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“Damn his admission, boy. He’s your father. He’s Romulus au gorydamned Raa!”
My heart breaks watching her spin helplessly about, as if she were a drowning woman the rest of us could not help. I’m as lost myself.
“Dido…” Romulus says from behind her. “Please.” She turns to him still in denial, but slowly as she looks into his eyes, she knows that there is no going back and all at once a shiver goes through her that I can see from forty meters back, as her reality, her family, are irrevocably shattered and she knows it is her doing.
“Tell them you’re lying,” she whispers. “Tell them you had suspicions but didn’t know.”
“But I knew,” Romulus says. “I knew because the holodrop you sent Seraphina to collect was offered to me first.”
“What?”
He looks up at the council as if he’s already parted from the world.
“It was offered to me. Several images were sent. I invited the brokers to the Rim, where they met around Enceladus. I relied upon my reputation of honor to lure them and the original copy there. I took out a warhawk and killed them all and burned their ship. Of course, as you have seen, there was a copy.”
“You did this by yourself?” Helios asks, looking at Pandora.
“I am Romulus au Raa.” He smiles sadly. “You might ask yourself why I did this. Why I tell you this now when it will cost me my own life. All my days I have lived as honorably as a man can. But I have carried this secret for too long. And, as my father would ask, what is honor without truth? Honor is not what you say. Honor is what you do.”
A cold stone settles in my throat as I watch Seraphina’s heart break. Tears leak down her cheeks.
“We live by a code. I broke that code, even if my reasons for doing so were just. Let it serve as a warning to you all. I lied because I knew if we saw what the Slave King did to the docks, we would have no choice but to declare the peace void and sail for war.
“I believe that war will destroy us. All of us, Rim and Core alike. All that the Colors have built together. All we have protected. The legacy of the Society will vanish. Not because our arms are weak. Not because our commanders are frail. But because we are fighting against a religion whose god still lives.
“At this moment, he is mortal. He strains under the burden of rule, and the seams of their alliances fray. But if we sail on Mars or Luna, the Colors will unite. They will become a tide and their now mortal general will become, once again, their god of war. And if he falls, another will rise, and another, and another. We are too few. We are too honorable. We will lose this war just as surely as I will now lose my life.
“I urge you to feel my death. To let it be the last casualty, and not the first of this war that claimed my father, my daughter, my son, and now me.”
Seraphina bursts into tears. Dido hangs her head, her body limp. I feel the stirring of my own grief, a reflection of the grief I felt for Cassius’s death. It is tragic to see a man’s nature doom him, especially when it is a nature so fine as Romulus’s.
Helios stands. His voice barely even a whisper. “Romulus au Raa, you are found guilty of the charges levied against you. Guards, seize the convicted and prepare him to return to the dust.”
AMONGST A HOST OF MOON LORDS on a frozen sulfur dune, Romulus says farewell to his children. Only Raa are in attendance. I do not know why I have been invited. Wearing a kryll and a scorosuit,
I watch from the end of their ranks as he bends to press his forehead against young Paleron’s. The child weeps for his father. The tears freeze on his cheeks. Romulus stands before Marius. The two men press their foreheads together stoically.
“Forgive your mother. Honor me and serve the Rim,” Romulus says.
“As you wish, Father.”
Marius watches icily as his father moves on to Diomedes. The warrior looks down at his father like a giant child, hoping beyond all hope for the man to perform some miracle and make this all a dream. “I am sorry, Father,” he says, a huge sob stuck in his chest. His father lays a firm hand his shoulder. “I have failed you.”
“No. I should never have involved you in this. But what luck I have to call a man like you my son. It is an honor you cannot understand. One day you will have children and if you have just one who is as dear as you are to me, you will understand how blessed my life has been. Stay true to your own heart, no matter the cost.”
They say farewell and Romulus goes to Seraphina. Guilt and grief rack her. He puts his forehead to hers. “My burning one.”
She recoils from him. “You don’t have to die.”
“If I live, I divide the Rim. You might forgive, but how could the Codovans? How could anyone on Ganymede who lost a son, a daughter? They’ve been denied justice because of my lie. I hope this cools their blood. But…if the Rim does go to war, it must go as one.”
Seraphina says nothing. He touches her face. “The same spirit is in you that was in my brother. Do not let it consume you like it did him. You have nothing to prove. Glory for others is nothing.” He touches her heart. “What matters is in here. Honor your conscience, honor your family.” His eyes crinkle as he smiles behind the kryll. “One day you will understand why I’ve done this.”
“I will never understand.”
He tries to embrace her, but she pulls back from him and walks away from the family across the dune as Diomedes calls to her. Romulus watches her go. He does not move on to Dido, or his mother, who chose not to come watch her son die, but instead he walks to me.
“Lord Raa,” I say, lowering my head.
