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“Are you always this familiar with your superiors, pilot?” Kalindora says from the wall. Atalantia has sent her to watch over me in the Rain.
“No, domina.”
Kalindora does not buy the formality. “I recommend reminding your retainer of her place, and yours.” She glances at the techs. “This is not the Belt. Now, if you will excuse me, I must tend to a pressing matter. If you lose your way to the tubes, just follow the stench of big humans.”
I’m sorry to see her go. Yet I’m pleased to have a moment alone with Pytha.
“Bloody terrifying woman,” Pytha mutters after her.
“I think she is sad, rather. Wasn’t always…” Pytha watches me with unease. “It will probably be safer for you to stay in my quarters while I’m away,” I suggest. The lowColors on the Annihilo are like drones. The mids, barely better. There’s a hierarchical terror in the very air, one that never existed in the Citadel.
“Can’t believe she’s making you do this,” Pytha mutters.
“I volunteered.”
“You little shit!”
“Hold,” I say to the Oranges crawling over me. They don’t know who I am, but my caste and Kalindora’s presence are enough for them to stop as if controlled by a remote, and stand at the edge of the bay adjusting their tools. I glance at the grizzled Golds fitting up to either side of me. “Lower your voice, Pytha.”
“You little shit,” she whispers. “If we were on the Archi, I would slap you. What do you even know about Iron Rains?”
“My studies weren’t isolated to political theory.” It’s an understatement.
“It’s not like a simulator.” Her voice has softened.
“And you glean this from your own extensive experience?” I say as I flex my leg to test the fit of the greaves.
“I’ve been in a Rain.”
I look up in confusion. “I thought you were expelled from the Academy.”
“Snakeshit. Before I was a pirate, I was an equites.” Her chin lifts in pride. “First Decurion, Twelfth Squadron of the Bellona light-destroyer Dignitas.”
“Cassius said—”
“Cassius didn’t want you to know only warriors.” She sighs. “This isn’t what he would have wanted for you. Ever since he died, something’s woken up in you. A machine in your brain. It’s not you. This isn’t you. Or have you just always been desperate to be an Iron Gold?”
I nod slowly. “I won’t lie and say that’s not a small part of it. But that’s not why I must do this. Gold hasn’t changed. If anything, the sickness has metastasized. They uphold the wrong virtues.” I lean forward and lower my voice. “If Seraphina dies down there…if Atalantia betrays the Raa…if Darrow wins…mankind will disintegrate.”
“So what? That’s not your burden.”
“Look around, Pytha. We teeter upon oblivion. Everything humanity has built. All the sacrifices, the hierarchy, the wars…for what? If Gold loses, the Republic will fracture into kingdoms. The kingdoms to fiefdoms. The fiefdoms to tribes. It will become a dark age of fractured planets and war for three hundred years.”
“Three hundred years?”
I nod. “According to precedents, longer, but I’ve run the simulation as many times and ways as I know ho
w.” She knows I don’t say that lightly. “You think this is about me. It isn’t. Darrow thinks this is about good and evil. It isn’t. This is about order and chaos. I have chosen my side. But to have a voice, I must have a scar.”
“And you think Cassius was arrogant.” She looks at the ground, shaking her head at some unspoken thought. Eventually she looks up. “Fear.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You think if you gain respect, you’ll be able to change them? Nah. It’s about fear. You pretend Lorn au Arcos was the picture of an Iron Gold because he was wise and honorable.” She jams a thin thumb into her sternum. “We know the truth. He boarded our ship. Arcos in a corridor was death incarnate. You want to play the big game? Fine. But you play to win. You make them fear you.”
“I am not that man.”
“Then you’re for the worms, dominus, and I’m out my last friend.”
