“Volk on the moon? Many. At the feast? Enough to require a requisition of one thousand auroch, four hundred thousand liters of mead, six hundred thousand liters of wine, fifty tons of bread, cheese, butter, five thousand drums of olives, one hundred thousand fowl.” The Copper spares a look back at my guards. “The great Fá knows his Core braves are restless out here in the dark, especially with the gossip that spreads through the ranks. He will tell them to take the Deep soon. A great demand. So he bribes them with riches, and sedates them with mysticism.”
“The new gossip? Darrow,” I say.
Nicator looks over at me, with interest. “Were you on Io when he fought Skarde? Of course you were. Sigurd’s friends brought you.” I say nothing. “Is he here? On Europa?”
“If I knew, why would I tell you?” I say. I glance behind us. The hangar is busy with preparations for departure. My Ascomanni guards smoke tobacco a few paces away while hundreds of Volga’s household braves load onto flatbed skiffs. They look glorious. The four gold torcs on each of their right arms are polished. They wear bright cloaks made from exotic furs or dread scale. Like Nicator, they are clean. Unlike Nicator, they are already drunk and laughing.
“They don’t look troubled.”
Nicator shrugs in a mixture of surrender and resentment. “Humans are a herd animal. We do as our fellows do, for few can bear the shame of doing otherwise. Why else war? Why else traditions? Look below. How many islands with fires do you count?”
“Thirteen.”
“And how many torcs upon the arms of Volga’s braves?”
“Four.”
Nicator points a finger toward an island, the fourth from the left.“The heir’s household guard will feast there upon the island of Apollo. They belong to the Fourth Band. Fourth from Fá’s favor. Do you understand?”
I feel the sickness of it creep through me. “The hierarchy. It’s happening all over again,” I murmur. “Can’t they see it?”
“If you are raised in a house that is square, what shape do you think you will build your house when you are grown?” Nicator asks.
I say nothing. The beauty I saw in the Daughters of Ares—all the Colors working together to escape the hierarchy—seems such a frail thing before the might of this ordered host. I thought they were just barbarians. I shake from fear of what’s to come. Then Nicator slides something into my hand. A pill. “A small mercy for a fellow child of Mars,” she says.
On principle, I flip the pill out to sea. She watches it disappear with a growing smile. “Do not fear, Lyria. You are not to die today. My mistress plays politics. Fá’s spies would have told him of your arrival the moment that those young fools brought you aboard. She will ask him to spare you, and he will because he craves her love. Fá fathered many children but raised none. He thinks of Volga as his daughter.”
“Then why did you give me a suicide pill?”
“It was a breath mint. The muzzle you’ll be wearing when you meet the Great Fá will taste…unpleasant. Easier to bear with a mint.”
—
The muzzle tastes like rust and a cow’s spit. Bitter sea wind gnaws through my thin prisoner kit as Volga’s skiff coasts beneath the rim of the shields toward the islands. Flanked by the skiffs of her new household warriors, it is not a small procession. The wind carries music and laughter and cursing and the clatter of dishes and the screeches of slaves. Volga stares into the clamor like an old sailor heading toward a storm. The skiffs carrying her men bank away to the right toward the island of Apollo, where the Fourth Band feasts. Volga’s carries on alone toward the isle of Zeus, where Fá awaits.
The isle of Zeus is not large, but it is beautiful—a family of snow-covered peaks floating above the deep sea. Between the two highest peaks, each a pedestal for the statue of Zeus’s feet, a black acropolis hangs suspended over a frosted valley. My eyes are drawn up toward Zeus as we land. Carrion birds churn around his legs and torso. Golds have been nailed to the statue. Many are still alive.
I look away and see Volga watching the bodies with an expression that doesn’t match the iron she put in her hard words.
Volga leads her small entourage off the skiff when we arrive at the acropolis of Zeus. I’m dragged behind to the acropolis’s courtyard where amidst shrines and tall pines the great Fá and several hundred ornamented jarls feast, drink, wrestle, and rut. Our procession grinds to a halt as Volga stops to stare at the scene. Just for a moment, but it makes me wonder: did my words find some purchase after all?
I’m again pushed forward. To keep up with Obsidians I have to go at a trot. Squadrons of Pinks nearly as thick as the birds above flock to a vast piece of debris serving as a table for the jarls. It seems to have been taken from a Raa ship’s hull. Part of a blue dragon’s head can still be seen on the charred metal.
The sight of the jarls is gross and absurd. In furs, scale capes, spider silk jackets, they glitter with gold and drip with jewels. They don’t mingle, the Ascomanni and the Core jarls. Even here, at the high feast, they cluster in factions within factions like Red clans at a Laureltide dance. The most curious to me is a group of about twenty Core Obsidians in great fur cloaks. They sit far away from the rest drinking heavily and glaring at the line of Obsidians that queues before the man anyone could tell is their king. Fá sits above them all on a pitch-black chair encrusted with melted gold, diamonds, and skull trophies. Pinks surround him like the feathers of a peacock.
I can’t help but stare at the beast. It’s not Fá’s size that terrifies me, though he is a giant. It’s not the metal grafted onto his body. It’s the calmness that emanates from him. He is the pupil in this eye of insanity. Cold, aware, watching, and sober.
His eyes flick to Volga and then to me before tossing a glass orb that glows from within to an Ascomanni leader on his right. He yawns as the next warleader scampers forward to unveil a trident. It is the most beautiful weapon I’ve ever seen. Polished platinum flashes in the firelight. Its killing tips are flanged and shaped like dolphins.
The jarls stir. Fá sheds his Pinks to stride across the top of the table and hop down to seize the trident with greedy hands.
“Daughter!”he calls to Volga as he measures the trident’s balance.“This brave of the Twelfth has brought us a treasure. The Trident of Ignaeus.”Then with the trident’s edge, he cuts several torcs off the rightarm of the Obsidian until only five remain.“Rise to the Fifth Ring, son of the Volk. The Allfather wills it.”
The Ascomanni keen in approval. So do the Volk but with less enthusiasm.
A half hour later, Fá motions Volga forward. She drags me along with her by a chain linked to a collar around my neck. The wind moans as if in pain.
“Jarl Volarus! Hunter of Dragons. You come at the Allfather’s hour of hunger. The Slaying is almost upon us. Truly his fire burns in you, daughter.”For her he’s a jolly giant with clever, smiling eyes.“But your catch is smaller than Jarl Gherala’s! I’d hoped you would have the honor of catching mighty Cyaxares, not a minnow.”
