“You’re bloodydamn manic,” I tell Sevro when we’re alone in Virany’s infirmary. Sevro’s holding his neck laughing at himself. I kiss the top of his head. “Bloodydamn insane, you know that?”
“Yeah well I stole that one from your playbook; what does that say about you?”
“That he’s insane as well,” Mickey says from the corner. He’s smoking his laced-burners. Purple smoke slithering from nostrils.
Sevro winces. “That slagging hurt. I can’t even look sideways.”
“You sprained your neck, damaged the cartilage, lacerations in your larynx,” Dr. Virany says from behind her biometric scanner. She’s a lithe, tan woman with that special small silence inside her reserved for people who have seen both sides of hardship.
“Just as I said when you came in. All these tools you use, Virany. Really where’s the art in it?”
Virany rolls her eyes. “Another ten kilos on your body and you would have broken your neck, Sevro. Count yourself lucky.”
“Good thing I took a shit before,” he grumbles.
“Darrow’s neck would have held up under the strain of fifty more kilos,” Mickey brags idly. “The tensile rating of his cervical—”
“Really?” Virany says tiredly. “Can’t you brag later Mickey?”
“Merely observing my own mastery,” Mickey replies, giving me a little wink. He enjoys pushing the gentle Virany’s buttons. Since he’s employed her help in his project they’ve been spending most waking moments in his laboratory, much to Virany’s chagrin.
“Ow!” Sevro yelps as she prods the back of his spine. “That’s my body.”
“Sorry.”
“Pixie,” I say.
“I almost broke my neck,” Sevro complains.
“Been there, done that. At least you didn’t have to get whipped.”
“I’d rather have been whipped,” he mutters, wincing as he tries to turn his neck. “Be better than this.”
“Not being whipped by Pax,” I reply.
“I saw the video, he wasn’t swinging that hard.”
“Have you ever been whipped? Did you see my back?”
“You see my bloodydamn eye at the Institute? Jackal had it plucked out with a knife, didn’t see me whining.”
“I had my whole bloodydamn body carved open,” I say as the doors hiss open and Mustang enters. “Twice.”
“Oh, it always comes back to the slagging Carving,” Sevro mutters, wiggling his fingers in the air. “I’m so bloodydamn special, I had my bones peeled. My DNA spliced.”
“Do they always do this?” Virany asks Mustang.
“Seems like,” Mustang says. “Any chance I could bribe you to suture their mouths shut till they learn not to swear so much?”
Mickey perks up. “Well, it’s interesting you ask…”
Sevro interrupts him. “How’s the Gold holding up?” he asks Mustang. “You know?”
“Happy he still has a tongue,” Mustang says. “They’re suturing his chest in the infirmary. He has some internal bleeding from blunt trauma, but he’ll live.”
“You finally went to see him?” I ask.
“I did.” She nods thoughtfully to herself. “He was…emotional. He wanted me to thank you, Sevro. He says he knows he didn’t deserve it.”
“Damn right he didn’t,” Sevro mutters.
“Sefi says the Obsidian will leave him be,” I say.
“The Obsidian?” Mustang asks, my statement pulling her from her thoughts. “All of them.”
I laugh suddenly. “I didn’t even think about that.”
“What’s that?” Sevro asks.
“She spoke for the Obsidian now, not just the Valkyrie. Wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Pan-tribalism wasn’t in place before the riot,” I say. “Must have used it to unite the other warchiefs under her direction.”
“So…she pulled a coup?” Sevro asks.
I laugh. “Seems like.”
“We’ll see if it holds. Still…impressive,” Mustang says. “They always told us never to let a good crisis go to waste.”
Mickey shivers. “Obsidians playing politics…”
“So all that out there…was that strategy or was real?” Mustang asks Sevro.
“Dunno.” Sevro shrugs. “I mean, gotta stop the cycle somewhere. Sucks, but dad’s gone. No sense burning down the world to try and bring him back. You know? Cassius didn’t kill dad because he hated him. They were both soldiers doing what soldiers do.”
Mustang shakes her head, at a loss for words. So she sets a hand on his shoulder, and he knows how impressed she is. The compliment of silence is as deep a one as she can give, and Sevro favors her with a rare un-ironic smile. One that disappears when the door opens and Victra comes in. She’s red-eyed and agitated.
“I need to talk to you,” she says to Sevro.
“Get out,” Sevro says when we don’t move. “Everyone.”
We wait outside the door as Victra and Sevro speak inside. “How long do you think it will take to make the voyage?” Mustang asks.
“Forty-nine days,” I say, pulling Mickey back from the door where he cups his ear in an attempt to hear the happenings inside. “Key is keeping the Blues quiet.”
“Forty-nine days is a long time for my brother to make plans.”
