“I didn’t know this,” I say quietly.
“History is written by the victors.”
Lorn looks at me and the lines on his face seem to deepen. “I don’t want to go to war, Darrow. In my time, I have seen a moon burn, because one man would not bow. I have led a million warriors shot from warships to invade a planet. You cannot begin to understand the horror of it. You think only of how beautiful it will be. But they are men. They are women. They have families. And they die by the thousands. And you will be helpless to protect even the best of your friends.”
“Ah!” He points uphill. “There’s Icarus.”
Rain drips from the pines as we push through the lower tree boughs to find Icarus, Lorn’s pet griffin, sleeping in a great bed of moss on a high promontory inside the small forest. Icarus’s paws curl into his body. His wings curve around him as he sleeps—iridescent and glittering with droplets of water. His great eagle’s head is nearly larger than I, one of his eyes half the size of my skull. The Carvers made him well.
“He looks peaceful when he sleeps,” Lorn says.
“He’s bigger than any I’ve seen,” I say, unable to conceal the awe in my voice.
“You’ve not been to the pole of Mars or Earth, then.”
“Where did you buy him?”
“Martian Carvers made him for my family. Damn that fashionable Zanzibar twit. Icarus is of the same genus as the beasts in the high aeries in Mars’s north pole. The ones they use to terrify Obsidians into believing magic is real.” He strokes the sleeping giant. “Are you still in love with the ArchGovernor’s daughter?” He glances back at me hopefully. “Is that why you do this? I heard about her and the Bellona.”
“It isn’t about what happened between her and Cassius.”
“No?” he sighs. “I could have understood that, at least. You were sloppy in that, you should know. The Winding Wisp would have done him in three moves.”
“I wasn’t sloppy. I was making a show.”
“Sloppy. Violets are showmen. Did I train you to be a showman?”
I move past him to pet Icarus. “So you do care about me.”
He does not answer me for a spell, and it’s then that I know the moment is nearly upon us. “In another life, you would have been one of my sons, Darrow. I would have found you earlier, before whatever happened that filled you with this rage. I would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love. Now all I can give you is a chance. Icarus,” he booms.
His griffin stirs by his side, its amber eye showing me my reflection. The ground shudders as the creature moves, uprooting a tree as easily as I’d pull a hair.
I move back from the beast, unsure of Lorn’s intentions.
“What is going on?” I ask Lorn.
“Look to your ship.” He points upward in the night. Through a break in the clouds, we can see my long ship glittering in orbit. She’s no longer alone. Ten torchShips come for her now, slipping around the cover of Europa’s equator to capture the Pax.
“A Praetorian death squad waits for you inside my home, Darrow. Aja au Grimmus leads them. They will take you, chain you, and bring you before the Sovereign.”
“You betrayed me?” I ask.
“No. They arrived days ago. They threatened. What could I do? Kellan au Bellona leads their fleet. It will destroy or capture your ship. I can’t stop that. But I do not want you to die. So Icarus will take you to an island where I have hidden a ship for you. Use it to escape.”
“Will they hurt your family if I escape?”
“They may try,” he growls. “That is the consequence of your decision and mine.”
He stands with his back to the sea.
“I want to fade in peace. So please, leave and never return, Darrow.”
He gestures to Icarus and I see a thin saddle upon the beast—the new toy of which he spoke. But I do not need to flee. I shake my head for what is about to happen.
“I’m sorry, my friend. But I cannot allow that.”
“Allow?” he asks, turning.
“You will join us in this war.” My razor uncoils. “Whether you like it or not.” I speak into my com, telling the Howlers to prepare to rise and the Titans to bring the ships around.
The blood drains from his face and he looks at the beast emblazoned upon my tunic. “A lion after all.”
29
Old Man’s Wrath
I prepared the trap before I even left the fleet. All secrets find themselves whispered into Pliny’s ears and he would wish for nothing more than my timely demise, particularly after I provoked him in the ArchGovernor’s meeting. So he did his work. He schemed and plotted and found himself an ally against the big bad Darrow au Andromedus in the Sovereign herself, a fact that I will be happy to share with Augustus as soon as possible.
The Sovereign’s ships hid themselves amongst the ruins of a derelict space station that was once used as a base of terraforming operations. Kellan au Bellona was smart, but predictable. My larger secondary force—a detachment of Telemanus ships—which I hid behind another smaller moon’s mass, will ambush the Bellona force in sixty seconds, slingshotting around the other side of the moon by using its gravity to gain velocity. With Roque in command, I’ll have ten Bellona ships to add to my personal armada by day’s end.
“You knew,” Lorn accuses me quietly, his thick hand gripping my uniform at the neck and shaking me. “You knew.” And he knows what this means for him. It is not simply my victory. It is his defeat. One way or another, he must ally himself. And I’ve made it easy for him to pick a side.
“‘If you’re a fox, play the hare.’ Isn’t what you taught me? But it will look like you knew I set a trap for her. That you slipped news of her trap to me.” I touch his shoulder as he releases me. “I am sorry, friend. Truly. But you are part of this war.”
His jaw works, but he says nothing.
“The Sovereign will send her Praetorians again to Europa once I have left,” I say. “Only this time they’ll come for you and yours. Their black and purple ships will shell you from orbit till your islands and your cities on the archipelagos and mainland and the rising mountains in the south are made glass and swallowed by the seas. The waters will weep over your shattered towers, and of your house, there will be nothing but crypts in the deep. Unless we win.”
His eyes seek in me something to give him time. But instead he sees only what made him take me under his wing from the start—himself. Most men would give anything to see that, but here and now, he wishes to see anything else.
“I put my family at risk to help you escape. I took you in, taught you. And you betray me like the others. Like Aja.”
“You look for pity? You let me come here, Lorn. You would have consigned my friends above to torture and death even as you gave me a path to escape. But my friends will not be prisoners.”
I point upward to the fiery gashes in the night sky as my secondary force rockets around Europa.
“Hate me, but fight at my side,” I tell Arcos. “Only then will your family survive.” I put a hand out for my former teacher. He pulls out his razor.
“I should kill you.”
“Can I come and shoot the geezer?” Sevro asks over the com.
“Hold,” I tell him.
“You forget.” Lorn pulls his own datapad from his pocket. “I could have my fleet destroy yours, boy.”
“Not before mine takes the Sovereign’s.”
“But she would know then where House Arcos stands. She would know that you tricked me. That my house is not part of this.”
“Then do it,” I tell Lorn. “Launch your ships if you think my cause evil. Put me down if you think me a monster.” I step forward close to him. “But you know the heart that beats here. Choose me. Or choose that darkness.” I nod down the hill of the forest garden to where we entered the place. Twelve Obsidian Praetorians file through the same glass door we used. Huge men and women in black and purple armor, skull helms. Only one Stained—this one thinner than the others, like a winter asp standing on its tail. His armor is white and splashed with colors like blood.