by Pierce Brown
Their millions of clenched fists are dipped in red.
A great murmur seeps through the crowd as I descend the plank with Kavax and Holiday at my side. They grow silent enough I can hear my boots on the metal plank and then on the marble as I cross the Courtyard of Victories to the Lion Steps. Niobe joins us along with the centurions of Pegasus Legion, loyalist Skyhall and house naval captains, and the remaining three widows of Arcos. The drums along the courtyard boom from the labor of Red tribal drummers.
I ascend the steps quickly when I see my boy waiting at the top of them. He is real. He is alive. Just ten meters away. It is as if he has walked through a doorway and come out not as a man, but finally the blueprint of the man he will one day be. He’s a hand taller, his cheeks shrunken, new scars on his face. But the real change is in his eyes. The look of childish wonder is gone forever. Now they hold the dullness that marks the passage into wisdom.
I wish I could wrap my boy in my arms and hold him until he became part of me again. I would garland him with kisses and apologies and promises. But we are at war, and I am the Sovereign, and so the mother must wait her turn.
Kavax sees my distress, and breaks from the procession to scoop my son up into his arms with a madman’s laugh. He perches him on his shoulder and crows about the Boy Who Killed a TorchShip.
* * *
—
I approach the ArchGovernor. My husband’s brother smiles up at me. As charismatic as Darrow, but without even a hint of his brother’s violent temperament, Kieran was always demure in private and popular with the crowds. It looks right to see him with the Sword of the Rising on his hip. Behind him stand the Praetors of the Martian Legions, the Imperators of the Ecliptic Guard, and the old Sons of Ares commanders, all battle-hardened and clever, if a far cry from those we lost on Mercury.
Kieran clears his throat.
“My Sovereign.” His voice floats over the crowd. “Luna has fallen. The Senate is dissolved. The ArchGovernors hold planetary imperium. According to the New Compact of the Republic, in this time of peril, I exercise my power to grant total imperium to my Sovereign.” He pulls the Sword of the Rising from its sheath. It is the battered slingBlade of the slave once known as L17L6363, his brother. The very tool Darrow used in the mine of Lykos. Kieran passes it to me. It is heavier than I expected a Red could wield. I turn to the crowd beyond the obelisks and thrust the blade in the air.
“Hail libertas!” I bellow.
“Hail Reaper,” echoes the crowd.
* * *
—
After I have received my debrief, I find Pax sitting with Holiday in the garden where my brother killed my father twelve years before. The blood has been washed from the stone, but I still see it there. Whatever Pax has told Holiday has her in tears. He presses something into her hand, and she surprises me by kissing his forehead. She salutes as she passes me. Scampering around the edge of the garden, Sophocles salutes her departure with a bark and weaves through my son’s legs in delight to see him again.
My old memories of the garden disappear as my boy spots me. I feared he would greet me as I’ve seen him greet his father. With that cold, scolding remove. But my fears were unfounded. All pretense fails between us and we crash together in an embrace. That hollow his absence has made in me is filled. I feel as whole, as warm, as loved and proud as I did the day I first held him in my arms. How many times did my willpower almost break? How many times did I let myself imagine what sinister designs my enemies had in store for him? He has survived. As I pull back from him, I see his father’s anger in his eyes. His mother’s patience. His own animated curiosity. But he has changed.
* * *
—
The sounds of training razors clack through the seaside courtyard at Hippolyte. Victra curses loudly, then barks, “Again!”
Pax sees me hesitate to pass through the fighter’s arch. I am afraid to see my old friend. He takes my hand and steers me clear of the training yard and together we approach the burial place of Ulysses. Grass has begun to grow over the small mound. The burial stone is wet with the morning rain. This could have been my son. Pax knows my mind and steps closer to me.
“You were right about Lyria of Lagalos,” he says. “She did have virtue. Without her and Volga, it seems Victra would have been lost.”
“I would like to see her again. Her brother was evacuated by the—”
“He’s on the Reynard. I know. I’ve sent her away.”
