“And you know if you go in, we can’t protect you? You’re secondary to our mission.”
“Yeah.”
He sighs. “What do you think, Sev?”
“Hmm.” He strokes his goatee. “I think you ain’t as popular with the Volk as you think you are. I think if Lyria can get Volga to play ball, it doubles our chances when we do the Thing. I think if anyone can get us the evidence we need on Atlas, it’s Volga. If Lyria is wrong and Volga won’t play ball, then Lyria will probably die or be tortured. But she don’t know shit, so she can’t compromise the Thing. So the only real risk is her life, which is a risk I’m certainly willing to accept. More important, I think Cassius will hate it even more than he hates the Thing. So. What do I say? I say give Truffle Pig her shot. She’s earned it.”
64
LYSANDER
The Noble Lie
“DUSTBORN THIRTY-THREE, YOU ARE CLEARED for approach.”
Hearing Pytha’s voice is like coming home. The battered Rim shuttle, one of the Dustmaker’s own, coasts out from its hiding place in an impact crater on the moon of Valetudo toward my newly arrived expeditionary fleet.
Atlas cast my ten Praetorians and me as survivors of the massacre at Kalyke. The cramped confines and spartan creature comforts of the shuttle have left us looking the part. Bearded, exhausted, with our uniforms doctored by his Gorgons and wounds administered by Atlas himself, my Praetorians queue up to depart. I linger in the cockpit watching our approach.
“The Lightbringer has never looked nobler,” Rhone says from behind my chair.
He’s partly right. Additional repairs to the damage she received in the Battle of Phobos were completed en route by the Votum builders—an incredible achievement. Not only are most of the Lightbringer’s guns finally operational, but the Lune crescent—black, for war—has been painted inside a gold pyramid along her port and starboard. Beyond that the rest of her hull is still patched, heterogenous, and unpainted.
I nod as if it looked fresh off the line. I will show no more reticence in front of Rhone. Gods know what he’ll tell Atlas. I miss the total security in him I felt before he poisoned me. I mourn that loss of trust. It can never be as it once was. Nothing can.
“What of all this will you share with the ranks?” I ask him.
“The ranks are best treated like mushrooms: spoiled with shit and kept in the dark,” he replies. “I recommend you treat your ranks the same, august though they are. Lysander may be good and noble to his friends, but a Sovereign must be a clinical operator.” His eyes trace the house ships that attend the Lightbringer. They belong to Reformers who came out here for the unity I preached that day in Rome. “So many have honored your call. It would be a shame to stain this noble enterprise.”
The full might of my Dracones XIII greets me in the main hangar of the Lightbringer along with my Reformer allies. Thirty-three thousand Praetorians snap to attention. I lost a fourth in the battle for Phobos. They are nearly as relieved to see me as they are distraught by my state. Limping into the hangar, I look back at their hard faces with far more wariness than I once did. If forced to choose, how many of them would follow Rhone or Atlas over me?
How many already do? Two hundred and twenty-one Gorgons aboard my ship, Atlas said.
I’m crushed into a hug by Cicero. “When we saw the atomic signatures, we feared you were dead at Kalyke. I feared—” He clears his throat, remembering himself and the eyes of the Reformers and Gold knights waiting behind him. Some of the knights have the dual scar of the New Shepherds, but there are several hundred new men and women. He swelled their ranks.
“Dido, Helios, Diomedes…what a waste,” Cicero murmurs.
“They will be avenged,” I say.
His eyes glisten as he nods. His grief is real, as is his righteous anger. He seizes Rhone’s arm and works his way to Drusilla, Markus, and Demetrius. “Well done, Praetorians. You are a credit to your legion. House Votum—nay, all of the Society is in your debt.”
“Any trouble from home?” I ask.
“Siege and stasis on Mars and Luna,” he replies. “Though that doesn’t stop Lady Bellona from playing Cassandra. She thinks Atalantia will sail on Mars any day.”
“Then we must be quick.”
Cicero pulls the command sceptre from its holster on his back. It was commissioned for the campaign to denote his imperium over the assembled factions. It is a bundle of iron rods that leads to a lightning bolt. “Your fleet stands ready, Lysander.”
“To return home,” Pallas adds. She stands with Lady Bellona’s clients.
I don’t take the sceptre yet. I greet Pallas warmly.
“Pleased to see you retain all your parts, Lune,” Pallas says. Her smile dissembles her wariness. Meanwhile her eyes collect and catalogue evidence to report back to Julia. To her, something’s not adding up. “After seeing Kalyke, even I must admit you are indeed blessed by fortune. My Bellona ships are prepared to make for Mars as soon as you give the order, as are those of our clients.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Mars?”
“Yes. This side venture was already ill-advised. The Lady Bellona would not have you risk our main endeavor on this…catastrophe that has nothing to do with our efforts anymore.”
I smile and stride past her to remove my jacket and shirt. I bare my chest and back to my Praetorians and walk down the line. They might hate Moonies, so I’ll play to their pride instead of their virtue. I tear off the bandages one by one to show the wounds Atlas gave me to lend credit to my harrowing story of survival.
“Look upon your Imperator,” I call. “Look what Fá and his horde have done to me. Will you let this stand? Can Obsidians and Far Ink reptiles now brutalize a Peerless son of Luna with impunity? What say you, Praetorians? Shall we retreat? Or shall we hunt?”
The result is predictable. Shamed for a decade by the death of Octavia on their watch, the Praetorians respond with: “Hunt! Hunt! Hunt!”
I clothe myself and address the New Shepherds next. “Most of you are new men, new women. Your families are not yet storied. Many hold that in contempt. I do not. You wrote the first chapter of your family’s legend on Phobos. Write its second with me now, and show all that you are the true keepers of the virtues the Conquerors held dear. You defend the weak. You shelter the low. Should the oceans rise, the sky fall, the darkness creep—you keep the wolves from the flock.”
They pull their razors and salute.
With my foundation shored up, I return to the ficklest of my allies and change tack yet again. “My friends, you have risked personal fortune and our cause itself by following me here. The safe route is retreat. The bold route is forward. In days like this, with enemies like ours, boldness is prudence and retreat is folly. Now is the time to show the Rim that we are worth a thousand Atalantias.”
They glance at one another, nervous to face the horde that humbled the Rim Armada.
“What good is an ally without a navy?” Pallas contends. “Shall we risk our lives, our ships, our soldiers, for those who can no longer aid us in our war? Who may not help us if they could?”
“My goodlady, Ilium is but a part of the Rim. Their domain is vast and slow to cross. They have more fleets. I assure you. Though they will not arrive in time. What we do here Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn will see, and they will remember.”