Iron Gold

  “There’s twenty-four of us,” Colloway continues, counting off the figures one by one. Many are still in their bunks. “Ten Golds in the cells.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Sevro asks. “We got shit to do.”

  “Last night I couldn’t sleep…”

  “You mean you were perving on people.”

  “So I synced into the ship and I saw this.” He rewinds the blueprint to the middle of the night. “Count them.”

  “There’s twenty-five.” Sevro squints. “Shit. How did you just notice this?”

  “There’s no reason for me to sync when we’re on autopilot. It’s a waste of my time,” Colloway says in annoyance. “It looks like they’re masking their signature, staying near the engines or wearing a thermal blanket.”

  “They could have been on the ship before it was stolen,” Pebble says. “Could be a dockworker or one of Quick’s servants.”

  “If it’s a docker, then they could sabotage our life support systems or melt down the helium core,” Colloway says. “That would be—and I say this as understatement—cataclysmic.”

  “A gorydamn grandma in the com center would be as dangerous as a Stained,” Clown says. “If they transmit on our coms, the whole gory system will know where we are. Society and Republic. We’re slagged! They’ll find us, obliterate us, and our molecules will drift through space for ten million years.”

  I turn to Clown. “You done?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re done. Get Alexandar and Thraxa and meet me in the armory.”

  Ten minutes later, Clown, Alexandar, Thraxa, Sevro, and I shoulder our multiRifles. I toss them green clips of ammunition. “Spider only,” I say. “I want the stowaway alive.”

  By eliminating the known thermal signatures one at a time, Colloway manages to track the signature of the intruder back from the galley to the engine room. The open room spans all four decks at the back of the ship. Metal walkways switchback down from the top and extend out amongst the machinery. The lights won’t turn on. Thraxa and Clown guard the bottom exit while the rest of us come down from the top, searching level by level. Our helmet floodlamps chase the shadows away as we comb through the machinery. Sevro signals me as he kneels. He shows me a wrapper for a Venusian noodle bowl. There’s more litter in an alcove on the third level, along with a holoVisor and a bundle of blankets.

  There’s a patter of feet on the level below. “Rat?” Sevro says with a grin.

  “Go,” I say. Sevro and Alexandar jump off the side of the metal walkway and land on the one below. There’s a thump and a laugh.

  “Darrow, you better come down here,” Sevro calls up.

  “It’s definitely a rat, a bloodydamn big one with freckles,” Alexandar adds. I take the stairs and find Alexandar and Sevro standing over a small woman who sits on her haunches. Her face is illuminated by their floodlamps.

  “Rhonna?” I sputter.

  My niece grins up at me. “Sorry, Uncle, got lost on the way to the shuttle. Is this New Sparta?”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Stowing away,” she says. “Can I stand or are you going to shoot me?” She looks in annoyance at Alexandar’s rifle. Unlike Sevro, he still points it at her. She stands.

  Sevro chuckles. “Got some big iron balls on you, don’t ya?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “I gave you an order,” I say, trying to calm myself down as Thraxa joins us.

  “Yeah. You can put me in the brig if you want, but I think the cells are all filled up. Or you can let me do my job. If Sir Pukealot here can have your back, so can I.” Alexandar glowers in embarrassment. “By my count we’re two weeks in. No way to turn back now, Uncle. You’re stuck with me.” She’s right.

  “You think this is about me?” I ask. “You just broke your father’s heart.”

  Her jaw tightens. “It’s my life. Now, can I join the rest of the crew and get to—”

  “Alexandar. Shoot the dumbass,” Sevro says.

  Alexandar grins. “With pleasure.”

  Her eyes widen. “No, not him. Anyone but—”

  Alexandar grins and fires his spider poison round into her thigh. She spins down, grunting in pain. Her fingers curl as the paralytic spreads. “Ouch.”

  “Leave her,” Sevro says when Thraxa tries to pick her up. “You’ll be able to move by tonight, shithead. Clean up your filth and find a bunk. Tomorrow you scrub the latrines in every bathroom. Starting with mine. Real shame for you because curry is on the menu tonight.” He bends down. “You sad because you ain’t with a Drachenjäger squad? A mechman? Please, we eat those little bitches for breakfast. You’re lucky to be in our glorious presence.” He leans in even closer. “You want respect? Earn it.”

