“The asshole of the worlds!” the legion shouts.
“And gifts. Cicero au Votum.” She thrusts forward Cicero on the end of a leash and holds up a rotted head. “And Ajax au Grimmus. The rest of him couldn’t make it.”
32
VIRGINIA
Parley
Lysander parallels my walkacross the metal wasteland. To my right, the lights of starscrapers sparkle with promise on the southern horizon. The northern horizon is bleaker—a mountain range of utilitarian mesas strewn with artillery obelisks shattered like trees by lightning. For two weeks, war has raged over most of the moon. I hardly recognize it.
As our armies grind against one another, their commanders have snuck away for this secret meeting.
I clomp forward. My welder boots are magnetic and heavy—clumsy as stipulated. With honor all but dead, the demands from both parties for the meeting were extensive and fraught with suspicion. But in the end, it comes down to trust. Trust that neither of us wants to die, and trust that we both have more to gain from an adversary with some modicum of social comportment.
A couple hundred steps from our airlocks bring Lysander and I together under the shadow of a crashed warship. The young Lune is more physically intimidating than I expected. Gone is the little boy from Octavia’s garden, the one who used to lose to me at chess over and over again, never tiring of it. He is taller than I am by a head and a half now. His pulseArmor, riddled with field patches and pressure seals, is that of a man who’s faced weeks of corridor fighting and emerged with a reputation for luck and leading from the front.
His face is a mirror of mine, haggard from strain and sleeplessness.This is not a spoiled, entitled princeling. This is the last of Silenius’s blood. A man who has come to see if he too can conquer.
Lysander and I fall back on tradition. He touches his heart with an open palm and extends it to me. I repeat the gesture and set my palm on his. His is larger. We draw back and he extends an analog audio cord.
The accent of the Palatine fills my helmet. “Sheathed is my blade, held fast by my word,” he says.
“True are my words, secured by my name,” I reply.
“Salve,Augustus.”
“Salve,Lune.”
He smiles, somehow still a little shy, or perhaps playing at it to set me at ease. “How many of our ancestors have said thus to each other do you think? The formal rites of parley?” he asks.
“On the field of battle? Formally? Four, all told.”
“Not five?”
“You’re counting Oceanus and Agrippa.”
He frowns. “I shouldn’t?”
“No. Oceanus may have been a chip off Silenius’s block but Agrippa was adopted into my house after the Genetic Accords. He had as much Augustan blood in his veins as you do. Which is a little over one point nine percent, actually.”
He smiles. “You always did know your history.”
“You, on the other hand, seem to have embraced theatricality. I remember a more bookish boy. A more prudent boy. You’ve learned to gamble on shock.”
“I have. Your husband is a stern teacher.”
Lysander’s face is not as classically handsome as Cassius’s or Apollonius’s, instead his is the lean hunting-dog ideal. Like Roque’s face, but intense instead of romantic. And it is a face no longer burned. According to our intelligence, it was fixed just before his speech at the Colosseum. Right before his true debut. He’s replaced the scar with marks of sorrow. Ajax was close to him.
“I doubt you had Darrow’s full attention. You must wonder what will happen when you do. Will you measure up?”
Lysander meets my tone. “I am here. Above his planet. Talking to his wife. Where is he?”
“Oh, he’ll turn up when it’s most inconvenient for you, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure. He’ll be wanting this back.” He turns bodily so that I can see the two razors sheathed on the outside of his left thigh armor.
One is familiar. When I gave Darrow his razor after the Institute, I had no idea what a symbol it would become. He was mocked for its curve by Tactus and his fellow lancers. They were too embarrassed to fence with him. Lorn wasn’t. Twelve years later, every child knows its shape. Now Lysander pats the hilt. The gesture makes no sound in the vacuum.
