by Pierce Brown
“Then a lack of ships, I warrant.”
“Many were destroyed by the Sword Armada,” Dido admits. “And there were…lean years. But no. Not a lack of ships or helium-3. In fact, it was disruption of agriculture on Titan last month that forced us to part with more of our bounty than anticipated.”
It isn’t natural for her to tell us so much.
“A daughter of Venus must have found this place…strange,” I say diplomatically, trying to pull Cassius away from his obvious endgame.
“Ah, so you know my lineage. Aren’t you a well-studied merchant?” she says.
“You’re rather famous,” I reply, playing the overwhelmed youth. I spare a glance at Bellerephon, who has not stopped watching Cassius since he sat down at the table. Something is wrong here. I can sense the sharks beneath the surface. “Even on Mars we know of Dido au Saud.”
“I doubt my father would let me still claim his name.” She leans forward. “Tell me, am I as famous as my husband?”
Seraphina tenses at mention of her father. She’s barely touched her food, and looks uncomfortable, furthering my unease.
“Few are as famous as your husband,” I say to Dido.
Her mouth pinches. “How diplomatic.”
“But on Mars, ‘Romulus and Dido’ is still a fairy tale.”
“A fairy tale. If only.” She smiles at that. “When I came here for the first time, I was a foolish little sun creature raised in the court of Iram. A gahja through and through. I fell in love with a pale wisp of a knight and thought our life would be a poem. But once I arrived here, I felt the darkness, the cold my mother warned me about. I missed the sun and hated this place. Hated my husband’s austerity. He would fret over water left in a glass. A crust of bread uneaten. But then I learned one of Io’s many lessons: here, by darkness, by radiation, by hunger, by thirst, by war, we are always at siege. It is not like the world of my birth, where life grows on every rock and men eat until they vomit. On Io, scarcity makes us strong. It makes us value what we do have.”
She looks around at her family with a warm smile.
Seraphina clarifies. “Father set a decree three months ago that rations are in effect until reserves are back to appropriate levels. No Gold may eat more, as measured by weight ratio, than the agricultural Reds do.”
I’m startled. “You mean to say even you follow the ration limit?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Seraphina asks, confused. “It is law.”
“Qualis rex, talis grex,” Dido says.
“As the king, so the people. But you have power,” I say, intensely curious. “You can do what you like.” Cassius shoots me a not-so-subtle look. He wants me to shut up and eat my food, leave the games to him, but my curiosity gets the better of me. My tutors called the Moon Lords impractical isolationists. But there seems little here but practicality.”
“An errant claim. Romulus and I believe it important to teach our children to be more than just powerful.” Dido slowly picks the meat off the bones of her fish with her fingers. “Gold was meant to be an ideal, to inspire. Don’t you agree?”
Why does she bait me?
Cassius’s eyes tell me to be careful. And so do Seraphina’s. “I’m just a merchant,” I say with a humble shrug. “My family wasn’t like yours.”
“Oh, please. Don’t be ponderous, boy. Peerless aren’t the only ones with opinions. Pray tell, do you agree? Speak plainly or don’t speak at all. Were we meant to be more than just force? Weren’t we meant to inspire?”
“Yes. But then we forgot it.”
“See! An opinion.” She looks over at Cassius. “You really should let him have a mind of his own, my goodman. Sighing like that when he speaks his mind? Not good to quash the naturally inquisitive.” She turns back to me. “Now, Castor, it’s been ten years since we purged the Sons of Ares from our moons and eliminated the last of the Slave King’s terrorists. Out of curiosity, how many rebellions and terrorist attacks do you think Ilium has had in the last year?”
“Forty-three,” I say instinctively, based on the ten-year annual average of reported incidents before the Fall. Seraphina’s eyes narrow at the precise number.
“Two,” Dido replies.
“Just two?” Cassius asks in suprise.
“A shooting and a bomb. The hierarchy has not changed. Do you know what inspires this loyalty to the Compact from all Colors? Honor. Honor in work. Honor in morality. Honor in principle and family. Our rules are harsh, but we obey them from Gold to Red. Romulus eliminated the rigged quotas in mines and the latifundia, has begun to phase out the Obsidian gods, and makes each man understand he is part of the same body. He has replaced subjugation with participation. Given a reason to sacrifice for the betterment of all. And it starts with us at this table, the head of the body.”
