“My noble counterpart from the Rim speaks with wisdom hard learned. Yes. Dido,” she says, clutching at her own heart, “I feel your anger. Your rage for Mars. The flames lick my heart as they licked my father’s skin when Darrow and Apollonius burned him in his bed. But…we cannot run from hard truths. My friends, the hard truths are what we must address today.
“I hope it steels your heart to know that I concur. Yes! A Rain must fall on Mars!” Her supporters thump their benches all around me. I abstain. “The Ecliptic Guard must be smashed! Augustus rooted out from her father’s old den. Julii pulled down from her moon roost. Every traitor must be tried and hanged! Their slingBlades beaten into collars! Agea stormed! The helium liberated! But…” she says amongst the cheers of her supporters. “But…the hard truth is if you turn your back on a wild boar to kill the lion, the only thing you’ll bring home is a tusk through your thigh. That is why, yes! Yes. Mars must fall. And after Luna, she will.”
Her supporters fill the Colosseum with a roar of support that sends the crows in the attico scattering. Alone now in the high perch, Atlas catches me watching him. He tilts his head.
“Which is why…Which is why!” The cheers quiet as Atalantia lifts her hand. “I have accepted Lysander au Lune’s petition to lead the vanguard of the Luna Rain along with the legions of the gens Falthe…six months from now! So that when Luna is reclaimed and the Society restored, there will be once again a Lune upon the Palatine!”
Her hardliners applaud me and turn to shake my hand. Diomedes has had enough. He stomps down to the speaking floor and stalks out. If they’d planned to stage a walkout, Dido or Helios should have been the one leading it. Nonetheless, they nod to the others and begin to follow the Storm Knight out.
My dreams of a united Society will burn before my eyes if I stay seated.
I clock Horatia. She nods.
Now is the moment. All is arranged.
When he sees what I am about to do, fear grips Ajax. He steps forward from his station with the Olympics, his hand outstretched, imploring me to stay safe on my knees in Atalantia’s cage with him. Instead, I stand.
17
LYSANDER
Mars Must Fall
“WHERE HAVE ALL THE shepherds gone?” I shout.
Atalantia turns with all the members of the Iron bloc to stare at me. Ajax looks at the ground, already mourning me. I push my way through them down to the floor. Diomedes has stopped halfway out the exit. “The Diomedes I know does not run from a fight,” I call. “If you gave up so easily in the field, Earth would still be in the Republic’s hands. Stay. Hear me speak.”
“Why should I listen to anything you have to say?” Diomedes calls back. “Palantine serpent. All can see where you sit.”
“Do you seek to aid Virginia?” I turn on his mother and the rest of their deputation before scouring the risers. “Gold infighting with Gold. Is that not how we arrived here? How Darrow shattered our hold on the spheres? Why the Dockyards of Venus now rattle with civil strife? We allowed our enemy to divide us before. Bellona against Augustus! Rim against Core! We are victims of our own bickering. We’re doing it all over again! Vox clamantis in deserto! Can none of you see it? This. Is. How. We. Fall.”
“Lune boy. You do not have the floor,” Lady Bellona calls to me, mocking. “You like games, yes. Games have rules, so do we. Sit down. Mind your manners.”
“I invoke my right of interjection,” I say. “It is my due as a direct descendent of a Conqueror.”
“At least you remember the archaic rules. You’ll know then that you will need thirty members to validate your interjection.”
“Forgive him, Julia,” Atalantia calls. “Lysander found his way to a cup and lost his wits on the journey. His youthful passion is usually such a virtue, but this is his first summit. It’s all so very exciting for him.”
Many laugh at me, and not just the Irons.
“Drown with laughter that which you cannot retort, how gauche,” I reply. “Do I have thirty members?” Horatia and her entire bloc raise their hands, as I asked her to arrange earlier in the morning. “Princeps Senatus, I have thirty members. I’ll wait while you count.”
I earn a few laughs. The Moonies are more than a little mystified by the theatrical style of our politics. Dido nods to Helios. They don’t retake their seats, but they wait. Julia makes a show of counting and sighs as if it’s out of her hands. “He’s right, Atalantia.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Atalantia mutters.
“You fuck off. On what grounds do you interject, young man?”
“On the grounds of conscience,” I declare.
“Conscience?” Atalantia laughs. So does her bloc, but the laughter is forced.
“There is precedent. First cited by Akari in 5 PCE,” I say. That one was for the Rim. A smile starts to grow on Dido’s face.
A student of history herself, Julia rolls her eyes again. “Hilarious. Very well. The body recognizes the interjection. The pyramid is yours. Dictator, please return to your seat. You may continue your speech after the interjection is finished.”
“No,” Atalantia says. “It is my floor. The opportunity for discussion has passed. Go back to your seat, boy.”
“Au Grimmus, what am I holding?” Lady Bellona wiggles her staff of office. “You may be Dictator, but I remind you that the authority that makes you so is that of this body, the same authority that makes me the Princeps Senatus, and the same authority by which you summoned young Lune with the Iron Fist and sent legions to Venus. You control the state fleet, the state armies. I control the state floor. It is important we remember our laws. They are meant to protect us from ourselves after all. Did not Lysander honor the law in obeying your summons, at great inconvenience to himself, considering his games were only in their infancy? Should you not follow his precedent?”
Julia is a menace when she cares to be. By law, she holds imperium here, though no one really believes the Olympic Knights are her policemen today. Not all the knights are Atalantia’s creatures, but if it came to trouble it’s common consensus that Ajax counts as four.
Still, if it comes to blades, I’ve failed miserably.
Gauging the mood of the Two Hundred, Atalantia surrenders the floor. “House Jupiter after all. Such a pity,” she says as she passes me and shakes her head at Ajax as if she tried her best with me. Already she draws him closer again.
When Atalantia settles in her seat, I let the silence stretch and fight back the thoughts of Glirastes. I was raised on the rhetoric of Cicero and Demosthenes, but it is Silenius I channel now. Humility first.
“Why should you listen to me?” I ask and meet their eyes one by one. “Why indeed? Diomedes was not wrong to ask the question. I have not shared the horrors of these last years with you. I have not stood shoulder to shoulder with you to hold back the Rising. I have heard it said that I am a traitor. That I renounced Gold to lie with the wolves. I have been called a shadow of my predecessors, a Palatine buzzard returned for the easy spoils—”
“Catamite! Don’t forget catamite!” an Iron shouts.
Ajax turns on the man, and the man leans back as if suddenly seeing a tiger staring back at him from an otherwise pleasant glade. Atalantia’s eyes twitch toward Ajax, calculating.