Before we can begin, Nyla asks about the Jackal. Sevro’s voice is quiet as he tells what he learned in the mountains. It grows louder as he realizes we are all listening.
“His castle is somewhere in the low mountains. Subterranean, not in the high peaks. Just near Vulcan. Vulcan got off to a prime start. Fastlike. They blitzed Pluto on the third day. Efficient turds. Pluto wasn’t ready. So the Jackal took control, had them retreat into their deep tunnels. Vulcan came howling in with advanced weapons from their forges. It was all going to be over. The Jackal would have been a slave from the first week on. So he collapsed the tunnel—no plan, no way out—in order to preserve his chance to win the game. Killed ten of his own House, tons of highDrafts. MedBots couldn’t save anyone. Stranded forty of the rest in the dark caves. Plenty of water, no food. They were there for nearly a month before they dug their way out.” He smiles and I remember why Fitchner called him Goblin. “Guess what they ate?”
If a Jackal is caught in a trap, it will chew off its own leg. Who told me that?
The fire crackles between us. I would have expected Mustang to shift uncomfortably, but instead what I see from her is anger as the details are relayed. Pure anger. Her jaw flexes and her face loses a shade. I grip her hand beneath the blanket, but it does not grip back.
“How did you find all that out?” Pax rumbles.
Sevro taps one of his curved knives with a fingernail, allowing a soft ding into the night air. It echoes into the woods, bouncing off trees and returning to our ears like a lost phrase. Then I can hear nothing from the woods, nothing beyond the fire. My heart leaps into my throat and I catch Sevro’s eye. He’ll have to find Tactus.
A jamField envelopes us.
“Hello, children,” a voice says from the darkness. “Such a bright fire is dangerous at night. And you’re like little puppies, all snuggled together; no, don’t get up.” This voice is melodious. Frivolous. Eerie to hear after so many months of hardship. No one’s voice sounds like that. He strolls in lightly and plops down beside Pax. Apollo. This time he brought no bear, only a grand spear that drips purple sparks along its business end.
“Proctor Apollo, welcome,” I say. Sentinels perch above us in the trees, their arrows pointed at the Proctor. I wave the trap away and ask the Proctor why he is here, as if we’ve never met. His presence sends a very simple message: my friends are in danger.
“To tell you to return home, my dear nomads.” He opens up a flagon of wine and passes it around. No one drinks, except Sevro. He holds on to the flagon.
“Proctors aren’t supposed to interfere with things. It is in the rules,” Pax says in confusion. “By what right do you come here? This is dirty play.”
Mustang seconds his question.
The Aureate sighs, but before he can say anything, Sevro stands and belches. He begins walking off.
“Where are you going?” Apollo snaps. “Don’t walk away from me.”
“Going to piss. Drank all your wine. Rather I piss here?” He cocks his head and touches his small stomach. “Maybe shit, too.”
Apollo wrinkles his nose and looks back to us, dismissing Sevro.
“Influencing is hardly dirty play, my giant friend,” he explains. “I merely care for your well-being. I am here, after all, to guide you in your studies. It would be best for you all to return to the North, that is all. Better strategy, let’s say. Finish your battle there, consolidate your power, then expand out. It is the rules of war: Do not expose yourself when weak. Do not push your enemy to fight when you are inferior. You have no cavalry. No shelter. Meager weapons. You are not learning as you ought.”
His grin is welcoming. It slashes through his beautiful face like a crescent moon as he twirls the rings on his finger, waiting for our response.
“It is kind of you to consider our well-being,” Mustang replies in mocking highLingo. “I do say, very kind! Warms my bones. Paying special attention, no less, to the fact that you’re from another House. But tell me, does my Proctor know you are here? Does Mars’s?” She nods over to silent Milia. “Does Juno’s? Are you doing a naughtynaughty, good sir? If you’re not, then why the jamField? Or do others watch?”
Apollo’s eyes harden, though his smile remains.
“To be quite frank, your Proctors don’t know what you children are playing at. You had your chance, Virginia. You lost. Don’t allow yourself to be bitter. Darrow here beat you fair and sound. Or did your winter together blind you to the fact that there can only be one winning House, only one victorious Primus? Were all of you truly so blinded? This … boy can give you nothing.”
