“Where is he?”
“But he knows you. He knows all of you.”
“Where?”I shout.
He does not reply. His eyes change, like he knows now whatever vision he had of his future is no longer in reach. He says farewell to it with a heavy sigh and a small smile. He lets go of his warsaw. It clangs against the ground.
“Where is Atlas?” he asks and pats his chest over his heart. “Here. There.” He nods to me then up at the audience. “In all our hearts. He may be mortal, but his work is not. My Gorgon brothers you butchered were patriots, Darrow. Their sacrifice will live on in the works of our brother, our teacher, our Allfather. Before only him, I kneel.” He closeshis eyes and goes to his knees. He no longer speaks to me. “Without darkness, there could not be light. Forgive me, brother, for seeking a little more for myself before the end.”
He unfastens his armor. His huge body is rent and dark with blood. The armor clangs to the ground a piece at a time. From the smile on his face, I know he’s sown poison in his truths.
“Did you kill the Raa in their family vestibule?” Diomedes asks. “The children, was it you?”
Cassius stays Diomedes with a hand on his chest. We had agreed beforehand: Fá is the Volk’s to kill.
Fá does not answer anyway.
Diomedes relents and Cassius throws me the heatseeker gauntlet he carried from the isle of Zeus. It is heavy with sharp fingers. I walk toward Fá and see Skarde floating above, surrounded by jarls. No doubt already spreading dissent against my pending reign. “You saw how he used my boy, my Sigurd,” he will say. “You saw how he let him die.”
“He wants the throne. I told you!” Fá calls. “Did I kill your son, Darrow? Skarde, should not you deliver the blow? Avenge Sigurd?”
The Volk hand that kills a king or queen takes the crown. That is often the Obsidians’ way.
If I take Fá’s life, I am king. If Skarde takes it, then he is. Both are a problem.
Skarde will not cross me. Not today. None will. If I kill Fá, the Obsidians will cheer. They will kneel. They will hail me as king. They will follow me to Mars and be my axe. But their actions speak for the thoughts they will not voice. Already some of them are floating to join the orbit of the strongest who are not me.
This is the problem. The Obsidians’ is a cult of silence that follows strength. That silence is called honor, but it is really fear. The seeds of resentment sown here will grow to yield more destruction. The Obsidians will rebel again or, when I die, start the cycle all over. I cannot decide their fate either by sitting on the throne myself or installing a puppet. Yet if I leave the throne empty, they will destroy each other in their rush to fill it.
Nothing will change. So I will try to get them to tread the thin line between chaos and tyranny: that fragile experiment we call demokracy. Not now, though. First, Fá must die. And then I must give my candidate a chance.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I say to Fá. “That’s up to her.” I look over at Volga and motion her to join me. The Volk jarls roar in protest, especially Skarde. I raise my blade for silence, and call out. “A servant of the Fear Knight cannot be King of the Volk, can he?” They quiet. They see what I’m doing. If Fá is not really their king, I am declaring his murder will not serve as a coronation for their new monarch.
“No. He cannot,” Skarde says, sly, sacrificing the day to win tomorrow.
“This man is no king then! He is just a man! Just a father! It is known by the Volk that a father’s shame is his family’s. So by the laws of the ice, let blood judge blood,” I say.
The jarls let it pass.
I toss the gauntlet to Volga as she approaches. Lyria follows. Volga is shorter than I am, and shy to meet my gaze. Eventually she does, and the shame in her expression is eclipsed only by her anger at Fá. She slips on the gauntlet and faces Fá. I take Lyria by the shoulder and guide her off to the side.
Whatever peace or malice Fá had left drains from him as he looks up at Volga.
“If not for the Volk…why did you do this?” she asks him.
“For a brother, and my deserved peace,” he replies.
“But the Passage…”
He seems to shrink a little. “This farce was not to last. I thought…if you were like me, you could not hate me. You could understand me. You could love—” He jerks as she plunges the gauntlet into his chest, up to the wrist, and gives a twist. Their faces draw close together. For the first time I see his features in her, hers in him, and Ragnar’s in both. Then Volga pulls out Fá’s heart and holds it before his eyes.
“Unworthy.”
She throws it over her shoulder and soon after, he teeters down to the ground to the delight of the crabs. Silence presides but for the sounds of the dwindling battle beneath thePandorain the distance. No Obsidians cheer, because for the first time in years, they have no ruler. Seeing the chaos coming and the factions already forming, the Ascomanni look one last time at the corpse of the man they thought blessed by god and slip away into the dark.
I motion to Sevro.
He jogs over with his helmet off to become the scariest town crier theworlds have ever seen. “Hello. Sorry!” He steps up onto Fá’s corpse. “That’s better. Can you hear me now? Good. Great to be back. Lots of favorite faces here. We’ve shared a lot of good times. And now, a few bad ones. Let’s not make it worse. You know it could get really shitty really fast. You know what you’re like…come on. You do.”
