“Seraphina brought back nothing.”
“Is that a fact?” She stands to look down at him. A dozen of her men come forward. “Romulus au Raa, you are under arrest.” I wait for her to say the word “treason,” as does Romulus, but it never comes. “Bellerephon, seize him.”
Flanked by his men, Bellerephon steps forward. Diomedes’s hasta snaps up from his waist and forms into a two-meter-long lance. He points the long black length at his cousin. “Aevius, Bellerephon, as much as I love you, take another step and you will be for the worms.”
“Come now, cousin. Don’t be truculent,” Bellerephon says. But Diomedes does not relent.
“Son…” Dido says. “Your duty is to the Compact. Your father has violated it…”
“By protecting Seraphina?”
“For other sins.”
“You have evidence?”
“Forthcoming.”
“Insufficient.” He does not move.
She sighs. “Disarm Diomedes. Kill anyone who isn’t dragonblood.” Dido’s men hesitate, looking to Bellerephon for confidence. He nods them forward and they move as one toward Romulus and his defenders, their long razors held in two hands above their heads. Diomedes lifts his rigid razor to his lips. He closes his eyes and kisses the metal. Then his eyes open, and the spirit behind them bears no kindness.
When Diomedes moves, they begin to die.
He skims diagonally across the front rank of his mother’s men with such possession of his body that it seems he were another species entirely. One made of wind and wrath. He sidesteps two of their thrusts and removes the head of the one he called Aevius, and exchanges two parries with a thickset woman before pulling a second, shorter razor called a kitari from his belt, and skewering her stomach and ripping sideways through half her rib cage. Aevius’s body hits the stone and the woman stands there trying to stuff intestine and mesentery back into her abdomen before collapsing to her knees, bubbling screams from her mouth. Bellerephon and Diomedes crash together at the end of Diomedes’s assault. I watch in awe, and glance at Cassius. I thought he was the greatest Gold swordsman left. By the look on his face, I know now that presumption was shared and mutually shattered the moment Diomedes moved.
Sparks fly from the long razors of Diomedes and Bellerephon before they separate, both of far greater skill than the men around them. The other Golds encircle Diomedes, about to close on him from his flanks when his brother Marius lunges forward clumsily and sheathes his blade through the eye socket of a rangy Peerless. He’s slashed in the side of the head by Bellerephon. He reels back, like a child struck by a father, losing his right ear and very nearly his right eye. Flesh flaps open. Bellerephon kills two of the bodyguards as Diomedes takes one more of his lot. Vela is about to throw herself into the fray as Dido’s other men shoulder their rifles to gun the unarmored Raa down.
“Hold!” Dido shouts, stopping Bellerephon and Diomedes from cutting one another apart. Bellerephon draws back to her side, warily watching his cousin.
“No hand touches my father,” Diomedes growls as more Peerless encircle him. His eyes stay on Bellerephon, the most dangerous of the traitors. Marius and Vela tighten to make a hydra fighting formation, their spines pressed together as blood sheets down Marius’s neck. Clearly no warrior, he looks ridiculous amongst the rangy killers, like an overgrown glass figurine trying to dance with boulders. Despite their earlier friction, Diomedes angles himself to protect his younger brother.
Diomedes points his gore-covered weapon at his mother.
“You would kill your own mother?” Dido asks, stepping past her men toward him till the tip of his razor rests against her right breast. She leans into it. Blood wells through her tan armor. “Me. Who carried you in my womb. Me who nursed you on my flesh, on my milk.” She leans forward, centimeter by centimeter letting the blade enter into her body. “Me who pushed you into this world.”
“Enough,” Romulus says coldly. “You waste our blood. Let them take me. I have nothing to hide.”
Only when Romulus sets a hand on Diomedes’s shoulder does his son lower the blade. At her brother’s instruction, Vela lets her own weapon clatter to the ground. Once the rest of Romulus’s men are unarmed, Dido’s come forward warily and bind Romulus and his kin.
It ends as fast as it began. If this were a coup of the Core, Romulus and the rest of us would have been mowed down from the door. Fast and clean, with blame placed where it does further good—that is how my grandmother dealt with her rivals. It is how she told me I should deal with mine.
Seraphina enters with her mother’s men as her father is escorted out. Her eyes follow him with deep sadness. Dido bends by the dead Golds and tips a finger into each of their blood and spreads it on her Peerless scar as a Rim sign of respect. “See that they are sent to the dust with all honors,” she tells her lancer.
“Seraphina,” Dido says. The women embrace.
“Tell me you found it.”
“I did. You told me no one would be hurt.”
“Diomedes.” Her mother shrugs as if that explains it.
I stand up behind the pillar. Cassius joins me hesitantly. “Shall we try this again?” I ask.
He winces. “Let me guess. You want to talk. Go on. Use that silver tongue.”
“With pleasure.”
We step out together from our hiding place. The women turn to us. Their men rush forward with their razors. Cassius and I are knocked again to our knees.
“We get the gorydamn point,” Cassius mutters when one grabs his hair.
“The infamous gahja,” Dido says with a laugh. “Hiding like mice.”
I look at Seraphina. “We never had a proper chance at introductions. I am Castor au Janus. This is my brother, Regulus. Pleased to finally meet you. Now, considering I saved you from being a three-course Obsidian feast, would it be terribly rude of me to ask for a bath?”
“They saved my life,” Seraphina says in amusement.
“Saved your life?” Dido is annoyed. “I did not send you because you are a woman who needs saving. But still…My goodmen, I do not believe my husband showed you proper hospitality. Men of the Rim can be so blunt. Prithee, excuse him and let me amend the oversight.” She has her men unclasp the muzzles and opens a foil packet of wafers from a pocket on her armor and breaks a wafer in half to give to us. She pushes the pieces into our mouths, but we’re too dehydrated to swallow them down until her men push canteens to our cracked lips. “You are now my guests. And guests need not kneel.”
WE FLY LOW AND FAST over the bucking sea. A storm has risen over the Atlantic, heaving up mountainous waves of cresting foam. With a howl of joy over the coms, Sevro leads his squadron through a wall of water. They look like sea lions, their scarabSkin oily and glistening wet as they weave above and through the churn, red beacon lights blinking from the heels of their gravBoots.