I stand before my master, but he does not care.
The office walls are of paneled wood, and on the floor lies an ancient rug his iron ancestor took from a palace of Earth after the fall of the Indian Empire, one of the last great nations to stand against Gold. What dread those natural-born humans must have felt to see the Conquerors falling from the sky. Man perfected, but bringing chains instead of hope.
I stand in front of Augustus’s desk, a bare thing of wood and iron, just before the seven-hundred-year-old bloodstain where the final Indian emperor had his head parted from his body by a sleek Gold killer.
Idly, Nero au Augustus strokes the lion that lies beside his desk. They look like twin statues. Behind them is space. A viewport peers into the blackness, where the ships of the Scepter Armada lie like giant golems in terrible slumber. We pass them on the last leg of our three-week voyage from Mars.
Augustus peers at his desk as a stream of data runs over the wood. It seems so long ago that he took me on a tour of Mars to show me our domains—from the latfundia where highReds toil over crops to the great polar reaches where Obsidians live in medieval isolation. He favored me then, bringing me close, teaching me the things his father taught him. I was his favorite, second only to Leto. Now he is a stranger, and I, an embarrassment.
It’s been two months since the day Karnus beat me at the Academy. Though my hair has grown back and my broken bones have mended, my reputation has not. And because of that, my tenure in ArchGovernor Augustus’s employ is tenuous, at best. My enemies grow by the day. But these new ones prefer whispers to razors.
More and more do I believe the Sons of Ares chose the wrong man. I am not made for the cold war of politics. Not made for subtlety. Hell, I’d hide a boy in the gut of a horse any day, but I wouldn’t know how to bribe someone properly if my life depended on it.
A gentle, warm voice made for half-truths drifts through the ArchGovernor’s office. “Three refineries. Two nightclubs. And two Gray police outposts. All bombed since we left Mars. Seven attacks, my liege. Fifty-nine Gold fatalities.”
Pliny. Slender as a salamander, with skin as smooth as a Pink’s. The Politico is no Peerless Scarred, never even went to the Institute. His glittering eyes peer out from eyelashes that would put peacock plumage to shame. Muted lipstick coats thin lips. His hair is coiled and scented. His body thin but muscular in a pleasing but utterly facile way beneath a too-tight embroidered silk tunic. A child could beat the living hell out of this beautiful kitten of a man. Yet he’s ended families with a rumor here, a joke there. His power is of a different breed. Where I am kinetic energy, he is potential.
I’ve heard he’s also responsible for ruining my reputation. Tactus even hinted that Pliny might have put Karnus up to the violence in the garden, or at the very least, arranged a holoCam to record my proud moment.
Beside Pliny stands the fourth man in the room, Leto. He’s a bright lancer ten years my senior with braided hair and a half-moon grin. He’s also a poet with the razor, a younger Lorn au Arcos, according to some. It’s likely he’ll inherit Augustus’s estate instead of the ArchGovernor’s blood heirs—Mustang and the Jackal. Truth be told, I rather like the man.
“The Sons of Ares grow too bold,” Augustus mutters.
“Yes, my liege.” Pliny squints. “If it is indeed they who perpetrate the acts.”
“What other ant bites us?”
“None that we know of. But there are spiders, ticks, rats in the worlds. The bombings are crude for Ares, indiscriminate, uncharacteristically violent. Discontiguous from the pattern of technological sabotage and propaganda in his profile. Ares is not capricious, so I struggle believing these acts originate from him.”
Augustus frowns. “Then what do you suggest?”
“Perhaps there is another terrorist group, my liege. With eighteen billion souls on the census, I hardly think one man has a monopoly on terrorism. Perhaps even a criminal syndicate. I’ve been creating a database I can share.…”
Pliny is right. The terror attacks that have plagued Mars and other planets make little sense. Dancer spoke of justice, not revenge. These attacks are petty and gruesome—the bombing of barracks, fashion outlets, bazaars, highColor coffee shops, and restaurants. Ares would never condone them. They draw too many eyes for too little result, daring the Golds to act, to crush the Sons.
I’ve sent messages to Dancer via the holoBox. Nothing. Just silence. Could he be dead? Or has Ares abandoned me for this new strategy of bombing?
Pliny yawns. “Perhaps Ares has changed his tactics. He’s a deuced one.”
“If Ares is a man,” Leto says.
“Interesting.” Augustus swivels abruptly. “What makes you think Ares isn’t a man?”
