Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  Publius quivers and I feel sorry for him. How this all must have started as a distant fantasy when Lilath came to offer him her services. Closer and closer he drew to his prize, a year away, a week away, a day away, and finally he had power.

  Now this.

  That would test any soul.

  His crumbles. He lowers himself to his knees and crawls to Lilath. She fits the collar around his neck very gently and strokes his face. “You will be a good dog, won’t you?” She stays face-to-face with him. “Won’t you?”

  “Yes.” He lowers his head.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes…domina.”

  Lilath produces collars for the rest of the tribunal. Her men pull them down to fix them tight. Two protest and are killed. After the survivors are fitted, Lilath tilts her head to the door behind me.

  “My Emperor. Your slaves await.”

  Small hands applaud from behind me and the Boneriders bend in amorous supplication, even Lilath.

  “Well done, my Queen. Well done, my friends.”

  That voice.

  Its accent is Lunese, but I know it to my bones.

  Fear eclipses all rational thought. Little footsteps make their way to the front of the court. An abomination wears the face of a small boy around ten years old. Its hair is flaxen. Its face narrow. Its eyes reptilian in their cold curiosity. It stands before the enslaved Vox carrying several simple plates.

  “I know this emotion,” the Abomination says sweetly. “This reminds me of a novel I’ve read about a shoemaker in old Russia. It’s this moment, isn’t it? This moment where you breathe on all fours, your heads privately tucked to your own chins, where the personal myth which you shrouded around your hearts collapses under its own weight, and you realize what you actually are. Not weak—that would still give you a victim narrative with enough tragic romance upon which to nurse yourselves. Not average—you are all clever in a rudimentary way. Just smart enough to rise above the sea of human meat to comprehend how insignificant you really are.” The Abomination touches Publius’s head. “We all want to be special. It must ache to discover you are not.”

  He goes to the Blue Lilath slaughtered and picks out handfuls of her brains and deposits them upon the plates before setting each one in front of the Vox. Lilath falls to her knee and unveils a small box. From the box, the Abomination draws an antique razor.

  The Sword of Silenius.

  He cracks the whip.

  “The natural order has resumed,” he says to the Vox.

  “Hic sunt leones!” say his men.

  “The son of Augustus rules the Republic. But what is a world with only lions? Do my bidding and you will be rich and mighty. Slave Kings of the Emperor.” He points the Sword of Silenius at them. “Now eat your supper.”

  Publius is the first to eat. As they cry and chew, the Abomination watches and turns to me with familial affection. “Hello, sister. So nice to finally meet you.”

  “APPARENTLY HOWLERS DO KNEEL,” Lilath says.

  I am in a nightmare.

  The clone of my brother stands before the Morning Chair running his hand along the smooth wood as if it held an electric current. Still wearing his collar, Publius sits on the floor staring at nothing. Gorgo, the Obsidian enforcer with gold teeth, watches the clone with deep respect.

  Sevro, Pebble, and Clown are driven to their knees beside me before the Morning Chair. They have been beaten to a pulp. Which means they look quite like I did after the mob did its work. Even my hair is missing chunks. My forearms are covered with poorly sutured wounds.

  “You untidy abortion,” Sevro hisses at Lilath through mashed lips. “How the hell are you still sucking oxygen?” He glares at the clone. “And what the fucking fuck is that?”

  Lilath smiles idly and sits at the foot of the clone’s chair. Boneriders rove about. Made all the more mad by their isolation in Deepgrave, they have decorated the room with the corpses of Republic Wardens.

  “Mustang, what is this?” Sevro asks. “Who’s the beady-eyed rodent?”

  “That is a clone of my brother,” I reply. The spike has not been removed, but no longer plays with my serotonin levels. Instead, my legs are paralyzed. I barely notice.

  “The Jackal?” Pebble whispers.

  “Bullshit,” Sevro says. “Bullshit.” He tries to stand, but receives a kick from a Bonerider to his stomach. He falls gasping. Gorgo walks up to him and kicks him again for good measure before returning to the clone. “How…”

  “The Emperor is a master strategist,” Lilath proclaims. “He sees all.”

