by Pierce Brown
“Continue to run with our fleet till Vespasian’s reinforcements arrive from Neptune,” Augustus murmurs. “In six months.”
The Politico nods. “Or surrender.”
“Would that you had killed Octavia when you had the chance, boy,” Kavax says.
“If I had, everyone here would be dead,” I reply.
Daxo nods. “He meant no offense. Wistful thinking.”
“Why didn’t you kill Octavia?” Pliny squints at me skeptically.
“I couldn’t have. I was in a room with Aja au Grimmus. Perhaps if you were there, you could have done better, but I’m a mortal man.”
The Praetors who know their business laugh.
“Even Lorn au Arcos wouldn’t have dared,” Augustus mutters. “And I once saw him kill Stained without a razor. Darrow did as he could.” He turns his attention on me. “Do you think we should run now as well?”
“It makes you look weak.”
“We are weak,” Pliny replies. “But this makes him look wise.”
“Wise men read books about history, Pliny. Strong men write them.”
“Stop quoting Lorn au Arcos!” Pliny snaps.
“I thought you’d be open to all knowledge.”
“Your many years of life no doubt make you an authority on innumerable things,” Pliny says melodically. “Do recycle more maxims from old warriors so we may learn more of life and wisdom.”
“This isn’t about me, dear Pliny. So cut the ad hominems.” I gesture to the ArchGovernor “This is about our liege. This is about his fate.”
“How theatrical of you to note, Darrow.” Augustus rubs his eyes, tired.
“The young can’t help but be eager,” Pliny continues. “But we must remember, there is no dishonor in prudence, my liege. Six months’ delay is a small price to pay for victory.” He splays out his long-fingered hands. “In fact, time is our friend. Octavia cannot afford to scour the Solar System for us. Not with the Senate so divided at home. Her grasping hand will be like iron. It will rake along the backs of the other ArchGovernors, and it will not be long before those who follow her begin to chafe at her orders. They will learn why we fight against her; namely that she is not our representative, but is instead an Empress. This will give us time. Which will give us power. Which will give us the ability to sue for profitable peace.”
Praetor Kavax slams his fist on the table. “Piss on this.”
A titan of a man, he’s carved more from rock than flesh. His neck is so thick that I couldn’t wrap even my hands around it. Unlike most Golds, he has shaved his head and permitted his beard to grow. It is thick and dyed blood-red. When the lights dim, it glows like a brand in the night. Only three fingers remain on his left hand. They say his son, Daxo, bit them off as a child. Though Daxo always smiles and with his soft voice suggests that it was his younger brother, Pax. The Telemanuses are the only Praetors in the room not beholden, in one way or another, to Pliny. I like Kavax.
“It chafes my balls. This Pixie talk chafes my balls!” Kavax sneers. “We should not be in this position. Give me leave, my liege, and I will take a thousand of my guard to treat with the cowards who did not answer your summons. Apologies, my darling,” he whispers to his favorite fox, Sophocles, a red-gold, sharp-eared thing that flinches at the loud sound of its master’s voice. Sophocles eats little jelly beans from Kavax’s massive palm.
We wait for Kavax’s attention to return to his words.
“You were saying, Kavax?” Augustus prods with a quick smile he reserves for his favorites.
“Father.” Daxo nudges the larger man.
Kavax looks up, startled. “Oh. And when their balls are ripped off and made to dangle from their own earlobes, others will remember you are ruler of Mars and they will beg to aid you, Nero.”
Satisfied, he goes back to feeding Sophocles jelly beans.
“And they will know that we few lords were found loyal,” Daxo quickly adds, waving to the Golds around the table, who nod appreciatively. Daxo sucks on a stick of cinnamon. He smiles even more than Pax, though his are half as grand and twice as mischievous. The only frown I’ve yet seen on his face was when he saw the Jackal at the gala.
That particular grudge will not fade. Nor should it. The Jackal took their Pax. In reply, the Telemanuses demanded his head. In turn, Augustus banished the Jackal from Mars. But now war brings new complications, new necessities. And the Jackal seems to have been forgiven in his father’s eyes, if not those of the Telemanuses. I watch them carefully. They are not stupid, despite the guise they enjoy wearing. I only hope they remain ignorant of my alliance with Pax’s killer.