“Why do we assume Ares is a man? He could be a woman. Could be a group of individuals for all we know, which would go a long way toward explaining the discordant nature of these new attacks.” Leto turns to me, eyes inclusive. “Darrow, what do you think?”
“Don’t befuddle Darrow with complex questions!” Pliny crows defensively. “Make it a yes or no so he can understand.” Pliny flashes me the most pitying of smiles and squeezes my shoulder in sympathy. “Behind his lepid smiles, he’s an honest, simple beast. You should know that.”
I stand there and take it.
He turns away. “In any manner, Leto, you’re forgetting we designed Red culture to be highly patriarchal. Their identity as a people centers around the collection of resources to propagate the embryonic terraforming of Mars. Physically strenuous, grueling tasks performed by men . Tasks we don’t let their women perform, even if they are capable, pursuant to the Stratification Protocol. So, you see, it can’t be a woman, because no roughneck Ruster would follow a man or a woman who has never ridden a clawDrill.”
Leto smiles cleverly. “If Ares is a Red.”
Pliny and Augustus both laugh. “Maybe he’s a deranged Violet who’s taken his acting to a new stage,” Pliny offers.
“Or a Copper cambist beleaguered by filing provincial tax returns,” Leto adds.
“No! An Obsidian who, dare I say, has finally forsaken his terror of technology and developed the skills to use a holoCamera?” Pliny slaps his leg. “I’d give away one of my Roses just to see—”
“My goodmen. Enough.” Augustus cuts him off, tapping his finger on the desk. Pliny and Leto share a grin and turn back to Augustus. “Your recommendation, Pliny?”
“Of course.” Pliny clears his throat. “Unlike their propaganda and cyber attacks, the brutality is quite simple to counter. Ares or not, issue a reply. Our kill teams are prepared for tactical strikes on several terrorist training grounds beneath Mars’s surface. We should strike now. If we wait, I fear the Sovereign’s Praetorians will take matters into their own hands. Luneborn don’t understand Mars. They’ll slag it up.”
“A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.” Augustus pauses. “Something Lorn au Arcos once said to my father. It’s engraved on the Hall of Blades in New Thebes. Striking training grounds will do nothing except fill the holoNet with pretty explosions. I tire of political plays. Our strategy must change. With every bombing, the Sovereign grows wearier of my administration.”
“You govern Mars ,” Leto says. “Not Venus or Earth. Ours is not a placid planet. What does she expect?”
“Results.”
“What do you have in mind, my liege?” Pliny asks.
“I intend to poison the Sons of Ares’s roots. I want suicide bombers, not Grays. Find the ugliest, nastiest Reds on Mars, hold their families hostage, and threaten to kill their sons and daughters if the fathers do not do as we command. Focus the suicide bombers on surface areas with high youth density as well as two choice mines. No women bombers. I want social divide. Women against violence.”
How little life costs here. Just words in the air.
“Urban areas too,” he continues. “Not just Browns and Red miners and agriculturalists. I want dead Blue and Green children in schools or arcades next to Sons of Ares glyphs. Then we’ll see if other Colors still sing that girl’s gorydamn song.”
My heart dips a beat. Eo’s song spread further than she dreamed, reaching the holoNet and ripping across the Solar System, shared over a billion times thanks to anarchist hacker groups. Time and again, I fear I’ll be recognized. Perhaps some Gold will search through the records to find that Eo’s husband’s name was also Darrow. But even I hardly recognize that skeletal, pale boy. And as for names? There are no true records for lowRed names. I had a number designation given to me by some officious Copper administrator. L17L6363. And L17L6363 was hanged from his neck until dead, whereupon his body was stolen by an unknown perpetrator and presumably buried in the deep mines.
“You plan to alienate Red from the other Colors, then alienate the Sons from Red.” Pliny smiles. “My liege, sometimes I wonder why you even need me.”
“Do not patronize me, Pliny. It’s beneath the both of us.”
Pliny bows. “Indeed. Apologies, my liege.”
Augustus looks back to Leto. “You’re squirming like a pup.”
“I worry this will make matters worse.” Leto frowns to himself. “Presently the Sons are a nuisance, yes. But hardly our chief plight. If we do this, we could be pouring fuel on the flames. And worse, we’d be as guilty as the Sons themselves. Terrorists.”
“There is no guilt.” Pliny peers idly at a stream of data on his datapad. “Not when you’re the judge.”
