* * *
—
Diomedes enters the room wearing his dusky cloak of office. “I fear I’ve caused a disturbance,” he says and surveys me in my medical bed with deep concern. “But I’m glad you’re awake. Flavinius thinks I’ve killed you by waking you too early.”
“Overprotective,” I murmur. “Just doing his duty.” If Diomedes wasn’t worried at the sight of me, he is by the halting rasp of my voice. Beneath that worry is a tension I don’t like one bit. My friends did not exaggerate. He is leaving. I fight back the panic rising in me.
“They say Medusa’s Lament is unpleasant,” he says, understated as ever. “I’m pleased to hear that you will survive. Are you in pain?”
“Why are…you leaving. Our Rain…” A fresh surge of agony lances through my left eye socket and stirs my brain into bloody gray mush. “What—” I breathe heavily, waving off his concern with a clumsy hand. “What has happened?”
“The Beacons of Jupiter burn red. Ilium is under attack.”
I don’t understand. Ilium. The moons around Jupiter. His home.
The pain makes it hard to think, but not as hard as the painkillers pumping into me through the med bracelet. Forming thoughts is like walking through neck-deep sludge.
“Attack?”
“Yes.”
“The…Republic. Darrow? How?”
“No. Not the Republic.” He hesitates. “Two days ago, we received an emergency tightbeam from my grandmother in Sungrave and the Moon Council on Ganymede. Both messages were confirmed by our long-lenses near the Belt.”
He hesitates.
“Trust me,” I say.
“Ilium is under attack by an Obsidian fleet led by a warlord. One who might be known to you through your intelligence reports. Volsung Fá.”
I think very hard. “The pirate leader. The same who attacked Olympia? Stole…the Pandora and the Volk fleet?” I feel like I’ve been asleep for years. “He’s raiding the asteroid belt. Republic cities. Trade posts. His fight is with them—”
“We thought so too. It seems that’s changed,” Diomedes says. “Three days ago, the Ilium Guard responded to an Ascomanni raid at Garmaga, one of the outer moons of Jupiter. Instead of encountering a raiding group of Ascomanni corvettes, as intelligence suggested, they encountered a Core-grade warfleet comprising dreadnaughts and destroyers, supplemented by Ascomanni ships in numbers not even my great-grandfather ever encountered. The Ilium Guard was destroyed completely.”
I must be high on the painkillers. The defense fleet of the Raa homeland, gone?
“There were warnings. Of course. My grandmother…the isolationist who cried wolf one too many times. Our intelligence is incomplete, but we believe Fá has united the Ascomanni and the Volk. He claims to be the father of Ragnar Volarus.”
We heard that rumor too. “Is he?”
“We don’t know. I’m breaking the law even telling you we don’t know. Like you, we thought he was still somewhere in the Belt attacking Republic stations and trade posts. Apparently his ransacking of Mars, his coup of Sefi, now seem nothing more than stepping stones for his true ambition: a war against my people, just when we can least afford it. He saw his chance and exploited it.”
Very clever. But not surprising in the end. That is the problem with rebellions. They incite others to rebel. Exhausted, I hang my head in sluggish thought. “Diomedes, we have Mars…in our grasp. All we did here. If you leave now—”
“I know. I am sorry, Lysander. But no victory is worth a people’s home. We must protect Ilium. We’re far closer than the Shadow Armada. Our consuls are in agreement. Even my mother. The Dragon and Dust armadas will return home at full torch.”
“Demeter’s Garter,” I whisper. Nothing else could make Dido and Helios react so aggressively except a threat to the breadbasket of the Rim. “You think the Ascomanni may be able to take the Garter.”
He almost scoffs.
“Even the Ash Lord and Fabii couldn’t take Io. But we cannot let Obsidians run rampant in our home system. Not everything is so well defended. We have a duty to protect our people.”
I sigh in relief for him. If the Garter were to fall it would mean famine, death. The Rim is far more fragile than it pretends to be. Life is hard so far away from the sun.
“When are you leaving?” I rasp.
“Once all the troops are loaded.”
“When?”
“Just over three hours from now.”
Even though I feel for the Rim, it is impossible not to think of my own plight. Without their ships, their troops, my faction will be hard-pressed to maintain the siege, much less take the surface. I feel a second schism forming, all our progress reversing. My allies will be furious at being abandoned. Somewhere Atalantia will be laughing, the Republic wiping their brows. But Pytha would not wake me unless there was something I could do about this calamity. Filled with immense love for her, I narrow my eyes at Diomedes.
Is it just the pain, just the drugs, or is he far more talkative and open than usual?
“Then why wake me?” I ask.
He considers for a long time. “When you came to Ilium, when you promised an alliance, I thought you were a boy who wanted to matter so badly he’d bend everything to do it. Even the truth. On Mercury, I felt that suspicion confirmed. But then you stood in Rome. Then you spoke. Then you sailed. Then, when blood was demanded here to turn pretty promises into hard truths, you opened a vein. You did what you said you would do. I worry…I know Atalantia is not that sort of leader. I fear her. If we leave, the alliance will break, but we must leave, so you must come with us. Prove to Helios, to all, this alliance is more than convenience. Prove it is the future. We do not live in the shadow of Rhea. We make our own light.”
I have never seen him so passionate.
I do not take his hand despite the emotions riding in me. “If I do…sail with you, what assurances do I have…you will return to finish what we started here?”
“I bind my honor to this. We will give you the Shield of Akari.” He smiles. “And my consul, Dido au Raa, has granted me the right to bind her honor to that pledge as well. Help us, the Dragon Armada will come back and help you.”
* * *
—
“The Shield of Akari?” Lady Bellona says. “They haven’t given that relic to a Core Gold since Silenius died. It must be under a meter of dust in Plutus.”
Unable to stand, I must look pathetic to my allies in the floating chair I rode to the emergency summit held in Julia’s new base of operations—Quicksilver’s former estate. Horatia has gone home to manage Mercury. Cicero stands at my side, firmly backing my petition to my allies to aid the Rim. Naturally, Apollonius was the last to arrive. He rode into Quicksilver’s former palace on a winged chimera he took as a spoil of war from Julii’s household menagerie. After the beast was led out by nervous Bellona guards, I informed my allies of the Rim’s plight and Diomedes’s offer.
“The shield is only given to signify a century pact,” I reply with a nod. “There has not been one since Silenius died. We change that, we can turn this tragedy into unity.”