Golden Son (39 page)

“What if I forgave you?”

“You’re lying.” He turns more and I see the full measure of what the bomb did to him. His nose is crooked, broken. The rest looks like a cherry stripped of its skin. My friend …

“I’m not lying.” I did not put my faith in Tactus once, and I lost him. Now I will. I’ll take the same leap I ask him to take. I step forward. “I know there’s good in you. I saw your face when those children were killed at the gala. You’re not a monster. Come back to me. You would be one of my lieutenants again, Tactus. I would give you a legion to lead when we take Mars. You’ll carry one of my standards. But you can’t wear that ugly armor.”

“It is uncomfortable,” he wheezes with a slight smile. “But Sevro, Roque, Victra …”

“They miss you,” I lie. “Drop your razor and come back to my army. I promise you will be safe.”

The razor dips in his hand. One of the children spares a smile at his younger siblings, a hopeful smile. “Just leave the children alone, and all is forgiven.”

I mean it. Deep in my heart, I mean it.

“We all make mistakes,” he says.

“We all make mistakes. Just come back. I won’t hurt you.” I drop my own razor. “Neither will Arcos.” I stare at Arcos till he nods his weathered head in complicity.

“I want to come home,” Tactus murmurs quietly, pain in his voice. “I want to come home.”

“Then come home.”

Tactus’s razor clatters to the floor and he falls to a knee in front of me. He’s rasping from pain.

Relief floods the room. The children start crying again from the tortuous shift from death to life. The caretakers hug their charges, tears making lines on their faces. I go forward to Tactus and motion him upward to clasp my arm. He wraps me in a frantic hug and sobs into me. Body shaking, bloody features painting my armor.

“I’m sorry,” he says a dozen times. He’s weeping hard into my shoulder, clasping tight. His face is such a ruin. And I hug him. Exhaustion fills me. His sadness is like a weight that nearly drives me to tears. Yet I’m buoyed by the strange feelings of having him back, standing with me, gripping me. It is a humbling thing knowing someone cannot live without you, knowing that though they’ve betrayed you, they wish for nothing but absolution. And as he clenches my back, I wrap my arms around his armor and try not to cry myself. Even the cruel feel pain. And even the cruel can change. I hope this changes him. He could do so much, if only he would learn.

In so many ways, he is the embodiment of his race. And so if Tactus can change, Gold can change.

They must be broken, but then they must be given a chance. I think that’s what Eo would have wanted in the end.

When at last his sobs are done and we part, he stands at my side, loyal as a puppy, looking to me subtly for signs of affection. His hands tremble from the pain of his wounds, yet he watches in silence with Arcos and me as the children, high and low alike, file upward out of the hidden bunker with their caretakers. Pebble comes down to giddily tell us Roque is wrapping up the space engagement. Seeing Tactus’s wounds, she pales. I tell her to fetch a Yellow.

Soon Lorn, Tactus, and I are left alone in the basement.

Lorn looks over to us. “Now that the children are gone, consequences.” His hands flash faster than a hummingbird’s wings. An ion-Dagger appears, lurches forward four times into Tactus’s armpit, where the armor is the weakest. I rush to stop Lorn, but it’s already done. He twists like he’s wringing a towel, severing the artery, an old man killing a young one. Tactus’s ruined face wrenches with pain; and he gasps, as though he knew justice would finally find him in the end.

Lorn leaves. And I hold my friend as he dies, his eyes fading to some distant place, where perhaps he’ll find that peace Roque always wished for him.

30

GATHERING STORM

“How long till we reach the rendezvous?” I ask Orion on the command deck. Except for our attendants, we are alone in front of the viewports of the
Pax
, watching my ships cross through space.

The newest additions to our fledgling armada are painted white and carry Lorn’s angry-faced purple griffin. With them fly the black and blue and silver warships captured from Kellan au Bellona above Europa. Oranges and Reds crawl over the exteriors of the metal monsters, mending the holes made by leechCraft and preparing them for the siege of Mars.

“Three days till Hildas Station. The other ships will have beaten us there,
dominus
.”

Kavax and Daxo approach from behind. I turn to them and gesture out the repaired windows to the

ten ships of Kellan au Bellona.

“Thank you for the presents,” I say.

“Your plan, your spoils,” Kavax declares.

“With us taking a percentage, naturally,” Daxo adds, smooth as ever, raising his swirling golden eyebrows. “Fifty percent finder ’s fee.” I glance at him with amusement. “Well, thirty percent, because Pax liked you.”

“Ten percent!” Kavax booms.

I cock my head. “You’re a poor negotiator, Praetor.”

He shrugs amiably and points in joy to jelly beans on the ground. He tosses Sophocles down, encouraging him to vanquish them all.

“Twenty.” Daxo splays his hands, movements always seeming to belong to a thinner, more bookish

man. “That is fair, no? We lost a hundred and sixty house Grays and thirteen Obsidians.”

“Then thirty percent to compensate you. For friends.”

“Three ships! What a haggle!” Kavax proclaims. “What a haggle. Sometimes a man needs a good

haggle.” He claps me on the back, making the joints crack again. “If only we had caught Aja. That’d be a spoil to divide!”

“She fled into the sea, unfortunately.” I gesture to Ragnar, who stands at the edge of the bridge.

“Heard he did well.” Pale and tall, he continues looking at me from behind his beard and runic tattoos, appearing as devoid of emotions as Kavax and Daxo are full of them.

