“Once more unto the breach,” I murmur, as if Roque, Victra, or Tactus could hear me. I activate my gravBoots and move forward.

The passage is narrow as it curls beneath the wall near the bottom of the riverbed. We travel two abreast. So I take the best fighter with me, Ragnar, as we move first through the underwater passage. My com crackles with news of the battle above. We’re losing at the wall.

Ragnar and I clear the tunnel together. I half expected a Bellona ambush, but none comes. The Sons did their job well. We wait on the opposite side of the wall, still submerged, one hundred meters down at the bottom of the riverbed. The rest of my cadre join Ragnar and me—Mustang, Sevro, and the remaining Howlers. Fifty more Golds and three times that many Obsidians and Grays.

I speak into my com when we’ve all gathered at the bottom of the river. “You know your orders.”

Sevro bumps armored fists with me. Mustang does the same. Ragnar salutes with his fist balled and against his heart. Jupiter yawns into his com. Clown, Pebble, and Weed rile up the Howlers, stirring silt at the bottom of the river. The seconds tick by. My razor is looped about my arm. PulseFist in my left hand. Feel the thump of my heart and the chill of the pendant on my chest. Hear the crackle of chaos outside. My Helldiver hands ball. My eyes close. Sevro sends up a probe to see if the riverbank is safe.

I’m to find the Sovereign.

Ragnar is to open the gates.

Mustang is to lower the shield so Roque can send reinforcements and we can take the city in one fell swoop. I don’t want her to leave me, but I can trust no one else with the task.

Trust. I must trust that she will live, trust that her Obsidians will protect her, and that she will protect herself. There’s a weight pressing down on my heart, a fear that she will not come back. It feels like she’s already falling into darkness. If she dies, she’ll die believing a lie. I promise myself I’ll tell her if we survive this. She deserves that much.

Stay alive. Stay alive. All of you, stay alive.

Mustang departs, moving farther downriver, following it for kilometers till she reaches the park near the generators. I watch her go and flounder for something to hold on to, someone to pray to. My father is with me, and so is Eo. I feel them in the beating of my heart.

I close my eyes.

Sevro gathers the probe he sent above and tells me that we are clear, just a girl playing in the mud above us.

“Fight for each other,” I say over the com to those at my side in the riverbed. “Or me.” We activate our gravBoots and soar through the water, bursting through the surface of the river like inky monsters, our black starShells dripping as we fly up over the riverbank, muddy from rain that fell before the shields were raised to protect the city. Beneath us, a single unarmored Brown girl stands, ankle deep in the mud. I stare at her from behind my terrible black helm. She should be hiding with her family, not out in a besieged city. Something is wrong.

When she sees us, she snatches from a basket a small globe device. Lightning slashes the sky. Her best dress gathers mud on the hem, turning an even deeper brown.

“Shoot her!” Sevro snarls.

I knock his hand aside. A tree explodes instead. And as I look high above where, on the wall, far out of range of the probe Sevro sent up, and far beyond the limits of the EMP globe the girl carries, perch Bellona knights and their Obsidian retinue. Waiting.

The girl presses a button on the globe.

And that’s when we begin to die.

PART IV

Rise so high, in mud you lie.

—KARNUS AU BELLONA

40

MUD

The EMP detonates. Sounds like a giant child gasping when pricked by a needle. Our electronics die. Our gravBoots sputter. StarShell synapses fail, causing the massive metal suits to be gripped by gravity. We plummet down. Most fall into the mud of the riverbank. I splash into the water. Sinking. Sinking. Ears popping. Down and down till I lodge into the mud of the river bottom. Hitting hard. Legs buckling under the weight of my starShell. Fall on my back. Can’t see my men. Only saw shapes moving over the surface of the water as I fell. Now too deep to see anything except how the river darkens with blood. Occasional lightning flashes silhouette fastsinking bodies.

I can’t move. My starShell is too heavy. I lie like a turtle, half stuck in mud at the bottom of the river. Confused. Fear rides in me. It happened so fast. Can’t even look to my left or my right to see who is with me. My com is dead. If it weren’t, I’d probably hear screams, curses.

This starShell brought me from space to land. A life raft, a personal castle in the middle of a war. Now it’s my coffin.

Heart thudding. Want to scream.

Hyperventilating. Terror traps itself in my chest, tensing me, making me swallow the air, eating it as though it’ll give me power to move. Slow down. Slow down. Think. Think. Two bodies sink near me. Heavy in their armor, they fall fast to join the others on the bottom. No grace in death, spilling blood as they go. When the killers finish with those stuck in the mud of the riverbank, they’ll come for us down here. But they don’t need to. I slow my breathing. Limited oxygen left in the suit. Recycler offline.

Cassius knew my plan. It had to have been him. Or was I betrayed?

I told no one but the Sons and Sevro and Mustang. None of them could have ratted. He just knew. That bloody bastard. If I could surrender, I would. I’d save the lives of those with me. But I don’t have a com.

I jerk my body around, trying to push myself off my back. But I’m too lodged in the mud, and my suit is more than one ton of metal. I can’t shed the weight. Can’t get the starShell off. I need the electronics for that. I push up with my arms. Nothing. The mud swallows me. Mustang got away. I think. I hope. Will she know we’re down here?

I look for Sevro, for Ragnar, my Howlers. Dark shapes around me. I’m dizzy. Slow the bloodydamn breathing. Slow. Think. They won’t even bother coming to kill me. I’ll die at the bottom of the river, staring up at the surface as one by one, my friends fall down to join me. So alone. Sevro. Ragnar. Pebble. Weed. Clown. They’re dead. Dying. Watching the same thing as me. Or maybe they’re on the bank as the Bellona walk among the paralyzed suits of armor, killing at will. I want to cry at my impotence.

Stop. Do something. Move.

“Rise so high, in mud you lie.” It echoes in memory.

This is the third time they’ve left me in the muck and mire to die. I grit my teeth till I feel enamel crumble off as I put all my strength into moving my right arm. Slowly, so slowly, it makes an exodus from the sucking pressure of the mud. But it is all that’s freed. I won’t be able to get off my back. I’m too sunken in. Too heavy in the shell. Then I see it. When the EMP blast detonated, it shut down the electrical synapses, which means the suit froze, but the razor still works, and there it is like a white python around my arm.

It will save your life for the price of a limb. Those are the words they told me when they put the slingBlade in my hand as a boy. Salvation is sacrifice. The razor’s impulse is chemical. Its switch will respond to me. It will straighten. But around my arm … I have to be fast.

Taking a breath, I close my eyes, feeling the toggle against my suit’s thumb. I have to be faster than a licking flame. Faster than a pitviper. I flick the switch on.