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Spending time in the Jackal’s estate feels akin to willingly breathing in poisonous air. Cassius focuses on cutting his breakfast pastry into little pieces and hiding his disgust at the company he finds himself surrounded by this morning.
The Jackal is seated at the center of the long side of the table and is prattling on about some successful deed he accomplished, no doubt made possible by stepping on the battered backs of lowColors with spiked shoes. His sandy hair is parted fastidiously to the side, and he gestures with both his intact hand and his stump as he speaks. For a small man, he has quite the presence. Committing multiple acts of unthinkable cruelty will do that, Cassius supposes.
At his right side is Lilath, the captain of the Jackal’s Boneriders. Her bald head is reminiscent of the shiny hummingbird eggs she has requested to eat this morning. There is a quiet stillness about her, likely a constant readiness to lunge out and strike anyone at the table with a simple word from the Jackal. Her loyalty to him is absolute.
On the other side of the Jackal is Antonia. As beautiful as she is rotten, the Gold drinks in every word he speaks like it is by Jove himself. She leans toward the Jackal suggestively, batting her eyelashes and arranging her silky hair just so. He doesn’t seem to notice.
Seated between Antonia and Cassius is curly-haired Thistle. He hasn’t seen her since the Institute, but the rumors were true; the short girl has switched her allegiance from the Howlers to the Boneriders. Despite his understanding of her patriotism, Cassius still finds himself surprised by her choice. She seems too kind to be a part of that savage group at the very least.
Then again, maybe Cassius never knew her well enough to understand her character. He’s certainly been wrong before.
There are a number of other Peerless Scarred at the table, but Cassius pays them no mind. If they look upon the Jackal favorably and are willingly putting themselves in his path, they are either bought allies or short-sighted fools. Few survive under his gaze for long. Plus, any significance in status that they may hold pales in comparison to the Sovereign, who Cassius serves directly under as an Olympic Knight. He is dressed in the full gold and white attire of the Morning Knight, cloak and all. Though his rank is enough to earn respect, it doesn’t hurt to look the part as well — especially around a man as slimy as the Jackal.
Cassius’s one reprieve from these particular Golds lies in the presence of his traveling companion, Aja. A fellow Olympic Knight, the two have been working together on missions for months. While they have their differences, she is powerful, intelligent, and always has his six in battle. Her skill with the razor is impeccable; he has yet to win a duel against her.
Since the Sovereign had told them that they were headed to Attica to see the Jackal, Aja has been more quiet than usual. Still, he is grateful for her company. Though she hides it well, Cassius knows she also finds the Jackal’s nature… distasteful. The man himself is speaking again.
“… have found that the new liquidation protocols are proving very effective against rebellious behavior from lowReds…”
Ignoring the uncivilized conversation for as long as he can get away with, Cassius turns his attention to the room itself. Morning light streams through the large open windows. They let in a cool breeze as snow falls, painting the mountain peaks of Attica a shimmering white. The art along the walls is modern and elaborate, but the focus of the dining area is the grand table itself. One meter wide and twelve meters long, the marble is a deep black with blue and purple undertones. Custom matching chairs with embroidered cushions line its edges, all of them filled. Cassius shifts in his own chair uncomfortably. For all its extravagance, the furniture seems to emit a dark aura.
Maybe that’s just Cassius projecting.
Framing the entrance to the room are two sizable gold lion statues, complimentary to each other and carved with excruciating detail. In elegant lettering atop the doorway lies the motto of House Augustus: Hic Sunt Leones. The familiar words bring Cassius back to his days with Virginia. Though it was years ago now, their time together still feels like a dream. He wonders where she is now.
To think that she shared a womb with such a monster as the Jackal will always be a mystery.
Movement in his periphery brings Cassius out of his musings. He watches as Browns move around him to clear the center of the table, collecting various empty platters and other dishes. Odd. Usually such actions are conducted after the guests have left. Cassius eyes the Jackal, who looks rather anticipatory. He feels a chill run down his spine. Just what is the Jackal planning?
