I catch Horatia’s eye. She gives me three quick blinks, our signal. After our talk at Hercules Victor, she made her move at the Temple of Juno. Everything is prepared. My nausea deepens as I think of Glirastes curled on the floor of a dog kennel, waiting to see if I love him as much as he loves me.
Dido parts from her fellow consul, Helios, and replaces her son on the rostrum. It’s good Helios is not speaking. After a preview of his manners in Heliopolis, the last thing we need is our own Day of Red Doves. Dido is a profoundly handsome woman with charisma to spare. Strong features, penetrating eyes filled with mischief, thick hair of dark gold, and—peculiar for a consul of the Rim—she is bawdy, jocular, even funny. But it’s her temper that’s always been her liability.
“Atalantia, I can speak for us all when I say your boots are horribly lovely.” Atalantia’s boots are as marvelous as they are obnoxious. Black leather from a stygian cobra encrusted with great diamond skulls. “Yet, I swore war was in fashion. Not diamonds.”
Atalantia looks suddenly far less bored than when Cornelius held the rostrum. She doesn’t miss a beat. “The skulls started as carbon. Perhaps it is the pressure of carrying the war that has made them diamonds. Go on then, au Saud—oh, excuse me, au Raa. Lecture us as if you’re the one that’s been fighting the Rising for what…twelve years now, while we’ve been hiding behind our moat.” She smiles. “You paid a dear price to enter this war. How strange to flinch at casualties now.”
The room winces. The casualty of which Atalantia so casually speakswas Dido’s husband, who chose to die both in protest of the war, and because he hid evidence of Darrow’s destruction of the Dockyards of Ganymede from the Moon Lords, in violation of his honor. The same Romulus famous for his passionate, fairy-tale love for Dido. Who died, in the end, because Dido pressed for war.
“I hear young Seraphina was a virtuosic fighter and a credit to her father and her mother, and her people as a whole,” Atalantia says in reference to Dido’s daughter, who died in the fighting on Mercury. I saw her simply disappear when a rail slug hit her.
Technically,shewas the Rim’s first casualty. The Colosseum goes dead silent.
I’ve seen razor duels with less tension.
Dido sighs, and I wonder if her opening taunt was bait to lure this disproportionate response from Atalantia. I think it was. At the price of much hardship, Dido has gained an air of wisdom and gravitas. And by choosing to ignore Atalantia’s insults, she now seems the true statesman of the two, which Atalantia doesn’t seem to mind.
Dido continues. “We should not forget the great peoples we few here represent. Billions wait for us to sort the troubles that disturb our age. Time and again, you have preached a message of unity, au Grimmus. Promises of aid against the Ecliptic Guard. Promises of aid in the asteroid belt. Promises of aid in the matter of Ceres.
“Then what of that aid? What of that unity? I saw here today with my own eyes how quick you are to dispatch legions to deal with your own troubles. But what of our shared troubles? Time and again, au Grimmus, we have extended our hand only to be left grasping at air. Did we not aid you in liberating Earth? Did we not conquer Ceres upon your request? So why are your boots still stuck in the mud when it comes to the matter most dear to us?
“As you rebuild your cities, stack your spoils, polish your boots, the rest of us—fewer in bodies, poorer in monies—suffer to pay the bill. We are left to wonder why this is. Poor communication? Hidden agendas? Greed? Laziness? Or perhaps it is simply that habit has taught the leaders of the Core that Rim lives are expendable.
“That was true once—when the Rim was shackled to the Society. It is no longer true. Instead, what is true is that you need us. What is true is that we are not your vassals. We do not jump when you say jump. We do not die when you say die. But we will leave this alliance if you persistinthis…obstinacy…this…disrespectand brinksmanship against those you profess to be your allies.”
Scipio au Falthe calls out. “The honorable consul of the Dominion is quite correct. How selfish of us to rebuild our cities. If only we could be more like the Dominion, and not have to rebuild a single one.”
A Reformer next to Horatia fires back. “If only the honorable Falthe did not think all cities should be pounded to a fine dust, we might not have to rebuild anything but the trust of the people in us!”
