Red Rising Chapter 34 The Northwoods

There is agony.

And claustrophobia.

I am sick and wounded.

The pain is in dreams.

It is in darkness. In the pit of my stomach.

I wake up and scream into a gentle hand.

I glimpse soone.

Eo? I whisper her na and reach up. My muddy hand sars her face. Her angel’s face. She’s co to take to the vale. Her hair has turned Golden. I always thought she could be Golden. Her Colors are golden wings. No Red Sigil on her hands. It took death.

I sweat despite the rains and snows that co. Sothing shelters . I shiver. Clutch my scarlet headband. Mud in my hair. Eo washes it away. Tenderly strokes my brow. I love her. Sothing inside bleeds. I hear Eo speak to herself, to soone. I haven’t long. Have I ti at all? Am I in the vale? There is mist. There is sky and a great tree.

I shiver and sweat. Rot in hell, Cassius. I was your friend. I might have killed your brother, but I had no choice. You did. You arrogant slag. I hate him. I hate Augustus. I see them hanging Eo together. They mock . They laugh at . I hate Antonia. I hate Fitchner. I hate Titus. I hate. I hate. I am burning and mad and sweating. I hate the Jackal. The Proctors. I hate. I hate myself for all I’ve done. All I’ve done. For what? To win a ga. To win a ga for soone who will never know about anything I do. Eo is dead. It isn’t as if she will ever be coming back to see all I have done for her.

Dead.

Then I wake. The pain is there in my gut. It goes through . But I no longer sweat. The fever is gone, and the angry red lines of infection have faded. I’m in a cave’s mouth. There’s a small fire and a sleeping girl just inches away. Furs cover her. She breathes softly the smoky air. Her hair is tousled and gold. She isn’t Eo. Mustang.

I cry silently. I want Eo. Why can’t I have her? Why can’t I will her back into life? I want Eo. I don’t want this girl beside . It aches worse than the wound. I can never fix what happened to Eo. I couldn’t even run my army. I couldn’t win. I couldn’t beat Cassius, not to ntion the Jackal. I was the best Helldiver; I’m nothing here. The world is too big and cold. I am too small. The world has forgotten Eo. It has already forgotten her sacrifice. There’s nothing left.

I sleep again.

When I wake, Mustang sits by the fire. She knows I’m awake but lets pretend otherwise. I lie there with my eyes closed, listening to her hum. It’s a song I know. It is a song I hear in dreams. The echo of my love’s death. The song sung by the one they call Persephone. Humd by an Aureate, an echo of Eo’s dream.

I weep. If ever I’ve felt there was a God, it is now as I listen to the mournful chords. My wife is dead, but sothing of hers lingers still.

I speak to Mustang the next morning.

“Where did you hear that song?” I ask her without sitting up.

“From the HC,” she says, blushing. “A little girl sang it. It’s soothing.”

“It’s sad.”

“Most things are.”

It has been four weeks, Mustang tells . Cassius is Primus. Winter has co. Ceres is no longer under siege. Jupiter’s soldiers sotis co into the woods. There are sounds of battle between the two superpowers of the North, Jupiter and Mars. Jupiter to the west, Mars to the east. Since the river froze, they’ve been able to cross and raid one another. Our buzzards have risen out of their winter gulches. Hungry wolves howl at night. Crows flock from the south. But Mustang really knows very little, and I grow impatient with her.

“Keeping you breathing was a little distracting,” she reminds . Her standard lies underneath a blanket near my feet. She’s the last of House Minerva. Yet unbridled. And she didn’t enslave .

“Slaves are stupid,” she says. “And you’re already a gimp. Why make you stupid too?”

It is days before I’m able to walk. I wonder where those nifty dBots are now. Tending soone the Proctors like, no doubt. I won Primus and they never gave it to . Now I know why the Jackal will win. They are getting rid of his competition.

Mustang stalks with through the woods during the next weeks. I move stiffly through the thick snow but my strength is returning. She credits dicine she found lying conspicuously under a bush. A friendly Proctor placed it there. We pause when we spot the deer. I draw the bow, but I can’t get the string to my ear. My wound aches. Mustang watches . I try again. Pain deep inside. I let the arrow fly. We eat leftover rabbit that night. It tastes funny and gives cramps. I always have cramps now. It’s the water too. We have nothing to boil it in. No iodine. Just snow and a little creek to drink from. Sotis we can’t have fire.

“You should have killed Cassius or sent him away,” Mustang tells .

“Would have thought you nobler than that,” I say as I skin the rabbit we caught.