I look at him without surprise. “Where to?”
“After Ragnar’s daughter, in a manner.”
I don’t understand. “She’s just a girl.”
He pauses. “Not anymore.”
We look back to the grave, guilty for speaking over it. Sevro told me he was having a girl. It seems Victra was waiting to surprise even him. A boy at last, a chance to make up for his own father’s absence.
“Mother wanted to give him a sundeath,” Electra says. Always fleet of foot, she has grown quieter. I didn’t hear her approach. Like Pax, she’s grown since I last saw her. “But she knew Father would want to visit him when he gets back.”
“Electra. Thank you for taking care of my son,” I say.
Her narrow eyes flick to him. “That his story? No one likes liars, Pax.” They flick back to me. They were always hard, but not like they are now. I can see that now all she wants is to grow up so she can kill. It’s no longer cute.
“Whatever the Obsidian were feeding you worked. Look how tall you are.”
She shrugs. “Maybe you’re just smaller.” She bows slightly for her Sovereign, then stalks away. Pax watches her go with a worried expression.
“She doesn’t like waiting,” Pax says.
I glance toward the training courtyard. “That makes two of us. Wait here.”
I find Victra in the center of the courtyard, facing down three of her best knights. I silence my datapad before entering. Even at her peak, three prime opponents would have been one too many. Sweat lathers muscular arms swollen with welts. She trains like a woman possessed. Already the curves of motherhood burn away.
Practice razors whisper through the air as I walk in. A clutch of sixty Peerless stiffen and bow at my arrival. I whisper hello to Victra’s youngest daughter, Selene, and the middle child, Calypso. When they hug me, I see their hands are bandaged from training. Sons of Ares practice martial arts along a bluff on Victra’s estate.
Both parts of House Julii and Barca are preparing for total war.
In the square, Victra eliminates one of the knights with a neat thrust to his neck, and then receives a sideways slash to her shin and another to her temple from the fastest of the three. The head strike is a killing blow. Blood trickles down Victra’s face. She stumbles, growls, returns to the center of the circle and shouts for them to go again. The knights stop and bow when they see me. Victra casts me an annoyed glance and stalks over to a towel to wipe the blood off her face. I join her there.
“Does Mars ride for Luna, my Sovereign?” she asks.
“You know we can’t yet.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Just to speak with—”
“And of what would we speak? Of how they nailed my son to a tree? Of how Ascomanni came like fucking monsters out of the ether? Of how you could have saved Darrow but didn’t?”
“Victra…”
“Or maybe of how my husband is being tortured by that Abomination while you run back home to lick your wounds?” She glares down at me. “You might think I obeyed your orders, that I…molder here out of fidelity to your leadership. No. I am here because without reinforcements my fleet would be massacred by the Vox, much less if we ran afoul the Core.” She sticks a finger in my chest. “You abandoned my husband. Our enemies move uncontested. So unless Mars is riding for Luna right now, fuck off.”
She turns back to her practice.
The knights look away as I strip off my jacket and unbutton my tunic to my compression bra. “Victra.” She turns. Her eyes trace the divots Lilath’s hatchet left on my stomach and neck and the several hundred punctures the mob gave me on my flanks and arms, and a tension releases from her shoulders. Her love and hate are made of the same passion. “I tried,” I whisper. “Truly.” Her eyes search each one of the scars. I now have more than she does. Her heavy hand reaches to clutch my shoulder, and then the bigger woman pulls our foreheads together.
“If we cannot engineer salvation for our men, then vengeance will suffice,” Victra says.
I nod against her.
My husband would have it no other way. No matter what they say, Darrow is not dead. He endured for me, and I did not arrive. I will endure now until he does. Victra will have her wrath till her dying breath. I will have my hope. I will make our family whole again.
There’s a stirring in the courtyard from the knights. A defense pulseShield warps the air of Hippolyte, and Pax rushes into the courtyard with his datapad in hand. By the look on his face, I know what it is.
