Apollonius sighs, grandiloquent. “Impalement. Another grotesquerie of the Fear Knight designed only to shock the mob. An unworthy end for such soldiers.” He strokes his hair. “As your…clandestine arrival was unworthy of you. I could have impaled Sevro after I acquired him. Instead, I offered you a fair contest. So why must you impugn my valor? Coming like a thief in the night despite my earnest proposal? Did you think me a cretin who would offer a duel only to kill you on sight?”
I glance at Cassius. We’re both confused. Does he have Sevro? “I hope you got a receipt from the Syndicate. You do know the man in that cell isn’t Sevro,” Cassius clarifies.
Apollonius rolls his eyes.
“Where is he?” I say. “If you have him, bring him out.”
Apollonius considers. “No.”
“You disappoint me,” I say.
He coughs in offense. “Disappoint you? Disappointyou? I took this, the pride of the Carthii family, after you left me on an enemy sphere with half a thousand men. I swayed the hearts of their legions, their dockers, with nothing but rhetoric and passion and will. Lucifer himself when he stood afore the fresh-fallen legions of hell did not surpass my oration. It is you who disappointme. Bringing yourself to me in such a feeble state. Ungrateful for this chance I give you.”
I shrug. “At least I’m not a common whore.” Apollonius’s good humor vanishes. “When last I saw you, Atlas, Atalantia, Asmodeus, they all stabbed you in the back in ways I never have. And now you fight for them.”
“I do not fight for them.”
“You’re making ships for them. The iron flows from Mercury unmolested. Which means, you must have made peace with them—the very same people who let you rot for six years in Deepgrave and then gave you to me like a Saturnalian gift.”
“Patient is the bow of Apollo far-striker.” The cunning in his smile tells me I have only half the picture.
“Do you mean, ‘Patient is the Mind’s Eye’?” Cassius asks. “Seems you were not paying attention to Master Lysander’s lessons, goodman.”
Apollonius sets his hands on his hips and begrudgingly turns his attention to Cassius. As if he could see through the thin prisoner jumpsuit, he admires Cassius’s body but little else. “Little Bellona, still chirping like a bird in heat. I have fond memories of my days with Tharsus and Karnus, memories you despoil. Always nipping at our heels with that dented chin to the Pearl clubs, weren’t you? Gobbling up the debris of our debauchery. How Karnus despised you and your freeloading. As I told you then, a shining name does not entitle you to never pay for the Pinks, Cassius.”
“They made you pay?” Cassius asks.
Apollonius smiles with teeth. “Years ago, when they told me you killed your fellow Olympic Knights, broke a sacred coven, cut down the Sovereign and the Compact and all those ridiculous creeds you swore to uphold, I laughed. How could a man who never pays a bill ever be expected to keep his vows. Hollow then. Hollow now. Hollow ever after.”
Apollonius steps closer.
“Why have you returned from your exile, Bellona? Come to test your prowess? Bringing with you, perhaps, some esoteric battle form from the icy depths of the system? Shadowfall? Windstrider? Bringer of Dawn?” His eyes flare with intrigue at each hopeful guess. “Or do you too hunger for the glory of my…falchion?”
His fingers graze his groin armor and fall on his razor. The huge bronze-hued blade unfurls from its place on his hip. It is three times as thick as a conventional razor. He sets it on his shoulder.
“Indeed, for the glory,” Cassius replies. “But mostly for the patricianpleasure of watching an ill-mannered brute from a mediocre bloodline crumble under the burden of his own grandiosity.”
“Better a grandiose scion of mediocrity than a mediocre scion of a grand line.” Apollonius pats his face. “You may stay many beatings if you tell me where your ghost ship is. I want it. What mischief I could cause.” He waits. “Then begone, beastly cherub. A duel I sought and a duel I shall have.”
“There won’t be any duel,” I say. Apollonius motions to a familiar centurion, Vorkian, his most trusted henchwoman. Bad Lass and Cassius’s razor hang from her belt. She comes forward bearing a silver platter. “At this moment there is a ten megaton atomic planted on one of the construction spindles. When it blows, the Carthii will think you’ve finally gone mad. Unless you bring me Sevro and let me go, I will—”
My threat dies on my tongue when Vorkian reveals what’s beneath the platter. It is our atomic. Apollonius smiles at me. “I know you, Darrow, like I know my violin. The moment of your capture, a survey was conducted. Your ship may yet evade me, but your devices have not. A duel I sought and a duel I shall have.”
My stomach sinks. So much for the path. The Vale is only minutes away.
I say nothing as his Grays drag Cassius up to the pulvinar.
“Where is Sevro?” I murmur. “If he’s alive, we don’t have to fight. You have more in common with me than you do with Atalantia, with Lune.”
“Darrow.Darrow. No more words. They are fickle objects. Misspoken, misheard,misshapen. So let us continue our conversation in a truer tongue.”
He lifts his arms. A team of Oranges rushes out to undress him from his armor down to a traditional Martian fighting tunic, the sort they wear in the blade clubs where he settled so many juvenile scores. It covers little of his muscular thighs and even less of his arms. At the same time, White acolytes rush forward with bags to strew the ground with reddish dirt.
“Dirt from Mother Mars,” Apollonius calls. “My last gift to you. So that when you fall, it may be into her embrace. Know when I return to our cradle…when I fall upon Mars in the last Iron Rain of this age, you will be with me as Medusa was with Perseus. Your head will be affixed upon my shield. And when rots the flesh, the skull will be cleaned and preserved with tender care, and set upon the right horn of myhelmet so all may see me and know, there…yes, there up high…you see him, my son? There is the mortal who thought to challenge the heavens, and there is the dauntless god that humbled him.”
The Grays release me from my manacles, and Vorkian tosses me Bad Lass.I sigh and shape the blade with the control on the hilt until it takes on the curve of my old razor. I plunge the slingBlade into the sand and pick up a handful of dirt. It smells like home.
Apollonius ties up his hair in a ponytail. “I warn you, should you fight merely to wound me, for fear of my men’s rancor, it will be no contest. I am in my power. Our duel will be to the death. Hold nothing back. Should you survive, you and your Bellona paramour will leave here without molestation. You have the oath of my bones.” He takes hold of his pinky finger on his off-hand and jerks it sideways to snap the bone. “Of my blood.” He slices his left cheek with a knife to produce a crimson drip. “Of my flesh.” He fleeces a sliver off the point of his left ear. There were many notches before me. He tosses the sliver into the scattered dirt.