The man in question stands, and the chatter in the room ceases. He clears his throat. “Goodmen. Goodladies. As many of you may recall, today marks one year since Darrow’s Triumph… and tragedy.” Some laughs ring through the room. “Three months later, you all witnessed the execution of the treasonous Red, Darrow of Lykos, on the HC. However, all is not as it seems. What I am about to show you is known only by myself and the Sovereign…”
Cassius glances at his companion’s stony face. And Aja.
Before he can make sense of the Jackal’s words, the stone of the table itself begins to groan. Cassius watches in surprise and apprehension as a small portion of the table’s surface slides away into a hidden compartment. Another surface rises from below, and Cassius is horrified to find that a body lays atop it.
The foul stench hits him first. Putrid and suffocating, the closest thing Cassius can liken it to is the nauseating odor of a decaying animal that has been left in the sun to rot. His eyes almost water in retaliation to its intensity. He is used to the stink of corpses, but it is as if someone bottled up that smell and hoarded it for years before shattering the container.
Then there is movement. Cassius watches as the skeletal figure extends its legs from the fetal position it was confined to, letting out a broken gasp as it does so. Its spindly legs brush against plates and silverware. No one notices. Any remaining appetites are lost now.
Cassius stares at the sight before him, uncomprehending. A corpse lies naked on its side, its face partially blocked by a leftover cart of coffee and greasy strings of gold hair. Scars of all shapes and sizes cover it like a gruesome abstract drawing. They are especially concentrated on its torso, scattered across paper-thin skin that barely conceals its jutting ribs. Black, ropy umbilical cords have been Carved into the figure’s abdomen, keeping it alive and anchoring it to the stone below. It — he curls in on himself and starts to shake.
With an icy feeling of dread, Cassius begins to piece it all together. What I am about to show you is…
The Jackal spreads his arms theatrically. “My honored guests. May I present prisoner L17L6363.”
The uproar is deafening. Around him, guests exclaim in various degrees of shock, horror, and curiosity. The commentary is endless, the questions vast.
Cassius stays rooted to his seat in silence. His mind is a mess of conflicting thoughts and emotions. It can’t be…
“Goryhell, Augustus. Was this really necessary?” Aja’s disapproval is loud and clear. It soothes something inside of him. “He smells like death.”
“Fermented sweat and dead skin under the magnetic shackles. See the yellowish crust on his forearms, Aja?” the Jackal replies. “Still, he’s very much healthy and ready for your Carvers. All things considered.”
Aja turns to Cassius. “You know the man better than I. Make sure it is him, not an imposter.”
Cassius stands up as if in a trance and makes his way toward the emaciated man on the table. His bony spine, more visible now, protrudes from his back in grotesque lumps. Stick-thin arms are shackled together at the wrists and connected to the stone near his tailbone. The hands are calloused and twitching, the nails long and vile.
It is when Cassius sees his face that he begins to accept the possibility that this might be reality after all. Hollow and withered though it may be, Darrow’s face is still distinct in its sharp edges and furrowed brows. Fresh blood has made a mess of his forehead. Thin rivulets of red drip off his face onto the stone, adding to older bloodstains that have accumulated over time. His eyes are shut tight, his shoulders hunched. His expression, once so unreadable and calculated, is an open book. His multitude of layers have been patiently and excruciatingly peeled back until all that remains is this raw visage. Darrow looks overwhelmed and confused. Terrified.
He is a hollow shell of a man. Nothing like the strong, imposing leader he used to be. The boy that clawed his way to victory at the Institute. The man that called for the first Iron Rain in decades.
The Red who rose.
Looking at this broken man below him, Cassius finds himself struggling to dredge up anger about the Bellona massacre. He had been furious at Darrow in the months following the Triumph. He had wept for his nieces, his nephews, all his Scarless family members that had been butchered in the night like livestock. When the Sovereign told him the news, grandmotherly concern on her weathered face, Cassius almost hadn’t believed it. He wouldn’t have, if it had come from anyone else. He knew Darrow could be ruthless, but it just didn’t make sense. All of that senseless murder of innocents, and for what — to satisfy Nero au Augustus, a man that had planned to leave Darrow for dead the moment he stopped proving himself useful? Even the revelation that he was a Red didn’t answer all his questions.
