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“If you say so. What’s a Pixie doing with a piece like that?”

“If it don’t fit, it’s Howler shit. Search him for trackers and let’s ride. Fear’ll sort it.” The child’s face looks down at me again as I try to speak. “Time to take a nap, traitor.” The last thing I see is his boot coming down.

THE GORGONS TRAVEL VIA GRAVBIKE. The ride is long and covers several hundred kilometers back the way I walked. Back into the damn desert. In the late afternoon, they make a stop in a high-desert town surrounding a large mine. I watch tied to the back of a gravBike as lowColor townsfolk run out to greet the butchers like heroes. Children run along as we trail out of the town heading toward the snowline of the mountains.

Clouds eddy across the darkening sky as the gravBikes slow to go single file along a mountain track. We come to an abrupt halt. Boots crunch the snow and something hits me again on the head.

When I regain consciousness, I am cold and wet. The floor is stone. I do not open my eyes yet. My hands are chained above me, bracketed into the wall of a cave. Streams run to either side. Hushed voices converse.

“He never asks us any questions. Never any. He just takes something away. I told him all I could think of. I just wanted it to stop.” The man sobs.

“Spare us your weeping, Hadrian. It’s bad enough already without you bubbling like a Venusian harlot.”

“Let him be, Ignacius. We’ve all told

him something, Hadrian. It’s prime, brother.”

“He made…time slow down. Something he gave me. I could feel every molecule as he took…as he…” The words are lost in the sobs.

“How many guards have you counted, Drusilla?”

“He hoods me every time.”

“What’s it even matter what we’ve seen? We know he’s listening right now. That’s the only reason he’d let us stay together. How many Howlers has he caught? How many have been retrieved? One—and Orion was so mad she fucked a continent. We’re dead, goodmen. Go with dignity at least. Soon we’ll be upon the pale.”

“Sure, dignity with a metal pole up your ass. Sounds like a Tuesday for you, Ignacius.”

A beat of silence.

“The boss will come for us,” the leader says.

“Faithful to the end, Alex? Your Red god is drowned by now or blasted to bits. The only grace we’ll receive is the Void. But that’s prime. It’s just nothing, after all.”

“He’s not dead.”

“You really did go full lupus. The whole army is dead, because of the Senate Vox. Taking our ships, the tiny bastards. Heliopolis will have fallen in the siege, and the army will have been trapped in the desert under the guns of the Ash Armada. They’re probably already nailing Darrow to the bow of the Annihilo to sail on Luna.”

“Then why are we still in a cave?”

There are at least five around me. All of them Golds. Martian accents mostly, Elysian with a faint flavor of the Jovian Moons. I listen a little longer. Europan dialect. Howlers, Darrow, Alex, the accents. It leaves little left to guess. There’re two others sleeping. How many more, I can’t tell because of the sound of the stream. I would guess nine.

“Scarface is awake and listening to us,” the one called Ignacius says.

“Are you awake, my goodman?” another asks with more authority. The leader. His accent would be near-cultured but for how he mumbles. “Don’t be afraid, we’re all fucked here. Eyes open or closed, doesn’t much matter.” He laughs with thin confidence. I make a show of opening my right eye. There are ten other prisoners chained as I am against the wall. Two are sleeping. Two Gorgons sit about thirty meters off in the throat of a tunnel that is the room’s only exit.

“Told you he was awake,” Ignacius says. He’s a huge, handsome brute.

“I don’t see a scar,” the woman says. Drusilla.

“Like they weren’t wise to that after year one,” Ignacius says.

“What’s your name?” Drusilla asks. Her face is darker than the rest. Kind eyes watch me from swollen eyelids.

“Easy now, my goodman,” Alexandar says. “You’ve been mauled rather gruesomely.” Even with both his ears missing, and half his face grotesquely swollen, I can tell he is around my own age and that he used to be a handsome man. Staggeringly, I wager. His shoulders are incredibly broad for his frame. Legs meant to eat kilometers are folded under him. The last time I saw him was in a holo Cassius and I watched on the Archi as he stood behind Darrow during a speech.

Alexandar au Arcos, Lorn’s grandson, my estranged cousin, and Kalindora’s nephew on his mother’s side.

“What’s your name?” he asks. “Take your time. Concussions befuddle the best of us.”