At the grand building my arch settles down over the entrance to the executive reception plaza. We disembark between two columns of Praetorians. In the lift to the executive level, Glirastes physically side-checks Rhone to take his place at my side. Rhone is so surprised that by the time he regains his balance, the doors to the elevator are already closing. I hold up a hand and signal him to meet us up top.
The gravLift ascends. “I don’t know if force is the right idea with Rhone,” I say.
“How else can I penetrate the purple and black wall that follows you everywhere but with my hips and wits?” Glirastes glares at Kyber who stands in the corner. Somehow she was already in the lift waiting for us. “But one always manages to slither in.”
“You have something to say. Go on and say it.”
Glirastes, the greatest architect of his generation, is bald, hawkish with heavy eyebrows, gleaming orange eyes, and a stooped, predatory posture that once made him seem hungry and unctuous, but also impervious to any drug or construction catastrophe known to man. More and more, though, the posture also betrays his fragility. He seems like a man teetering over a cliff. These last months have been hard on him. In the end, artists are a sensitive breed.
“There are rumors the Saud denied you a loan. Is it true?” he asks.
I sigh. “You know what I miss most about being assumed dead? No gossip.”
“Rhone is steering you to ruin,” he blurts out.
“Glirastes, old friend, these games were your idea,” I say. “The people need hope, you said.”
“The games are a pittance compared to what you’re spending on ships and legions. And it’s not the games so much as the guests who trouble me. You dirty your hands dealing with the likes of Rath and the Carthii.”
A tired line. “But I should cover myself in eagle shit?”
“Hardly a fair comparison. You’re bleeding money. Lady Bellona is…distinguished. Far more than just a banker or a brute. She is a broker of power. She might not control the Two Hundred, but she influences a sizable block of senators. Most of whom have no love for Atalantia.”
“Yes, and perhaps if you sang my praises in her ear, she might actually have deigned to attend my games,” I say. “Instead, she sends no note, no emissary, just her racing team. It’s been nothing but insults since she sent Rhone to aid me in the desert.”
“Perhaps she did not sponsor you to be Atalantia’s plaything,” he says.
“Would a plaything smuggle legions to the Minotaur?” I ask. “Now you’ll moan I am reckless.”
“You’re juggling asps, my boy. Forget Bellona money. If Atalantia…Hades, if the Carthii discover you and the Minotaur have a secret pact—” He glances at Kyber. “I don’t understand, Lysander. Why him? The Minotaur is an insane person. He craves the ephemeral. Experiences! Satiation of his lusts! No man is more your inverse, and yet you waste the wealth that could rebuild Mercury to send him an army.
“Lysander, I am scared. For you. For me. Of every shadow, every glass of wine.”
“Maybe you should quit drinking then,” I say. I apologize immediately when I see the pain on his face. “Glirastes, you have no reason to be afraid. I will protect you. I promise. But, honestly, what would you have me do?”
“I’d have you listen to the people. You are loved, so be loved. Do not play Atalantia’s game. Play your own. Abandon this pursuit of an army and a fleet. Focus your time and money here. Let Mercury’s prosperity be your campaign for the Morning Chair.” He reaches to grasp my right hand. “It would break my heart to see you get caught in a Gold knife fight. You’re better than that. You must be.”
“Maybe I am, but without power, everything else is just good intentions. Now, I have guests waiting.”
Glirastes pouts but does not protest when I reactivate the lift. Pytha waits on the executive level with Rhone. Rhone’s gravBoots shimmer with heat from his ascent. “Sorry, I must have tripped,” he says to me with a glance for Glirastes. Glirastes doesn’t follow me out of the lift.
“You go on,” he says. “I haven’t the stomach for your guests or guards today.”
Annoyed, I leave Glirastes behind. Pytha, the Blue pilot who watched over me for so many of my formative years on the Archimedes, raises an eyebrow. “You want me to fly him home?”
“You’ll miss the race,” I say.
“Please. Chariots? They don’t even have engines.”
Pytha chose to follow me instead of Cassius. That loyalty, and her belief in my vision for the Society, has more than earned her the post that will make her the envy of all Blues in the Society—captain of the Lightbringer. That is if the ship actually flies. Otherwise she’ll be a laughingstock, and me with her. Our fates are entwined. I thank her and head for the box with Rhone.
“Vodka on his breath and it’s not even noon,” Rhone says. “I thought Mercurians were supposed to be industrious.”
“Mind your own self, Flavinius. I’ll not have you sniping at each other. Now put on a smile for my guests,” I snap and plunge into the pulvinar.
The Golds drinking inside the suite raise their eyebrows at Pytha and Rhone. They shift away altogether from Kyber, thinking her a Copper because of her disguise. But Rhone is popular. His service record, if not the myriad teardrops on his face, would demand respect from even Atalantia. I greet my guests with alacrity and mannered courtesy until a roar a few minutes later draws me beyond the protection of the silk awning and into the sunlight.
In the stands below, lowColors rush up through the tunnels from the vendors toward their seats, arms laden with fennel sausages, candied pecans, oysters, and sloshing gourds of wine. To the two hundred fifty thousand who cram together on the tiered marble bleachers, the sound of the hooves on the street outside is still distant. But already the crowd hollers in anticipation. The voice of the Hippodrome gargles like infant thunder. Only when the first wild sunblood enters the stadium does the discordant noise coalesce into a single voice.
“AD…ASTRA…AD…ASTRA…AD…ASTRA.”
The horses pour onto the racing sands. The youths gallop after them, herding the horses into running a lap. Great flames light around the stadium to signal the beginning of the games. As the dust-caked youths pass the pulvinar, my box, they stand in their stirrups to salute me and my Peerless guests. The youths resemble dusty birds of prey. Their faces and eyes are severe, their bones still thin, but though not one is over fifteen, there is not a trace of youth left in them. I have seen that look before. It is the look of having already chosen one’s fate. It worries me to see it in those so young.
I wonder if I wore such a look when I sat by Kalindora’s deathbed as she succumbed to the poison on Darrow’s blade, and confessed her part in the assassination of my mother and father. An assassination planned and executed by my mother’s best friend—and my betrothed—Atalantia. Considering Darrow has no reputation for poisons, it’s not hard to guess who was really responsible for Kalindora’s demise.
“Less than three hundred graduates. A pittance compared to Atalantia’s Institutes,” Rhone drawls, surveying the young horsemen and horsewomen. While most of my guests remain reclining in the shade deep within the box’s air-conditioned recesses, Rhone sweats with me in the early morning sun. “Dominus, what I said about Glirastes—”