  “He sees all,” Gorgo echoes.

  “I was not certain my plan to wrest control of the Sovereigncy from Octavia would work,” the Abomination says, still examining the chair. “So I left dear Lilath instructions and samples of my DNA in case my life was spent in the effort. I left messages and instructions to myself. One can never be too careful.” He walks around the chair, eyes barely coming over the top. “After she recovered from her own wounds, Lilath went to Earth and found Zanzibar the Master Carver, and proved her ultimate loyalty by growing me in her own womb.”

  Sevro literally throws up. He spits bile on the ground. “You that desperate to get the Jackal inside you, the only way you could do it was by shitting out his clone?”

  Lilath lunges forward, so close to caving in Sevro’s skull with her hatchet.

  The Abomination calls out her name and she stops mid-swing. The look she gives him is deep with affection, none of it motherly. No one misses it, not even the Boneriders, but they don’t seem to care one lick. The joy they feel being in their armor again is almost childlike.

  “That is the most bent thing I have ever heard,” Clown says.

  Pebble squints at Clown. “Did you give us LSD again? You know I hate LSD.”

  “Quality stock like Victra choosing a mongrel for a mate is far more perverse than simple cloning,” the clone says. Lilath blinks unhappily at the mention of the Julii. Victra’s sister, Antonia, was my brother’s lover before he died. And she did not look like Lilath. “But that was the opinion of my first life. I care very little, except for the pollution of the gene pool that you and your mongrel children represent.”

  “My babies’d eat your heart out with a spoon,” Sevro says.

  “Oh please, Sevro. It wouldn’t do to make me fret.” He taps his finger on his chin. “I have learned something watching this Republic. People only obey when it costs them something to disobey. So. The next time you threaten me, Sevro, I will teach you how much it costs, and we’ll see if it happens again. Prime?”

  “Don’t talk to me like you know me. I don’t know you. You little…freak. You’re not a real person. You’re just an afterbirth. Mustang, how have you not vomited all over yourself?”

  I stay silent, unable to put my cluttered thoughts to words. Daxo, Dancer, Theodora dead. Who else? Holiday? Darrow’s mother? Kavax? Who else because of my monstrous bloodline?

  Daxo was my best friend.

  And this…this is what killed him?

  I feel shattered. If this creature got ahold of Pax…

  Thank Jove for Victra. Keep him safe. Keep Electra safe.

  “Mustang…” Sevro says. “Can you hear me?”

  “Her name is Virginia,” the clone says to Sevro. “The same blood runs through her veins as in mine. I am Adrius, and I am not Adrius. In some ways I am less. In some I am more. I have learned from my first life, studied the archival recordings of the Institute, and the lives of my enemies.”

  He sits down in the Morning Chair.

  “Pulling apart your Republic was so easy a child could do it.” He smiles. “I cannot rule publicly, of course. In time, perhaps. But until then, my socialist dog will do.” He strokes Publius’s head. The disgraced senator flinches. “I did intend for Pax to be my Passage so I could earn
my scar. But Sefi interfered, and Atlas insisted Lilath not pursue.”

  I finally speak. “The Fear Knight would never ally with you. You nuked Luna.”

  “He doesn’t know I exist, of course. This was my design, my Day of Red Doves, my little birds sang such sweet songs to me.”

  He gestures to the high windows where the pachelbel sing. There were pachelbel in the window when Dancer and I met. There were pachelbel in the gardens where I had so many conversations. But we checked them for hardware when Sophocles kept eating them. It must be something more sophisticated than that.

  “Atlas and Atalantia merely liaised with Lilath in the end,” the clone continues. “We were going to sell Electra to Julia au Bellona. Old debts and all.” He smiles at Lilath. She looks pleased to be out of her Red disguise and back in her Bonerider armor. “The fools think they have a puppet on Luna, a Red Queen. What a hollow farce.” He taps his finger to his lips. He is identical to Adrius. Even in his tics, if not in his memories.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Sevro says. “Didn’t get the pleasure last time. And it will be slow.”