“I like to win. Family trait. And sotis cheating is in the rulebook.” She smiles. “You get a rit bar every ti you recapture your standard. So I arranged for it to be lost to House Diana by soone else several tis. Then rode out to capture it. Got to Primus in a week.”

“Tricky. Yet your army liked you,” I say.

“Everyone likes . Now eat your damn rabbit. You’re skinny as a cadaver.”

The winter grows colder. We live in the deep north woods, far north of Ceres, northwest of my forr highlands. I have not yet seen a soldier of Mars. I don’t know what I would do if I did.

“I’ve hidden from everyone but you,” Mustang says. “It keeps alive and ticking.”

“What’s your plan?” I ask.

She laughs at herself. “To be alive and ticking.”

“You’re better at it than I am.”

“How do you an?”

“No one in your House would have betrayed you.”

“Because I didn’t rule like you,” she says. “You have to rember, people don’t like being told what to do. You can treat your friends like servants and they’ll love you, but you tell them they’re servants and they’ll kill you. Anyway, you put too much stock in hierarchy and fear.”

“?”

“Who else? I could spot it a mile away. All you cared about was your mission, whatever it is. You’re like a driven arrow with a very depressing shadow. First ti I t you, I knew you’d cut my throat to get whatever it is you want.” She waits for a mont. “What is it that you want, by the way?”

“To win,” I say.

“Oh, please. You’re not that simple.”

“You think you know ?” The rabbit hisses out fat over the fire.

“I know you cry in your sleep for a girl nad Eo. Sister? Or a girl you loved? It is a very offColor na. Like yours.”

“I’m a farplanet hayseed. Didn’t they tell you?”

“They wouldn’t tell anything. I don’t get out much.” She waves a hand. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. All that matters is that no one trusts you because it’s obvious you care more about your goal than you do about them.”

“And you’re sothing different?”

“Oh, very much so, Sir Reaper. I like people more than you do. You are the wolf that howls and bites. I am the mustang that nuzzles the hand. People know they can work with . With you? Hell, kill or be killed.”

She’s right.

When I had a tribe, I did it right. I made every boy and every girl love . Made them earn their keep. I taught them how to kill a goat as if I knew how. I gave them fire as if I had created the matches. I shared a secret with them—that we had food and Titus didn’t. They saw as their father. I rember it in their eyes. When Titus was alive, I was a symbol of goodness and hope. Then when he died … I beca him.

“Sotis I forget that the Institute is ant to teach things,” I say to Mustang.

I must learn better than them, not simply beat them. That is how I will help Reds. I am a boy. I am foolish. But if I learn to beco a leader, I can be more than an agent of the Sons of Ares. I can give my people a future. That is what Eo wanted.

The wolves are hungry now. They howl in the night. When Mustang and I make a kill, we sotis have to scare them off. But when we kill a caribou at dusk, a pack descends from the northlands. They co from the trees like dark specters. Shadows. The biggest of them is my size. His fur is white. The fur of the others is gray, no longer black. These wolves change with the season. I watch how they surround us. Each moves with individual cunning. Yet each moves as part of a pack.

“This is how we should fight,” I whisper to Mustang as we watch the wolves approach.

“Could we talk about this later?”

We take down the pack leader with three arrows. The rest flee. Mustang and I set to skinning the big white brute. As she slips her knife along beneath the fur, she looks up, nose red from the cold.

“Slaves aren’t part of the pack, so we can’t fight like them. Not that it matters. The wolves don’t have it right either. They take too much from their pack leader. Cut off the head, the body retreats.”

“So the answer is autonomy,” I say.

“Maybe.” She bites her lip.

Later that night, she elaborates. “It’s like a hand.” She sits close and cozy, leg touching mine. Close enough for guilt to crawl along my spine. The caribou roasts, filling the cave with a fine, thick aroma. A blizzard rages outside and the wolf fur dries over the fire.

“Give your hand,” she says. “Which is your best finger?”

“They are all better at different things.”

“Don’t be obstinant.”

I tell her my thumb. She has try to hold a stick with only my thumb. She easily pulls it from my grasp. Then she has hold it without my thumb and only the other fingers. With a twist, the stick is free.

“Imagine that your thumb is your Housembers. The fingers are all the slaves you have conquered. The Primus or whoever is the leader is the brain. It all works pretty gory seamlessly. Yeah?”

She can’t pull the stick from my grip. I set it down and ask her the point.

“Now try to do sothing beyond simply grabbing the standard. Just move your thumb counterclockwise and your fingers clockwise except your middle.”