“Earth has fallen,” I whisper.
“Already?” Victra snarls.
“To whom?” I ask. “Rim or—”
“Both,” he whispers distantly. “Cassius was right. Lune has bridged the divide.”
“ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU want me to leave you alone out here?” Rhone’s eyes search the warped horizon of the Ladon. Pytha stands behind him before my personal shuttle. “Until the wedding, Ajax will look for any opportunity…”
“Ajax is on Earth. It must be done.”
“But, dominus…” He looks again at the feast. In the middle of the desert, upon a great dune, two broad couches of purple silk and raw nebulawood lie on either side of a long table weighed down by a feast to feed twenty. “Are you certain this is safe?”
“I don’t believe my guest would respect safe.”
“Are you certain he will come?”
I look out at the desert. “The better question is if he is even real.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never you mind. Come back for me in two hours,” I say. “If I’m in more than one piece, collect my remains and fire them into the sun.” I hand him a datadrop. “My will. Glirastes has a copy too.”
Glirastes, who took the day to scout locations for a new library in Pan, would be furious if he knew that I was out here in the desert instead of overseeing the rebuilding of Tyche, but despite what he thinks, he needn’t know all my affairs.
After a hesitation, Rhone salutes and enters the shuttle. Pytha remains behind. “Do you know what you are doing?” she asks. “He is not a sane man.”
“Are you afraid of him, Pytha?”
“Yes.”
“So is everyone.” She understands as she remembers her advice in the fitting bay of the Annihilo. But she does not like it.
Soon the shuttle is out of sight. I sit on one of the couches and sip chilled wine. With Kalindora’s revelations, my inner world is in shambles. But the strings of oaths, fidelity, and history that conspired to strangle me are cut. I know the rules now, Grandmother.
There are none.
At last, I feel free.
Here in the aftermath of the Battle of Mercury, I sense a great horizon of opportunity. The Free Legions are broken. Darrow is in flight. Luna is run by a madman. Mars trampled by Obsidians. Earth fallen to the Rim and the Society.
That sense of insignificance and guilt I permitted Cassius to instill within me has not disappeared, but remains in the back of my mind as a reminder of the fate one can accept if he lets the mercy of others define him. Darrow’s mercy all those years ago, Cassius’s mercy in serving as my protector, Kalindora’s last testament—all of it rooted in some vain attempt to rekindle honor they long ago sacrificed for one reason or another.
The same honor Lorn preached, after painting a legend in blood. The same selfish honor Romulus preserved before abandoning his people at their most dire hour. The same honor that led to my engagement with Atalantia, and let me delude myself into thinking that honor was about personal sacrifice.
My grandmother was the most cunning person I ever met, but still she was wrong. She thought there was no place for honor in the world. I cannot agree completely. It was her cruelty that chipped away at the foundation of her power and poisoned all who served her.
It is Atalantia’s cruelty which makes me prey to people like her. Is it honorable to kill her for my mother? Honorable to thrust us into civil war? Honorable to fulfill my pledge to submit to her every whim? Honorable to be trapped between her legs night after night so that Gold might have unity?
I think not.
I think, as with all things, honor is best appreciated in moderation. As is cruelty.
After all, there is no crime with a court.
The whine of gravBoots disturbs my silence. My guest arrives. He is no figment of my imagination. He is real, and dreadful. His Martian armor radiates heat in the sun until he steps into the cool provided by the pulseBubble I have prepared. He looks over the table from beneath the horns of his helm.
“A mirage of no finer quality has ever graced this wasted tomb to ambition and martial men,” he declares through his helmet. “Libations of Elysian red, Terran Bordeaux, Mercurian soletto. With gustatio of raw oysters, wine-steamed sow’s udders, candied pecans, olives, azeroles, and medlars and jucellum. A mensae primae of walnut-and-herb-stuffed thrush and pachelbel, garlic venison, honey-drizzled wild boar stuffed with dried figs, garum sauce, and, do mine eyes deceive me?”
