“I won’t take part in this…genocide.”
“Then you are an idiot. Worse, you are selfish. These deaths cannot be reversed. They are a sunk cost. It would be a logical fallacy to let them influence your decision. What should influence your decision is what will happen if you refuse me. Atalantia plans to let the Rim suffer Obsidian rule for three years before she comes as liberator. Three years, Lysander. The casualty estimates are…staggering. Why allow that? Your ships are already on their way; if you choose to step up, you will save hundreds of millions of innocent lives.”
“No,” I say and stand in vain protest.
“Then I will have to kill you, Lysander. You will not be missed. Back home plans are already underway for your replacement.”
I flinch. “What do you mean? A clone?”
“Nothing so perverse or uncontrollable. A doppelgänger. A man by the name of Lepidus, chosen from Atalantia’s stable of paramours. You’ve annoyed her, so she’ll just keep your name and face.” Atlas casually glances at the corpse of Helios au Lux.
I grow sick at the thought.
“That won’t stop Cicero and Pallas from destroying Fá. They have the Lightbringer and—”
“And Fá has me,” Atlas says. “And I have two hundred and eighty-one Gorgons aboard the Lightbringer, waiting for orders. Cicero has proven himself a loyal friend to you, but that will not stop my nightmares from tearing out his throat as he sleeps. By then, you’ll be dead, Atalantia will sit on the Morning Chair, and the Rim will descend into three years of torment, war, and famine.”
I sink back down, overwhelmed.
“If the Rim finds out about your actions…this is how Darrow wins.”
“You are correct in that. The burning of Rhea was a tactical mistake only because everyone knew who ordered it and who carried it out. But I have learned from Octavia’s mistake. I am a careful man, Lysander. There may be conjecture, there may be suspicion, but there is no direct evidence of my involvement. Besides, you are too fixated on Darrow, boy. Darrow cannot win. Darrow is beaten. His only power lies in the mystery of his absence. He has no tools left to resuscitate his cause. No allies to call upon.
“As for Mars? Augustus and Julii can slow the inevitable but they cannot stop it. Meanwhile, your assault on Phobos and subsequent absence has made it easier for Atalantia to strike Mars without jeopardizing her martial supremacy. When she decides to take the planet, she will. With ships given to her by Valeria au Carthii.” He smirks. “What? Valeria may run the dockyards because of you, but will she die for you? I think not.”
I look at the floor, wondering what my mother and father would say if they saw me here facing this proposal, what Glirastes would say. What Cassius would say. He would curse me for even considering the coldblooded convenience of the realpolitik Atlas spews. Ajax would sneer at this but for far different reasons.
“Lysander, I value your hesitancy,” Atlas says. “More than you know. If it is any consolation, I do not do this for glory or my own satisfaction. I do this because I believe in the Society enough to be the tool it requires. I am a monster because a monster is needed. But after, when the monster has rampaged and terrorized the people, they will need a savior to gather them up, remind them of their better values, and lead them to a better, more unified future. I have brought darkness to the worlds in its fullest extreme so you can bring the light.”
I look up at him.
Atlas is the picture of conviction. His words are not the empty promises of an ambitious politician. His expression is not that of a cocksure commander who has never known defeat. He is a priest, solemn and resolute, one acquainted with pain, familiar with suffering, who has grown surer, wiser from both to reach a state of eerie omniscience.
“Once you are on the chair, it will be time to address Society’s dysfunction. To bring it closer to the more perfect light of Silenius’s dream. Or, your story can end here, your death not even a footnote in history. The choice is yours.”
And that choice is impossible.
My mind reels, trying to grasp the magnitude of the moment. Atlas offers me everything I have worked for and fought for, not to mention the chance to stop the deaths of hundreds of millions, but the price is my soul.
I thought I was done with disillusionment when I sat down with Apollonius in the Graveyard of Tyrants. I told myself I could play the game by Atalantia’s rules. Then in Diomedes, in the Rim, I saw a way to win that seemed moral. In that moment in Rome, I conjured an illusion. And now, in the shattered remains of that illusion, I feel like a player in a production I thought was a drama discovering the audience bought tickets to a comedy.
Atlas’s eyes do not mock. They wait for my answer.
I let myself sink into the Mind’s Eye and the ship and my anxiety disappear. I see myself seated on the Morning Chair, the Rising crushed, the worlds at peace, my reforms spreading prosperity from Pluto to Mercury, and Atlas, Atalantia, and Rhone dead at my feet.
“Very well,” I say. “I will be your savior.”
Atlas leans back into a shadow. His lips twitch into a faint smile as he says, “Hail Lune, bringer of light.”
48
DARROW
The Tickler
A POUNDING WAKES ME IN the night. We’re still three days out from Io, but I assume they’ve found us. That Obsidians are in the halls. Ascomanni are peeling Lyria and Aurae in zero-G. My traitorous braves are laughing as they stomp on Cassius with their boots and drink from Sevro’s skull. They look like grinning beetles in the dark, their armor heavy as they drag us before the throne of Fá to make us into Blood Eagles.
No. I wake screaming.
The room is still. The bed warm. The alarms quiet. But someone is pounding on the door. I grab Bad Lass and crank open the door to find Lyria standing there with a crazed look. “It’s Sevro! He’s torturing the prisoner.”
Lyria’s already sprinted back down the hall. I rush after her, ducking my head to avoid the bulkhead partitions. I’m not the only one to hear Lyria’s shout. I collide with Cassius as he comes from his cabin bunk with alpine on his breath. Gin.
How many varieties of booze does he have on this heap?
We scramble off one another. I push a little more aggressively, annoyed he’s drunk, and lead the way to the medBay. We find Lyria and Aurae in the hall outside the door trying to hack the smashed controls. Aurae looks sick to her stomach.
“He’s crazy,” Cassius replies. “I told you.”
The door is thick. I peer through the duroglass viewport to see a murky image of Sevro hunched over Diomedes with cables in his hands. I beat on the door but Sevro either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care. “Lyria, those controls are fragged. You remember how to initiate the fire protocols?” Cassius asks.
“Yeah. Oh, it’ll demagnetize the lock,” she says with a burst of inspiration.
“Go to the bridge, initiate them, then override the oxygen cutoff protocol.” He gives her his access password and she takes off.
“Go with her,” I say to Cassius. He ignores me, and I do my best to put myself between him and the door. “Cassius, don’t pour gas on this flame.” I look to Aurae for help. She puts a hand on his shoulder, but he brushes her off. “He could kill him.”