“All should be reminded that fealty is not easily cast off,” Daxo finishes, his voice astonishingly cordial. “A visit from my father and my sisters would remind other bannermen of their duties to you in times of war.” He tilts his head playfully, allowing us to admire the workmanship of the gold angels engraved into his scalp. “It is in the Telemanus nature to leave an impression. Perhaps it would swell our ranks.”
“My thunder lords.” Augustus smiles. “Ever eager for violence.” He traces a finger along the back of his long left hand. “But no. That reminder must wait. Punishment can only be doled out in victory. It would look petty, the sad flailing of a drowning man, considering my fleet is scattered and my legions trapped behind the shields of my cities.”
He looks to Pliny and asks how the rest of our trade allies fare. I sneak a glance at Mustang. She notices and raises an eyebrow at me, wondering when we shall begin.
“All our Politicos have been received,” Pliny says slowly. Today, Pliny wears a very serious coat of black lipstick. “As you know, my Politicos and I conferred after we fled from Luna. And we developed a rather advanced theoretical breakdown of potential alliance shifts—”
“With computers?” Kavax asks with a booming laugh.
“With computers,” Pliny continues, irritated. “Simulations were performed by my Green analysts. Of the Galilean Moons—Io, Calisto, Ganymede, and Europa—none will cast their lot with us. Neither in simulation nor actuality.”
“Hardly surprising,” a hawkish Praetor mutters. “We had the same results from the moons of Saturn.”
Pliny continues. “Naturally, they fear the repercussions of choosing the wrong side. The Saturn Governors are a lost cause for now. They see Rhea’s corpse in their sky every day. In the Galilean sector, the presence of Lorn au Arcos on Europa is a problem. His … isolationist political leanings have proven infectious to the ArchGovernors of Jupiter’s moons, particularly since his private army is twice again as large as any of the ArchGovernors’.”
“Isolation? More like retirement.” Augustus sighs. “Perhaps he has the right of it.”
“You would go mad, Father,” Mustang says from the end of the table. “No scheming, no plots or stratagems. Just family and time to spend with Adrius and me.”
His smile is tight, unreadable. “How well my daughter knows me.”
“What worries me most,” Pliny says, “is that the Galileans, in their own words, doubt the validity of our cause.”
“That’s because we don’t have a cause,” I moan, remembering my role. “At least not so far as anyone else cares.”
“Explain,” the ArchGovernor demands.
“He’s getting to it, father,” Mustang says. “Darrow plays for drama.”
I make a show of looking around the room. “It’s safe to say that the gentle Golds in this room understand human nature. Yes? Even if we did not, what motivates us? A cause? No. None of us have a cause. Freedom? Liberty? Justice?” I roll my eyes. “Hardly. What do we care that the Sovereign acts like an Empress? What do we care about the Compact and the liberties it extends Golds? Nothing.
“This is about power. It is always about power. We fight her because we attached ourselves to a star, the ArchGovernor. But the star falls, fades …”
Kavax half rises from his seat. “Don’t insult your lord as if—”
“As if he’s
what? A fool? He’s not, so come off it. The Bellona take Mars. They will get the contracts, the government positions. We will be pushed to the fringe, dead or irrelevant.” My voice plays with the audience. “Power is the only thing of worth in this world. Consider Tactus au Valii-Rath—a loyal ally of mine for three years. But as soon as my star began to fall, he stole from me and departed out the back door. A thief in the night.
“How many empty seats are here that were filled before Luna? So many men and women who would have bled for Augustus. So many men and women who would have given their eyes for him when he sat on his dais in Agea. Now …”
I dust off my hands.
“We are losing. To run is to wither and die. If we want to rise again, draw the Galileans to our cause, marshal the Governors of Saturn to our banners, then we show them we are not powerless. Show them we drip with power. We are arbiters of life and death. We, not the Bellona, are the House of Mars.”
