Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

Soon the shuttle is out of sight. I sit on one of the couches and sip chilled wine. With Kalindora’s revelations, my inner world is in shambles. But the strings of oaths, fidelity, and history that conspired to strangle me are cut. I know the rules now, Grandmother.

There are none.

At last, I feel free.

Here in the aftermath of the Battle of Mercury, I sense a great horizon of opportunity. The Free Legions are broken. Darrow is in flight. Luna is run by a madman. Mars trampled by Obsidians. Earth fallen to the Rim and the Society.

That sense of insignificance and guilt I permitted Cassius to instill within me has not disappeared, but remains in the back of my mind as a reminder of the fate one can accept if he lets the mercy of others define him. Darrow’s mercy all those years ago, Cassius’s mercy in serving as my protector, Kalindora’s last testament—all of it rooted in some vain attempt to rekindle honor they long ago sacrificed for one reason or another.

The same honor Lorn preached, after painting a legend in blood. The same selfish honor Romulus preserved before abandoning his people at their most dire hour. The same honor that led to my engagement with Atalantia, and let me delude myself into thinking that honor was about personal sacrifice.

My grandmother was the most cunning person I ever met, but still she was wrong. She thought there was no place for honor in the world. I cannot agree completely. It was her cruelty that chipped away at the foundation of her power and poisoned all who served her.

It is Atalantia’s cruelty which makes me prey to people like her. Is it honorable to kill her for my mother? Honorable to thrust us into civil war? Honorable to fulfill my pledge to submit to her every whim? Honorable to be trapped between her legs night after night so that Gold might have unity?

I think not.

I think, as with all things, honor is best appreciated in moderation. As is cruelty.

After all, there is no crime with a court.

The whine of gravBoots disturbs my silence. My guest arrives. He is no figment of my imagination. He is real, and dreadful. His Martian armor radiates heat in the sun until he steps into the cool provided by the pulseBubble I have prepared. He looks over the table from beneath the horns of his helm.

“A mirage of no finer quality has ever graced this wasted tomb to ambition and martial men,” he declares through his helmet. “Libations of Elysian red, Terran Bordeaux, Mercurian soletto. With gustatio of raw oysters, wine-steamed sow’s udders, candied pecans, olives, azeroles, and medlars and jucellum. A mensae primae of walnut-and-herb-stuffed thrush and pachelbel, garlic venison, honey-drizzled wild boar stuffed with dried figs, garum sauce, and, do mine eyes deceive me?”

His giant helmet inspects the centerpiece.

“A hare decorated with the wings of a peacock—no, ’tis but a noble pegasus! And, not to be forgotten, a mensae secundae of Lunese iced frizeé, tactun, chocolate pecans, and white pudding.”

He looks up at me. That metal helmet impassive and dreadful.

“Now, this is a cena! A feast fit for a conqueror, a gourmand, a student of Apicius himself, and set before such grandeur.” He waves at the desert. “Yes, yes! I at last am paid the respect I am due.”

“If I have learned anything, it is that one does not simply summon the Minotaur,” I reply. “If you would please do me the honor of joining me, I believe we have common interests to discuss.”

He doffs his helmet and reclines on the couch. His face is that of an evil angel. Masculine, suspicious, amused, and tan from what I assume he considers his vacation in the desert. He peers under the table with mocking eyes. “Gelding or stallion, my goodman?”

“Were you not there when I was tortured?” I ask.

“I was mocking your union with the Fury, not your time with the Gorgons,” he says. “How well I know the unlimited depths of her voracious appetites. Though I hear Ajax has filled the holes my absence has left. Now you seek to do the same.” He grins. “But, yes, I was outside the cave, I waited, listening via my sophisticated drone hardware to the ministrations of the Fear Knight. I confess, I considered striking when you purloined him for your own purposes. Such opportunity seldom presents itself with that most dangerous game. But the show…oh, the show was far too interesting to interrupt. The flight across the desert will be held forever in amber in the hollows of my mind.” He leans forward, very sincere. “I do apologize for claiming you lacked theatricality. It is always a pleasure to be wrong.” He strokes his purple chest plate. The grapevines of his home in Thessalonica stretch to a horizon gilded with silver sunlight. “Alas, my armor died from that infernal electromagnetic pulse. I have yet to divine why its shielding failed to that device. I have many questions for Glirastes. Many questions to which I must have answers.”

“They can wait. I confess, I am surprised to find that you did not go witness the attack on Earth. Most of your quarry were in play.”

“My path to my quarry runs through

this moment,” he says. “And after the Ash Rain?” He looks offended. “After a cup of ’21 Thessalonican Chianti, one does not rinse one’s mouth with sangria. I saw thirty million men in mortal conflict. Oh, my need for violent theater is quite sated. In any matter, it was a pathetic affair. The Vox fleet gazed lazily from their perch above Luna as Atalantia feigned a retreat and led Earth’s fleet straight into a Rim attack group. The only thing of interest would have been to see the son of Romulus lead his commandos to the surface to lower the shield generators. What a specimen is he. Perhaps we have a new lead on stage.”

“Well, I hope you still have room for theater of a different sort,” I say.

A great mechanical groan tears the sky, frightening the dishes and the sand of the dune into frantic palpitations. The sound rushes toward us in a flood of decibels till it seems that the torrent of it will swallow the dune. And then it is overhead and Apollonius grins. A great mass blocks the sky. Slowly, a thin wedge of blue elongates in the darkness as two vast legs of stone pass through the midday heat. They are but the lowermost extremities of the ancient mass born aloft by six heavy-cargo haulers. The haulers creep across the sky, and soon begin to lower their charge.

The statue is immense. Its face, riven by the ravages of desert storms and chipped by the target practice of Rising riflemen, sneers at us as if to say, You think yourself worthy?

The stone lips of my first Ancestor, Silenius au Lune, curl in contempt as he resumes his rightful place under the sun. The haulers release the towing bonds. The Sovereign sways. His stone feet sink into the sand. Dust from his recent grave shudders from his shoulders, nose, and the creases of his robe to form a billowing cloak. When the dust clears, he is still and solemn amongst his mighty fellows. Two-score Sovereigns stand in the desert to form a circle ten kilometers in circumference.

It is theater fit for the Minotaur. He claps his hands like a delighted, monstrous child.

“In each individual, one might find vanity, cruelty, pride, all or any of the excesses and deficiencies of the Homo aureate,” I say. “But together they stand for something more than their individual parts. Each was a custodian for his or her time, forming a chain of order that guided the human spirit from the dark ages of war through seven hundred years of expansion and growth. They erred in the end. Each small corruption spawning one more evolved and potent, until the natural evolution of that corruption induced decay and torpor, and the death of all empires: aristocracy. In that decay, how could they not expect a new predator to rise?”