At Darrow’s Triumph, Cassius had been too blinded by grief and pain to feel any guilt for betraying the man in such a brutal manner. Such a man as Darrow — a murderer of defenseless children, a Carved Red terrorist — deserved to be betrayed. When he saw the execution on the HC, he tampered down conflicting feelings because he knew that Darrow deserved it.
Looking down at him now, Cassius knows with certainty: No one deserves this.
“You can really see the Red in him now,” Antonia sneers. She stares at Darrow with morbid fascination, like a sadistic child watching a wolf get torn apart by a lion on the HoloNet. Cassius feels like an infection is seeping into his pores from his proximity to her alone. Then the Jackal speaks and the potency of the infection increases ten-fold.
“Exactly, Antonia!” he says. “I’ve been curious to see how he turned out. A member of the Aureate genus could never be so debased as this creature here before us. You know, he asked me for death before I put him in there. Started weeping about it.” For someone like Darrow to have been driven to that point, after all he has endured, is chilling. The Jackal’s mind is a frightening, twisted thing. And Darrow has been a victim to it for so long…
The Jackal continues to speak. “The irony is he could have killed himself whenever he chose. But he didn’t, because some part of him relished that hole. You see, Reds long ago adapted to darkness. Like worms. No pride to their rusty race. He was at home down there, more than he ever was with us.”
Darrow’s eyes open and stare out, unfocused. Cassius steps forward and gently lays a hand on the edge of the table.
“Darrow?” he says. The pallid man turns his dull gaze towards the hand on the table and flinches away. Cassius wonders briefly if it was because of the Bellona ring on his finger, but the reaction was too automatic. Darrow has been conditioned to associate people with pain. Cassius feels his stomach twist at the realization. “Do you recognize me?”
Darrow cranes his head to look up at him. Cassius almost flinches at the sight of those hollow, bloodshot eyes. The man looks haunted, nearly animalistic, as if he has seen things that no man should ever see. Experienced horrors that no man should ever endure. Cassius doesn’t doubt it for a second.
“Cassius,” Darrow murmurs, almost reverent.
“And?” Aja asks from behind Cassius.
Darrow’s eyes shift to her. His expression darkens for the briefest of moments before he looks away in submission. Cassius knows he is thinking of Quinn. Any stubborn hope that this living corpse was just a Carved lookalike slips away.
“He’s alive after all,” Cassius says quietly. A surge of fury rushes through him, and he clenches the hand at his side into a tight fist. He wheels on the Jackal. “What did you do to him? The scars…”
“I should think it obvious,” the Jackal says. “I have unmade the Reaper.”
Cassius glances back at Darrow. He takes in the faded bloodstains on the stone, the assortment of scabs on his forehead alone. Some are freshly broken from what must have been Darrow’s recent pastime of slamming his head against the marble wall. Others are older. Much older. “How long was he in there?”
“Three months of interrogation, then nine months of solitary.”
“Nine…”
“As is fitting. War shouldn’t make us abandon metaphor. We’re not savages after all, eh, Bellona?”
Cassius cannot keep the contempt and rage from his face. His hand trembles at his side, nails cutting into skin. The Jackal shows no hint of shame, no ounce of human decency. He used to stand at Darrow’s side as one of his greatest allies. He used to plot with him, dine with him. How could he?
Honor is what echoes. The words of Cassius’s father have never seemed more difficult to live by than in this moment. For all his attained glory and strength, Cassius is powerless to punish the Jackal for his sins or prevent him from committing more. He can’t even ensure that Darrow is given an honorable end. Becoming an Olympic Knight was supposed to allow him to make a difference. So why is it that Cassius can do nothing but watch?
In moments like these, a tiny, traitorous part of him agrees that lowColors have every right to fight against Gold.
“Cassius’s sensibilities are offended, Adrius,” Antonia reports.
“Pardon me if I fail to see the purpose of torturing a fallen enemy,” Cassius barely refrains from spitting the words. “Especially if he’s given all the information he has to give.”
