Light kindles in the eyes of a few. Cicero herds the rest.
“The Raa cannot stand with us to defend their worlds,” he says. “So we will stand for them. Yes?” He glares at his clients. “Yes?”
They nod in twos or threes, but in the end they all nod. Except Pallas. I thank them and return to her. “Lady Bellona didn’t invest in an endeavor. She invested in me. Remember that, Pallas.” She watches me with a thoughtful smile, but does not press the issue. I button my jacket back up and extend my hand to Cicero. “I’ll take my fleet now.”
Grinning, he hands me the sceptre of command.
I twist the sceptre’s lightning bolt. My image streams onto the bridges of the fleet and my voice into the ears of all the sailors, legionnaires, and crew of the fleet.
“This is Lysander au Lune. I have reclaimed imperium over the fleet from Praetor Votum. You have sailed past Kalyke and seen the slaughter there. But the situation is more dire than you know. Not only has the enemy sacked Io, they have razed Callisto with atomics. Soon they will have Europa in their clutches. They have enslaved millions of our fellow citizens. And they have seized Demeter’s Garter. They hold its destruction hostage over the Rim. Their war, their crime, is not just against our allies, it is against civilization itself! In his madness, the warlord known as Volsung Fá wishes to drag us back to the bitter pit of chaos from which mankind barely escaped.”
As I orate I begin to pace. Walking with increasing speed and intensity past Praetorians whose eyes follow my every step. Past excited young Golds, eager to make their mark. Eventually, I come to Rhone and his eyes narrow with intensity. He is pleased with my performance. I pour on the gravitas.
“Fá is a cunning and brutal adversary. He has trampled all in his path. He does not yet know the taste of defeat. In his arrogance he thinks himself the lone power left in Ilium. He has divided his forces and so made a fatal error. One we will exploit by reclaiming the Garter with utmost haste. Once the threat of famine is removed, we will hunt the beast himself and teach his horde that civilization has teeth.”
* * *
—
After meeting with my officers to explain my escape from Kalyke and dictate the plan Rhone and I created during our wait on Valetudo, I retire to my stateroom and summon Pytha. My stateroom is a heavily secured network of chambers not far from the bridge. The metallic nature of warships is softened by wood paneling chosen by Horatia au Votum. The engravings of my family history in the wood were not yet complete when we left Mercury. They are now. A pleasant surprise followed by another as I’m greeted by Exeter in the atrium.
I’d almost forgotten I’d commissioned him as my valet before my poisoning. I feel a pang of longing for Glirastes. Exeter’s presence, more than the luxuries of the rooms, makes the stateroom feel more like home.
“May I recommend Debussy and a clean shave now that you’re back from the wild, dominus? It always put Master Glirastes at ease.”
Washed, clean-shaven, and dressed in my formal whites, I wait for Pytha in my library. Amidst the classic texts that line the walls, I recline on a chair examining the completed painting on the ceiling. It is a scene of the Conquering. My oldest ancestor is not alone in any of the images. Akari accompanies him—sometimes standing beside him, sometimes behind. I thought such images would impress Diomedes when he stood here with me. Instead, it is to be a different Raa beside me. A shadow that no portrait will ever render.
But if future generations do etch or paint us together, how will my distant descendants judge me for Atlas’s presence? Will they revere him as I revere Akari, his evil deeds scrubbed clean by the brush of history?
Pytha greets me with a warm hug when she arrives, and doesn’t let go until I surrender to the embrace. She clings to me like I’m her brother, and I feel like I am. “I’m sorry about Diomedes,” she says after we take a seat on the couch. “I know you thought you had found a friend in him.”
“More than that,” I murmur.
“We both watched silence eat Cassius up,” she says. “Tell me what happened.”
With Rhone no longer in my trust, I told myself I would confide everything in Pytha, but as she holds my hand I realize that while she very well might understand why I accepted Atlas’s offer, she will never look at me the same way ever again. Not with that protective love of an older sister. Lysander will cease to exist. She will look at me then only as her Sovereign. In time I will look at her as only my captain, and it will be as if our lives on the Archimedes never happened.
To preserve that, I lie to her. I tell her the tale I told Cicero and Pallas and my officers.
“The ambush came out of nowhere,” I say. It’s not hard to look haunted. “I don’t know what happened. I woke in the barracks to Ascomanni in the halls. I tried to repel the boarders, but the Dustmaker was overrun. I wanted to stay and fight to the end, but my Praetorians forced me to evacuate.”
“And you feel guilty for that?” she asks. I nod. “It wasn’t your fault. You were a passenger.” Her hand settles on my knee. “I saw the rubble. I heard your speech. You can be brave for them. You don’t have to be brave for me.”
“I know. I’d rather not relive it anymore,” I say.
“But you don’t have to live with it alone,” she says. “Whatever happened. Whatever you saw—” She pauses. “You don’t have to tell me. But I’ve never seen you like this. I can carry it with you. Whatever it is.”
I want to tell her. I know I need someone else to trust. I feel that aching in my heart to share this burden. Glirastes is gone. Ajax too. I want to tell her I am afraid. That my Praetorians are not my protectors. That I am a fool. That there are strings inside me I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to cut. Instead, I deflect, shame binds my mouth from telling the truth.
“It’s just how cold it all was—Kalyke,” I say. “How cold it all is.”
That truth, though not the truth, makes me crack. The tears stream out, and she takes me in her arms. I cry into her uniform and hold on to her warmth. She knows I’ve not said it all, but Pytha—sweet and dear as she is—accepts the deflection and whispers that it will be all right. It can’t be, I know, because it never was.
65
LYRIA
Into the Maelstrom
WITH DARROW’S MESSAGE FOR Volga burning a hole in my mission pack, I follow six Black Owls through the bustle outside the main pedestrian sealift to Heraklion. The sealift doors groan like old men going down stairs. They open to release thousands of refugees from the surface. In the robes of their Colors, the refugees stream out between the statues of Poseidon and Aphrodite like migrating butterflies. Not just on the ground but by means of lines strung in the air. Gray soldiers floating about in leviathan-marked cuirasses of House Kalibar herd them toward the magnetic trams where Daughter militia load them into cars to take them to refugee cities nearer the core. The tension between the groups of soldiers is enough that everyone expects a firefight to break out at any moment. Yet everyone is keeping their tempers, sensing that feeling that hangs in the air. The feeling I had as a girl in 121 when storms would wrack the Cimmerian plains and the clans would abandon the camp and huddle together in the mines, even with us Gammas.