“Once upon a time, there was a family of strong wills,” she says, voice slow and measured as a pendulum. “They did not love one another. But together they presided over a farm. And on that farm, there were hounds, and bitches, and dairy cows, and hens, and cocks, and sheep, and mules, and horses. The family kept the beasts in line. And the beasts kept them rich, fat, and happy. Now, the beasts obeyed because they knew the family was strong, and to disobey was to suffer their united wrath. But one day, when one of the brothers struck his brother over the eye, a cock said to a hen, ‘Darling, matronly hen, what would really happen if you stopped laying eggs for them?’ ”
Her eyes burn into mine. Neither of us look away. Silence in the sparse suite, except the sound of rain at the windows of her skyscraper. We’re among the clouds. Ships pass in the haze outside like silent, glowing sharks. The leather creaks as she leans forward and steeples her long fingers, which are painted red, a lone splash of color. Then her lips curl in condescension, accenting each syllable as though I were an Agea street child only just learning her language.
“In so many ways you remind me of my father.”
The one she beheaded.
That’s when she fixes me with the most enigmatic smile I may ever have seen. Mischief dances in her eyes, subdued and quiet beneath the cold trappings of power. Somewhere inside is the nine-year-old girl who infamously started a riot by throwing diamonds from an aircar.
I stand before her. She sits on a couch by a fire. Everything is Spartan. Hard. Cold. A Gold woman of iron and stone. All this drabness as if to say she needs not luxury or wealth, just power.
Her face is creased but not faded by time. A hundred years, or so I hear, not cracked by the pressures of office. If anything, pressure has made her like those diamonds she scattered. Unbreakable. Ageless. And she will be without age for some time longer, if the Carvers continue their cellular rejuvenation therapy.
That is the problem. She will cling to power far too long. A king reigns and then he dies. That is the way of it. That is how the young justify obeying their elders—knowing it will one day be their turn. But when their elders do not leave? When she rules for forty years, and may rule for a hundred more? What then?
She is the answer to that question. This is not a woman who inherited the Morning Throne. This is a woman who took it from a ruler who had not the courtesy to die in a timely fashion. For forty years others have tried to take it from her. Yet here she sits. Timeless as those fabled diamonds.
“Why did you disobey me?” she asks.
“Because I could.”
“Explain.”
“Nepotism shrivels under the light of the sun. When you changed your mind to protect Cassius, the crowd rejected your moral and legal authority. Not to mention, you contradicted yourself. That in itself is weakness. So I exploited it, knowing I could get what I wanted without consequence.”
Aja, the Sovereign’s favorite killer, broods in a chair near the window—a powerful panther of a woman with skin duskier than her siblings’, and eyes with slitted pupils. She is one of the Olympic Knights, the Protean Knight to be technic. She was Lorn’s last student before me. Though he didn’t teach her everything. Her armor is gold and midnight blue and writhes with sea serpents.
A young boy enters quietly from another room to sit beside Aja. I recognize him immediately. The Sovereign’s only grandson, Lysander. No older than eight, but so very composed. Regal in his quiet, thin as a scarf. But his eyes. His eyes are beyond gold. Almost a yellow crystal, so bright they could nearly be said to shine. Aja watches me appraise the boy. She takes him onto her lap protectively and bares her teeth, their whiteness fiercely bright against her dark skin. Like a great cat playfully saying hello. And for the first time I can remember, I glance away from a threat. The shame burns hot and sudden in me. I might as well have kneeled to her.
“But there are always consequences,” the Sovereign says. “I’m curious. What did you want out of that duel?”
“The same as Cassius au Bellona. The heart of my enemy.”
“Do you hate him so much?”
“No. But my survival instinct is … enthusiastic. Cassius, as far as I am concerned, is a stupid boy crippled by his upbringing. His stock is limited. He talks of honor but he stoops to ignoble things.”
“So it wasn’t for Virginia?” she asks. “It wasn’t to claim her hand or sate your jealous rage?”
