You really should think about changing the slipper policy,Cassius would say right now.
Crammed together with them, my right shoulder probably broken, blood slithering down the back of my neck, I think again of Cassius swaying on the end of that rope. I sink into my grief as we descend down and down through a chute into the metal and stone world of bunkers. A shudder goes through me. My heart weighs as much as a planet. It was all finally starting to go so well.
Medici greet us when we arrive in a bunker. They tend to us and start to usher away the wounded. Diomedes turns to face the others. His shoulder is fleeced of skin after his efforts with the pillar. The Moon Lords look no better. Their robes are tattered. Their skin flayed by stone.
Diomedes looks gutted, lost. Almost insane. “There are people on the surface. People in the second level. There are people everywhere…” He nods after the medici. “That way lies safety, shelter. The garages and tunnels to the surface are this way.” He takes off at a jog toward the garages. All but the oldest of the Moon Lords follow.
“Carry me,” Gaia says. I look down to see the old woman glaring up at me. Blood sluices down her left leg. “Carry me,gahja. I can’t run but I can fly.”
“Shoulder’s shot. Get on my back,” I say.
The old matron of House Raa clambers onto my back and I take off at a run.
88
LYSANDER
The Sack of Demeter
Alone piece of ashtwirls down from the sky. I catch it on my hand.
“The fire is spreading from the eastern Garter,” Kyber reports. The air has started to smell like smoke. I rub the ash into my palm.
“No matter, we’re almost done here.” I watch a loader mech slowly pulling a giant plum tree from the ground. Thick as four Grays lined abreast with long, narrow leaves and huge blue plums, the trees are the culmination of centuries of horticultural splicing and research by the growers of House Raa. I turn from the excavation and walk, surrounded by Kyber’s trusted Praetorians, toward the mobile command post where my house horticulturalists oversee the sack of the Garter. Industry bustles all around. Hundreds of mechs trundle with trees toward waiting transports. RipWings buzz in the sky. Praetorians land in curtains of dust, dragging trussed Raa growers behind them.
Three stories from the ground, Pallas stands with my growers atop the command post. She turns with a smile as I arrive. “Ah, Lysander. Lucilla here was just apprising me of the haul,” she says. “Lady Bellona will be impressed.”
“Not upset I’m going into the produce business?” I ask.
“As long as you stay clear of helium, she will revel in your success. You have creditors to pay after all. What a trove, Lysander. The value of the fruit trees alone rivals all the gold of Persepolis. I’ll not lie, I told the lady this adventure was likely to be nothing more than an expensivelark. I couldn’t have been more wrong.” She points at two passing mechs. “What are those, Lucilla?”
“Ah, a prized pair. ThosePrunus domestica caeruleumwill be the first of their kind in the Core,domina,” my archGrower, Lucilla, says.
Pallas sighs. “I feel like I’m watching Noah’s ark load, but the animals are all made of money.”
Lucilla was selected for my household by Glirastes, or rather by Exeter. She is a plain Brown woman with narrow, ochre eyes, a stout body, and ambition far beyond her thirty-six years. Until now, she has just been an expensive eccentricity on my household roster. I am grateful now for Exeter’s foresight. In the sixteen hours since the bombardment’s inception, she has earned her keep ten million times over.
“Lysander, might I borrow a Praetorian?” Pallas asks. I nod. She has more respect than to pick Kyber. Her eyes fall on Draconis, one of Kyber’s favorites. I’m told he shot Demetrius in the head personally. He is a dark-skinned man, with bright eyes, a solemn face, and an optimistic disposition. He despised the kill-pool nonsense, and is apparently Kyber’s best mate. “I’m lusting for some plums. Fetch me two, please.”
Draconis pops into the air on his gravBoots and returns with two plums. Pallas eats one and tosses one back to Draconis. “What do you think?”
He tastes. “Just desserts,domina.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Pallas says and pats my shoulder. “Well done.”
“Fires are coming. What’s the haul, Lucilla?” I ask.
“The majority of their western agricultural portfolio is now under our control,” Lucilla says and begins to go into details. I listen and watch my troops. Below, caked in dust, ash, sweat, and occasionally blood, groups of Praetorians and house legionnaires flow in from looting seed banks and capturing valuable human assets.
“You are confident these trees can grow in the Core?” I ask Lucilla, interrupting her. “I’ve lost nearly a hundred Praetorians in this endeavor already.”
“We have already begun preparing to adapt the cellular samples to Mercury’s biome.”
“Mercury?” Pallas asks with raised eyebrows.
“Rim horticulture outpaces the Core’s by a century, at least. With the DNA sequences alone, we can close that gap within the year,” I say. “Infive years, I will make the Waste of Ladon a crop heartland fertile enough to feed the whole of Luna, and then some.”
“I hear rebels make good fertilizer,” Pallas says. “Cicero must be delighted. As you must be. The revenues will be…immense.”
