by Pierce Brown
“Why would you want it extracted when all it wants is to be repaired?” he asks. “Isn’t it giving you instructions?”
I don’t answer. Even now, I feel the urges of the parasite. They heightened near the city. Maybe it’s the communication towers. I feel an emotional ache to return home to someplace I’ve never been. But I know that’s not me talking, because I don’t have a home, and the feeling seems to be coming from a great distance. Then Pax says something I didn’t include on the report.
“O my mountain hyacinth, what shepherds trod upon you with clumsy, rustic foot? Now you are a broken seal: a scarlet stain upon the earth. Figmentum es.”
I blink at him. “How did you—”
“So I was right.” He smiles to himself. “I read everything and cross-reference latently. Including files only ten people have access to. My mother wanted me to be prepared, and I think I know how to help you. Her spymaster had…relevant information. Wouldn’t you like to be someone who could make a difference, Lyria of Lagalos?” He looks up after the Obsidian fleet.
“Did Victra send you?”
“No. She wants to protect you from what you could be. But she only knows that Figment inherited the parasite, and gained…advantages from it. She has no idea what it really is, or where it comes from.”
“And you do?”
“I have my suspicions.”
I don’t take the bait. “My brothers were in Heliopolis. Liam’s the only family I have left.”
“Family is more than just blood.”
I look up after the ships. I helped those girls save themselves. I helped Victra. I helped Volga. The little man is right. I do want to make a difference.
“What if I told you that I could find Liam easier than you could, without leaving a computer? Would you do something for me?”
I squint at him. “Be more specific.”
He pulls out a thin holoMap of the inner asteroid belt and hands it to me. “Have you ever heard of a city called Oculus?”
I STAND LOOKING OUT AT HELIOPOLIS from the Lady Beatrice.
Cassius is alive. I do not know how, or why. But somehow he survived the Rim’s perversion of justice. Diomedes must have had a hand in it. Was it for honor that he was spared? Or some nefarious purpose I cannot yet divine? I would ask the man, but he departed Mercury to prepare the Rim’s entrance into the war long before Heliopolis’s liberation. Pytha told me he searched the Ladon for ten days for his sister before departing with a heavy heart.
There is a war inside me. I would have given nearly anything to bring Cassius back from death. Anything except this. He died for the Rising. Now he fights with them.
He is my enemy. I cannot come to terms with it.
I believe I am the only one who knows Cassius’s hand in the fiasco at the Mound. If Atalantia found out, the ramifications for me, for the Rim, would be calamitous.
Whatever pact Cassius made with the Rising earned the Archimedes a boon. Her new engines were faster than any the Core ships possessed. Her hull cloaked even more thoroughly than Atalantia’s hunting corvettes. I sense Quicksilver’s hand at work. Because of my old friend, Darrow, Harnassus, Telemanus, and the core of the Howlers managed to either hide on Mercury or slip out of its orbit.
Their army was not so fortunate.
Those who survived the Long Night, as they now call it, languish in camps south of the spaceport, pressed into labor to rebuild the planet they helped break. After seeing the ruins of Tyche and northern Helios, I know it will be no short affair.
Today is the first day since recapturing Heliopolis that the city does not rattle with sounds of construction. The cranes are quiet in the city sky today, but the streets bubble with noise. Rooftops along the Via Triumphia writhe with color and jubilation. Mercury has turned out for my Triumph.
“Are you there?” I ask the air. “Apollonius?”
No one replies.
“Whomever are you talking to?” Glirastes crows from the doorway.
“Just phantoms.” Did he ever really exist in the desert? Did he follow me, or was it the imaginings of a sun-leached brain?
“You look as if you were bound for your own funeral,” Glirastes says. My old friend sways up behind me to look out at the city.
“It may yet be.”
“Oh, please.”
“Do you have it?” He hands me the Dux pendant I had made for Rhone. “I am told there are crescents painted upon every street corner from the Hippodrome to the spaceport. You go too far.”
