But if future generations do etch or paint us together, how will my distant descendants judge me for Atlas’s presence? Will they revere him as I revere Akari, his evil deeds scrubbed clean by the brush of history?
Pytha greets me with a warm hug when she arrives, and doesn’t let go until I surrender to the embrace. She clings to me like I’m her brother, and I feel like I am. “I’m sorry about Diomedes,” she says after we take a seat on the couch. “I know you thought you had found a friend in him.”
“More than that,” I murmur.
“We both watched silence eat Cassius up,” she says. “Tell me what happened.”
With Rhone no longer in my trust, I told myself I would confide everything in Pytha, but as she holds my hand I realize that while she very well might understand why I accepted Atlas’s offer, she will never look at me the same way ever again. Not with that protective love of an older sister. Lysander will cease to exist. She will look at me then only as her Sovereign. In time I will look at her as only my captain, and it will be as if our lives on theArchimedesnever happened.
To preserve that, I lie to her. I tell her the tale I told Cicero and Pallas and my officers.
“The ambush came out of nowhere,” I say. It’s not hard to look haunted. “I don’t know what happened. I woke in the barracks to Ascomanni in the halls. I tried to repel the boarders, but theDustmakerwas overrun. I wanted to stay and fight to the end, but my Praetorians forced me to evacuate.”
“And you feel guilty for that?” she asks. I nod. “It wasn’t your fault. You were a passenger.” Her hand settles on my knee. “I saw the rubble. I heard your speech. You can be brave for them. You don’t have to be brave for me.”
“I know. I’d rather not relive it anymore,” I say.
“But you don’t have to live with it alone,” she says. “Whatever happened. Whatever you saw—” She pauses. “You don’t have to tell me. But I’ve never seen you like this. I can carry it with you. Whatever it is.”
I want to tell her. I know I need someone else to trust. I feel that aching in my heart to share this burden. Glirastes is gone. Ajax too. I want to tell her I am afraid. That my Praetorians are not my protectors. That I am a fool. That there are strings inside me I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to cut. Instead, I deflect, shame binds my mouth from telling the truth.
“It’s just how cold it all was—Kalyke,” I say. “How cold it all is.”
That truth, though not the truth, makes me crack. The tears stream out, and she takes me in her arms. I cry into her uniform and hold on to her warmth. She knows I’ve not said it all, but Pytha—sweet and dear as she is—accepts the deflection and whispers that it will be all right. It can’t be, I know, because it never was.
65
LYRIA
Into the Maelstrom
With Darrow’s message forVolga burning a hole in my mission pack, I follow six Black Owls through the bustle outside the main pedestrian sealift to Heraklion. The sealift doors groan like old men going down stairs. They open to release thousands of refugees from the surface. In the robes of their Colors, the refugees stream out between the statues of Poseidon and Aphrodite like migrating butterflies. Not just on the ground but by means of lines strung in the air. Gray soldiers floating about in leviathan-marked cuirasses of House Kalibar herd them toward the magnetic trams where Daughter militia load them into cars to take them to refugee cities nearer the core. The tension between the groups of soldiers is enough that everyone expects a firefight to break out at any moment. Yet everyone is keeping their tempers, sensing that feeling that hangs in the air. The feeling I had as a girl in 121 when storms would wrack the Cimmerian plains and the clans would abandon the camp and huddle together in the mines, even with us Gammas.
It is strange. Couple years ago it’d be me filing along clutching my siblings’ hands, making sure we all stick together as we flee the storm. Now, I trudge toward the maelstrom, and I’m surprised that I don’t feel unprepared. Darrow himself handed me off to the Owls. I will not let him down. I will win Volga back to the Republic.
“Wrong way, squibs!” a Gray shouts to the Black Owls in an accent so thick I can barely understand him. He sets down in front of us inbeautiful blue armor. The leviathan on his chest is golden. An officer then. “Follow the lanes and get with the others.”
“We’re going up top,” I say.
The Gray snorts. His bluff face is half hidden in his helmet. Hard eyes peer out at us from the dark blue steel. “Naw, ya ain’t, little rusty. Them reptiles will make a meal of ya.”
“It’ll be the crows,” a second Gray says. “Reptiles are sacking the Dryads.”
The first Gray shrugs. “Either, neither. Yar going nowhere, lass.”
“Let us through,” a voice booms behind us and the Owls and I spin around.
Two giants in armor enter the doorway. Cassius and Sigurd. The former is unexpected. “What you doin’ here?” I ask Cassius with a smile.
“You didn’t think I’d let strangers drop you off, did you?” he asks. “I thought I’d come along in case you met trouble.”
The Gray who’d blocked us is as surprised to see a Core Gold as he is the Obsidian brave standing next to him.
“D-Dominus,”the Gray stammers and steps aside.
Cassius sweeps me into the lift along with Sigurd, leaving the Owls outside. The door closes and the motors hum to life.
“I have a warrant badge,” I say as the lift begins to rise. “I would have used it to get past that tinpot. Truth is you just can’t stay away from me, Bellona.”
