“Hello, wife,” Romulus says from his pallet.
“Husband,” she says, voice muffled as she strides in front of her men toward Romulus’s smaller coterie. She wears a tan cloak, underneath which is dust-colored light karatan armor with radiation shielding and a hood. A kryll covers her face, orange reflective goggles cover her eyes, and around her head is wrapped a cloth ugan, like a Bedouin rover of Old Earth. A long black rifle is strapped to her back. She removes a new item every third step, till at last she pulls free the ugan, pulls back the hood, and a thick tangle of graying dark hair falls about her shoulders, framing a masculine, strident face with ridgelines for cheekbones. Gray-gold eyes flare out from behind thick rows of dark eyelashes and heavy, sleepy eyelids like those of her daughter. There is a duskiness about her, and a warmth to skin raised in Venusian seas, close to the bosom of the sun. “You said you were going hunting. But you didn’t say your quarry was gahja and errant daughters.” Dido clucks her tongue.
“Perhaps it should be duplicitous wives,” Romulus replies. He scans the soldiers behind her, eyes settling on a towering young Gold who bears a striking resemblance to Romulus himself. The man has an iron fist the size of a grapefruit embedded in the sternum of his armor. Doesn’t leave much of the man’s temperament to the imagination. “Bellerephon, you too?”
“You’ve held us at bay long enough, Uncle.” The young man’s voice is reptilian and amused. His eyebrows are thick as catepillars atop a dramatic face with a hooked nose. “Debts need repaying.”
Romulus looks back at his wife. “Is this really what we have come to?”
“It is where you have brought us. Now, where is my daughter?”
“In the upper reaches.” Romulus sighs. “You’ll find her scarred from her travels.”
Dido nods and motions to three eager young lancers. They depart at a run. She turns to her two sons. “Hello, children. I see your father has employed you in his schemes. Marius, I wish I could say I’m surprised, but you’ve always been a general offence to me. If ever a child deserved to be forgotten in the desert…But Diomedes, you disappoint me. Skulking about in the night on ill errands is the duty of an assassin, one of your father’s Krypteia, not an Olympic Knight.”
“Mother,” Diomedes says, nodding his head and dutifully receiving the kiss she puts on his brow, not knowing what to do. “Why are you here?”
“To voice my dissent.”
He eyes the men behind her. “And the men?”
“To ensure that dissent is heard,” Bellerephon says.
“I wasn’t talking to you, cousin,” Diomedes snaps. He steps toward his mother. “I know you and Father have had your differences, but this…this is beyond the pale. It is unforgiveable.”
“So many things are unforgiveable.” She shrugs. “I’m only visiting my husband. But why do I feel I’ve caught him with his hand on the water jug? Has he a paramour here? Come out, paramour!” She frowns. “No? None?” She makes a show of looking around. “None at all?”
“Are you quite done?” Romulus asks.
“Oh, Romulus, I’ve hardly just begun.” She fans out her cloak and folds her legs to sit across from him. Cassius waits with me in the shadows of the pillar, watching the door. There are too many Golds to escape.
“Wait,” I whisper to him. “Let them sort it out.” It pains him to sit and watch, but the new Golds are our only hope.
“Did you fire upon my escort vessel outside?” Romulus asks.
She shrugs innocently. “I remove obstacles from my path.”
“And my Krypteia?”
“Sorted.”
“You raise a hand against your Sovereign,” Marius hisses. “Have you both finally lost your wits?”
“No,” Dido sneers. “I have not lost my wits, you venomous, loathsome toad. You have lost yours, if you ever had any to begin with.”
“Mother—” Diomedes begins.
She holds up a single finger. “Mother is speaking.” She looks back to her husband as her large son lowers his head. “Did you think you could keep this a secret? From me? From the council? Shutter my bright child away and I would be none the wiser or worse about it?”
“Must we do this in public?”
“What have we to hide?” She smiles. “Do you know why she even went into the Gulf?”
“Because you sent her after your folly.”
This catches Dido off guard.
“You knew. But did not arrest me?”
“You are my wife,” he says as if that answers everything. I watch for some sign of affection to take hold of her. Even on Luna, their love was something of fable. Romulus and Dido, the star-crossed lovers who burned a city for their love. But the years, it seems, have dimmed their star. And now Dido pulls back away from Romulus, a look of disgust spreading across her face.
“Then you are a coward.”
“Perhaps. Are you more angry that I have faces you cannot see, or that I showed you mercy?” Romulus asks, amused.
“Where is the man I married?” she whispers. “The man who could carry a world on his shoulders? I look for him, but all I find is this withered, cowed creature you’ve become. If you were an Iron Gold, you would have sent me to the dust.”
Romulus sighs, unaffected. “All this Venusian prattle and bluster…You’re wading in the shallows, my dear. Shall we cross the Rubicon?” He looks past her to address the fifty Gold who’ve followed her into the room. More pack the hall outside. They watch from behind filtered reflective goggles, their cloaks making them look like devilish bats gathered in the shadows. “Children of the Dust, you stand before your Sovereign uninvited, wearing weapons and hiding your eyes like Horde filth. Remove them and kneel.”
They do not.
“I said kneel.”
Not a man moves. “There we have it,” Romulus says. “Alea iacta est.”
“You are a Sovereign, not a king, my love,” Dido says, her humor fled. “You have forgotten that, as did the old Luna bitch.” My blood stirs at the mention of my grandmother, even if her words are true enough. “Forgotten that you are expected to serve the will of the Moon Lords from Io to Titan. As you cloister yourself here, men loyal to the Rim seize control of Sungrave. They move against your Praetors in their ships, your Imperators in their barracks. By dawn, patriots will have control of Io, and I, as its Protector, will serve until such time that a new Sovereign can be elected.”
He smiles ruefully. “You may seize Io, but you cannot hold her. The people will not forget your birthright. A gahja till I made you my wife.”
“Don’t you start with me too….”
“The blood of my ancestors watered this moon. Their hands shaped her. She is ours and we are hers. You are not a Raa, no matter your brood. I make you a Raa.” He leans forward, baring his teeth. “Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, they will all fall upon you, and then Norvo and the rest of them will come and you will have spent your life and mine for nothing.”
“Perhaps.”