  “The nerve of her,” I mutter as we head out into the hallway.

  “Least she didn’t come through the viewports.”

  “Poor Kieran. You should have seen him ask me to leave her behind.”

  “Was a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Thraxa says, catching up to us.

  Sevro grins. “Listen, Thraxa, kids are like dogs. Some whimper, some bark, some growl. You just gotta find the right language and then speak it back at them.”

  Alexandar smirks. “You can speak to dogs?”

  “I talk to you, don’t I?”

  —

  Min-Min lounges in the brig guard post forward of the cellblock with her rifle leaning against the wall when Sevro and I arrive to talk with Apollonius. Her bandy metal legs are up on the console, a coffee cup balanced precariously on her hydraulic joint as she watches a holo comedy about a Red moving in with a Violet and Gray in Hyperion City; hijinks ensue. She scratches the coarse whiskers on her neck and looks back at us. “ ’Lo, bosses.”

  “How are the little devils today?” I ask.

  “Quiet as mice.” Min-Min keeps one eye on the projection and laughs as the Red tries to reach the top cabinet in their apartment’s kitchen to get the whiskey the others hid from him. “That’s some racist shit,” she says. “We’re not all alcoholics.” The smell of whiskey wafts up from her coffee. “Tongueless is on his conjugal visit again.” I look down the hall to see the old Obsidian sitting cross-legged looking into one of the cells.

  “How many is that?”

  “Comes every day.”

  —

  Our collection of “escaped prisoners” is a motley assortment of devils. Half are men and women the Howlers labored to capture personally over the last ten years—all ten are Venusian. It seems a blasphemy that we’ve been the ones to free them. I feel the silent anger in the Howlers at mess, in the ship’s gymnasium, even when they pass in the hall. Not anger toward me or our mission, but as though this is some grand joke that existence plays on us. We circle around again to see the same faces, the same ships, the same battles. Again and again. Around and around. It’s the very reason I need to kill the man at the axis of the cycle, around which this all spins.

  Tongueless sits on the floor of the hall, the warden’s dog asleep in his lap, watching Apollonius play his phantom violin through the one-way glass. The old Obsidian has cut his hair short and trimmed his beard to a fine goatee. He looks an altogether different man, sophisticated even in the military fatigues. His dog wakes and growls as we approach. Quieting only when Tongueless strokes him behind the ears.

  Apollonius is naked in the dim light of his cell. His clothing folded neatly on the floor. It disturbs me, watching him rocking there playing his phantom instrument, his golden hair pouring down his shoulders, eyes closed, face a monklike mask of concentration. A bandage is affixed to his head over a shaved patch from Winkle’s surgery.

  I want him dead. Gone from the worlds. He’s taken two people I love and tormented another as a boy. The thought of setting him loose again makes me sick.

  “Do you fancy the evil violinist, Tongueless?” Sevro asks.

  The Obsidian looks up at us with his dark eyes and shakes his head. He makes a mo
tion of the violin and points to one of the tattoos on his arm of an old man with a long beard and a harp in his hands. It is the Norse god of music, Bragi. “Is he that good?” I ask.

  Tongueless nods. He taps his ear and then his heart, as if to say he wishes he could hear him play again. “Not happening,” Sevro says. Tongueless nods, accepting that, and stands to leave us alone with Apollonius.

  I watch him go and wonder what he’d say had he a tongue. He’s unique amongst the Obsidians I’ve met. The way he moves is elegant, cultured, like he’s accustomed to finer things. He’s quickly become a new favorite in my pack, owing to his craft in the kitchen. Men don’t ask questions if you feed them well. But I’m beginning to suspect there’s more to the story about how he ended up in an Omega cell than simply getting on the wrong side of the warden’s temper.

  “Why does he always have to get naked every time?” Sevro mutters, drawing me back to Apollonius. “Go on. Let’s get it over with.”

