He sat down with half the ingot still bright. Amparo left it until it died on its own.
Mateo went next. He kept his seat, spoke low, and by the time his ingot died he hadn't committed to either side.
Mierda. I knew what that meant.
The fourth leader was Lença. She ran a family on the coast and had driven through the night to be here. The Pantheon had been squeezing her shipping routes for months, boarding boats, burning cargo, making it clear that independent Romani operations in the Mediterranean had an expiration date. She stood, crossed her arms, and spoke for maybe a minute.
"Those men on the ridge will kill my family whether I vote yes or no. I'd rather die facing forward."
She sat. The ingot still had color. Amparo pulled it anyway because Lença was done and my grandmother respected a woman who knew when to stop talking.
The fifth leader sat with his hands folded. When Amparo offered the ingot, he shook his head once and abstained.
I did the math. Three for. Two against. One couldn't be bothered.
Amparo set the tongs on the rim. She picked up her clay cup and this time she drank.
"The Kris has spoken," she said.
Rhadamanthys stayed on the stool. He'd kept his hands on his knees through all of it, his mouth shut, which I had to respect even if I was planning to make his life difficult later. The man knew when to let other people do the talking.
Nicu stood. He buttoned his jacket before walking past Rhadamanthys without looking at him and took the stairs.
I stood, and my knees reminded me exactly how long I'd been sitting on that stone.
Rhadamanthys cleared his throat. "So, amici." His Calabrian accent filled the cellar now that everyone else had left. "Do I live to fight another day, or should I straighten my tie and prepare for the noose?"
"You live. Three to two. One didn't give a shit either way."
He exhaled through his nose. He pushed himself up off the stool, all his weight on the good leg, the bad one leaving a fresh line on the stone. He stood breathing, putting something away before it had a name.
Then he tugged his jacket straight, and the mask came back on. "Well then. I believe I owe you a drink. Several, in fact."
"Make it tequila. The good shit, not whatever you've been drinking."
The cellar window exploded.
Glass hit the floor, and I was flat on my back before the sound finished. The second shot punched through the wall above the stairs, and plaster rained into my hair. Rhadamanthys went down off the stool, his bad leg folding under him, and he rolled behind the brazier.
Hijo de puta.
I took the stairs on my hands and knees. Glass covered the kitchen counter from the sink window. A hole gaped in the plaster above the stove. Beni's eldest stood at the hall closet, pulling shotguns and handing them down the line. My mother had three kids by their collars, driving them toward the backwith the focus of a woman who'd decided bullets were someone else's problem.
Dios. My mother in a firefight looked exactly like my mother at Sunday dinner.
Jasper came through the kitchen door with the katana in his hand and hauled me up by the collar. I could feel his pulse hammering under his jaw. I grabbed the front of his shirt, held on for half a second longer than I needed to, because the man I loved was standing in my grandmother's kitchen with a sword while the whole world came apart outside.
"Eight," I said.
"With me." He jerked his chin toward the back hall. She stood in the doorway with a knife and her back against the frame, covering the corridor like she'd done it her whole life.
She had. That was the problem.
“Achilles and the Myrmidons?” I asked.
"Looks like it," Jasper said. "Must’ve gotten tired of waiting."
Lorenzo came off the back porch with his hand pressed to his side, looking like a man who'd expected exactly this and was furious about being right.
