Instead, I face them, signaling that I do not deserve honors. They like that.
Rhone says the ritual words in my ear. “Remember, you live for the fallen, for at your word they ran to the grave. Make not their sacrifice be ever in vain.”
A hologram glows to life to show the great statue of Darrow standing astride Phobos’s north pole. A ship from all my major allies fires on the statue as one. As his monument crumbles, the figureheads Darrow’s hands imprisoned are liberated at last. Centaurs, suns, eagles, crescents, skulls, gold all, scatter out to space. We will let them go. And the retreating Republic? They watch their idol fall.
“Per aspera ad astra!”we roar.
—
Pink acrobats twirl over the couches arrayed in Victra’s garden. I pluck a grape from a passing servant’s tray and plop it in my mouth. I worried I’d be seen as weak for reaching a compromise with Virginia. Far from it. My allies are elated. They could care less that we let the enemy retreat. Phobos itself is the prize, and not even Apollonius liked the style of war it was taking to claim it—though he was responsible for most of our gains. I saved us a year of blood and treasure and won us a second dockyards for our faction and a beachhead for our siege of the planet, and all it took was a little compromise. I am heady with success, but in no mood to celebrate.
“Is it possible for you to relax?” Julia au Bellona pours me a glass of wine from the pitcher.
“Don’t I look relaxed?” I ask and sip the wine.
“Looking and being relaxed are very different things, young man.” She sighs. “Apollonius swore this party would be tasteful, so as not to offend our dusty guests but honestly I expected that to mean the Pinks would be edible,” Julia says with a leer at the Dominion couches. She lies on her side next to me pretending to be drunker than she is. “Either humility has curbed his libido or you have a stronger rein on him than I thought.”
I come back from my thoughts of Ajax and shift my bloodstained cloak before sipping my wine. “I can’t vouch for his libido, but I believe your lancer Pallas is quickly becoming an authority on the subject. I warn you. The southern route is not the way to Apollonius’s heart.”
Julia laughs.
“Prostitute my lancer? Vile. She’s special. Like a daughter to me,really.” Pallas, far more seriously dressed than she was at my party, is interrogating Helios au Lux, and he seems to be enjoying it. Missing is his shadow, Diomedes. “Pallas is curious by nature, especially about powerful, simple men.” Julia eyes me. “Just not the ones who spit in her patron’s eye in public.”
“Me?” I ask, mock offended.
“You. I financed half this endeavor, and you give Apollonius the dockyards. I should have you poisoned for that.”
“Yet here we are, cozy as thieves,” I reply. “I promised Apollonius the dockyards—”
“In exchange for being a military marvel, which he was not.”
“Who knows that better than he?” I ask.
“Cicero,” she replies. “Still pouting?”
“Still.”
“Good. The little idiot. I will say, at least Apollonius pouts ferociously.”
I glance at Apollonius. The man reclines on a couch all to his own drinking wine by the pitcher and having his feet mutilated by a Red masseur with hands the size of dinner plates. “He’s not pouting. He’s furious. You can’t chastise or put reins on Apollonius. All you can do is consistently deliver until he realizes it’s his turn.”
“Which would be now, I presume,” she says. “Or he’d have fixed his face.” I nod. Apollonius’s gunshot wound to the face is as ugly as he is usually beautiful. “I think he’s the only man I’ve ever met where his exterior always matches his interior. Take Cassius for instance. Such a strong outer chin…” Her eyes dart to me. I have no idea what sheactuallythinks of Cassius. “Word on that?”
“If they try to sneak into Mars, we’ll catch them,” I say. “Helios assured me. For Darrow, he’s pulled out all the stops.”
I pause as an acrobat descends on a column of silk. The Pink comes a stop upside down with her eyes very close to mine. Her breath is scented with cloves and roses. “We are talking,” I say.
“I don’t mind,” Julia says. “Go on, blow off some steam.”
I remain looking at the Pink, until she retreats back up the silk with a sigh.
“All my energy is focused on this war, Julia. I literally don’t care about anything but our path forward.”
“That’s a little pathological and unhealthy.”
“They cut off Ajax’s head,” I say. “People are dying. The man who gave me this cape today, the Red. His face was half melted. If you saw the look in his eyes, the faith. He believes we know what we are doing. I will not let him down.”
She holds my gaze. “Good. I also tire of petty things. But I need honesty.”
