Present day
Clo and Kyla made their way to the exterior of the grand ballroom. They used the crush of a queuing crowd to dart into an empty hallway when guards weren’t looking.
Clo turned on the pendant Ariadne had designed, a device that sent out a pulse as they moved through the building to create a digital map. It wasn’t to scale, but Ariadne had given it to Clo just in case the Evoli hid something in the blueprints. Clo would know where the cameras and sentries were, and all sorts of secrets hidden behind the walls.
“This little baby is lovely,” Clo murmured. “I don’t think I’m giving this back to Ari.”
Kyla rolled her eyes. “Thieving again, wee slumrat?”
“Only in my spare time, Commander.”
With the pendant’s help, they found an empty room. Kyla planted one of Ariadne’s scramblers on the wall panel, which would keep the footage of the abandoned hallway on a loop. Ariadne could have been beyond filthy rich if she’d decided to go into the black market instead of the resistance.
Quickly, Clo took out the bits of her toolkit that Rhea had cleverly sewn into her shirt. Clo and Kyla peeled off their finery to reveal dark jumpsuits. The clothes folded down to small cubes they attached to their belt.
Everything in the palace was made by the Evoli, who had different design aesthetics from the Tholosians. There were no ornate carvings to provide discreet handholds—the Evoli preferred their walls smooth and opalescent, as if they’d been built with finely crushed pearls. Beautiful, yes, but that complicated Clo’s plan. On the ceiling were the thin slats of a vent, but Clo couldn’t see a way to access it or how to pry it off the wall so they could get inside and burrow into the belly of the building.
Kyla clicked her tongue against her teeth as she considered their ascent into the vents. “No hope for it. We’re going to have to leave evidence behind.”
She reached down to her shoes and peeled off the outer layer of their soles to reveal the rough, sticky under layer. Similarly treated gloves from the bag at her waist that contained the smoke orbs followed. Clo did the same, wincing as her skin pinched against her prosthetic. She wished she’d had these when she and Ariadne had crawled through the dusty vents of the palace on Macella.
Kyla hadn’t asked about Clo’s leg—the commander didn’t know how much it could hurt sometimes. When Clo had sent her report on crawling through Macella’s vents and jumping off a damn building, she had made it seem fully functional, a minor inconvenience at most. Clo hoped it wouldn’t betray her.
With impressive aim, Kyla sent up a small grappling hook by the vent, wedged into the cornices of the ceiling. Then they began to climb.
Immediately, Clo wished the Evoli weren’t so fond of high ceilings and open spaces. The cables helped take some of the pressure off, and the soles and gloves held their weight, but everything hurt. Every footprint and handprint showed on the walls after them, leaving a clear trail of where they were going, like the salamanders that had crawled along the walls of the slums of Myndalia.
<That’s bad,> Clo commented.
<We can’t do anything about it now,> Kyla replied. <Come on. Time to crawl.>
They set off through the vents. Every fifteen seconds, the pendant against Clo’s chest buzzed, mapping another section of the palace as she moved.
Clo tried to reach Ariadne to make sure the building was mapping correctly. No response.
“Is something wrong with my Pathos?” Clo whispered to Kyla. “I can’t get through.”
A pause. “No luck for me, either.” Another pause. “The building might be blocking the signal.” But Kyla didn’t sound convinced. A Pathos’s signal could reach the ground from a ship in orbit.
Clo followed the map on her pendant until they reached the ballroom. The slats were wide enough to peer below. The ballroom was a riot of color: gold brocade, iridescent blues and greens. Clo couldn’t help but watch as people milled around the ballroom in their fine gowns and suits. They held flutes of sparkling wine, or cocktails with winged insects that fanned on the brim of the glass. Normally, Clo would have scoffed at such a display of extravagance, but she had work to do.
“I don’t see Sher,” she whispered to Kyla as she felt for the orbs at her belt. She lined them neatly below the vent. They’d chosen ones in reds, yellows, oranges, and blacks. A distraction that resembled firesmoke.
“Then we wait,” Kyla said simply. She stared intently at the revelers below. “Make sure your filters are secure. He’ll give us the signal if he needs us.”
More people arrived in a steady stream; from up there, Clo could feel the heat of bodies close together. If that contagion were released, everyone in this damn ballroom was a goner.
God of Survival, Salutem, don’t let me die, she thought.
Clo and Kyla camped out. Clo’s bad leg ached, but she’d rather be up in the vents than down in the ballroom rubbing shoulders with the top dipwells of the Empire, smiling at them and pretending they were in any way on the same side.
