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I turn to her.
“What do you want?” There’s a dull ache between my shoulder blades that now is working its way into my head. I’m weary of this. She’s talking like we’re old friends, pretending that we mean anything to one another. On another night I might have patience for it. “Why did you bring me here? It wasn’t to commiserate or show me your piano. I know I’m going to die. Is that why you’ve stopped pretending you’re senile? Because you know I won’t last the night?”
“No. It is because I want your help.”
“My help?” I laugh bitterly. “Why would I ever help you? I gave you the war you all seem to want. Isn’t that enough?”
“Who said I wanted war?” She tries to get up from the bench. Goroth rushes to help her, his own knees crackling as he comes. She shoos him away and manages on her own with great difficulty. She extends a hand to me. “Come. I will show you.”
I hesitate, then take her hand. I support her as she leads us back through the door through which Aruka disappeared earlier. It leads us into a humid artificial solarium that smells like flowers and pastries. Luminescent ivy crawls up the walls. The steward is there, pouring tea at a low table at which sits a lone, hunched woman with short dark blue hair in a prisoner uniform.
“Pytha?”
She bolts upward and bowls toward me with her spindly limbs, shocking me by wrapping her arms around me in an embrace. She holds tight, the top of her head under my chin. The latticework of her rib cage presses against mine.
“You’re alive,” she says into my chest. “You’re fucking alive.”
I did not expect an embrace from her. I would not have given one myself.
“Pytha…there’s something I have to tell you. About Cassius…”
She pulls back, eyes red. “I know.”
I swallow the stone in my throat. “Where have you been?”
We sit sipping tea at the table as Pytha recounts her trials. She was not accorded the same comfort Cassius and I were. She was tortured by Pandora on the first night we were captured and has trouble remembering what she revealed. Here on Io, she’s been treated well, but she’s still famished and devours a plate of thin sandwiches that Aruka serves. I nibble on one without tasting it, mulling over what she’s told me. Gaia picks tobacco from her pipe with a short knife.
“You still haven’t told me,” I say. Gaia looks up, confused. “What you want from me…from us.”
“As you said, you are going to die. Soon. Both of you. I believe Dido will execute you after Romulus’s trial tomorrow. Perhaps before. It will be quiet. A blackblood scorpion in your room. A needle drone. A poisoned cup of tea.” I set down my cup uneasily. “She will want the grandson of Lune to disappear. You complicate her plans, Lysander. She can stand no challenges to her authority. So disappear you shall, regardless of Seraphina’s intervention.”
“Damn, you’re depressing as an empty stimpack,” Pytha mutters, but she’s not depressed enough to stop eating the sandwiches. “So what do we do? Just wait to die like Cassius?”
“No,” Gaia says. “I suggest an alternative: survive.”
It’s not the answer I expected, but it fits. “And how do you propose we do that?” Pytha asks sharply. “Even if we get past the guards and steal a ship, we need to get past Sungrave’s guns. Then we need to get to orbit before warhawks shred us with railguns. Then we need to outrace the orbital guard. Then the fleets themselves. Prolly won’t even chase us. They’ll just send a long-distance missile and it’ll do the work. We run, we die a dozen ways.” She loses interest in her meal and pushes it away. “We’re trapped on this shithole moon.”
“I understand you are angry,” Gaia says. “But speak to me in that way again, lowborn, and your tongue will fertilize my tobacco garden.” Gaia puffs away on her pipe as Pytha blanches. “And, yes, you are trapped…unless…”
“Unless what…domina?” Pytha asks nervously.
“Unless Dido’s not in power,” I guess. “Unless Romulus defeats her coup. Then he may let us go.”
“Romulus, who let me be tortured by that Pandora…” Pytha spares a quick look at Gaia. “…woman? Didn’t you say he wanted to cut your head off and send the Archi into Jupiter? Aren’t you a little raw about that?”
“It’s in the past. And it made sense, considering his predicament.”
“Killing you made sense?”
“Technically.”
She considers. “Well, I have thought of it a few times.”
I mull over an idea, seeing Gaia’s intention. “You want us to help you. You want us to free Romulus from the Dust Cells.” Gaia nods at me through her pipe smoke.
“So we can get killed by those turbaned psychopaths? Are you spacemad?” Pytha crosses her arms. “Don’t you have your own men…domina?”
“All my men have been arrested or displaced,” Gaia says. She gestures to Aruka and Goroth. “We crones are all that’s left. What mischief could we do, feeble as we are?” Goroth bares his black teeth, chilling me.
