Apollo watches me, impervious in his armor. My pack has been blasted back down the hill. I see the Jackal struggling on the mountainside. He seems stronger now. A distortion follows him. Some other Proctor giving him strength. Venus, I think.

I scream out the rage that’s been building in me since I went under Mickey’s knife.

Apollo says something I can’t hear. I curse him and swing my blade again. He catches it and tosses it into the snow. The invisible layer of pulseShield around his fist strikes my face—never touching, yet sending agony into the nerves. I scream and fall. Then he picks me up by my hair and we rise into the storm. He soars on gravBoots till we’re three hundred meters up; I dangle from his hand. The snow swirls around us. He speaks again, adjusting some frequency so my damaged ears can hear.

“I will use small words so that you are sure to understand. We have your little Mustang. If you do not lose in your next encounter with the ArchGovernor’s son so all the Drafters can bear witness, then I will ruin her.”

Mustang.

First Pax. Now the girl who sang Eo’s song by the fire. The girl who pulled me from the mud. The girl who curled beside me as the smoke swirled in our little cave. Brilliant Mustang, who would follow me out of choice. And this is where I led her. I did not expect this. I did not plan for this. They have her.

My stomach sinks. Not again. Not like Father. Not like Eo. Not like Lea. Not like Roque. Not like Pax. They will not kill her too. This son of a bitch will not kill anyone.

“I’m going to rip out your bloodydamn heart!”

He punches me in the belly, still holding me by my hair. His face is strange as he tries to place the word. Bloodydamn. We’re floating in the air now, high. Very high. I dangle like a hanging man as he hits me again. I moan. But as I do, I remember one thing I learned from Fitchner as I clapped his shoulder in the woods. If Apollo is holding my hair and I do not feel his pulseShield, then it is turned off. And it is turned off over his entire body. He has physical recoilArmor everywhere else, except one place.

“You are a stupid little puppet, I realize now,” he says idly. “A mad, angry little puppet. You won’t do as I say, will you?” He sighs. “I’ll find another way. Time to cut your strings.”

He drops me.

And I float there, inches from his outstretched hand.

I go nowhere, because beneath fur and cloth, I’m wearing the gravBoots I stole from Fitchner when I assaulted him in Apollo’s warroom. And Apollo’s shield is down. And he’s pissed me off. He gawks at me, confused. I flex the knifeRing’s blade out and punch him in the face, jamming the blade through his visor into his eye socket four times, jerking upward so that he dies.

“You reap what you sow!” I scream at him as he fades. All the rage I’ve felt swells in me, blinding me, and fills me with a pulsing, tangible hatred that seeps away only as Apollo’s boots deactivate and he tumbles down through the swirling storm.

I find my Howlers around his body. The snow is red. They stare at me as I descend, my knifeRing wet with the blood of a Peerless Scarred. I had not intended to kill him. But he should not have taken her. And he should not have called me a puppet.

“They took Mustang,” I tell my pack.

They look on silently. The Jackal no longer matters.

“So now we take Olympus.”

The smiles they give one another are as chilling as the snow.

Sevro cackles.

42

WAR ON HEAVEN

There is no time to waste in going back to the fortress. I have the boys and girls I need. I have the hardest of all the armies. The small, the wicked, the loyal and quick. I steal Apollo’s recoilArmor. The golden plate coils around my limbs like liquid. I give his gravBoots to Sevro, but they are ludicrously large on him. I strip off my own boots, his father’s, so he can wear them; they jammed my toes something awful. I put on Apollo’s boots instead.

“Whose are these?” Sevro asks me.

“Daddy’s,” I tell him.

“So you guessed.” Sevro laughs.

“He’s locked in Apollo’s dungeons.”

“The stupid Pixie!” He laughs again. They have an odd relationship.

I keep Apollo’s razor, his helmet, his pulseFist, and his pulseShield along with his recoilArmor. Sevro gets the ghostCloak. I tell him to be my shadow. And then I tell my Howlers to tie their belts together.

GravBoots can lift a man in starShell as he carries an elephant in each arm. They are easily strong enough to lift me and my Howlers, who hang from my arms and legs on belt harnesses as I carry us through the swirling snowstorm up and up to Olympus. Sevro carries the others.

The Proctors have played their games. They pushed and pushed for so long. They knew I was something dangerous, something different. Sooner or later, they had to know I would snap and come to cut them down. Or perhaps they think I’m still a child. The fools. Alexander was a child when he ruined his first nation.

We rise through the storm and fly over the slopes of Olympus. It floats nearly a mile above the Argos. There are no doors. No dock. Snow covers the slopes. Clouds mask its glittering peak. I lead the Howlers to that bone-pale citadel at the top of the steep incline. It strikes up out of the mountain like a marble sword. Howlers unfasten their belts in pairs, dropping down on the highest balcony.

We crouch on the stone terrace. From here we can see the misty lands of Mars, the rocky hills and fields of Minerva, the Greatwoods of Diana, the mountains where my army garrisons Jupiter. I would be down there. The fools should have left well enough alone.

They shouldn’t have taken Mustang.

I wear recoilArmor of gold. It is a second skin. My face alone is exposed. I take ash from one of the Howlers and streak it across my cheeks and mouth. My eyes burn with anger. Blond hair is wild to the shoulders, unbound. I pull my slingBlade and clench the shortwave pulseFist in my left. A razor hangs from my waist; I don’t know how to use it. Dirt under my nails. Frostbite on my pinkie and middle finger of the left hand. I stink. My cloak stinks like the dead thing it is. It hangs limp behind me. White stained with a Proctor’s blood. I pull up the hood. We all do. We look like wolves. And we smell blood.

The Drafters better enjoy this or I’m a dead man.

“We want Jupiter,” I tell my Howlers. “Find me him. Neutralize the others if we come across any. Thistle, you take my gravBoots and fetch reinforcements. Go.”

Barefoot, I blow open the doors with my pulseFist. We find Venus lying in bed in a silk shift, her armor dripping snow from its stand by the fire; she’s only just returned from helping the Jackal. Grapes, cheesecake, and wine are on a nightstand. The Howlers pin her down. Four, just for effect. We tie Venus to the bedposts. Her golden eyes are wide with shock. She can hardly speak.

“You cannot! I am Scarred! I am Scarred!” is all she can manage. She says this is illegal, says she is a Proctor, says we’re not allowed to assault them. How did we get here? How? Who helped us? Whose armor am I wearing? Oh, it’s Apollo’s. It’s Apollo’s. Where is Apollo? A man’s gentle clothing is in the corner. They are lovers. “Who helped you?”

“I helped myself,” I tell her, and pat her shining hand with a dagger. “How many other Proctors are left?” She has no words. This is not supposed to happen. It has never happened. Children do not take Olympus, not in history on all the planets was this even thought of. We gag her anyway and leave her tied, half naked, window open so she gets a taste of the chill.

The Howlers and I slink through the spire. I hear Thistle bringing reinforcements. Tactus will be here to bring his own breed of wrath. And Milia will come. Nyla soon. My army rises for Mustang. For me. For the Proctors who cheated us and poisoned our food and water and cut free our horses. We go room to room. Searching frigidariums, calderiums, steam rooms, ice rooms, baths, pleasure chambers filled with Pinks, holoImmersion tanks, for the Proctors. We take down Juno in the baths. Howlers splash in to wrestle her out. She has no weapons, but cloaked Sevro has to stun her with a stolen scorcher after she breaks Clown’s arm and starts drowning him with her legs. Apparently she did not leave like she ought to have either. All these rule breakers.