“No.”
“No? You don’t want to save millions of Dominion lives? Billions of lives suffering under this unending war? You don’t want to be my cure for this plague? You don’t want me to set you on the Morning Chair so you can guide us to a brighter future?”
“I won’t take part in this…genocide.”
“Then you are an idiot. Worse, you are selfish. These deaths cannot be reversed. They are a sunk cost. It would be a logical fallacy to let them influence your decision. What should influence your decision is what will happen if you refuse me. Atalantia plans to let the Rim suffer Obsidian rule for three years before she comes as liberator. Three years, Lysander. The casualty estimates are…staggering. Why allow that? Your ships are already on their way; if you choose to step up, you will save hundreds of millions of innocent lives.”
“No,” I say and stand in vain protest.
“Then I will have to kill you, Lysander. You will not be missed. Back home plans are already underway for your replacement.”
I flinch. “What do you mean? A clone?”
“Nothing so perverse or uncontrollable. A doppelgänger. A man by the name of Lepidus, chosen from Atalantia’s stable of paramours. You’ve annoyed her, so she’ll just keep your name and face.” Atlas casually glances at the corpse of Helios au Lux.
I grow sick at the thought.
“That won’t stop Cicero and Pallas from destroying Fá. They have theLightbringerand—”
“And Fá has me,” Atlas says. “And I have two hundred and eighty-one Gorgons aboard theLightbringer,waiting for orders. Cicero has proven himself a loyal friend to you, but that will not stop my nightmares from tearing out his throat as he sleeps. By then, you’ll be dead, Atalantia will sit on the Morning Chair, and the Rim will descend into three years of torment, war, and famine.”
I sink back down, overwhelmed.
“If the Rim finds out about your actions…this is how Darrow wins.”
“You are correct in that. The burning of Rhea was a tactical mistake only because everyone knew who ordered it and who carried it out. But I have learned from Octavia’s mistake. I am a careful man, Lysander. There may be conjecture, there may be suspicion, but there is no direct evidence of my involvement. Besides, you are too fixated on Darrow, boy. Darrow cannot win. Darrow is beaten. His only power lies in the mystery of his absence. He has no tools left to resuscitate his cause. No allies to call upon.
“As for Mars? Augustus and Julii can slow the inevitable but they cannot stop it. Meanwhile, your assault on Phobos and subsequent absence has made it easier for Atalantia to strike Mars without jeopardizing her martial supremacy. When she decides to take the planet, she will. With ships given to her by Valeria au Carthii.” He smirks. “What? Valeria may run the dockyards because of you, but will she die for you? I think not.”
I look at the floor, wondering what my mother and father would say if they saw me here facing this proposal, what Glirastes would say. What Cassius would say. He would curse me for even considering the coldblooded convenience of the realpolitik Atlas spews. Ajax would sneer at this but for far different reasons.
“Lysander, I value your hesitancy,” Atlas says. “More than you know. If it is any consolation, I do not do this for glory or my own satisfaction. I do this because I believe in the Society enough to be the tool it requires. I am a monster because a monster is needed. But after, when the monster has rampaged and terrorized the people, they will need a savior to gather them up, remind them of their better values, and lead them toa better, more unified future. I have brought darkness to the worlds in its fullest extreme so you can bring the light.”
I look up at him.
Atlas is the picture of conviction. His words are not the empty promises of an ambitious politician. His expression is not that of a cocksure commander who has never known defeat. He is a priest, solemn and resolute, one acquainted with pain, familiar with suffering, who has grown surer, wiser from both to reach a state of eerie omniscience.
“Once you are on the chair, it will be time to address Society’s dysfunction. To bring it closer to the more perfect light of Silenius’s dream. Or, your story can end here, your death not even a footnote in history. The choice is yours.”
And that choice is impossible.
My mind reels, trying to grasp the magnitude of the moment. Atlas offers me everything I have worked for and fought for, not to mention the chance to stop the deaths of hundreds of millions, but the price is my soul.
I thought I was done with disillusionment when I sat down with Apollonius in the Graveyard of Tyrants. I told myself I could play the game by Atalantia’s rules. Then in Diomedes, in the Rim, I saw a way to win that seemed moral. In that moment in Rome, I conjured an illusion. And now, in the shattered remains of that illusion, I feel like a player in a production I thought was a drama discovering the audience bought tickets to a comedy.
Atlas’s eyes do not mock. They wait for my answer.
I let myself sink into the Mind’s Eye and the ship and my anxiety disappear. I see myself seated on the Morning Chair, the Rising crushed, the worlds at peace, my reforms spreading prosperity from Pluto to Mercury, and Atlas, Atalantia, and Rhone dead at my feet.
“Very well,” I say. “I will be your savior.”
Atlas leans back into a shadow. His lips twitch into a faint smile as he says, “Hail Lune, bringer of light.”
48
DARROW
The Tickler