Leto isn’t satisfied. “My liege, our imperative to rule exists because we are fit to best guide mankind. We are Plato’s philosopher kings. Our cause is order. We provide stability. The Sons are anarchists. Their cause is chaos. We should use that as our weapon. Not Grays in the night. Bombers among children.”
“We should aspire to a higher purpose?” Pliny asks.
“Yes! Perhaps fashion a media campaign against the Sons. Darrow, wouldn’t you agree?”
Again, I do not answer. Not until the ArchGovernor acknowledges my presence. He does not value impudence or impropriety unless it benefits him.
“Idealism.” Pliny sighs. “Admirable in the young, if misguided.”
“Take care in talking down to me , Politico,” Leto growls, scanning Pliny’s smirking face for the absent Peerless scar. “Your plan should be less brutal, ArchGovernor. That is my point.”
“Brutality.” Augustus lets the word hang in the air. “It is neither evil nor good. It is simply an adjective of a thing, an action in this case. What you must parse is the nature of the action. Is it evil or good to stop terrorists who bomb innocents?”
“Good. I suppose.”
“Then what do our methods matter so long as we harm fewer innocents than they would harm if we continue to allow them to exist?” Augustus folds his long-fingered hands. “But at the core, this is no philosophical issue. It is a political one. The Sons of Ares are not the threat. Not at all. All they are is a weapon for our political enemies, namely the Bellona, to use as an excuse to claim I cannot control Mars.
“The curlyhairs already seek to strip me of the Governorship. As you know, the Sovereign has sole power to remove me from the position, even without a vote from the Senate. If she wishes, she can give Mars to another house—Bellona, our allies the Julii, even a nonMartian house. None of these entities would run Mars as effectively as I. And when Mars is run effectively, all benefit—low and high. I am not a despot. But a father must cuff the ears of his children if they make an attempt to set fire to his house; if I must kill a few thousand for the greater good, for helium-3 to flow, and for the citizens of this planet to continue to live in a world untorn by war, then I will.
“Which brings us to Darrow au Andromedus.” Now his cold eyes turn on me, fresh from ordering the deaths of a thousand innocents, and I cannot help but flinch as a dark hate rises inside me. I bow my head in polite deference.
“My liege. You summoned me?”
“I did. And your purpose here shall be brief. You were a gambit when I took you from the Institute and put you in my employ. You know this?”
“Yes.”
“I thought your merit to be sufficient, and I found your rivalry with Cassius au Bellona amusing in a schoolyard way. But the bloodfeud declared between you has become”—he spares a glance at Pliny—“burdensome to my interests, both economically and politically. Substantial revenues have been lost due to tariff increases to the Core, where Bellona supporters lie. Houses waver in their commitment to honoring deals made years ago at the trade table. So, as an act of reconciliation to these aggrieved parties, I have decided to sell your contract to another house.”
I shudder inside.
“My liege …,” I try to interject. This cannot happen. If he strips me of my place, nearly three years of work will have been for nothing. “If I may—”
“You may not.” He opens a drawer and idly tosses a slab of meat to his lion. The lion waits for Augustus to snap his fingers before eating. “The decision was made a month ago. There is no use bandying words with me. I’m not Quicksilver negotiating the price of lithium futures. Pliny …”
“The particulars are rather simple, Darrow. So they shall be easy to grasp.” Pliny hasn’t taken his eyes from me. “The ArchGovernor has been overly kind in giving you the fair warning in case of termination, as stipulated in your contract.”
“My contract says I’m to be given six months’ fair warning.”
“If you’ll recall section eight, subsection C, clause four, you’re to be given six months’ fair warning unless you fail to act in a manner befitting a lancer of the esteemed House Augustus.”
“Is this a joke?” I look to Leto and Augustus.
“Do you see us laughing?” Pliny asks primly. “No? Not even a scoff or chortle?”
“Of all the lancers, I came in second at the Academy! You couldn’t even make it through the Institute.”
“Oh, it’s not that ! You did well … enough.”
“Then what?”
“It is your constant presence on HC talk shows.”
“I’ve never gone on the HC! I don’t even watch it!”
“Oh, please. You relish your own celebrity. Even though they mock you, you bathe in the limelight and cloak this house with shame. We know your datapad search histories. We see you preening at yourself on the HC as though it were your personal mirror. The stories run on you and the ArchGovernor’s daughter—”
“Mustang is in court on Luna!”
“Which you likely encouraged. Did you ask her to join the Sovereign’s court? Is it part of your plan to divide daughter from father?”
“You’re spinning horseshit, Pliny.”