I do it. She stares at my hands and laughs incredulously. “Ass.” I ruined her demonstration. Helldivers are dexterous. I watch her hands as she tries to do it too. Of course she fails. I understand.

“A hand is like the Society,” I say..

It is the structure of the armies at the Institute. The hierarchy is good for simple tasks. So fingers are more important than others. So are better at certain things. All fingers are controlled by the highest order, the brain. The brain’s control is effective. It makes your thumb and fingers work together. But the single brain’s control is limited. Imagine each one of the fingers had a brain of its own that interacted with the main brain. The fingers obey, but they function independently. What could the hand do then? What could an army do? I twirl the stick along my fingers in intricate patterns. Exactly.

Her eyes linger on mine, and her fingers trace along my palm as she explains. I know she wants to react to her touch, but I force my mind to be lost on other things.

This idea of hers isn’t part of the Proctors’ lesson.

Their lesson is about the evolution from anarchy to order. It is about control. About the systematic accumulation of power, the structure of that power, and then its preservation. It is a model to show that the Rule of Hierarchies is the best. The Society is the final evolution, the only answer. She just slagged that rule, or at least showed its limitations.

If I could earn the voluntary allegiance of the slaves, the army created would look nothing like the Society. It would be better. Like if the Reds of Lykos thought they could actually win the Laurel, they would be so much more productive. Or if a Praetor on board his starcruiser could utilize not only his own genius, but that of his crew of Blues.

Mustang’s strategy is Eo’s dream.

It’s like an electric shock jolts through .

“Why didn’t you try it with the slaves you captured?”

She pulls her hand away from mine after I don’t respond to her touch.

“I tried.”

She’s quiet the rest of the night. Near morning, she develops a cough.

Mustang takes sick over the next few days. I hear fluid in her lungs and feed her broth made from marrow and wolf and leaves boiled in a helt I found. She looks like she will die. I don’t know what to do. We’re low on food, so I hunt. But the ga is scarce and the wolves are hungry. Prey has fled these woods, so we survive on small hares. All I can do is keep her warm and pray a dBot descends from the clouds. The Proctors know where we are. They always know where we are.

I find human tracks in the woods the next week. A set of two. I follow them to an abandoned campsite, hoping they might have food I can steal. There are animal bones and embers still hot. No horses, though. Probably not scouts then. Oathbreakers, the Shad who have broken their vows after being enslaved. There’s plenty of them now..

I follow their tracks through the woods for an hour before I grow worried. They circle back around, leading sowhere familiar, leading to our cave. It is night by the ti I return. I hear laughter from the ho I share with Mustang. The arrow feels thin in my fingers as I nock it on the bowstring. I should kneel to gather my breath. My wound aches. I pant. But I can’t give them more ti. Not if they have Mustang.

They cannot see as I stand at the edge of the frozen caribou skin and hardpacked snow that walls off our cave from sight and elents. The fire crackles inside. Smoke seeps out through vents Mustang and I took a day in making. Two boys sit together eating what’s left of our at, drinking our water.

They are dirty and ragged. Hair like greased weeds. Stained complexions. Blackheads. Once beautiful, I’m sure. One boy sits on Mustang’s chest. The girl who saved my life is gagged and in her undergarnts. She shivers from the cold. One of the boys bleeds from a bite wound on his neck. They are planning on making her pay for that wound. Knives heat till red in the fire. One boy obviously enjoys the sight of her nakedness. He reaches to touch her skin as though she’s a toy ant for his pleasure.

My thoughts are primal, wolflike. A terrifying emotion sweeps over , one that I did not know I had for this girl. Not till now. It takes a mont to calm myself and stop my hands from shaking. His hand is on the inside of her thigh.

I shoot the first boy in the kneecap. The second I shoot as he reaches for a knife. I’m a bad aim. I get his shoulder instead of his eye socket. I slide into the shelter with my skinning knife, ready to finish the boys off as they howl in pain. Sothing in , the human part, has turned off, and it’s only when I see Mustang’s eyes that I stop.

“Darrow,” she says softly.

Even shivering, she is beautiful—the small, quicksmiling girl who brought back to life. The brighteyed soul who keeps Eo’s song alive. I shudder with anger. If I had been ten minutes later in returning, this night could have broken forever. I cannot bear another death. Especially not Mustang’s.

“Darrow, let them live,” she says again, whispering it to as Eo would whisper she loved . It cuts to my core. I can’t take the sound of her voice, the anger inside .