A general firefight ensues.
The Senate was never as solemn in closed sessions as it pretended to be to the public. Neither is the Two Hundred. Formed around the same rules, the Senate and the Two Hundred have the same manners. In both bodies, beings with genius-level intellects are reduced to hollering like gladiatorial crowds in some asteroid backwater, shaking performative fists, reeling back in indignation, and sharpening rhetorical harpoons to thrust into an adversary or draw a smile from their patron.
The commotion only quiets when Julia au Bellona, the Princeps Senatus, stands and hammers her pyramid-tipped staff of office on her riser. As the leader of the Two Hundred, Julia keeps its rules and, along with the Olympic Knights, enforces them. “We’re already an hour behind the day’s schedule. If the esteemed Dictator does not remind her friends that we are not baying coyotes, but Peerless Scarred, I will skip the lunch recess and fine every member responsible for my low blood sugar. Yes, that includes you, Scipio. Quit blathering and let the woman talk. You might have more legions than hair follicles, but she has the floor.”
Atalantia flicks a finger and her bloc quiets. Dido carries on.
“The agreement made between your government and mine when we entered this war was that Mars would be the main military target. That Luna—that seat of tyranny—would be your responsibility to reclaim. Not ours. You agreed to these terms, Atalantia. You signed these terms, Atalantia. And yet every time we request to begin the campaign against Mars, you…prevaricate.”
A shadow cast by something above wags on the floor in front of her. I follow her eyes up to the gap in the awning where Atlas sits far above the summit, legs dangling off a support strut. The crows perched up there don’t seem to mind him one bit.
Dido is flustered by the unexpected appearance of her brother-in-law, but not for long.
“What am I to tell the mothers and fathers of the Rim that their children died for, Atalantia? What am I to tell the Gray and Blue archons their caste members died for, Atalantia? As this war drags on, what excuse shall I give? We did not attack Mars because your friends were too busy shoring up their own domains? We did not attack Mars because you had to rebuild your capitals and your pet fiancé must host games while we did the dying?” Dido’s eyes meet mine. She does not veil her disgust with my place in Atalantia’s bloc. “That we were used by the Core and then tossed away like a street tramp?
“Time and again, you preach a message of unity, au Grimmus. Today you have an opportunity to prove that Core Golds keep their word. Together, we have the ships. Together, we have the legions. Declare the campaign for Mars and let us finish the Rising once and for all.” She looks at the most famous isolationist in the room, Helios, and gives a hard nod to show their unity. “If you do not, then you must not need us, and we will have no choice but to assume this alliance dissolved and sail back to our own worlds.”
Dido returns to her seat beside her son to strong applause from Horatia and the Reformers.
“That concludes the Rim deputation’s time,” Julia says. Atalantia begins to stand. “Not yet. Protocol, Atalantia. You know the floor must first be open to the body.”
“Thank Jupiter we have you, Julia. I’m always in such a rush to just get things done.” Atalantia swans back down. If anyone wants to waste their breath advocating for the Rim, now is the time. No one dares. Not even the Reformers. That is a crucial part of the theater Horatia has arranged.
Atalantia takes one of the asps slithering around the arms of her chair of office and dons it like jewelry. She doesn’t once spare me a glance to see if I intend to speak, secure in her conviction that I don’t have the stomach to consign Glirastes to death. Seated down with the other Olympic Knights, Ajax looks relieved. He offers me a smile of conciliation. He knows defeat only too well.
As the silence stretches, it becomes awkward, and then oppressive. More and more people begin to look around. I can sense there are others like me out there—those who chafe under Atalantia’s yoke—but she’s silenced some of them. Those she has not silenced, Horatia has silenced. Many of the house heads who know my true opinion on thematter look at me and wonder why I do not speak. But most of them, while powerful, are fence-sitters, not deeming the matter worth the risk one way or the other.
Still, the fence-sitters would have expected me to lend my opinion. I have been very vocal for this very reason. My silence would not have mattered in a room filled with remonstrations from the Reformers, but now it thunders.
