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I stare out the viewport. “I don’t know.”
But Cassius knows. And there’s a feeling about him, like he expected this. Like this was some inevitable end. I’m beginning to understand. “You lied to me,” he says. He looks over to me with heartbreak on his face. “She had a scar. Didn’t she?”
I accept his anger and meet his eyes. “She did.”
He thinks I have killed us. And maybe I have. But as long as we breathe, there will be more opportunities for escape. We’ve jumped from the fire into the frying pan.
“Open the transmission,” he says.
Static crackles through the open channel until a cold voice calls out from the deep in an accent not heard on the streets of Mars or the halls of the Luna since the Rim closed its borders a decade ago. The long, lazy vowels that linger in the back of the throat hail from the volcano moon of Jupiter. The same moon that House Raa, leaders of the Rim, call home.
It is the accent of Io and the Lords of the Dust.
“Attention, Archimedes,” the disembodied voice says. “This is the Rim Dominion Destroyer Charybdis. Your communications equipment is neutralized. Any deviation from present course will result in the destruction of your vessel. Any resistance will result in the destruction of your vessel. Stand by for boarding.”
The com goes off. Silence sits with us in the cockpit.
Desperate, Cassius grabs the com. “Charybdis, we are not in violation of Rim Space. Repeat, we are in neutral territory. This is a violation of the Pax Ilium. Repeat, we are not in Rim Space.” No response. Cassius hurls the com in anger. Pytha flinches as the plastic shatters against the metal bulkhead.
“Better our own kind than Ascomanni,” I say, though I’m disquieted by the fear I see in his eyes and Pytha’s. We can reason with them.
“Reason? Bring me the faciem, Pytha.” I look at him and wonder if his fear is warranted. “Lysander, get my box and yours and put it in the vault.” He pulls his House Bellona ring from the chain around his neck and pushes it into my hand. “Make sure there’s nothing that could lead them back to who we are. Holos, weapons, rings—everything goes in the vault. And Karnus’s razor. That cover you have on it won’t fool them. Hide it or we’re dead.”
I rush through the halls to the living quarters, where I collect Cassius’s oak box in which he keeps his family heirlooms, the meager remaining inheritance of a man who once could have ruled Mars. I fetch my own box, a large ivory vessel that carries the last relics of my past. I deposit both boxes in the hidden vault in the wall behind the ship’s oven. I frisk my body to make sure I’ve not forgotten anything. Grudgingly I take my grandmother’s ring that hangs around my neck and Karnus’s razor and push them into the box.
By the time I’ve returned to the cockpit, Cassius has opened the faciem, which we bought in a black market on Ceres. Set in foam is a honeycombed thin gray mask, a vial of smelling salts, a chemical ice pack, and a missing holster for the painkilling stim syringe, which we emptied weeks ago to fill our field kits. “You don’t happen to have any extra stims?” he asks me.
“I used them on the Gold. Don’t you??
?
He shakes his head. “Gave them all to the prisoners.”
“Goryhell,” I mutter, looking at the mask’s honeycombs. “Cassius…”
He laughs and lets a bit of his old roguish smile break through. “It’s fine, my goodman. Pain’s just a memory.”
“Are you spacemad?” Pytha asks flatly. “You can’t use that monster without stims.”
“I can check the hold,” I say. “We might have missed a pack….”
Cassius shakes his head. “No time.”
Pytha’s horrified. “Lysander. Don’t let him…”
I meet Cassius’s gaze. “I’ll hold you down.”
Cassius glances down into the mask, a distant, forlorn look in his eyes. The same look he had when we had to pay for engine parts by collecting a bounty on a former Gold Tribune. It asks how it came to this. So far from what he thought he would be.
Sparing a gentle smile to us, one that belongs to another time, a gentler version of himself, he brings the mask to his face till only his eyes are visible. He tightens the plastic latch at the back so it is secure to his head.
“Don’t let me take it off,” he says.
“Coral hold?” I ask.
“Mantis lock. I’d break your arms in a coral hold.”
I obey. Sitting behind him, I wrap my legs around his midsection and loop my arms around his biceps, then under his armpits, and clasp my hands together at the middle of his spine. “Pytha, you flip the switch.” She creeps forward.
