He gawps at me. “After this why would I?”
“Because you’ve been a piss-poor Proctor up until now. You owe me bounties. And you have your own future to look after.”
He snorts a defeated laugh. “Fair enough.”
He takes an injectable from a medcase on his leg and hands it to me. I notice how the pulseArmor doesn’t hurt me 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 men. 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 me. 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.
35
Oathbreakers
My friends are with me. What would they mean by that? Which friends? The Sons of Ares? Or was the mystery friend being more general, alluding to those who support my chances at the Institute? Do they know the significance of the Pegasus? Or were they simply reuniting me with something she thought I might miss?
So many questions; none of them matter. They are outside the game. The game. What else is there but the game? All the true things in the world, all my relationships, all my aspirations and needs, are wrapped up in this game, wrapped up in me winning. To win, I’ll need an army, but it cannot be made of slaves. Not again. I now need, as I’ll need at the head of a rebellion, followers, not slaves.
Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.
A week after I inject Mustang and her fever fades, we set off to the north. Her strength grows the more we move. Her cough is gone and her quick smile returns. Sometimes she needs a rest, but soon she comes close to outpacing me. She lets me know it too. We make as much noise as possible when we move to draw our prey to us. On the sixth night of setting obnoxiously large fires, we get our first nibble.
The Oathbreakers come along a stream, using its sounds to mask their approach. I like them immediately. Were our fire not a trap, they would have caught us unawares. But it is a trap, and when two step into the light, we almost spring it. Yet if they are smart enough to come along the stream, they are smart enough to leave someone in the dark. I hear an arrow nock on a bowstring. Then there’s a yelp. Mustang takes the one in the dark. I take the other two. I stand up from my snowpile, my wolfcloak shedding snow, and knock them down from behind with the flat of my bow.
Afterwards, the one Mustang struck nurses his swollen eye by our fire as I speak with their leader. Her name is Milia. She’s a tall willow with a long horseface and a slight hunch to her shoulders. Rags and stolen furs cover her bony frame. The other uninjured one is Dax. Short, comely, with three frostbitten fingers. We give them extra furs and I think that makes all the difference in the conversation.
“You understand we could make you slaves, yes?” Mustang asks, brandishing her standard. “So you’d be twice Oathbreakers and twice shunned once this game is over.”
Milia doesn’t seem to care. Dax does. The other just follows Milia.
“Could give a rat’s prick. No difference between once and twice,” Milia says. They all bear the slave mark of Mars. I don’t recognize them but their rings say they are from Juno. “Rather bear shame than bruise my knees. Do you know my father?”
“I don’t care about your father.”
“My father,” she persists, “is Gauis au Trachus, Justiciar of the southern Martian hemisphere.”
“I still don’t care.”
“And his father was—”
“I don’t care.”
“Then you are a fool,” she drawls. “Twice a fool if you think to make me your slave. I will cut you in the night.”
I nod to Mustang. She stands suddenly with the standard and puts it to Milia’s head. The mark of Mars becomes that of Minerva. Then she erases the Minerva mark and Milia’s forehead is only dirt and gold. Dax’s eyes widen.
“Even if I free you?” I ask Milia. “You’re still going to cut me?”
She doesn’t know what to say.
“Mily,” Dax says quietly. “What are you thinking?”
“No slavery,” I elaborate. “No beatings. If you dig a shit pit, I dig a shit pit for the camp too. If someone cuts you, I cut them. So, will you join our army?”
“His army,” Mustang corrects. I look over at her with a frown.
“And who’s he?” Milia asks, her eyes not leaving my face.
“He’s the Reaper.”
It takes a week to gather ten Oathbreakers. The way I look at it is those ten already made it clear they don’t want to be slaves. So they might like the first person who will give them purpose, food, furs, who is not demanding that they lick a bootheel. Most of them have heard of me, but all are disappointed that I don’t have the famous slingBlade I used to beat Pax. Apparently he’s become quite the legend. They say he picked up and threw a horse and rider into the Argos as Mars’s slaves fought Jupiter’s.
As we grow, we hide from the larger armies. Mars may be my House, but with Roque dead and Cassius an enemy, only Quinn and Sevro are left as friends. Pollux perhaps, but he’ll go whatever way the wind blows.
I cannot be with my House. There’s no place for me there. I may have been their leader, but I remember how they looked at me. And now it is crucial they know I am alive.
Despite the war between Mars and Jupiter, stalwart Ceres stands unconquered by the riverside. Behind their high walls, bread smoke still rises. Mounted warbands from both armies roam the plains around Ceres, crossing the frozen Argos at will. They carry low-charged ionSwords now, so they can electrocute and maim one another with a brush of metal. MedBots scream over the battlefield when skirmishes break into pitched frays, healing wounded students as they bleed or moan from broken bones. The champions of each army wear ionArmor to protect themselves against the new weapons. Horses smash together. IonArrows fly. Slaves mill about hitting each other with older, simple weapons across the wide plain that separates the highlands from the great river Argos. It is a spectacular thing to see—but foolish, so foolish.