The Red Rising: Golden Son Part 31

He scratches his head, looking worried with all the Gold faces staring at him. The deckhands watch the exchange furtively.

"Out with it," Sevro barks.

"Sure. Well, I could put it out the lock, dominus. Or, I mean, I could find the scanners and the radiated material, if they went that route. We got some clever nuts and bolts here. Could find 'em out, and I could put 'em all in a long-range scout, no problem. Might do nice to let Pliny's hounds go barking in the wrong direction, yeah?"

"What is your name and world?" I ask.

"Dominus ... uh." He blinks heavily. "Cyther's my name. Luna. Three girls. Wife works in the Center for Automotive Development, so we have-"

I cut him off. "Do this right and we'll bring them to Mars and put them up on the Citadel staff, Cyther. You have ten minutes."

"Yes, Sir!" He wheels to his men excitedly.

I lead Mustang and my coterie to the lifts.

"Pliny said he killed you," she whispers as we walk.

"Aja and a Bellona fleet waited for us, like we thought they would." I grin sideways at her, then pull up my datapad. "Orion, take command of the fleet. I want us far from this sector before we have more company. Sevro, summon the Telema.n.u.ses. I want them in the ... Sevro?" I look around for him. He's loitering around Pliny's eyeball some twenty meters back. We turn to look at him and he shuffles his feet awkwardly.

"Can I ..." He gestures to it.

"What?" Mustang asks.

"Can I have it?"

Mustang squints at him. "All yours."

He scoops up the eyeball and jams it into his pocket, grinning merrily. He runs to catch up. "Collecting the set, hopefully."

32.

DIE YOUNG.

Mustang insisted on seeing Tactus before the meeting. Theodora guides us. We find Roque sitting by his body in the ship's medBay. The way he sits with his hands clasped together, you'd think Tactus might still have a chance at life. Perhaps in some other world where men like Lorn don't exist.

"He's been here since Europa," Theodora says quietly.

"You didn't tell me he was down here," I say.

"He asked me not to."

"You're my servant, Theodora."

"And he's your friend, dominus."

Mustang nudges me. "Stop being an a.s.s, can't you see she's as exhausted as he is?"

I look at Theodora. Mustang's right. "You should get some sleep, Theodora."

"A prime idea, I think, dominus. Always lovely to see you, domina," Theodora says to Mustang before shooting me a cross look. "Master has been rather moody in your absence."

Mustang watches Theodora glide out. "You were lucky with her." She gently touches Roque's shoulder. His eyes flutter open.

"Virginia."

They grew close in the year we all spent in the Citadel together. Neither could ever get me to join them at the opera. It's not that I wasn't interested in the music. Lorn simply demanded time.

She squeezes his hand. "How are you?"

"Better than Tactus." He glances at me. I wager he'd say more if I weren't here. He sees Mustang's state of disarray, brow creasing in worry. "What went wrong?"

Once we tell him, he gently runs a hand through his wavy hair. "Well, that is bad. I never thought Pliny would ever be so thoroughly bold."

"We're meeting in ten to discuss plans," I say.

Roque ignores me. "I'm sorry about your father and brother, Virginia."

"They're still alive, I hope." She looks to Tactus and her face quiets. "I'm sorry about Tactus."

"He went as he lived," Roque says. "Only wish he could have lived longer."

"You think he would have changed?" Mustang asks.

"He was always our friend," Roque says. "It was our responsibility to help him try. Even if it was like hugging a flame." He looks at me momentarily.

"You know I didn't want him to die," I say. "I wanted him to come back with us."

"Just as you wanted to catch Aja?" Roque says, snorting at my expression.

"I told you why I did that."

"Naturally. She kills our friend. She kills Quinn, but we let her walk away for the grander scheme. Everything costs something, Darrow. Perhaps you'll soon tire of making your friends pay."

"That's not fair," Mustang says quickly. "You know it's not."

"What I know is we're running out of friends," Roque replies. "Not all of us are as tough as the Reaper. Not all of us want to be warriors."

Of course Roque thinks this life is a choice of mine. His own childhood was one of leisure and reading, spent going back and forth between his family estate in New Thebes and the highlands of Mars. His parents didn't believe in enhanced learning uploads, so they hired Violets and Whites to teach him pedagogically-walking and talking in peaceful pastures and beside still lakes.

"Tactus didn't sell the violin," Roque says after a moment.

"The one Darrow gave him?"

"Yes. The Stradivarian. He sold it, then felt so guilty he didn't let the sale finalize with the auction house. Made them cancel the order. He was practicing in private, shaking off some of the rust. Said he wanted to surprise you with a sonata, Darrow."

The heaviness in me deepens. Tactus was always my friend. He just got lost in trying to be the man his family wanted him to be, when all along his friends loved the man he already was. Mustang puts a hand on my lower back, knowing what I'm thinking. Roque leans down now to kiss Tactus once on the cheek and to give him a benediction.

"Better to go into that other world in the full glory of some pa.s.sion than to fade and wither with age. Live fast. Die young, my wayward friend."

Roque walks away, leaving Mustang and me alone with Tactus.

"You have to fix that," she says of Roque. "Fix it before you've lost him."

"I know," I say. "Soon as I fix a hundred other things."

We sit in the warroom in full council around a grand wooden table. Coffee cups and trays of food litter it. Mustang sits at my side, boots up on the table, as ever, while she explains what went wrong with her father's mission. Kavax leans forward precariously in his seat, terrified at the idea of Augustus suffering defeat. He wrings his hands nervously, so distressed that Daxo takes Sophocles from his lap and hands him to an uncomfortable Victra. Mustang's voice fills the room and the holo Pliny gave her comes to life above the table. A brigade of corvettes rockets silently through s.p.a.ce toward the famed shipyards of Ganymede that ring the industrial moon of mottled green, blue, and swirling white.