Beyond our hull the worlds continue to turn. Reds are hunted. And though we’ve woken the spirit of the lowColors, and given this rebellion another victory, every day we spend crossing the distance to Core is another day that the Jackal can hunt our friends and the Sovereign can squelch the rebellions that plague her. My uncle’s already gone. How many more will die before I return?
“This won’t heal everything,” Mustang says. “The Obsidians still killed seven prisoners. My people are wary of this war. The consequences. Particularly if Sefi now has united the tribes. That makes her dangerous.”
“And more useful,” I say.
“Until she disagrees with you again. This could go wrong at any moment.”
She straightens as Mickey skitters back and the door to the infirmary opens. Sevro and Victra come out, both wearing smiles. “What are you two grinning about?” I ask.
“Just this.” Sevro thrusts out a House Jupiter Institute ring. It’s loose on his finger. I squint at it, not understanding right away. His own ring is missing and then I see it awkwardly jammed onto Victra’s pinky. “She proposed,” he says with delight.
“What?” I sputter.
Mustang’s eyebrows shoot up. “Proposed…as in…”
“Yeah, boyo!” Sevro beams. “We’re gettin’ hitched.”
Sevro and Victra marry seven nights later in a small ceremony in the auxiliary hangar of the Morning Star. When Victra asked me to give her away after they broke the news to us, I couldn’t speak. I hugged her then as I hug her now before taking her arm and walking her through the small line of scrubbed and washed Howlers and towering Telemanuses. It’s the cleanest I’ve ever seen Sevro, his unruly Mohawk combed to the side as he stands before Mickey. It is custom to have a White give the benediction. But Victra laughed at the idea of tradition and asked Mickey.
The Violet’s face glows now. Too much makeup on the day, but he’s a ray of light all the same. From Carver to slaver to slave to wedding officiant, he’s not had an easy road, but he’s lovelier for it. He was delighted when Clown and Screwface asked him to join us for Sevro’s bachelor night, and he howled along with us as we kidnapped Sevro from his room the night before and dragged him to the mess hall where the Howlers gathered to drink.
The animosity stemming from the riot has not abated entirely, but the wedding brings a sense of nostalgic normalcy. Surrounded by the insanity of war, it’s a special hope given knowing life can go on. Though some Sons gripe about the marriage of the Red leader to a Gold, Victra’s done enough to merit respect from the leaders within the Sons. And the bravery she showed in storming the Morning Star with Sefi and me around Ilium has bought her their respect. She shed blood for them, with them, so my fleet is quiet, at peace. At least for tonight.
I’ve never seen Sevro so happy. Nor so nervous as he was the hour before the ceremony when he combed his hair in my washroom. Not that you can do much with a Mohawk. “Is this insane? It seemed like a good idea yesterday,” he asked, staring at himself in the mirror.
“And it’s a good idea today too,” I told him.
“You’re not just saying that. Tell me the truth, man. I feel sick.”
“Before I married Eo, I threw up.”
“Bullshit.”
“Got it all over my uncle’s boots.” A twinge of pain as I remember he’s gone. “Wasn’t that I was afraid of making the wrong decision. I was afraid she was. Afraid of not living up to her expectations…But my uncle told me that it’s women who see us better than we see ourselves. That’s why you love Victra. That’s why you fight with her. And that’s you why you deserve this.”
Sevro squinted at me in the mirror. “Yeah, but your uncle was crazy. Everyone knows that.”
“Even company then. We’re all a little manic. Especially Victra. I mean she’d have to be to marry you?”
He grinned. “Bloodydamn right.” And I rumpled his hair, hoping beyond all hope that they can have this little moment of happiness and maybe more after that. It’s the best any of us can hope for, really. “Wish Pops was here, though.”
“I think he’s laughing his ass off somewhere that you have to stand on your tiptoes to kiss your bride,” I said.
“Always was a prick.”
Now Sevro shifts from foot to foot as I hand Victra over to him and he looks up into her eyes. I’m not even there. None of us are, not to them. The gentleness I see from the raging woman now is all it takes to know how much she loves him. It’s not something she’d ever talk about. It’s not her way. But the sharp edge she has for everything and everyone is dull tonight. Like she sees Sevro as a refuge, a place where she can be safe.
I rejoin Mustang as Mickey begins his flowery speech. It’s not half so grandiloquent as I might have expected. The way Mustang nods along to the words, I know she must have helped him edit it down. Reading my mind, she leans over. “You should have heard the first draft. It was a spectacle.” She sniffs me. “Are you drunk?” She looks back at the flushed Howlers and teetering Telemanuses. “Are they all drunk?”
“Shhh,” I say and hand her a flask. “You’re too sober.”
Mickey is finishing the ceremony. “…a compact that can be broken only by death. I pronounce you Sevro and Victra Barca.”
