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Ozgard waits for me in the same hangar where I trained the skuggi and later shot three of them in the face. He wears his crow-feather cloak, his dragonbone staff, his red scale boots, and his great fourteen-point elk horn headdress, tips crusted in the blood of his people’s enemies. It was a mighty fine sight seeing him try to squeak out that perforation in the pulseShield outside his window with all that luggage in tow. But what Ozgard might lack in finesse, he more than compensates for in loyalty. He does not wait alone.

Fetched from their barracks by Ozgard, eighty of my skuggi spirit warriors surround the rotund shaman. Gudkind stands as their leader. They eye me with no small amount of distrust and wariness, especially the ones I shot, but Ozgard called them here, so they listen.

“Hello, you ugly sods, my name is Ephraim ti Horn,” I drawl as I waltz before them in my scarabSkin. “I was once the greatest freelancer in all Hyperion, which means I am the greatest freelancer who ever lived. But then I met you pukes. You dogged, creepy assassins of the icy poles have warmed the cockles of my reptilian heart. I ain’t your people. You ain’t mine. Let’s get that out of the way. In fact, I think you’re damn weird, and you think I’m a money slut. Fine. I could give a tick’s dick what you think of me. But your Queen.” I pause. “Our Queen needs our help.”

* * *

—

The prison of the Alltribe was inherited from the Bellona. It stands lonely and arcane on the far eastern fringe of Eagle Rest, connected to the great citadel by means of an anorexic little bridge with room for no more than two Obsidians to stand abreast. With thousands of Obsidian bloodbraves asleep in their barracks, Ozgard waltzes through the fog that grips the bridge toward six armored Valkyrie guards. One is Braga, Pax’s bodyguard.

“Shaman!” Braga shouts. “You are not free to roam. Where are Ulfred and Ulra?” Or something like that in Nagal. He presses forward. “Shaman! Halt.”

“Braga!” he calls in a voice that is not frail Ozgard’s but possessed with the myth of the shaman he built to rise nearly to the top of the matriarchy. “I knew thee as a child. Did you not listen as you sat upon my knee? Doom visits those who shed the blood of the servants to the gods.”

“We are in service of the Queen,” Braga rumbles in irritation.

“And even she serves the gods,” he replies, continuing forward. “It is not the duty of a servant to blind themselves to truth. It is the duty of a servant to understand the will of the master, especially when the master does not. Our Queen has been deceived—”

“Hollow words. Perhaps they always were,” Braga calls, lowering her pulseRifle. Her sisters do the same. “Our Queen believes Valdir covets her throne.”

“Bah! He covets only war trophies and a warm cunny. You know this!” The Valkyrie flinch when Ozgard lifts his dragonbone staff. “Strike me, and you will summon the shadows of the mist.” The Valkyrie look back to Braga, seized with apprehension.

“Idiots. He is only a storyteller. A drunk storyteller.” Braga holsters her rifle and pulls out her axe, stalking forward to take Ozgard into custody. Standing before the armored warrior, cloaked in frail feathers, Ozgard waves his staff with dramatic flourishes. I begin to laugh. The mist flashes and Braga stumbles back, her breastplate smoking. For the smallest moment, she thinks magic has been conjured. Then experience takes over. Too late. She looks out over the bridge, not expecting an enemy here in the heart of their power. “In the mist—” she shouts as her helmet slithers over her head. The mist stutters with color. Half the Valkyrie go down before they can activate their pulseShields.

As the skuggi emerge from the mist to overwhelm the guards and enter the prison to free Valdir, their jammers go active and I lose the signal. My turn.

I activate a jamField and drop from the ceiling to land in front of the two muscular guards outside Xenophon’s room. To their credit, the sleepy Obsidians do not flinch, and run straight into the gravity mine I toss in front of me. They invert and shoot upward, crunching into the ceiling. I lower the intensity and let them float, unconscious. Wait, one’s not unconscious. Crunch a second time into the ceiling.

“Hang tight, ladies.”

I reach for the door latch to enter Xenophon’s room, when instinct saves me. The latch is charged with enough power to melt my brain. That little shit. I strip my spider gloves, take a canister from my belt and rubberize the scarabSkin gauntlets. As the spray sets, I set a tripwire at the far end of the hall, two more gravity mines along the walls, and a gas trap above the door just to be safe. Then, with the resin set, I disarm the laser alarm inside the lock, then the secondary trigger—someone’s paranoid—and then the mechanism itself.

The door clicks open, the sound contained inside my jamField.

Xenophon’s room is spartan. Except for the size, it is suitable for a servant. The White sits facing the fireplace watching a hologram. The sound is mute outside the perimeter of my jamField. Wary of pressure traps in the threshold, I don my spider gloves again and reach inside the doorframe to crawl up the wall, then the ceiling, until I’m suspended above him in the shadow of the vaulted ceiling. I turn off my jamField.

The White is watching a recorded hologram of a severe man nearly Sefi’s height, but much thinner and full of that tensile Gold terror. His face is thin, his eyes perfect crystals behind slanted lids. There’s a man who knows pain. Atlas au Raa. My heart drop-kicks a beat.

“Salve, Xenophon, the product of all your toil amongst the flea-bitten is nearly at hand. The asset is hidden within the crags at the coordinates you detailed. He will act only upon your signal, which is to be given only if the greater sum of Obsidian warbands are upon Mars. If they are not, postpone incitement. Our window is narrowing, but he will listen. He knows you are my hand. Follow my design and soon you will be home on the Palatine. In a world of protean hearts, your steadfastness does not go unnoticed. When you return to the fold, you will be honored by the Dictator with the Iron Pyramid. It will be much deserved. Destroy this message upon receipt. Per aspera ad astra.”

“Per aspera ad astra,” Xenophon echoes, and then plays the message again. I watch it twice from above. I pieced it together the first time, but it beggars belief. I drop in front of Xenophon, and stand amidst the hologram. Those pale eyes go wide and I pistol-whip the White in the face.

Xenophon sprawls backward. I kick them between the legs, forgetting nothing’s there but a tiny aperture for piss. The slender creature stumbles back, not calling out in pain, not showing a lick of anger upon their face.

“Mr. Horn. I did not expect you to return. I knew I was missing a crucial factor.” With a glance to the door, Xenophon knows the guards have been dispatched.

I flick the disabled tracker into their chest. “You little rat. You’re a fucking Gorgon.”

“The proper term is Pavor Nocturnus, a night terror. But colloquialisms do rule the day.” The White folds their hands over their tummy and stands erect and pacific as a priest. “Xenophon, First Frumentarius, Legio Zero Pavor Nocturnus, at your service.”

“And a frumentarius? I should have guessed it was one of you psychos.” Special forces spy. The kind that could end even a centurion’s career with a keystroke. I’d put a canyon in their face if I didn’t want to watch Sefi do it herself. “Sefi will love tearing you to ribbons.”

“I imagine she would. Ever has she feared the Gold masters. She was wise to fear them. They know all. Of course, I knew it was a risk to keep the message. In sixty years, it is the only order I have ever refused. But even I grow weary in the cold isolation of my duty.” Xenophon gestures to my gun. “Must you threaten? A little redundant, considering your skill set. I’ve little chance against you. Though, if I call the guard, they would pull you apart like cake.” My eyes dart to the door. “You’re wondering what to do. This evidence is incriminating, I agree, but two death sentences are hardly worse than one. And I hear you already have mine in your belt pouch. A holo of the incriminating variety.”

I shove the gun against the White’s forehead. “How do you know that?”