Dark Age

by Pierce Brown

  Though it feels so very far away. Daxo is dead.

  Twice they try to link psychotechs directly to my brain as I did with the Duke of Hands. My security packet activates. I unleash neurological attacks. The first man dies of a seizure. The second blocks that attack but suffers a headache and then kills himself the next day because of the insidious memories of trauma I planted in his head.

  What does Lilath want? To rule behind Publius? To avenge my dead brother? To atomize Luna and fulfill his dying wish after all these years?

  Whatever she wants, I cannot open my mind to her.

  In time they will break through, and my self-destruct protocol will go into effect, leading to a medulla cataclysm that will deactivate my breathing and turn off my heart.

  It is only a matter of time.

  Then one day, I appear out of the void in the center of an empty Moonhall court.

  I am delighted, but do not know why.

  I sit in the accursed chair dead center before a plinth upon which Adjudicators once heard cases from behind an emblem of the Society. The emblem is gone. Instead of the Adjudicator’s single chair, there are now seven. A rotating moon hangs over my head. Wardens comprise my only company.

  I smile, realizing I am physically unbound, yet I cannot move more than my head. The psychoSpike has disabled the nerve reflexes of my body beneath my sixth vertebra. Quadriplegic then. How amusing and clever of Lilath. I never thought to use the spike quite like this.

  A sudden feeling of amazement fills me.

  Let’s analyze.

  I try to speak to the Wardens, who are standing in small groups along the sides of the room, talking amongst themselves. A cowlike moo comes out of my mouth. Hilarious. The psychotechs have hijacked the Broca’s area of my brain, disabling my language abilities even though I maintain the motor skills to form sounds.

  Lilath, you clever girl.

  “Sorry, lass. Say again?” a Gray Warden says, laughing. So my angular gyrus and Wernicke’s area are intact. I can understand words and concepts. He was being an asshole. That Warden is really quite handsome. I would kill him if I could, naturally, yet I still wonder if his manhood is sufficient to please me. Probably not. I have high standards.

  No. Don’t be distracted. My supposition was correct.

  I will sit in silence as they accuse me of heinous crimes before billions of confused, frightened citizens who will be waiting for some clarity on the dreadfully violent massacre. They will have been waiting for days, perhaps weeks, for my account, and I will sit in silence as they accuse me of murdering Dancer.

  In my silence, my people will proscribe condescension and guilt. If this were a time of peace, there would be a rebellion and anarchy, but in a time of war, they will swallow it just to have a leader, and I will be executed. My son will watch. Atalantia will lift the communication blockade on Mercury and let Darrow watch. And Lilath will rule through Publius.

  It’s masterful.

  I’m distracted. That Gray warden really does have fine…

  Oh no.

  I can feel the scores of wounds the crowd gave me during the massacre, but not well. They are dull, distant, and deep beneath the pleasure.They’ve hijacked the dopamine and oxytocin levels of my brain. I’m happy when I should be furious. I can process and understand, but feel nothing but amplified postcoital joy.

  Lilath, that bitch.

  A hologram appears before me. It grows from a small blue embryo to consume half the room.

  The daylight hologram of a funeral procession enters the Moonhall courtyard, the one outside the building in which I currently sit. It is led by blue-cloaked Wardens on white horses. Blackchains walk with heavy guns. Skiffs follow, the same that are used in the washing of highrise windows, now laden with victims of Publius’s purge: members of my Lionguard and my household, senators, Skyhall officers, businessmen, and politicos of the required hue.

  And on the front of the skiff, sitting with rigid dignity, is Theodora.

  The poor woman. I was nothing but hard on her. I should have brought her closer. The distrust created gaps, and now she will die. What a horrible world, I think with a smile.

  Publius stands with the leaders of the Vox’s radical wing on the steps of the Moonhall. They wear their unwashed senatorial robes stained with old blood. Ashes mark his face for mourning.

  How dramatic.