“Each man and woman given liberty to pursue achievement, with the best of his virtue and abilities, and rise within the station for which his flesh was made—a sacrifice of the Self for the preservation of All.” I murmur the words of the Compact like scripture. “Admirable.”
“Yes,” Seraphina says, her eyes warmer to me than ever before.
“Why did you not carry on the fight? Why become traders?” Diomedes has been nursing the question, waiting for a pause in the conversation. The timing is awkward.
“You mean fight for the Ash Lord?” Cassius asks, sipping his wine. “I think not. His daughter murdered my friends at the Triumph.”
“What of you, Castor?” Dido asks. “Don’t you want revenge for your family?”
I feel Cassius’s gaze on me, the weight of expectation as I regurgitate his lessons, his maxims. “What good would it do?” I answer loyally.
“Is that your answer…” Dido nods to Cassius. “…or his?”
How many times have I lain in my bunk on the Archimedes lonely, fantasizing of strength, of revenge? Of sailing home and taking back my grandmother’s scepter, her chair, and putting Darrow and his rabid wolves in chains? I always thought it a fantasy, something that could never be. But now that I see how much strength is left in Gold, how much of the old virtues, it grows harder to see it as the vain, idle fantasy of a little boy any longer.
Gold is not dead.
“Is that why you want war?” Cassius asks. “For revenge?”
“In part, yes,” Dido replies. “To avenge the wrongs the Slave King has done us. But also to heal the chaos that he has made. His Republic has had ten years to create peace. They’ve failed. The time is right for the Society to be rebuilt. We have the will, the might. But we need the spark. That is why I sent my daughter to the Gulf. To retrieve that spark. Thanks in no small part to you, she brought it home.” She pauses a moment to smile with no kindness in her eyes. “But now, I fear it is missing.”
Finally, the twist. The reason behind all these innuendos and games.
“Is that an accusation?” Cassius asks warily.
“Oh yes, my goodman.”
“That’s why you went back into the Vindabona…” I say to Seraphina. “But you didn’t bring anything back with you.”
“I brought your razor,” she says.
My heart sinks in my chest. I missed it. I’ve walked straight into their trap. They’ve been toying with us, with me. And here I was admiring their civilization like a gorydamn anthropologist.
“And where is your razor?” Dido asks. “We’re dying to know.”
“It was lost,” I say.
“Our hull was punctured and the razor pushed into space before the cellular armor could close the breach,” Cassius explains.
“Is that so…Regulus?” Dido leans back. “The fish has left a foul taste in my mouth. I think it is time for dessert.” She motions to the servants and the door to the room opens. Two Obsidians with bulging pale arms enter carrying a load between them, which they set in the center of the table.
It is our safe.
“THE SAFE WAS WELL HIDDEN,” Dido says. “But of course our men are nothing but thorough. Fortunately, the k
rypteia who discovered it was one of mine.”
“If you are so thorough, then you know what sort of safe that is,” I reply before Cassius can speak. The safe might hold our damnation in our family rings, but it also is our only leverage. It can’t be lost. “It is a halcon-7. It has four inches of rolled steel with an analog tumbler lock instead of a digital mechanism, which makes it impervious to electronic incursion. More importantly, it has three Sun Industry military-grade plasma charges embedded on the interior wall faces of the safe. You drill, it will detonate at a temperature of three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. But of course you know that, or you would have already opened it.”
“Indeed,” Dido says. “Personally, I would very much like my daughter’s efforts not to have been spent in vain.” She holds up a finger as I’m about to reply. “And I would be wary if I were you at further insulting my intelligence by claiming your razor is not inside this safe. I bear insults poorly.” Then her lips slide into an enigmatic grin. “But open it for me, and we can be friends again. I am a most generous friend.”
I glance at Seraphina.
“Is that the only reason we’re alive?” I feel foolish for letting her lower my guard. A strain of grandmother’s malice pulses into me, despising her attempts at manipulation.
