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“It is my purpose to know.”

It’s a bluff. The skuggi hate the creep, they’d never rat me out. They need time, and I need answers. I jerk my head at the hologram. “You been that bastard’s mole for years? Since Sefi brought you in?”

“Yes.”

“Then it wasn’t that poor Pink who was supposed to kill her.”

“Oh, no, Amel certainly was an assassin. The peril of current affairs, I fear. Many Golds pulling strings against one another, causing all to fray. I detected him quite early, but when Atalantia activated him, it was necessary to expose him.”

“The hell are you doing here if not to kill Sefi then?”

“Death is sloppy. And my dominus does not abide sloppy. With a dead queen, the Obsidians would seek the strongest to lead them. Who is stronger to them than the Morning Star? Valdir? He loves Darrow. It would do little good to the Society for the Slave King to be bestowed with such a gift. Sefi must die the proper way, at the proper time, on the proper planet, with her people along the proper trajectory. For that, only a frumentarius would suffice.”

“And Volsung Fá…”

“But another piece of the puzzle.” Xenophon considers, enjoying this little bout of honesty. “Perhaps more. Dominus au Raa learned much in his banishment to the Kuiper Belt after his…indiscretions. Not the least of which was the impossibility of his task in subduing the Ascomanni there. Octavia sent him to die, he soon realized. A fact I witnessed firsthand. I remained behind as his factor, and saw her appoint another Fear Knight in his absence—one Darrow easily dispatched of. The second thing my master learned was that the Ascomanni could not be conquered from without, only from within. Ironic enough. So he left his most cherished Gorgon amongst them, not to destroy them, but to rise amongst them.”

Keep him talking, let Ozgard get Valdir. They may already be en route to Sefi. Keep the little bastard’s mouth here, where it can’t do any talking in Sefi’s ear.

“He Who Walks the Void was a Gorgon?” I ask.

“Is a Gorgon. The master called him the most talented of that martial breed. Grimmus was good to loan him to us.” The White’s lips make a thin line as it attempts a smile. “You are a clever Homo bellicus, Mr. Horn, as I am an efficient Homo logicus. But do not compare yourself with the best of the Homo aureate. My dominus’s designs are painted on a horizon we will only see in time. My science is logic, his is illogic—humanity.

“The Raa are in motion, you see. They come for the Republic to repay old debts. But there is hubris in their blood. Thinking themselves fresh to the tired fray, they will find themselves undone. With one stroke, my master fells three.”

I check my six. No one is behind me. Yet Xenophon’s bragging like the gun’s to my head. Maybe it is. Maybe all I’ve felt, all I’ve seen, is part of this little game the White and his master cooked up. Sefi, the skuggi, Valdir, Freihild, Ozgard, are all just wriggling as the snake chokes the life from us. I want to scream in frustration. I thought I was being the hero. I’m just the fool in their game. But maybe I can stop it. Tell Sefi. Find a way to unwind all this, and let her dream continue on its course.

“Why did you come back?” Xenophon asks.

“Couldn’t stand to see a little shit ruin something good,” I say. “Been there. Done that. World’s better off without the likes of you and me.”

“I understand the conflict you feel.”

“Nah, you really don’t.”

Xenophon thinks for a moment. “You cannot stop this. The reason I tell you all this is to disabuse you of that delusion of grandeur. You are small, as am I. But you can be a part of something, Mr. Horn. A part of the solution to this dark age.” The White’s voice quickens. “When you first arrived, I thought you were a liability. And you were, thanks to that meddling shaman. The conquest of Cimmeria was meant to be a massacre led by Valdir. Millions of Reds were to die. They were to flock to the Red Hand, which was to carve Volkland from the inside, and pit the Obsidians against the people and each other. So that when Fá came, it would be as savior. Instead, he must come as terror.”

“Let me guess, you needed the children on Luna, not here. Poor Fear Knight. His Syndicate stooges didn’t get to play with their toys.”

“They were upset. Baying for your blood—as those cretins would. I could have killed you with a nerve agent in your wine, in your food, as you slept at any time. But I saved you. I convinced my master of your utility. You more than any other jeopardized his plans. On accident, of course. Still, he knows this. He respects this. He desires you in Zero Legion.”

“Me? A Gorgon? Don’t make me laugh. This dog don’t collar.”

“He does not wish to give you a collar. He offers you opportunity. The Obsidians never knew how to use your skills. Never respected what you are: the greatest infiltrator of an age. Yet you came here to save them. You crave something that will be loyal to you, so you can be loyal to it. Join us, and help us bring order back to mankind. Is humanity better of

f than it was ten years ago? The irrevocable answer is no. Become a shepherd. Become a savior.”

“Humanity isn’t an it.”

Xenophon sighs. “You stall for time because you are recording me, and think I don’t know about your prison break.” I go cold. My finger grazes the trigger. “You mock me, because I am different. But I have always respected you—I see the rigors of your training, the loss of your husband, how you float adrift and search for meaning. These savages only respect you for what you have given them—skillgift, the mines, amusement. Do you so easily forget the violations they have reaped upon your race? How they conspired to use Volga? They are monsters.”

“Sefi is not a monster,” I say. “She wants something different for her people. It ain’t a clean world, but she’s trying to do right by them, by Mars. You, you greasy little larva, are trying to rob that from them.”

“No. They will rob themselves. You will see. It is in their nature. As duty is in ours.” Xenophon’s eyes flick over my head. “Nakata. Hold.”

I turn to see three lanky monsters, with crowns equal parts metal, asteroid, and diamond fused to their skulls, perched on a windowsill. Two more, barely taller than children, with huge skulls, thick, long, apelike arms, and stunted legs, swing through a second window.

Ascomanni. Not the rabid offshoots of the Iceborn. But aliens five hundred years separated from the human genome and mutated by radiation. Their eyes are huge and black as their hair, their foreheads pronounced like proto-humans. Their noses little more than nostrils. They hold weird, twisted weapons. Their skin, thick as hide and ribbed with ritual scarring and metal implants, is the deep red of a Bordeaux-fortified sangria.