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It takes everything I am not to flee. What comes hissing from the box is pulled out of nightmare, pulled so perfectly out of the depths of my subconscious that I nearly think the Sovereign knows where I come from. Where I truly come from.
“The game is one of questions,” she says. “Lysander, please do the honors.” She hands her son a knife. The boy cuts the sleeve of my uniform to the elbow, rolling it back to expose my forearm. His hands are gentle. He smiles at me apologetically.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says. “Nothing bad will happen, so long as you don’t lie.”
The carved creatures from the box—two of them—stare at me with three blind eyes apiece. Part scorpion. Part pitviper. Part centipede. They move like liquid glass, organs, skeleton, visible through skin, chitinous mouths chattering and hissing at the same time as one slithers onto the table.
“No lies.” I force a laugh. “That’s a breezy order when you’re a child.”
“He never lies,” Aja says proudly. “None of us do. Lies are rust on iron. A blemish on power.”
Power they’re so drunk on, they can’t even remember how many lies they stand upon. Tell my people you don’t lie, you brutish bitch, and see what they do to you.
“I call these Oracles,” the Sovereign says. One of her rings ripples liquid, forming a shell over her finger, turning it into a talon, needle growing slowly at the end. With this needle, she pricks my wrist and says the words “Truth over all.”
One Oracle slips forward, skittering onto my arm, coiling itself around my wrist. Its strange mouth seeks the blood, latching on like a leech. Its scorpion tail arches four inches upward, drifting back and forth like a cattail in summer wind. The Sovereign pricks her own wrist, repeats the oath, and the second Oracle slithers from the box.
“Zanzibar the Carver designed this especially for me in his Himalayan laboratories,” she says. “The poison won’t kill you. But I’ve cells filled with men who have played my game and lost. If there is a hell, what’s in that stinger is as close to it as science has let us come.”
My pulse quickens as I watch the tail sway.
“Sixty-five,” Aja says of my pulse. “He was resting at twenty-nine beats per minute.”
The Sovereign lifts her head at that. “As low as twenty-nine?”
“When are my ears wrong?”
“Calm yourself, Andromedus,” the Sovereign says. “The Oracle is designed to measure truth. It’s in fluctuations of temperature, chemicals in the blood, pulse of the heart.”
“You don’t have to play if you don’t want, Darrow,” Aja purrs. “You can go the easy way with the Praetorians. Death is not so bad.”
I glare at the Sovereign. “Let’s play.”
“Would you assassinate me tonight if you could?”
“No.”
We all watch the Oracle. Even I. After a moment, nothing happens. I swallow in relief. The Sovereign smiles.
“This game doesn’t have an end,” I mutter. “How do I even win?”
“You make me lie.”
“How many times have you played this game?” I ask.
“Seventy-one. In the end, I’ve trusted only one other. Where does Augustus hide his unregistered electromagnetic weapons?”
“Asteroid depots, hidden armories throughout Mars’ cities.” I list the particulars. “And in the dais of his reception room.” That surprises them. “Where are yours?”
She lists off sixty locations in fast order. She tells everything because she’s never lost. She’s never had to worry about the information walking out the door. Such confidence.
“What does that pegasus pendant mean to you?” she asks. “Is it from your father?”
I look down. It’s spilled out of my shirt. “It means hope. Part of my father’s legacy. Did you help Karnus at the Academy?”
“Yes. I gave him that ship he rammed you with. Did you really intend to launch yourself at his bridge?”
“Yes. Why did you bring Virginia into your inner circle?”