“The purpose?” the Jackal says. “The purpose is punishment, my goodman. This… thing presumed he belonged among us. Like he was an equal, Cassius. A superior, even. He mocked us. Bedded my sister.” Cassius buries his rising thoughts of Virginia, knowing that the Jackal is aiming for a reaction. “He laughed at us and played us for fools before we found him out. He must know it was not by chance that he lost, but inevitability.”
The Jackal continues to explain, but Cassius knows the real reason behind this barbarity. “You mean he made a fool of you,” Cassius says when the excuses have stopped, “when your father preferred a carved-up Red to his blood heir? That’s what this is, Jackal. The petulant shame of a boy unloved and unwanted.”
The comment hits home. Cassius sees it in the Jackal’s face, but he can’t bring himself to feel satisfied. Below them, Darrow’s shivering has worsened.
Antonia, of course, comes to the Jackal’s defense. “Darrow took Julian’s life! Then slaughtered your family.” Cassius’s eyes jump to the man on the table, but Darrow has no reaction except the slightest furrowing of brows. Then again, he may not even be comprehending the words around him. His eyes are open but distant. This must be a lot to take in after nine months in a box. “Cassius, he sent killers to butcher the children of your blood as they hid on Olympus Mons. One would wonder what your mother would think of your pity.”
Cassius ignores her and jerks his head toward the Pinks at the edge of the room. “Fetch the prisoner a blanket.”
They do not move.
“Such manners. Even from you, Thistle?” As the only other one in the room who had been a friend to Darrow once, Cassius had thought he might find an ally in her against the mistreatment. She looks away in shame but says nothing.
With a snort of contempt, Cassius strips off his white cloak and drapes it over Darrow’s shivering body. There is a moment of stunned silence.
“Thank you,” Darrow rasps, but Cassius avoids his gaze. This is, apparently, all he can do against the injustice before him — and the ones that await. There is truly nothing to thank him for.
Lilath snorts a laugh as she slurps her hummingbird eggs. “There is a point when honor becomes a flaw of character, Morning Knight.” Cassius almost rolls his eyes. What would Lilath know of honor? “Old man Arcos learned the hard way.”
Aja doesn’t reply to the pointed slight, but Cassius knows that she would happily cut Lilath to pieces if only the Sovereign said the word. Though she never mentions it, Aja is still affected by her betrayal of the man who taught her the razor, sanctioned though it was.
“We’re all friends here,” the Jackal says playfully. “Mind your manners, Lilath. Lorn was an Iron Gold who simply chose the wrong side. So, Aja, I’m curious. Now that my lease on the Reaper is up, do you still plan to dissect him?”
“We do,” Aja says. Like an animal, Cassius thinks balefully. “Zanzibar is curious to discover how he was made. He has his theories, but he’s champing at the bit for the specimen. We were hoping to round up the Carver that did the deed, but we think he perished in a missile strike up in Kato, Alcidalia province.”
“Or they want you think that,” Antonia says pointlessly.
Aja ignores her, turning to the Jackal. “You once had him here, didn’t you?”
He nods. “Mickey’s his name. Lost his license after he carved an unlicensed Aureate birth. Family tried sparing their child the exposure. Anyway, he specialized in blackmarket aerial and aquatic pleasure mods afterward. Had a carveshop in Yorkton before the Sons recruited him...”
An unbidden memory comes to Cassius from the early days of the Institute, when Julian had rushed to him with what he deemed scandalous news.
Cassius had shook his head in mock disappointment. “He’s not a Yorkton supporter? Julian, tell me it isn’t so! Darrow! Darrow, how could you be? They never win a game!”
Darrow had thrown up his hands. “A curse of birth, I suppose. I am a product of my upbringing. I cheer for the underdog.”
The words were more true than Cassius ever could have imagined.
The Jackal is still speaking. “… If you want my opinion, he’s still alive. My operatives place him in Tinos.”
Cassius and Aja exchange a look. Any situation in which the Jackal has knowledge that the Sovereign does not is troubling.
“If you have a lead on Tinos, you need to share it with us now,” Cassius says.
“I have nothing definitive yet. Tinos is well hidden. And we’ve yet to capture one of their ship captains… alive. But irons are in the fire, and you’ll be the first to know if anything comes of them.” The Jackal’s gaze shifts to Darrow. “Though, I rather think my Boneriders would like the first crack at the Howlers. Wouldn’t you, Lilath?”
