PART II
BREAK
If you’re a fox, play the hare. If you’re the hare, play the fox.
—Lorn au Arcos
12
The Willow
I stalk back into the gala.
The Golds have taken their seats and formalities have begun in earnest. I am not subtle as I duck beneath the table and scrounge around on the ground to find the pegasus pendant. I put it in my pocket. Straighten my jacket. Ignore the questioning glances and move boldly away from Augustus’s table toward the object of my interest. Pliny hisses my name. I pass him by. He knows nothing of what I have in store. Pliny is a man to make rules. I’m more the breaking type.
I weave through the tables that seat the noble families, gathering eyes as a stone rolling down the mountain gathers snow. I feel them adding to my velocity. My gait is careless, my hands coiled with danger, like the muscles of a pitviper. Thousands watch me. Whispers form a cloak behind as they realize my target; he sits at his long table surrounded by his family members—a perfect Golden man attentively listening to his Sovereign speak. She preaches of unity. Order and tradition are paramount. No one rises yet to challenge me. Perhaps they don’t understand. Or perhaps they feel the force of me now and dare not rise.
The Bellona notice the whispers now, and they turn, almost as one, a family of fifty and more, to see me—a martial man, all in black. Young, untested in war. Unblooded beyond the halls of the Institute and the asteroids of the Academy. Some have reasoned me mad. Some have called me brave. Tonight, I’m both. The weight is gone. All the pressure I let crush me as I worried about expectations, as I gentlefooted around making a decision. All velocity, I tell myself. Don’t freeze. Don’t stop. Never stop.
The Sovereign’s voice falters now.
Too late to go back. I dive in.
Smile.
And the gala goes dead silent as I spring thirty feet in the low gravity and land hard on the Bellona table. Dishes crack. Servers scatter. Bellonas fall back. Some shout at me. Some do not move even as their wine spills. The Sovereign watches, struck by curiosity, her Furies stirring at her side. Pliny looks about to die. He’s gripping his knees in panic. Beside him, the Jackal is as strange and unreadable as a lonely desert creature.
I did not wear dress shoes tonight. My boots are thick and heavy. They crack the porcelain as I trod along the Bellona table, shattering dishes of pudding and squishing tender steaks. My blood pumps through me. Intoxicating. I lift my voice.
“I’ll have your attention.” I crush a plate of peas underfoot. “You may know me.” There’s nervous laughter. Of course they know me. They know everyone of worth, though mine is more of rumor than substance. I see the Furies whispering to the Sovereign. See Tactus grinning his ass off. Karnus leans forward anxiously. Victra’s smiling at the Jackal. Even see Antonia nudging a tall, serene Gold. I avoid looking at Mustang. Pliny gibbers in Augustus’s ear. Augustus raises a hand to shut him up. “Do I have your attention?” I ask.
Yes. I do.
“Boy, sit down!” someone shouts.
“Make him,” Tactus replies drunkenly. “No? That’s what I surmised!”
“For those of you who do not know, I am a lancer of the House of Augustus, for another hour or so.” They laugh. “I am the one they call the Reaper of Mars, who struck down a full Peerless Knight, who stormed Olympus and made slaves of my Proctors. My name is Darrow au Andromedus, and I have been wronged.
“We Peerless Scarred come from Golden ancestors. From conquerors with spines of iron. Honorable men, honorable women. But before you today, I see a family that is dishonorable. A family with spines made of chalk. A corrupt and fraudulent family of liars and cowards that conspires to steal my master’s Governorship, illegally.”
I crush a serving plate with my boots. Who knows if they conspire to do it or not? It sounds good. It seems like they conspire. And it’s the mask I need them to wear. Karnus replies beautifully by whipping out his razor and surging toward me. His father, the Imperator, waves him back. Praetor Kellan looks about to grab my feet and jerk me down where Cagney would no doubt cut my throat with my own razor. The younger girls of their family think me a demon. A demon that killed their cousin, brother. They have no idea what I really am. But perhaps Lady Bellona does. Cadaverous in her grief, she sits surrounded by her brood like a withered lioness. They look to her as much as to her husband. The last thing I note is the trembling of her long right hand, as though it aches for a knife with which to cut me.
“Twice I have been wronged by this family. Once in the mud of the Institute. Again at the Academy by that one … and this one … and that one.” I point out all those who beat me in the gardens. I see Cassius now near the head of the table, just by his father and mother. Mustang sits beside him. Her face a mask. Disappointed? Upset? Bored? When she quirks an eyebrow at me, I meet her eyes, walk toward her and set my foot on the edge of the wine decanter that sits in front of Cassius. All eyes focus there, like light falling into a black hole. Pausing time, space. Bending all forward. Breaths catch. “All courts of Golden law permit a man to defend his honor against any force that would desecrate it unjustly. From the old lands of Earth to the icy bowels of Pluto, the right of challenge exists for any man and any woman. My name, gentle lords and ladies, is Darrow au Andromedus. My honor has been pissed upon. And I demand satisfaction.”
I tip the wine over onto Cassius’s lap.
He explodes up at me. Golds all over the grand party burst up from their seats in a great roar. Tactus rushes from our table, joined with Leto, Victra, all of the aides and bannermen of the vassals to my ArchGovernor—the Corvos, the Julii, the Voloxes, the huge Telemanuses, Pax’s family. Razors snap into hands. Curses splinter the winter air. Aja, the largest and darkest of the Furies, leans down from the Sovereign’s table and bellows, “Stop this madness!”