He looks around at each of them.
“I shall repeat, since you are a rusty lot: Darrow’s win will not mean you win. No one will offer you an apprenticeship, because they see him being the key to your success. You merely follow—like General Ney or Ajax Minor, and who remembers them? This Reaper does not even have his own standard. He is using you. That is all. He is embarrassing you and ruining your chances for careers beyond this First Year.”
“You’re quite annoying, all due respect, Proctor,” Nyla says without her usual kindness.
“And you’re still a slave.” Apollo points to her mark. “Fit for all sorts of abuse.”
“Only till I earn the right to wear one of those.” Nyla gestures to Mustang’s wolfcloak.
“Your loyalty is touching, but—”
Pax interrupts. “Would you let me whip you bloody, Apollo? Darrow did. Let me whip you, and I’ll obey like a Pink. Promise on the graves of my ancestors, those of Telemanus and the—”
“You’re nothing more than a bureaucratic Pixie,” Milia hisses. “Do us a favor and piss off.”
My lieutenants are loyal, though I shudder to think what Tactus or Sevro would have said had they been around the fire with us. I lean forward to stare down Apollo. Still, I must provoke him.
“Do us solid, eh? Take your advice, shove it up your ass, and piss off.”
Someone laughs in the air above us, a woman’s laugh. Other Proctors watch from inside the jamField. I see silhouettes in the smoke. How many watch? Jupiter? Venus, maybe, by the laugh? That would be perfect.
The fire flickers over Apollo’s face. He is angry.
“Here is the logic I know. The winter could get colder, children. When it gets cold outside, things die. Like wolves. Like bears. Like mustangs.”
I have a reply and it is perfectly longwinded.
“I wonder, Apollo, what happens if the Drafters find out that you are arranging to have the ArchGovernor’s son win? If you were, say, rigging the game like a bazaar crime lord.”
Apollo freezes. I continue.
“When you tried killing me in the woods with that stupid bear, you failed. Now you come here like the desperate fool you are to threaten my friends when they do not slaver at the idea of betraying me. Will you really kill us all? I know you can edit what you like from the footage the Drafters see. But however will you explain to all our Drafters how we all died?”
My lieutenants feign their shock.
I go on.
“Say an Imperator of a fleet, say a Legate, say any of the Drafters of any of the other Houses, found out that the ArchGovernor was paying the Proctors to cheat, to eliminate the competition so that his son would win and their children would lose. Do you think there would be consequences for the Proctors being bribed? For the ArchGovernor? Do you think they might care that their children are dying in a rigged game? Or that you’re getting paid to ruin the meritocratic system? The best shall rise. Or is it the best connected?”
Apollo’s jaw tightens.
He looks up to the other Proctors. They wisely stay invisible. He must have drawn the short straw to come down here and be the face of their cheating. My lieutenants stay silent as he speaks.
“If they did find out, children, then there would be consequences for everyone,” Apollo threatens. “So feel free to guard your tongues while you have them.”
“Or what?” Mustang asks viole
ntly. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
“You of all people should know,” he says. I don’t understand his point, but this charade has run its course. I’ve counted the seconds since Sevro left. The Proctors have not. I turn to Mustang.
“How fast can Sevro run two kilometers?”
“A minute and a half, in this gravity, I do believe. Though he’s a little liar, so likely faster.”
“And how far is Apollo’s castle?”
“Oh, I’d say three kilometers, maybe a little more.”
Apollo jumps to his feet, looking around for Sevro.
“Splendid,” I say. “Say, Mustang, do you know what I like most about jamFields?”
“That no sound can get out?”
“No. That no sound can get in.”
Apollo disengages the jamField and we hear the howls. They come from the distance, two miles away. From ramparts. From Apollo’s castle. MedBots wail toward the cries, streaking across the distant sky.
“Venus! Were you not watching them? You stupid …” Apollo snarls at the empty air.
“The little one took off his ring,” an invisible woman cries. “They all took off their rings! I can’t see anything without their rings on, and not in a jamField!”
