Morning Star

They escort me like a prisoner through the halls. Hood on my head. Hands behind my back in unlocked manacles. Brother on my left, sister on my right, both supporting me. The snakebite lets me walk, but not well. My body, jacked with drugs as it is, still feels slack as wet clothes. I can barely feel my busted toe or feeble legs. My thin prisoner’s shoes scrape the floor. My head swims, but there’s a hyper speed to my brain now. It’s focused mania. I chew my tongue to keep from whispering, and to remind myself that I am not in the darkness like before. My body is shuffling down a concrete hall. It is walking toward freedom. Toward my family, toward Sevro.

No one here will stop two dragoons of the Thirteenth, not when they have clearance and Aja herself is here. I doubt many in the Jackal’s army know I’m even alive. They’ll see my size, my ghostly pallor, and think I’m some unlucky Obsidian prisoner. Still, I feel the eyes. Paranoia creeping through me. They know. They know you’ve left bodies behind. How long till they open that door? How long till we are discovered? My brain races through the possible ends. How it could all go wrong. The drugs. It’s just the drugs.

“Shouldn’t we be going up?” I ask as we descend on a gravLift deeper into the heart of the mountain citadel’s prison. “Or is there a lower hangar bay?”

“Good guess, sir,” Trigg says, impressed. “We’ve got a ship waiting.”

Holiday pops her gum. “Trigg, you’ve got some brown on your nose. Just…there.”

“Oh, shut your hole. I’m not the one who blushed when he was naked.”

“Sure about that, kiddo? Quiet.” The gravLift slows and the siblings tense. Hear their hands click the safeties off their weapons. The doors open and someone joins us.

“Dominus,” Holiday says smoothly to the new company, shoving me to the side to make room. The boots that enter are heavy enough for a Gold or Obsidian, but Grays would never call an Obsidian dominus, and an Obsidian would never smell like cloves and cinnamon.

“Sergeant.” The voice scrapes through me. The man it belongs to once made necklaces of ears. Vixus. One of Titus’s old band. He was part of the massacre at my Triumph. I shrink into the side of the gravLift as it descends again. Vixus will know me. He’ll sniff me out. He’s doing it now, looking our way. I can hear the rustle of his jacket collar. “Thirteenth legion?” Vixus asks after a moment. He must have noticed their neck tattoos. “You Aja’s or her father’s?”

“The Fury’s, for this tour, dominus,” Holiday replies coolly. “But we’ve served under the Ash Lord.”

“Ah, then you were at the Battle of Deimos last year?”

“Yes, dominus. We were with Grimmus in the leechCraft vanguard sent to kill the Telemanuses before Fabii routed them and Arcos’s ships. My brother here put a round in old Kavax’s shoulder. Almost took him down before Augustus and Kavax’s wife broke our assault team.”

“My, my.” Vixus makes a sound of approval. “That would have been a gorydamn prize and a half. You could have added another tear to your face, legionnaire. I’ve been hunting that Obsidian dog with the Seventh. Ash Lord’s offered quite the price for his slave’s return.” He snorts something up his nose. Sounds like one of the stim canisters Tactus was so fond of. “Who’s this, then?”

He means me.

I hear my heart in my ears.

“A gift from Praetor Grimmus in exchange for…the package she’s taking home,” Holiday says. “If you understand me, sir.”

“Package. Half a package, more like.” He chuckles at his own joke. “Anyone I know?” His hand touches the edge of my hood. I cower away. “A Howler would warm the heart. Pebble? Weed? No, much too tall.”

“An Obsidian,” Trigg says quickly. “Wish it was a Howler.”

“Ugh.” Vixus jerks his hand back as though contaminated. “Wait.” He has an idea. “We’ll put him in the cell with the Julii bitch. Let ’em fight for supper. What do you think, Thirteen? Up for some fun?”

“Trigg, kill the camera,” I say sharply from beneath my hood.

“What?” Vixus asks, turning.

Pop. A jamfield goes up.

I move, clumsy but fast. Snapping my hands out of the shackles, I pull free my hidden razor with one hand and rip off my hood with the other. I stab Vixus through the shoulder. Pin him to the wall and head-butt him in the face. But I’m not what I was, even with the drugs. My vision swims. I stumble. He doesn’t, and before I can react, before I can even focus my vision, Vixus pulls his own razor.