My mouth doesn’t work. My face is numb; I can’t lose the grimace of rage that controls it. I drag the two boys out by their hair and kick them till Mustang joins us. I leave them moaning in the snow and return to help her dress. She feels so fragile as I pull her animal skins around her bony shoulders.

“Knife or snow,” she asks the boys when she’s dressed. She holds the knives heated in the fire in her trembling hands. She coughs. I know what she’s thinking. Let them go and they kill us as we sleep. Neither will die from their wounds. The dBots would co if that were the case. Or maybe they won’t for Oathbreakers.

They choose snow.

I’m glad. Mustang didn’t want to use the knife.

We tie them to a tree at the edge of the woods and light a signal fire so that so House will find them. Mustang insisted on coming along, coughing all the way, as if she were worried I wouldn’t do as she asked. She was right to think that.

In the night, after Mustang has gone to sleep, I get up to go back and kill the Oathbreakers. If Jupiter or Mars finds them, then they will spill where we are and we will be taken.

“Don’t, Darrow,” she says as I pull back the caribou skin. I turn. Her face peers out from our blankets.

“We will have to move if they live,” I say. “And you’re already sick. You’ll die.”

We have warmth here. Shelter.

“Then we will move in the morning,” she says. “I’m tougher than I look.”

Sotis that is true. This ti it is not.

I wake in the morning to find that she shifted in the night to curl into for warmth. Her body is so frail. It trembles like a leaf in the wind. I sll her hair. She breathes softly. Salt tracks mark her face. I want Eo. I wish it were her hair, her warmth. But I don’t push Mustang away. There’s pain when I hold her, but it cos from the past, not from Mustang. She is sothing new, sothing hopeful. Like spring to my deep winter.

When morning cos, we move deeper into the woods and make a lean-to shelter against a rock face with fallen trees and packed snow. We never find out what happened to the Oathbreakers or our cave.

Mustang can barely sleep, she coughs so much. When she sleeps curled into , I kiss the nape of her neck softly, softly so that she will not wake; though I secretly wish she would if just to know that I’m here. Her skin is hot. I hum the Song of Persephone.

“I can never rember the words,” she whispers to . Her head lies in my lap tonight. “I wish I did.”

I have not sung since Lykos. My voice is raspy and raw. Slowly the song cos.

Listen, listen

Rember the wane

Of sun’s fury and waving grain

We fell and fell

And danced along

To croon a knell

Of rights and wrongs

And

My son, my son

Rember the burn

When leaves were fire and seasons turned

We fell and fell

And sang a song

To weave a cell

All autumn long

And

Down in the vale

Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing

the reaper swing

Down in the vale

Hear the reaper sing

A tale of winter long

My girl, my girl

Rember the chill

When rains froze and snows did kill

We fell and fell

And danced along

Through icy hell

To their winter song

My love, my love

Rember the cries

When winter died for spring skies

They roared and roared

But we grabbed our seed

And sowed a song

Against their greed

My son, my son

Rember the chains

When gold ruled with iron reins

We roared and roared

And twisted and scread

For ours, a vale

of better dreams

And

Down in the vale

Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing

the reaper swing

Down in the vale

Hear the reaper sing

A tale of winter done

“It is strange,” she says.

“What is?”

“Father told that there would be riots because of that song. That people would die. But it is such a soft lody.” She coughs blood into a pelt. “We used to sing songs by the campfire, out in the country, where he kept us out of …” coughs again “… of the public … eye. When … my brother died … Father never sang with again.”

I know she will die soon. It’s only a matter of ti. Her face is pale, her smiles feeble. There’s only one thing I can do, since the dBots haven’t co. I will have to leave her to seek out dicine. One of the Houses might have found so or received injectables as a bounty. I’ll have to go soon, but I need to get her food first.

Soone follows that day as I hunt alone in the winter woods. I wear my new white wolfcloak. They are camouflaged as well. I do not see whoever it is, but he is there. I pretend my bowstring needs fixing and steal a glance back. Nothing. Quiet. Snow. The sound of wind on brittle branches. They still follow as I move along.

I feel them behind . It’s like the ache in my body from my wound. I pretend to see a deer and pass quickly through a thicket only to scramble up a tall pine on the other side.

I hear a pop .

They pass beneath . I feel it on my skin, in my bones. So I shake the branches under my legs. Gathered snow tumbles down. A distorted hollow in the shape of a man forms in the snowfall. It is looking at .

“Fitchner?” I call down.

His bubblegum pops again.