“And you create a tawdry name for Augustus. You brawl with Bellona in baths set aside for refreshment and contemplation. This we cannot abide.”
I don’t even know what to say. He’s making it up. There’s enough in reality to make a case, but he lies just to spit in my eye, just to show that I am in his power.
Pliny continues. “The termination of the contract will occur in three days.”
“Three days,” I echo.
“Till then, you will accompany us to the surface of Luna and stay in the residence provided for the House Augustus for the Summit, though, as of this moment, you are no longer a lancer of this house. You do not represent the ArchGovernor and may not use his name to gain access to facilities nor curry favor with young ladies or young men, neither in boast, promise, or threat. Your house datapad will be confiscated. Your lancer ID codes have already been downgraded and you will cease and desist participation in all projects to which you were previously assigned.”
“I’ve only been assigned construction projects.”
Pliny’s lips crawl into a reptilian smile. “Then this shall be an easy transition.”
“To whom am I being sold?” I manage. Augustus doesn’t look in my eyes as he abandons me. He pets his lion. You would guess I’m not even in the room. Leto stares at the ground. Ashamed. He’s nobler than this charade, but Augustus wanted him here to watch, to learn how to amputate a rotten limb.
“You are not being sold, Darrow. Despite your birth, I would have expected you to understand your place. We are not Pinks or Obsidians to be sold as slaves. Your services are being traded at auction,” Pliny says.
“It’s the same gory thing,” I hiss. “You’re abandoning me. Whoever buys my services cannot protect me from the Bellona. Those curlyhair bastards will hunt me down and kill me. The only reason they didn’t two months ago was because—”
“Because you were an Augustan representative?” Pliny asks. “But the ArchGovernor does not owe you anything, Darrow. Is that the misapprehension you suffer? In fact, you owe him! Protecting you costs us money. It costs us opportunities, contracts, trade. And that cost has proven too dear. We must be seen to promote peace with the Bellona. The Sovereign wants peace . You? You’re a source of friction, a chafing burr in our proverbial saddle, and an instrument of war. So now we melt our sword into a plowshare.”
“But not before you use it to lop off my head.”
“Darrow, do not beg.” Pliny sighs. “Show some resolve, young man. Your time here has expired, yes, but you’ve got pluck. You’ve got the vigor of a young man. Now, straighten that spine of yours and leave with the dignity of a Gold who knows he tried his best.” His eyes laugh at me. “That means leave this office. Now , my goodman, before Leto throws you out on your preposterously toned buttocks.”
I stare at the ArchGovernor.
“Is this what you take me for? Some sniveling child to be pushed into a corner?”
“Darrow, it’d be best if—” Leto begins.
“It is you who have pushed us into a corner,” Pliny answers, putting a hand on my shoulder. “If you’re worried you won’t receive a severance package, you will. Enough money to—”
“The last time one of the ArchGovernor’s lackeys touched me, I buried a knife in his cerebellum. Six times.” I look at his hand as he quickly withdraws it. I square my shoulders. “I do not answer to a scarless Pixie whelp. I am a Peerless Scarred. ArchPrimus of the 542nd class of the Institute of Mars. I answer to the ArchGovernor alone.”
I take a step toward Augustus, causing Leto to take a protective angle. The length of my temper is well remembered. “You put Julian au Bellona in the Passage with me, my liege.” My eyes burn down at him. “I killed him there for you . I warred against Karnus for you . I kept my mouth, the mouths of my men, sealed after you tried to buy your son victory at the Institute.” Leto flinches at that. “I altered the recordings. I proved myself better than your blood heirs. Now, my liege, you say I’m a liability .”
“You are a Peerless Scarred,” the ArchGovernor agrees, examining data on his desk. “But you are of little substance. Your family is dead. They left you with no lands, no holdings of resources or industry, no position in government. All was seized as their debts came due, including their honor. What scraps you have been given by your betters, cherish. What favor you curried, remember.”
“I thought you favored deeds, not titles. My liege, Mustang has left you. Do not make the mistake of severing me from you as well.”
Finally he raises his head to look at me. Eyes belonging to some creature beyond man—a distant, callous calculation fueled by monstrous, inhuman pride. A pride that goes beyond him and stretches back to man’s first feeble steps into black space. It is the pride of a dozen generations of fathers and grandfathers and sisters and brothers, all distilled now into a single brilliant, perfect vessel that bears no failure, abides no flaws.
“My enemies embarrassed you. So they embarrassed me, Darrow. You told me you would win. But then you lost. And that changes everything.”