Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

I replay the conversation between Atalantia and myself to the officers of my high command. Screwface straddles the balcony outside, his desert shades hiding his eyes. No aides line the warroom, the coffee is forgotten at a side table. The Day of Red Doves has streamed on every screen in Heliopolis that has power. It is the only signal from beyond our cage. They mock us from orbit. But this conversation is what matters. The image dissolves, leaving darkness on the faces of my commanders. Harnassus slumps in the chair to my right. Thraxa stares at a fly hovering over a vine by the window. She has not spoken since she learned Daxo has died. The news has rattled her in a way nothing else ever has. What of her mother, her father, her sisters?

“Until now…” My voice betrays me. I clear my throat. “Until now our strategy was based upon the belief that the Republic was on its way. I do not believe it…practical to continue in this assumption. I have reason to believe that Publius is an agent of Atalantia’s. Or that the events that took place in the Senate were the product of her designs. The Vox Populi are compromised. I would caution you against recognizing the authority of any element on Luna.” I look at Harnassus, knowing Atalantia will likely beam him a message from Publius and the surviving Senate demanding surrender.

“We have been given an offer with a twenty-four-hour clock. An offer that we have no reason to believe our enemy would honor.” I pause, knowing what I am about to say is true, but feeling a coward nonetheless. “I do not believe that I can chart an unbiased course given the situation.” I wave a hand as Thraxa and several others rise from their seats in protest. “Just let me get this out.” Colloway and Harnassus remain absolutely still. Of the two, I can’t tell which looks worse, though the ripper pilot is certainly drunk. I hear Screwface had to pull him from a brothel to get him here. “An army is not a demokracy. But given our situation, I do not believe it should be despotism.” I try to look around the table, but find it difficult to meet their eyes. I fell into Atalantia’s trap. I brought them here. I sowed the seeds of my wife’s end, and the end of our Republic. I may not have done it alone, but it hardly matters. “Most of you have been with this army as long as I have. It is your family as much as it is mine. You will decide its fate. I will accept any decision you make. The only plea I offer is that you decide based on what is best for our men, and then the Republic.”

With that, I leave Thraxa, Harnassus, Colloway, Screwface, and the rest of the high command in the high warroom to decide my fate and that of the Free Legions. I walk along the lower balconies where night mist beads on the stone walls. The waves crash all around the roots of the building. Both were made by man. Perhaps at first in hope, to give our species a new home to live and to love. But in time, I don’t know when, their creation became a vanity of will, and in the shadow

of that vanity, man grew lesser for having more. Lesser for mastering the keys of creation, because he mistook himself for god, and cared less for his people, and more that his works endured.

Have I done the same?

With a great sucking sound, the black water pulls back to reveal the work it has done to the roots of the stone after all these years. And then the waves crash back. A cavernous solitude makes a home in my chest, where once there was only purpose that made far too little room for my boy and my wife.

I return to my room and take Pax’s key from my luggage. I wrap its chain around my neck and hold it as I stare at the ceiling.

“ARE YOU AWAKE OR ASLEEP, Lysander?”

I’m not in the desert.

I am at Lake Silene.

Snow clings to the evergreens. It makes the stones slippery under my feet. My legs tremble as I haul myself up the stairs that wind up the cliff from the lake to the house. I drop a stone the size of my abdomen atop a cairn. My hands are bloody and shaking. It is the winter after my parents died.

I look up to see the severe face of my grandmother.

I am terrified of her, but desperate for her approval. Even now, knowing what she did, the boy in the memory cannot hate her. He is too afraid to hate.

I thought the week would be just for Aja and me. I never get her to myself. Atalantia had taken Ajax to Echo City to watch the water races. I thought Aja and I would take the horses north, but Grandmother has come back from Hyperion to continue my lessons.

She is inescapable.

“I asked you a question.”

“I am awake.”

“Are you? How many crows are in the trees that line the steps?”

I look to Aja for help. She watches evenly from her perch on a fallen log.

“Will you look to Aja every time you need saving?”

“I do not know how many crows there are.”

“You do not know?” I look down. “Never manifest shame physically. Look at me.” There’s no anger in her face. There never is. “How many owls are there? Hawks? Squirrels?”

“I don’t know, Grandmother.”

“Do you really think you’ve earned the right to use contractions yet?” She leans forward. “Why do you not know? I will answer, since your tongue is lead. Your mind was asleep. Do you at least know how many steps there are?”

“Four hundred thirty-one.”

“How many turns?”

“Seventeen.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, Grandmother.”