“Castor, let the adults speak,” Cassius says slowly, his eyes fixed on Dido. “The safe can be opened, for a price.”
“A price?” Seraphina laughs in appreciation of his boldness.
“We are merchants, after all,” Cassius replies.
“What is your price?” Dido asks.
“For the key to your war, I offer a bargain. Give us our ship. Give us our pilot, and any surviving crewmembers of the Vindabona. Give us our freedom. And once we reach safe distance from Io, we will send you the combination.”
Dido wags a finger at him. “Are you trying to make a fool of me? Castor left out a feature of the halcon-7. Didn’t he? Clever boy. A secondary detonation code. One that can be given in place of the real code. One you could supply me with when you are cruising toward the Belt.”
“And why would I want to destroy what’s inside?” Cassius asks. “We take no issue with your war. Only your value of our lives.”
“Yes.” She runs a finger over her lips. “Why indeed?”
The silence grows to terrible length.
“On my honor, I’ll send the proper combination,” Cassius lies. He’d rather die than let them have their war.
“Your honor.” Bellerephon laughs at a private joke. “Be thankful we do not peel you like tank shrimp.”
“They are guests,” Diomedes says sternly. “They have eaten our bread, supped at our table. No guest in the history of our house has been violated. Not even Fabii and the Reaper. Not even the Ash Lord after the Burning of Rhea. Do not disrespect your ancestors.”
Bellerephon rolls his eyes at his cousin and turns to his aunt. “Aunt Dido, we don’t have time for this. Vela is already rallying legions at Karath.” If Vela escaped, then Cassius is right again. The coup is not concluded. “The Codovan will be coming too. Our allies are nervous. Some won’t stand by us if Vela attacks. We need the evidence.”
Dido opens her hands to us. “You see my predicament. There is no time for your proposal. One option remains, and that is to trust me. Have I not been a good host? Have I not shown honor?”
Does she think we’re so stupid?
Cassius smiles. “You have my terms.”
Seraphina looks to me. “Castor, no harm will come to you…”
“My brother speaks for the both of us,” I reply.
Dido leans back in her chair and nods to a Brown by the door. “Tell Pelebius to bring in his pet.”
“Have you a new creature for the children?” old Gaia asks in delight. Her wrinkled neck cranes in anticipation as an old Violet with a black mustache limps into the room. “Oh. Vile.” She frowns as he carries in a glass jar filled with noxious yellow liquid. Something stirs within, but I can’t yet make it out. The Violet stands ominously at the end of the table.
“It is said that a life is made great by sorrow and joy.” Dido stares at me, then Cassius. “But you men are cursed. You will never really understand life because you do not know what it is to bear a child. To push a life from your flesh. To have two hearts beating inside you at once.” She looks at the empty seat beside Seraphina. She takes the flower there between her fingers. “To have had seven hearts beating beyond you, carrying your hopes, your dreams. And when one of those hearts stops…you feel it as if it were your own.”
She crushes the flower in her slender hand and lets the mangled petals drift free one by one to settle on the barren bones of her fish.
“The story of their life ends. All those dreams gone. And you begin to forget them. You begin to loathe yourself for time ill-spent with them. For your grief stealing the joy their life brought as their memory begins to fade.”
More Obsidians enter the room and stand behind us.
“My daughter, my Thesalia, was not made in my image or Romulus’s,” Dido whispers. “She was a birth of air. A sweet girl. A vessel of all my joy. Eleven years ago Thesalia went with her grandfather Revus to see Mars and attend Augustus’s summit. She wanted to see the Valles Marineris. The Olympus Mons. Eleven years ago she watched her grandfather die and felt fear as her head was caved in by a Martian boot. My joy vanished that day, and as a family, we swore vengeance upon all those responsible. Roque au Fabii, Lilath au Faran, Aja au Grimmus, Adrius au Augustus. Antonia au Severus-Julii. Octavia au Lune.” Dido’s lips curl. “And Cassius au Bellona.”