“You may co down now, boyo,” Fitchner barks up. He deactivates his ghostCloak and gravBoots and sinks into the snow. He’s wearing a thin black thermal. My layered fatigues and stinking animal skins don’t keep half as warm.

It’s been weeks since I last saw him. He looks tired.

“Going to finish what Cassius started?” I ask as I hop down.

He looks over and smirks. “You look horrible.”

“You do too. The soft bed, warm food, and wine giving you trouble?” I point up. We can just barely see Olympus between the skeletal branches of the winter trees.

He smiles. “Readout says you’ve lost twenty pounds.”

“Baby fat,” I tell him. “Cassius’s ionSword carved it off.” I pull up my bow and point it at him. I wonder if he’s wearing pulseArmor. It’ll stop anything short of pulseWeapons and razors. Only recoilPlate can gird off those weapons—and even then, not well. “I should shoot you.”

“You wouldn’t dare. I’m a Proctor, boyo.”

I shoot him in the thigh. Except the arrow loses velocity before it hits the invisible pulseShield, which flickers iridescent, and the arrow bounces to the ground. So they wear it at all tis, even when they don’t wear pulseArmor.

“Well, that was petulant.” He yawns.

PulseShield, gravBoots, ghostCloak, looks like he has a pulseFist too, and a razor. Snow lts as it touches his skin. He saw in the tree, so I’m guessing his eyes have injected optics. Certainly thermal scopes and night vision. He has a widget and an analyzerMod too. He knew my weight. Probably knows my white blood cell count. What about spectrum analysis?

He yawns again. “Little sleep these days on Olympus. Busy days.”

“Who gave the Jackal the holo of killing Julian?” I ask.

“Well, you don’t dally away ti.”

He did sothing just as I spoke, and the sound around us localizes. I can’t hear anything beyond an invisible five-ter bubble. Didn’t know they had toys like that.

“The Proctors gave it to the Jackal,” he tells .

“Which ones?”

“Apollo. All of us. Doesn’t matter.”

I don’t understand. “I assu it’s because they favor the Jackal. Am I right?”

“As usual.” His gum pops. “Unfortunately, you’re just not allowed to win, and you were gaining montum. Sooo …”

I ask him to explain. He says he just did. His eyes are ringed and tired despite the collagen and costics he now wears to cover his fatigue. His stomach has grown. Arms are still skinny. Sothing worries him, and it isn’t just his appearance.

“Allowed to?” I echo. “Allowed to. No one can be allowed to win. I thought the gorydamn point was to carve our own ladder to the top. So if I’m not allowed to win, that ans the Jackal is.”

“Pegged it.” He doesn’t sound very happy.

“Then that doesn’t make any lick of sense. It corrupts the entire thing,” I say hotly. “You broke the rules.”

The best of Gold is supposed to rise, yet they already have chosen a winner. Not only does this ruin the Institute, it ruins the Society. The fittest reign. That’s what they say. Now they’ve betrayed their own principles by taking sides in a schoolyard fight. This is the Laurel all over again. Hypocrisy.

“So this kid is what? A predestined Alexander? A Caesar? A Genghis? A Wiggin?” I ask. “This is slagging nonsense.”

“Adrius is the son of our dear ArchGovernor Augustus. That’s all that matters.”

“Yes, you’ve told that, but why is he supposed to win? Simply because his father is important?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Be more specific.”

He sighs. “The ArchGovernor has secretly threatened and bribed and cajoled all twelve of us till we ca to agree upon the fact that his son should win. But we have to be careful in our cheating. The Drafters, my real bosses, watch every move from their palaces, ships, et cetera. They are very important people as well. And then there’s the Board of Quality Control to worry about, and the Sovereign and Senators and all the other Governors themselves. Because, though there are many schools, any of them can watch you whenever they like.”

“What? How?”

He taps my wolf ring.

“Biotric nanoCam. Don’t worry, it’s showing them sothing else right now. I threw down a jamField, and anyway, there’s a half-day delay for editing purposes. All other tis, any Drafter, any Scarred, can watch you to see if they would like to offer you an apprenticeship when this is over. Oh, do they like you.”

Thousands of Aureates have been watching .

My insides, already cold, tighten.

Detrius au Bellona, Imperator of the Sixth Fleet, father of Cassius and Julian, Drafter of House Mars, has watched kill one son and deceive the other. It takes the wind out of . What if I had told Titus that I knew he was a Red because I was a Red? Did they notice him say “bloodydamn”? Did I say he was a Red out loud or was that just in my head?

