Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  He steps close to me. “You didn’t come back to save us. You came back to kill them.” He suppresses a shudder of anger. “You’re rolling dice in the dark. Reinforcements may already be en route. At least try to run their blockade. Get a signal out. Contact the Senate. Learn their intentions. You have a solemn duty to keep the men alive as long as possible. And if you use those engines, we’re as bad as the enemy.”

  “Harnassus. Look around. Does today look like a day where I am inclined to entertain anyone’s moral protestations? I am going forward. Are you with me, Imperator?”

  “And if I’m not?”

  “My left hand can’t have a mind of its own.”

  At my command, ten black-clad Howlers file out of the Necromancer. The chameleon properties of their pulseArmor ripple to match the pale ice. Felix tilts his buzzed head.

  Harnassus’s face falls. “You would use Howlers…on me?”

  “That choice is yours.”

  The most terrifying Golds, Obsidians, and Grays in the legions stare him down. Each one would kill him for me, or slam cuffs on his wrists and throw him in the brig. Harnassus glances at his Blacksmiths, wondering if they would do the same. He comes to the correct conclusion and lowers his voice. “If you are forced to choose between saving our army and killing theirs, I need your word you will choose us.”

  “We are an expeditionary force. Our mission is to find and destroy the enemy.” I grin. “Well, we’ve found ’em. Your answer, Imperator.”

  He stares at the ground, hands quivering at his sides. He lost the army as soon as I returned. I understand him well enough to know he once harbored thoughts of stepping in if I took us to the edge. Now he knows that was never an option. “Damn you,” he says and looks up. “Damn you.” Though the anger never leaves his eyes, he delivers his salute with a precision few would think his slumped body could manage. He holds it far too long for my tastes. “Hail Reaper.”

  “Sir…” Rhonna says from behind. “It’s Pup One.”

  In the Necromancer’s communications bay, a meter-tall hologram of Alexandar warps in and out, eroded by the jamming tech from Atalantia’s fleet. Harnassus and Orion crowd in behind me.

  “Lost…Fear…in the…Ladon.”

  “Does that mean Fear’s going after Eleusis?” I ask. “Did he take the bait?”

  “…bait…no…from…Ang…” Harnassus crosses his arms and strains to hear Alexandar. “Distress…from…No…cation.”

  “Repeat. Pup One. Repeat.”

  “Did not take bait. No movement on Eleusis….received a distress call from Angelia. Communication from…Angelia…since 06…”

  “Angelia…” I murmur. Angelia is a small city in the mid-eastern Ladon, one we used for civilian evacuation from the cities surrounding our killbox. It’s under the Northern Shield Chain, but not a generator nexus like Eleusis. Atlas was supposed to attack Eleusis. I left it wide open for him, practically begging to be assaulted.

  Perhaps it begged too much.

  Harnassus’s jaw muscles work overtime.

  “The bastard knows. He guessed your plan.”

  “Specious assumption,” Orion replies. “Angelia doesn’t have a generator like Eleusis. It’s under the shadow of Kydon’s.”

  “Then what does he want there?” Harnassus asks. “What does it have? Darrow?”

  I can’t wait for further intel. A decision must be made. But if I play my hand too soon, it all falls apart. Dammit. What went wrong? “Harnassus, you’re done here. I want you back in Heliopolis.”

  “Away from the fight with the civilians and rear echelon?” he asks.

  “The fight will be at Tyche. When we lose the air, we’ll need you to continue to supply us reinforcements via the gravLoop. And we need to protect the integrity of the command chain. If I fall in the desert and Orion falls with the engines, the army must have a commander.”

  That’s the thing about Harnassus. Whatever our differences, when the enemy comes, he’s got my back. He snaps a salute. As he turns, he glares at Orion. I watch her as he departs. One by one, my bodyguards slide down the passage into the garage below. They know what’s coming. Here we go again. The thought fills me with exhaustion.

  “I need you at BlueReach One,” I tell Orion. “Take any of the shuttles, get the rest of the pilots to their engines.” I grab her arm as she moves to the passage. “We do not raise the Storm Gods above primary horizon. Swear to me.”

  “On my life.”

