The Iron Fist, writ of the Dictator.
Tharsus looks for escape. There is none. The Carthii cackle and urge him to come to them. “Help me! Someone! Help me!” he screams and starts for me only to find Rhone and a line of Praetorians barring his path. I feel a hand on my chest.
“There’s nothing to do,” Cicero says.
The Fear Knight comes for Tharsus. Finding neither escape nor aid, Tharsus resolves to die well. After a life of privilege, he is denied his last wish. His enraged attack is easily turned by the Fear Knight. After three slashes, Atlas raises the Iron Fist and Tharsus is snared by the device’s statis field. He floats, suspended in zero-G. Atlas cuts off Tharsus’s feet first, then his hands. The severed parts float in the field with their former owner.
Atlas makes a fist with the gauntlet and Tharsus screams as his limbs crackle and compound fracture in a dozen places. Only then does Atlas release him. Tharsus flops screaming to the hull. Wiggling wormlike to nowhere, he gasps as Atlas grabs him by the hair and drags him toward the menagerie. Atlas takes a golden serving bowl from a table as he passes, puts it on Tharsus’s head, bends the edges with his hands to enclose Tharsus’s head, then stuffs Tharsus into the manticore cage.
I look away as the beast feeds on Tharsus’s broken body. His screams echo out from the bowl. My eyes meet Pallas’s. The Bellona client pats her belly.
Atlas is headed my way. My Praetorians make a wall between us. Atlas removes his mask for Rhone. His eyes are dark jewels set in a gaunt philosopher’s face. I read in them paragraphs of disappointment.
He holds up the Iron Fist. “To oppose me is treason against the Society. I am the will of your lawfully appointed Dictator. You of all people are no traitor, Flavinius. Move.”
I set a hand on Rhone’s shoulder and guide him out of the way. Cicero shrinks away from me, terrified at Atlas’s approach. Glirastes comes closer, protective. Horatia finally joins us from her work on the bridge, coming up from a lift in the hull to see Atlas walking toward me. She goes very still.
Atlas lifts his voice for my guests.
“The truce between House Rath and House Carthii has been broken by the Minotaur. An inquest has been launched. The verdict of which will be announced at the summit on Earth one week hence.” He comes closer and taps my chest with the Fist to make it formal. “You have been summoned to report to New Sparta.”
“I am in the middle of my—”
“You have two minutes to set your affairs. Do not abuse my leniency.”
Atlas helps himself to a shrimp from a server’s tray and goes to the manticore cage to whip the creature back from Tharsus’s tattered body. He leaves the body but takes the head and the golden bowl that protected its features from the manticore. Then he strides off in silence to await his ship.
Even the Carthii have gone quiet. My friends are terrified.
“You can’t go with him,” Glirastes says. “Lysander, you have the Lightbringer. You have the Votum. You don’t have to obey.”
Cicero swallows. “We can’t take on Atalantia. Not head-to-head. Not with three Lightbringers.”
Horatia joins. She sees the political trap. “He was touched by the Iron Fist. He must go. It’s a trap. Atalantia wants him to reject the summons. She’s looking for a public infraction to bring you up on charges. Your popularity won’t matter then. All options will be available to her.”
Glirastes grips my arm again, imploring. “Lysander, if you go to Earth you’ll never leave. She will kill you or make you her puppet.”
I did not expect Atlas so soon. I don’t know how he fooled Kyber and lost her tail. But as soon as the news of the dockyards came, I knew I would have limited time to act.
“I must go,” I say. “This is why we created contingencies. Atalantia won’t kill me yet. Horatia, Rhone, we will play peacemakers one more time. Contingency Eleven is our best hope. I’ve already spoken with Valeria. She’s in. You know what to do.”
They nod in agreement.
Cicero is green with worry. “Are you certain?”
“We cannot lose Apollonius. Not now. A dozen ships in hand are worth a hundred on the ledger. We’re in the game now, my friends. Stay true to each other, and we will succeed.”
I hope.
I say my farewell to Cicero and Horatia before taking Glirastes by the arm. “Remember, I want you to get to the safe-house in the mountains as soon as I depart. Keep Exeter close.”
His face is pained. But he tries to be strong for me. He takes my shoulders. “Before you, I was broken. Lost. Hope had fled with youth.” He thumps my chest. “Hope beats here. In you.”
In Glirastes I feel the presence of the love Octavia stole from me with her Pandemonium Chair. The love of a parent for a son. “I will see you soon, Glirastes.” I kiss the wizened man on the brow and tear myself away to walk with Rhone toward Atlas’s landing shuttle. My guests may cry out their complaints against the Dictator but none dare intervene. “I’m counting on you most of all, Rhone. We need more than just Apollonius and his men from the docks.”
“I understand, dominus. I will not fail you,” Rhone says.
Reluctant, he hands me over to the custody of the landing Gorgons. They scan me after I board their shuttle. They miss nothing, not even the implant in my ear canal. The last words I hear before they take it come from Pytha on the bridge. “Good luck, Moonboy. We’ll see you soon.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, Lysander,” Atlas says as the shuttle lifts off. He takes off his cape and hands the Iron Fist to an attendant. “The Styx will rendezvous with us a day out from Mercury. We will take it the rest of the way to Earth. Atalantia thinks you look too martial with that scar. She sent her best carver to better shape you to fit her desires.” He glances at the burn on my face. “But first she has a message for you.” He turns to leave the passenger compartment and calls back to his Gorgons. “Make him shit blood.”
The first fist hits me in the kidneys.
11
DARROW
Inheritance
THE ARCHIMEDES WHISPERS through space on a route beneath the ecliptic plane that will add weeks to our journey but hopefully help us avoid enemy hunting squadrons. In the commissary, Sevro and I eat dinner in silence. His hair is long and disheveled, and like me he has a beard. He breaks the silence with a burp and wags a chunk of ham on the end of a combat knife. “I’ll say one thing about Kavax. He packs a good larder. Surprised your lot didn’t pillage it.”
“We did. Cassius nicked this grub from Starhold. Neglected to share with the others before we parted ways.”
Sevro shrugs, deciding not to let the origins of the food diminish his enjoyment of it.
“You try the ham yet?” he asks.
“Not yet.”
Four days out from the dockyards, and Sevro and I have apparently forgotten how to talk to each other. At the same time, we can’t seem to ever be more than one room away from each other or avoid touching each other when we are in the same room. It’s weird like that. The push and pull of a war bond that goes as deep as ours. So much guilt, but at the same time he’s my security and refuge, and I am his. We know we’re the only ones who understand what the other one has seen. Indescribable things. Things words explain to those back home about as well as cave paintings relay the reality of a woolly mammoth.