They land between the trees on the grass, blocking our way back to the Citadel. Obsidian Praetorians and Gold knight-captains. The Praetorian Obsidians are titanic, like golems pulled from the stone of some mountain. Crueler by far than those we used at the Academy. No armor like theirs in all the worlds. Dark purple inlaid with black, like coral curling over their titan bodies. They stand in tight squad formation, loyal and bound to each other as they are to their faith.
Thumpthumpthump till there are ninety-nine. Thump. Their Golden commander lands last, on a knee. He rises, tall helmet a laughing wolfskull. His cape of gold, emblazoned with the pyramid of the Society, kicks sideways in the wind. An Olympic Knight. There are twelve in the Solar System, sworn to protect the Compact of the Society against all who’d defy it. This is the Rage Knight, the post Lorn filled for sixty years till he left for Europa. They represent what the Golds see as the dominant themes of man, the same as our school houses. A man slighter than myself wears the armor. So the Sovereign’s already filled Lorn’s former post.
“Declare yourself, knight!” I shout.
The knight allows his helm to melt back into his armor. His flaxen hair falls over an ugly hatchet face. Wet from sweat, lined with age and stress. I bark out a laugh when he smiles out that sideslash of a mouth. I draw stares. Now they’ll only think me madder. The Rage Knight falls from the sky, and I laugh in his face.
He cackles. “Don’t you recognize me, you little shiteater?”
“Fitchner, you look uglier than I remember!”
“Fitchner?” Tactus snorts. “How nostalgic.”
“Hello, boyo.” Fitcher laughs at seeing Tactus in the ArchGovernor’s cloak. “Nice cape, but you’re not ArchGovernor Augustus.” Fitchner clucks his tongue and sets his hands on his hips. “ArchGovernor! ArchGovernor! Darling, where the devil are you?”
The ArchGovernor rolls his eyes and steps past me. “Proctor Mars.”
“There’s the darling! And that’s an old title, didn’t you know?”
“I see you have a new helmet.”
“It is pretty, isn’t it? The ladies love it. Can’t remember when I was laid so much by Golden stock.” Fitchner moves his hips suggestively. “It was such a bother getting it. Thought there’d never be an end to the duels and tests! We did it in front of the Sovereign, boyo. Each man, each woman, making their case. Everyone who thought the post should be theirs. Time and again. But fortune favors the nasty!”
“How …,” I wonder aloud. “You beat everyone?”
“Hardly,” my ArchGovernor sneers. “It goes to the great warriors.” He strafes Fitchner with his eyes. “Which you are not, Fitchner. What did you promise the Sovereign for your new helmet?”
“Oh, I rode Darrow’s star when he beat your boy. Hello, Jackal, you little rugrat. Then there was a gorydamn contest and, well, you can ask Tactus’s oldest brother and Proctor Jupiter about the specifics.…” He strikes a pose. “I’m more than meets the eye, eh?”
“So you don’t have a new master with the new helmet?” Augustus asks.
“Master? Pfah!” Fitchner comically puffs up his chest. “Olympic Knights have no master but our conscience. We defend the Society’s Compact, subservient only to our duty.”
“Once. Now you are the Sovereign’s servants,” Daxo declares.
“As are we all, my dear Telemanus,” Fitchner replies. “Great admirer of your brother and your family, by the bye. Wonderful warhammer you carried at that tournament on Thebos. Gorydamn scary lineage. I’ve always meant to ask, which of your ancestors screwed the rhinoceros?”
Daxo raises his eyebrows in delicate offense. Kavax grumbles like his son Pax might have.
“Sorry. Was it a grizzly instead?” Fitchner grunts another laugh. “A joke. Keen? We’re all servants, though, eh? Gorydamn slaves to the one with the scepter.”
“I assume, then, your loyalty to Mars is gone and cannot be … remembered?” Augustus asks. “Since you’re a servant.”
Fitchner claps his gloved hands together. “Mars? Mars? What is Mars but a gorydamn hunk of rock? It’s done nothing for me.”
“Mars is home, Fitchner.” Augustus waves to those around us. “The Sovereign bid you to find us. Well, here we are—kin from your own planet. Will you join your loyalty to us? Or will you give us up?”
“Oh, you are a jokester, Augustus! A prime jokester. My loyalties are to the Compact and to myself, as yours are to yourself, my liege. Not to a rock. Not to false kin. And it benefits me to be loyal to the Sovereign. Now, I’ve been told to place you and your kin under house arrest. You recall we set aside a prime villa for your pleasure? It’d be dandyfine if you could scamper on back there. Enjoy our hospitality, eh, boyo?”
“You forget yourself,” Augustus hisses.
“I forget much. Where I put my pants. Who I’ve kissed. Who I’ve killed.” Fitchner touches his arms, his belly, his face. “But forget myself? Never!” He points to the Obsidians around him. “And I’ve certainly not forgotten my dogs.”
“And where are mine? Where is Alfrún?”
“I killed your Stained mutts. Both of them.” Fitchner smiles. “They were barking, Augustus. Barking so loudly.”
Rage burns across Augustus’s face.
“I hope they weren’t expensive, boyo,” Fitchner says with a smile.
“You speak as though we are familiars, Bronzie.”
“We are familiar.”
“As though we were equal. We are not equal. I am a descendant of the Conquerors, of the Iron Golds. I am the lord of a planet. What are you? A—”
“I’m a man with a stunFist.” He shoots Augustus in the chest. Augustus crumples backward as his Praetors gasp. “That’ll show him to not wear his armor to galas. Now!” Fitchner smiles. “Who can I reason with?”
“Me.” The Jackal takes a step forward. “I am heir to this house.”
“Hmm … pass! You’re creepy.”
He shoots the Jackal in the chest with the stunFist.
“Foolishness! Enough foolishness.” Kavax steps forward, pushing his son back. “Speak with me or Darrow. It’s plain enough, your intentions.”
“Indeed. Darrow. You shall come with me.”
“Like hell,” Victra sneers, stepping in front of me.
Fitchner rolls his eyes. “Telemanus, you and your son take the ArchGovernor back to his villa and then return to your own. Matters must be sorted.” Fitchner gazes quietly at the bald Gold. His words now scrape out like raw iron on slate. “This is not a request, Telemanus.”
Telemanus looks to me. “My boy trusted this one. So shall I.”
“I need your assurance my friends will not be hurt,” I say to Fitchner.
He looks at Victra. “They won’t be.”
“Convince me.”
He sighs, bored.
“The Sovereign can’t gorywell execute an entire house absent a trial for treason. Can she? That violates the Compact. And you know how that would make us Olympic Knights feel, not to mention the other houses. Remember how her father met his end. But if you resist, well, that’s another matter entirely.” Fitchner flips a piece of gum into his mouth. “Do you resist?”
I cast a look at my company, favoring Kavax au Telemanus and his son with smile of gratitude. What trust they give the man who led their son to his death.
I clench my teeth and bow. “Then I suppose I am at the Sovereign’s service.”
“As are we all.”
14
The Sovereign
“Once upon a time, there was a family of strong wills,” she says, voice slow and measured as a pendulum. “They did not love one another. But together they presided over a farm. And on that farm, there were hounds, and bitches, and dairy cows, and hens, and cocks, and sheep, and mules, and horses. The family kept the beasts in line. And the beasts kept them rich, fat, and happy. Now, the beasts obeyed because they knew the family was strong, and to disobey was to suffer their united wrath. But one day, when one of the brothers struck his brother over the eye, a cock said to a hen, ‘Darling, matronly hen, what would really happen if you stopped laying eggs for them?’”