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“I know.” They could spend the millions on the contract and not even notice the loss, but Roque’s mother has not sat a Senator for twenty years because of her charity. Her lot is thrown in with Augustus’s contingent in the Senate. What he wills, she supports.
“I’ll be fine. You’re right,” I say as Luna appears in the window, hushing the aides, and filling me with dread. The city moon of Earth. Orbiting satellites and installations encircle it like a steel angel’s halo wrapped around a ball of amber held to the sun. “I’ll be fine.”
6
Icarus
We land near the Citadel. Sticky, polluted wind bends the towering trees near our landing pad. Perspiration quickly beads along the top of my high collar. Already I do not like this ugly place. Despite the fact that we land here on Citadel grounds, which are far from the nearest cities and surrounded by forests and lakes, the air here cloys and sticks to the lungs.
On the horizon, just past the spiked spires of the Citadel’s western campus, Earth hovers, swollen and blue, reminding me that I am so far from home. The gravity here is less than Mars’s, only one-sixth Earth’s, and makes me feel unsettled and clumsy. I seem to float when I walk. And even though coordination quickly returns, my body suffers its own lightness with strange feelings of claustrophobia.
Another vessel lands to the north.
“Looks like Bellona silver,” Roque says quietly, squinting against the sunset.
I chuckle.
He glances back at me. “What?”
“Just imagining having a pulseRocket right about now.”
“Well, that’s just … lovely of you.” He walks along. I follow, eyes lingering on the vessel. “I do love the sunsets of Luna. Like we’re in Homer’s world. Sky a hot shade of fresh-forged bronze.”
Above, the alien sky melts into night with the long setting of the sun. For two weeks, the daylight will disappear from this part of the moon. Two weeks of night. Luxury yachts cruise through this strange day’s end, while nimble Blue-piloted ripWings soar past on patrol like bats glued together from shattered ebony.
The one-sixth gravity lets these Luneborn build to their heart’s desire. And build they do. Beyond the Citadel grounds, the horizon is fenced with towers and cityscape. RungPaths wind everywhere so that citizens can pull themselves through the air with ease. The network of rungs stretch between high towers as would ivy, linking the heavens with the hells of the lowDistricts. Along them, thousands of men and women crawl like ants on vines, while Gray patrol skiffs buzz around the thoroughfares.
The household of Augustus is assigned a villa nestled between thirty acres of pines on Citadel grounds. It’s a pretty thing amongst other pretty things in this stately place. There are gardens, paths, fountains carved with little winged boys of stone. All that sort of frivolity.
“Fancy a session of kravat?” I ask Roque, nodding to the training facility beside the villa. “My mind’s running away with itself.”
“I can’t.” Roque winces, stepping out of the way of our fellow lancers and their attendants who file into the villa. “I have to attend the conference on Capitalism in the Governed Age.”
“If you wanted a nap, I’m sure they have beds in the villa.”
“You joking? Regulus ag Sun is giving the keynote.”
I whistle. “Quicksilver himself. So you’re going to learn how to make diamonds out of gravel? You hear the rumor about him owning the contracts of two Olympic Knights?”
“It’s not rumor. Least according to Mother. Reminds me of what Augustus said to the Sovereign at her coronation. ‘A man is never too young to kill, never too wise, never too strong, but he can damn well be too rich.’”
“Arcos said that.”
“No, I’m sure it was Augustus.”
I shake my head. “Check your facts, brother. Lorn au Arcos said it, and the Sovereign turned to reply, ‘You forget, Rage Knight, I am a woman.’”
Arcos is as much myth as man, at least to my generation. Reclusive now, he was the Sword of Mars and the Rage Knight for over sixty years. Peerless Knights across the Society have offered him the deeds to moons if he would but tutor them for a week in his form of kravat, the Willow Way. It was he who sent me the knifeRing that killed Apollo and then offered me a place in his house. I rejected it then, choosing Augustus over the old man.
“‘You forget, I am a woman,’” Roque repeats. He cherishes these stories of their empire the way I cherished stories of the reaper and the Vale. “When I get back, let’s talk. Not the usual banter.”
“You mean you won’t yammer on about a childhood crush, drink too much wine, wax poetical about the shape of Quinn’s smile and the beauty of Etruscan grave sites before falling asleep?” I ask.
His cheeks flush, but he puts a hand over his heart. “On my honor.”
“Then bring a bottle of foolishly expensive wine, and we can talk.”
“I’ll bring three.”
