Roque au Fabii sits at a stone table in an orchard along the side of the house, finishing a dessert of elderberry cheesecake and coffee. Smoke from a brooding dwarf volcano twirls up into the twilight
horizon with the same indolence as the steam from his porcelain saucer. He turns from watching the smoke to see us enter. He’s striking in his black and gold uniform—lean like a strand of golden summer wheat, with high cheekbones and warm eyes, but his face is distant and unyielding. By now he could drape a dozen battle glories across his chest. But his vanity is so deep that he thinks affectation a sign of boorish decadence. The pyramid of the Society, given flight with Imperator wings on either side, marks each shoulder; a gold skull with a crown burdens his breast, the Sigil of the Ash Lord’s warrant. Roque sets the saucer down delicately, dabs his lips with the corner of his napkin, and rises to his bare feet.
“Darrow, it’s been an age,” he says with such mannered grace that I could almost convince myself
that we were old friends reuniting after a long absence. But I will not let myself feel anything for this man. I cannot let him have forgiveness. Victra almost died because of him. Fitchner did. Lorn did. And how many more would have had I not let Sevro leave the party early to seek his father?
“Imperator Fabii,” I reply evenly. But behind my distant welcome is an aching heart. There’s not a hint of sorrow on his face, however. I want there to be. And knowing that, I know I still feel for the man. He is a soldier of his people. I’m a soldier of mine. He is not the evil of his story. He’s the hero who unmasked the Reaper. Who smashed the Augustus-Telemanus fleet at the Battle of Deimos the night after my capture. He does not do these things for himself. He lives for something as noble as I.
His people. His only sin is in loving them too much, as is his way.
Mustang watches me worriedly, knowing all I must feel. She asked me about him on the journey from Mars. I told her that he was nothing to me, but we both know that isn’t true. She’s with me now.
Anchoring me among these predators. Without her I could face my enemies, but I would not hold on
to so much of my self. I would be darker. More wrathful. I count my blessings that I have people like her to which I can tether my spirit. Otherwise I fear it would run away from me.
“I can’t say it’s a pleasure to see you again, Roque,” she says, taking the attention away from me.
“Though I am surprised the Sovereign didn’t send a politico to treat with us.”
“She did,” Roque says. “And you returned Moira as a corpse. The Sovereign was deeply wounded
by that. But she has faith in my arms and judgment. Just as I have faith in the hospitality of Romulus.
Thank you for the meal, by the bye,” he says to our host. “Our commissary is woefully militaristic, as you can imagine.”
“The benefit of owning a breadbasket,” Romulus says. “Siege is never a hungry affair.” He
gestures for us to take our seats. Mustang and I take the two facing Roque as Romulus sits at the head of the table. Two other chairs to the right and left of him are filled with the ArchGovernor of Titan and an old, crooked woman I don’t know. She wears the wings of Imperator.
Roque watches me. “It does please me, Darrow, knowing you’re finally participating in the war you
began.”
“Darrow isn’t responsible for this war,” Mustang says. “Your Sovereign is.”
“For instilling order?” Roque asks. “For obeying the Compact?”
“Oh, that’s fresh. I know her a bit better than you, poet. The crone is a nasty, covetous creature. Do you think it was Aja’s idea to kill Quinn?” She waits for an answer. None comes. “It was Octavia’s.
She told her to do it through the com in her ear.”
“Quinn died because of Darrow,” Roque says. “No one else.”
“The Jackal bragged to me that he killed Quinn,” I say. “Did you know that?” Roque is unimpressed
with my claim. “If he’d let her be, she would have lived. He killed her in the back of the ship while the rest of us fought for our lives.”
“Liar.”
I shake my head. “Sorry. But that guilt you feel in your skinny little gut. That’s gonna stick around.
Because it’s the truth.”
“You made me a mass murderer against my own people,” Roque says. “My debt to my Sovereign
and the Society for my part in the Bellona-Augustus War is not yet paid. Millions lost their lives in the Siege of Mars. Millions who need not have died if I had seen through the ruse and done my duty to
my people.” His voice quavers. I know the lost look in his eyes. I’ve seen it in my own in the mirror as I wake from a nightmare and stare at myself in the pale bathroom light of that same stateroom on Luna. All those millions cry to him in the darkness, asking him why?