“Like your remaining son?” she asks.
He takes a long, calming breath. “You will be quiet or you will leave.”
Mustang grinds her teeth together, but stays uncharacteristically silent. Pliny’s lips curl in a rather pleased smile.
“Don’t blame her, my goodmen, if she’s already tired of war,” Pliny says, softly placing a knife in a wounded enemy. “After so many nocturnal summits spent engaging in horizontal diplomacy with the Bellona, her stamina isn’t what it used to be.”
Kavax lunges at Pliny. Daxo pulls him back just in time. But it’s Mustang who is first to speak over the uproar.
“I can defend my own honor, my goodman. But from Pliny, such insults are to be expected After all, I would be bitter too if my wife bent over backwards to make sure so many of your young mercenaries learned how to properly sheathe their swords.”
Pliny stares angrily at her as she rises, continuing, “I left Mars to pursue knowledge in the Sovereign’s court. I did not abandon my family, as so many of you have suggested. And I’m not sorry I left and missed conversations such as this. For you goodmen seem good only at one thing, and that is bickering. Yet you quickly come to agreement upon me as an item of ridicule. Curious. Is it because you see me as a threat to your power? Or is it simply because I’m a woman?” She peers at the few scattered women around the table. “If that is the case, you forget yourselves. This Society was founded by men and women based on merit.
“The dear Politico Pliny is right, however: I would have avoided this war. In fact, I tried. Why else do you think I allowed Cassius au Bellona to court me? But war is here. And I will protect my family again from all threats, those from without and from within.”
Augustus lets slip the smallest, barest of smiles, a twin to the first. His love is the most conditional I’ve ever seen. How quickly he can call his daughter a whore, then smile as she reclaims what power she lost in the room. Suddenly, she matters.
“Then what do you think of my plan?” I ask.
“I think it is dangerous. It spreads the war without ensuring our benefit. It is immoral and sets dangerous precedent. But then again, war is inherently immoral. So we must simply decide how far we want to go.”
“You know Octavia better than I,” I say. “How far will she go?”
Mustang is quiet for a moment. “If we have a victory and sue for peace either from a position of strength or weakness, she will accept the overture.…”
“You see!” Pliny beams.
Mustang isn’t finished. “She will suggest a neutral location. And on that day when we go to make peace, she will do everything in her power to kill all of us.”
Pliny looks back and forth between us, realizing how easily he’s been played.
“So there is no going back? Win or die?” I ask flatly.
“Indeed, Darrow,” she says with a smile. “Win or die.”
“It seems you’ve been outmaneuvered, Pliny. We move forward with Darrow’s plan.” Augustus stands. “Tomorrow, Praetor Licenus will take command of this vessel and its fleet and lead the Sovereign’s fleet on a chase, while I take a small strike group of corvettes and frigates to the Gas Giants. With them, I will raid the shipyards of Ganymede.”
“I will go with you, my liege!” Kavax booms. His fox jumps off his lap at the noise to tremble under the table.
“No.”
Kavax’s face falls. “No? But, Nero … the defenses there—battle stations, destroyers, torchShips—they will shred any force of corvettes you bring.” His large hands gesture imploringly. “Let us do this for you.”
“You forget who I am, my friend.”
“Apologies, I did not mean …”
Augustus waves the apology away and turns to Mustang. “Daughter, you will take what elements of the fleet you need to execute the second portion of Darrow’s plan.”
Watching Pliny now is like watching a child try to hold on to a handful of sand. He doesn’t understand the course things have taken. But he’s not fool enough to make his play now. He will wait in the grass like the snake he is.
The ArchGovernor turns to me. “Darrow, what did you say to me before you shed Cassius’s blood?”
“I said that you should be King of Mars.”
“My friends.” Augustus sets his thin hands down on the table, fingers rigid. “Darrow has demonstrated powers none of you possess. He predicts what I want. I want to be king. Make me so. Dismissed.”
The room empties. I wait with Augustus. He wants a private word.
Mustang brushes close to me as she passes, winking playfully.
“Nice speech,” I mutter.
“Nice plan.”
She squeezes my hand and then she is gone.
“In league again,” Augustus observes. He gestures me to close the door. I sit near him. The hard lines of his face deepen as he stares into my eyes. From a distance, the lines are invisible. But this close, they are the things that make his face. Loss gives a man lines like this, reminding me, This is the man you do not anger. The man you do not owe.
“We can do away with righteous indignation before it finds a place on your tongue.” He steeples his fingers, examining the manicured cuticles. “The question is simple, and you will answer it: Are you a demokrat?”
I had not expected this. I try not to look around nervously.
“No, my liege. I am no demokrat.”`
“Not a Reformer? Not someone who wants to alter our Compact to create a more fair, more decent society?”
“Man is organized properly now,” I say, pausing, “except for a few notable exceptions.”
“Pliny?”
“Pliny.”
“You each have your gifts. And you would do well not to question my judgment in keeping him close.”
“Yes, my liege. But I am no more a demokrat than you are a Lune.”
He does not smile as I intended. Instead, he presses a button and the speech I used to win over the Pax comes on the speakers. An HC holo shows the faces of different Colors.
“Watch their expressions.” He watches mine as he cycles through a series of video clips from different parts of the ship as the crew listens to the speech I gave before they rose against their Gold commanders. “Do you see that? That right there. The spark? Do you?”
“I see it.”
“That is hope.” The man who killed my wife waits for my face to give me away. Good luck with that. “Hope.”
“Are you saying I made a mistake?” I ask.
He recalls old words. “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
“My heart has always been laid bare.”
“So you say.” His lips part slightly, hissing the words. “But as terrorists spread lies over the net, as bombings wrack our cities, as the lowColors rumble with displeasure, as we begin a war despite the termites in our foundation, you say this.”
“Any chaos is—”
“Shut your mouth. Do you know what would happen if the other Governors thought us Reformers? If the other houses looked at mine as a bastion of equality and demokracy?” He points to a glass. “Our potential allies.” He brushes the glass off the table, letting it shatter. Points to another. “Our lives.” It falls and shatters too. “It is bad enough my daughter had the ear of the Reformer bloc on Luna. You cannot seem political. Stay a warrior. Stay simple. Do you understand?”
What if the lowColors rally to us? I want to ask, but he would have his Obsidians kill me where I stand.
“I understand.”
“Good.” Augustus looks at his hands, twisting the ring there. Hesitancy creeps over him. “Can I trust you?”
“In what way?”
A scornful laugh bursts from his mouth. “Most would say yes without thinking.”
“Most men are liars.”
“Can I trust you with power autonomous from my own?” He scratches his jaw idly. “That is when many leave their lords. It is when hunger fills their eyes. The Romans learned this time and again. It is why they did not let generals cross the Rubicon with their armies without the permission of the Senate. Men with armies soon begin to realize how strong they are. And they always know that their particular strength is not forever. It must be used with haste, before their army leaves them. But hasty decisions can ruin empires. My son, for instance, must never be allowed such power.”