Even under the shelter of the cape, Darrow shifts noticeably. His eyes betray him too, brightening ever so slightly with something desperate. Something like hope. Cassius feels pity wash through him. How cruel, to dangle the presence of the Howlers before Darrow when he will be peeled apart before getting the chance to see any of them ever again. He glances back at the Jackal to see a glimmer of smug satisfaction on his features.
That was on purpose, Cassius realizes with a start. The Jackal was aiming to mess with Darrow’s head from the beginning. He’s likely done it before. The knowledge adds another sickening layer to Cassius’s idea of what Darrow’s time with the Jackal must have been like. Not just physical torture, but psychological too…
Lilath replies, but Cassius doesn’t hear her over the sudden wash of righteous rage he feels. All this time. All this time…
“The Sovereign needs us home anyway, Cassius,” Aja says, sensing Cassius’s rising anger. She looks to the Jackal. “We’ll be departing as soon as my Thirteenth has decamped from the Golan Basin. Likely by morning.”
“You’re taking your legions back to Luna?” he says.
“Just the Thirteenth. The rest will remain under your supervision.”
“My supervision?”
Aja nods. “On loan till this… Rising is fully snuffed out. It’s a token of the Sovereign’s trust. You know she is pleased with your progress here.”
“Despite your methods,” Cassius adds. He ignores Aja’s reproachful glare.
The Jackal pays him no mind. “Well, if you’re leaving in the morning you should, of course, dine with me this evening…” Cassius would like nothing less. He tries to tune out the conversation, but it only works for so long when the Jackal is addressing him and Aja directly. “…It’s been too long since I had such august company as two Olympic Knights. You’re in the field so often, skirting around provinces, hunting through the tunnels and seas and ghettos. How long has it been since you had a fine meal without worry of a night raid or suicide bombers?”
“A spell,” Aja admits. Cassius can’t stop staring at Darrow’s withered form on the table. His shaking has receded, but not entirely. “We took the Brothers Rath up on their hospitality when we passed through Thessalonica. They were eager to show their loyalty after their behavior during the Lion’s Rain. It was… unsettling.”
The Jackal laughs. “I fear my dinner will be tame by comparison. It’s been all politicians and soldiers of late. This gorydamn war has so impeded my social calendar, as you can imagine.”
“Sure it’s not your reputation for hospitality?” Cassius snaps. “Or your diet?”
“Manners, Bellona.” Aja sighs, as if she’s not enjoying every moment.
“Not to fear; the enmity between our houses is hard to forget, Cassius. But we must find common ground in times like these. For the sake of Gold. Anyway, we all have our schoolyard stories,” the Jackal waves off his history of cannibalism dismissively. “I’m hardly ashamed.”
“There was one other matter we wished to discuss,” Aja says.
“I told you there would be,” Antonia complains. “What does our Sovereign require now?”
“It pertains to what Cassius mentioned earlier.”
“My methods,” the Jackal confirms.
“Yes.” The Jackal tries to redirect the conversation to the successful results those methods have brought for the Sovereign, but Aja cuts him off. “It’s the kill squads.”
“Ah.”
Cassius scoffs at the bland response. Aja pushes forward, going into detail about the backlash resulting from said kill squads and liquidation protocols to strengthen her case. “The spirit of rebellion is alive, but it is fractured. It must remain so,” she finishes.
Antonia’s response is weak, and the Jackal steps in. “There is no danger of my tactics reaching the public eye. The Sons’ abilities to propagate their message has been neutered. I control the message now, Aja.” His face is the picture of certainty. Cassius wants to wipe that look right off, but the Jackal’s control over the media has only grown over the years. “The people know this war is already lost. They’ll never see a picture of the bodies. Never glimpse a liquidated mine. What they will continue to see is Red attacks on civilian targets. MidColor and highColor children dead in schools. The public is with us.”
“And if they do see what you’re doing?” Cassius asks. The Jackal’s power is not absolute, no matter what he thinks.