Glirastes shrugs. Today he wears silver and white, the colors of my house. On his neck is a gold chain with a great pendant of an eye with a ruby iris. The Eye of the Society, the greatest award any civilian can receive. Octavia gave it to him long ago at the unveiling of the Water Colossus of Tyche.
Though Atalantia has not executed him as a traitor yet, neither has she gifted him with a pardon.
“You’re projecting frustration, dear boy. Desist. I am the artist. If it is to be a diva duel, I’ll match you cry for cry and then piss on your pillow and blame it on my dead ocelot, and you’ll wonder if I’m insane, and I’ll cackle, because yes. Yes, I am. And I can get away with anything.”
“Atalantia still may kill you,” I say. “Don’t forget.”
“If I were a betting man…”
“Which you are.”
“Then I would wager all on the proposition that my head is more secure than yours, young Lune. After all, I am the best kind of hero—harmless. And you are the worst—young with a name.”
I sigh and lean on the railing with him. “I suppose I did ask for theatrics.”
“Yes, dear boy. And right now they’re the only thing keeping you alive.” That, and the furor for the Heir Returned that sweeps through Mercury and the legions.
I really don’t mind it much at all, but I fear Grandmother’s wisdom. Will Atalantia break me if she thinks I eclipse her in the mirror?
Ajax already tried. With my polite imprisonment in the Lady Beatrice, and Atalantia spurning my requests for an audience, I fear he is pouring poison in his aunt’s ear. She will think I did this for my own glory, to supplant her. Did I?
Glirastes searches my face. “Kalindora was asking for you.”
“I know.”
“She said it was important.”
I say nothing. Kalindora’s wounds were mended by the medici, but not the poison Darrow’s blade slipped into her bloodstream. She is dying. And I do not think I could do what I must were I to look her in the eye before the Triumph.
“Do you love her?” Glirastes asks.
I look at him. I left her on the ground to chase Darrow. What a hideous thing to do. “I never had the chance, but I believe I would.”
“Then I will find a cure.”
“You’re not a medicus.”
“No, but I am a genius.”
Heavy boots clomp the tile. Rhone stands in the entry. I am appalled by his armor. It is as black as the space between stars. Purple bands cover the joints, and on the chest plate is a silver crescent moon inside the pyramid of the Society. “Dominus, the shuttle has arrived.”
“Where did you get that uniform?” I ask. Rhone looks suddenly embarrassed.
“Their old gear is on Venus,” Glirastes explains. “I had new uniforms made in Naran and shipped here for the occasion.”
“You have to stop. The provocation…”
“Exists regardless of the accoutrement. I know. I know. You are not the Sovereign, nor do you campaign to be. But you are the last blood of Silenius. If Atalantia wants to kill you, she must kill your destiny before the eyes of the worlds.”
* * *
—
Atlas au Raa waits at the Grimmus shuttle eyeing the ceremonial dress of my guards. It is a product of chance that he survived the Long Night. When the power died, his cell
went into lockdown. I hear the queue to kill him was a thousand men deep. How he must have smiled at them as they beat at the doors. Rhone says it took the man’s Gorgons four hours to drill into the cell to free him.
He looks peculiar groomed and without his desert gear. His Fear Knight ceremonial armor is bone white and perversely etched with screaming children. Unlike most, he does not hide his true vocation behind gilded heraldic symbols. Yet there’s an anxiousness to him here in civilization which I did not see in the desert, a sort of alienation from the very thing he sought to protect.
“Aren’t you minorly overqualified for an escort?” I ask.
He eyes the Praetorians. “Aren’t they minorly overdressed?”
“For a funeral?” I ask.
“Kalindora has several days yet,” he says without pleasure. It says something about Kalindora that even a man like Atlas would look at his toes considering her death. “I know the poison. It is favored by the skuggi. Slow but thorough.”
“We both know I wasn’t speaking of Kalindora.”
He eyes me with amusement. “Well, Lune, I suppose that depends entirely upon you.”