  I deactivate the opacity on Apollonius’s side of the glass so that he can see us in the dimly lit hall. He’s nearing the end of his song. Rocking and thrashing out a crescendo, then a slow, silent denouement. And when he has finished, he leans back to look at us, an amused smile on his lips.

  “Did you like my sonata?” he asks, not waiting for us to answer. “Much approbation is granted Paganini as the great violin virtuoso of the pentadactyl period. Well, before the coming of Virenda, of course. But for sheer Orphian transcendental rigor, I’ve long maintained a true master must attempt Ernst’s Variations on ‘The Last Rose of Summer.’ The fingered harmonics and left-hand pizzicato are facile enough, but the arpeggios are a Herculean labor.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means,” Sevro says.

  “A pity for you to have such narrow concerns.”

  “You’re dying to tell us when you first played it, aren’t you? I know you folks can’t resist a little brag,” Sevro mutters. “Well, go on. Impress us, Rath.”

  “I mastered it when I was twelve.”

  “Twelve? No!” Sevro claps his hands. “What genius! Reap, did you know that we had a psychotic virtuoso aboard?”

  “I had no idea.”

  “The mastery of music is its own reward,” Apollonius says. “The process by which one’s heart is entwined with masters of old. You do not know the toil, nor could you suffer it, and so you will never know the reward of understanding it.” He leans forward with slit eyes. “But by all means, dismiss it if you cannot comprehend. Art survived the Mongols. I wager it will survive you.”

  “You’re hardly a patron of the arts, from what I’ve heard,” I say. “You broke Tactus’s violin when he was a child. Not very inclusive of you.”

  “So full of nuance, families. Would I understand your relationship with your brother?” He gently plucks out several strands of hair and uses them to tie the wild of his mane into a ponytail. “Have you pulled me from my cage just to put me in another? Seems a cruel irony for a man who prides himself on breaking chains.”

  “I hardly think your suite on Deepgrave was a cage,” I say. “Did well for yourself.”

  “Not so stark as your prison was, I admit. The Jackal was a bizarre creature, pregnant with pain, wasn’t he? Much like his sister.”

  “You’re lucky we haven’t spaced you, after what you’ve done,” Sevro sneers. “But talk about Virginia again. Go on. We’ll see how good your violin sounds in vacuum.”

  Apollonius sighs. “My goodmen, enemies we may be, but let us not pretend we are bands of troglodytes warring over fire. We are sophisticated creatures who met in conflict under the agreed-upon terms of total war.”

  “You’re not sophisticated. You’re a monster wearing a man-suit,” Sevro says. “You boiled men alive.”

  “My brother boiled men alive. I am a warrior. Not a torturer.”

  “Your brother, you. What’s the difference?”

  Sevro looks at Apollonius and reduces him to a gestalt of all the men who have hurt him over the years. He has suffered the likes of Apollonius his entire life.

  He forgave Cassius for me, once, because he knew the hope of our rebellion balanced on the fragile notion that a man could change. I suspect he’s worried that I believe the same for the man before us. The Goblin stands close to me now, as if to protect me from the prisoner, despite the sheet of duroglass.

  But the deepspine truth is that he’s really trying to protect me from myself. That’s why he came.

  He need not worry: I will never trust this man. Cassius was a man who lived for an ideal; Apollonius is too bright and too narcissistic to live for anything but himself. But even that can be useful.

  Apollonius sighs. “Please don’t insult me by claiming you still labor under the notion that you alone in history are an innocent army. War summons the demons from angels. I’ve seen Gold scalps hanging from Obsidian battle armor. City blocks naught but powder and meat. Or would you have me forget the atrocities you wrought on Luna? On Earth and Mars? Hypocrisy is not becoming of either master or hound. Especially ones who ally themselves with Obsidians.”

  “The men who did that were punished,” I say, knowing that it isn’t true. It was two whole tribes that sacked Luna after Octavia’s death and ravaged its citizens—low- and highColor alike. Too many to prosecute without losing Sefi. Compromises were made. Always compromises.

