“Rubi, Rubi, Rubi!”
Rubidum smiles, though tears streak her opalescent face paint. “Let her speak,” I whisper, and Hysan nods at Neith.
Neith bows and gestures for her to take the floor. She climbs onstage, passing close by us without noticing. The speaker’s staff is too long for her to hold upright, so she grips its head and lets the tail end rest at an angle on the floor.
“Fellow Guardians, you know me. For three hundred years, my brother and I have seen plagues, floods, famines, disasters of every kind. The Taurian mudslides, the Piscene drought, the Leonine fires—we watched them with troubled hearts. Yet until today, we assumed these events were normal, cyclical, beyond anyone’s control.”
She pauses to dab a tear, and the audience murmurs.
“But now, friends, we’ve seen atrocities without equal. Three Houses laid to waste in one month. Three Guardians struck down. Origene’s dead, Moira’s a vegetable, and my brother . . .” She sniffles and wipes another tear.
Then she aims her staff at the audience with a look of blood thirst. “We have to stop denying the truth. Someone’s orchestrating this. Whose House will be next? Yours? Yours?”
People shrink back in their seats as she points. “Not one of us is safe while the monster lives. We know his name. What is it?”
“Ophiuchus!” the Geminin group yells. And just like that, the people of Gemini are believers.
“Yes, Ophiuchus!” Rubidum moves across the stage like a tragic actor, dragging the end of the staff. “Behold his work.”
Near the front of the crowd, a Geminin stands and beams images from the Tattoo on his palm to the virtual screens: gruesome videos from Argyr’s burn wards of the injured and the dying. Their agony silences everyone.
Rubidum lifts her head. “Mother Rhoma Grace warned my brother and me about Ophiuchus. I was a fool not to listen then, but now I say this butcher must die.”
“Kill the butcher! Kill the butcher!”
The chant echoes through the Geminin group. Then, to my amazement, it spreads like fire through the entire crowd.
I can’t believe how fast terror can turn the tide of public opinion. Suddenly everyone believes in the boogeyman.
“He can strike anywhere, anytime!” Rubidum shouts above the noise. “He’ll destroy us all unless we act. We cannot sit still.”
When the frenzy reaches a crescendo, Rubidum drops the staff with a clatter and raises both hands to the sky. “Friends, we were wrong to ban Rho Grace from this Plenum. She was the only one who foresaw this foe. We need her on our side.”
The students begin to chant my name, and to my shock, over half the audience joins in. Overhead, the holograms echo the chant like crashing cymbals.
“Rho! Rho! Rho!”
I was willing to sacrifice my life just to convince the Zodiac of Ophiuchus’s existence. Now that they believe, I should be thrilled . . . only I’m not. Something about this feels wrong.
Reason hasn’t converted them—the fervor of the room has.
Albor Echus begs for order, swinging his robes of fur, and Neith pounds the lectern with his fist. “Shall we call back Mother Rho?”
“Yes!” the people thunder. “Call her back! Bring back Mother Rho!”
“Now,” whispers Hysan. “Unveil.”
All three of us switch off our collars, and when we pop into view, the audience’s reaction makes me lightheaded.
Our magic trick has them on their feet, giving us a rousing standing ovation, and from all over the arenasphere micro-cameras zoom toward me. The colors and lights and flashes and shouts and sounds—it’s all overwhelming.
Small arms embrace me. I look down and see Rubidum. “We’re placing our faith in you, Rho. Bring this monster to justice.”
Now I realize what a grave mistake I’ve made.
I let these people believe I’m more than a whistleblower—that I actually have a plan for defeating someone who can turn our own particles of air against us.
I’m not in the military. I’m not a qualified Zodai. I can’t lead an army. As the cheers rise louder, Neith hands me the speaker’s staff. But for the first time, I have no idea what to say.
My speeches never went beyond pleas to unify the Houses . . . and now it’s done. I’ve accomplished what I set out to do—I’ve sounded the alarm, the very thing Ochus threatened to kill me for attempting. The whole point of joining forces with the other Houses was so I could share the quest for justice—not lead it.
At my silence, Rubidum raises her voice. “House Gemini will outfit forty war ships to crush the butcher. Who’ll join me?”
Ear-splitting cheers erupt from the audience.
“We will!” shouts the amber-eyed Guardian of Sagittarius. I remember her face from the newsfeeds two years ago, when she was named Guardian at just twenty-one years old. “We’ll send tankers.”
“Capricorn will send arks,” their ambassador announces.
The Taurian Guardian shouts, “We’ll supply weapons!”