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“What if I forgave you?”

“You’re lying.” He turns more and I see the full measure of what the bomb did to him. His nose is crooked, broken. The rest looks like a cherry stripped of its skin. My friend …

“I’m not lying.” I did not put my faith in Tactus once, and I lost him. Now I will. I’ll take the same leap I ask him to take. I step forward. “I know there’s good in you. I saw your face when those children were killed at the gala. You’re not a monster. Come back to me. You would be one of my lieutenants again, Tactus. I would give you a legion to lead when we take Mars. You’ll carry one of my standards. But you can’t wear that ugly armor.”

“It is uncomfortable,” he wheezes with a slight smile. “But Sevro, Roque, Victra …”

“They miss you,” I lie. “Drop your razor and come back to my army. I promise you will be safe.” The razor dips in his hand. One of the children spares a smile at his younger siblings, a hopeful smile. “Just leave the children alone, and all is forgiven.”

I mean it. Deep in my heart, I mean it.

“We all make mistakes,” he says.

“We all make mistakes. Just come back. I won’t hurt you.” I drop my own razor. “Neither will Arcos.” I stare at Arcos till he nods his weathered head in complicity.

“I want to come home,” Tactus murmurs quietly, pain in his voice. “I want to come home.”

“Then come home.”

Tactus’s razor clatters to the floor and he falls to a knee in front of me. He’s rasping from pain. Relief floods the room. The children start crying again from the tortuous shift from death to life. The caretakers hug their charges, their tears making lines on their faces. I go forward to Tactus and motion him upward to clasp my arm. He wraps me in a frantic hug and sobs into me. Body shaking, bloody features painting my armor.

“I’m sorry,” he says a dozen times. He’s weeping hard into my shoulder, clasping tight. His face is such a ruin. And I hug him. Exhaustion fills me. His sadness is like a weight that nearly drives me to tears. Yet I’m buoyed by the strange feelings of having him back, standing with me, gripping me. It is a humbling thing knowing someone cannot live without you, knowing that though they’ve betrayed you, they wish for nothing but absolution. And as he clenches my back, I wrap my arms around his armor and try not to cry myself. Even the cruel feel pain. And even the cruel can change. I hope this changes him. He could do so much, if only he would learn.

In so many ways, he is the embodiment of his race. And so if Tactus can change, Gold can change. They must be broken, but then they must be given a chance. I think that’s what Eo would have wanted in the end.

When at last his sobs are done and we part, he stands at my side, loyal as a puppy, looking to me subtly for signs of affection. His hands tremble from the pain of his wounds, yet he watches in silence with Arcos and me as the children, high and low alike, file upward out of the hidden bunker with their caretakers. Pebble comes down to giddily tell us Roque is wrapping up the space engagement. Seeing Tactus’s wounds, she pales. I tell her to fetch a Yellow.

Soon Lorn, Tactus, and I are left alone in the basement.

Lorn looks over to us. “Now that the children are gone, consequences.” His hands flash faster than a hummingbird’s wings. An ionDagger appears, lurches forward four times into Tactus’s armpit, where the armor is the weakest. I rush to stop Lorn, but it’s already done. He twists like he’s wringing a towel, severing the artery, an old man killing a young one. Tactus’s ruined face wrenches with pain; and he gasps, as though he knew justice would finally find him in the end.

Lorn leaves. And I hold my friend as he dies, his eyes fading to some distant place, where perhaps he’ll find that peace Roque always wished for him.

30

Gathering Storm

“How long till we reach the rendezvous?” I ask Orion on the command deck. Except for our attendants, we are alone in front of the viewports of the Pax, watching my ships cross through space. The newest additions to our fledgling armada are painted white and carry Lorn’s angry-faced purple griffin. With them fly the black and blue and silver warships captured from Kellan au Bellona above Europa. Oranges and Reds crawl over the exteriors of the metal monsters, mending the holes made by leechCraft and preparing them for the siege of Mars.

“Three days till Hildas Station. The other ships will have beaten us there, dominus.”

Kavax and Daxo approach from behind. I turn to them and gesture out the repaired windows to the ten ships of Kellan au Bellona.

“Thank you for the presents,” I say.

“Your plan

, your spoils,” Kavax declares.

“With us taking a percentage, naturally,” Daxo adds, smooth as ever, raising his swirling golden eyebrows. “Fifty percent finder’s fee.” I glance at him with amusement. “Well, thirty percent, because Pax liked you.”

“Ten percent!” Kavax booms.

I cock my head. “You’re a poor negotiator, Praetor.”

He shrugs amiably and points in joy to jelly beans on the ground. He tosses Sophocles at them, encouraging him to vanquish them all.

“Twenty.” Daxo splays his hands, his movements always seeming to belong to a thinner, more bookish man. “That is fair, no? We lost a hundred and sixty house Grays and thirteen Obsidians.”