“She’s the definition of the elite. Worse than Victra. Her father—”
“Killed my wife,” I say. “So if I can stomach it, so can you.” Holiday makes a whistling sound and heads back to the cabin, unhappy with our new ally.
“So the Mustang joined our quest,” Ragnar says.
“She’s getting dressed,” I reply. “You had no right to let Kavax go. Much less tell him where we would be. What if they gave us up, Ragnar? What if they ambushed us? You would never have seen your home. If they find out we’re there, they’ll never let your people off the surface. They’ll kill them all. Did you think of that?”
He eats another chocolate. “A man thinks he can fly, but he is afraid to jump. A poor friend pushes him from behind.” He looks up at me. “A good friend jumps with.”
“You’ve been reading
Ragnar nods. “Theodora gave it to me. Lorn au Arcos was a great man.”
“He’d be glad you think so, but take everything with a grain of salt. The biographer took some liberties. Especially in his early life.”
“Lorn would have told you that we need her. Now, in war. And after, in peace. If we do not bring her to our cause, then we will not win until every Gold is dead. That is not why I fight.”
Ragnar rises to greet Mustang as she joins us. The last time they stood eye to eye, she had a gun pointed at his head. “Ragnar, you’ve been busy since I last saw you. Not a Gold alive doesn’t know and fear your name. Thank you for releasing Kavax.”
“Family is dear,” Ragnar says. “But I warn you. We go to my lands. You are under my protection. If you play your tricks, if you play your games, that protection is forfeit. And even you will not survive long on the ice without me, daughter of the lion. Do you understand?”
Mustang bows her head respectfully. “I do. And I will repay your faith in me, Ragnar. I promise you that.”
“Enough chatter. Time to buckle up,” Holiday snaps from the cabin. Vesta’s synced with the ship and pushing out of the hangar. We find our seats. There’s twenty to choose from, but Mustang takes the one next to me in the left aisle. Her hand grazes my hip accidentally as she reaches for her seat harness.
Our ship departs the hangar, silently floating forward into the vacuum of the dim subcutaneous industrial world of Phobos. Pipes and loading docks and garbage bays as far as we can see. Closed off to the stars and the light of the sun. Few ships as lovely as ours have ever flown so far beneath the surface of Phobos. The word
Our sleek yacht passes a motley fleet of slow-moving garbage haulers and freighters. Inside, men and women huddle quietly together in windowless, dirty steel cubes. Sweat drenches their backs. Their hands shake holding unfamiliar instruments: weapons. They pray they can be as brave as they’ve always imagined themselves to be. Then they’ll land in some Gold hangar. The Sons will shout orders. The doors will open and they will meet war.
I pray silently for them, clenching my hands as I stare out the window. I feel Mustang watching me. Measuring the tides deep within.
Soon we leave the industrial Stacks behind, trading the dim recesses for the neon advertisements that bathe the space boulevards of the midSector. Manmade canyons of steel to either side. Trams. Elevators. Apartments. Every screen connected to the web has been slaved by Quicksilver’s hackers, showing images of Sevro and the Sons overrunning security gates and checkpoints, painting scythes on walls.
And around us, the city of thirty million churns. Deep space commercial transports racing past little civilian taxis and skippers meant to go between the buildings here. Freighters soar from the Hollows up through the midSector toward the Needles. A flight of ripWings hunts through the streets above us. I hold my breath. With a flip of a trigger they could shred us. But they don’t. They register our highColor ship ID and hail us over the coms and offer an escort out of the warzone toward a current of yachts and skiffs that blaze quietly away from the moon.
