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“Met a man once,” I say as Pax becomes a cloud. He doesn’t cough. Good on him. Neither did I. “Wasn’t much younger than you. It was before the Legion Ward House got ahold of me. Was a lookout for the local tough, when I heard they were selling ice frizeé down by the Light Plaza. You know that mound. Heroes’ Plaza or whatever now.” He nods. “Anyway. Got caught stealing said frizeé and was gonna get cuffed real bad by the local urbanes, when a man piped up for me. Said I was with him. The urbanes gave him one look, a long salute, and went on their way. He was a Gray. Looked such a legend, leaning on the fountain like he owned it. Had a Titan Rain badge on his chest, a shattered Rhea beneath, a shower of golden teardrops on his face, inky in Legio XIII blacks. You weren’t around then, but even Golds gave that sort a nod.” I roll my burner in my hands. “Smoked that burner like the unimpressed footman of a god. I remember that clear as day. Jove, he looked slick. He gave me my first. Like I’m giving you yours. I asked him if he was a hero, and he looked me dead in the eyes”—Pax looks over—“and he said, ‘Fuck heroes, kid. It’s all about being slick enough to squeak through. That’s the last man standing.’ Took that to heart. And here I bloody am.”

“And what’s that supposed to teach me?” he asks. “Be an asshole?”

“I dunno. Don’t be like your folks, I reckon. It ain’t on you to save the world. They were some impressive people, all told. I ain’t saying you’re not. But they was them, and look where they are.” I set a hand on his shoulder. “I want you to get old, that’s all.”

“Why? I’m just a mark to you.”

“Everyone’s a mark to someone. Bet you a pretty credit, Sefi’s someone’s mark.” I hold the smoke in my lungs until they tighten. “Guess I’m telling you because age doesn’t look good on me. But I think it’ll look good on you. That’s all. That’s the pep talk.”

He looks back down at the braves. “You’re shit at pep talks.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s why I’m alive, and why you’re wearing Trigg’s ring.” He plays with the chain. “He was as good as we get. Just a shish kebab in the end.”

“My father wishes he knew him better,” Pax murmurs.

“You don’t have to pander.”

“Truly. Say what you want about my da, but don’t ever think he doesn’t notice his men. It’s the best thing about him. When they go, it breaks him.”

“Well, he’s the one givin’ the orders.”

“Someone has to.” He looks at the fire of the burner as it works its way through the tobacco. “I don’t hate him. I mean I do, but I don’t. If that makes sense. I hate him for leaving for Venus, but not for Mercury. At his best, he’s how men should be. So maybe that means it’s the world that’s flawed.”

“That’s the damn truth.”

We lean and smoke in silence. He really is a good egg. I don’t give a shit about Sefi’s instructions to brown-nose him. If she tells me to use him, I’ll pop her between those black eyes.

“Grarnir. It is time.” Pax and I jump at the voice. Neither of us noticed Ozgard sneak up behind us. For once he’s not in good humor. The shaman’s eyes are rimmed with ash. “The kjr assemble for the Kjrdakan. As aefe, you must join.”

I squint at him. “The what for the what as what?”

“You’re letting a Gray into the Kjrdakan?” Pax asks in shock. “The Lord Wager,” he explains to me. “The Volk’s war ritual before important battles. My father was the first person not of the Volk to join one. He was an aefespakr—a wise planner. It’s an honor.”

“Sefi accepted my plan?” I ask Ozgard, dumbfounded. “Not Valdir’s?”

He laughs at me. “Grarnir is blind. Still he does not see. Freihild and skuggi are already en route back to Mars. We press for Phobos for transfer to ore haulers.” He pauses, black eyes searching mine. “Come. Kjrdakan awaits.”

Pax understands the seismic statement Sefi is making choosing the plan of a Gray outsider to that of her most successful warlord. It is a declaration of change, and a choice on her part to pick risk over slaughter. Entirely too civilized to be true. But it is also spitting in her lover’s eye while putting me directly in the cross fire between them. Valdir will be pissed.

More than a little worried, I flick my burner away and follow Ozgard. Pax grabs my arm before I get far. “Whatever you do, don’t bleed into the rib cage.”

“Huh?”

“If the campaign fails and you’ve given a blood wager, you’re killed in ritual homicide.”

“Yeah. I’m going to need a few more details. Walk and talk, kid. Walk and talk.”

* * *

—

Incense burns from braziers on the stage of the opera house where Amel was butchered. It’s so thick my eyes itch back to the retinal nerves. I shift foot-to-foot in my place in the circle of towering war leaders as a giant albino aurochs with twisted horns is led onto the stage by Ozgard’s acolytes. Sefi approaches the muscled cow with an axe the size of a tree on her shoulder. I cross my arms and settle in to watch the pagan absurdity.

Sefi tightens the glove on her right hand and crouches to peer into the beast’s eyes with the tattoos on her closed eyelids. Apparently it only takes a minute to see the aurochs’s “spirit.” She whispers some alien sacrament that sounds like a pressure release on a gas rifle, and then rears back with the axe and splits its skull down the center in a tremendous blow. Blood sprays on my boots. The blade is so long it divides the aurochs’s neck halfway down the spine. I watch in mild horror as the beast shudders and sways and crashes to the floor, spurting blood everywhere.

Sefi reaches into both sides of the split beast’s head and rips out its tongue to show that it has been divided in half. Impossible precision.

The Obsidians rattle approval with the torcs on their left arms as Sefi hands one half of the grisly appendage to her varKjr, Valdir. The two eat the tongue raw, staring at each other with feverish enthusiasm that borderlines on erotic. My stomach twists as blood and juice trickle down their chins.