  The clone watches him without emotion. “I told you the next threat would cost you. This is your fault. Gorgo, please bring in the wolf and the prisoners.”

  The Obsidian disappears out a side passage.

  A moment later, the great Sun Doors at the far end of the hall open. Syndicate thorns guide in a cargo skiff loaded with a giant iron statue of a howling wolf. It thumps against the ground as it sets down behind us. Sounds come from inside. A voice calls out through the iron.

  “Min-Min?” Pebble whispers beside me.

  “No. No. No. No. No,” Clown murmurs.

  Sevro just watches as the iron wolf begins to glow with heat. The iron thumps as the Howlers inside try to kick their way out. Smoke slithers through the wolf’s nostrils. Then the trapped men and women inside begin to scream. As they melt in its belly, their cries of agony funnel through the chamber of the wolf’s throat to ululate into a howl.

  When no more howls escape the wolf, and the smell of roasted meat fills the room, the clone speaks. “Did you learn your lesson, Sevro?” Sevro does not reply. He’s not inside his body at all. Neither are Clown and Pebble. Their eyes are glassy, their shoulders slumped. Sevro’s eyes are dry and dead.

  “I hope you have, Sevro. Because I have great plans for you. My sister has uncovered ways to play with the mind. I am going to play with yours. So the next time you see your wife, your daughters, you will not even know who they are. I will strip you of all you wanted, as you and your pack stripped me of all I wanted.” He strokes the chair. “Then we will be even.”

  I have never seen Sevro afraid like this. He glances at me, knowing full well what we did to the Duke of Hands. And now that it is his turn, all the blood rushes from his face. His hands tremble at his sides as if he had been electrocuted. His girls are his everything. With an animal scream, he lunges for Adrius, and gets just far enough for Lilath to personally beat him to the ground. He gets up, and she nails him in the head with the hilt of her hatchet. He stands again, bleeding everywhere, and another Bonerider kicks him in the kidneys. Time and again, he stands up and takes a step toward the clone until Lilath kicks him in the head two steps short.

  Sevro goes limp on the ground.

  And I can do nothing.

  My confidence, my proud intellect, are dormant in the face of this. I am paralyzed inside and out with horror.

  “Just kill us and end this ridiculous show,” I snap. The clone’s face is blank for me as Boneriders drag Sevro away. “You are not Adrius. You’re just playing the role she taught you.” I point at Lilath.

  The clone walks down from his perch to cup my face.

  “The blood that runs through your veins runs through mine. You are my sister, Virginia. My only blood. How could I ever kill you?” He strokes my hair. “You are family. Too long you have been weighed down by fools and insects. You deserve a second chance.” Behind him, Lilath sucks on her teeth. “You deserve true dominion over the sheep.”

  I AM THE GUEST OF HONOR at a banquet for jackals. My brother’s creatures could never have been accused of sanity before their imprisonment, but after so long robbed of power, they have become mad with the taste of it. As night sets, Sunhall turns to orgiastic bedlam. Niobe’s fleet has arrived with the ships of my house, House Telemanus, House Arcos, and almost all the lesser Gold houses of the Republic. The Vox fleet over Luna gathers in formation to block their way to the planet. The hologram of the pending space battle floats over the room.

  While the Republic eats itself, the Boneriders party.

  Safe behind Citadel walls and puppet legions, they indulge in yellow and green mountain ranges of narcotics. They have emptied the Citadel cellars of my husband’s whiskey and chug down bottles of wine that have been in my family for generations. Their Syndicate servants ferry them supplies of Pinks and political enemies. On them, they indulge their most depraved appetites. Some poor souls are fetched from the deep cells to be used for fencing practice, or made to fight each other naked in gladiatorial bouts to the death. The bodies fall to the floor to die, and thorns drag them out and bring new ones in. The prisons, brimming as they are with the Vox’s enemies, have an unlimited supply. When I have to watch the Silver senator Britannia ag Krieg face down an unarmed, drunk Bonerider, I turn away. She no longer seems an adversary, or even a rich woman. To them, she’s just the lower species.

