need my permission to do anything any longer,” I reply. He sits with a grimace.
Outside, a volcano roars in the distance. My room has no windows but there’s little mystery where Atlas’s torchShip has landed. Io, the volcanic homeland of the Raa, their citadel of Sungrave, and Demeter’s Garter. With the Rim Armada destroyed, nothing stands in Fá’s way except the ground defenses, and maybe my fleet.
If they are still coming. They’ll have seen the ambush on their scopes. They’ll hear the silence. They’ll think I’m dead.
For a few moments Rhone stares at his hands, picking at one of the calluses that line his palms. He is not guilty, just thinking. In the muted light of the room, the teardrop tattoos on his face all look the same color. “You know me as your shooting instructor,” he says slowly. “You know me as crown winner, as a Praetorian subLegate of Dracones XIII,as Rhone ti Flavinius. I was not always those things. Before the agoge, my home was Lost City. My name was Fleabite. And that is what I was. One of a million fleas in the armpit of the city. That is who I knew until your family’s recruiters found me. Gave me a bed, a roof, a chance, a purpose. A pack. People think I’m from a famous line who’s always been in service to a patron. No.
“We bunk in centuries in theludus. A hundred per kennel. Most who graduate go to the Lune house legions. Maybe five of those eventually are quality enough to go to the Praetorian Guards. Of my kennel, all one hundred went to the guard. It has never happened before. It will never happen again.
“They were my brothers. They were my sisters. Forty-six of them died in the Battle of Ilium when the Raa chose Darrow over the Society. Twenty-one died when Darrow came to Luna. After twelve years of this war, a war the Raa made possible, only Markus, Drusilla, Demetrius, and I are left of that kennel.
“I tell you this because I know you are angry. I know you feel betrayed. But you are not the only one with debts. You are not the only one with anger. Diomedes was your friend, but barely. So take a moment. Weigh your loss against ours. We who have given our blood, our lives, our futures to House Lune. We who have abdicated legacy for ourselves by forsaking the chance for children. We who would give our lives for you, if you but asked.” He sets his Praetorian dagger on his thigh. “And consider, perhaps we are due more thangratitude,gilded though it might be.”
“And what are the innocents of the Rim due?” I ask.
“No better and no worse than the innocents of Luna,” he replies. “Our home.”
His words are not lost on me. I see him more clearly than I ever have before. But that does not change what he did. “It wasn’t the acrobat. You poisoned me on Phobos.”
“I thought you might work it out eventually.”
“How?” I ask, doing my best to keep the anger out of my voice. “My food?”
“Let’s just say that perhaps you shouldn’t have given your favor to some fucking ruster before the battle. Never know what bloodborne diseases those vermin might be carrying.”
I nod, understanding. It was Rhone who put the poison on my cloak before the Red Helldiver returned it. The petty jealousy turns my stomach. I’m mad at myself for mistaking this man’s patriotism for loyalty. That means Kyber isn’t in his circle. Shot by a sniper, maybe, but not one from the Republic. He didn’t want her coming on this trip.
“You knew this would happen,” I charge. “Kalyke.”
“Yes.”