  The crowd teems against barricades and soldiers, jeering as the procession draws to a halt before the Obelisk of Ares. It floats ten meters above the ground. Commissioned by Victra to commemorate Sevro’s father, it bears images of the birth of the Sons of Ares along its one-hundred-meter length. Darrow’s image, which by tradition always faces north, has been turned south. The hallowed sight of his first wife now holds the place of honor. Eo of Lykos sings in stone before the gallows that would claim her life.

  I always felt jealousy toward the dead girl. She knew Darrow back when all he wanted was to love and be loved. Darrow has loved me. Truly loved me in a way that cannot exist outside of wartime, yet that love reflects a Gold love, not the Red love that consumes the self, a love I could never feel. My brain has always been too far ahead of my heart. But even then, I cannot help but think that Eo loved him less than he deserved.

  Will he watch me die from Mercury as the enemy engines of doom stalk ever closer?

  The procession has come to a stop.

  How did it work? Did Atalantia sponsor Lilath? She must have.

  Soldiers unload the prisoners at the tip of the Obelisk’s shadow and lead them along its path to the base of the Obelisk. There is no struggle. Many walk with a determined step. Some few dance a little jig. Theodora lifts her eyes to behold the last rays of the sun as light glints off the bronze dome of the Moonhall, where blindfolded Liberty stands with her scales. Pigeons watch from her bronze shoulders.

  When the victims all have been brought to the base of the Obelisk, Publius recites the charges of which Theodora has been found guilty by the new power of the land—the People’s Tribunal.

  “…conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to wrest legal authority from the Senate, conspiracy to commit treason against the Republic…”

  Each charge is met with a jeer from the crowd. The transparent partitions are lowered around the base of the Obelisk and Theodora is taken under and secured to a hook of metal set in the stone. The Vox have made their mark. Grooves have been lasered into the stone for liquid to run into troughs beyond the partitions.

  Publius completes the reading of the charges.

  Theodora lifts her chin and stares straight ahead, a woman of worth underneath the shadow of ten thousand tons of stone. A woman who was grown in a tank, who was raised with Cupid’s Kiss to understand that pain is relieved only by sexual obedience, who was made to learn the art of pleasing the men who would one day rape her body, a woman who survived decades of sexual humiliation to become a glorified maid, and then chose to follow a young man at war with the world, not because she believed he would win, but because he was the first man to fight for her.

  She fought for him, and as the stone comes down she is flattened by a marble monument dedicated to the dream she lived for.

  I close my eyes.

  Did she think of him in her last moments, or some childhood love? The tragedy of death is that I cannot ask, and her secret dies with her.

  Theodora is dead.

  The Obelisk rises, stained red all along the bottom. Blood runs through the grooves. People from the crowd rush forward to dip their kerchiefs and banners in the blood troughs. They wave them around as Servilla au Arcos, Alexandar’s mother, watches them with a look of beleaguered contempt. Then the remains are hosed away and Servilla is secured to the grisly hook. She shouts something. Then the stone comes down again.

  Does Alexandar feel it on Mercury?

  When all have been executed, th
e image disappears.

  I hear voices moments later as the circus comes to the courtroom. A dozen aides swirl around Publius, exultant with their newfound power. What dreams these Vox must have. What fools to think it comes for free. ArchImperator Zan, surrounded by her own staff, walks with Publius.

  “Your agents missed their opportunity,” Zan says to Publius. The Blue looks at me, makes a small sound of distaste, and glares back at the Copper. “I advised you to use Dunhul instead of your mercenaries.”

  “If you weren’t so paranoid of Mars, we wouldn’t be in this position.”

  Zan sneers. “The Reaper’s brother runs two-thirds of Mars, the Obsidian bitch runs the other third, and you say I am paranoid?”

  “He only runs Mars because your men put a bullet through ArchGovernor O’Sicyon. As for the Obsidian, we know whom to blame.”

  They look at me.

  “We have more than enough helium to act before we take the mines back,” Publius says. “The Telemanus and Augustus armada is on its way here. Turn your eyes to that, Zan. I will deal with Mars.”

