Victra grimaces. “But I was crafting a chalice for Sevro.” She sighs. “Fine. But really, Virginia. The Minotaur is in my house. No word from Sevro or Darrow. We’ve lost Phobos. You said there was good news.”
I nod to Glaucus. He disappears out the door. Sophocles runs squealing from his pout in the back of the room and runs after Glaucus. Infectious laughter booms from the hall. A moment later, Glaucus returns pushing Kavax in a wheelchair. Niobe and Thraxa rush him as Sophocles tries to inhale his face.
Victra doesn’t move but tears well in her eyes. “Shit. I said don’t get emotional.”
33
LYSANDER
Master of the Spoils
THE TRANSFER OF PHOBOS is nearly complete, and so far Virginia has honored her word. That is good. It means this war need not end with a genocide on Mars. Yet it is still war. So to rub salt in their wounds, I host the battle honors as the last Republic ship leaves the moon.
Amidst the Golds in their shining panoply and the Grays under their proud standards, a feeble man walks carrying my once-white cape. It is dark with blood and soot now. The man is as ruined as the cape. He is terribly burned, and looks like a wax sculpture that sat too close to a fire. He is not the same man I gave my cloak to. That man is dead. This one was from my own clawDrill. His gnarled hand trembles as he gives me back my cape. I drape it over my arm. It is filthy. His words are so slurred I cannot hear what he says.
I bend and pin on his uniform a golden phalera of a torch burning a moon. He looks down at the torch and begins to sob. I rest a hand on his unburned forearm. “This pain is temporary. Your glory is forever. Hail Orlow of Gamma!”
Thousands roar his name.
Softly, I say: “I will make you whole. You are part of my house, and so you are part of me. Come to me when you are healed, and whatever you ask you will have.”
“Hail Lune,” he whispers out his lipless mouth. “Hail Lune.”
Tears well in my eyes. I let them flow as I pin phalera on the few Helldivers who remain before moving up the hierarchy. All who partook in the battle will receive a phalera. Precious few are Gold, and come with the patron favor—an opportunity to approach me at any time later in life and ask for a boon. When I come to the Grays, I kiss Markus, Demetrius, Kyber, and Drusilla on their cheeks. Rhone doesn’t want a medal. He’s already a Dux. Fresh honors would be stealing valor from the men, he said.
There are many Blues who earned honors, but none as much as Pytha. In addition to her charge on Phobos, when the Lightbringer was no longer fit to fight, she turned it into a refuge. She saved countless lives by using the ship to collect thousands of wounded and escape pods from damaged Rim crafts during the pitch of battle.
To her, I give the Civic Crown. Made of common oak leaves, it is the highest decoration a general can give. Unlike lesser phalera, its worth is not enhanced by the precious metals that make it, but rather only by the honor itself of receiving it, because no price can be put on the saving of lives. Later, it will be tattooed onto her head to carry with her for life. I feel immense gratitude for her. Only when I saw her again did I cry for Ajax. She knew what he meant to me. I told many stories of our childhood to her when we sailed on the Archimedes. She held me in her arms, and I felt safe not having to be strong.
When at last I come to the Golds I look out with particular affection at the several dozen new men and women who made their marks. “In you I see the future the Conquerors intended,” I tell them. “Virtuous knights defending the rights of all Colors to live in worlds of peace, order, and prosperity. It is you New Shepherds who will carry the flame of the Society. To you, no honors will be given. To be Gold is honor enough. Instead, I levy a burden.”
Rhone brings out custom razors. Each with a pearl crescent on the leather grip. I cut the cheek opposite their Peerless Scars before giving them their blades. They stare at me as if I were Silenius himself.
The room bursts into applause. I see Pytha watching the Red who brought the cape, Orlow. Though he is burned, he claps and hollers in almost pathetic joy. For a moment, she looks sad. Can she not see what I am doing here? She will. They all will. After I finish this blasted war.
With the ceremony done, I return to Rhone and he attaches my cape.
What was white is now stained in blood. I do not turn my back, as is custom, to see if they will give me the highest honor a citizen can receive, an honor higher even than the Civic Crown, because it can only be given to a general by the acclaim of his troops—the Grass Crown.
Instead, I face them, signaling that I do not deserve honors. They like that.
Rhone says the ritual words in my ear. “Remember, you live for the fallen, for at your word they ran to the grave. Make not their sacrifice be ever in vain.”
A hologram glows to life to show the great statue of Darrow standing astride Phobos’s north pole. A ship from all my major allies fires on the statue as one. As his monument crumbles, the figureheads Darrow’s hands imprisoned are liberated at last. Centaurs, suns, eagles, crescents, skulls, gold all, scatter out to space. We will let them go. And the retreating Republic? They watch their idol fall.
“Per aspera ad astra!” we roar.
* * *
—
Pink acrobats twirl over the couches arrayed in Victra’s garden. I pluck a grape from a passing servant’s tray and plop it in my mouth. I worried I’d be seen as weak for reaching a compromise with Virginia. Far from it. My allies are elated. They could care less that we let the enemy retreat. Phobos itself is the prize, and not even Apollonius liked the style of war it was taking to claim it—though he was responsible for most of our gains. I saved us a year of blood and treasure and won us a second dockyards for our faction and a beachhead for our siege of the planet, and all it took was a little compromise. I am heady with success, but in no mood to celebrate.
“Is it possible for you to relax?” Julia au Bellona pours me a glass of wine from the pitcher.
“Don’t I look relaxed?” I ask and sip the wine.
“Looking and being relaxed are very different things, young man.” She sighs. “Apollonius swore this party would be tasteful, so as not to offend our dusty guests but honestly I expected that to mean the Pinks would be edible,” Julia says with a leer at the Dominion couches. She lies on her side next to me pretending to be drunker than she is. “Either humility has curbed his libido or you have a stronger rein on him than I thought.”
I come back from my thoughts of Ajax and shift my bloodstained cloak before sipping my wine. “I can’t vouch for his libido, but I believe your lancer Pallas is quickly becoming an authority on the subject. I warn you. The southern route is not the way to Apollonius’s heart.”
Julia laughs.
“Prostitute my lancer? Vile. She’s special. Like a daughter to me, really.” Pallas, far more seriously dressed than she was at my party, is interrogating Helios au Lux, and he seems to be enjoying it. Missing is his shadow, Diomedes. “Pallas is curious by nature, especially about powerful, simple men.” Julia eyes me. “Just not the ones who spit in her patron’s eye in public.”
“Me?” I ask, mock offended.
“You. I financed half this endeavor, and you give Apollonius the dockyards. I should have you poisoned for that.”