Our shuttle arrives at the staging area outside the storm wall of Heliopolis. The triumphal arch that was commissioned in haste by Glirastes stands before the open gates. It is the most heterogenous gathering of any Triumph I can remember. Glirastes’s servants mill together, gawping at the spectacle as they share cups of wine and receive instructions from the Copper planners. Hundreds of the loyalists who answered my call and risked their lives to save their city are here. Most are midColor, though many low are amongst them. I could not have designed a better message to the people gathered here. You saved your city. You walk with me. Behind them, sprawling out into the desert, are the hundreds of thousands of soldiers captured in Ajax’s failed assault on Heliopolis. Their line snakes four kilometers long. Gold, Gray, Obsidian, and Blue drink down spirits passed out by Reds and Browns. Together they sing the ancient hymn Battlecry of the Lightbringer.
If only Aja could see this. If only my parents could.
A buzz goes through the assembly as I walk to my place at the honored fore with Glirastes and Rhone. The drunkest of the loyalists shout my name or begin to applaud. A Copper actarius bustles over to me with a huge datapad and a gaggle of assistants. She greets me with alacrity and guides me to my chariot. “It is made of the finest Mercurian onyx, dominus. A gift from the Dictator herself. It is incredibly light compared to most triumphal chariots, and with four of the Dictator’s bucephelon geldings to pull, your charioteer will be—” I raise a hand. She stops mid-sentence.
“Of course she favors geldings,” Rhone whispers.
I hide a smile.
“You expect a self-respecting Lunese Gold to ride in onyx like a Venusian sprite?” Glirastes replies. “Au Lune has brought his own chariot.” Several Praetorians wheel it forward from one of Glirastes’s shuttles.
“But the color coordination!” the actarius squeals before my Praetorians guide her away. Rhone stays to oversee the sunbloods’ transfer to the white chariot Glirastes had made specially for the event.
Pytha watches me from amidst Glirastes’s servants. They lower their heads as I approach. My friend held me in her arms for three whole minutes when Atalantia’s men delivered her to the estate. She tilts down her eye shades at me.
“My liege,” she says with a bow. Since I told her Cassius was alive, she has been distant, spending most of her time in Glirastes’s gardens. “I’ve decided I’ll be sticking around.”
I’m stunned. It is not what I expected. “May I ask why?”
“You need me more than the old boy does.” Her eyes dart about at the sycophants watching us. “Be a shame to see you survive the desert only to die in your sleep.” She jerks her head. “Now get. The worlds await you, my liege.”
I return to the chariot to see the horses ready to go. Rhone pats Blood of Empire on the neck and begs a word before I mount. His eyes focus on my chest. “I merely wanted to say, formally…We failed your family. More than once. I…I never thought I would see the Praetorian Guard reclaim its honor, my liege. I never thought I could reclaim my own. But you gave us the opportunity.” His eyes find mine. “We will not fail you.”
There’s equal parts pride and humility in this man. I wish he knew for a single moment how high the legions hold him in esteem, but if he were capable of knowing, he would not be Rhone ti Flavinius. I worry for him, for what awaits at the end of this Triumph. I have seen how easily lives are spent.
I do not wish to spend him or the three hundred who survived the Ladon.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “I believe for some reason that our fates are entwined, Flavinius. I will need you today, tomorrow, and all the days after. Within my household, I grant you the title of Dux.”
He blinks at me.
“Dux, my liege?”
“Are you fit for the task?” A Dux is an appointed right hand with unlimited imperium within a house. His word is my word. It is usually, but not always, reserved for Golds like Aja, who was my grandmother’s Dux. It will honor him as he should be honored, and at the same time show the Grays of the legions how I reward loyalty.
I have the sneaking suspicion that as go the Grays, so go the legions. After all, they do outnumber my race a thousand to one. As Glirastes would say: “Never pass up the opportunity to shore up your foundation.”
I pull the warrant of Dux from my pocket. He lifts his head and I seal the metal to his forehead. The skin burns as the hawk and crescent moon meld with his flesh and bone. He salutes with tears in his eyes and mounts his horse to follow my chariot.