  After Zan departs, Publius dismisses his staff to the far wall and looks at me. I search his face for some sign of evil. Even now it is a pleasant face. A small chin and delicate facial bones, with only a long nose to add drama. But those eyes, for so long cold and distant, flicker with excitement.

  “Apologies, Virginia,” the Incorruptible says. “I am sorry it came to this. If your child had only been delivered to me as requested, we could have spared you this trauma. But change is not always pretty.”

  An “honorable” man like the Incorruptible could harness the Wardens. They were poised for defection after Wulfgar’s death. But it must have been Lilath who poisoned the togas, and destroyed the barrier to let the mob in. Publius isn’t an operator. But how did he know about my agreement with Dancer? The question is driving me mad.

  “I looked up to you once, you know. I truly did.” Lilath’s puppet smiles sadly to himself and leans against the dais. He doesn’t know he’s a puppet. He thinks he is in control. And here comes his gorydamn speech.

  “I thought you were our great hope. After the Fall, I sung your praises. I debated radicals in our political halls. I preached an even middle ground. I thought the Vox misguided in their fervor.

  “You were not perfect, far from it, but you were the best we could hope for. ‘Let us be sensible,’ I said to those radicals. ‘Let us understand we cannot make a new world in a day.’ But I was naïve. Our whole political discourse was like a great infant. None of us knew our business or how big our feet were. There was no culture to build upon. Politics was new to us, but not to you.

  “I watched you dismiss the voiceless majority. I watched you accrete power even as you spouted demokratic platitudes. I watched you lead us rung by rung back into the old world. Soon I knew there was no middle ground. Only the past and the future. The poor and the rich. Us and you. It was then I realized sensibility is torpor by a more palatable name.

  “Since the first ape pulled himself out of the mire to fashion an axe from stone, the meek have served the strong. We learned to content ourselves with crumbs. We allowed ourselves to be placated by religion. A promise of something after all this horror. We allowed ourselves to be enfeebled by poverty. We learned to be scolded whenever we raised our voice. Lasting change must be slow and steady and civil, we were told. That civility neutered us. But tell me, Virginia, was Gold civil when they conquered Earth? Did they assemble in peaceful protests? Or did they come with terror?”

  He paces before me, waxing grandiloquent.

  “If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during revolution must be virtue and terror. Virtue without terror is helpless—as I have learned after ten years of being ‘the voice of reason.’ Terror without virtue is evil—as Gold has taught. My terror is nothing more than speedy, severe, and inflexible justice. It is an emanation of virtue, a vehicle for it.

  “I know. I know. You think I allied with a monster.” He picks lint from his toga, not knowing the strings his monster has put in him. “But the child was meant to be returned to you after you stepped down. You have done far worse. You allied with the Moon Lords. Fascist slavers.” He looks direly offended. “Using a criminal organization is hardly comparable. And now that you have removed them for me, hardly problematic. Your attacks on their facilities were nearly without flaw.

  “I know you look down on me for this monologue, but after so many years of biting my tongue, it feels good to have a voice. I wanted you to see the executions because you will be found guilty today and die tomorrow, since my techs tell me you have a self-destruct protocol in your brain.

  “Before you do—die, that is—I wanted you to understand that I am different from you. What remains of the Syndicate is already being destroyed. I do not abide criminality. Quicksilver has deserted Luna, but he will be hunted down and put to the Obelisk like your spymaster. I do not allow allies to escape justice when they are villains just because they have utility. I am going to remake the world, Virginia. It will be as it should. One without hierarchy. Without economic class distinctions. One in which it will be criminal to own excess wealth. Where the loftiest goal of a human being is to serve the People. No corporations. No private citizens. All serve one another for dignity and protection of the common good. All men were created equal, and I will make them so.” He claps his hands together. “Now, are you ready for the justice of the meek?”

  WE ARE JOINED BY SIX radical Vox senators who survived the massacre to comprise the People’s Tribunal. Several dozen others join, but it will not be a public monstrosity. Likely Publius wanted to limit the possibility of my allies rescuing me. Whichever of them is alive. Even through the muddle of serotonin I feel the fear of the final tally. Will I ever see anyone I love again?