Pliny begins to say something, but Augustus motions him to be quiet.
“What would you propose?”
“The Galilean families are soft for Luna for one reason. Commerce. Ganymede has her shipyards. Calisto is little more than a factory of Grays and Obsidians for the Society’s armies. Europa is an oceanworld of banking and deepsea mining and vacation homes. Io is the breadbasket to any world along Jupiter’s orbital path. They depend too much on commerce with the Core to run to our side. And even the basest child knows what happened when the Ash Lord descended upon Rhea.” The Praetors nod along. “So we must impress them. We must terrify them so that they know our power can touch them at any time and they cannot risk alienating us.”
“How?” Augustus asks. They’re all on the hook now.
I set my razor on the table so they know what business I propose. “We take their ships. We take their children. We take them as allies as the Spartans took their wives. By force, in the night.”
Silence forms around me. Then comes the uproar. Pliny lets his Praetors slash at the idea. His energy he spends whispering in Augustus’s ear. I glance at Mustang, but she watches the others, gauging them.
“Boasts.” The ArchGovernor quiets the room and readdresses me. “I’ve not heard a plan.”
“One plan. Two parts.”
I touch a datapad, and the holo the Jackal’s agents gave me expands over the table to show Ganymede. The moon shines bright with blues and greens from its oceans and forests, brilliant against the marbled white and orange of Jupiter’s vaporous surface. Gray shipyards ring the moon. I zoom in so that they stretch across and above the table. I list the ships registered, highlighting one in particular. “Ganymede has a moonBreaker.”
Whistles from around the table. “A moonBreaker?” someone whispers.
“Is this information reliable?” Augustus asks.
I nod. “Very.” My fingers twitch, rotating the image of the docks. In the shadow of an orbital dock floats a ship like my Pax, but newer, larger. Black as night, and eight kilometers in length. “The Sovereign herself commissioned it as a present for her grandson.”
Kavax nearly drools at the sight of the monster of a ship. “What a loving woman.”
“Assuming this is not contrived.” Pliny inspects the holo. “How did you come upon the information?”
“Little birds whisper into my ears too.”
“Don’t be coy. It is important.”
“My sources are mine, just as yours are your own, Pliny.”
“So you want to steal the moonBreaker from Ganymede?” Pliny asks. “That’s an act of war.”
I chuckle. “No. You misunderstand. I want to steal all of the ships.”
26
Puppet Master
Pliny glances worriedly at Augustus. “Do this, and this war does not end till one side is ash.”
“It’s already that way …,” Kavax begins.
“This is different,” Pliny crows. “It expands the scope.”
“My father is right,” Daxo declares. “We are already in open rebellion.”
Pliny slaps his hand down. “This is different. This declares war on the Society, not the Bellona, not the Sovereign as a singular person. Ganymede has not harmed us. This will fracture everything.”
Augustus sits quietly, his cold eyes staring at the moonBreaker on the holo. Without looking at me, he asks, “You said there were two parts to this plan. What is the second?”
I change the holo. The Academy replaces the shipyards. Ships ring its dull gray surface. Asteroids rotate in the backdrop.
“Those ships are ancient,” a balding Praetor named Licenus says before I can begin. “Useless in a fight. Is your plan to steal them too?”
“No, Praetor Licenus. My plan is to steal the students.” I add another visual. Mars’s Institute joins the Academy. Then another Institute, Venus’s. Then Earth’s two Institutes. Then the Galilean Institutes and Saturn’s. Then more till nearly a dozen images float in the air. “I want to steal all of the students. Not to fight. But to ransom.”
“Goryhell.” Mustang bursts out laughing. “Are you insane, Darrow?”
Augustus frowns. “Virginia, control yourself.”
“I am under control, Father. Your attack dog isn’t.”
“You forget your place.”
“And you forget how Claudius looked, dead on the ground. Leto too. Do you want that for the rest of us?” She regrets the words as soon as they leave her lips.