Holiday shields me with her body, shoving me away. I fall to the ground. Trigg’s even faster on the take; he jams his slug shooter straight up into Vixus’s open mouth. The Gold freezes, staring down the metal length of the barrel, tongue against the cold muzzle. His razor pauses centimeters from Holiday’s head.

“Shhhhhh,” Trigg whispers. “Drop the razor.” Vixus does.

“The hell are you thinking?” Holiday asks me angrily. She’s breathing heavily and helps me back up. My head’s still spinning. I apologize. It was stupid of me. I steady myself and look over at Vixus, who stares at me in horror. My legs tremble, and I have to hold myself up by one of the gravLift’s railings. My heart rattles from the strain of the drug in my system. Stupid to try to fight. Stupid to use a jammer. The Greens watching will piece it together. They’ll send Grays to investigate the prep room. Find the bodies.

I try to paste my splintering thoughts together. Focus. “Is Victra alive?” I manage. Trigg pulls the gun out just past the teeth so Vixus can answer. He doesn’t. Not yet. “Do you know what he did to me?” I ask. After a stubborn moment, Vixus nods. “And…” I laugh. It stretches like a crack in ice, spreading, widening, about to shiver a thousand different ways, till I bite my tongue to cut it short. “And…and still you have the balls to make me ask you twice?”

“She’s alive.”

“Reaper…they’ll be coming for us. They’ll know it’s jammed,” Holiday says, looking at the tiny camera node in the elevator’s ceiling. “We can’t change the plan.”

“Where is she?” I twist the razor. “Where is she?”

Vixus hisses in pain. “Level 23, cell 2187. It would be wise not to kill me. You might put me in her cell. Escape. I will tell you the proper path, Darrow.” The muscles and veins under the skin of his neck slither and rise like snakes under sand. No body fat to him. “Two backstabbing Praetorians won’t get you far. There’s an army in this mountain. Legions in the city, in orbit. Thirty Peerless Scarred. Boneriders in southern Attica.” He nods to the small jackal skull on the lapel of his uniform. “You remember them?”

“We don’t need him,” Trigg snaps, fingering his gun’s trigger.

“Oh?” Vixus chuckles, confidence returning as he sees my weakness. “And what are you going to do against an Olympic Knight, tinpot? Oh, wait. There are two here, aren’t there?”

Holiday just snorts. “Same thing you’d do, goldilocks. Run.”

“Level 23,” I tell Trigg.

Trigg punches the gravLift controls, diverting us from their escape route. He pulls up a map on his datapad and studies it briefly with Holiday. “Cell 2187 is…here. There will be a code. Cameras.”

“Too far from evac.” Holiday’s mouth tightens. “If we go that way, we’re cooked.”

“Victra is my friend,” I say. And I thought she was dead, but somehow she survived her sister’s gunshots. “I won’t leave her.”

“There’s not a choice,” Holiday says.

“There’s always a choice.” The words sound feeble, even to me.

“Look at yourself, man. You’re a husk!”

“Back off him, Holi,” Trigg says.

“That Gold bitch isn’t one of us! I won’t die for her.”

But Victra would have died for me. In the darkness, I thought of her. The childish joy in her eyes when I gave her the bottle of petrichor in the Jackal’s study. “I didn’t know. Darrow, I didn’t know,” was the last thing she said to me after Roque betrayed us. Death around, bullets in her back, and all she wanted was me to think well of her in the end.

“I won’t leave my friend behind,” I repeat dogmatically.

“I’ll follow you,” Trigg drawls. “Whatever you say, Reaper. I’m your man.”

“Trigg,” Holiday whispers. “Ares said—”

“Ares hasn’t turned the tide.” Trigg nods to me. “He can. We go where he goes.”

“And if we miss our window?”

“Then we make a new one.”

Holiday’s eyes go glassy and she works her large jaw. I know that look. She doesn’t see her brother as I do. He’s no lurcher, no killer. To her he’s the boy she grew with.

“All right. I’m in,” she says reluctantly.

“What about the Peerless?” Trigg asks.

“He puts the code in and he lives,” I say. “Shoot him if tries anything.”

—

We exit the elevator at level 23. I wear my hood again, having Holiday guide me along as Vixus walks ahead as if escorting us to a cell, Trigg ready with his gun close behind. The halls are quiet. Our footsteps echo. I can’t see past the hood.

