Morning Star

“Devilish ultimatum.” Antonia applauds from the ground. “And you call yourself a Red. I think you were more at home with us than you are with them. Isn’t that right?” She laughs. “It is isn’t it?”

“You have an hour to think it over.”

I walk away from them, letting them stew in it. “Darrow,” Thistle calls after me. “Tell Sevro I’m sorry. Darrow, please!” I turn and walk back to her slowly.

“You dyed your hair,” I say.

“Little Bronzie just wanted to fit in,” Antonia purrs, stretching her long legs. She’s more than a head and a half taller than Thistle. “Don’t blame the runt, unrealistic expectations.”

Thistle stares out at me, hands clutching the bars. “I’m sorry, Darrow. I didn’t know it would go so far. I couldn’t have…”

“Yes, you did. You’re not an idiot. And don’t be pathetic and claim to be one. I understand how you could do it to me,” I say slowly. “But Sevro was supposed to be there. So were the Howlers.” She looks at the ground, unable to meet my gaze. “How could you do that to him? To them?”

She has no answer. I touch her hair with my hand. “We liked you the way you were.”

I join Sevro, Mustang, and Victra in the brig’s monitoring room. Two techs lean back in ergonomic chairs, several dozen holos floating around them at once. “They said anything yet?” I ask.

“Not yet,” Victra answers. “But pot’s stirred and I’ve cranked the heat.”

Sevro’s watching Thistle on the holoDisplay. “Did you want to talk with Thistle?” I ask.

“Who?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “Never heard of her.” I can tell he’s wounded by seeing her again. Wounded even more because he tells himself to be hard, but this betrayal—by one of his own Howlers—cuts at his core. Still he plays it off. Not sure if it’s for Victra, for me, or for himself. Probably all three.

After several minutes, Antonia and Thistle drip with sweat. Per my recommendation, we’ve made the cells forty degrees Celsius to amp up their irritability. Gravity is jacked up a fraction too. Just outside the realm of perception. So far, Thistle’s done nothing but weep and Antonia has been touching the bruise on her cheek to see if any lasting damage has been done to her face. “You need to come up with a plan,” Antonia says idly through the bars.

“What plan?” Thistle asks from the far corner of her own cell. “They’re going to kill us even if we give them information.”

“You weeping little cow. Pick your chin up. You’re embarrassing your scar. You’re House Mars, aren’t you?”

“They know we’re listening,” Sevro says. “Least, Antonia does.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t matter,” Mustang replies. “Highly intelligent prisoners often play games with their captors. It’s the self-confidence that can make them even more vulnerable to psychological manipulation because they think they’re still in control.”

“You know this from your own extensive personal experience being tortured?” Victra asks. “Do tell me about that.”

“Quiet,” I say, turning up the holo’s volume.

“I’m going to tell them everything,” Thistle’s saying to Antonia. “I don’t give a shit about this anymore.”

“Everything?” Antonia asks. “You don’t know everything.”

“I know enough.”

“I know more,” Antonia says.

“Who would ever trust you?” Thistle snaps. “Matricidal psychopath! If you even knew what people really thought about you…”

“Oh, darling, you can’t really be so stupid.” Antonia sighs sympathetically. “You are. So sad to watch.”

“What do you mean?”

“Use your head, you little simpleton. Just try, please.”

“Slag you, bitch.”

“I’m sorry, Thistle,” Antonia says, arching her back against the bars. “It’s the heat.”

“Or syphilitic madness,” Thistle mutters, now pacing, arms wrapped around herself.

“How…base. It’s in the upbringing really.”

I consider pulling Thistle out, extracting the information she’s willing to give. “Could be a ruse,” Mustang says. “Something Antonia designed in case they were captured. Or maybe my brother’s play. That’d be like him to sow misinformation. Especially if they just let themselves be captured.”

“Let themselves be captured?” Victra asks. “There’s over fifty dead Golds in the morgues of this ship who would disagree with that statement.”

“She’s right,” Sevro says. “Let it play. Might make Antonia open up more when we get her in a room.”

Antonia closes her eyes, resting her head against the bars, knowing Thistle will ask what she meant by “use her head.” And sure enough, Thistle does. “What did you mean when you said if I tell them everything, I’d have no more use?”

Antonia looks back at her through the bars. “Darling. You really haven’t thought this through. I’m dead. You said it yourself. I can try to deny it, but…my sister makes me look like the village cat. I shot her in the spine and played acid drip with her back for almost a year. She’s going to peel me like an onion.”

“Darrow wouldn’t let her do that.”

“He’s Red, we’re just devils in crowns to him.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“I know a Goblin that would.”

“His name’s Sevro.”

“Is it?” Antonia couldn’t care less. “Point’s the same. I’m dead. You might have a chance. But they only need one of us alive for information. The question you have to ask yourself is if you tell them everything, will they still keep you alive? You need a strategy. Something to hold back. To barter incrementally.”

Thistle approaches the bars that separate the women. “You’re not fooling me.” Her voice becomes brave. “But you know what, you are done. Darrow is going to win and maybe he should. And you know what? I’m going to help him.” Thistle looks up at the camera in the corner of her cell, taking her eyes off Antonia. “I’ll tell you what he’s planning, Darrow. Let me make…”