Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

“Do you expect a concession of regret, sister?” he asks with soft malice. “I daresay the fate of your pet should be on your conscience. Jeopardizing the Pax Ilium for a flight of fancy? What if the Slave King and his Horde had caught you? War would follow.”

“You might try sounding less pleased about it

, brother,” Diomedes says. I note the tension between them, filing it away for later, and glance at Cassius. He’s eyeing the razor Romulus left on his pallet.

Seraphina spits at her brother’s feet. The greatest sign of disrespect on a world barren of natural water. “I weep for a world where a worm like you could order a man like Hjornir to the dust.”

Marius does not rise to meet her anger, he just sighs.

“Did I raise a dog?” Romulus asks her.

Seraphina’s face reddens. “No, Father.”

“Then don’t act like one. Your brother is my Quaestor. And his service has been faithful. I would have questioned Hjornir myself had I been there.” Seraphina looks away from her father in disgust. “He conspired with you to break a legal treaty. He was a traitor.”

“Then so am I.”

“Yes. You are,” Marius says. “Strictly speaking.”

“Boy…” Romulus stares at his son till the man lowers his head in apology. He turns back to address his daughter. “You broke the peace. A peace that has protected our moons for ten years. You went against your Sovereign. You went against your own father. Why? What could you possibly seek?”

“The truth,” she says passionately.

“What truth?”

“The truth of what happened to our docks.”

This gets Cassius’s attention, and mine.

Diomedes blinks. “What mystery is there? Fabii destroyed them for his Sovereign.” Unlike the utter destruction of Rhea, my grandmother cannot claim responsibility for the destruction of the Ganymede Docks. She gave no such order. Roque au Fabii’s reasons for crippling the far worlds died with him. Or did they? I lean forward in interest.

“So you’ve been listening to Mother’s fantasies again?” asks spindly Marius. “And did you find anything?”

“No,” Seraphina says, hanging her head. “Mother was wrong.”

I catch the slightest movement of Romulus’s lips, so slight all but a Pink and a boy raised by my grandmother might have missed it. Relief. Interesting. He feared she would bring something back. “You wanted war so badly?” he asks his daughter.

“I want justice,” Seraphina says. But she has noticed something else, and echoes my own thoughts. “Why did you not bring me to Sungrave? Why here?”

“All of Io believes you are on a mission for me,” Romulus says. “That is what I’ve claimed. If the council discovered the truth—that you went into the Gulf of your own accord—you would be executed for treason. I brought you here to protect you.”

“Then where is Mother? Why is she not here?”

“I think you know why,” Romulus says. “She used you, child. She would have had you spark her war. But as I told her, you cannot draw blood from the stone. There is no mystery. No conspiracy. Fabii destroyed our docks. Anything else is the fantasy of a warmonger.” Romulus steps back from her. “Now what am I to do with you?”

“Let me return to Sungrave. Let me serve the Rim.”

Romulus looks down at his daughter, but his eye is fixed on the past, heavy with the weight of age. He lost his firstborn daughter in the Reaper’s Triumph. His son Aeneas at the Battle of Ilium. How much more will he lose? he wonders. I know because I have seen that same look in Cassius’s eyes. The same weight in his spirit.

“If only I could,” he says to her. He nods to the robed Obsidians. They seize Seraphina from behind. She struggles in vain against their huge hands.

“Father!”

“Were I stronger, I’d bring you before the Moon Council. But I don’t have the heart to watch you meet the dust. You risked a war. You broke the law. Now this place is your home. Living quarters have been installed for your comfort. But it has no communications equipment. It has no transports. The nearest outpost is three hundred kilometers away. The Sohai I leave behind will be here for your safety. But they will have no kryll. No scorosuits or radiation shielding. If you attempt to leave on foot, the dust will devour you in a kilometer. This is the fate you made yourself.”

I don’t know these people, but I feel a keen ache seeing family trauma as Seraphina begs her father not to do this, for her brother to stop him. But they’re right, it was not her place to risk war.

Diomedes looks pained. “It is this or death. I am sorry, Little Hawk. It has to be.”