“They’re for security.”
“But the rest of it is a lie?”
“Yes.”
“So you didn’t, in fact, come to my home with enough nuclear weapons to make our moons glass?”
“We did not,” Roque says. “The only warheads we have aboard are for ship-to-ship combat. Five megaton yield, max. Romulus, on my honor…”
“The same honor you had when you betrayed your friend…” Romulus gestures to me. “When you betrayed honorable, Lorn. My ally, Augustus. My father, Revus. That honor by which you watched as my daughter’s head was stomped in by a sociopathic matricide who takes orders from a sociopathic patricide?”
“Romulus…”
“No, Imperator Fabii. I do not believe you deserve the intimacy of using my given name any longer. You call Darrow a savage, a liar. But he came here wearing his heart on his sleeve. You came with the lies. Hiding behind manners and breeding…”
“ArchGovernor Raa, you must listen. There’s explanation if you will just…”
“Enough,” Romulus screams. Surging to his feet and slamming his large hand on the table. “Enough hypocrisy. Enough schemes. Enough lies you sniveling Core sycophant.” He trembles finally with the rage. “If you were not my guest, I would hurl my glove at you and cut your manhood away in the Bleeding Place. Your lost generation has forgotten what it means to be Gold. You have forsaken your heritage. Suckling at the tit of power, and why? For what? Those wings on your shoulders? Imperator.” He scoffs at the word. “You whelp. I pity a world where you decide if a man like Lorn au Arcos lives or dies. Did your parents never teach you?” They did not. Roque was raised by tutors, by books. “What is pride without honor? What is honor without truth? Honor is not what you say. It is not what you read.” Romulus thumps his chest. “Honor is what you do.”
“Then do not do this….” Roque says.
“Your master did this,” Romulus replies indifferently. “If she could not make us bow, she would make us burn. Again.”
Mustang tries and fails to keep the smile from her face as Roque watches the Moon Lords slip through his fingers. A darkness enters his cultured voice. One which leaves my heart in tatters. To think that voice once defended me. Now he guards something far less loving. A Society that cares nothing for him.
I always wondered why Fitchner selected Roque for House Mars. Until his betrayal I had known him to be only the most gentle soul. But now the Imperator shows his wrath.
“ArchGovernor Raa, listen to me carefully,” he says. “You are mistaken in believing we came here with intent to destroy you. We came to preserve the Society. Don’t give in to Darrow’s manipulation. You are better than that. Accept the Sovereign’s terms, and we may have peace for another thousand years. But if you choose this path, if you renege on our armistice, there will be no quarter. Your fleet is ragged. Darrow’s, wherever it hides, can be nothing more than a coalition of deserters in borrowed vessels.
“But we are the Sword Armada. We are the iron hand of the Legion and the fury of the Society. Our ships will darken the lights of your worlds. You know what I can do. You do not have a commander to match me. And when your ships burn, the knights of the Core will pour into your cities at the head flying columns and fill the air with ash enough to choke your children.
“If you betray your Color, the Compact, the Society—which is what this will be—Ilium will burn. I will acquaint you with ruin. I will hunt down every person you have ever known and I will exterminate their seed from the worlds. I will do so with a heavy heart. But I am a Man of Mars. A man of war. So know my wrath will be unending.” He extends a thin hand. The wolf of House Mars’ mouth is open in a silent, hungry howl. “Take my hand in kinship for the sake of your people and the sake of Gold. Or I will use it to build an age of peace upon the ashes of your house.”
Romulus walks around the edge of the table so that he is facing Roque, the younger man’s outstretched hand between them. Romulus draws his razor from where it is coiled on his hip. It rasps into rigid form. A blade etched with visions of Earth and of the Conquering. His family is as old as Mustang’s, as old as Octavia’s. He uses that blade to slice open his hand and suck the scarlet blood from the wound before drawing up and spitting it into Roque’s face.
“This is a bloodfeud. If ever again we meet, you are mine or I am yours, Fabii. If ever again we draw breath in the same room, one breath shall cease.” It is a formal, cold declaration that requires one thing of Roque. He nods. “Vela, see the Imperator to his shuttle. He has a fleet to prepare for battle.”
“Romulus, you can’t let him leave,” Mustang says. “He’s too dangerous.”
“I agree,” I say, but for another reason. I’d spare Roque from this battle. I do not want his blood on my hands. “Hold him prisoner until the battle is over, then release him unharmed.”
“This is my home,” Romulus says. “This is how we conduct ourselves. I promised him safe passage. He shall have it.”
Roque dabs the blood and spit away with the same napkin he used for the cheesecake and follows Vela away from the table toward the steps that lead back into the home. He pauses there before turning back to face us. I cannot say if he speaks to me or the Golds gathered but when he recites his last words, I know they are for the ages:
“Brothers, sisters, till the last
Woe that this has come to pass,
By your grave, I shall weep
For it was I who made you sleep.”
Roque bows minutely. “Thank you for the hospitality, ArchGovernor. I will see you shortly.” As Roque leaves the assembly, Romulus instructs Vela to hold him until I am safely off Io.
“Hail my Imperators and Praetors,” he tells one of his lancers. “I want them on holos in twenty minutes. We have a battle to plan. Darrow, if you would like to link in your Praetors…” But my mind is on Roque. I may never see him again. Never have a chance to say so many things which swarm my chest now. But so too do I know what letting him go could mean for my people.
“Go,” Mustang says, reading my eyes. I rise abruptly, excusing myself and manage to catch Roque as he finishes tying his boots in the garden. Vela and several others are moving him toward the iron gate.