“No one was talking to you, servant,” I snap. He still clings to his honor, and my words dare him to attack.
Instead, he flicks his eyes to signal to a guard who enters the room and lunges at me from behind. I move without thinking. The world becomes like an orchestra as the skills Faria taught me take over. The guard touches me, a note on a piano. I counter with a rhythm of breaking his wrist. A gentle lyric as I duck the blow of his fist. A rising crescendo as my fingers lift to the spot in his chest where the energy flows. The crash of a cymbal as he falls, paralyzed. Drumbeats of another throne-room guard running to his aid. I howl in time as my kick casually punctuates a pop to his solar plexus. Chimes as he sails and a bell when I tap between his helm and neck to put him to sleep. I take a deep bow before the throne. My father and his seneschal sit unmoving.
“Bravo! Bravo! Shall I delight you with an encore?” I ask. “I think not. I’ll not fight for you,” I answer.
“It’s in your nature. It’s in every living thing that crawled from the muck to reach for the stars. You may be too dull to divine the disaster that confronts our race, or my reasons for why I’ve done what I’ve done, but if the pain I’ve caused you was truly so great, you would’ve let yourself die long ago. So stop whining about your mother and dead wife. Be man enough to kill me or kill yourself and join them. Otherwise, stop wasting your breath pretending you will.”
Edric nods at the men crumpled before me, now twitching. “Get them all out of my sight.”
I’m walked down palace halls flanked by Alberich and silent guards. We stop at a med bay where some minutes in a healing tank, combined with my own abilities, mend my contusions. All around I look for avenues of escape. I’m escorted to a small, but lavish room where a feast is laid before me.
“Regain your strength so that we may resume your training tomorrow,” Alberich says. “There’s a uniform on the bed.” He gestures to a folded navy-and-silver garment. “The funeral is in one hour. All the great houses will respect the fallen. Phaestion of the Julii will light the pyre so that Edgaard’s sparks may join the ancestors among the Elder Stars.”
“Phaestion? Shouldn’t it be Edric?” I ask.
“Phaestion’s Companions have become powerful forces within the government. Edgaard was the last credible threat to their triumph. The Julii prince insisted on this symbolic honor.”
“Edric loses his preeminence. I care not. One thing I’ve learned, Alberich, great warriors don’t necessarily make great leaders. The strongest man isn’t always the better man.”
“You think Phaestion is the better man?” he asks. “Put on the uniform. I’ll return in an hour.”
The purple of Meridian twilight is lit with the electric brilliance of every fireglobe in the city. I’m heralded by silver trumpets. I can almost hear the aquagraphic telecasters commenting—
Edmon Leontes, the once handsome and rebellious scion . . . what’s happened to him?
“Eyes forward, Edmon,” my father rasps. He leans on his cane and beckons me to stand beside him on a balcony overlooking the city.
“Hello, brother.” A woman with raven hair peeks from around my father’s shoulder.
“Lavinia,” I mutter, meeting her violet gaze.
“You look uglier than the last time we spoke.”
“Prison requires disfiguration,” I allow. “I feel much more at home with you all because of it.”
I lean on the railing and look to the lower balcony where Edric’s concubines—Lady Tandor, Rosalind Calay, and Olympias of House Flanders—as well as my sister Phoebe and her pudgy husband, Beremon Ruska, watch the sky procession.
“Quit your bickering,” Edric says, coughing. “Were I blessed with children as obedient as they are proud, I might actually enjoy the last few years of pain before me.”
“If you had children like that, they’d all be like Edgaard: dead.” I smile. Lavinia snickers.
“Edgaard died honorably, husband.” A cold, clammy hand grasps mine from behind. I know the face to expect before I turn. The white-powdered, moon-shaped face and black teeth of Miranda Wusong, the last remnant of the imperial house, looks back at me.
“There is no honor in death,” I say quietly. “Only ashes or food for worms.”
Miranda doesn’t bat an eye. “I’m so happy to see you.” Then under her breath: “A word misspoken by an heiress out of favor quickly hastens her fall from grace. You did not better my position by incurring your father’s wrath. Though you saved me from having to endure your company.”
I feel a pang of guilt. This woman no more desired to be a game piece in her forebears’ schemes than I did. Yet she has met the challenge with a dignity that I’ve rejected.
Drums beat a tattoo, reminding me of the Eventide on Bone. This beat, however, is regimented, and portends the wails of riders.
The black screamers round the avenue in trident formation, the black-and-purple capes of their riders whipping in the wind. The most handsome man you might ever see heads the pack. His smooth face looks carved of ivory, and he has high cheekbones, a square jaw, and lips perhaps just a shade too full for a man. His shock of thick, coppery hair floats behind him. A giant sondi circling above us broadcasts an enormous aquagraphic screen pasted to its flanks. I catch the close-up of Phaestion’s fierce gray eyes beneath his silver diadem. Voices erupt from the scraper windows, cheering for the handsome warrior. It’s beyond excitement. It’s worship.
“They used to cheer for me like that,” Edric rasps.
His cough turns into an uncontrollable spasm. He doubles over, trying not to spew spittle in front of the hovering camglobes. Miranda scrunches her face at the sour smell.
“They never cheered for you quite like that, Father,” Lavinia says quietly.
Alberich helps Edric stand upright and regain composure. “Our ancestors worshipped dying gods. Divine martyrs.” He laughs. “This boy wants to resurrect such cravenness in his own image!”
“Make a man a god and they’ll do more than follow him,” says Lavinia. “They’ll sacrifice. Maybe Phaestion plies the very catalyst needed to galvanize our people to change.”
War made civilization, Phaestion said when we were boys.
“House Julii perverts the principles of arête and the Balance,” my father snaps. “They should be our only gods.”
He’s only jealous it’s not him, I think.
“They say he’s immortal, that his mother is a goddess,” Miranda chimes in.
“He’s no more immortal than his old crone father, who was probably put in cold storage.” Edric spits blood into a handkerchief. “I doubt that old fool had the courage to truly undergo the patricide, though Phaestion now wears the orca tattoos.”
The procession stops. Phaestion gracefully steps from his screamer onto a floating platform, flanked by three others wearing the black and purple.