The Red Rising: Golden Son Part 28

"For some reason, I think you like me more than her."

"And why's that?"

"I have a sense of humor."

He laughs. "Aja can be funny."

"Surely you're joking."

"You meet a man, you know him. You meet a woman, she knows you." He laughs to himself about some memory. "Might be easier thinking her some terror in the night. But she's flesh and blood. She has friends. She has family. And she thinks you a threat to them."

"Yet she's the one who killed my friend."

"Yes. I heard. You had the child. Clever tactic." He squints back at the razor curled around my arm. "Does everyone wear their razor like a fool now?"

"It's the fas.h.i.+on."

"It's meant to be looped on the hip. You'll cut your arm off by accident." He sighs. "Your generation ... So arrogant. Changing things for no reason. I wonder, arrogant boy, did you think that if you rode in here with your stolen s.h.i.+p that I, a man of a century, would follow you to battle? That I would put in danger all my servants, all my family, all I love, for you? Someone who rejected me when I asked him to join my house?"

I ignore his bitterness. "You left the Society for a reason, Lorn. Can you remember why?"

"To avoid loud fools."

"I think you left because you thought the Society sick. Because it was not worth sacrificing for anymore."

"Stop barking at me, puppy."

"So I'm right."

"No. You're not right." He wheels angrily. "I left the Society not because it is sick, but because it is dead. The Society was created to instill order. Men were made to sacrifice so that humanity endured. They were given Colors, lives limited and ordered so that we could destroy the timeless cycle of our race-prosperity to greed to war. Gold was meant to shepherd the other Colors, not devour them. Now we are trapped again in that cycle, the very thing we endeavored to avoid. So the Society? The beautiful sum of all human enterprise? It's been dead and rotting for hundreds of years, and those who fight over it are but vultures and maggots."

"So it wasn't Brutus's death." I speak of his youngest son who was married to Octavia au Lune's deceased daughter.

"That was an accident."

"A convenient accident," I say. "There are rumors that Octavia's daughter was organizing a coup against her mother."

"I don't entertain rumors," he says darkly.

"If you help me, I can give you your grandson back."

"Lysander has been raised so long ago with poison in his ear that now it's in his blood. He is not my kin."

"You're not that cold. Lorn, I've met the boy. He's more like you than her. He isn't wicked. Fight for him."

Lorn stares quietly at the rain falling against the pulses.h.i.+eld.

"You fight a tyrant to replace her with a tyrant," he says wearily. "This is the same game I have seen a hundred times. Do you even know who you serve?"

"I have a feeling you're about to tell me."

"I'll not stop being your teacher just because you've stopped listening. Sit. I don't want Icarus to be bothered by this d.a.m.n story." He sits on a large stone and instructs me to take a place opposite him. I do. He hunches forward and plays with the thick House Mars ring on his finger.

"House Augustus was always strong, I'm sure you know that. Even when Mars was little more than a mine for helium-3. They bribed or killed their way into owning most of the governmental contracts. And as their pockets swelled, so did their influence. They became, along with several other families-including the Bellona and my own-the lords of Mars. There was one family of greater power, however, named Cylus. They controlled the ArchGovernors.h.i.+p and were favored by the Senate and the sitting Sovereign.

"When your master, then simply called Nero, was seven, his father found himself in dispute with Julius au Bellona, Ca.s.sius's grandfather. Nero's father attempted to have the Browns who served the Bellona poison the entire family at supper. The plan failed. A housewar began.

"Nero's father summoned his bannermen and led them against the Bellona and the ArchGovernor Cylus, who had declared his forces for Julius au Bellona. The sitting Sovereign did not intervene, and instead allowed the two families to go to war. Eventually, Nero's father found himself besieged in Agea when his fleet was destroyed and captured around Phobos.

"Cylus put House Augustus to death, sparing only young Nero from punishment. He was allowed to live so that an aged family that had partaken in the Conquering did not disappear from history. It is said that ArchGovernor Cylus even gave young Nero grapes to quench his thirst because there was no water as the city burned around them. After that, he raised him in his own court.

"Twenty years later, Nero, who had always been considered an honorable and honest man, much unlike his wicked father, asked for Iona au Bellona's hand in marriage. She was the youngest and favorite daughter of old Julius."

He stares up at water droplets falling from the needles of overhanging evergreens. "I knew her well. My sons were her playmates. I knew Nero too. I liked him, even if he was a little cold as a child.

