Oh, she must hate me for this.
Below the lift, lights glow along the cobbled paths that cut through the huge forest of flower trees. The musicians no longer play. Instead, we hear shouts and screams and long periods of terrifying silence. Golds run beneath. Fleeing to the stone halls past the forest, where they can access their ships, fly home. Only, some aren’t fleeing. They are hunting.
Something has happened I did not expect. Other family feuds find satisfaction tonight. It felt the same at the Institute when the other students realized it wasn’t a game. That there weren’t rules. An eerie feeling, a notion that devils roam the grounds instead of men. Who knows what anyone will do now that the rules are gone?
There are four hunters in the distance. A pack of three men and one young woman dash silently through the forest. They hop a brook. Running with all the vigor of the hungry. All the ambition of youth. From House Falthe, it seems. I recognize raisin-eyed Lilath, the girl the Jackal sent to deliver the holo of me killing Julian to Cassius. With her is Cipio, the stout young man who once aided Antonia in and out of the bedroom.
We watch them in silence as our lift descends. Carrying death, the lean pack streaks through the trees toward an unsuspecting line of House Thorne family members, all in dresses and suits of red and white; too late they head frantically for the stone halls. Their standard is the rose. It falls as the killers burst from the trees. A family dies. Scary how quiet and fast it is with razors. Different from my duel. I took my time. They don’t. I see a boy of ten cut apart. There’s no mercy for Gold children. They are not seen as innocent. They’re enemy seeds. Destroy them or fight them years from now. A woman in a ball gown slashes back, manages to kill one of the Falthes before being cut down. Two children run. One is caught. The other escapes. She’s the only one.
Then the Falthe lancers dance. Taking large, exaggerated stomps. They turn in different directions, grinding their toes into the dark ground. They aren’t dancing.
“Goryhell,” Tactus curses, and rubs his face.
“The children …,” Victra whispers.
Augustus says nothing, his face as resolute as stone.
“The Thornes have fifteen children.” Tears bead in Victra’s eyes, surprising me.
“Monsters,” the Jackal whispers, sending chills up my spine, because his acting is so damn good. He couldn’t give a piss.
Children. Would Eo have sung if she’d known this was the chorus? We all carry burdens. And as the killers slip away from the murdered family, I know my burden will crush me under its weight one day. Just not today.
“Data jammer deployed,” says Daxo au Telemanus. He flashes me the datapad on his wrist. “Datapads are dead. They don’t want us contacting our ships in orbit.”
Augustus looks at his blank datapad and says that soon the other families will be summoning their Obsidian, Gold, and Gray attendants. We must be off planet and back in a position of strength before the tide turns against us.
“You made this chaos, Darrow. Deliver me from it.” He leans toward me and feels the pulse of the Praetor I carry. “Get rid of her. She’ll be dead in a minute.” He wipes his hands. “The children weigh us down enough already.”
The Praetor murmurs something to me as I set her on the floor of the lift. I don’t know what she says. When I die, I will say nothing because I know the Vale waits on the other side. What waits for this warrior? Only darkness. I didn’t even understand her last words, and we discard her like a broken sword. I close her eyes with my bloody fingers, leaving long, fading marks. Victra squeezes my shoulder.
Standing, I give my orders to the lancers and the other men of war. There are fifteen I would consider good killers. Some my age, others well into old age. Yet not one contradicts me. Not even Pliny. The Telemanuses in particular seem eager to follow. Each holds my gaze longer than necessary, nodding deeper than mere formality.
“I hope no one is bored.” They laugh. “We’ll have company if another family decides they may earn favor with the Bellona or the Sovereign by taking the ArchGovernor’s head,” I say. “We must kill that company, and carve our way to the hangars. Telemanus, you and your son are now the ArchGovernor’s shadows. Attend nothing else. Do you understand?” They nod their massive heads. “Hic sunt leones.”
“Hic sunt leones.”
When the lift reaches ground, forty men and women wait for us. Family Norvo of Triton and Family Codovan of Jupiter’s moons.
“Unfortunate odds,” Tactus sighs.
“Cordovan and Norvo are ours,” Augustus replies. “Bought and paid for.”
“Rapscallion! Codovan, you rapscallion!” Kavax thunders. “I thought you were a Bellona man!”
Augustus expected something like this.
I take command of the new Golds. Again, I thought someone would object. They just stand watching me, waiting for my orders. All these Praetors, all these politicians and sinewy men and women of war. I hold back a chuckle. Amazing the power you have when you’re bloody up to the sleeves and none of it is your own.
We escort the ArchGovernor out of the forest. Three times we’re assailed, but I have Tactus take Augustus’s cloak and lead some of the attackers on a wild-goose chase. Roses of a thousand shades fall from the trees as Golds fight beneath them. They’re all red in the end.
The gang of three from House Falthe try to ambush Tactus as he returns to the main body. He wheels on them and with little help lays all but Lilath low. She scampers off as he kills Cipio and stomps on the dead man. “Babykillers,” he spits over and over, till Victra pulls him away. I watch for the Jackal. Every moment I expect a dart in the back, to die as Leto did. But the Jackal merely follows, as does his father. No one saw what he did to Leto. Or if they did, their fear silences them.
When we reach the stone halls beyond the forest, finally crossing a white limestone bridge, the rules of the Society seem to return. LowColors skitter out of our way as we, now seventy strong, storm through the halls to the hangars to leave this moon. But when we reach our hangar, we find that our ship is gone. We rush to the landing pads lined with trees and grass. All the family ships are missing. Society ripWings patrol the sky.
We question a shaking Orange. Tactus holds him up by his collar. He shudders as he looks at us seventy bloody souls. He’s never spoken to a Gold before, much less ones like us. Victra knocks Tactus’s hand away and speaks quietly to the Orange.
“He says the ships were required to return home two hours ago.”
“First they don’t let Obsidians into the gala, now this,” Tactus mutters.
“That means the Sovereign planned something,” says the Jackal. “A something that was never allowed to blossom. She removed our Obsidians, our ships, to isolate the houses from their sources of power,” he explains, eyeing the Telemanuses warily. “Marooning us. What do you suppose she had up her little sleeves, Father?”
Augustus ignores his son; he’s looking to the sky.
“Mothermercy,” Victra curses.
“Gather yourselves!” Kavax bellows to his warriors.
“Piss on my face.” Tactus goes pale beside me.
I look up and see doom coming. “Praetorians!” Seventy razors curl out and we fan apart in case they have energy weapons.
“Darrow. You’re with me,” Augustus says.
The enemy is little more than black dots in the night sky. But our eyes are keen. The dark bastards streak from the darkness and impact the ground like fallen devils, always in their threes.
Thumpthumpthump. Thumpthumpthump. Thumpthumpthump.