“Shut your mouth, girl.” Augustus shudders with wrath. His bony fingers clutch the edge of the table till it creaks. “You’ve been unhinged since you let that Bellona boy between your legs. Walking in here like a Pixie pomp. Eating that apple like a child. Stop being a sideshow whore and live up to your name.”
“Like your remaining son?” she asks.
He takes a long, calming breath. “You will be quiet or you will leave.”
Mustang grinds her teeth together, but stays uncharacteristically silent. Pliny’s lips curl in a rather pleased smile.
“Don’t blame her, my goodmen, if she’s already tired of war,” Pliny says, softly placing a knife in a wounded enemy. “After so many nocturnal summits spent engaging in horizontal diplomacy with the Bellona, her stamina isn’t what it used to be.”
Kavax lunges at Pliny. Daxo pulls him back just in time. But it’s Mustang who is first to speak over the uproar.
“I can defend my own honor, my goodman. But from Pliny, such insults are to be expected After all, I would be bitter too if my wife bent over backwards to make sure so many of your young mercenaries learned how to properly sheathe their swords.”
Pliny stares angrily at her as she rises, continuing, “I left Mars to pursue knowledge in the Sovereign’s court. I did not abandon my family, as so many of you have suggested. And I’m not sorry I left and missed conversations such as this. For you goodmen seem good only at one thing, and that is bickering. Yet you quickly come to agreement upon me as an item of ridicule. Curious. Is it because you see me as a threat to your power? Or is it simply because I’m a woman?” She peers at the few scattered women around the table. “If that is the case, you forget yourselves. This Society was founded by men and women based on merit.
“The dear Politico Pliny is right, however: I would have avoided this war. In fact, I tried. Why else do you think I allowed Cassius au Bellona to court me? But war is here. And I will protect my family again from all threats, those from without and from within.”
Augustus lets slip the smallest, barest of smiles, a twin to the first. His love is the most conditional I’ve ever seen. How quickly he can call his daughter a whore, then smile as she reclaims what power she lost in the room. Suddenly, she matters.
“Then what do you think of my plan?” I ask.
“I think it is dangerous. It spreads the war without ensuring our benefit. It is immoral and sets dangerous precedent. But then again, war is inherently immoral. So we must simply decide how far we want to go.”
“You know Octavia better than I,” I say.
“How far will she go?”
Mustang is quiet for a moment. “If we have a victory and sue for peace either from a position of strength or weakness, she will accept the overture.…”
“You see!” Pliny beams.
Mustang isn’t finished. “She will suggest a neutral location. And on that day when we go to make peace, she will do everything in her power to kill all of us.”
Pliny looks back and forth between us, realizing how easily he’s been played.
“So there is no going back? Win or die?” I ask flatly.
“Indeed, Darrow,” she says with a smile. “Win or die.”
“It seems you’ve been outmaneuvered, Pliny. We move forward with Darrow’s plan.” Augustus stands. “Tomorrow, Praetor Licenus will take command of this vessel and its fleet and lead the Sovereign’s fleet on a chase, while I take a small strike group of corvettes and frigates to the Gas Giants. With them, I will raid the shipyards of Ganymede.”
“I will go with you, my liege!” Kavax booms. His fox jumps off his lap at the noise to tremble under the table.
“No.”
Kavax’s face falls. “No? But, Nero … the defenses there—battle stations, destroyers, torchShips—they will shred any force of corvettes you bring.” His large hands gesture imploringly. “Let us do this for you.”
“You forget who I am, my friend.”
“Apologies, I did not mean …”
Augustus waves the apology away and turns to Mustang. “Daughter, you will take what elements of the fleet you need to execute the second portion of Darrow’s plan.”
Watching Pliny now is like watching a child try to hold on to a handful of sand. He doesn’t understand the course things have taken. But he’s not fool enough to make his play now. He will wait in the grass like the snake he is.
The ArchGovernor turns to me. “Darrow, what did you say to me before you shed Cassius’s blood?”
“I said that you should be King of Mars.”
“My friends.” Augustus sets his thin hands down on the table, fingers rigid. “Darrow has demonstrated powers none of you possess. He predicts what I want. I want to be king. Make me so. Dismissed.”