  I bring her forehead to mine. “From Vanguard till Vale, sister.”

  She smiles in remembrance of that old ship where we met. “Vanguard till Vale, brother.” She departs and takes something of me with her. You never know anymore when you will see a friend again. Or if. Of all the people I know, Orion has never said what she would do after the war. I feel a need to know now, but she’s already calling to her storm pilots and shoving them toward shuttles.

  “You think she’s all there?” Rhonna says from the disembarkation plank. “If she goes Blood Red…”

  “I have an insurance plan.”

  “ ’Course you do.”

  I turn to her. About to tell her to go with Harnassus, when I see she understands what I mean…what exactly I mean by insurance plan on Orion. Fuck. She sees right through me.

  “Where is it?” she asks. “Just in case…”

  In case I lie dead on the battlefield, she means.

  When I asked Glirastes to build the sync hardware for the Storm Gods, I had him construct a safety valve so that the Blues running it couldn’t decide the fate of the planet without me. I pull the master switch from my coat and brandish it at Rhonna.

  “And in armor?” she asks.

  “Second thigh box. Right leg.”

  And like that, she ensures her place at my side. I’m sorry, brother.

  I send a message to the Howlers: “Alexandar, tell Thraxa to reconnoiter Angelia. Do not engage the Fear Knight. I’m on my way.”

  “LYSANDER AU LUNE. HOW vital you look, for a ghost.” Atalantia lifts me from my knees to embrace me in her meditation chamber. “Look, Hypatia, our old friend,” she croons. The tamed black vasta serpent that coils about Atalantia’s throat like a necklace eyes me with reptilian indifference. “Go on, my dear, give dear Lysander a kiss.”

  I’d forgotten how terrifying it is to feel the cold scales of Venus’s most venomous creature against your lips. As I pull back from the kiss, I watch the snake’s chameleon scales wash pale to match my skin tone, and then darken as it coils back around Atalantia’s neck. “She remembers you!” Atalantia croons.

  Her meditation chamber is more pleasant than her jewelry. Unlike Grandmother, Atalantia enjoys a little chaos. Her chamber is a garden with some of the most esoteric vegetation I have ever seen. Under a dome of stars, helix trees with violet leaves wend like DNA strands. Birds sing. And even a monkey or two swings in the trees. Were it not for Mercury turning outside the viewport, I would not know I was on a battleship.

  My favorite touch is the carnivorous orchids perched upon babbling cupid fountains. Their tongues reach for me as I look at Atalantia.

  Like Ajax, Atalantia has changed in my absence. Now in her late forties, the youngest Grimmus sister is lean and hungry-looking. She looks not a day over twenty-five except in the eyes. But where once reclined the whimsical heartbreaker of the Palatine now stands a soldier.

  Gone are the gowns and the jewels and the hair swaying in braids down past her lower back. Gone are the diamond nails and spiced champagne flutes and the halls filled with muscled Pink paramours. The gowns have been replaced by a dramatic black uniform with rows of golden spikes and a death’s-head on each shoulder, and the paramours by a ship full of the intrepid killers from my generation, the ice-eyed veterans of her own, and the remaining legends of the one before.

  Atalantia’s hair is fade
d on the sides, in short braids on the top. One could almost mistake her for one of those humorless martial Martians she used to mock.

  Seeing her again is like touching a fragment of home. More even than seeing Ajax or Kalindora. She was close with my parents. While I have always feared Atlas, my father’s best friend, I have never feared my mother’s. In many ways, Atalantia was as much a protector to me as Aja was.

  We are joined by Ajax, Kalindora, and, via hologram, an endangered species—the Primuses of the remaining houses of the Conquering. They are Carthii, the rich and licentious shipbuilders of Venus; the purity-obsessed Falthe, nomadic after their lands on Earth fell; and Votum, the poetic, yet ultimately practical metal-mining magnates and builders of Mercury, recently evicted, of course.

  Absent are the upstart families who have risen through war still deemed petty by this lot. And, most notably, the ancient Saud, the infantry purveyors of Venus. Dido’s family are the chief rivals of the Carthii, Atalantia’s strongest allies. Their absence speaks volumes.

