Cassius’s left eye is swollen shut. Lips are split. Ribs purple as grapes. His other eye is bloody. Three dislocated fingers shoot out like tree roots, and his shoulder is odd. The others stare at him with such sadness. Cassius was the Imperator’s boy—their shining knight. And now his body is a ruin, and the looks upon their faces, the pallid cast to their skin, tell me that they have never before seen someone beautiful mutilated.

I have.

He smells like piss.

He tries to play it off as some lark. “They beat the slag out of me when I challenged him. Hit me with a shovel on the side of the head. Then stood around and had themselves a circle piss. Then they tied me up in that stinkhole keep, but Pollux set me free, like a good lad, and he’s agreed to open the gate if we need it done.”

“I didn’t think you were so stupid,” I say.

“Of course he is, he wants to be one of the Sovereign’s knights,” Roque mutters. “And all they do is duel.” He shakes his long hair. Dirt crusts the leather band that holds it in a ponytail. “You should have waited for us.”

“What’s done is done,” I say. “We go ahead with the plan.”

“Fine,” Cassius snorts. “But when the time comes, Titus is mine.”

26

MUSTANG

Part of Cassius is gone. That invincible boy I first met is somehow different. The humiliation changed him. I can’t decide how, though, as I straighten his fingers and help him fix his shoulder. He falls down from the pain.

“Thank you, brother,” he says to me, and cups the side of my head to help himself up. It is the first time he says it. “I failed the test.” I don’t disagree with him. “I went in there like a plum fool. If this were anywhere else, they would have killed me.”

“Least it didn’t cost you your life,” I say.

Cassius chuckles. “Just my pride.”

“Good. Something you have in abundance,” Roque says with a smile.

“We have to get her back.” Cassius’s own grimace fades as he looks at Roque, then at me. “Quinn. We have to get her back before he takes her up to his tower.”

“We will.” We bloody will.

Cassius and I go east according to my plan, farther than we have gone before. We stay to the northern highlands, but we make sure we walk along the high crests visible to the open plains below. East and east, our long legs taking us fast and far.

“A rider to the southeast,” I say. Cassius doesn’t look.

We pass through a humid glen where a dark loch offers us the chance to catch a drink across from a family of deerling. Mud covers our legs. Bugs flit over the cold water. The earth feels good between my fingers as I bend to drink. I dunk my head and join Cassius in eating some of our aging lamb. It needs salt. My belly cramps from all the protein.

“How far east of the castle do you reckon we are?” I ask Cassius, pointing behind him.

“Maybe twenty klicks. Hard to peg it. Feels farther but my legs are just tired.” He straightens and looks where I point. “Ah. Got it.”

A girl on a dappled mustang watches us from the edge of the glen. She has a long covered bar tied to her saddle. Can’t make out her House, but I have seen her before. I remember her like it was yesterday. The girl who called me a Pixie when I fell off that pony Matteo put me on.

“I want her horse to ride back,” Cassius tells me. He can’t see out his left eye but his bravado is back, a little too forcefully. “Hey, darling!” he calls. “Shit, that hurts the ribs. Prime ride! What House are you?”

I’m worried about this.

The girl rides to within ten meters, but she has the sigils on sleeve and neck covered with two lengths of sewn cloth. Her face is streaked with three diagonal lines of blue berry juice mixed with animal fat. We don’t know if she is from Ceres. I hope not. She could be from the southern woods, from the east, from the far northeastern highlands even.

“Lo, Mars,” she says smugly, looking at the sigil on our jackets.

Cassius bows pathetically. I don’t bother.

“Well, this is swell.” I kick a stone with my shoe. “Lo … Mustang. Nice sigil. And horse.” I let her know having a horse is something rare.

She is small, delicate. Her smile is not. It mocks us. “What are you boys about in the hinterlands? Reaping grain?”

I pat my slingBlade. “We have enough back home.” I gesture south of our castle.

She suppresses a laugh at my feeble lie.

“Sure you do.”

“I will be even with you.” Cassius forces his battered face into a smile. “You are stunningly beautiful. You must be from Venus. Hit me with whatever is under that cloth on your saddle and take me back to your fortress. I’ll be your Pink if you promise not to share me and to keep me warm every night.” He takes an unsteady step forward. “And every morning.” Her mustang takes four back till he gives up trying to steal her horse.

“Well, aren’t you the charmer, handsome. And by that pitchfork in your hand, you must be a prime fighter too.” She bats her eyelashes.

Cassius puffs out his chest in agreement.

She waits for him to understand.

Then he frowns.

“Yup. Uh-oh. You see, we didn’t have any tools in our stronghold except those pertaining to our deity, soooo you must have encountered House Ceres already.” She leans forward in the saddle sardonically. “You don’t have crops. You just fought those who do, and you don’t have any better weapons, clearly, or you would be carrying them with you. So Ceres is in these parts as well. Likely in the lowlands near the woods for crops. Or near that big river everyone is talking about.”

She’s all laughing eyes and a smirking mouth in a face shaped like a heart. Hair so golden it sparkles in the sun and flows down her back in braids.

“So you are in the woods?” she asks. “North in the highlands, probably. Oh, this is fun! How bad are your weapons? You clearly don’t have horses. What a poor House.”

“Slag,” Cassius makes a point of saying.

“You seem pretty proud of yourself.” I put my slingBlade on my shoulder.

She raises a hand and wiggles it back and forth. “Sort of. Sort of. More proud than Handsome there should be. He’s full of tells.” I shift my weight on my toes to see if she notices. She moves her horse back. “Now, now, Reaper, are you going to try and get in my saddle too?”

“Just trying to knock you out of it, Mustang.”

“Fancy a roll in the mud, do we? Well, how about I promise to let you up here with me if you give me more clues as to where your castle squats? Towers? Sprawls? I can be a kind master.”

She looks me up and down playfully. Her eyes sparkle like a fox’s might. This is still a game to her, which means her House is a civil place. I’m envious as I examine her in kind. Cassius didn’t lie; she is something to look at. But I’d rather knock her off her mustang. My feet are tired and we’re playing a dangerous game.

“What Draft number were you?” I ask, wishing I’d paid more attention.

“Higher than you, Reaper. I remember Mercury wanted you something awful, but his Drafters wouldn’t let him pick you in the first round. Something about your rage metric.”

“You were higher than me? So you’re not Mercury then, because they chose a boy instead of me, and you’re not a Jupiter, because they took a gorydamn monstrous kid.” I try to remember who else was chosen before me, but I can’t, so I smile. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so vain. Then I wouldn’t know what Draft you were.”

I notice the knife under her black tunic, but I still can’t remember her from the Draft. Wasn’t paying attention. Cassius should have remembered her the way he looks at girls, but maybe he can only think of Quinn and her missing ear.

Our job is done. We can leave Mustang. She’s smart enough to figure out the rest. But leaving might be a problem without a horse, and I don’t think Mustang really needs hers.