“The former,” Atlas says. “The three of us have much to discuss, but first I must see my kin.”
I trail the two men through the brig until they come to the void cell containing Atlas’s sister. Its occupant can neither see nor hear us. Vela is a hard-faced veteran with even less charisma than Romulus and more fire than Atlas. She lies on her bed without moving. “You broke her back,” Atlas notes.
Fá gestures to several of his bandages. “For my trouble. It was the only way, I fear. To take a warrior like her alive in a pitched fray…very difficult.”
“Apologies. Diomedes was meant to be a sure thing.” Atlas glances at me.
“We scoured the battlefield and the escape pods as thoroughly as we could. My Kinshield believe he was likely vaporized in a blast. Per your recommendation, I was liberal with the Grimmus atomics you supplied. If I had known we would need to search for a survivor…”
“I don’t blame you, Vagnar.” He insists on using Fá’s original name. A sign of friendship. Then he shoots a look of annoyance back at me to show Fá who he does blame.
“Vela will do?” Fá asks. “Even with a broken back?”
“She will,” Atlas says. “I need her nervous system, not her spine.”
“And what exactly do you need her for?” I ask.
“He doesn’t know?” Fá asks.
“Not everything, not yet,” Atlas says.
“You said you’d be fully transparent,” I say. “I’ve thrown in with you, at the cost of my soul. What could you possibly think you need hold back?”
“What’s a soul to an atheist?” Atlas asks Fá.
Fá makes a farting sound. “Gas.”
Atlas smiles and moves on to the middle cell. I am about to press the issue, but Atlas preempts my question. “Just a moment, lad. All of my cards will be on the table in short order…”
Atlas trails off as he approaches the cell of his mother. Gaia, the old matron of House Raa, is a broken woman. Her vacant eyes stare at the gray wall of her cell as she murmurs a phrase I can’t quite make out. Atlas watches her for a few moments, his emotions inscrutable. “My nieces, nephews. Did my mother see it done?”
Fá hesitates. “She…cut their throats with her own hand, but she could not bring herself to kill the youngest.” Atlas’s eyes soften for his mother. For a moment he looks like he will cry. Instead, he turns his attention to the last Gold prisoner. A girl still shy of puberty with red-rimmed eyes, and the long face of the Raa. Thalia. Diomedes’s younger sister.
“Neither could you, it seems,” Atlas says.
“She looks like you, and she bit me very hard.”
She does look like Atlas. Her face is slender, her eyes narrow and quiet, and has the same distant boredom so commonly seen in Atlas’s expression. “You were not so soft before Volga joined us. Was she there with you?” Atlas asks.
Fá grimaces. She was. “I thought you might need a bargaining—”
“Have I ever minced words with what I do and do not need, old friend?”
“I will kill the girl now then.” Fá moves to open the cell.
“No,” I say. Atlas turns and lifts an eyebrow. Knowing only proving her utility will spare the girl, I conjure some from the ether. “The Rim is stubborn and proud. Many will resent me as Sovereign even if I am their savior. But if I were wed to an ancestor of Akari, then might not that ease the pill down?”
Atlas’s eyes narrow. “It will be years before she’s of age.”
“I thought you were a man who planned for the future. Seems a waste to trim this possible future from our tree, no? Better to have the option.”
“You more than anyone should know the perils of mercy,” Atlas says. “More than anyone except Darrow, perhaps.”
“The difference is I watched Darrow cut down Octavia. Thalia has only seen him.” I dip my head in Fá’s direction.
Atlas smiles softly. “We’ll consider it.” He waves Fá away from the cell. “Come. We have plans to iron out.”
I linger as the two men make their way from the brig. Thalia is older than I was when my parents died. Younger than I was when Darrow killed Octavia. It wakes my sympathy. If I keep her alive, perhaps I’ll have paid some of my debt back to Diomedes.
Gaia is another matter now. When last I saw her, she hid her cunning behind a guise of senility. But grief has broken the woman. She whispers the same phrase over and over. The same phrase a barbarian murmured to a Roman declaiming the price of surrender long ago.
Vae victis. Woe to the vanquished.
50
LYSANDER
Heavy Is the Head
“SO, WHAT YOU’RE SAYING is…” Fá trails off after Atlas tells him the new order of things.
“Your reign will only last three weeks instead of three years, thanks to Lysander here,” Atlas clarifies.
The king sits across the table from Atlas and me in his stateroom. I watch his huge hands, especially the metal one, and wait for violence to erupt as he learns the curtailed length of his reign. Instead, he throws back his head and laughs in sheer delight. A great weight sloughs off him and tears come to his eye. Atlas leans over to squeeze his shoulder.
“Thank Jove,” Fá says.
He grimaces when he sees my surprise and taps his monstrous crown with a metal finger.
“Do you think I enjoy the weight of this, Dominus Lune?” He pushes it toward me. “The worship of asteroid-dwelling savages? The slaughter of the Society’s civilians? The venal backbiting among Darrow’s Volk? No. A single day under the sun with sand between my toes is worth ten years on a throne. One performance of Giulio Cesare or Parsifal does more for my heart than ten thousand chanting my name. I need no honors. I crave no power. Let me be rid of it all.”
I’m stunned. “You’re not angry in the least? You helm the greatest Obsidian army since Kuthul. Power the nations of old Earth could only dream of.”
“War has never been my passion, only my profession, dominus. Once my service to the Society is done, I will retire and live out my days eating well, attending the opera, watching races, and swimming in the sea.”
Fá’s eyes lust for that day. I look back and forth between him and Atlas. “Then what do you get out of this?”
“Satisfaction. Pride that I have done my duty to help ensure a lasting and peaceful Society and the continued advancement of humankind,” he replies. “And for myself, a small pension.”
“What have you promised him?” I ask Atlas.
“Less than he is due, and more than he requested,” Atlas replies. “A penthouse in Hyperion. A seaside retreat on Venus. A pegasus ranch in Switzerland.” Fá’s eyes go distant and dreamy at that one. “A telomerase tank, a carver, a new name, and twenty years of peace.”
“And a daughter,” Fá adds.
Atlas winces. “And a daughter.”
“Volga,” I clarify.
“You should see her, Atlas. She is bright, clever, with a mind like a sponge.”
“Has she joined you in battle?” Atlas asks.