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“Stop talking, everyone,” I say. They don’t. To them this is fun. It is a game. They have no urgency, no desperate need. Every moment we waste is a moment the Jackal builds his strength. Something in the way Mustang and Fitchner talked about him scares me. Or is it the fact that he is the son of my enemy? I should want to kill him; instead, I want to run and hide at the thought of his name.
It’s a sign of my fading leadership that I have to stand up.
“Quiet!” I say, and finally they are.
“We’ve seen fires on the horizon. War consumes the South where the Jackal roams.”
Cassius chuckles at the idea of the Jackal. He thinks him a ghost I conjured up.
“Will you stop laughing at everything?” I snap at Cassius. “It’s not a gorydamn joke, unless you think your brother died for amusement.”
That shuts him up.
“Before we do anything else,” I stress, “we must eliminate House Minerva and Mustang.”
“Mustang. Mustang. Mustang. I think you just want to snake Mustang,” Sevro sneers. Quinn makes a sound of objection.
I snatch Sevro’s collar and lift him up into the air with one hand. He tries to dart away, but he’s not as fast as me, so he dangles from my grip, two feet off the ground.
“Not again,” I say, lowering him nearer my face.
“Registers, Reap.” His beady eyes are inches from my own. “Off limits.” I set him down and he straightens his collar. “So, it’s to the Greatwoods for this alliance, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s to be a merry quest!” Cassius declares, sitting up. “We’ll be a troop!”
“No. Just me and Goblin. You aren’t going,” I say.
“I’m bored, I think I’ll come with.”
“You’re staying,” I say. “I need you here.”
“Is that an order?” he asks.
“Yes,” Sevro says.
Cassius stares at me. “You giving me orders?” he says in a strange way. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten that I go where I want.”
“So you’ll leave control to Antonia while we both go risk our necks?” I ask.
Quinn’s hand tightens on his forearm. She thinks I don’t notice. Cassius looks back at her and smiles. “Of course, Reaper. Of course I’ll stay here. Just as you’ve suggested.”
Sevro and I make camp in the southern highlands within view of the Greatwoods. We do not light a fire. Our scouts and others roam these hills at night. I see two horses on a far hill, silhouetted against the setting sun behind the bubbleroof. The way the sun catches on the roof makes sunsets of purples and reds and pinks; it reminds me of the streets in Yorkton as seen from the sky. Then it is gone and Sevro and I sit in darkness.
Sevro thinks this is a stupid game.
“Then why do you play it?” I ask.
“How was I to know what it’d be like? Think I got a pamphlet? Did you get a slagging pamphlet?” he asks irritably. He’s picking his teeth with a bone. “Stupid.”
Yet he seemed to know on the shuttle what the Passage was. I tell him that.
“I didn’t.”
“And you seem to have every gory skill required for this school.”
“So? If your mother was good in bed, you suppose she’s a Pink? Everyone adapts.”
