I lead the rest in drinking. Amidst my guests, Valeria rolls her eyes at her brothers. After the muted applause dies down, I tap a foot on the hull beneath us.
“You all know this storied ship. It was commissioned by Octavia and built in the Dockyards of Ganymede. It was stolen by Darrow during the Battle of Ilium, when he slaughtered noble Fabii with his Valkyrie savages and then destroyed those proud dockyards over Ganymede. Those sins have come back to haunt him. As will this ship.” The Golds stomp their feet. “Today, thanks to gens Votum, Glirastes the Master Maker, and my creditors…whom I beg to wait until after the party to twist my thumbs”—there’s generous laughter at that—“it is my honor to present your dance floor for the evening and our next great weapon in the battle to restore order to our spheres: the Lightbringer.”
Hundreds of Golds join me in smashing down their wineglasses on the hull. Cicero, Horatia, and I draw our razors and cut our palms and drip the blood onto the ship to ward off the bad luck of a rechristening. Then the brother and sister wait to see if we’re bankrupt, and our guests wait for the ship to fail. I hail my bridge, where my friend Pytha waits in her captain’s chair.
“Captain Pytha, bring me the sky.”
“By your will, dominus.”
I hold my breath. The tests were a success, but in the nest of vipers that is Gold power politics, sabotage is as common as bribery. A seismic groan comes from the ship as the new reactors power on. Spilled wine ripples. The groan deepens. The broken glass dances into the drops of blood. Whispers spread. A few laughs from Valeria and her brothers. The groan turns into a roar and the Lightbringer begins to rise.
I close my eyes, overwhelmed with emotion. When I open them again, we are in the clouds. I grip Horatia’s hand. Cicero kisses my forehead. I embrace Glirastes. They’ve done it. We’ve done it. I’ve done it. All of Gold society snickered when I said I would rebuild the ship without Carthii engineers. None of my guests laugh now as we pass through the clouds. Shrouded in vapor, the Golds look like ghosts. If their silence tells me they know that today a new power was born, their applause, when it comes, shows me the difference between hosting games and putting a moonBreaker into the sky.
Five kilometers up, Pytha brings us into a holding pattern over the cloud layer that covers the city. All of Heliopolis was watching. Fireworks shot for the people glow through the clouds like coals. The whole planet will feel this victory.
Swamped with congratulations, even from some of Atalantia’s veterans, I remain humble and defer all credit to Horatia, Glirastes, and their thousands of engineers and laborers—all of whom are inside the ship at their own party enjoying better wine than my Gold guests. I made sure of that.
Though Cicero had little to do with the efforts surrounding the Lightbringer, he’s soon off to enjoy the rewards. “Not used to sycophancy?” I say to Horatia once the wave of congratulators has abated.
“No,” she says, a little dazed. Her cheeks are flushed. Not from the praise, but from the private satisfaction of accomplishing a feat of monstrous logistical and technical difficulty. “To be honest, I’m a little contemptuous of the tidal shift in the manners of our guests,” she says.
“It’s about time the Reformers had a bit more muscle,” I say. “Enjoy it.”
She smiles at that and takes my hand. It’s the first time it feels more than friendly. “You have work to do and so do I.”
“I’d rather run diagnostics with you and Pytha.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re a political animal, Lysander. It’s been too long since my bloc had one like you. We need you to hunt.”
“Money, manpower, mass,” I say. “I’ve got my marks.”
She squeezes my hand and we part. My party is tame by Gold standards. There are no orgies, as might be included on Venus, but there are Pinks and Red acrobats on lines strung amongst the trees of the orchard created by my growing stable of household botanists. In the trees there are carved creatures rumored to be half cat, quarter bird, and one quarter lizard, though I can only attest to the size of the bill I paid to my new household carvers. Some of the drunker Golds, Tharsus’s friends, have given up taunting the manticore in the menagerie and decide instead to climb the trees and investigate. I’m excited for them to learn the arboreal carvelings have stingers.
“Lysander, my boy,” Glirastes calls and waves me over. “There’s someone you must meet.”
I turn to see my friend arm in arm with a striking young woman with a very serious face. “Pallas au Grecca. The captain of the Bellona racing team,” I say. “I see you survived Tharsus’s compliments.”
Pallas is not tall. The top of her head barely comes to my sternum. Neither is she muscled like a frontline Peerless. Yet there’s something…fearsome about her, as if she’d been slapped earlier in the day and has been carrying it around all day to give back to someone else. Her skin is umber, her hair a dense, proud gold-brown tangle bound back with an unfashionable platinum eagle clasp. Her eyes are bright and impudent and stare at me as if she’d tossed me a ball and is expecting me to do something with it.
“I hope you’re stronger than you look too,” she says without an ounce of flirtation. A live eagle perches on her shoulder harness. She feeds it carpaccio from the tray of a passing Pink server. “You’ll have to be stronger than you look to keep this ship from Atalantia’s hands. What’s to say she won’t just take it?”
“The law, of course.”
“It’s silent these days, didn’t you know?” she says.
“I didn’t introduce you two so you could fence,” Glirastes says.
“No. You did not,” Pallas says, deadpan.
“So…Julia did send an envoy after all,” I surmise. Pallas’s narrowing eyes tell me I’ve hit the mark. “I was just hoping to see the Lady Bellona herself here for the games.”
“We’re at war,” she says. “She is busy on Earth preparing for the summit.”
“Ah. The summit again. Waste of time, really. She should be busy over Mars, if you ask me. I’ve only just spoken with Helios au Lux. He’s of the same mind. Perhaps you know if Atalantia intends to finally declare an assault on Mars once and for all?”
Pallas cannot be tempted into intrigue. “The Lady Bellona told me to relay a message to you. You have the name of a Sovereign. Now you have the ship. And you certainly have the debt. But until you prove you have the guts, she will not cross the Dictator, and neither will her money.”
“Because she fears a visit from Atlas?” I ask and resist the instinct to search for his pale face amongst my roving guests.
She shrugs. “Only an idiot would not.” She looks me up and down. “And Lady Bellona is no idiot.”
Her eagle hisses at me. It’s an attack bird, I’ve noticed. Metal-reinforced talons. Lovely.
“The lady was kind enough to send me Rhone.” I glance at Glirastes, thinking of Darrow and Cassius in Apollonius’s cells. “Perhaps soon, I’ll have a gift in kind for the lady to open a dialogue. Something dear to her heart.”