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Now a million of my men lie in the sands of Mercury and we have our Liberation Day.
Were Wulfgar with me on Mercury, he would not have joined our Rain against the Senate’s permission. In fact, he might have tried to stop me. He’s one of the few men alive who might manage. For a spell at least.
He spares a nod for Sefi. “Njar ga hae, svester.” A rough translation is “Respect to you, sister” in nagal.
“Njar ga hir, bruder,” she replies. No love lost between them. They have different priorities.
“Your weapons.” Wulfgar gestures to my razor.
Sefi and I hand his Wardens our weapons. Muttering under his breath, Sevro hands over his as well. “Did you forget your toothpick?” Wulfgar asks, looking at Sevro’s left boot.
“Treasonous yeti,” Sevro mutters, and pulls a wicked blade long as a baby’s body from his boot. The Warden who takes it looks terrified.
“Odin’s fortune with the togas, Darrow,” Wulfgar says to me as he motions for us to continue upward. “You will need it.”
Arrayed at the top of the steps of the New Forum are the 140 Senators of the Republic. Ten per Color, all draped in white togas that flutter in the breeze. They peer down at me like a row of haughty pigeons on a wire. Red and Gold, mortal enemies in the Senate, bookend the row to either side. Dancer is missing. But I have eyes only for the lonely bird of prey that stands at the center of all the silly, vain, power-hungry little pigeons.
Her golden hair is bound tight behind her head. Her tunic is pure white, without the ribbons of their Color the others wear. And in her hand, she carries the Dawn Scepter—now a multi-hued gold baton half a meter long, with the pyramid of the Society recast into the fourteen-pointed star of the Republic at its tip. Her face is elegant and distant. A small nose, piercing eyes behind thick eyelashes, and a mischievous cat’s smile growing on her face. The Sovereign of our Republic. Here at the summit of the stairs, her eyes shed the weight from my shoulders, the fear from my heart that I would never see her again. Through war and space and this damnable parade, I have traveled to find her again, my life, my love, my home.
I bend to my knee and look up into the eyes of the mother of my child.
“?’Lo, wife,” I say with a smile.
“?’Lo, husband. Welcome home.”
SILENE MANOR, THE SOVEREIGN’S traditional Luna country retreat, is nestled five hundred kilometers north of Hyperion at the base of the Atlas Mountains on a small lake. The northern hemisphere of the moon, comprised of mountains and seas, is less populous than the belt of cities that girdle the equator. Though Mustang governs from the Palace of Light in the Citadel, Silene is the true home of my family, at least until we return to Mars. Built to resemble one of the papal villas on Earth’s Lake Como, the stone house sits along the edge of a rocky cove, and spills down to the lake by means of switchbacked stairs cut into the rock.
Here the thin conifers whisper to heights four times those possible on Earth. They sway nearly two hundred meters in the air around the raised concrete landing pad where the steward of House Augustus, Cedric cu Platuu, waits with my wife’s Lionguards as our shuttle lands. The small Copper greets Sevro and me with great alacrity, bowing deeply and flourishing his hand. Thraxa runs past him without even a greeting, eager to find her mother.
“ArchImperator,” he gushes, plump cheeks flushing with delight. He’s a short but ample man, built a bit like a plum with knobby arms and legs added as an afterthought. A whisper of a mustache, nearly as thin as the graying copper hair upon his head, wavers in the wind. “What gladness to see you again!”
“Cedric,” I say, greeting the short man warmly. “I hear you’ve just had a birthday.”
“Yes, my lord! My seventy-first. Though I do maintain one should stop counting after sixty.”
“Prime work,” Sevro says. “You look positively prepubescent.”
“Thank you, my lord!”
Few know the secrets of the Citadel as well as Cedric; he was one of the gems of the Sovereign’s court. Mustang, having thought highly of him during her time with Octavia, saw no need to dismiss a man so knowledgeable and dedicated to his duty.
“Where’s the welcoming party?” Sevro asks, looking for his wife, Victra. Mustang and Daxo remained behind in Hyperion to deal with their unruly Senate, but promised to rejoin by dinnertime.
“Oh, the children are recently returned from a three-day adventure,” Cedric says. “The Lady Telemanus took them to the ruins of the USS Davy Crockett in the Atlas Mountains. Merrywater’s own! I hear they had quite a time around that old wreck. Quite. A. Time, yes. Learned many lessons and expanded their individual initiative. As your curriculum requested, dominu—” Cedric’s eyes nearly pop out of his head before he corrects himself. “As your curriculum requested, sir.”
“Is my wife here yet?” Sevro asks gruffly.
“Not yet, sir. Her valet said she would be late to dinner. I believe there were labor strikes in her warehouses in Endymion and Echo City. It’s all over the holoNews.”
“She didn’t even show to the Triumph,” Sevro mutters. “I looked fabulous.”
“She has missed you at your most prime, sir.”
“Right. See, Darrow? Cedric agrees.” What he hasn’t noticed is Cedric shuffling away from the odious stench of his wolfcloak.
“Cedric, where is my son?” I ask the man.
He smiles. “I think you can guess, sir.”