  “I was an agent of war, like you,” Apollonius continues. “We played the same game. I lost. I was caught. Punished. And I used the devices nature and nurture provided me to lessen the blunt impact of incarceration. The great hilarity is that, in many ways, I owe you a debt of thanks.” Sevro grunts at that. “Solitude can be the best society. You see, I encountered a perilous choice when I faced your tribunal and received the terms of my sentence. A choice that helped me define myself.

  “After life imprisonment was handed down with clean white gloves, a syringe was left for me in my cell by which I was to erase myself from existence. Left by you, Sevro? No matter. The more cowardly examples of my kind did choose this expedient death, finding the shame of losing an empire more than their hearts could bear. Your late friend Fabii, for example. They caved to their own despair. Do any now sing their songs? Does anyone speak their glory?”

  He lets the silence answer.

  “I knew it was my duty to my own legend to survive this trial. But I was still crippled by my own devices. Imagine me as a great fully-rigged man-of-war. Four masts, great bulwarks of oak and five score cannon. All my life I have sailed smooth seas and waters that parted for me by virtue of my own splendor. Never tested. Never riled. A tragic existence, if ever there was one.

  “But at long last: a storm! And when I met it I found my hull…rotten. My planks leaking brine, my cannon brittle, powder wet. I foundered upon the storm. Upon you, Darrow of Lykos.” He sighs. “And it was my own fault.”

  I war between wanting to punch him in the mouth and surrendering into my curiosity by letting him continue. He’s a strange man with a seductive presence. Even as an enemy, his flamboyance fascinated me. Purple capes in battle. A horned Minotaur helmet. Trumpets blaring to signal his advance, as if welcoming all challengers. He even broadcast opera as his men bombarded cities.

  After so much isolation, he’s delighting in imposing his narrative upon us.

  “My peril is thus: I am, and always have been, a man of great tastes. In a world replete with temptation, I found my spirit wayward and easy to distract. The idea of prison, that naked, metal world, crushed me. The first year, I was tormented. But then I remembered the voice of a fallen angel. ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’ I sought to make the deep not just my heaven, but my womb of rebirth.

  “I dissected the underlying mistakes which led to my incarceration and set upon an internal odyssey to remake myself. But—and you would know this, Reaper—long is the road up out of hell! I made arrangements for supplies. I toiled twenty hours a day. I reread the books of youth
with the gravity of age. I perfected my body. My mind. Planks were replaced; new banks of cannon wrought in the fires of solitude. All for the next storm.

  “Now I see it is upon me and I sail before you the paragon of Apollonius au Valii-Rath. And I ask one question: for what purpose have you pulled me from the deep?”

  “Bloodyhell, did you memorize that?” Sevro mutters.

  The man before me is not the man I saw before the tribunal all those years ago. His vanity has remained, but now it is a hardened, sharpened sort. Once, he was a vulture of the Society. Instigating duels for fun. Throwing orgies that would last for days. He and Karnus au Bellona were even longtime drinking companions. He’d been looking for a reason to exist, to escape the nihilism of tedium. Then war came.

  “You say you have dissected your mistakes,” I say. “Let’s put that to the test.”

  “I welcome all tests.”

  “Goryhell, do you ever shut up?” Sevro asks. “Just let us get a verb in.”

  Apollonius folds his hands in his lap, waiting patiently.

  “Tell me, if you can, how you found yourself in Deepgrave,” I say.

  “The man who thought himself a king discovered he was but a pawn. I angered the wrong man. Magnus au Grimmus. The Ash Lord. But you know that, don’t you?”

  “I was curious if you did.”

  He smiles to himself. “I was the first Martian to fire at Lilath au Faran’s ship over Luna, you know. I helped save Luna from nuclear holocaust. And I brought him ships, legions, and, along with the other great Martian houses, political capital to offset House Saud on Venus. But he resented me because I would not bend the knee like those Pixie Carthii. I was his ally, not his servant.

  “I never saw the knife coming. When he proposed a mission to cut off the head of the Rising, I volunteered eagerly. He let me lead a division of my knights; one century of ten that were to penetrate the Citadel and kill you and your families. With the Carthii we were to be a thousand Peerless Scarred. What a sight it would have been! Not had such a pure force been assembled for a single mission since the Battle of Zephyria. It was to be a coordinated attack.