RED
Tonight, I kill two thousand of humanity’s great.
Yet I walk with them now, untouched by their decadence and condescension.
Pliny’s arrogance raises none of my blood.
Victra’s immodest dress does not disconcert me, not even when she slips her arm in mine after Tactus offers her his.
She whispers in my ear how silly she is for forgetting her undergarments.
I laugh like it’s a merry joke, trying to mask the coldness that’s taken over me.
This is static.
I mind myself and say little as I follow with Victra at the end of the long procession that snakes its way through labyrinthine marble halls from our villa to the Citadel Gardens some five kilometers distant.
The Sovereign’s tower juts from the floor of the garden there, a grand, two-kilometer high sword piercing a groomed garden thick with rose trees and streams.
Beautiful Pink servants and Brown footmen service the lift. Gold triangles of the Society decorate their white livery.
The lift is flat, marble with gravthrusters. It sits in the middle of a clearing where green grass flutters in the wind. Several Coppers rush forward to talk with Pliny, who, as Politico, speaks on behalf of the ArchGovernor.
Augustus’s sharp face surveys his aides, as if making an accounting of the razors we carry. Some wear them coiled at their sides. Others wear them around their forearms like I do. Tactus and Victra each use them as sashes. His eyes settle on mine, the only white one.
“I want three lancers attending the ArchGovernor at all times,” Leto says, his voice almost a growl. We nod silently, the pack tightening. “No drinking.”
The gala upon the roof of the Sovereign’s tower is modeled as a winter fairyland. Snow falls from invisible clouds. It dusts the spearlike pines of manmade forests and frosts my short hair with snowflakes that taste like cinnamon and orange. Breath billows in front of me.
Beneath the spire, the citadel sprawls, and beyond those grounds the cities glisten with a million lights.
You would never guess that beneath that sea of twinkling jewels lies a second city of filth and poverty.
You would never guess the terrorists hidden there could reach this height. There are worlds between.
“Try not to lose your head,” Victra whispers to me, raking a clawed hand through my hair before going to speak with friends of hers from Earth.
I walk toward our table. Great chandeliers hover overhead on small gravthrusters. Light sparkles. Dresses move like liquid around perfect human forms. The Pinks serve delicacies and spirits on plates and in goblets of ice and glass.
Hundreds of long tables spread concentrically around a frozen lake at the center of the winter land.
The Pinks wear skates to serve here. Beneath the ice, shapes move.
Not sexualized perversities as one would find entertaining Pixies and lowColors.
But mystical creatures with long tails and scales that glitter like the stars.
The tables are neither named nor numbered.
Instead, we find our place as we see a great lion seated upon the center of our table, nearly motionless.
Each family’s table is so claimed by their sigil.
There are griffins and eagles, ice fists and huge iron swords.
The lion purrs contentedly as Tactus prances up to stroke its mane.
I gaze around the gala. Hundreds mill about already.
Those from Venus will be late, as is their way.
We of Mars pride punctuality. Luneborns are enigmatic socially, and so may be first or last. And the families of the Gas Giants will come whenever they damn well like.
How long should I wait? It is difficult to hold on to the rage that made me embrace this decision.
They killed my wife, I tell myself. But no matter the anger I summon by remembering, I cannot burn away the fear that I steer the rebellion toward a cliff.
This will not be for Eo’s dream. It will be for the satisfaction of those living.
To sate their lust for vengeance rather than honoring those who have already sacrificed everything.
And it will be irreversible. But so is the course that has been set.
Thousands of Reds wait for my signal to begin the uprising. I cannot abandon them now.
So many doubts. Am I being a coward? Does my mind play tricks to salvage my pride, using logic to pull me away from risk? I chase myself in circles.
I’m thinking too much. That makes a bad soldier. And that is what I am. A soldier for Ares. He gave me this body. I should trust him now. So I take the bomb shaped like my Pegasus pendant and slap it on the underside of Augustus’s table, just near the table’s end.
I wander away, willing more houses to fill the gala so that I may end this soon.
A host of praetors, quaestors, judiciary, governors, senators, family heads, house leaders, traders, two Olympian Knights, and a thousand others come to bid my master a good evening.
