“Damn right it is,” Sevro says.
“He knows of our division at home and is using it to gain time to regroup his forces around Venus. You all know what I fear by now.” I pull up a holoMap and walk along it, dragging my fingers through the asteroids. “I fear dragons. The Raa are coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But one day Romulus will attack. We must consolidate control over the Core before that happens. If we leave the Ash Lord alive, we will be caught between two enemies. We will not win.”
“They’ll never fight together,” Victra says. “They might hate you, but I know Moonies. Even the hostages Octavia used to keep are born hating the Ash Lord. Never forget. Never forgive.”
“They do not have to fight together,” Sefi says. “They only have to fight against us.” With the heavy casualties the Obsidians faced on Mercury, I know she doesn’t relish that prospect. Then why didn’t her senators vote to support me?
I continue. “The Senate is evidently concerned that I am a liability to the peace process. They have called me a warmonger. As of now, they say I am no longer ArchImperator. Soon, I believe, there will be a warrant for my arrest.”
“Might already be one,” Sevro mutters under his breath.
“Dancer’s a bastard…” Rhonna says. When she lived in the hidden city of Tinos, he was like an uncle to her. Her fists clench in anger at the betrayal.
“No. Dancer is a good man. He’s doing what he thinks is right with the tools he has,” I say. “It’s our turn to do the same.”
“What are your orders, bossman?” Min-Min asks. “You hiccup and the whole Seventh will storm the Senate and crucify any Pixie who looks at you funny.”
“Damn right,” Clown agrees. “The Senate is more corrupt than the Syndicate. I say you go in there and dissolve it. Have new, clean elections.”
“And what?” Pebble asks her husband. “Darrow rules as an autocrat in the meantime? Don’t be ridiculous. The Republic’s done if that happens.” She looks to me plaintively. “Can’t Virginia do anything? Surely she won’t let them place a warrant for your arrest.”
“Of course she can’t do anything,” Victra replies. “Majority rules unless she uses Emergency Powers. But she does that, and the Vox Populi will cry tyranny and vote for impeachment. You seen the streets lately? The mob will back them, especially if they think they can end the war. No one cares about Venus.”
“She’s the Sovereign,” Rhonna says.
“Which has one-tenth the power it once did. The silly lion helped write the laws that stripped the Sovereigncy of so much of its power. I told her not to….” Victra sighs. “Idealists never learn.”
Holiday stirs uneasily at her place on the wall. “You can’t really be thinking of violence, Darrow. If you mobilize the Seventh, then the Home Legions will be ordered against them.”
“By whom?” Victra asks. “What general would go against us?”
“Wulfgar,” Holiday says. “And he’ll be the one coming to arrest you, Darrow.”
“Patriotic idiot,” Min-Min mutters. She turns to Sefi. “Can’t you rein him in, big lady? Aren’t you their queen or somesuch?” Sefi doesn’t even look her way. Her eyes are locked on me.
“Please,” Victra says. “Half the people in this room have their faces on coins. The rest have statues. Whatever army they send against us will become our army. One look at Sefi and Darrow and they’ll piss their pants.” Does she not see how Sefi is watching me?
Victra looks up at me with a grand smile. “Darling, I say we all attend the peace talks. Make it a bit of a party. And once that sanctimonious prick Dancer is put in a cell, we give the Ash Lord our diplomatic reply and send him the head of Julia au Bellona back in a gorydamn box, mouth stuffed with grapes. Or her eyes stripped out and replaced with snake heads. Or Dancer’s testicles, whichever you find more thematically appropriate. We can vote! ’Tis a demokracy, after all.”
She smiles at the heads nodding along with her, but more than half in the room look nervously at their hands and each other. They’re hesitant to go against the Senate. No one wants civil war. Holiday gives voice to their dissent. “I’ve followed you through hell, Darrow. Don’t ask me to follow you through this. I believe in the Republic. We have to put our faith in something. If you march on the Forum tomorrow, you march without me.”
“Loyalty gone just like that?” Victra asks. “A mercenary after all.”
“And I thought you was hard, Holi,” Min-Min says. “Pfah. You’re getting peaceful in your menopause.”
“Shut up, Min-Min,” Pebble says. “She’s right.”
“That’s a load of shit,” Sevro snaps. “If they try—”
“Enough,” I say, seeing Sefi’s growing displeasure at the bickering. “Holiday is right. Gold fell because they let themselves be consumed by civil war. I won’t let our Republic fall in the same way. I know how fond we are of escalation.” Grins from some of my longest-serving Howlers. “But not this time. The Seventh stays in their barracks. We’re not disbanding the Senate. The peace accords will continue. They’ll take months.”
“So you’re, what…” Victra says, looking to Sevro, then me, aghast and more than a bit disappointed. “Going to let them arrest you?”
“No, love,” Sevro says softly, looking back to me. Our conversation on the shuttle to the Den was short and to the point. “Not quite.”
“The Ash Lord is no fool,” I say. “Dancer and the Vox Populi are being played. He wants me to use the Seventh. He wants me to dissolve the Senate and seize power. It would fracture the Colors and allow him to pry them away, by offering stability.”
“That’s a stretch,” Victra says.
“I know him. I will not break the Republic. And I will not be a prisoner. Which is why I am leaving this moon tonight.” They look to each other in confusion. “The question is: who’s coming with me?”
Sevro steps forward to stand at my side even as the rest of them look at me blankly.
He did not agree with my plan initially. He wanted to stay on Mars and dare the Senate to arrest me at the center of the Seventh Legion barracks.
“To where?” Holiday asks.
“You’re running?” Victra almost spits.
“I’m not running. But if I tell you, then you are party to conspiracy,” I say. Not to mention, the plan’s details will leak like word of the emissaries. I look at each of them, wondering again who betrayed me. “You will be outlaws. Some of you have doubts about this. That, I understand. You followed me to Luna, to Mars, Earth, and Mercury. I will not pressure you now to compromise your oath to the Republic. We are family. We will survive this. But if you think your duty is here, it is time for us to part. Vale willing, we will see one another again soon.”
For a moment, no one moves. Then Holiday walks around the table to stand in front of me, her face wracked with guilt. “I’ve followed you everywhere, but I can’t abandon the Republic.”