Blood drips from Mustang’s hand.
The voices of children drift through the air.
“My son, my daughter, now that you bleed, you shall know no fear.” A young virgin girl with hair of white and feet bare on cold metal panels walks through the lines of kneeling giants carrying an iron dagger that drips with Aureate blood. “No defeat.”
Gold armor etched with deeds of their ancestors. The boy’s cloak innocent as snow. “Only victory.” She slices the already-injured hand of Romulus au Raa, whose eyes are closed, his dragon armor white and smooth as ivory as his other hand holds his eldest son’s hand. The boy is no older than seventeen, only just having won his year at the Ganymede Institute. His eyes are flashing and wild for the day. If only his intrepid young soul knew what waited on the other side of the hour. His older cousin kneels by his side, her hand on his knee. Her brother beside her. The family forming a chain across the bridge. “Your cowardice seeps from you.” Behind the girl, more children walk through the fold, carrying the four standards of Gold—a scepter, a sword, and a scroll crowned with a laurel. “Your rage burns bright.” She holds up the dripping dagger before Kavax au Telemanus and his youngest daughter Thraxa, a wild haired, freckle-faced, squat girl with her father’s laugh and Pax’s simple kindness. “Rise, children of Ilium, warriors of Gold, and take with you your Color’s might.”
Two hundred Gold Praetors and Legates rise. Mustang and Romulus at their head, flanked by the Telemanuses and House Arcos. Mustang lifts up her hand and smears the blood upon her own face. Two hundred killers join her, but I do not. I watch from the corner with Sefi as the combined officer corps of my Gold allies honors their Ancestors. Martian Reformers, Rim tyrants, old friends, old enemies clutter the bridge of Mustang’s flagship, the two-hundred-year-old dreadnought Dejah Thoris.
“The battle today is to decide the fate of our Society. Whether we live under the rule of a tyrant or whether we carve our own destiny.” Mustang catalogues the list of enemies for the day’s hunt. “Roque au Fabii, Scipia au Falthe, Antonia au Severus-Julii, Cyriana au Tanus.” Thistle. “These are wanted lives.”
I’ve been here before, witnessing this benediction, and I can’t help but feel I will be here again. It has lost none of its luster. None of the grandeur that so sheathes this remarkable people. They go to death not for the Vale, not for love, but for glory. We have never seen a race quite like them, nor will we again. After months surrounded by the Sons of Ares I see these Golds less as demons than falling angels. Precious, flaring so brilliantly across the sky before disappearing beyond the horizon.
But how many more days like this can they afford?
In the halls of our enemies, Roque will be reciting our names, and the names of my friends. He who kills the Reaper will have glory unending, bounty and renown. Young beasts with wide shoulders and angry eyes straight from the halls of the Core’s schools will hunt me. Ready to make their name.
So too will the old Gray legionnaires hunt me. Those who see my rebellion as the great threat against mother Society. Against that union which they have loved and fought for their entire lives. And Obsidian will seek me, led by masters who promised them Pinks in exchange for my head. They will hunt my friends. They will say Sevro’s name, and Mustang’s, and Ragnar’s because they do not yet know he is gone from us. They will hunt the Telemanuses and Victra, Orion, and my Howlers. But they cannot have them. Not today.
Today I take.
I stand looking down at my Gold allies. I am encased in militarized metal. Two point one meters tall, one hundred and sixty kilograms of death in a pulseArmor suit of blood-red. My slingblade is coiled around my right vambrace just above the wrist. A gravFist on my left hand. Built for collisions in corridors today, not speed. Sefi is just as monstrous as I in her brother’s armor. Hate in her eyes seeing this host of enemies.
My allies needed to see her. To see me. To know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Reaper is more alive than ever. Many of the Martians fell with me in the Rain. Some look at me with hate. Others with curiosity. And some—a very few—salute. But from most there’s a contempt that will never be washed away. That’s why I brought Sefi. Absent love, fear will do nicely in a pinch.
Upon hearing news that Roque’s fleet has begun its journey from Europa, I make my farewell to Romulus and his coterie of Praetors who helped devise our battle plan. Romulus’s handshake is firm. Respect between us, but no love. In the hangar, I say goodbye to Mustang and the Telemanuses. The floor vibrates as shuttles ferry the hundreds of Peerless back to their ships. “It seems like we’re always saying farewell,” I say to Kavax after he says his goodbyes to Mustang, lifting her up easy as he might a little doll and kissing her head.
“Farewell? It is not farewell,” he rumbles with a toothy grin. “Win today and it becomes just a long hello. Much life left for the both of us, I think.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I say.
“What for?” Kavax asks, confused, as per usual.
“The kindness…” I don’t know how else to say it. “For watching over my friends when I’m not even one of you.”
“One of us?” His ruddy face smirks. “A fool. You speak like a fool. My boy made you one of us.” He looks across the hangar where Mustang speaks with one of Lorn’s daughters-in-law near a transport. “She makes you one of us.” It’s all I can do to keep the tears from my eyes. “And if we damn all that, I say you’re one of us. So one of us you are.”
He lets Sophocles down from his shoulder perch to lope onto the floor. Circling, the fox jumps up onto my leg to dig something out of a joint in my armor. A jellybean. Thraxa puts a finger to her lips behind her father. The big man’s eyes light up. “What fresh deliciousness is this, Sophocles? Oh, your favorite kind! Watermelon.” The fox returns, jumping up onto his shoulder. “See! You have his benediction as well.”
“Thank you, Sophocles,” I say, reaching to scratch him behind the ears.
Kavax slams me into a hug before departing. “Take care, Reaper.” He trundles up the ramp. “Fishing?” he booms down at me before he’s gone ten meters.
“What?”
“Do Reds fish?”
“I never have.”
“There is a river through my estate on Mars. We will go, you and I, when this is done and sit by the bank and toss our lines and I will teach you how to tell a pike from a trout.”
“I’ll bring the whiskey,” I say.
He points a finger at me. “Yes! And we will be drunk together. Yes!” He disappears into the ship, throwing his arm around Thraxa and calling to his other daughters about a miracle he just witnessed. “I think he might be the luckiest of us,” I say as Mustang comes up from behind me to watch the Telemanus ship depart.
“Is it ridiculous if I ask you to be careful?” she asks.
“I promise not to do anything rash,” I reply with a wink. “I’ll have the Valkyrie with me. I doubt anyone will want to tangle with us for long.” She glances over my shoulder to where Sefi waits by my own shuttle, admiring the engines of other ships as they fly away. Mustang looks like she wants to say something, but is wrestling with how.
“You’re not invincible.” She touches the armor of my chest. “Some of us might want you around after all of this. After all, what’s the point of all this if you go and die on me? You hear?”
“I hear.”
“Do you?” She looks up at me. “I don’t want to be left alone again. So come back.” She raps her knuckles on my chest and turns to go to her ship.
“Mustang.” I chase after her and grab her arm, pulling her back toward me. Before she can say anything, I kiss her there surrounded by metal and engine roar. Not some delicate kiss, but a hungry one, where I pull her head to mine and feel the woman beneath the weight of duty. Her body presses against me. And I feel the shudder of fear that this will be the last time. Our lips part and I sink into her, rocking there, smelling her hair and gasping at the tightness in my chest. “I’ll see you soon.”