“The leader of his boarding party was killed. So were the lieutenants. Lots of heads smashed. They ran into some of Kellan’s friends,” Kavax says dourly as he rummages through his pockets for his impatient fox, who clawed at his leg for more jelly beans.
“I don’t have any more, my little prince.”

He smiles up at me hopefully. “Do you have any jelly beans?”

“No. Sorry.”

“Ragnar there took command. Did himself well,” Daxo says.

“Took command?” I ask.

Kavax explains. “There was a kill squad of Peerless. Half a dozen Bellona blade dancers, real noble boys, carved up all our Golds and most of the Obsidians. The Stained there collected the surviving Grays and a few Obsidians and managed to get the ship.”

“Any of these blade dancers survive?”

“No.”

Ragnar looks at the ground again, as if expecting a reprimand.

“Well done, my goodman,” I say instead.

Both Kavax and Daxo squint at the familiarity.

Worth it to see Ragnar surprise me with a smile. A broad, yellowtoothed grin.

“Do you think he could do more?” I ask.

Daxo hesitates. “What do you mean?”

“Could he lead absent a Gold?”

Daxo and Kavax share a worried glance. “What would be the benefit in that?” Daxo asks.

“I could send him places I could not send Golds.”

“There is no such place.” Kavax crosses his arms. I go too far.

I smile to placate them. “Of course. Just a theory. The mind wanders from time to time.” I clap Kavax on the shoulder and they depart together for their own ship.

“You overstepped,” Orion says.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You have ears.”

I look down, searching the pale blue tattoos on her dark skin as if the math there holds the key to understanding her mind. “You’re observant for a Blue.”

“Because I know how the world works outside my digital sync? Comes from working the docks,

dominus
. When you’re at the bottom, you have to notice everything.”

“Which docks?” I ask.

“Phobos. Father was a Docker, born outside the Sects. Died when I was small. A young girl has to be on her toes if she wants to grow big in the Hive dock cities. It’s the only way to beat the monsters.”

“It’s not the only way,” I say.

“No?” she asks, surprised.

“You can always become a monster too.”

Orion turns from the viewport to look up at me. Fierce intelligence burns behind her arctic eyes.

“And there’s the beauty of space. A billion paths to choose.”

I’m spared from replying when the comBlue calls from the pit.

“
Dominus
, we’ve an assault shuttle inbound. It’s Virginia au Augustus.”

31

COUP

“Father is captured,” she says to me as she storms down the ramp from her smoking ship. She’s flanked by several Obsidian bodyguards in battle-scarred armor. A dozen Grays exit the shuttle behind them. Sun-hwa from Luna at their head. They’re all lurcher mercenaries, plain and dangerous.

The Jackal’s hunters. Sevro eyes them warily.

Around us, hundreds of ripWings and a dozen storks sit parked in the bay—large enough a place to swallow all of Lykos’s Common and her townships. Oranges clamor about the craft, preparing maintenance checks before the eventual invasion of Mars.

I greet Mustang with my own coterie—Lorn, Sevro, the Howlers, Victra, and Ragnar. Roque did not respond to my summons. I want to rush forward to embrace Mustang, but she’s in a rage. Spittle flying out of her mouth. Dark circles ringing angry eyes. Exhaustion pulls at her face.

“Pliny has begun a coup. He arrested my brother. My aunt is dead, and her children murdered along with six of our Praetors. More than twenty of my father ’s bannermen have sworn new oaths of fealty.

And we’ve lost control of the fleet.”

I ask Mustang if she’s injured.

“Injured?” She sneers the word. “As if that could matter. They killed my men. We came upon the

Academy in stealth, and as soon as I launched my leechCraft toward the space station and the training ships, a Bellona fleet emerged from behind an asteroid and destroyed every one of my leechCraft.

Ten thousand men. Dead. They didn’t have to do it. They had enough guns on us that we could do nothing but surrender. It was merciless.”

“Sounds like Karnus,” I guess.

She nods. “And Pliny. They didn’t lead the Bellona on a goose chase. They led them straight into my operation.”

“Why didn’t Pliny just kill you?” Sevro asks.

“A man like Pliny craves legitimacy,” Lorn says from my side, nodding in greeting to Mustang. If she thinks his presence here strange, she doesn’t let on. “It’s his nature. He came to you beforehand, didn’t he?”

Mustang shares a disgusted look with my mentor.

“The Pixie had me put under guard in my quarters as he took my captured fleet to Hildas. During

the journey, he came to me and showed me the holo footage of my father ’s failed raid on Ganymede.”

She shudders in anger. “And he said that though my house had fallen to ruin, he would not see my bloodline ended. The Sovereign and he had come to an arrangement. If he could provide her with peace, then she would provide him with position, legitimacy, and a prize of his choosing. So he batted his pretty lashes at me as my father ’s ships burned on the holo and said he would divorce his wife and allow me the honor of taking his hand in marriage.”

I say nothing. The Howlers rumble discontentedly.

“And your response?” Victra asks.

Mustang ignores her. “He said he always had his eye on me.” She reaches into her pocket, pulls something out, and drops it onto the floor. “So I took one of his.”

Sevro cackles with Harpy. Lorn makes a sound of disapproval. Like he has any ground to stand on

in matters of cruelty.

“It is good to see you again, Rage Knight,” Mustang says. “I’m sorry you were drawn into this. But we need you now more than ever.”