“This is it,” Vixus says when we reach the door.

“Put in the code, asshole,” Holiday orders.

He does and the door hisses open. Noise roars out around us. Horrible static from hidden speakers. The cell is freezing, everything bleached white. The ceiling flaring with light so bright I can’t even look directly at it. The cell’s emaciated occupant lies in the corner, legs curled up in a fetal position, spine to me. Back painted with old burns and striped with lash marks from beatings. The mess of white-blond hair over her eyes is all that shields the woman from the blazing light. I wouldn’t know who she was except for the two bullet scars at the top of her spine between the shoulder blades.

“Victra!” I shout over the noise. She can’t hear me. “Victra!” I shout again, just as the noise dies, replaced over the speakers by the sound of a heartbeat. They’re torturing her with sound, light. Sensation. The exact opposite of my own abuse. Able to hear me now, she whips her head my direction. Gold eyes peering ferally out from the tangle of hair. I don’t even know if she recognizes me. The boldness with which Victra wore her nakedness before is gone. She covers herself, vulnerable. Terrified.

“Get her on her feet,” Holiday says, pushing Vixus to his belly. “We gotta go.”

“She’s paralyzed….” Trigg says. “Isn’t she?”

“Shit. We’ll carry her, then.”`

Trigg moves quickly toward Victra. I slam a hand back into his chest, stopping him. Even like this, she could rip his arms from his body. Knowing the terror I felt when I was pulled from my hole, I move slowly toward her. My own fear retreating to the back of my mind, replaced by anger at what her own sister has done to her. At knowing this is my fault.

“Victra, it’s me. It’s Darrow.” She makes no sign of having heard me. I crouch down beside her. “We’re going to get you out of here. Can we lift—”

She lunges at me. Throwing herself forward with her arms. “Take off your face,” she screams, “Take off your face.” She convulses as Holiday rushes forward and jams a thumper into the small of her back. The electricity isn’t enough.

“Go down!” Holiday shouts. Victra hits her in the center of her duroplastic armor chestpiece, launching the Gray meters back into the wall. Trigg fires two tranquilizers into her thigh from his ambi-rifle, a multipurpose carbine. They put her down quick. But still she pants on the ground, watching me through a slitted eye till she falls unconscious.

“Holiday…” I begin.

“I’m Golden.” Holiday grunts, lifting herself up. The chest piece has a fist-sized dent in the center. “Pixie can hit,” Holiday says, admiring the dent. “This armor is supposed to handle rail rounds.”

“Julii genetics,” Trigg mutters. He hoists Victra up on his shoulders and follows Holiday back out into the hall as she snaps at me to hurry after them. We leave Vixus belly-down in the cell. Alive, as I promised.

“We’ll find you,” he says, sitting up as I go to shut the door. “You know we will. Tell little Sevro we’re coming. One Barca down. One to go.”

“What did you say?” I ask.

I step suddenly back into the cell and his eyes light with fear. The same fear Lea must have felt those many years ago when I hid in the dark while Antonia and Vixus tortured her to lure me out. He laughed as her blood soaked into the moss. And as my friends died in the garden. He would have me spare him now so he could kill again later. Evil feeds on mercy.

My razor slithers into a slingBlade.

“Please,” he begs now, thin lips trembling so that I see the boy in him too as he realizes he made a mistake. Someone somewhere still loves him. Remembers him as a mischievous child or asleep in a crib. If only he had stayed that child. If only we all had. “Have a heart. Darrow, you’re no murderer. You’re no Titus.”

The heartbeat sound of the room deepens. White light silhouetting him.

He wants pity.

My pity was lost in the darkness.

The heroes of Red songs have mercy, honor. They let men live, as I let the Jackal live, so they can remain untarnished by sin. Let the villain be the evil one. Let him wear black and try to stab me as I turn my back, so I can wheel about and kill him, giving satisfaction without guilt. But this is no song. This is war.

“Darrow…”

“I need you to send a message to the Jackal.”

I slash open Vixus’s throat. And as he slumps to the ground pulsing out his life, I know he is afraid because nothing waits for him on the other side. He gurgles. Whimpers before he dies. And I feel nothing.

Beyond the heartbeat of the room, alarm sirens begin to wail.