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Roque sings a soft song to her as they lift her body to move to another room. The song is one he made around the campfire as my army ate in the highlands. Quinn was with Cassius then, as it seems all women are at one time or another. But even then, I noticed her eyes meet Roque’s. They are the messenger pigeons from his story, crossing again and again in the sky. How excited he was to be reunited with her.
I crack inside. I can still save her. I can fix this.
The Sovereign was right. I misunderstood my own bargaining power. What was I going to do? Kill her son if Aja killed Quinn? What if he killed Sevro, Mustang, Roque? I’m lucky she didn’t hurt more of them.
I turn to see Sevro.
He stands quietly in his armor watching us, watching Roque hold the girl Sevro loves but has never told, the girl he could never have. The pain is raw and etched deep into the lines of his hawkish face. Impervious Sevro, immune to hurt, to sadness, to having his eye gouged out by Lilath, the Jackal’s lieutenant; it all falls on him now. Quinn never called Sevro Goblin like the rest of us. Victra puts a hand on his shoulder, noticing the pain if not understanding why it’s there. He shoves her hand off.
“I don’t know you,” he snarls.
Victra backs away. “Sorry.”
“What are you waiting for, Reap?” he demands. “We’re not off this rock yet.” He jerks his head. I follow, asking Victra to bring the Sovereign’s boy.
Sevro and I climb a ladder and meet Tactus in the narrow corridor that leads to the passenger hold and the flight cabin.
“Oy, goodman,” Tactus calls, favoring his injured shoulder. Wet hair dangles over laughing eyes. His voice is loud, unmindful of Quinn’s condition. “Next time you’re planning something dramatic, tell us you’re coming so we don’t go pissing our pants.”
I push past him. “Not now, Tactus.”
“Ever the bore.” He eyes Sevro. “Looky, looky. Goblin. If possible, you’ve shrunk even further, my goodman.”
Sevro doesn’t smile.
We enter the passenger hold, where the Augustans and Howlers buckle themselves into bucket seats in preparation for breaching the atmosphere. Tactus follows at our heels.
“Hello, psychos,” Tactus calls to the Howlers. “Pleasure to see your diminutive forms yet again. Especially you, Pebble.”
“Eat shit,” Pebble says, looking up from helping buckle one of Augustus’s young nephews into his seat.
Tactus leans into me when we’re past the passenger hold. “Good friends to come and rescue you. Thought they were scattered to the Rim.”
“Were,” Sevro says.
“What brought you back?” Tactus asks. “The weather?”
Sevro says nothing.
Tactus laughs despite the numerous holes in his armor. “Just how you like ’em. Eh, Darrow? Friends who will risk life and limb to always be in your shadow?” He nudges me, a bit too playfully, leaving faint smears of his blood on me. We come to the flight cabin’s closed door. Tactus winces as he bumps a bulkhead with his shoulder. Sevro trails behind.
“How’s the shoulder?” I ask.
“Better than that girl’s head back there. Quinn, wasn’t it? The fast one from House Mars. Aja slagged her good. Pity. I’d have taken her for a—”
Sevro kicks Tactus in the balls from behind, foot going between legs hard enough to dent metal. He elbows him in the side of the head, sweeps his legs in swift kravat form. Three more strikes to the ears before Tactus hits the ground. Sevro puts one knee into Tactus’s shoulder wound, a forearm against Tactus’s throat, the other knee to Tactus’s groin, and his free hand dangles a knife over Tactus’s eyeball. “Talk about Quinn again, and I’ll cut your balls off and jam them in your eye sockets.”
“Brother always said … keep your eye … on the ball,” Tactus gags out.
The metal cabin door hisses open. Augustus fills the frame. He stares down at the scene just as Victra brings Lysander forward from the aft of the ship.
“They’re almost done, my liege,” I say. I step over Tactus and Sevro to join the ArchGovernor in the cabin. Victra does the same, except she steps on Tactus, grinding her heels.
“Prime work,” she says to Sevro.
“Slag off, cow.”
“Who is the little one?” she asks me as we slip into the cabin and close the door.
