TheArchimedeswhispersthrough space on a route beneath the ecliptic plane that will add weeks to our journey but hopefully help us avoid enemy hunting squadrons. In the commissary, Sevro and I eat dinner in silence. His hair is long and disheveled, and like me he has a beard. He breaks the silence with a burp and wags a chunk of ham on the end of a combat knife. “I’ll say one thing about Kavax. He packs a good larder. Surprised your lot didn’t pillage it.”
“We did. Cassius nicked this grub from Starhold. Neglected to share with the others before we parted ways.”
Sevro shrugs, deciding not to let the origins of the food diminish his enjoyment of it.
“You try the ham yet?” he asks.
“Not yet.”
Four days out from the dockyards, and Sevro and I have apparently forgotten how to talk to each other. At the same time, we can’t seem to ever be more than one room away from each other or avoid touching each other when we are in the same room. It’s weird like that. The push and pull of a war bond that goes as deep as ours. So much guilt, but at the same time he’s my security and refuge, and I am his. We know we’re the only ones who understand what the other one has seen. Indescribable things. Things words explain to those back home about as well as cave paintings relay the reality of a woolly mammoth.
“You always try the ham, Darrow. Wherever you go. It’s a good barometer for the rest of the larder. Trust me.”
He throws a piece on my plate. “I’m prime.”
“PTSD because the Minotaur carved you like a pig?” he asks.
“Was that all a setup?” I ask.
“Don’t be so conceited.”
I grimace at him from across the table. He’s lost weight in his stays in the clone’s prison and then Apollonius’s. Skinny, bearded, tattooed, savage as a serrated knife, drowning in Cassius’s too-large shirt and too-large pants, he looks more like a Lunese street killer than a soldier. Except in the eyes. They’re locked in a thousand-meter stare. Then there’s the matter of his necklace of ears, which he hasn’t taken off. They stink.
“Still a little nauseous from the meds actually,” I admit.
“Pain meds are for Pixies.”
After the duel and the meatstraw, I can’t move without suffering a litany of pains. I’ve been in theArchimedes’s medBay with Aurae more than I’ve been in my own bunk.
“Be honest. It’s the ears,” he says. “I’d get rid of them, but how else could I mock the dead?” He brings an ear to his mouth. “Galerius, you still squealing like a piggy down there?”
“Galerius au Voth?” I ask. “He came to the Minotaur?”
“That’s the piggy,” he says and goes back to eating.
“Well, he certainly had it coming.”
“He was my sixth. After I got free. I was in the vents by then. Strong enough to finally gather supplies and make a real guerilla action out of it. Found him in the showers. His life wasn’t the first thing he lost.”
“I’m glad you showed restraint,” I say. He looks up, eager to take offense but not sure if there’s an angle to. “Ears. You could have chosen pricks.”
“Thought about it. Gender biased and too heavy. Golds, you know.” He’s not joking. “Once I got into an armory and got my hands on antipersonnel mines, it started getting real fun. Best one was pulling a fire alarm in the mess and seeing all those Grays run out. Got fifty-one that day.”
It’s not like Sevro to brag. Maybe like me he doesn’t know how to fill the silence. “So Galerius was there. You already told me about Tiberius and Drusilla. What about on Luna?”
He goes quiet and returns to his food. “Told you. Old crowd. Vox were puppets. Syndicate Queen was Lilath. Clone thing. Clown,Pebble, who knows where. Iron wolf. You want me to tell you Min-Min smelled like bacon when she burned? She did. So did the rest of them.”
He meant it to hurt me, but saying it hurt him too. He looks away. I told him about Mercury. He didn’t say a thing the whole time. Not a single expression either, not even when I told him about Alexandar and Rhonna. He was too mad. He didn’t say it, but I know he thinks I should have let him kill Lysander when he was a boy.
I love Sevro to death, and he is fundamentally a good friend, but he feels no need to be a good person when dealing with enemies. “There he is. Hero of the hour,” Sevro says when Cassius limps in for coffee.
“Barca, glad to see you’re making use of the larder,” he says.
Sevro gives him a wide grin. “What a host you are.” Cassius nods to me and goes for the coffee. “But of course you had practice. You and this manse hosted royalty for over a decade.” His smile grows wider. “Glad to see you left a positive impression on young Lune. Taught him all the best ways to slaughter heroes of the Rising.”
Cassius turns around, jaw locked. “I won’t make excuses for Lysander. I hear Alexandar and Rhonna were good people.”
“Good?” Sevro asks.
