—
Thirty minutes later, we watch Apollonius devour a two-kilogram steak in the Nessus’s officers’ dining room with the patience and manners of a well-bred crocodile. Each bite-sized piece is dipped into the jus and chewed laboriously before being washed down with a thick Bordeaux from our stores. When he has finished, he leaves several ounces of the steak unattended, as well as a thumb of the red wine, and has only a spoonful of the iced lemon dessert that he requested made for him by Tongueless. He leans back in his chair and blesses my lieutenants with an expansive smile as Alexandar takes his plate away. Apollonius levels his gaze at Alexandar.
“You’re a pureblood-looking boy. What is your name?”
“Alexandar.”
Apollonius eyes him with interest and then gestures to Sevro and Colloway. “Does it not rankle you to serve such genetic inferiors, Alexandar?”
“I’ve now seen sharks fly and lions bark.” Alexandar laughs. “A lecture over genes from a Valii-Rath.” He leans forward, Apollonius’s plate still in his hands. “It would have been a severe pleasure to see my grandfather educate you on the merit of your genes.”
“And whom do you call kin, Alexandar?” Apollonius asks.
“Lorn au Arcos.”
“Well now! A griffin in the flesh.” Apollonius is impressed. “Blood of the Conquerors still in your veins makes you an endangered species. You must have been there when my baby brother was gutted by your grandfather on Europa. You would have been in the seed of youth. Eight, nine? Tell me, did the violence excite you?”
“It educated me on how to kill Valii-Rath. In that, it proved most satisfactory.”
“One could say we have a blood feud between us, young man.”
“Please,” Alexandar says with another laugh. “I wouldn’t give your lowly house the dignity of my attention.” The insult finds its mark. Sevro shoos him out of the room with a fraternal slap on the backside.
“Apollonius,” I say quietly. “If you insist on provoking my men, we will have a problem.”
“Provocation is the nature of predators like us, Darrow.” He looks around. “But of course, where are my manners? Apologies for offending you.” He waves his hand to the walls. “This is not your moonBreaker. Nor a dreadnought or a destroyer. The officers’ mess is much too small. A torchShip perhaps? Smaller?”
He’s a sharp one. “It’s a frigate. Xiphos-class.”
“So they’re finally deployed. What a curious ship for a warlord, and custom tables…What a curious exodus from Deepgrave. If one didn’t know better, a sagacious intellect might suspect that something is foul in the state of the Republic.”
“This is a black ops mission,” I say. The less he knows, the better. “The Morning Star is a little less than discreet.”
“Indeed,” he says. “Now, I think it is time you tell me about my brother and what has befallen my house in my absence.”
Sevro smiles. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
“Your house is a shadow,” I say. “Your brother may have bought his life. But it was at a steep price. He is a political puppet. Your destroyers and torchShips have been given to your enemies, the Carthii of Venus. Your coffers have been drained into the Ash Lord’s own pockets. Many of your legions have been disbanded, the men conscripted to serve the Ash Lord. Your house is small yet again. Everything you built on the profit of war is gone….”
“Except my name.” A great darkness has built in his eyes.
“Give it a year,” Sevro says. “Men forget.”
“How do you know all this?” Apollonius asks skeptically.
“One of your family lawyers defected several years ago.”
“And where is he now?”
“Slipped in the shower,” Sevro says. “Our people found him in thirty-four pieces. Atalantia likes her assassins to make a statement.”
Apollonius smiles pleasantly. “And what of my brother? Has he sat idle as the house of my mother and father was pillaged by that Lunese brute?”
“The lawyer said Tharsus has given himself over to vice,” I say.
“Oh, how typical of him.” He picks at his nails. “If my house has fallen to disgrace, what is my utility to you? In six years, I imagine the defenses for Venus have quite changed. I have neither information nor means.”
“No. But your brother does.”
I throw a holo of Venus into the air above the table. The verdant planet with two polar ice caps is ringed with metal and military ships. A great dark spot mars the center of one of Venus’s oceans. Starhall thinks that is where the Ash Lord resides, but his confidants are far more discreet than those of Valii-Rath.
“This is the latest image of Venus from our spy telescopes,” I say. “Unlike Luna, she is self-sustaining. Farmland, teeming oceans, and vast mineworks. But the rigors of war are demanding. All production is geared toward the war effort. There is no trade. That means no ships in or out.”
“There is trade from Mercury….”
“No longer. Mercury’s skies are mine,” I say.
Apollonius’s eyebrows float upward. “Indeed? Respect. How did you bypass the defense platforms?”
“With an Iron Rain,” Sevro says.
“What a price you must have paid. What a price.” He looks around the table. “Is that why you must risk life and limb for this desperate gambit, because you shattered your army?”
I ignore him. “As you can see, there is an extreme military presence on Venus. The engines of this ship and the stealth capabilities could conceivably run the blockade to escape Venus if we need to, but not to land there. We need you to help us land.”
“As I said—”
“Your brother may have tamed his spirit to survive. He may have bent a knee to the Ash Lord. But what is one thing that a brother Rath cannot tame?”
Sevro looks at Apollonius’s plate. “His appetite.”
“The rigors of war have forced even the wealthy to ration. But your brother has plunged himself into debt with his taste for blackmarket goods, and his appetite has not declined. Sevro…”
He pulls up his datapad. “Ninety-nine boxes of Earth wine, two hundred bottles of baiji, two hundred bottles of brandy.” He grimaces and says in a small voice, “One hundred thirty-seven bottles of Earth whiskey. Four bottles from Mars.” I look back at him, noting the low count of Martian whiskey. Sevro remains assiduously looking down at his datapad. “Two hundred bottles of arrack. Two hundred bottles of schochu. Two thousand kilograms of beef, five hundred kilograms of lamb, four hundred snails, three kilograms of hummingbird tongues, three kilograms of caviar, and twenty imaginary Pinks of Quicksilver’s personal stock.”
Slowly, Apollonius begins to clap.