"With hopes of mending the lingering wounds of past generations and making Mars strong and unified, ArchGovernor Cylus agreed. Bellona married Augustus.

"It was a beautiful wedding. I attended, representing the Sovereign as the Rage Knight. And I had a wonderful time of it. I'd never seen Iona so happy as she was in that stern young man's arms. But that night, when the Bellona family returned to their estate with the rest of their family, a package arrived. Inside, old Julius found his daughter's head. Grapes stuffed in Iona's mouth along with two wedding rings.

"He summoned his daughters and sons, including Ca.s.sius's father, and flew to the Citadel to ask for justice from ArchGovernor Cylus, as he had twenty years prior when the Augustuses first rose up.

"But instead of his old friend, he found young Nero on the ArchGovernor's throne, backed by Praetorians and two Olympic Knights. I was among them, having been told that Cylus was a threat to the Society by my Sovereign. I did as I was commanded. The House of Cylus was wiped out and stricken from record.

"I found out later, Nero contrived an agreement with the daughter of the sitting Sovereign. You know her as Octavia au Lune. Younger then, she convinced her father to give Nero the throne of Mars and his revenge; in return, she earned Nero's support when she led the faction that overthrew and killed her father five years later. That is the man you started a war for."

"I didn't know this," I say quietly.

"History is written by the victors."

Lorn looks at me and the lines on his face seem to deepen. "I don't want to go to war, Darrow. In my time, I have seen a moon burn, because one man would not bow. I have led a million warriors shot from wars.h.i.+ps to invade a planet. You cannot begin to understand the horror of it. You think only of how beautiful it will be. But they are men. They are women. They have families. And they die by the thousands. And you will be helpless to protect even the best of your friends.

"Ah!" He points uphill. "There's Icarus."

Rain drips from the pines as we push through the lower tree boughs to find Icarus, Lorn's pet griffin, sleeping in a great bed of moss on a high promontory inside the small forest. Icarus's paws curl into his body. His wings curve around him as he sleeps-iridescent and glittering with droplets of water. His great eagle's head is nearly larger than I, one of his eyes half the size of my skull. The Carvers made him well.

"He looks peaceful when he sleeps," Lorn says.

"He's bigger than any I've seen," I say, unable to conceal the awe in my voice.

"You've not been to the pole of Mars or Earth, then."

"No. Where did you buy him?"

"Martian Carvers made him for my family. d.a.m.n that fas.h.i.+onable Zanzibar twit. Icarus is of the same genus as the beasts in the high aeries in Mars's north pole. The ones they use to terrify Obsidians into believing magic is real." He strokes the sleeping giant. "Are you still in love with the ArchGovernor's daughter?" He glances back at me hopefully. "Is that why you do this? I heard about her and the Bellona."

"It isn't about what happened between her and Ca.s.sius."

"No?" He sighs. "I could have understood that, at least. You were sloppy in that, you should know. The Irenicus Folly would have done him in three moves."

"I wasn't sloppy. I was making a show."

"Sloppy. Violets are showmen. Did I train you to be a showman?"

I move past him to pet Icarus. "So you do care about me."

He does not answer me for a spell, and it's then that I know the moment I've dreaded most is nearly upon us. "In another life, you would have been one of my sons, Darrow. I would have found you earlier, before whatever happened that filled you with this rage. I would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love. Now all I can give you is a chance. Icarus," he booms.

His griffin stirs by his side, its amber eye showing me my reflection. The ground shudders as the creature moves, uprooting a tree as easily as I'd pull a hair.

I move back from the beast, unsure of Lorn's intentions.

"What is going on?" I ask Lorn.

"Look to your s.h.i.+p." He points upward in the night. Through a break in the clouds, we can see my long s.h.i.+p glittering in orbit. She's no longer alone. Ten torchs.h.i.+ps come for her now, slipping around the cover of Europa's equator to capture the Pax.

"A Praetorian death squad waits for you inside my home, Darrow. Aja au Grimmus leads them. They will take you, chain you, and bring you before the Sovereign."

"You betrayed me?" I ask.

"No. They arrived days ago. They threatened. What could I do? Kellan au Bellona leads their fleet. It will destroy or capture your s.h.i.+p. I can't stop that. But I do not want you to die. So Icarus will take you to an island where I have hidden a s.h.i.+p for you. Use it to escape."

"Will they hurt your family if I escape?"

"They may try," he growls. "That is the consequence of your decision and mine."

He stands with his back to the sea.

"I want to fade in peace. So please, leave and never return, Darrow."

