I run into Victra in the hall as I leave Sevro with Ragnar. It’s late. Past midnight and she’s only just arrived to help coordinate the final preparations between Quicksilver’s security, the Sons, and our new navy, which I’ve given her command of until we’re reunited with Orion. It’s another decision that peeves Dancer. He’s frightened I’m bestowing too much power on Golds who might have ulterior motives. Mustang’s presence could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
“How’s he doing?” Victra asks regarding Sevro.
“Better,” I say. “But he’ll be glad to see you.”
She smiles at that, despite herself, and I think she actually blushes. It’s a new look for her. “Where are you going?” she asks.
“To make sure Mustang and Dancer haven’t torn each other’s heads off yet.”
“Noble. But too late.”
“What happened? Is everything prime?”
“That’s relative, I suppose. Dancer’s in the warroom ranting about Gold superiority complexes, arrogance, etc. Never heard him curse so much. I didn’t stay long, and he didn’t say much. You know he’s not that sweet on me.”
“And you’re not that sweet on Mustang,” I say.
“I’ve nothing against the girl. She reminds me of home. Especially considering the new allies you’ve brought us. I just think she’s a duplicitous little filly. That’s all. But it’s the best horses that’ll buck you right off. Don’t you think?”
I laugh. “Not sure if that was innuendo or not.”
“It was.”
“Do you know where she is?”
Victra makes a sad little face. “Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t know everything, darling.” She moves past me to join Sevro, patting my head as she goes. “But I’d check the commissary on level three if I were you.”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
She smiles mischievously. “Mind your own business.”
I find Mustang in the commissary hunched over a metal bottle with Uncle Narol, Kavax, and Daxo. A dozen members of the Pitvipers lounge at the other tables, smoking burners and eavesdropping intently to Mustang, who sits with her boots up on the table, using Daxo as a backrest, as she tells a story about the Institute to the other two occupants of the table. I couldn’t see them when I first entered, due to the bulk of the Telemanuses but my brother and mother sit listening to the tale.
“…And so of course I shout for Pax.”
“That’s my son,” Kavax reminds my mother.
“…and he comes on over the hill leading a column of my housemembers. Darrow and Cassius feel the ground shaking and go screaming into the loch where they clung together for hours, shivering and turning blue.”
“Blue!” Kavax says with a huge childish laugh that makes the Sons eavesdropping unable to keep their composure. Even if he’s a Gold, it’s difficult not to like Kavax au Telemanus. “Blue as blueberries, Sophocles. Isn’t that right? Give him another, Deanna.” My mother rolls a jelly bean across the table to Sophocles, who waits eagerly beside the bottle to gobble it up.
“What’s going on here?” I ask. Eying the bottle my brother’s refilling the Golds’ mugs with.
“We’re getting stories from the lass,” Narol says gruffly through a cloud of burner smoke. “Have a dram.” Mustang wrinkles her nose at the smoke.
“Such an awful habit, Narol,” she says.
Kieran looks pointedly at our mother. “I’ve been telling both of them that for years.”
“Hello, Darrow,” Daxo says, standing to clasp my arm. “Pleasure to see you without a razor in your hand this time.” He pokes me in the shoulder with a longer finger.
“Daxo. Sorry about all that. I think I owe you a bit of a debt for taking care of my people.”
“Orion did most of the minding there,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. He returns gracefully to his seat. My brother’s captivated by the man and the angels tattooed on his head. And how could he not be? Daxo’s twice his weight, immaculate, and more well-mannered than even a Rose like Matteo, who I hear is recovering well on one of Quicksilver’s ships, and is delighted to know I’m alive.
“What happened with Dancer?” I ask Mustang.
Her cheeks are flushed and she laughs at the question. “Well, I don’t think he very much likes me. But don’t worry, he’ll come around.”
“Are you drunk?” I ask with a laugh.
“A little. Catch up.” She swivels her legs down and puts her feet on the ground to clear a space on the bench beside her. “I was just getting to the part where you wrestled Pax in the mud.” My mother watches me quietly, a little smile on her lips as she knows the panic that must be going through me right now. Too shocked at seeing two halves of my life collide without my supervision, I sit down uneasily and listen to Mustang finish the story. With all that’s transpired, I’d forgotten the charm of this woman. Her easy, light nature. How she draws others in by making them feel important, by saying their names and letting them feel seen. She holds my uncle and brother in a spell, one reinforced by the Telemanus’ admiration for her. I try not to blush when my mother catches me admiring Mustang.
“But enough of the Institute,” Mustang says after she’s explained in detail how Pax and I dueled in front of her castle. “Deanna, you promised me a story about Darrow as a boy.”
“How about the gas pocket one,” Narol says. “If only Loran was here…”
“No not that one,” Kieran says. “What about…”
“I have one,” mother says, cutting off the men. She begins slow, words sluggish through the lisp. “When Darrow was small, maybe three or four, his father gave him an old watch his father had given him. This brass thing, with a wheel instead of digital numbers. Do you remember it?” I nod. “It was beautiful. Your favorite possession. And years later, after his father had died, Kieran here got sick with a cough. Meds were always in short ration in the mines. So you’d have to get them from Gamma or Gray, but each has a price. I didn’t know how I was going to pay, and then Darrow comes home one day with the medicine, won’t say how he got it. But several weeks later I saw one of the Grays checking the time with that old watch.”
I look at my hands, but I feel Mustang’s eyes on me.
“I think it’s time for bed,” mother says. Narol and Kieran protest until she clears her throat and stands. She kisses me on the head, lingering longer than she usually would. Then she touches Mustang’s shoulder and limps from the room with my brother’s help. Narol’s men go with them.
