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“You are my wife,” he says as if that answers everything. I watch for some sign of affection to take hold of her. Even on Luna, their love was something of fable. Romulus and Dido, the star-crossed lovers who burned a city for their love. But the years, it seems, have dimmed their star. And now Dido pulls back away from Romulus, a look of disgust spreading across her face.
“Then you are a coward.”
“Perhaps. Are you more angry that I have faces you cannot see, or that I showed you mercy?” Romulus asks, amused.
“Where is the man I married?” she whispers. “The man who could carry a world on his shoulders? I look for him, but all I find is this withered, cowed creature you’ve become. If you were an Iron Gold, you would have sent me to the dust.”
Romulus sighs, unaffected. “All this Venusian prattle and bluster…You’re wading in the shallows, my dear. Shall we cross the Rubicon?” He looks past her to address the fifty Gold who’ve followed her into the room. More pack the hall outside. They watch from behind filtered reflective goggles, their cloaks making them look like devilish bats gathered in the shadows. “Children of the Dust, you stand before your Sovereign uninvited, wearing weapons and hiding your eyes like Horde filth. Remove them and kneel.”
They do not.
“I said kneel.”
Not a man moves. “There we have it,” Romulus says. “Alea iacta est.”
“You are a Sovereign, not a king, my love,” Dido says, her humor fled. “You have forgotten that, as did the old Luna bitch.” My blood stirs at the mention of my grandmother, even if her words are true enough. “Forgotten that you are expected to serve the will of the Moon Lords from Io to Titan. As you cloister yourself here, men loyal to the Rim seize control of Sungrave. They move against your Praetors in their ships, your Imperators in their barracks. By dawn, patriots will have control of Io, and I, as its Protector, will serve until such time that a new Sovereign can be elected.”
He smiles ruefully. “You may seize Io, but you cannot hold her. The people will not forget your birthright. A gahja till I made you my wife.”
“Don’t you start with me too….”
“The blood of my ancestors watered this moon. Their hands shaped her. She is ours and we are hers. You are not a Raa, no matter your brood. I make you a Raa.” He leans forward, baring his teeth. “Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, they will all fall upon you, and then Norvo and the rest of them will come and you will have spent your life and mine for nothing.”
“Perhaps.”
“Seraphina brought back nothing.”
“Is that a fact?” She stands to look down at him. A dozen of her men come forward. “Romulus au Raa, you are under arrest.” I wait for her to say the word “treason,” as does Romulus, but it never comes. “Bellerephon, seize him.”
Flanked by his men, Bellerephon steps forward. Diomedes’s hasta snaps up from his waist and forms into a two-meter-long lance. He points the long black length at his cousin. “Aevius, Bellerephon, as much as I love you, take another step and you will be for the worms.”
“Come now, cousin. Don’t be truculent,” Bellerephon says. But Diomedes does not relent.
“Son…” Dido says. “Your duty is to the Compact. Your father has violated it…”
“By protecting Seraphina?”
“For other sins.”
“You have evidence?”
“Forthcoming.”
“Insufficient.” He does not move.
She sighs. “Disarm Diomedes. Kill anyone who isn’t dragonblood.” Dido’s men hesitate, looking to Bellerephon for confidence. He nods them forward and they move as one toward Romulus and his defenders, their long razors held in two hands above their heads. Diomedes lifts his rigid razor to his lips. He closes his eyes and kisses the metal. Then his eyes open, and the spirit behind them bears no kindness.
When Diomedes moves, they begin to die.
He skims diagonally across the front rank of his mother’s men with such possession of his body that it seems he were another species entirely. One made of wind and wrath. He sidesteps two of their thrusts and removes the head of the one he called Aevius, and exchanges two parries with a thickset woman before pulling a second, shorter razor called a kitari from his belt, and skewering her stomach and ripping sideways through half her rib cage. Aevius’s body hits the stone and the woman stands there trying to stuff intestine and mesentery back into her abdomen before collapsing to her knees, bubbling screams from her mouth. Bellerephon and Diomedes crash together at the end of Diomedes’s assault. I watch in awe, and glance at Cassius. I thought he was the greatest Gold swordsman left. By the look on his face, I know now that presumption was shared and mutually shattered the moment Diomedes moved.
Sparks fly from the long razors of Diomedes and Bellerephon before they separate, both of far greater skill than the men around them. The other Golds encircle Diomedes, about to close on him from his flanks when his brother Marius lunges forward clumsily and sheathes his blade through the eye socket of a rangy Peerless. He’s slashed in the side of the head by Bellerephon. He reels back, like a child struck by a father, losing his right ear and very nearly his right eye. Flesh flaps open. Bellerephon kills two of the bodyguards as Diomedes takes one more of his lot. Vela is about to throw herself into the fray as Dido’s other men shoulder their rifles to gun the unarmored Raa down.
“Hold!” Dido shouts, stopping Bellerephon and Diomedes from cutting one another apart. Bellerephon draws back to her side, warily watching his cousin.
“No hand touches my father,” Diomedes growls as more Peerless encircle him. His eyes stay on Bellerephon, the most dangerous of the traitors. Marius and Vela tighten to make a hydra fighting formation, their spines pressed together as blood sheets down
Marius’s neck. Clearly no warrior, he looks ridiculous amongst the rangy killers, like an overgrown glass figurine trying to dance with boulders. Despite their earlier friction, Diomedes angles himself to protect his younger brother.