“Julii,” Sevro corrects quickly. “Hers is the elder house.”
Victra shakes her head down at him. “He said it right.”
“But you’re a Julii,” he replies, confused.
“Yesterday I was. Today I’d rather be a Barca. Presuming you don’t have problem with that and I don’t have to become proportionally diminutive.”
“It’d be lovely,” Sevro says, cheeks glowing as Mickey continues and Sevro and Victra turn to face their friends. “Then I present you to your fellows and the worlds as Sevro and Victra of the Martian House Barca.”
The ceremony may have been small, but the celebration is anything but. Fleet-spanning, even. If my people know one thing it is how to survive hardship with celebration. Life’s not just a matter of breathing, it’s a matter of being. Word of Sevro’s speech and his hanging spread through the ships, stitching the wounds back together.
But this day is the one that matters. The one that reaffirms the joy of life throughout my fleet. Dances are held on the smallest corvettes, on the destroyers and torchShips and the Morning Star. Flights of ripWings buzz bridges in celebratory formation. Swill and Society liquors flow among the milling crowds, which gather in hangars to sing and dance around weapons of war. Even Kavax, so stubborn in his fear of chaos and his prejudice against the Obsidians, dances with Mustang. Drunkenly hugging Sevro and Victra and clumsily attempting to forget the ballroom dreck of Gold dances and learn those of my people from a full-figured Red with a laughing face and a mechanic’s grease under her nails. With them is Cyther, the awkward Orange who so impressed me a year a half ago in the garages of the Pax. He only just finished Mustang’s special project this morning. Now he’s drunk and turning his ungainly body around on the dance floor as Kavax roars approval.
Daxo shakes his head at his father’s antics while sitting in reserve on the side, as always. I share a drink with him. “It’s wine,” I say.
“Thank Jove.” He replies, delicately taking the glass. “Your people keep trying to give me some kind of engine solvent.” He scans his datapad warily.
“I’ve got Holiday on security,” I say. “This isn’t a Gold party.”
He laughs. “Thank Jove for that then as well.” Finally he takes a sip from his wine. “Venusian Atolls,” he says. “Very nice.”
“Roque had good taste. Your father is a sight,” I say, nodding to the dance floor where the big man sways along with two Reds.
“He’s not the only one,” Daxo replies shrewdly, following my eyes to Mustang who’s now being spun about by Sevro. The woman’s face is aglow with life, or maybe it’s the alcohol. Hair sweaty and plastered on her forehead. “She loves you, you know,” Daxo says. “She’s just afraid of losing you, so she holds you far away.” He smiles to himself. “Funny how we are, isn’t it?”
“Daxo why aren’t you dancing?” Victra says, striding up to him. “So proper all the time. Up! Up!” She hauls him up and pushes him onto the dance floor then collapses into his chair. “My feet. Raided Antonia’s closet. Forgot she’s got pigeon feet.”
I laugh and Clown stumbles up to us, heavily drunk.
“Victra, Darrow. A question. Do you think Pebble is interested in that man?” he asks me, leaning against one of the tables as he chugs down another glass of wine. His teeth are already purple.
“The tall one?” Victra asks. Pebble’s dancing with a Gray captain. “She seems to fancy him.”
“He’s terribly handsome,” Clown says. “Good teeth too.”
“I suppose you could always cut in,” I say.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to seem desperate.”
“Jove forbid,” Victra says.
“I think I’ll cut in.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” she says. “But you should bow first. To be polite.”
“Oh. Then it’s settled. I’ll go right now.” He pours another glass of wine. “After another drink.”
I take the wine from him and push him on his way. Holiday appears in the doorframe to watch Clown’s awkward interruption. He’s bowing to Pebble and sweeping back his hand dramatically. “Oh, hell. He actually did it.” Victra snorts champagne through her nose. “You should do the same with Mustang. Think she’s trying to steal my husband away. Husband. That’s a weird word.”
“It’s a weird world.”
“Isn’t it, though. Wife. Who’d have thought?”
I look her up and down. “On you, it seems to fit.” I put my arm around her. “It seems to fit perfectly.” She smiles radiantly.
“Sir,” Holiday says, coming up to us.
“Holiday, come to have a drink?” I glance over at her, smile dying when I see the expression that marks her face. Something has happened. “What is it?”
She motions me away from Victra.
“It’s the Jackal,” she says quietly so as not to spoil the mood. “He’s on the com for you. Direct link.”
“What’s the delay?” I ask.
“Six seconds.”
On the dance floor, Sevro’s spinning with Mustang clumsily, laughing because neither knows the dance the Reds around them perform. Her hair is dark from sweat on her temples, her eyes alight with the joy of the moment. None of them feel the sudden dread in me, in the world beyond. I don’t want them to. Not tonight.