“I don’t remember asking for your permission.” Aja bares her teeth at the insult, but the Sovereign’s hand on her shoulder restrains her tongue.
“Let him do it,” the Sovereign says. Strange, the Sovereign’s deference to the Jackal. It’s out of character, but in keeping with the oddness I’ve felt between them on the day. Why would he be here, I wonder. Not Luna. That’s obvious enough. But why would he come to a place where the Sovereign has absolute power over him? At any moment, she could kill him. He must have something over her,
to buy himself immunity. What is his play here? I sense Mustang trying to divine the same answer as Aja moves away from me. The Joy Knight offers the Jackal a scorcher, but Adrius refuses. Instead, he picks Sevro’s gun from his holster and twirls it around his index finger.
“He’s no Gold,” the Jackal explains. “He doesn’t deserve a razor or a state death. He’ll go like his uncle. In any matter, I very much would like to begin the transition as the hand of justice. Plus, offing Darrow with Sevro’s gun is…more poetic, don’t you think, Octavia?”
“Very well. Is there anything else you would like?” the Sovereign asks tiredly.
“No. You’ve been most accommodating.” The Jackal takes Aja’s place beside me as the Sovereign
transforms before our eyes. The exhaustion burning away from her face as she adopts the serene, matronly visage I remember telling me: “Obedience. Sacrifice. Prosperity,” time and time again from the HC in Lykos. Then, Octavia seemed a goddess so far beyond mortal ken that I would have given
my life to please her, to make her proud of me. Now I’d give my life to end hers.
The Joy Knight nods to the Sovereign. A light glows softly above her, empowering the woman with
the fury and warmth of the sun. It’s just a spotlight. The lamp deepens its glow. The Jackal brushes an errant strand from his fastidiously parted hair and smiles fondly at me.
The broadcast begins.
“Men and Women of the Society,” Octavia says. “This is your Sovereign. Since the dawn of man,
our saga as a species has been one of tribal warfare. It has been one of trial, one of sacrifice, one of daring to defy nature’s natural limits. Then, after years of toiling in the dirt, we rose to the stars. We bound ourselves in duty. We set aside our own wants, our own hungers to embrace the Hierarchy of
Color, not to oppress the many for the glory of the few, as Ares and this…terrorist would have you believe, but to secure the immortality of the human race on principles of order and prosperity. It was an immortality that was assured before this man tried to steal it from us.”
She points a long, elegant finger at me.
“This man, once a noble servant of you, of your families, should have been the brightest son of his Color. He was lifted up as a youth. Awarded merits of honor. But he chose vanity. To extend his own ego across the stars. To become a conqueror. He forgot his duty. He forgot the reason for order and has fallen into darkness, dragging the worlds with him.
“But we will not fall into that darkness. No. We will not bend to the forces of evil.” She touches her heart. “We… we are the Society. We are Gold, Silver, Copper, Blue, White, Orange, Green, Violet, Yellow, Gray, Brown, Pink, Obsidian, and Red. The bonds that bind us together are stronger than the forces that pull us apart. For seven hundred years, Gold has shepherded humanity, brought light where there was dark, plenty where there was famine. Today we bring peace where there is war. But to have peace, we must destroy outright this murderer who has brought war to each and every one of our homes.”
She turns to me with a callousness that reminds me of how she watched my duel with Cassius. How she would have let me die then sipped her wine and been about her dinner. I am a speck to her, even now. She’s thinking past this moment. Past the time where my blood cools on the floor and they drag me off to be dissected.
“Darrow of Lykos, by the power entrusted in me by the Compact, I hereby find you guilty of conspiracy to incite acts of terror.” I stare directly into the holoCam’s optic lens, knowing how many countless souls watch me now. How many countless eyes will watch me long after I have gone. “I find you guilty of mass murder upon the citizens of Mars.” I barely listen to her. My heart thunders in my chest. Rattling the fingers of my left hand. Pushing up into my throat. This is it. The end swarming toward me. “I find you guilty of murder.” This moment, this fragment of time is my life in summary.
It is my shout into the void. “And I find you guilty of treason against your Society….”
But I want no shout.