His giant helmet inspects the centerpiece.
“A hare decorated with the wings of a peacock—no, ’tis but a noble pegasus! And, not to be forgotten, a mensae secundae of Lunese iced frizeé, tactun, chocolate pecans, and white pudding.”
He looks up at me. That metal helmet impassive and dreadful.
“Now, this is a cena! A feast fit for a conqueror, a gourmand, a student of Apicius himself, and set before such grandeur.” He waves at the desert. “Yes, yes! I at last am paid the respect I am due.”
“If I have learned anything, it is that one does not simply summon the Minotaur,” I reply. “If you would please do me the honor of joining me, I believe we have common interests to discuss.”
He doffs his helmet and reclines on the couch. His face is that of an evil angel. Masculine, suspicious, amused, and tan from what I assume he considers his vacation in the desert. He peers under the table with mocking eyes. “Gelding or stallion, my goodman?”
“Were you not there when I was tortured?” I ask.
“I was mocking your union with the Fury, not your time with the Gorgons,” he says. “How well I know the unlimited depths of her voracious appetites. Though I hear Ajax has filled the holes my absence has left. Now you seek to do the same.” He grins. “But, yes, I was outside the cave, I waited, listening via my sophisticated drone hardware to the ministrations of the Fear Knight. I confess, I considered striking when you purloined him for your own purposes. Such opportunity seldom presents itself with that most dangerous game. But the show…oh, the show was far too interesting to interrupt. The flight across the desert will be held forever in amber in the hollows of my mind.” He leans forward, very sincere. “I do apologize for claiming you lacked theatricality. It is always a pleasure to be wrong.” He strokes his purple chest plate. The grapevines of his home in Thessalonica stretch to a horizon gilded with silver sunlight. “Alas, my armor died from that infernal electromagnetic pulse. I have yet to divine why its shielding failed to that device. I have many questions for Glirastes. Many questions to which I must have answers.”
“They can wait. I confess, I am surprised to find that you did not go witness the attack on Earth. Most of your quarry were in play.”
“My path to my quarry runs through
this moment,” he says. “And after the Ash Rain?” He looks offended. “After a cup of ’21 Thessalonican Chianti, one does not rinse one’s mouth with sangria. I saw thirty million men in mortal conflict. Oh, my need for violent theater is quite sated. In any matter, it was a pathetic affair. The Vox fleet gazed lazily from their perch above Luna as Atalantia feigned a retreat and led Earth’s fleet straight into a Rim attack group. The only thing of interest would have been to see the son of Romulus lead his commandos to the surface to lower the shield generators. What a specimen is he. Perhaps we have a new lead on stage.”
“Well, I hope you still have room for theater of a different sort,” I say.
A great mechanical groan tears the sky, frightening the dishes and the sand of the dune into frantic palpitations. The sound rushes toward us in a flood of decibels till it seems that the torrent of it will swallow the dune. And then it is overhead and Apollonius grins. A great mass blocks the sky. Slowly, a thin wedge of blue elongates in the darkness as two vast legs of stone pass through the midday heat. They are but the lowermost extremities of the ancient mass born aloft by six heavy-cargo haulers. The haulers creep across the sky, and soon begin to lower their charge.
The statue is immense. Its face, riven by the ravages of desert storms and chipped by the target practice of Rising riflemen, sneers at us as if to say, You think yourself worthy?
The stone lips of my first Ancestor, Silenius au Lune, curl in contempt as he resumes his rightful place under the sun. The haulers release the towing bonds. The Sovereign sways. His stone feet sink into the sand. Dust from his recent grave shudders from his shoulders, nose, and the creases of his robe to form a billowing cloak. When the dust clears, he is still and solemn amongst his mighty fellows. Two-score Sovereigns stand in the desert to form a circle ten kilometers in circumference.
It is theater fit for the Minotaur. He claps his hands like a delighted, monstrous child.