  Britannia dies with the sound of wet towels slapping stone.

  I have seen almost all there is to see, so it is not the barbarity that irks me. It is the shallowness of their cause. There is no cause. There is no religion, no delusion of honor, only some vague notion of retribution and domination, which means little more to them than the degradation of their enemies. To me, these ten years have felt like a hundred, full of texture and trials and triumphs. But these savages were frozen in time in Deepgrave. They did not evolve. They only want to live in the past. In that fleeting moment of youth, where even the Sovereign feared the House Pluto of Mars’s Institute. They were barely past twenty years old and all worlds were laid out before them. Now in their ecstasy, they don’t realize how far behind everyone else they are. Or maybe that is the reason for the ecstasy. Maybe they all know they are doomed because of their own nature, and they want to live in the sun while it shines.

  How long can this ruse really last?

  I stayed quiet to assess the situation well after my initial shock wore off. I have learned much. My real brother loathed the Boneriders. He mocked them behind their backs. But the best soldiers are often the hollow ones, whom you can fill with your own purpose. This clone doesn’t know he’s supposed to hate the Boneriders. He was raised by a woman who worshipped the Jackal and the Boneriders, and thought the two inseparable. How disappointed the clone must be in the legends he was raised on.

  I sit at his left hand, a place of secondary honor. Lilath eats her hummingbird eggs across the table from me. She feeds like a pelican, head down, eyes up, slurp, slurp, slurp.

  Like clockwork, her eyes flick to the clone to make sure he has everything he needs. When he stops drawing with his stylus on a datapad after a Pink screams from a Bonerider arrow, Lilath bolts to attention. It is almost grotesque to see how quickly the dead-eyed killer melts into suffocating sycophant. “What is it, my Emperor? Do you possess everything you need?”

  Lilath loved my brother. I’ve always known it. But now that love is something wrong. She would have been his lover, but he liked pretty harpies like Antonia. So instead, Lilath gave birth to his clone. I do not believe I understand psychology enough to try to unravel that.

  But I wager the clone has.

  And that is the vulnerability of this little cabal. I glance up at the arrayed fleets.

  In reply to Lilath’s query, the clone forms a simple three-dimensional puzzle on his data
pad and flicks the floating image to her off his datapad. “Can you solve that?” Sitting up straighter, she peers at it. Slowly her eyes lose their gleam as she realizes she doesn’t even know there is a puzzle. He looks at me to make a joke of her. I never thought I’d see Lilath squirm from shame.

  Her influence is slipping. She did fail him with the abduction of Pax and Electra. Now she is frightened I will steal him away. And he is afraid that I will let him down like these Boneriders have. How long did it take for his mind to be useful to her, I wonder. Has it been four years, five? She did much on her own. But how long will he need her now that he has his other Boneriders? Now that he has the Vox legions through his puppets? She must wonder. She must be afraid. And he must be annoyed that he is still so small.

  I know where to drive the wedge.

  “If he had all he needed, Lilath, I would already be a blank slate, wouldn’t I?” She says nothing. The clone watches intently as I solve the puzzle, add two new polygons, and spin it back to him. He looks at it for a moment and then smiles in delight. He adds a fresh twist to the puzzle and hurls it back. This volley lasts the better part of thirty excruciating minutes as the fleets probe one another over our heads.

  I have a strange feeling inside as he pauses the game to spend several minutes on a separate datapad making adjustments to his battleplan. The ships above move according to his wishes after a slight delay.

  His last volley was an oddity. He did not try to beat me with it. In fact, he seemed surprised and then delighted to see I could solve his puzzles. After that, he was just having fun. By the third puzzle, so was I. I would have given fingers off my hand for my twin to sigh like that when we were children. All my life, I thought my brother was born broken. He wasn’t. Perhaps he was just born with an incompatible father.