Atalantia strides out trailing Olympics and Irons.
I look over at Ajax and grip his shoulder. He gives me a hard nod, then we both look up to the top of the Colosseum, where Atlas watches us for a moment from his perch before flying away on his skipBoots, as silently as the crows who left before.
18
VIRGINIA
The Returned
Victra’s war shuttle squatsin my reserved spot on the executive tarmac outside the Citadel of Agea. Muttering aspersions, I jump out the side of my own shuttle before it even sets down, and sprint for the Citadel.
Removed from the rest of Mars’s capital, the grounds are quiet. On the other side of the lake looms a battered Votum torchShip. It only just cleared orbital security to land. I spare it a glance and cut through the gardens, moving so fast Holiday and my Lionguards struggle to keep up. Their boots and capes trail red dirt from my tour of the bunker construction sites in the deepmines of Cimmeria.
Birds scatter as we rush along the white cobbled stone path. Pale tree-lynxes stare down wondering at our hurry and go back to licking their paws. I burst into the executive wing’s side entrance. Virgilus, a Lionguard centurion, greets me with a grin. “Where are they?” I demand.
“Executive lounge.”
I sprint through the network of halls past more smiling guards until I reach the godTree doors. I catch my breath, straighten my jacket, and Holiday opens the door for me. When I enter, four bedraggled, semi-emaciated strangers turn to look at me. I feel an urge to cry when I realize they aren’t strangers at all: they are dear friends and colleagues. War has made them ashen and leeched the light and softness from their skin and eyes.
While they are more Darrow’s friends than mine, it would be difficultto find four people more worthy of my trust and respect than these: Harnassus, the steady, soulful commander of the Free Legions’ engineers and the loyal doubter my husband always needed. Screwface, a Howler who wore the cloak only weeks before I first did, and was always my favorite of the original pack though I don’t think he ever knew it. Thraxa, the Telemanus sister who taught me to box when we were girls in New Zealand together and is like a sister—as much as a bulldog can be a sister. And Colloway Char, Darrow’s virtuosic pilot and darling of the masses, media, and single persons everywhere.
Holiday shuts the door behind me.
They were sitting at a table eating. They scramble up and snap to attention to salute me. “Slag that,” I say and rush to embrace Thraxa. Her hand sledgehammers my back. Not being as personally acquainted with Harnassus or Colloway, our embraces are more formal. I soften the most for Screwface. I saved him for last so I could spend the most time on him. He was my school friend, but I know he always worried he was a hanger-on. He looks nervous, ashamed of the brutality that has been done to him. He’s missing a leg and wears a wool cap to cover an atrocious scalping. His face is not the same as it was at the Institute, but his eyes have never changed. They’ve always been insecure, I think. While Sevro learned to put knives into the soft places of those who told him he was worthless, Screwface believed his tormentors’ words a little too much and grew to think if only he was only a little taller, a little more handsome, a little more sophisticated, then maybe he would be worthy of love and respect.
That is why he agreed to infiltrate the Ash Legions. Three years with the devils has taken its toll on him. I embrace him and hold him because he seems to need it. He melts into me and begins to sob like a child. The others look away, but I don’t let go of him. A man like this deserves to know both that I am his friend and that his Sovereign sees his sacrifices. I hold him for several minutes and spoil him with attention.
“Welcome home,” I say to them over his head. I let go of him and hold his face between my hands. “You most of all, my friend. You most of all. Welcome home.”
He smiles up at me with incandescent love, because he feels that his presence is welcome when he doubted it would be. “Can I tell her?” Abroad-shouldered woman stands by the window, her hands clasped behind her back. She turns. Her eyes are red from crying. I let go of Screwface. My hands shake.
Victra crosses the room to me, and more than a head taller, she leans down to embrace me. My heart plummets in despair and then soars on wings as her lips curl into a smile and she says, “Sevro. Darrow. They are alive.”
I close my eyes in exultation, and then yelp as Victra hoists me into the air and spins me around, cackling. “They’re alive! Itwasthem over Venus.”
I’m fighting back tears by the time she sets me down. “Where are they?” I ask.
“We don’t know,” Harnassus says and tries to temper our expectations. “In fact, we don’t know if Darrow was successful in rescuing Sevro. But Victra won’t hear anything about that.”
“We can game theory it,” I say. “I’ll get the Conservatory and Midnight School hives going. We can send out search parties.”
They all look at Victra. “There’s something else,” she says. “Char?”
“Our sensors were soup the whole journey. Victra tells us it’s the same here?” Char asks.
I nod. “Even the telescopes. It’s a light war unlike anything we’ve ever seen. They’ve virtually annihilated our telescope web and sensor network all around the system. Solar flares. Dummy fleets. Drone Mimidae are everywhere. I’ve never seen fog of war this thick.”
He grows solemn. “In crossing the Earth–Mars orbital gap, we observed a squadron of enemy ships too heavy to be a patrol. Since we had Votum tags, we were able to follow them, but still, we dared not get closer than this.” My pulse quickens. He taps the holoDisplay on the table. A grainy image appears of Eros, the Mars-crosser asteroid nearly seventeen kilometers in diameter. It was a Republic trade post and military harbor until we lost it seven months ago to Dido. Dark shapes in the hundreds lurk in the shadow of its mass. Warships.
I feel the limits of my power acutely. The Rim’s nimble ships have had a ruinous effect against our scouts and drones like never before. They’ve gouged out our navy’s eyes at the same time that Atlas’s Gorgons and Atalantia’s spies have cut off my ears by eliminating my own spies. A fleet that size could not sail much closer to Mars without us seeing. Butfor the enemy to have amassed that much firepower only six days away without my knowing…it is humbling.
“What is that?” I point to the largest mass. “The enemy couldn’t have built a moonBreaker in secret.”
“No. They couldn’t,” Char says. “I’d know that shape anywhere. That’s theMorning Star.”
I step back from the table. I heard the Votum were trying their hands at shipbuilding. If theMorning Staris there, it can only mean one thing: that Lysander is there too. He’s finally come to war.
Victra is smiling. Now, at last, we can kill him.