The dais, where the Archon and the Ascendant would sign the treaty, was still empty. The thrones for the leaders were raised high enough to look down on their combined people.
In the ballroom, the Evoli kept a physical distance from Tholosians, and the two sides didn’t speak or mingle more than they had to. In contrast to the music, the decorations, and the grandeur, these were enemies who had been fighting bitterly for hundreds of years. Generals from both sides—all present—had ordered countless deaths.
Beneath the glitter and perfume was the memory of smoke and blood, the sound of battle hidden behind the fake smiles and gentle laughter. Hands kept straying to where weapons would be. A hip, the small of the back.
Clo shifted, grunting softly with effort. Her knee was holding up as well as could be expected, but the skin was rubbing badly. If she wasn’t careful, she’d have to keep the prosthetic off the next few days while her sores healed. But she’d take that over the alternative.
The music grew into a proper fanfare. The Tholosian royals and higher-ups of the Empire and the Evoli Ascended and Oversouls made their way to the dais.
Where the Tholosians sparkled and glimmered over every inch of their bodies, the Evoli were sleeker. They wore billowing robes in pastels, belted tight about their waists. Yet while their garb was simple, the Oversouls wore ornate, elaborate headpieces that resembled woven antlers, encrusted with jewels and delicate chains of precious metals. They were taller than the Archon’s crown, which must have salted him off no end.
“Oh, gods,” Kyla breathed. “Eris.”
Clo peered down, her nose pressed to the grate of the vent, but she couldn’t see the small, dark-haired infuriating woman that had gotten herself kidnapped. Kyla’s hand lay heavy on Clo’s shoulder. “Behind Damocles.”
A jolt went through Clo. They’d changed Eris’s face back to Discordia’s: the pale blond hair, her golden eyes almost luminous beneath the lights. Small, doll-like features that gave the false impression of being delicate, vulnerable. Her headdress was an echo of the Evoli’s but darker, flaming opals glittering along the wicked points.
Clo had seen those features broadcast on icons all over the galaxy. It was the face that had stared down at Clo the night she lost her leg. It was the face of a woman Eris had left behind years before. And Damocles had forced Eris to wear that woman’s face.
Clo was fucking furious.
“I’m going to kill him,” Clo hissed.
Kyla waved a hand. “Shhh.”
The music was so loud, they could only catch parts of what Damocles said. They each picked up a smoke orb and put on goggles to protect their eyes from the stinging.
“Now?” Clo asked.
“Not until Sher gives the signal,” Kyla said, but she sounded uncertain.
Clo checked as Damocles gestured to the crowd below him, his acting skills far too good. What was he saying? Clo could barely concentrate on anything but Eris’s face: the vacant stare, skin that appeared ashen beneath the face powder. Gods, what had Damocles done to her? What the flames had he done?
Then Eris opened her mouth to reveal an empty, dark maw.
Clo stifled a gasp. Oh gods. Oh gods.
Kyla shook with rage. Clo felt horror curl through every part of her. What scared her more than the missing tongue was Eris’s body language.
She looked . . . defeated.
The Novan commander shook herself, breathing hard. “They’re giving each other their votive gifts. Where the hell is Sher?” Kyla asked, almost to herself. “He should be in place by now.”
The Evoli inclined their heads gravely at the Tholosians. The Archon looked ancient in his throne, for all his attempts to appear younger. It was strange to actually see the man who had led the Tholosian Empire for so long. The man who knew the horrible conditions of the slums in Myndalia and didn’t give a damn. So many deaths under his rule.
Clo wanted to throttle him with the expensive tassels dangling from his coat. Then she’d go for Damocles. Doing that would throw everything into disarray and chaos, but she didn’t care.
<Ariadne?> Clo tried one more time on her Pathos. <Any word on the weapon?>
Nothing.
Silt.
Clo clutched the cold metal of the orb tighter as the Archon gave the Evoli their gifts: elaborate, glittering opals that resembled those in Eris’s oversized headdress.
They were about to sign the truce. Clo squinted at the faces, still desperately searching for Sher in the face of his stolen Delegate.
“Fuck it,” Kyla said, ready to twist the orb. “We’ll have to do it and hope Cato and Nyx can get her. Ready?”
Clo started to nod and then froze as something cold as the end of a Mors blaster pressed into the back of her head.
“Stop,” said a voice she knew far too well.