“That’s right. Sorry. The wine. Well, she brought back pets she captured for her menagerie. Included among them was a solitary ghost raptor. She’d branded out its eyes so it couldn’t see it was caged. Octavia was horrified. She had Aja put it down. Said Varazana was right. Some beasts are too noble to be caged.”
“Ah,” he says. “So, I am a noble bird now? Or are you referring to yourself?”
I shrug, down the rest of my wine, and watch the waves noiselessly thrash upon the rocks below. His hand closes on my shoulder. “Lysander. I know this might not mean much coming from me. But I do not want you to die. I want you to live.” He nods to the coastal mansion behind us. “This cage isn’t so bad. Is it?”
“She killed my parents, Ajax.”
He freezes. His eyes a thousand kilometers away. Then he stands and looks down at me. “She said you’d say that. The problem with loving you two is that you were both meant for the Palatine. I never was. You’re both too good at lying.”
He departs.
16
LYSANDER
The Two Hundred
Sun bakes the tranquilparklands around the Roman ruins, but it is cool in the shade of the Colosseum. The morning events at Atalantia’s summit of the Two Hundred had started with summer showers, floral tea, handshakes, and power politics in the restored Temple of Hercules Victor. There, I was able to sneak a moment with Horatia alone to tell her what must be done. With the Irons watching us, she hastily confirmed the dockyards deal I teased to Valeria is already complete. She flashed me a holocube and we drifted our separate ways. Then, after the subsequent breakfast at the Temple of Juno, the heads of the Gold houses made their ritual procession to the Colosseum for the main event. By then the skies had cleared and a lazy warm wind was already rolling in from the Italian interior.
The outside of the Colosseum gleams white. A golden awning has been erected over the top. The inside of the Colosseum has also been refurbished for gladiatorial games Atalantia plans to host. But today in place of the fighting sands, Atalantia has laid down travertine marble. Marble risers for the Two Hundred sit beneath the actual viewing stands and lie in a U-shape at the north end. When one stands on the rostrum—an iron triangle on the floor—to speak, the Irons are to their left, the Moderates directly ahead, the Reformers to their right, the Rim delegation even further to the right, and the black chair of the Dictator on the floor about fifteen meters in front of the rostrum.
After taking our seats, we heard a briefing regarding the Ascomanni warlord Volsung Fá’s raids on Republic strongholds in the asteroid belt—a welcome consequence of the Republic’s chaotic internal divides. I sit listening amongst Atalantia’s hardliners, the diamond in her Iron tiara.
After the briefing, Cornelius au Carthii assumes the rostrum. Cornelius, a loquacious and handsome man, uses all of his oratorial prowess to bemoan the injustice of the conflict still raging on the Dockyards of Venus, indict the scurrilous character of Apollonius, and extol the virtue of his family’s show of arms even while begging the Two Hundred to help them defeat a numerically inferior foe:With millions of men under arms, we Carthii will not lose, but Apollonius is cementing his place in the pantheon of premier field commanders by ripping the men we send against him to bloody shreds. Surely ship production is a common cause! Surely property rights still matter! The truth is plain as day to everyone listening.Those docks were built by us, kept by us, they are ours, but needed for the common good.Cornelius surrenders the rostrum with a plea for unity and respect for law and order. The irony of these sentiments coming from a haughty Carthii is reflected in the little smiles shared around the room.
The Falthe sitting next to me in the Irons leans over with a whisper of contempt. “The Carthii stuck their perfumed hand in the Minotaur’s mouth, and he’s dragging their whole house into his labyrinth bit by bloody bit. Hilarious.”
I give him a slight smile and sigh at Cornelius’s impending political decapitation. What’s that old maxim? Be wary of tyrants: they will help you today and own you tomorrow.
Atalantia doesn’t even need to rise from her black chair of office to ruin Cornelius’s life and demote one of the great houses of the Conquering to a middling power. “Cornelius, you could not be more correct. Ship production is crucial to the functioning of this state. A vote will only delay decisive action, and decisive action is needed. Therefore, I have personally dispatched ten legions to deal with this threat to the Society. I will bear all costs and all risks. Cornelius, tell your father, Asmodeus, to worry not. The dockyards will soon be in safe hands.”
Cornelius and his siblings pale. By month’s end, their six-hundred-year-old family heirloom will belong to Atalantia—exactly the fate I helped Heliopolis to avoid. The fools can’t even challenge Atalantia’s jurisdiction. They handed their inheritance to her on a platter.
“No gratitude for au Grimmus’s generosity?” Scipio au Falthe asks Cornelius from amongst his phalanx of hard-bitten siblings.
Cornelius eats the mouthful of shit, swallows, and thanks Atalantia for it. Her Iron bloc snickers. The Reformers purse their lips. The Rim deputation look at each other, smug at the comparative dignity of their Moon Council.
“Julia, who is next on the docket?” Atalantia asks.
“Storm Knight of the Rim Dominion, the rostrum is yours,” Julia calls.
Diomedes au Raa stands from his place between his mother, Dido, and his mentor, Helios, and trudges up to the rostrum. He begins without preamble and delivers the butcher’s bill for the last two months of warfare with his head lowered like a ram.
Diomedes is not a very good public speaker. Thicker than most of his colleagues from a life of high-gravity training, it’s obvious what the Raa heir was made to do, and it wasn’t to stand at a rostrum and sway hearts and minds. Politics and rhetoric were supposed to have been the destiny of Diomedes’s brother, Aeneas. Diomedes’s destiny was to be his family’s fist. When Aeneas died at the Battle of Ilium fighting many of the men and women who now recline in the shade above Diomedes, Diomedes was thrust toward a future he neither expected nor wanted.
Then his father, Romulus, died too and he became heir to a legacy seven hundred and fifty years old. Great expectations follow Diomedes. Chafing at that—and at the sophisticated airs of his audience—his words come like bullets.
From under heavy brows his eyes glare accusations searing enough to set togas on fire. When he finishes his report, he scowls up at Atalantia and her Iron bloc hardliners as if they, not the Republic, were responsible for the casualties. I am not spared his ire. After our talk in the theater, he does not appreciate my seating arrangement. He will see it as a grotesque hypocrisy. If I thought I saw an ally in him in the theater based on his embarrassment at Helios’s manners, it is confirmed by his obvious disappointment in me. Like all other Core Golds, I say one thing and do another. Snipe at Atalantia, sit in her section.
I glance at Horatia, who sits with the smaller Reformer bloc, and feel nauseated.
Diomedes does not surrender the rostrum as he should. He remains on the iron triangle in the center of the marble floor, glaring at Atalantia. She watches back from her chair of office. As does Ajax from hisplace with the Olympics on the wings of the speaking floor. And so do the hooded crows in the circular gap in the awning’s center high above.
Atalantia cocks her head in amusement.
“Diomedes. First to storm the Twin railguns. Then on to Earth to take the Middle East from the Red Sea to the Black. Then to Ceres, and the Belt, then all the way back to Earth. By Jove, young dragon, you’ve the wings of Hermes on your boots.” Atalantia pauses, smiles. “This must be the longest you’ve remained rooted to one spot since you arrived.”
The laughter is not limited to Atalantia’s bloc. It spreads into the more populous moderates in the center, where even Julia au Bellona smiles at Diomedes’s expense. The Reformers to Diomedes’s right, by far the minority, think the joke in poor taste.