“But they’re all back on by now,” I say. “So pull up your datapad and tell me what you see.”
“You little …” Apollo’s hands clench. I flinch back. Mustang steps between us, as does Pax.
“Uh-oh,” Pax booms, thumping his huge axe against his chest. The armor beneath his wolfcloak thumps rhythmically. “Uh-oh!”
Snow flies as Apollo soars out of the woods, the other Proctors on his heels. They will be too late. Edit all they like, interfere all they like, the battle for House Apollo has begun, and Sevro and Tactus have claimed the ramparts.
My lieutenants and I arrive at the battle in time to see Tactus climbing the highest tower, a knife in his teeth. There, standing on the edge of the hundred-meter parapet like some careless Greek champion, he pulls down his pants and pisses on the banner of House Apollo. He’s crawled through shit to earn that banner. The slaves we captured throughout the week told us of the castle’s weaknesses—large latrine holes—and so Tactus, Sevro, and the Howlers exploited them in dreadfully efficient time. House Apollo’s soldiers woke to demons covered in dung. Oh, how terribly my conquering soldiers smell as they open the gates for me. Inside, it’s a mass of chaos.
The castle is tall, white, ornate. Its plaza stands round and has six grand doorways that lead to six grand, spiraling towers. Sheep and cows crowd makeshift pens on the far side of the plaza. Apollo guards have retreated there. More of their allies stream from the tower doorways behind them. My men are outnumbered three to one. But mine are freemen, not slaves. They will fight better. Yet it is not numbers that threatens to turn the tide against my invading army. It’s the Apollo Primus, Novas. The Proctor gave him his own pulseWeapon. A spear that glimmers with purple sparks. Its tip touches one of the DeadHorses from Diana, and the girl flips ten feet backward, like a broken toy convulsing on the ground as its gears fall off their tracks.
I gather my forces near the gatehouse, just inside the plaza. Many are still in the towers like Tactus. I’ve got Pax, Milia, Nyla, Mustang, and thirty others at my back. The enemy Primus marshals his own forces. His weapon alone could ruin us.
“Mustang, ready with that standard?” I ask. I feel her hand on the small of my back, just beneath my breastplate. I wear no helm. My hair is bound by leather. My face is dark with soot. My right hand carries my slingBlade. The left, a shortened stunpike. Nyla carries the standard of Ceres.
“Pax, we’re the scythe. Girls, you’re the pickers.”
My men in the towers howl as they sprint and jump down from their perches to join the battle, streaming into the plaza from all angles. Their stained wolfcloaks reek. The cobblestones between my band and Apollo’s lie thick with ankle-high drifts of snow. Proctors glint in the air above, waiting for the pulseSpear to make short work of my army.
“Take their Primus,” Mustang whispers in my ear. She points to the tall, hard boy and smacks my butt. “Claim him.”
“Twenty meters and stop, Pax.” He nods at my command.
“The Primus is mine!” I roar to my army and to theirs. “Novas, you gorywhore. You are mine. You piss-eating snail. You foul piece of shit.” As the tall, mad invader with the slingBlade screams at their Primus, Apollo’s forces shirk instinctively away. “Enslave the rest!” I howl.
Then Pax and I charge.
The rest stream after, trying to catch my heels. I let Pax overtake me. He’s screaming with his war axe and charging at Novas and his band of bodyguards—heavily armored boys and girls with crimson handprints on their helmets. They lead the charge of the enemy host, going straight at Pax, lowering their spears to stop his mad charge. These are the tall sort, the dashing killers who have long since grown too arrogant to understand they are in danger or to feel fear as they make plans to meet Pax in arms.
Then Pax stops.
And without breaking stride, I jump so his hand catches my foot; I push off and he launches me ten meters forward into the air. I’m howling the entire way, like a thing torn from bloodydamn nightmares, until I smash into the bodyguards. Three go down. A random spear catches my stomach and scrapes along my ribs, spinning me just as a trident pierces the air where my head had been. I gain my feet, swing horizontally, sweeping legs. I spin away from a thrust and hack down diagonally as I come from my spin, shattering someone tall at the collarbone. Another spear comes at me; I slap it to the side and run along its length, jumping to bury my knee into the face of an Apollo highDraft. He falls back, taking me with him, my knee stuck in his helmet’s visor. I slash madly as I go from the high vantage, stunning three other highDrafts with looping blows till I teeter down to the ground.