I join Atlas on the chariot. He rides as my daggershadow, a place of honor, and trust. Two things he has not earned in my eyes. But Kalindora is too sick to stand where she ought. “He’s a good man, Flavinius,” he drawls. “Be a shame to waste him.”
“Is that a warning?” I ask.
“Advice, rather.” He glances at Glirastes on the horse next to Rhone’s. “It seems you heed the wrong men.”
“I know how to handle Atalantia.”
“That would make you the first.”
I lean past Atlas and press a DNA scanner on the side of the chariot. There’s a thrum as the reinforced pulseShield flickers into place, distorting the world around, and encasing the entirety of the passenger compartment with enough shielding to take a direct hit from a pilum missile.
Atlas chuckles. “A promising start.”
* * *
—
Trumpets signal the beginning of the Triumph. A blind White girl walks ahead of my chariot with a flaming torch. With an old White guiding her, she finds her way to the crimson curtain that hides us from the crowd. She pushes the torch into the wool. Flames lick upward. When they have consumed all but the topmost remnants of the curtain, my charioteer snaps the reins and the chariot rolls forward.
We are swallowed by noise. A street cleared of rubble bisects a sea of humanity for four kilometers until the street bends to the right. Millions roar on the ground, on the rooftops. Trumpets blast. Bells clatter on horses. The sound washes over me as we ride forward. An honor guard lines the parade route. Not Votum or Ash Legions.
I feel the chill of the past.
The Praetorians have returned. Thousands of purple-and-black-clad men and women stand with their rifles shouldered. I glance back at Rhone. He smiles and bellows. “Praetorians!”
“Ad lucem!”
“Lune!”
“INVICTUS!”
They have returned from their disbandment by the thousands.
The Fear Knight’s voice is barely a whisper. “Poor choice, young man. Poor choice.”
I miss the desert. It was simpler there.
The route is twelve kilometers long, exactly the length of Silenius’s first Triumph on the Via Triumphia
from Hyperion to the Citadel. After ten minutes, I am exhausted from sensory overload. Flowers cascade, children rush from the crowd to bedeck the honored with floral wreaths of mountain flowers. The Battlecry of the Lightbringer echoes through the city. Verse after drunken verse. Military ships hover with snipers to cover the rooftops for signs of terrorists or agitators. Despite the best efforts of Society forces to round up all the enemy at the spaceport, it’s inevitable that thousands more will have melted into the city.
A Triumph in this climate is as good as a death sentence. And we all remember Darrow’s fated day. But how could I refuse Atalantia?
Of course, there are snipers. Shots slam into the pulseShield over us, and send response teams swarming over rooftops. I almost pity the shooters. With each shot, I wonder if it is Darrow’s men or Atalantia’s or someone else’s. Who knows?
The procession carries through the heart of the city and comes to a halt at the Mound of Votum. The statue of Helios still lies fallow in the sea.
High upon the steps of the great palace, Atalantia waits, surrounded by the Two Hundred heads of the prominent remaining houses. The brooding Falthe killers, vile Asmodeus au Carthii, and Cicero au Votum are all there. The Carthii tap their feet in resentment, as if they have better things to do. The Votum beam at me. I saved their city from extermination. And now they see a chance to escape from under Atalantia’s thumb.
“Remember you are but a mortal,” Atlas whispers into my ear.
I hop down from the chariot. “As are we all.”
He frowns as I ascend the steps toward Atalantia. Ajax looms behind her amongst her officers and Olympic Knights.
She smiles in lovely fashion.
Behind that smile is so much malice. She wonders, just as the crowd and the Praetorians and the soldiers wonder, when we come face-to-face, will I kneel?
When I reach the top of the stairs, the crowd goes silent. Atalantia is in pure white. Her shoulder spikes are gold, her necklace that dreadful pet Hypatia, and two ornate gauntlets of gold cover either hand. Her gold razor is at her side, but I know she looks at the broken slingBlade I wear on my right hip. It is the envy of all the legions.