“I’m angry, but I’m not petty,” I snap. “Besides, Virginia isn’t the sort of woman who would stand for such things. If I did it for her, I would have lost her.”
“You have lost her,” Aja growls from the side.
“Yes. I realize she has a new home, Aja. Easy to see.”
“Do you lash out at me, my goodman?” Aja touches her razor.
“My goodlady, I do but lash out.” I smile slowly at her.
“She’ll gut you like a pig, boyo,” Fitchner says quickly. “Don’t give a piss if Lorn taught you how to wipe your ass. Think twice on who you insult here. The true blades of the Society do not duel for sport. So mind your gorydamn tongue.”
I touch my razor.
He snorts. “If you were a threat, do you think they’d let you keep that?”
I nod to Aja. “Another time, perhaps.” I turn back to the Sovereign, straightening. “Perhaps we should discuss why you are holding my house under military guard. Are we under arrest? Am I?”
“Do you see shackles?”
I look at Aja. “Yes.”
The Sovereign laughs. “You’re here because I want you to be.”
An idea comes to me. I try not to smile. “My liege, I should like to apologize,” I say loudly. They wait for me to continue. “My manners have always been … provincial. And so I find the manner of my actions nearly always distracts from their purpose. The base fact is, Cassius deserved worse than what I supplied. That I disobeyed you was not meant as insult by myself or the ArchGovernor. Were he not unconscious on account of your dog”—I glance at Fitchner—“I wager he would do what needed to be done to make amends.”
“Make amends,” she repeats. “For …”
“For the disturbance.”
She looks to Aja. “Disturbance, he says. Dropping a dish is a disturbance, Andromedus. Helping yourself to another man’s wife is a disturbance . Killing my guests and cutting off the arm of an Olympic Knight is not a disturbance. Do you know what it is?”
“Fun, my liege?”
She leans forward. “It is treason.”
“And you know how we treat with treason,” Aja says. “My father taught my sisters and me.” Her father, the Ash Lord. Burner of Rhea. Lorn despises him.
“An apology from you is insufficient,” the Sovereign says.
“Apology?” I ask.
The Sovereign is caught off guard by my tone.
“I said I should like to apologize. But the problem is, I cannot, because it should be you who apologizes to me.”
Silence.
“You little whelp,” Aja says, rising slowly.
The Sovereign stops her, words cutting clear and cold. “I did not apologize to my father when I took his head from his body. I did not apologize to my grandson when his mother’s ship was destroyed by Outriders. I did not apologize when I burned a moon. So why would I apologize to you?”
“Because you broke the law,” I say.
“Perhaps you were not listening. I am the law.”
“No. You’re not.”
“So you are a student of Lorn’s after all. Did he tell you why he abandoned his post? His duty?” She looks at Lysander. “Why he abandoned his grandson?”
I did not know the boy was Lorn’s grandson. My teacher’s retirement makes sudden sense. He always spoke of Society’s fading glory. How men have forgotten themselves mortal.
“Because he saw what you have become, my liege. You are no Empress. This is no empire, despite what you may think. We are the Society. We are bound by laws, by hierarchy. No person stands above the pyramid.” I look to her killers. “Fitchner, Aja, you protect the Society. You ensure peace. You sail to the far reaches of the System to root out weeds of chaos. But above all else, what is the purpose of the twelve Olympic Knights?”
“Go on,” Aja says to Fitchner. “Play into his mummer’s farce. I will not.”
Fitchner drawls out, “To preserve the Compact.”
“To preserve the Compact,” I say. “And the Compact states, ‘A duel, once begun, cannot reach resolution until its terms are properly fulfilled.’ The terms were death. But Cassius is not dead. His arm will not suffice. I honor the iron ancestors and my rights stand inviolable. So give me what is mine. Give me the gorydamn head of Cassius au Bellona. Or reject the legacy of our people.”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing more to discuss. You may find me on Mars.”
I turn on my heel and walk toward the door.