In reply, the Jackal signals a Pink over from the couches in the adjacent sitting room. The young girl comes to his side and stares meekly at the ground. Though he is responding to Cassius, the Jackal makes eye contact with Darrow as he strokes the girl’s face with his hand before viciously shoving his fingers into her mouth and prying her teeth apart. He pauses there for a purposeful moment, basking in Darrow’s distress, before using his stump to turn the girl’s head towards Cassius and Aja so they can also see into her mouth. She has no tongue.
“I did this myself after we took her eight months ago. She attempted to assassinate one of my Boneriders at an Agea Pearl club. She hates me. Wants nothing more in this world than to see me rotting in the ground.” Letting go of her face, he pops his sidearm out of his holster and thrusts it into the girl’s hands. “Shoot me in the head, Calliope. For all the indignities I have heaped upon you and your kind. Go on. I took your tongue. You remember what I did to you in the library. It will happen again and again and again.” He returns his hand to her face, squeezing her fragile jaw. Cassius clenches his own in indignation. “And again. Pull the trigger, you little tart. Pull it!” The Pink shakes in fear and throws the gun on the floor, falling to her knees to clutch his feet. He stands benevolent and loving above her, petting her head with his hand.
Cassius can’t help but see Darrow in her place.
“There, there, Calliope. You did well. You did well.” The Jackal turns back to the Olympic Knights. “For the public, honey is always better than vinegar. But for those who war with wrenches, with poison, with sabotage in the sewers and terror in the streets, and nibble at us like cockroaches in the night, fear is the only method.” His gaze returns to Darrow pointedly. “Fear and extermination.”
Darrow can do nothing but blink sluggishly at him. Though his own hands are free of manacles, Cassius feels ironically like he is in the same position. What can he do at this moment to change Darrow’s fate without betraying his oaths and the Compact? The Sovereign has decided this is Darrow’s end, and so it will be. He cannot even commiserate with Aja about the dishonor of it all because she is so blindly loyal to the Sovereign. Darrow is just another person who will die under Cassius’s watch.
Cassius has seen too much death. It started with Julian — after losing his softhearted twin, he has never been the same.
Though it may have been Darrow who dealt the killing blow, Cassius always knew that Julian wouldn’t last long in the Society. He was too gentle, too sweet. Even if he was harmless, the vultures of the Society would target him for simply being of the House Bellona. Cassius had always intended to protect him from such people, even at the cost of himself, but that plan had failed the moment they were separated. This world is not for kind souls like him.
In this world, the Golds that thrive are those like Aja, whose skill with the razor is so immense that no one has seen her bleed in battle, and who would beat a good person to death without a second thought. Golds like Thistle, who collected scalps at the Institute and traded out a loyal friend group for a bunch of cannibalistic brutes. Golds like Antonia, who didn’t hesitate to shoot her mother in the head and her sister in the spine at the dinner table.
Golds like the Jackal.
Each casualty since the war began adds another layer of weight to his shoulders. His father. His family. Quinn. Weed. Harpy. Rotback. Tactus. Lorn. Victra. All of the countless low, mid, and highColors that have been fighting or caught in the crossfire. And now, after a year of torture by the Jackal’s hand, Darrow.
Cassius is so gorydamn tired of war.
But it is for this reason that Cassius needs to work harder, become stronger, and bring victory to Gold. Because there is no escaping this war — only finishing it. Loath as he might be to agree with the Jackal on anything, his earlier comment is true. This war is already lost. All Ares has been doing is prolonging that end for the past year. They fight for “equality among all Colors,” but it is a pipedream. As pretty as the notion might sound, Golds are genetically bred and trained to be humanity’s finest. They have the strongest weapons, the latest technology. There is simply no winning against them. All of this violence and sorrow and death is for nothing, so the most Cassius can do is work to bring this senseless war to a swift end.
And so, with this in mind, Cassius does not linger when the breakfast has ended. He leaves Darrow on that table, at the mercy of a madman, and walks side by side with Quinn’s killer as they discuss battle strategies and the details of their trip back to Luna. He continues his strained alliance with the Jackal on behalf of the Sovereign, and prepares to hone his skill with the razor ever further. For peace.
For Gold.