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He’s cut short as a high-pitched alarm screams out of the walls.

A Gray lurcher bursts into the room, weapon drawn. Four others accompany her. “Dominus, we have a breach in the lower level. We have to escort you to a safer room.”

“Who?” the Jackal rasps. Victra and I draw our razors. The Gray is about to answer when the alarms are cut short and replaced by a rising humorless laughter over the speakers. It echoes through the room even as the lighting of the place blacks out. We hurry to the door. A small metal spider clinks onto the window. The glass melts. My vision and hearing vanish. Replaced by a swarming, high-pitched keening. I stumble, stunned by the flash grenade.

Dark shapes fly into the room. Blinking, I glimpse cacodemon masks. Eyes glowing red out of terrible visages. The Sons have come. They shoot the Grays and kick us to the ground. Ragnar storms in from the hall and catches three stunFist blasts to his chest. He goes down like a felled tree. One masked intruder bends over the Jackal. As my hearing returns, I make out that he’s screaming for the code to the facility’s mainframe. He shoves the muzzle of his scorcher into the Jackal’s mouth till the Jackal gives it up.

“Some Gold,” rasps a distorted voice.

Behind the mask, I know Sevro would love nothing more than to pull the trigger, and for a moment I think he’s going to. But he waits for me as he’s supposed to. And on cue, I rise sluggishly, shaking off the results of the flash grenade, and grab one of the intruder’s weapons, taking it for myself. I fire at them. They fire at me. Each of us missing on purpose. Then they are gone, back out the window. The Grays lie dead on the ground. Victra bleeds from a shallow head wound and rises to her feet. The Jackal tries to stand, blood dripping from his nose.

Wordlessly, we try the doors to the room. They’re locked. The Sons have control of the mainframe now. The Jackal leans his head against the door. Then he rears back and slams it into the metal again, again, again till blood pours down his face. I have to pull him away before he splits his skull. He laughs darkly for a moment before shaking himself.

“Twice,” he sneers. “Twice they violate me.” An animalistic shudder goes through his body. “I was breaking them. Another day. Maybe two and they would have cracked.”

“Who?” Victra asks.

He doesn’t answer. I press the question. “Who, Adrius? Who the hell was that?”

“Terrorists. Came for captured Sons,” he says impatiently. “One was the Pink bitch who tried to kill us on Luna, Darrow. It wasn’t Pliny after all. It was the Sons. Another was one of Ares’s right hands. They call her Harmony. A Violet was with them. Making them an army of carved soldiers.”

“You had captured Sons of Ares here? When were you going to tell us this?” Victra snarls, standing from checking the pulse of a dead Gray.

“I wasn’t. Not until I knew who Ares was.”

“What else are you keeping from us?” I say. “This is a partnership.” I kick over a table. “Why the goryhell do you have me if not to protect you from things like this?”

“My fault,” he says. “My fault.” He swallows the blood in his mouth and walks toward the empty window bank, gripping my shoulder as he passes. Wind howls in. “You did protect me. Yet again. Thank you.”

I scowl and brood in fine actorly fashion.

“They couldn’t have been Reds,” I say bitterly. “Couldn’t have been Sons. Sons never would have, could have done that. Not to me. Not to Ragnar.” I help the Stained from the floor. “They were too organized. They had gravBoots.”

“You underestimate them, my friend,” the Jackal says. “They can pull triggers too. And they would have pulled them with their muzzles against our heads if you hadn’t stopped them.”

“How the gorydamn did they get past your security?” Victra asks. “Were there tracking devices? Signal jammers? GravBoot signatures?”

“I don’t know,” the Jackal says.

Because the Sons held on to my hull wearing ghostCloaks, like little barnacles.

“Who else has come and gone?” I ask.

He looks around as I hoped he might. He calls up his men on a com at his desk. After a moment, he looks back up to us. “Sun-hwa,” he whispers. “Her men are dead and she’s gone like the wind. She survived the last attack too.” Then he laughs. “She betrayed me.” And when he sees the money transferred to Sun-hwa’s accounts, he’ll find all the corroborating evidence he needs to pin the blame on his chief of security. Only thing is, Sun-hwa is loyal as a dog and dead as a doornail in the cargo hold of the shuttle that now tears away from the Jackal’s winter citadel carrying Fitchner, Sevro, and my once-captured friends.

I come beside the Jackal as Victra tries the door again. Together we watch the ship disappear beyond the mountains. And I say in a low, menacing voice, “We will kill the rats, together. I promise. All of them.”

“After the Sovereign,” he says, patting my back. “After the Sovereign.”

46

Brotherhood

I hug Dancer so hard his back cracks. He taps me in panic. I apologize and separate, feeling large as a Telemanus next to him. Outside the garage-turned-makeshift-office, the Sons of Ares warehouse rattles with industry. They brought me in through the side door and had me wait for Dancer amongst old engines and rusted aerlons.

Dancer pulls back from me and looks up, rusty eyes glittering with tears. Start

ling to think that I once considered him a handsome man. He’s in his forties; old for a Red. Hair shot with gray. Face creased by age and hardship. His right arm still hangs limp. His foot still drags. And his smile still stretches wide enough, baring uneven, imperfect teeth.