CASSIUS BURSTS FROM HIS SEAT, diving across the table to try to reach the access pad on the safe. The Obsidians grab him and wrench him back. I lunge for one of the knives on their belts, but Bellerephon stands and in one fluid movement whips his razor diagonally across the table. The thin black metal snaps around my arm. He jerks me sideways and I spill down, set upon by Obsidians. Bellerephon’s fingers move over the hilt of his razor to recall the whip to rigid form. He’ll take my arm.
“Bellerephon,” Seraphina snaps. “Not that one.”
He says nothing but flicks his whip free of my arm and recalls it back across the table. It slithers like a snake across plates and spilled rice. The Obsidians shove me into my seat. They’ve wrestled Cassius back to his. “If you hurt him, I won’t give you the combination,” I say quickly. “Seraphina, he saved your life. You’re in his debt and he’s under your promise of hospitality.”
“Void because of your lie,” Dido says.
Diomedes, who has sat like some paragon statue this whole time, watching the drama unfold, now frowns. “Mother. I know the face of Bellona as well as any man. That is not him.”
“Oh, but it is…” she says. “The razor of a Bellona is in that safe. Concealed under a shell of titanium.”
I look to Seraphina, hiding my horror as I realize what gave us away. When she opened the razor to hide her evidence inside it, she must have discovered the false cover and seen the eagles on the handle underneath. She knew all along.
“Did you think we do not know the technology of our enemies?” Dido asks Cassius, gesturing at her own face. “You may keep your Silver-spawned enlightenment; here we have masters of the old ways, of flesh and bone.” She gestures to the Violet and his jar. “You may begin.”
The Violet shuffles up to the table and, with a pair of tongs, reaches into his jar. From the yellow liquid he draws a tiny horror. A hideous spider-legged slug with corpse-pale skin and a belly riddled with small, hungry apertures. “This is a gruesli,” Dido says. The creature squeals like a burning worm and writhes in the air over Cassius’s face. He flinches away. From its apertures, thin tentacles push past layers of pallid flesh toward his face. “The gruesli eats masks, you see. You are not the first spy to breach the Gulf.”
The Violet lowers the creature onto Cassius’s face. Black stingers spurt from the tentacles into his skin. It wraps its legs around his head and sucks, shuddering
with an orgiastic sigh as my friend gurgles beneath its flesh. I watch in cold terror as the creature feeds till it is engorged and lethargic and the Violet pulls it back up with tongs, to reveal, under a mess of puncture wounds and thin trails of blood, the swollen face of my handsome friend. He blinks through the layer of grime up at Dido as the Obsidians haul him up to face our hosts. Blood and milky fluid drip into his beard.
“The truth, at last,” Dido says.
Cassius laughs and rebelliously spits blood from his mouth. “Cassius au Bellona…at your service.”
I look to Seraphina for help, but there’s no ally left in the room. She loathes Cassius as much as the rest of them.
“You didn’t just take my daughter. You took my brother,” Dido says.
“Marcus,” Cassius says. “The Joy Knight.”
“Your sworn brother. Your fellow Olympic. You cut him down before you killed Octavia.”
“He was a bastard.”
“Yes. But he was my blood,” she whispers. “I will give you one last chance to open the safe.”
Cassius grunts. “So you can have a war that will send mankind back to the dark ages? Funny. You don’t look stupid.”
“These are the dark ages,” Seraphina says. “We will bring order back.”
“Says the little girl. Have you ever seen a city after orbital bombardment?”
“I saw Ganymede after the docks fell from orbit,” she replies bitterly. “I’ve seen horror—starvation. A whole city frozen.”
“You haven’t seen war.” His heavy eyes strafe the rest of the Raa. “You all think you’re the chosen people. The keepers of the flame. Please. You know how many have thought that? You’re just like the rest. Too vain to realize the flame has gone out. The dream of Gold was dead before any of us were ever born. You want a war because you think the Rising is vulnerable? Because they still battle the Core? You don’t know Darrow. You don’t know his people. If you attack, you lose everything.”
“The Slave King has already fallen,” Dido says, smiling at Cassius’s confusion. “Of course, how could you know? He has become an outlaw. His own mentor and wife have turned their backs on him. The Obsidian Horde is thinned. The remainder stirs with discontent. Their Senate devours itself and debates peace with the Pixies of the Core. They are flailing, scattered, and weak.”