We hit the snow. The highDraft’s nose is broken and he’s unconscious, but my knee is numb and bloody from the impact as I jerk it out of his helmet. I roll away, expecting spears to fillet me. They don’t. I shattered the head of the Apollo army in one mad charge; Pax and my army sweep in like an iron curtain till I’m left with Novas in the center of the chaos. He’s tall and strong. A sweeping arc from his spear shatters a Howler’s shield. He blasts Milia backwards and catches Pax in the arm with the spear, knocking him to the ground like a toy. I’m taller and stronger.
“Novas, you little girl!” I shout. “You sniveling Pink.”
His eyes flash when he sees me coming.
The battle takes a collective breath as he wheels toward me like an elk turning on the leader of a wolfpack. We stalk toward one another. He lunges first. I dodge and spin along the length of the spear till I’m behind him. Then with one massive swing, like I’m hacking down a tree with my slingBlade, I break his leg and take his spear.
He moans like a child. I sit on his chest, smug with the satisfaction that I did not moan like this when my legs were broken and rewoven in Mickey’s carveshop. I make a show of yawning despite the chaos swirling around me.
Mustang takes the reins of battle.
Only one member of House Apollo escapes. A girl. A fast girl, but an unimportant member of their House. Somehow, she jumps from the highest tower and simply floats down to the ground with her House’s standard. Almost like magic. But I see the distortion around her. Proctor Apollo preserves his position in the game. The girl finds a horse and rides away from my horseless army. Pax hurls a spear at her from a distance. His aim is true and would have pinned the horse to the turf through the neck, but a freakish wind miraculously knocks the spear wide. In the end, it’s Mustang who takes a horse from the Apollo stables and chases the girl down with the Howlers Thistle and Pebble. She brings her back bent over her own horse’s neck, spanking her butt with the standard as they gallop back.
My army roars as Mustang trots into the conquered castle square. We’ve already freed the House Ceres slaves; they’ve earned their place in my army. I wave do
wn at Mustang from my perch beside Sevro and Tactus on the high ramparts; our feet dangle carelessly over the edge. House Apollo has fallen in less than thirty minutes despite Apollo’s interference with the pulseSpear.
Proctor Apollo confers with Jupiter and Venus in the sky. They glitter in the dawn light as though nothing has happened. But I know he will have to leave the game; the standard and castle are taken. He cannot hurt me any longer.
“You’re through!” I taunt Apollo. “Your House has fallen!” My army roars once more. I bask in the sound and the winter air as the sun peeks over the western lip of the Valles Marinerise. Most of those voices would be slaves. Instead, they follow willingly. Soon even those of House Apollo will follow me.
I laugh wildly; the fire of victory is hot in my veins. We have beaten one Proctor. But Jupiter can still hurt us. His House is unbent, unbroken far to the north. A quick rage overtakes me along with another, darker passion—one of arrogance, furious, mad arrogance. I grab the pulseSpear, cock my arm, and hurl the weapon as hard as I can at the gathered Proctors. My army watches this act of impudence. The three Proctors scatter after the pulseSpear goes through their shielding. They turn to look at me. Fire glitters in their eyes. But the passion in me was not quenched by a mere spear throw. I hate these scheming fools. I will ruin them.
“Jupiter! You are next. You are next, you piece of dog shit!”
Then Pax bellows my name. And then Tactus’s voice echoes it, then Nyla from a far tower. And soon a hundred voices chant it throughout the conquered castle—from the courtyard to the high parapets and towers. They beat their swords and spears and shields, and then they throw them at the Proctors. A hundred missiles thump harmlessly into pulseShields and many of my army must scatter so that they are not impaled by the falling weapons, but it is a sweet sight, a sweet sound of metal rain on cobbled stone. And again they take up my name. They chant and chant the name of the Reaper at the Proctors, because they know whom we now fight.