Mallow Berrad sits with her back to Renhome City-1. Sunlight warms her dark skin and the smooth marble on which she sits. No hovering hunk of rock blots it out here. In lucky City-13, the sun shines bright and blaring on a sea of ten thousand skyscrapers like whitecaps on a churning sea, glittering all the way out to the curve of the world. Mallow Berrad’s eyes stare out at the concrete and steel horizon, but she sees none of it.
She sits unmoving. Elbows leaned on her knees. Spine Hunched. There are statues carved in intricate craft of stone that flows like draped silk in the wind, veils in marble and granite with arms upraised as they watch attentively over headstones and columbarium blocks. Between them, Mallow is still. Wind whips her hair and finds not a blink. Her face, chiseled, blank. Bedrock. Between set lips glows the tip of a cigarette, and the flare of orange glowing ashes stands as the only sign of slow and steady breath. Smoke curls idly from her nostrils.
It burns down to the filter—a column of unbroken ash—before her hand moves and she lifts the cigarette from her lips.
A tremor in her fingers fumbles the stub. She swipes ashes from her trousers onto the green grass.
There is no room for grass in Renhome City-1. No room for bodies, either. The dead are cremated and boxed in as tightly as they lived. But not hers; Mallow carried her fallen warrior back to her home city, one her former gang had conquered before Mallow bent them to her will. Arva died on her feet. Mallow would not abide her right hand being shelved in a niche like an unwanted birthday card stuffed in a desk drawer.
Her Steel Crown was sent off by an army. The streets of lucky Renhome City-13 were bathed red in the funeral march from the burning of dawn. Those who had once been her Lions carried her to her grave in the earth and swore new vengeful oaths in her honour.
It was a closed casket.
Mallow crushes the cigarette butt beneath her heel and stands. Her hand is steady as stone, and when she holds it out to her left, Nobun steps forward with her jacket in hand. She drapes it over her shoulder.
He has never seen her so shaken.
“Acker’s summit is in three hours,” Nobun says at her side. His voice crunches like wet gravel. “Tsetch expects our surrender. Expects our concession for the six.”
Mal nods, her expression unchanged. They both know what Venstra Tsetch has planned. Both know how predictable they are. They must demand blood for blood; the six who killed their sister-in-arms. The one who dared to wear her face while she lay dead inside.
Mal inhales, nostrils flared, still unmoving. She stares out at the skyline of City-13; one of countless where the red’s rule is undisputed.
The Triumvirate, no matter their funding or strategic planning, could never take them all. Nobody could. The Red Line were the rats of the world; it would never be rid of them.
“I presume we will make no such request.”
Finally, Mal turns at her lieutenant’s words. She claps a hand on Nobun’s shoulder. Loyal Nobun, she thinks with a wry smirk, my hound. Where would we be without you? He has been a perfect Silver Crown, able to see what she needs of him before she asks it.
“War will be terrible for us,” she says with a glace to the distance—the hulking shadow of Reflection hovers above the horizon like a beacon for the distant City-1. “It will bleed us horribly, and we will be only worse for it at the end. We will gain nothing from it.”
Venstra Tsetch’s judgement is sound, logical. In a way, she has to be impressed. Mal has no Steel Crown. Their ranks of Helms have been slashed. Their army, large as it is, lies disorganised in the face of the Triumvirate’s tactical precision. Venstra wants to offer six meaningless lives in exchange, knowing well that to do nothing in vengeance for Arva is unforgivable, and Mal’s position is too fragmented, too weak to demand anything more in concession.