“Are you ever serious?”
His sharp eyes sparkle. “Oh, you don’t want me serious.”
“How about obedient?”
He claps his hands together. “Well, you know I’m not prime fond of the idea of a leash.”
“Do you see a leash?” I ask, pointing to his forehead, where his slave mark could be.
“And since you know I don’t need a leash, it may do to tell me where we are bound. I would be more…effectivethat way.”
He’s not challenging me, because he speaks quietly. After the whipping we both received, he’s taken to me in a frighteningly loyal way. Despite all the smiles and sneers and laughs, I have his obedience. And his question is sincere.
“We’re going to ruin Apollo,” I tell him.
“But why Apollo?” he asks. “Are we merely checking off the Houses at random, or should I know something?”
The tone in his voice makes me cock my head. He’s always reminded me of some kind of giant cat. Maybe it’s the frighteninglycasual way in which he lopes along. Like he’d kill something without even tensing his muscles. Or maybe it’s because I can imagine him coiling up on a couch and licking himself clean.
“I’ve seen things in the snow, Reaper,” he says quietly. “Impressions in the snow, to be specific. And these impressions are not made by feet.”
“Paws? Hooves?”
“No, dear leader.” He steps closer. “Linear impressions.” I get his meaning. “GravBoots flying very low. Do tell me, why are the Proctors following us? And why are they wearing ghostCloaks?”
All his whispers mean nothing because of our rings. Yet he doesn’t know that.
“Because they are afraid of us,” I tell him.
“Afraid of you, you mean.” He watches me. “What do you know that I don’t? What do you tell Mustang that you don’t tell us?”
“You want to know, Tactus?” I’ve not forgotten his crimes, but I take his shoulder and bring him close like he’s a brother. I know the power touch can have. “Then knock House Apollo off the gory-damned map and I will tell you.”
His lips curl into a feral smile. “A pleasure, good Reaper.”
We stay away from the open plains and cling to the river as we move farther south, listening to our scouts relay news of enemy holdings over the comms. Apollo seems to control everything. All we see of the Jackal are his small bands of scouts. There’s something strange about his soldiers, something that chills the heart. For the thousandth time, I think of my enemy. What makes the faceless boy so frightening? Is he tall? Lean? Thick? Fast? Ugly? And what gives him his reputation, his name? No one seems to know.
The Pluto scouts never come near despite the temptation we offer them. I have Pax carry the banner of Ceres high, so that every Apollo cavalryman in the surrounding miles can see it glimmer. Each realizes the chance for glory. Parties of cavalry dash into us. Scouts think they can pry our pride away and gain themselves status in their House. They come stupidly in threes, in fours, and we ruinthem with the Ceres archers or Minerva’s spearmen or with buried pikes in the snow. Little by little, we gnaw at them as the wolf gnaws at the elk. Always we let them escape, though. I want them angry as hell when I arrive on their doorstep. Slaves like them would slow us down.
That night, Pax and Mustang sit with me by a small fire and tell me of their lives outside the school. Pax is a riot when you get him going—a surprisingly energetic talker with a penchant for complimenting everything in his stories, including the villains, so half the time you don’t know who is good and who is bad. He tells us of a time he broke his father’s scepter in half, and another time he was mistaken for an Obsidian and nearly shipped off to the Agoge, where they train in space combat.
“I notion you could say I always dreamt of being an Obsidian,” he rumbles.
When he was a boy, he would sneak from his family’s summer manor in New Zealand, Earth, and join the Obsidians as they performed the Nagoge, the nightly necessity of their training, in which they looted and stole in order to supplement the paltry diet they were given at the Agoge. He would scrap and fight with them for morsels of food. He says he would always win, that is until he met Helga. Mustang and I lock eyes and try not to bust out with laughs as he waxes grandiloquent on Helga’s ample proportions, her thick fists, her ample thighs.
“Theirs was a large love,” I tell Mustang.
“A love to shake the earth,” she replies.
I’m woken the next morning by Tactus. His eyes are cold as the dawn’s freeze.
“Our horses have decided to run away. All of them.” He guides us to the Ceres boys and girls who were watching the horses. “None of them saw a thing. One minute the horses were there; the next they were gone.”
“Poor horses must be confused,” Pax says sorrowfully. “It was stormy last night. Perhaps they ran for safety to the woods.”
Mustang holds up the ropes that held the horses during the night. Pulled in half.
“Stronger than they looked,” she says dubiously.
