“Ah, I see the Ash Lord has become most literal indeed.”
Apollonius sits on the edge of the bed and pulls back the sheets to see the cadaverous legs of the old warlord. He makes a clucking sound with his tongue and prods the flaking skin at the thigh, peeling off a small strip of the scale and grinding it between the metal fingers of his gauntlets till a fine powder sprinkles the bed. “Did the bite hurt?”
“So it was you,” the Ash Lord murmurs. “Atalantia did not believe me.”
“Even from the deep, I have teeth,” Apollonius says. “I served nobly. Without deceit or graft. But you betrayed me to steal from me. You turned my blood against me. That, my goodman, was a dire mistake.”
I feel a reptilian fear slipping into me. I back away from Apollonius. Sevro points his pulseFist at him. “You knew he was like this and you did not tell me?” I say.
“You son of a bitch,” Sevro hisses.
Apollonius smiles. “The warden did not just buy me tomatoes and whores.”
“You’re dead, shithead.” But Sevro doesn’t fire.
“I did not know it worked,” Apollonius says innocently. “But I am delighted by the results.”
The Ash Lord tries to spit at him, but the feeble saliva catches on his own chin. “Is revenge worth sounding the death knell of your race, spoiled cur?”
“My race?” Apollonius stands. “No, no, my lord, I am a race unto myself.”
“How long ago?” I ask, grabbing Apollonius by the throat. “How long ago did you do this?”
“Three years,” he says, not liking my hands on him. “Are we not allies any longer?” He steps back measuredly, touching his throat. At the news, Sevro looks light-headed.
Three years. Three years like this…He can’t have led his men or fleets on Mercury from here. The time delay would make battle command impossible. But how then did they resist me for so long? Who commanded them? Who is responsible for their new tactics? Who was really behind the holos of him on his bridge when we spoke those half dozen times?
“Yes,” the Ash Lord rasps, as if he can hear my thoughts. “Do you feel the dread yet, slave? Knowing you came all this way, fractured your Republic, your family! Made a pact with this devil to kill a sick old man at the end of his days?”
I fight the urge to scream. I feel like I’m falling. What a waste. What an unbelievable waste.
“Who was it?” I ask.
The Ash Lord looks at Apollonius. “Who else? The only daughter you have left me.”
“Atalantia…” I whisper.
“My last Fury.” He smiles with pride. “You destroyed her home. You murdered her sisters. Now you come to take her father. She was a frivolous girl. She would have lived in peace, Darrow, but you have brought her nothing but war.” He mocks me.
“All of this for nothing,” Sevro murmurs to himself. “We killed Wulfgar for nothing. We came all this way. Darrow…”
I don’t know what to say.
“Where is Atalantia now?” Apollonius asks.
“Far from here,” the Ash Lord says. “The peace talks were her idea. She expected you to dissolve the Senate. Take the reins. But you left. You should have gone to your fleet, Darrow.”
There were too few ships in orbit. I assumed most were on the far side of the planet. But now I know what he means. “Impossible,” I say. “They would have been detected.”
He smiles. “Ten years ago, you came upon Luna from the fog of war. She will fall upon your fleet over Mercury. It is at half strength because of your…tantrum in your Senate. It will burn. And your fabled army on the surface will burn.”
Something inside me knows that he is right, because it would be too fine a world for this to end with him, today. If Atalantia has led his forces, if they are en route to destroy the Republic forces, then the war is not ending. It is beginning again. Around and around it goes. I do not know if the Republic can last another blow. It is my fault. I never should have launched the Iron Rain; but for hubris, for so many reasons, I let the Rain fall, and it has not stopped since. I shattered my family, killed Wulfgar, came here all for nothing.
The Ash Lord watches me realize this with little satisfaction. There is no joy in his final moments. No cruel relish. Just a great exhaustion.
“Orion and Virginia have to know that Atalantia is coming,” I say, numbly. “We have to go.”
“Do you think I would tell you this if you could hope to influence it?”
“Darrow, we have to let them know…” Sevro says.
“You came all the way here,” the Ash Lord continues. “Across the great ink, thinking you could kill me and return home to your family. But now there is nothing to return to. No Republic. No family…”
“No family…” I echo.
Sevro takes a step forward. “Say that again?”
“You left your children behind. Didn’t you?”
Sevro lurches forward and grabs him by the neck. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The Ash Lord smiles at him, their faces inches apart. “You are like me, in the end. I spent my children for my war. And now, so have you.”
Sevro’s grip goes slack.
“Your daughter.” He looks at me. “And your son. They have been taken.”
No.
My fingers curl around the wood post of this rotted man’s bed and I feel the shifting of something inside me. The whisper of formless dread that attends when I wake from a horrible nightmare and for a moment forget my human delusions and see the world for as cold a place as it really is. Dark, hollow wind channels through my heart and I know I have lost. I left my boy behind.
“You’re lying,” Sevro whispers.
We’re each in our little worlds of dread, each sinking into the darkness, each unable to grasp, to believe that he is telling the truth. This is the spite of a dying man. That is all it can be. That is all I can accept.
“You’re lying,” Sevro says again. His face is milk pale.
But he’s not. There is too much satisfaction in him.
“Was it you?” I whisper.
“If only. It was one of yours.”
“Who?”
The Ash Lord watches me and then turns his large head to look away from me out to the bright sea, where his spirit has already fled. “Lorn was right,” he says in a rough whisper. “The bill comes at the end.”
“Who took my son?” I shout. “Who?”
With an animal scream, Sevro launches himself past me and slams his fist into the Ash Lord’s face. Again and again till blood coats Sevro’s hands to his wrists and the Ash Lord’s lips are mangled. I pull at Sevro. He hits me right in the jaw. I hold on, sagging against him as he hyperventilates. He shoves me off, wheeling back to the Ash Lord with his razor drawn.
“We need him alive,” I shout. “We need to know more.”
There’s a soft pop and I look back to the Ash Lord to see foam bubbling from his mouth. He spits a false tooth onto the sheets. Apollonius picks it up and brings it to his nose. “Poison.”
“Who stole my child?” I say, gripping him. “Tell me.”
He smiles, baring his rotting gums.
“He won’t talk,” Apollonius says.