  So this is still a den of carnivores. It will prove a difficult audience. At least I am spared from telling Julia au Bellona of Cassius’s fate at the hands of the Rim. She is not here.

  “I grieved to hear of your father’s death,” I say to Atalantia according to court protocol. “Long was his toil. Great were his deeds. May he rest unburdened in the Void.”

  Beneath heavy lids, her eyes flash like matchheads. They search my face, the room, for more fuel to burn. They fall on my vestments and dance with fire. “Dear child, I do say, your fashion seems to have become rather bleak…”

  “Your father—”

  “Did I teach you nothing? Sweet Lysander! Idleness is no reason to discount the hoof maintenance of your steed, just as war is no excuse for poor tailoring. We will have to amend your sins at once. It is a matter of self-respect. I have three of the premiere tailors in all Venus aboard. One week with them, and you will look like a king.”

  That is a dangerous word in this company.

  It is better I say nothing.

  She sighs and looks up at the stars. I spare a glance for the giant mural that dominates the far wall. It is the one Octavia commissioned of our family, and our closest allies, the gens Grimmus. Ajax, Atlas, and Aja stare out, but of the dead, nothing can be seen of their faces.

  Atalantia has painted them out.

  Including mine.

  “Father always thought it would be Lorn who would do him in, one way or another,” she says, noting my interest in the painting and looking at her father, whose death shroud is freshly painted. “He wouldn’t have minded that, or even Nero. But a cur, a half-breed, and a slave?” She makes a faint sibilant sound. “What an indecorous age we inhabit, dear boy. No one gets the death they deserve. It is most uncouth.”

  “What sort of farce is this, Atalantia?” mutters Scorpio au Votum’s hologram. He has always been a pedantic, mathematical creature. He has also just eclipsed one hundred years of age, and is on his sixteenth paramour. “We hardly have the time for this…sideshow. There are logistics to discuss.”

  Atalantia rolls her eyes to me. As if saying “Look what I must bear,” but there’s still a gulf between us. She is wary of my intentions, as is only natural.

  “Farce?” Ajax hisses, coming to my defense. “And what is farcical about Lysander returning from the grave, Scorpio?”

  “At this late hour, a lost boy stumbles to us from the fringes of civilization on an enemy ship?” Scorpio scoffs. “Pardon my incredulity, but it seems devious engines are at work.”

  “How I love the mausoleum of conspiracies in your mind, Scorpio. Such a delight. But I wonder, do you intend to accuse me of devious engineering?” Atalantia asks.

  “I was suggesting the lupine variety.” He wasn’t. “But, since you ask, I would remind you that Mercury belongs to my family, not the gens Grimmus, not the gens Lune, not this confederacy of Two Hundred we have cobbled together to include even the most diluted blood. We built Mercury. We tamed its orbit.”

  “Silenius and his heirs did pay for it….” Kalindora adds.

  In the mind of the Votum Primus, the youth of Kalindora and her pitiful bloodline, one a scant three hundred years old, is of little concern. He rails on. “Pray tell, Atalantia, do you truly believe the support of the heir will make us forget our deed to this planet? No. No. Precocious as you are, you are not the only one with an army. You are first amongst equals, but that does not make you our Sovereign. Nor will it ever.”

  Atalantia smiles at him. “If I mistook that for a threat, Scorpio, I might insist you have Atlas over for a midnight tea. I know, you can invite your lovely children: Cicero, Porcia, Ovidius, Horatia. Why not just invite the whole lot?”

  Atlas’s name has a chilling effect on the room. But it goes deeper than their fear of just that man. In an era in which these Primuses have witnessed the extinction of genetic lines as old as their own, threats to family do not just endanger the heart, but the survival of their ancient names.

  “Of course, I am no Sovereign,” Atalantia says, sharp as a tack now. “What need have I of groveling sycophants? Or the burden of planetary management? My province is war, my goodman. Only war. In it I have proven myself your superior, and enjoy your confidence in its prosecution.” None disagree, not even Falthe, and he’s seen as many battles as the Reaper himself. “This pertains to war. And I say this is Lysander. And this is the first time I have seen him in ten long years. Yet I am generous enough to share him with you. Why? Because I value your opinions. But if it is accusations you seek to levy at me…well…that would be disappointing.”