These older men and women talk of Outrider attacks on Uranus and Ariel, rumored Sons of Ares bases on Triton, and a new strain of plague on one of Earth’s dark continents. Light fare.
Many others take my master aside, as though a hundred eyes did not watch their every move, and with voices like syrup, tell him of whispers in the night, of shifting winds and dangerous tides.
The metaphors mix. The point is the same.
Augustus has fallen out of favor with the Sovereign the same way I have fallen out of favor with him.
The ships flitting above in the night sky are as distant from the conversation as I.
My eyes fall upon the Sovereign herself.
How strange a thing, to see the woman just there beyond the dance floor, at the raised podium speaking with other house lords and men who rule the lives of billions. So close, so human and frail.
For her part, Octavia au Lune is more handsome than beautiful, face impassive as a mountain’s. Her silence is her power. I see her speak little, but she listens; always, she listens to words as the mountain listens to the whispering and screaming of wind through its gulches, around its peaks.
I see a man standing alone near a tree. He’s near as thick around as its trunk. A hand dwarfs his small goblet, and he wears the mark of a sword with wings, a Praetor with a fleet. I approach him. He sees me coming and smiles.
“Darrow au Andromedus,” Karnus growls.
I snap my fingers at a passing Pink. Taking two of the wine goblets from his ice tray, I pass one to Karnus. “I thought that before you come to kill me, we might as well share a drink.”
“There’s a sport.” He downs his own drink and takes the one I offer him. He eyes me over the glass. “You’re not a poisoner, are you?”
“I’m not so subtle.”
“Equal company then. All these snakes about …,” he says, sly as a crocodile. His dark Gold eyes trace the men and women. The wine is gone in a moment.
“I hate this moon.” He takes a delicacy off a passing tray. “Food’s got too much butter. Not enough salt. Though I hear the sixth course will be something to die for.”
Noting his strange tone, I cross my arms and watch the party. It’s a strange comfort being around this hateful man. Neither one of us has to pretend to like the other. No masks here, at least not as much as usual.
“I hate butter,” I say. “Makes me feel like a pig.”
He chuckles deeply. “Julian liked butter. Ate it by the stick as a boy. He was a vile child, all whimpering and simpering.”
I turn to examine the killer. “Cassius only said pretty things about him.”
“Cassius.” He snorts out something like a laugh.
“Cassius once wounded a bird with a slingshot. Came to me crying, because he knew he had to kill it to put it out of its misery, but he couldn’t.
I dropped a rock on it for him. Just like you did.
” He smirks. “I should thank you for sweeping away the genetic chaff.”
“Julian was your brother, man.”
“He pissed the bed as a boy. Pissed the bed. He was a boy who did not deserve his mother’s favor or his father’s name.” He grabs another glass of wine from a passing Pink. “They try to make it tragedy, but it isn’t. It’s natural law.”
“Julian was more a man than you are, Karnus.”
Karnus laughs in delight. “Oh, do explain that one.”
“In a world of killers, it takes more to be kind than to be wicked. But men like you and I, we’re just passing time before death reaches down for us.”
“Which will be soon for you.” He nods to my razor. “Pity you weren’t raised in our house. We learn the blade before we learn to read. My father had us make our blades, had us name them and sleep beside them. You might have stood a chance then.”
“Wonder what you would have been if he had taught you something else.”
“I am what I am,” Karnus says, taking another drink. “And they sent me after you, me of all the sons and daughters, because I am the best at what I am.”
I watch him for a moment. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“You have everything, Karnus. Wealth. Power. Seven brothers and sisters. How many cousins? Nieces? Nephews? A father and mother who love you, yet … here you are, killing my friends. Setting the purpose of your life to killing me. Why?”
“Because you wronged my family. No one wrongs the Bellona and lives.”
“So it’s pride.”
“It’s always pride.”
“Pride is a hollow thing.”
He shrugs, voice deepening. “I will die. You will die. We will all die. And the universe will carry on without care. All that matters is how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.” He leans forward.
“So you see, pride is the only thing.” His eyes leave mine and look across the room. “Pride, and women.”
I follow his eyes and I see her then.