“The lion fades,” the Sovereign calls. “Find a new home. Here.”
I stop in my tracks. These people are so bloodydamn predictable. They all want what they can’t have.
“Why?” I ask without turning.
“Because I can give you resources Augustus cannot. Because Virginia has already seen how true that is. You want to be with her, don’t you?”
“Why would you want a man who so easily trades his allegiance?” I turn and look Fitchner dead in the eye. “Such a man is little more than a common whore.”
“Augustus abandoned you before you abandoned him,” the Sovereign says. “His daughter saw it even if you don’t. I will not abandon you. Ask my Furies. Ask their father. Ask Fitchner. I give a chance to those who stand apart. Join me. Lead my legions and I will make you an Olympic Knight.”
“I am an Aureate.” I spit on the ground. “I am no trophy.”
I stalk away.
“If I can’t have you, no one can.”
Then they come. Three Stained file through the door. Each a foot taller than I. Each garbed in purple and black and carrying pulseAxes and pulseBlades. Their faces hide behind bonelike masks. Eyes of killers grown in the arctic poles of Earth and Mars stare out at me. Glittering black, like oil. I pull my razor and take my battle stance. Their throat-sung war chant rumbles under their masks, like the funeral dirge for a dead god.
“Go on. Sing to your gods.” I twirl my razor. “I’ll send you to meet them.”
“Reaper, please stop,” Lysander calls loudly. I turn to find him walking toward me, hands splayed plaintively. His coat is simple and black. He stands half my height.
His voice floats. Trembles like a delicate bird’s.
“I have watched all your videos, Reaper. Six, maybe seven times. Even the Academy. My tutors believe you are the closest man to the Iron Golds since Lorn au Arcos, the Stoneside.”
That’s when I realize why he looks so nervous. I almost laugh. I’m this little bastard’s boyhood hero.
“We need not see you die tonight. Could you not find a home here as you found with Sevro? With Roque and Tactus, and Pax, the Howlers, and all your great warriors? We have warriors too. Noble ones. You could lead them. But … He steps back. “If you fight, then you die because you make the mistake of believing righteousness puts you beyond my grandmother’s power.”
“It does,” I say.
“Reaper, there is no place beyond her power.”
This is how it happens. They give them heroes. They raise them on lies and violence, and then they let them grow into monsters. What would he be without their guiding hand?
“He wanted to see you,” the Sovereign says. “I told him legend never matches fact. Better not to meet your heroes.”
“And what do you think?” I ask little Lysander.
“It all depends on your next choice,” he says delicately.
“Join us, Darrow,” Fitchner drawls. “This is the place for you now. Augustus is done.”
Smiling inwardly, I relax my blade. Lysander clenches a fist happily. I pace with him back to his grandmother, playing along but not yet proclaiming any allegiance.
“You’re always telling me to bow,” I tell Fitchner as I pass.
He shrugs. “Because I don’t want you to break, boyo.”
“Lysander, fetch me my box,” the Sovereign says. Happily, the boy rushes out of the room as I sit across from his grandmother. “I fear the Institute taught you the wrong lesson—that you can overcome anything if you but try. That is incorrect. In the real world, you must go along. You must cooperate and compromise. You cannot bend the worlds to your morals.”
“Would you have noticed me had I not tried to?”
She smiles softly. “Likely not.”
Lysander returns moments later, carrying a small wooden box. He hands it to his grandmother and waits patiently by her side, eating a tart that Aja hands him. The Sovereign sets the box on the table.
“You value trust. So do I. Let us play a game absent weapons, absent armor. No Praetorians. No lies. No falsity. Just us and our naked truths.”
“Why?”
“If you win, you may request anything of me. If I win, I get the same.”
“If I ask for the head of Cassius?”
“I will saw it off myself. Now open the box.”
I lean forward. Chair creaking. Rain patters on the windows. Lysander smiles. Aja watches my hands. And Fitchner, like me, has no idea what’s in the bloodydamn box.
I open it.