Instead, smaller figures skip across the landscape like hares. The Daughters are not freshly arrived. They came to help a day after Lysander departed. It’s taken them weeks to find and uncover the collapsed bunker entrances. Until today, we were trapped beneath the surface of Io. At Plutus alone, I spot ten hearthcraft offering medical aide to refugees. These craft may be painted Raa black, but the hastily sprayed red owls on their wings mark the emergence of Athena and her Daughters as something far more important in the Rim’s political landscape than rebels or terrorists.
Standing by my side, Diomedes watches the Daughters’ hearthcraft with mixed feelings. His grandmother’s face is far less conflicted. Sour and humbled, she scowls at the hearthcraft only to shoot a glare at an Athenian frigate parked on a hill where apples once grew. “Are we to kiss their feet now? And thank them for stealing our ships? Our ships that might’ve made the difference against Fá?” she says. “We’ll see how long that lasts when the Shadow Armada arrives.”
It’s that sort of talk that makes me fear this moment of idealism will be washed away by realpolitik before too long. All my hopes rest on Diomedes and his fabled honor. It is precarious to put so much faith in one man, but no more precarious than putting my faith in Volga. So much balances on the good intentions of dangerous people. It’s enough to give a man gray hair.
“I do not kiss feet,” Diomedes says after a long moment. He scans the Moon Lords, seeing similar sentiments in their ranks. “But I will clasp hands.”
“I thought Lune didn’t use any atomics,” Gaia says.
“He didn’t need to,” I say.
“Then what is that mutant?” she says and points to a strange figure descending a building riven down its center by an orbital strike. The figure leaps from one side of the fissure to the other, before bounding our way.
I run toward him and he stops, takes off his helmet, and opens his arms for a hug. I slam into him and cling to him and Sevro hugs me back. “Cassius…” I say.
“I know.”
I break down and Sevro holds me, hard, not humoring me, but clinging to me too. I know Cassius always rubbed him the wrong way, but when I pull back I see tears in his eyes. “I’ll miss the prick,” he admits. “I’ll miss him a lot.” Sevro smells terrible, and like home. He presses his forehead to mine. “We saw the bombardment from halfway across Ilium. I wanted to come straight off, but Athena and Volga wouldn’t join their fleets. Lyria worked on Volga. I worked on Athena. Finally they agreed to move in concert, but Lune didn’t stick around to give battle.”
“He’s more afraid of Atalantia than he is of us,” I say. “We’ll make him pay for that.”
“Damn right.”
I tousle his warhawk. When he finally pulls back, he glares at Diomedes. “You idiot. What do you think this is? The Middle bloody Ages? The only thing Lunes honor is themselves. You had that piece of shit in your grasp, Bellona. This. It’s all on you, man.”
Diomedes holds out his hand and closes it over the ash that falls on it. “It would appear the lesson is learned.”
“Glad Bellona could pay for your education, fool,” Sevro growls.
“This man is the Hegemon of the Dominion now,” Gaia says. “The Moon Lords have resurrected Akari’s post for him. Show due respect. He is to be referred to as—”
Sevro turns on Gaia. “Shut up, crone. I know all about you. Athena’s educated me.” He spies armored figures descending from the Pandora and stalks toward the frigate on the hill. “Best not keep your saviors waiting.”
Gaia stares after him, then at Volga and her descending entourage the way Caesar might have regarded Gauls entering the Forum with weapons. “Is this why we lived? To ally with beasts?”
“If Mars does not feed us, we will starve or else crawl to Lune,” Diomedes says. “So yes.”
When we reach the hill, Volga and Athena wait on either side of a square table charred black during the bombardment. The two women are a study in opposites. Athena wears her helmet but also the oil-smeared jumpsuit of a laborer, and stands with a slouch. Volga has become a warrior queen in image if not yet in proof. A mane of blue feathers flows from her shining silver warhelm. I’m disgusted to see Fá’s warsaw clings to the mag-holster on her back. Yet Volga’s face, when she doffs her helmet, is covered in a mask of ash. She is bald too. I search for Lyria amongst the titans of her entourage and spot her soot-stained hands folded in front of her. It was not Volga’s idea to wear the ashes and so come bearing her shame on her face, but the fact that Lyria thought of it and convinced her means far more to me. She looks at me in pain and her eyes start to well up.
Somewhere, maybe in the Void or the Vale, Cassius would smile to see his accidental protégé is yet again more than meets the eye.
Then Diomedes, of all people, starts the meeting off on a bad note.
“You were to come unarmed,” he says.
Volga is unimpressed. “You live by my mercy.”
“You rose by my aid,” he says.
They glare at each other until Volga shrugs, draws the warsaw, and breaks it over her knee. An impossible act if it hadn’t already been weakened by a laser. Premeditated then. She tosses the tip to Diomedes. “So you remember its edge.” She returns the hilt to the holster. “And who holds the grip.”
Athena curses under her breath and looks at me as if I made these giants in my personal laboratory. “Shall we get to it before we kill each other then?” she asks.
“Ideally,” I reply. “Diomedes. The Covenant.”
Four Dustwalkers bring the Covenant to the table. The document is laser-etched into a hunk of iron Sevro found in the rubble. It is a vague document and carries none of the reforms to the hierarchy that Diomedes agreed to in private, but it is consequential for five reasons. It provides Dominion amnesty without expiration for all Daughters of Athena, as well as promises of due process in legal proceedings for all Colors. It pronounces the Volk’s oath to never venture again beyond the asteroid belt. It formalizes a military alliance between the Republic and the Rim Dominion for a period of ten years. And it binds all parties to a declaration of war on the Society. Not Lysander, not Atalantia, not whomever rises if they fall, but the Society itself.
It does not solve all quarrels. The Dominion was refused a right to prosecute Volk braves and seek any restitution for their liberated Obsidians. The Volk were not allowed to keep any spoils of victory save the Rim Obsidians who wish to stay in the Volk host. Athena did not get the abolition of the hierarchy she desired or ownership of the Deep, yet.
In the end, no one is happy, which means it is probably the only document anyone could sign with even the slightest suspicion that it might actually be honored by the others. When drops of blood are taken from each signatory and sealed into the metal, Athena, Volga, and Diomedes stare at the iron tablet with an expression I know all too well.
What have I done? Will it matter in the end? No. One of them will break the agreement. I should be ready.
Those same thoughts play through my mind as the meeting threatens to dissolve with enough frigidity to make even an optimist fear the worst. Before each signatory can retreat to their people, I point to the iron tablet.