  Silence. Ajax looms behind Atalantia like an unshaken fist. Atlas, like an unseen one. Yet for all that menace, the Golds know Atalantia could only kill them at gravest cost to herself. And it is not in the nature of those who rule planets to tuck their tails, nor do they. However, Scorpio’s reply is markedly more judicious.

  “Lysander au Lune was in the Dragonmaw when it fell. Since he is here, one wonders how he survived. How do we know he is not an agent of the Rising? He may not even know himself. I know I need not remind you of the ruthlessness of our enemy. Or that you no longer hold the monopoly on certain…technologies.”

  “I am willing to accept that he is Lysander,” purrs Asmodeus au Carthii. “Scorpio is just a paranoid arachnid.” As Atalantia’s strongest ally, Asmodeus will seek to support her, at my cost. He looks the same since I saw him last, drunk in the gardens of the Palatine with drugged young Pinks on each arm. Though well over one hundred, the eerie creature has the tanned, unnatural face of a forty-year-old, the blue veins of age rejuvenation no doubt covered by concealer. The Carthii, while always dear to Atalantia, are the very worst of the Core. I let him spill his poison, but remember to look out for the more dire variety.

  “We all know that Bellona just barely escaped Gorgo and his assassins on Ceres not three years ago,” Asmodeus says. “The beast reported a sprightly catamite nipping at Bellona’s heels.” The famous letch gazes at me in the same hungry way he did when I was a boy. “I believe we now know the identity of that catamite.”

  Kalindora laughs and slaps her armored thigh. “You old pervert. You sure that wasn’t a dream of yours?” Ajax snorts a surprised laugh. Asmodeus looks irritated, but does not interrupt the soldier. “Neither Lysander nor the Traitor would so debase themselves.” She gives me a wink. “But maybe we should ask the man himself. I suppose he may have some information on the subject, no?”

  When I was a boy, Kalindora served on my protection unit before rising to the rank of Olympic Knight. I see she’s not lost her touch.

  “Honored Primuses,” I say loud and clear. “I apologize for my tardiness to the war. But I fear I must clarify my absence. I was not kept prisoner of the Republic nor was I Cassius’s catamite. After the murders of Aja and Octavia, Darrow gave me to Cassius as a ward after he killed m
y grandmother. It was with him that I have spent these last ten years in the Belt.”

  It was not exactly the reply Kalindora had in mind. Instead of defusing the Golds, it sends them into amazed laughter. Atalantia’s eyes widen slightly, while Ajax turns very slowly to face me. “Ward?”

  “Yes.”

  He goes silent, knowing better than to air our dirty laundry before the others. So he’s learned discretion. Perhaps I should have tried that instead of honesty, but it all would have come out eventually. Diomedes may be honorable, but if his duty required him to drop this bomb to gain leverage in the negotiations, he’d do it without flinching. Seraphina might tell them just for fun. The arch traitor of my people raised me just as long as our dead Sovereign did. While they might spit at me, it has a corrosive effect on their condescension. Bellona’s blood was as old as theirs, and he was a very dangerous man. What did he help raise?

  “Well, that is truly abhorrent,” Atalantia says with a whistle. “But from what your communiqué relayed, we are to believe Cassius is dead.”

  “Yes.”

  She and Ajax share an intense look. “Good. We will take custody of the body so that his mother may honor it with sundeath, if she so chooses.”

  “I do not have the body.”

  Atalantia’s eyebrows float upward, and around her neck Hypatia begins to slither counterclockwise in agitation. “Why not?”

  “The body was stolen and desecrated by familiars of Bellerephon au Raa, whom Cassius killed.”

  “Desecrated in what manner?”

  “I do not—”

  Asmodeus hijacks the conversation with a cackle. His jewel rings sparkle as he plays with his smooth chin. “Gone for a decade, ward to Bellona, no care to return. But now that you see a vacuum in power, you rush back like an eager little piglet to claim your throne. We have our leader, foul boy. Her name is Atalantia.”