“She’s quite a woman,” Kavax says. “And she loves you very much.”
“I’m glad you met like this,” I say to him, then to Mustang, “Especially you.”
“How’s that?” she asks.
“Without me trying to control it. Like last time.”
“Yes, I would say that was quite the disaster,” Daxo says.
“This feels right,” I say.
“I agree. It does.” Mustang smiles. “I wish I could introduce you to mine. You would have liked her better than my father.”
I return the smile, wondering what this is between us. Dreading the idea of having to define it. There’s an easiness that comes with being around her. But I’m afraid to ask her what she’s thinking. Afraid to broach the subject for fear of shattering this little illusion of peace. Kavax awkwardly clears his throat, dissolving the moment.
“So the meeting with Dancer didn’t go well?” I ask.
“I fear not,” Daxo says. “The resentment he harbors runs deep. Theodora was more forthcoming, but Dancer was…intransigent. Militantly so.”
“He’s a cypher,” Mustang clarifies, taking another drink and wincing at the quality of proof. “Hoarding information from us. Wouldn’t share anything I didn’t already know.”
“I doubt you were very forthcoming yourself.”
She grimaces. “No, but I’m used to making others compensate for me. He’s smart. And that means it’s going to be difficult to convince him that I want our alliance to work.”
“So you do.”
“Thanks to your family, yes,” she says. “You want to build a world for them. For your mother, for Kieran’s children. I understand that. When…I chose to negotiate with the Sovereign I was trying to do the same thing. Protecting those I love.” The Telemanuses share a glance. Her finger traces dents in the table. “I couldn’t see a world without war unless we capitulated.” Her eyes find my Sigil-barren hands, searching the naked flesh there as if it held the secret to all our futures. Maybe it does. “But I can see one now.”
“You really mean that?” I ask. “All of you?”
“Family is all that matters,” Kavax says. “And you are family.” Daxo sets an elegant hand on my shoulder. Even Sophocles seems to understand the gravity of the moment, resting his chin on my foot beneath the table. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” I nod gratefully “I am.”
With a tight smile, Mustang pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and slides it to me. “That’s Orion’s com frequency. I don’t know where they are. Probably in the belt. I gave them a simple directive: cause chaos. From what I’ve heard from Gold chatter, they’re doing just that. We’ll need her and her ships if we’re going take down Octavia.”
“Thank you,” I say to them all. “I didn’t think we’d ever have a second chance.”
“Nor did we,” Daxo replies. “Let me be blunt with you, Darrow: there is a matter of concern. It’s your plan. Your design to use clawDrills to allow the Obsidians to invade key cities around Mars…we think it is a mistake.”
“Really?” I ask. “Why? We need to wrest the Jackal’s centers of power away, gain traction with the populace.”
“Father and I do not have the same faith in the Obsidians you seem to have,” Daxo says carefully. “Your intentions will matter little if you let them loose on the populace of Mars.”
“Barbarians,” Kavax says. “They are barbarians.”
“Ragnar’s sister…”
“Is not Ragnar,” Daxo replies. “She’s a stranger. And after hearing what she did to the Gold prisoners…we can’t in good conscience join our forces to a plan that would unleash the Obsidians on the cities of Mars. The Arcos women won’t either.”
“I see.”
“And there’s another reason we think the plan flawed,” Mustang says. “It doesn’t deal properly with my brother. Give my brother credit. He’s smarter than you. Smarter than me.” Even Kavax does not contest this. “Look what he’s done. If he knows how to play the game, if he knows the variables, he’ll sit in a corner for days running through the possible moves, countermoves, externalities, and outcomes. That’s his idea of fun. Before Claudius’s death and before we were sent to live in different homes, he’d stay inside, rain or shine, and piece together puzzles, create mazes on paper and beg me over and over again to try and find the center when I came back from riding with Father or fishing with Claudius and Pax. And when I did find the center, he would laugh and say what a clever sister he had. I never thought much of it until I saw him afterward one day alone in his room when he thought no one was watching. Shrieking and hitting himself in the face, punishing himself for losing to me.
“The next time he asked me to find the center of a maze I pretended I couldn’t, but he wasn’t fooled. It was like he knew I’d seen him in his room. Not the introverted, but pleasant frail boy everyone else saw. The real him.” She gathers her breath, shrugging away the thought. “He made me finish the maze. And when I did, he smiled, said how clever I was, and walked off.
“The next time he drew a maze, I couldn’t find the center. No matter how hard I tried.” She shifts uncomfortably. “He just watched me try from the floor among his pencils. Like an old evil ghost inside a little porcelain doll. That’s how I remember him. It’s how I see him now when I think about him killing Father.”
The Telemanuses listen with a foreboding silence, as afraid of the Jackal as I am.
“Darrow, he’ll never forgive you for beating him at the Institute. For making him cut off his hand. He’ll never forgive me for stripping him naked and delivering him to you. We are his obsession, just as much as Octavia is, as much as Father was. So if you think he’s going to just forget how Sevro waltzed into his citadel with a clawDrill and stole you from under him, you’re going to get a lot of people killed. Your plan to take the cities won’t work. He’ll see it coming a kilometer off. And even if he doesn’t, if we take Mars, this war will last for years. We need to go for the jugular.”
“And not just that,” Daxo says, “we need assurances that you’re not aiming to begin a dictatorship, or a full-demokracy in the case of victory.”
“A dictatorship,” I ask with a smirk. “You really think I want to rule?”
Daxo shrugs. “Someone must.”
A woman clears her throat at the door. We wheel around to see Holiday standing there with her thumbs in her belt loops. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. But the Bellona is asking for you. It seems rather important.”