  That’s the loneliest thought.

  Not my husband. Not my son. Not Kavax or Niobe or Sevro or Leanna or even Victra. No one but these fools.

  They dither first with proclamations of the day’s importance. Of the seriousness of my ridiculous crimes to impose my will on humanity. Then Publius reads the charges as the robotic cameras zip around for dramatic angles. With one twenty centimeters from my face, I listen and try not to smile from the chemicals racing in my brain.

  “You are brought here today before the People’s Tribunal so we may adjudicate your guilt or innocence as to the charges of: high treason, assassination of Dancer O’Faran and loyal senators of the people, election fraud, bribery, conspiracy to install despotism, embezzlement, and fornication with a known collaborator of the Core Golds, Daxo au Telemanus. How do you plead?”

  I stare at them, finding it difficult to frown. They hold themselves with such ludicrous self-importance. Canaries pretending to be eagles. No, not canaries. Canaries can smell death coming. They’re dodo birds.

  “Silence will not save you from these charges, citizen,” Publius says, frowning as an aide walks up and pours him a glass of water. Something moves in the glass. The robotic cameras go dead and drop to the floor, hacked. There’s a noise in the back of the court.

  Something resembling a scream.

  Publius shouts for the Wardens to investigate. Half of the two dozen make for the door, calling for backup as if their coms weren’t dead. I stare straight at Publius as the weapons fire outside and grow silent.

  “Publius, what’s happening?” a Red senator asks.

  “It’s Sevro!” one of them cries.

  But Publius knows. He knows all too well, because moving in his glass is a squid. The remaining Wardens take defensive positions around the entrance and the senators. I look up at the ceiling as three transparent shapes drop from it.

  They land beside the Wardens guarding Publius and tear off their heads.

  Blood fountains onto the ghostCloaks. They deactivate to reveal three tall Go
lds in black armor embedded with the bones of complete skeletons.

  I know their blood-spattered faces.

  Each one was from House Pluto, the dark brotherhood my brother formed during our year at the Institute. They shared the hunting grounds with me as children and human flesh with my brother. Each was there at Darrow’s Triumph, and survived ten years in isolation. They are pale and mad from their time in our aquatic prison, and laugh as the Vox senators scream. The Wardens at the door are already dead. I tilt my head back just enough to see the rest of the psychopaths enter.

  Seventeen remain of the blood-soaked Martian savages that my brother collected for his own personal quest to depose Octavia and reach the highest office in the worlds. Not a one of them is out of their thirties, and it seems a hilarious realization to think that perhaps their time in defeat will be but the footnote of their saga.

  Lilath, Queen of the Syndicate, walks at the head of the pack.

  She pulls off the Red face, wig, and contacts she wore at the Forum, and takes a black iron crown from one of her men and sets it on her head. She walks toward me carrying a Warden’s head. She rolls it like a playing ball toward the speechless senators. They murmur her name in terror. Several try to flee.

  She runs a hand along the back of my head as she comes to a stop. “Publius, you’ve been very naughty.” Her voice is dead and empty of humor. “I gave you that seat and you try to kill me. This is not the behavior of a pet.” She produces a studded dog collar and a leash. “Come.”

  Publius does not move. The Vox senators stare at him. “You’re in league with Boneriders?” a Red cries. “Have you gone mad!”

  Publius has lost his voice. Lilath’s becomes a whip. “Publius, come.”

  “You’re not a Red?” he murmurs.

  Lilath tilts her head. “The right hand of the Emperor, a Red? Disgusting.”

  “Begone, slaver!” a Blue shouts at her. “We are free men and women here! We wear your chains no more. We would rather die than—”

  Lilath lunges in a way the Blue probably never thought possible. One moment she is beside me, the next, she has tackled the Blue and is hacking her face apart with an iron hatchet. When the Blue’s head is a ruin, Lilath walks back to me and holds out the collar, motioning, “Publius, come.”