I strip away my cloak and ball it up. My skin is coated in charcoal. I push the metal tongs into the spaces between the stones. It is like climbing my drill again except I’m stronger and I’m not wearing a frysuit. Easy. The Pegasus bounces against my chest as I pull myself up. I’m not even panting when I reach the top six minutes later.

My fingers cling to the stone just beneath the ramparts. I hang, listening to the passing sentry. Of course it is a slave. And she’s not stupid. She sees me as I pull myself over the rampart and shoves a spear against my throat. I flash my Mars ring and hold my finger to my lips.

“Why should I not call out?” she asks. She was once of Minerva.

“Did they tell you to guard the wall for enemies? I’m sure they did. But I’m of House Mars. The ring says so. I can’t be an enemy then, yes?”

She frowns. “The Primus told me to watch the walls for intruders and to kill or call out …”

“This is my home. I am rightful Primus of House Mars. I am your master and I demand you continue to watch the wall for intruders. It is imperative.” I wink. “I swear Virginia would be happy if you followed your orders to the letter.”

She cocks her head at Mustang’s real name and looks me over.

“My Primus is alive?”

“House Minerva has not yet fallen,” I say.

The girl’s face almost breaks she smiles so hard. “Well … then … I suppose this is your home. Can’t stop you from entering it. Bound by oath to obey, I am. Wait … I know you. They said you were dead.”

“Thank your Primus that I draw breath.”

I learn from her that the Housemembers sleep while the slaves guard the fortress at night. That is the problem with slaves. They are so willing to find a way around their duty, and so excited to share secrets. I leave her behind and steal into the keep using a key she accidentally dropped into my hand.

Sneaking through my home, I am tempted to pay Cassius a visit. But I’m not here to kill him. Violence is the fool’s way out. Sometimes I’m the fool, but tonight I’m feeling smart. I’m also not there to steal the standard. They will be guarding that. No. I’m there to remind them that they once were afraid of me. That I am the best of them all. I can go where I please. Do what I please.

I stay in the shadows even though I could use the same argument on every slave guard they have. Instead, I carve a slingBlade on every door in the keep. I slip into the warroom and carve a slingBlade into the huge table there to create the myth. Then I carve a skull into Cassius’s chair and slab a knife deep into the back of the wood chair to create the rumor.

As I leave the way I came, I see the hillside north of the castle erupt in flame. The brush stacked in the shape of the Reaper’s slingBlade burns hot in the night.

Sevro, if he is still with Mars, will find me. And I could use the little bastard’s help.

36

A SECOND TEST

In order to have an army, I must be able to feed it. So I will take the ovens of Ceres that Jupiter and Mars both lust over.

The new members of our band from House Minerva find it perfectly reasonable to accept my authority. I don’t fool myself. Yes, they were impressed by me hiding my Howlers inside dead horses months ago, and they remember me defeating Pax. But it’s only because Mustang trusts me that they obey. We leave those of House Diana as slaves for now. I need to earn their trust. Tactus, oddly, is the only one who seems to trust me. Then again, the laconic youth was all smiles when I told him I’d be sewing him inside of a dead horse over a month ago. There are two more of Diana that I sewed away. The others call them the DeadHorses, and they each wear braids of white horsehair. I think they’re a bit mental.

If there is anything in the woods and highlands, it is an abundance of wolves. We hunt them to train our new recruits in my way of fighting. No glamorous cavalry charges. No damn lances. And certainly no stupid rules of engagement. Everyone gets cloaks, which are smelly things as they dry and we peel away the rot. Everyone except Pax. They haven’t yet made a wolf big enough for him.

“House Ceres is no stranger to siege,” Mustang says. She’s right. At night, they seem to have more soldiers awake than in the day. They watch for sneak assaults. Blazing bundles of tinder light the base of their walls at night. Somehow, they have dogs now. Those prowl along the battlements. The way from the water is guarded ever since I tried sending Sevro in through the latrines long ago during a sneak attack I arranged when we were at war with Minerva. He barely forgave me for that one. The Ceres students come out no longer. They’ve learned the risks of battling stronger Houses on open ground. They’ll hole up for winter, and when the cold and hunger have weakened the other Houses, they’ll emerge from their fortress in the spring—strong, prepared, and organized.

But they’ll never make it to the spring.

“So we attack during the day?” Mustang guesses.

“Naturally,” I say. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother speaking. She knows my thoughts. Even the mad ones.

This idea is an especially mad one. We practiced it in a clearing in the Northwoods for a whole day after flattening out the wood with axes. Pax makes the plan possible. We hold competitions to see who has the best balance on the wood. Mustang wins. Horsefaced Milia is second, and she’s spitting bitter that she doesn’t beat Mustang. I’m third.

As we did when springing the trap on House Mars, we sneak as close as we dare the night before and bury ourselves in the deep snow. Again, Mustang and I pair off, huddling tight with one another under the snow. Tactus tries pairing with Milia, but she tells him to go slag himself.

“If you look at it properly, I was trying to do you a favor,” he mutters over at Milia as he huddles down under Pax’s smelly armpit. “You’re about as pretty as a gargoyle’s wart. So when else would you get a chance to snuggle with the likes of me? Ungrateful sow.”

Mustang and the other girls snort their derision. Then the quiet of night and the chill of the open ice plain bite into us and we grow silent.

Come morning, Mustang and I shiver into one another, and a new snowfall threatens to ruin our plan, burying us even deeper in the plain. But the wind is manageable and the flakes do not bury us too deep as they spin through the air. I’m first up, though I do not move. And soon after I yawn away the last vestige of sleep, my army wakes organically, one student stirring and grumbling into another till there’s a snake of sniffing and coughing Golds buried together in a shallow tunnel beneath the snow’s surface. I can’t see them, but I hear their waking despite the sound of the snowstorm’s wind.

Ice formed around me in the night outside my thick cloaks. Mustang’s hands are inside my pelts, warm against my side. Her breath heats my neck. As I stir, she yawns and straightens, pulling a little away as she stretches, catlike, under the snow. Snow crumbles in between us.

“Gory hell, this is miserable,” Dax, Milia’s companion, mutters. I can’t see him in our snow tunnel.

Mustang nudges me. We can just barely see Tactus curled into the hollow of Pax’s armpit. The two men snuggle together and wake like lovers, only to flinch away from one another when their ice-crusted eyelids flutter open.

“Wonder which is Romeo,” Mustang whispers, her throat raspy.

I chuckle and carve a hole in the roof of our tunnel to see that my band of twenty-four is alone in the plains except for early morning horse scouts in the distance. They will not be a problem. Wind rolls in from the north river, biting deep into my face.

“You ready for this?” Mustang asks me with a grin as I bring my head back into our shelter. “Or are you too cold?”