“What if I take the ring off?”

“Then you disappear, except for the caras we have hidden in the battlefield” He winks. “Don’t tell anyone. Now, if the Drafters discovered the ArchGovernor’s sche … there will be hell to pay. Tension between the school Houses, certainly. But more importantly, there could be a Blood War between the Augustuses and Bellonas.”

“And you’ll be in trouble if they find out about the bribery?”

“I’ll be dead.” He fails in trying a smile.

“That’s why you look like hell. You’re in the middle a shit storm. So how do I fit into this?”

He chuckles dryly.

“Many Drafters like you. Those of House Mars get to offer you your first apprenticeships, but you can entertain offers outside the House. If you die, they will be very unhappy. Especially the Sword of House Mars. His na is Lorn au Arcos; no doubt you’ve heard of him. He is pri good with his razor.”

“How. Do. I. Fit. In?” I repeat.

“You don’t. Stay alive. Stay out of the Jackal’s path. Otherwise, Jupiter or Apollo will kill you and there will be nothing I can do to stop it.”

“So they’re his guard dogs, eh?”

“Amongst others, yes.”

“Well, if they kill , the Drafters would know sothing is wrong.”

“They won’t. Apollo will use other Houses to do it or we’ll do it ourselves and edit out the footage from the nanoCams. Apollo and Jupiter are not stupid. So don’t fiddle with them. Let the Jackal play and you’ll have a future.”

“And so will you.”

“And so will I.”

“I understand,” I say.

“Good. Good. I knew you’d see sense. You know, many of the Proctors like you. Minerva even does. She hated you at first, but since you let Mustang go, she’s been able to stay around on Olympus. Much less embarrassing that way.”

“She’s allowed to stay around on Olympus?” I ask innocently.

“Naturally. It’s the rules of the Institute. Once your House is defeated, the Proctor heads ho to face the music and explain what went wrong to the Drafters.” Fitchner’s smile contorts when he sees the sudden glimr in my eyes.

“So if their House is destroyed, they have to leave? And it was Apollo and Jupiter who want dead, you say?”

“No …,” he begs, suddenly hearing the nace in my voice.

I tilt my head. “No?”

“You … can’t!” he sputters, confused. “I just told you, the Sword of the damn House Mars wants you as an apprentice. And there are others—Senators, Politicos, Praetors. Don’t you want a future?”

“I want to rip the Jackal’s balls off. That’s all. Then I will find my apprenticeship. I imagine it will be an impressive one if I do that.”

“Darrow! Be reasonable, man.”

“Fitchner, my friends Roque and Lea died because of the ArchGovernor’s ddling. Let’s see how he likes it when I make his son, the Jackal, my slave.”

“You’re mad as a Red!” he says with a shake of his head. “You’re screwing with the Proctors’ livelihoods. None are content with their current station. They are all looking to ascend as well. If you threaten their futures, Apollo and Jupiter will co down and they will cut off your head!”

“Not if I destroy their Houses first.” I frown. “Because don’t they have to leave if I do that? Soone reliable told those were the rules.” I clap my hands together. “ Now, I have another friend who is dying and I’d like so antibiotics. It’d be pri if you could give so.”

He gawps at . “After this why would I?”

“Because you’ve been a piss-poor Proctor up until now. You owe bounties. And you have your own future to look after.”

He snorts a defeated laugh. “Fair enough.”

He takes an injectable from a dcase on his leg and hands it to . I notice how the pulseArmor doesn’t hurt when his hand touches mine. So they can turn it off. I thank him by clapping his shoulder affectionately. He rolls his eyes. The armor is turned off over the entire body. Then it’s back. I hear the microhum at his waist where the contraption sits. Now that I’ve got Proctors for enemies, it’s a good thing to know.

“So what will you do?” Fitchner asks.

“Who is more dangerous? Apollo or Jupiter? Be honest, Fitchner.”

“Both are monsters of n. Apollo is more ambitious. Jupiter is simple—he just enjoys playing god here.”

“Then House Apollo first. After that, I’ll crush Jupiter. And when they are gone, who will protect the Jackal?”

“The Jackal,” he laughs.

“Then we’ll see if he really does deserve to win.”

Before I go, Fitcher tosses a small package on the ground.

“Not that it matters now, but this was given to . I was told to say that you’re to know that your friends have not forsaken you.”

“Who?”

“I cannot say.”

Whoever gave it to him is a friend, because inside the box is my Pegasus, and inside that is Eo’s haemanthus blossom. I put the Pegasus necklace about my neck.