“But even then the planet itself is a logistical nightmare for an invader. Mars has far more land surface area than Mercury, yet it doesn’t sprawl as on Earth. She is compact, well shielded, with limitless energy and resources, and a hostile populace, which makes a Rain difficult and occupation costly. Not to mention, she’s riddled with tunnels which eliminates the prospect of orbital support. I fought in the Rat War. It was my least favorite theater. Ever.” He slips a piece of eel into his mouth, swallows it, seemingly without registering its taste.
“It seems they’re shorn of most of their best Obsidian veterans,” I contend.
“Yes, but when you fight Reds in their own mines…” He shakes his head. “Low estimate is two million casualties.”
“Two million?”
“In the first month, and that’s just the infantry. But if you don’t take the mines, they can wage a guerilla war with a full army, and still have a choke hold on their helium supply. I cannot express the level of difficulty this would present.”
“I did not say it would be easy. I said it should be done,” I reply. “You know how the Rim will react to this news of the invasion of Luna. They’ll know you’re just using them to wear Mars down as you build your strength.”
“I am.” She frowns, genuinely perplexed by me. “Lysander, really, what good are allies if you don’t use them to make you stronger?”
“What good are allies who just leave and carry a bad taste in their mouth home?” I reply.
“Let them bluster. They’re stuck with us and they know it. Time is on our side, Lysander. As Luna cannibalizes itself for want of food, Mars does the same for want of circuits, Blues, nickel, even uranium. All the little things from the Belt and Mercury and Earth that make their fleets run. And I haven’t even lifted a finger yet.”
She lifts a finger, feigning exhaustion with the effort. Her nymphyte swans forward. The man is no older than twenty, and is the picture of youthful Attican beauty. His olive skin, jet black curls, and pugnacious chin were likely designed by Atalantia herself and carved by one of her best. Atalantia receives the Pink with a kiss and, arms still bloody to the elbow, takes a frosted crystal glass full of a dark liquor from his tray.
“Answer me this, my love. The Rim wants a short war. The Rim wants Mars to fall. So why don’t they attack the planet and quit dancing about its perimeter?”
“They can’t,” I say. “Aside from the Dustmaker and a few others, they don’t have enough heavy ships.”
“That’s right. They can’t. Sure, they’re real bastards in asteroid combat and deep space affairs, but when it comes to breaking a planet, it takes tonnage, Newtons, manpower, and a strong stomach—most of your men will die. Why do you think Darrow and I are the only assholes who take planets?
“So the duty of taking Mars would fall to us. More specifically to me. To my armada. To my legions. I love my armada. I fucking love my legions. I want them to have pensions and live like gods into retirement until they exhaust themselves from slagging and drinking. I will not expend them on Mars just so the vultures can rip me apart and then steal the chair those men earned for me.”
She thinks I’m lying in wait for her to exhaust herself, only to steal her chair when games, not battles, are the order of the day. Others are lying in wait, certainly, but I know if I rose that way, my reign would be hollow and crumble soon as someone hit it with an iron fist. She is defensive. Dangerous. I can’t sidestep the conversation any longer.
“And so long as Mars is a threat, no one would dare question your power. Except me,” I say.
She flips a coin to Atlas. “I thought you wouldn’t have the balls to broach that subject.”
“I don’t know what Atlas has told you or what you’ve heard, but—”
“Let’s not dance around it. Atlas, fetch the dog.” Atlas screws closed his canteen and heads for the hound cages. “It’s not that I am allergic to dissent, Lysander. In fact, I depend upon the friction with Horatia, the Reformers, even Lady Bellona at times. I am the first of equals, of peers.” She smirks. “That is, until I am strong enough to drop the pretense and make them all kneel. My problem is when people reward my generosity by sticking a dagger in my back.”
When Atlas returns it’s not with a hound on his leash. Instead, it is a naked old man. My heart sinks. The man is bald and barefoot on the hot dirt and sharp grass. His skinny body sags with age and is mottled with bruises and superficial lacerations. Nausea churns in me as the man lifts his head and looks up at me with strained Orange eyes.
I thought he was safe in the mountains. How did they find him? I feel sick.
“Glirastes,” I whisper and take a step toward my friend. Atlas draws him up short of me, jerking his collar so Glirastes must fall to his knees in the low grass. “What have you done to him?”
Atalantia twitches another finger and a lancer sets down the bowl that contained Tharsus’s head. The blood has mixed with the water the lancer poured in. She snaps her fingers at Glirastes. “Drink, dog.” He drinks, feverish and thirsty.
“You did this to him,” Atalantia says. “You and all your scheming. The entitlement is what’s truly appalling. Did you think I’d just let you walk all over me as long as it was behind my back?”
Grief overcomes me as Glirastes shivers there on his hands and knees. All the vitality and genius and irascibility in the man is gone, replaced by a grotesque desperation to reach me. That desperation makes me almost recoil from him even as I yearn to embrace him and tear my hair out in penance. I had assumed Glirastes was safe on Mercury.
Did they take him right after I left? Was he on the Styx during our journey from Mercury? In a cage while the carver healed my scar? As Atlas and I dined in silence? Why did the Praetorians not protect him?
“You are useful to me, Lysander,” Atalantia says. “You are. A velvet glove for my iron fist. Useful. But not indispensable.
“This autonomy you’ve enjoyed…it was a gift from me. The breath in your lungs right now…a gift from me. I love you. I do. Since you were knee high. But I’m done tolerating your insolence. Trying to make a faction behind my back? You piece of shit.”
She slaps me and is on me again before I can recover. She slaps me again and follows me, slapping me with either hand until I rear back as if to strike her. Then I see why Ajax told me to go to my knees. Calculation waits behind her eyes. If I hit her back, I fall from one category into another. If I show too much spirit, I won’t leave this desert. Not in one piece, not in control of my own mind.
I release my anger and, as I so often have when I’m with Atalantia, channel my agony into a useful fiction. A few months ago Pytha asked if sleeping with Atalantia whenever she visited bothered me; I told her it didn’t, that it sharpened me. I lied. It’s the same lie I perpetually tell myself every time she touches me. I loathe the intimacies I allowed Atalantia, and had to allow her even after knowing her hands were covered in the blood of my parents. I hate her almost as much as I hate myself. I feel unworthy of my house and my dreams. My very skin crawls with shame, my eyes grow watery, my face hot. I let my arm fall to my side.