The city mourns the demise of its guardian triad.
The shields fell because of Atlas, and my Praetorians. Smoke from their sabotage mission still twirls to the west from the ruins of the shield pylons. Bombardment—and tides of savages delirious for spoils—did in the other two pillars of the city’s defenses.
I follow Atlas as he weaves through traffic toward a road that carries along an orchard of plum trees five times larger than those of the Core. Ascomanni lie together like sated dogs between the trees gorging on fruit and taunting the Grays who’ve been nailed to the tree trunks. That is not the worst of the carnival of horrors we see before we reach the city, nor indeed the worst we see in the city itself where an orgy of violence is in full swing, but the look on the face of a young Ionian Gray as she watched the braves beneath her eating plums haunts me. Her expression could not be more different from the smile upon the benevolent statue of the goddess Demeter that extends from the harnessed volcano north of the city.
We park our bikes in a courtyard crisscrossed with huge tables hewn from fresh-cut trees. Preparations for a feast are underway even as an assembly line of Ascomanni axemen execute Raa Grays in the courtyard adjacent.
“I’m surprised you didn’t have Fá nuke the Garter,” I say to Atlas as we ascend the wooden steps to the Arbor of Akari. Like me, his face is concealed by Obsidian prosthetics. His nose is horribly bent, his cheeks heavy with scars, and face tattooed with the skull of a Stained. “But I suppose even you have your limits.”
“Absent a dependable source of food there is no civilization,” he replies. “The goal is not to destroy the Rim, Lysander, but for you to be able to control it without leaving your supper table on the Palatine Hill. Do you want a reign impoverished by infrastructure reconstruction? The Garter and the seed vaults were built over dozens of lifetimes. My family might pretend it was the honor in our blood that made us masters beyond the asteroids. In truth? It’s the hand that holds the Garter that grips the belly of the Rim.”
“And what if Fá decides not to let go of that belly?” I ask. “What if he decides he’d rather be a king than a soldier to a thankless Society.”
“A good question. One you should ask him yourself.”
I stop and listen to the wailing on the wind. Atop my bike I could not hear it. Now I can hear nothing else. The city itself is weeping. Atlas turns, a few steps up. His voice is gentle.
“Lysander, this is how it has always been. The vaunted past we so revere saw thousands of cities fall to thousands of armies. Periods of trauma are traded for periods of peace. The greater the trauma, the longer the peace. Bear it, and this year will be the last year you see war in your lifetime.”
“I will hold you to that,” I reply and march upward.
* * *
—
The Arbor of Akari has been spared the murder and rapine that flagellates the rest of the city. Fá has taken the building that hosts the Raa’s horticultural history for himself and his inner circle.
After gaining passage to the Arbor’s interior past the blood-painted Ascomanni warriors who guard its doors, we are greeted by three Obsidian veterans in armor studded with gems and encrusted with Gold sigils. Beneath apricot and apple trees, Atlas embraces them like long-lost brothers. They are all members of the Kinshield, the team Fá took with him to aid his rise, and speak fluent Common. One by one Atlas introduces them to me and gives them my true name. They kneel in deference, but I see the confusion in their eyes.
They don’t know why I am in Ilium.
That confusion is shared by the five more Kinshield Gorgons who return over the course of the next several hours to join us around a circular table set in the Arbor’s inner sanctum. I am unexpected; that makes me nervous. The Gorgons come with blood on their boots and soot and sulfur on their furs and capes, fresh from supervising the sack of the Garter or the pacification of one of its cities. Stacking their armor beneath a tree, they join us at the table where they drink and laugh with Atlas as if they were back in the barracks on Luna.
The conversation is fascinating both in its casual nature and its depth. Very quickly the signs of Atlas’s tutelage become apparent. Their understanding of politics, strategy, and logistics unnerves me, especially when I hear quotes from Cicero, Hobbes, and Seneca used not only in proper context, but sometimes with deft irony. I have never heard such sophisticated conversation from Obsidians. That is not all that surprises me. When I ask the Gorgon beside me, a clever-eyed man of fifty or so with a cutlass for a nose and mallets for hands, if he was at Kalyke, he hangs his head for a moment.
“I was,” he says.
“Why do you hang your head? Was it not a glorious victory?”
“I find little glory in war,” he says. “Satisfaction yes, for a job well done. I claimed Aleskandar au Rûn upon my blade. He was a worthy foe, and met a worthy end. That was proper. I bested him man to man. But others, great names—Cassander au Megara, Alethia au Codovan, Talia au Anthos…I saw them done under by reptiles, spit, skinned. Their warrior virtue, and it was virtue, was denied. That is why I hang my head, dominus. There is much to admire in our foe, and little in our allies.”
“Does that dissuade you from your mission?” I ask.
“No. The reptiles cannot help but be reptiles. The knights of the Rim, however, cannot plead ignorance. They chose to be traitors to the Society that built their worlds.”
“You call them reptiles,” I say. “Like the Moon Lords do.”
“They are reptiles, dominus. Perhaps not in physiology but in their lack of empathy,” another answers. “The centuries have taught them starvation and poverty can only be staved off by violence. They fight other tribes who are their mirror, and so their violence and cruelty are exponential and theatrical.”
“It is like they have never seen the light, dominus,” rasps a quiet one whom Atlas seems to favor above the rest. He is lean, handsome in a way, with an eagle’s face and clear eyes and a slight lisp. “Mercy is literally unknown to them. Out there, meat is meat. You understand?”
“No, not yet, go on, Fergarus, isn’t it?” I say.
“Yes, dominus.” He considers. “A man from the wilderness who has never heard music might come upon a city and hear through a window the song of a violin. It makes no matter if he knows the complexity of the piece, or the reverence culture has for the instrument, he will stop and listen because he can recognize the rarity of beauty. These Ascomanni would go into the house and beat the player to death for making a racket, enslave the children, break the violin, and burn down the house. All of them. They do not seek context, or assimilation, only domination. If it does not fit into their paradigm, they destroy it.”
“And what of the Volk?” I ask.
“The Volk would enjoy the song and listen till its end, then break the man’s fingers, and steal the violin to sell.”
“You act as if they are all the same,” I say. “Are they?”
Fergarus defers to the others, but they urge him on. “We paint with a broad brush. The Volk have braves who are noble. Some are liars, cheats, and butchers. But some are decent men. Like any army. We all have seen the duality in their nature.” The others nod. “They were raised to worship strength, but unlike the Ascomanni they’ve tasted the light of culture, of cities, of parks, and plays. Yet they feel as if the light has rejected them and spit in their eye. The lowColors, the Republic, the Silvers.”