“You killed a Howler, Aja,” he says. “Wrong play.”
As I expected, the appearance of the Howlers reassures Aja and Tactus. This makes sense to them: I had soldiers hidden. Now I do not. A battle to the death. Honor. Pride. One force against another. The Obsidian Praetorians begin to keen their terrible throat song. All those men want is the glorious end. To join their relatives in the laughing halls of Valhalla with their blades in hand. They step forward on Aja’s command. The deadliest men and women in the Solar System, a Stained amongst them.
And I take a page from Evey’s book.
Ensuring Aja is clear, I detonate the landmine spikes I dropped on the ground as Lorn and I strolled into this forest. Only Tactus is quick enough. He grabs Aja from behind and jerks her back, hard—so hard in the lowGrav that both of them tumble in through the door just as the first explosion rips the salt air.
The explosions are tiered. First comes a concussion that disables pulseShields and scatters the Praetorians into the air. Then comes a gravPit, which pulls them back toward the source of the explosion like a vacuum collecting flies; and then comes the third—pure kinetics to destroy armor and bone and flesh, blowing the warriors outward, into the air, scattering their pieces in the low gravity like breath scatters the seeds of a dandelion. Limbs float gently down. Blood beads and spatters the ground. The explosion breaks the bubble roof overhead and rain again drifts down on the garden to extinguish the fires and thin the blood that leaks into the two dozen bomb craters. Only three Praetorians survived. They’re in poor shape.
“Do not let her escape.” Roque’s voice sears my ears. He watches my holofeed from the ships above.
My Howlers have not yet moved.
Lorn’s furious with me, saying something about honor.
“What?” I sneer. “You think I fight fair?”
“Darrow …,” Sevro hisses as I wait. “Darrow …”
“Hold.”
“She’s getting away!” Roque’s voice frightens me. It drips with spite I didn’t know he had. “Darrow!”
I growl at him to pay attention to his part of the battle.
“Darrow …,” Sevro begs. “Long enough.”
Lorn watches, perhaps beginning to understand.
I snap my fingers. “Hunt.”
The Howlers surge forward like loosed wolves to finish what the bomb started. They dispatch the remaining Praetorians. Sevro shouts Tactus’s name amidst the howling as they tear into the castle searching for him and Aja.
“Darrow, what are you playing at?” Roque asks me over the com. I let the holo of his face appear in the corner of my helmet’s HUD display. His jaw muscles flicker. “If Quinn’s killer escapes …”
“Lock that up,” I tell Roque as I see reports of one of our torchShips taking massive damage. He’s distracted. “Men are dying up there. Focus on your own job.” I shut off the link.
Harpy’s image appears on my display. “Seahorse is under.”
“Good. And Tactus?”
“No sign.”
“Copy.” I close the connection.
“Aja spooked into he sea. But no sign of Tactus,” Sevro says to me several minutes later as the Howlers scour the inside of the castle, going room to room. “He’s hiding. Unless he’s teleported.” He spits at that bit of science fiction. “Ask the geezer where they are.”
A dark worry slithers into my brain. I turn to Lorn. “What would Lune have them do if they could not kill you and me? If she thought someone expendable, what would she order them to do?”
He stands there for a moment in the rain. Then his face goes pale. “The children …” Arcos pushes past me, running through the bomb’s carnage to the shattered glass door. “They’re going to kill my grandchildren!” he shouts back.
“Where are the children?” I ask Sevro.
“What children? We found none.”
Cursing, I chase Arcos.
“I hid them,” he says over his shoulder to me as he sprints down the castle’s hall. He’s fast for an old man, but the gravity slows us till we start using our hands on the walls and ceiling, using gravBoots to take the long halls. We launch around corner after corner. And when he touches the head of a stone griffin and a steel wall falls away to reveal a hidden passage, I smell blood. Two corpses lie on the other side of the passage. One Gray, one Obsidian. I push past Arcos and fly ahead. I pull myself down a series of stairs using handholds in the ceiling till I find myself before two doors. I open one. Just a storeroom. I open another and let my razor slither into hand.
“Tactus,” I say slowly.
His back is to me. Three bodies lie around him, their blood making a pool about his shoes. His razor coils in his hand, hardening as he stands with his head lowered in a room of children and women. Blood slithers down the mercurial blade. He killed two men and a woman. Obsidians.
When I came, Arcos hid the children from me here, some Gold, some Silver, some Pink and Brown. Tactus could kill half of them with a lazy swing of his razor before we reach them.
“Tactus, remember your brothers,” I say to him, looking at the children.
“My brothers are shits.” He laughs coarsely, voice sounding strange. “Said I should get out of your shadow. Mother calls me the Mighty Servant. Did you know that?”
Children sob in the corner. One buries her face in her mother’s lap. The women are not armed. These are not warriors like Victra and Mustang. A Brown nursemaid covers a Gold child’s eyes. I hear Arcos in the tunnel behind me.
“Lune’s orders are wrong,” I say to Tactus.
“She asked me if I could fill your place, Reaper,” Tactus says quietly. “Said she didn’t think I could. Said I was so long in your shadow that she didn’t know if I would ever be more than an echo of you. I told her I could do anything you could do.”
“Tactus, she is evil.”
“Is she?” He spits blood on the ground, still not facing me. “They say the same thing about you. They wonder who you think you are to do what you do. To challenge the men and women you challenge. They wonder what right you have.”
“We all have a right to challenge. That’s the point.”
“The point. Was there a point?” he asks. “I was never told. You took me for granted. Never telling me anything.” Just as I’m doing with Roque. “Always whispering with others. Dismissing me like I’m a fool. You’re just like her …”