"He dispatched a lurcher squad of Grays concealed in the belly of two tankers. They disabled three of the defensive platform's nuclear reactors. Then my father came in hard with his ripWings and corvettes, as is his way-burning engines and dropping munitions before curling back around.

"It was a treasure trove-some seventeen destroyers and four dreadnoughts in dry dock, most near or at completion. Supposing the ships to be manned by skeleton crews, he boarded them simultaneously. He even commanded the leechCraft that boarded the moonBreaker with his two Stained. But the ships were not manned by skeleton crews. There were no crews at all. Instead, they were loaded with Praetorians, Gray lurcher squads. And Olympic Knights."

"And he ... surrendered?" Kavax asks in panic.

Mustang laughs. "My father? He nearly cut his way free. He killed the Hearth Knight, then he ran into some of our old friends."

The holo shows Augustus flowing through twelve Grays, like a man wading through stalks of high, dry gra.s.s. His razor sings and shrieks, sparking against the walls, sliding through men and armor till he meets another man in armor the shade of flame. The Hearth Knight. There's a flurry of tight lunges and then red mist. A head thumps to the ground. Then two men appear. One in a sun-crested helm, the other Fitchner in his wolfhead helm. Together, the men kill the Stained and put Augustus bleeding on the ground.

Lorn looks over at me. "Lady ... Mustang, who was the man in the sun-crested armor?"

She's silent.

"That's the armor of the Morning Knight," I answer. "Ca.s.sius. They must have mended his arm. Or given him a new one."

Mustang continues. "Julii ships were also there." She looks at Victra. "They finished my father's forces off."

Sevro glares at Victra, taking Sophocles from her as though she couldn't even be trusted with the fox. "Do you feel awkward? You should."

"We've been over this," Victra says, sounding quite bored with the accusations. "My mother was threatened by the Sovereign. She's not political. She cares about money and little else."

"So she doesn't care about loyalty?" Mustang asks. "Interesting."

"Pfah. Agrippina's a wicked b.i.t.c.h," Kavax grumbles. "Always has been."

"Careful, large one," Victra warns. "She's still my mother."

Kavax crosses his burly arms. "Apologies. That she is your mother."

"And how do we know you're not in collusion with them, Victra?" Daxo asks softly. "Perhaps you spy? Perhaps you wait. How do you trust her loyalty, Darrow? She could easily have sent word...."

Mustang looks at me. "I was wondering that myself."

"Why do I trust you, Daxo, or you, Kavax?" I ask. "Either of you would be in prime shape, earn pardons, earn more territories and monies if you delivered my head to the Sovereign."

"And your heart to Ca.s.sius's mother," Sevro reminds me.

"Thank you, Sevro."

"Here to help!" He grabs a drumstick off the table's spread and feeds it to Sophocles. Considering, he takes a bite himself, saying something quietly to the fox.

"I trust Victra for the same reason I trust any of you-friendship," I say, managing to look away from Sevro.

"Friendship. Ha." Mustang sets her coffee cup down loudly. "I'll be blunt. I don't trust a Julii farther than I could throw one."

"That's because you're intimidated by me, little girl."

Mustang sits up straighter. " 'Little'?"

"I have a decade on you, darling. One day you'll look back at yourself and laugh. Was I really so foolish, so simple? Additionally, you're not very tall. So I'll call you little."

"I don't cat-fight," Mustang says coldly. "I don't trust you because I don't know you. All I know is your mother's reputation is not apolitical. She's a schemer. A briber. My father knew it. I know it. You know it."

"Yes, to a degree my mother is a schemer. And so am I and so are you, but if there's one thing I am not, it is a liar. I've never told a lie, and never will. Unlike some people." The arch of eyebrows makes it quite clear what she means.

"Bad apples sp.a.w.n bad seeds, Darrow," Daxo warns. "Put your feelings aside on this one. She was raised by a dangerous woman. There's no need to mistreat her, but we can't have her in this council. I would encourage you to place her in quarters till this is over."

"Yes." Kavax raps the table with his knotted knuckles. "Agreed. Bad seeds."

"I can't believe you lured me into this mess, Darrow," Lorn mutters. He looks out of place here. Too old, too gray to be party to squabbling. "Can't even trust your own council."

"Grumpy. Low blood sugar perhaps?" Sevro tosses him the half-gnawed drumstick. Lorn lets it flop against the table, unimpressed by the display.

"We would hear your wisdom, Arcos," Kavax says respectfully.

"I would listen to your councillors, Darrow." Lorn pops his knotted fingers. "I've got scars older than them, but they aren't completely naive. Better safe than sorry. Confine Victra to her quarters."

"You don't even know me, Arcos!" Victra protests, finally pulled out of her chair. You see the warrior in her now, flaring just beneath the cultured calm. "This is an affront to me. I was fighting with Darrow when you were still cowering in your floating castle pretending it's A.D. 1200."

"Time does not prove one's loyalty." Lorn scoffs and runs a finger along a scar on his forearm. "Scars do."

"You took those fighting for the Sovereign. You were her sword. How much blood did you draw for her? How many men did you watch burn at the side of the Ash Lord?"

"Do not speak of Rhea to me, girl."

Victra's teeth glimmer in a cruel smile. "So there is a Rage Knight beneath the wrinkles and moth-bitten rags."

Lorn surveys her, seeing the wrathfulness of youth in her, and he looks to me, as if to wonder just what sort of man brings Golds like Tactus and Victra to his side. Does he even know me? his eyes ask. No, he's realizing. Of course not.