It’s only begun.
My hands shake like they used to in the mine. Now, as then, serpents surround me.
You could never hear them, the pitvipers. Could rarely see them. Black as pupils, they slither in the shadows till they strike. But there’s a fear that comes when they near. A fear separate from the rumbling of the drill. Separate from the throbbing, nauseating heat that builds in your balls as you carve through a million tons of rock and all the friction radiates up, making a bog of piss and sweat inside your suit. It’s fearing the coming of death. Like a shadow has passed across your soul.
That fear fills me now as these Peerless stand around me, a mass of serpentine gold. Whispering. Hissing. Deadly as sin.
Snow on the ground crunches under my heavy boots. I bend down as the Sovereign speaks. She tells of honor and tradition. How martial duels mark the greatness of our race, so she makes an exception for the day. We may duel beyond the gaming grounds. This bloodfeud must be put to rest here, now, in front of the august of our race. So confident is she in her newest Olympic Knight. But why wouldn’t she be? He’s killed me before.
“Unlike the cowards of old, we settle flesh to flesh. Bone to bone. Blood to blood. Vendettas die in the Bleeding Place virtute et armis,” the Sovereign recites.
By valor and arms. No doubt she has already spoken to her advisors. They will say I am outmatched, that Cassius is the better swordsman. It never would have gone this far if she hadn’t been assured a beneficial outcome.
“As it was with our ancestors, it is now and again to the death,” she declares. “Are there any contentions?”
I hoped for this.
Neither Cassius nor I say a thing. Mustang steps forward to object, but the Fury, Aja, shakes her head, stopping her.
“Then today, res, non verba.” Actions, not words.
I speak with my master before stepping into the center of the circle that now forms as Browns cart away the tables from the snowy plain. Pliny hovers beside Augustus. As do Leto, Tactus, Victra, and the great Praetors of Mars. So many famous faces, so many warriors and politicians. The Jackal stands further away, shorter than the rest, impassive, speaking to no one. I wonder what he would say to me were there fewer ears to hear. He does not look angry. Perhaps he’s learned to trust in my plans. He nods his head, as if reading my thoughts. We are still allied.
“Is this spectacle for me? For vanity? For love?” Augustus asks as I stand before him. His eyes dig into me, trying to find meaning. I can’t help but glance over at Mustang. Even now, she draws me from my task.
“You’re so young,” he nearly whispers. “What they tell you in the storybooks is wrong; love does not survive things like this. Not the love of my daughter, at least.” He pauses, reflecting. “Her soul is like her mother’s.”
“I don’t do it for love, my liege.”
“No?”
“No.” I bow my head to him and remember Matteo’s highLingo. “The duty of the son is the father’s glory. Is it not?” I fall to a knee.
“You are not my son.”
“No. The Bellona killed him, stole him from you. Your firstborn son, Claudius, was all a man could hope for—a son better and wiser than his father. So let me make you a present of their favorite son’s head. Enough quibbling. Enough of their politics. Blood for blood.”
“My liege, Julian was one thing. But Cassius …,” Pliny tries.
Augustus ignores him.
“I weep for your blessing,” I say again, pressing my master. “How long will you keep the Sovereign’s favor? A month? A year? Two? Soon she will replace you with the Bellona. Look how she favors Cassius. Look how she steals your child. Look how the other goes the way of a Silver. Your heirs are depleted. Your time as ArchGovernor will end. Let it. For you are not a man fit to be ArchGovernor of Mars. You are a man fit to be king of it.”
His eyes flash. “We have no kings.”
“Because none have dared craft themselves a crown,” I say. “Let this be the first step. Spit in the Sovereign’s eye. Make me the sword of your family.”
I pull a knife from my boot and make a quick cut beneath my eye. The blood falls like teardrops. This is an old blessing, from the iron ancestors, the Conquerors. And it will chill those who see it—a relic of a bygone, harder age. It is a Mars blessing. One of iron and blood. Of the raging ships that burned the famed Britannic Armada above Earth’s North Pole, and dashed the fastkillers from the land of the Rising Sun amidst the asteroid belt. My master’s eyes ignite like dormant coals breathed upon, slowly, then all at once.
I have him.
“I give my blessing freely. What you do, do in my honor.” He leans toward me. “Rise, goldenborn. Rise, ironmade.” Augustus touches his finger to the blood and then presses the mark beneath his own eye. “Rise, Man of Mars, and take with you my wrath.”
I rise to whispers. This is no simple squabble now between boys. It is the battle of houses. Champion against champion.
“Hic sunt leones,” he says, tilting his head—part challenge, part benediction. What a vain swine of a man. He knows my desperation to stay in his good graces. He knows he stands playing with matches on a powder keg. Yet his eyes glitter lustfully, hungering for blood and the promise of power as I hunger for air.
“Hic sunt leones,” I echo.
I pace back to the center of the circle, nodding to Tactus and Victra. They touch the handles of their razors, as do the other aides. Our pack mentality is keen. “Prime luck,” Tactus says.
High above, ships swim quietly through the long-night. Trees sway in the breeze. Cities sparkle in the distance. Earth hovers like a swollen moon as I unravel my razor from my forearm.
Mustang comes to me as Cassius’s mother kisses his forehead.
“So you’re a pawn now?” she asks quickly.
“And you’re a trophy?”