He gestures to Icarus and I see a thin saddle upon the beast-the new toy of which he spoke. But I do not need to flee. I shake my head for what is about to happen.

"I'm sorry, my friend. But I cannot allow that."

"Allow?" he asks, turning.

"You will join us in this war." My razor uncoils. "Whether you like it or not." I speak into my com, telling the Howlers to prepare to rise and the t.i.tans to bring the s.h.i.+ps around.

The blood drains from his face and he looks at the beast emblazoned upon my tunic. "A lion after all."

29.

OLD MAN'S WRATH

I prepared the trap before I even left the fleet. All secrets find themselves whispered into Pliny's ears and he would wish for nothing more than my timely demise, particularly after I provoked him in the ArchGovernor's meeting. So he did his work. He schemed and plotted and found himself an ally against the big bad Darrow au Andromedus in the Sovereign herself, a fact that I will be happy to share with Augustus as soon as possible.

The Sovereign's s.h.i.+ps hid themselves among the ruins of a derelict s.p.a.ce station that was once used as a base of terraforming operations. Kellan au Bellona was smart, but predictable. My larger secondary force-a detachment of Telema.n.u.s s.h.i.+ps-which I hid behind another smaller moon's ma.s.s, will ambush the Bellona force in sixty seconds, slingshotting around the other side of the moon by using its gravity to gain velocity. With Roque in command, I'll have ten Bellona s.h.i.+ps to add to my personal armada by day's end.

"You knew," Lorn accuses me quietly, his thick hand gripping my uniform at the neck and shaking me. "You knew." And he knows what this means for him. It is not simply my victory. It is his defeat. One way or another, he must ally himself. And I've made it easy for him to pick a side.

" 'If you're a fox, play the hare.' Isn't what you taught me? But it will look like you knew I set a trap for her. That you slipped news of her trap to me." I touch his shoulder as he releases me. "I am sorry, friend. Truly. But you are part of this war."

His jaw works, but he says nothing.

"The Sovereign will send her Praetorians again to Europa once I have left," I say. "Only this time they'll come for you and yours. Their black-and-purple s.h.i.+ps will sh.e.l.l you from orbit till your islands and your cities on the archipelagoes and mainland and the rising mountains in the south are made of gla.s.s and swallowed by the seas. The waters will weep over your shattered towers, and of your house, there will be nothing but crypts in the deep. Unless we win."

His eyes seek in me something to give him time. But instead he sees only what made him take me under his wing from the start-himself. Most men would give anything to see that, but here and now, he wishes to see anything else.

"I put my family at risk to help you escape. I took you in, taught you. And you betray me like the others. Like Aja."

"You look for pity? You let me come here, Lorn. You would have consigned my friends above to torture and death even as you gave me a path to escape. But my friends will not be prisoners."

I point upward to the fiery gashes in the night sky as my secondary force rockets around Europa.

"Hate me, but fight at my side," I tell Arcos. "Only then will your family survive." I put a hand out for my former teacher. He pulls out his razor.

"I should kill you."

"Can I come and shoot the geezer?" Sevro asks over the com.

"Hold," I tell him.

"You forget." Lorn pulls his own datapad from his pocket. "I could have my fleet destroy yours, boy."

"Not before mine takes the Sovereign's."

"But she would know then where House Arcos stands. She would know that you tricked me. That my house is not part of this."

"Then do it," I tell Lorn. "Launch your s.h.i.+ps if you think my cause evil. Put me down if you think me a monster." I step forward, close to him. "But you know the heart that beats inside. Choose me. Or choose that darkness." I nod down the hill of the forest garden to where we entered the place. Twelve Obsidian Praetorians file through the same gla.s.s door we used. Huge men and women in black-and-purple armor, skull helms. Only one Stained-this one thinner than the others, like a winter asp standing on its tail. His armor is white and splashed with colors like blood.

They are less than fifty meters away. With them, shorter than the rest, but more glorious, is the Protean Knight in her golden gear. Her razor s.h.i.+mmers with the colors of a nebula, and her armor writhes like the waves that batter the white walls of Lorn's island. Aja peers up to the night sky, where she sees my ambush unfolding. She lets her helmet recoil into her armor.

"And then the traitors were two," she calls. "House Arcos has embraced treason as well. Lorn. You stand with the lions?"

"The House Arcos stands apart," Lorn calls back.

"Apart?" Quinn's killer frowns and tilts her head so I can see the dueling scars on the right of her neck. Her cat eyes scan the woods for signs of a trap. "There is no such thing."