Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

“She’s in no hurry,” I say. “But if we kill him before we get him to my wife—” I stop as I realize what I’m doing. It’s always easier to plan on hope. “If she’s alive, she can crack him. When we get what’s in there, we’ll have a chance. Till then, let’s not push our luck by melting his cerebellum.”

We’re about to leave the cell behind when Atlas speaks.

“Pedicabere, fur, semel; sed idem

si deprensus eris bis, irrumabo.

quod si tertia furta molieris,

ut poenam patiare et hanc et illam,

pedicaberis irrumaberisque.”

“What does it mean?” Screwface asks.

“Fear is on the job.”

“Come on. My family was full of Pixies. Didn’t ever bother with Latin.”

I sigh, and translate:

“Thief, for first thieving shalt be swived, but an

Again arrested shalt be irrumate;

And, shouldst attempt to plunder time the third,

This and that penalty thou shalt endure,

Being both pedicate and irrumate.”

“I am going to kill that man,” Screw says quietly.

“Get in line.”

Back in the Mound, the final preparations for departure are under way. Despite Screwface’s effective efforts against Atalantia’s spy rings, it is best to assume she still has agents within the city. Tomorrow’s evacuation to the ships will come as a surprise to all but those within my inner circle. Until then, my army plays the part of occupying force. Patrols continue. Garages rattle with industry. Barracks swell with music and snoring and gambling.

Yet something feels wrong. The Fear Knight’s poem has haunted me.

Did I miss something?

To allay my concerns, I took a tour of the mountain fortifications for signs of Atalantia’s forward elements after visiting Atlas. All was still. Too still. Thraxa and Harnassus think my ill-ease to be general paranoia. Glirastes’s work is completed. The Morning Star and the remaining ships are repaired for combat. Morale is high. My confidants dwell on the coming fray, and debate our chances of slipping the noose. But in my quarters inside the Mound, my mind roves restlessly as I inspect datapackets from Atlas’s interrogation, surveillance of known loyalists, and Glirastes’s charge, Cato.

The five-minute gap from his detour to the wine cellar is explainable yet cloying. In secret, my men bugged the cellar after that surveillance failure, and faulted it on interference from the Lady Beatrice’s reactor. Harnassus himself has vouched for the integrity of Glirastes’s EMP. So why do I linger over this insubstantial creature’s idle days?

Is it simply the seeds of Fear?

He has done nothing suspicious, not even left the Lady Beatrice, yet something is off about Cato au Vitruvius’s nature, if not his actions. Perhaps it is latent sociopathic tendencies that set the hairs on my back standing on end. I watch him sit in the library reading his book, and shift back through the moments where my Greens flagged peculiar activity. Much is class-based misunderstanding. They divine malign intent from his reading selections and his ambivalence toward the names of the servants. False positives perfectly in keeping with his nature.

I should let it alone and not squander my time, but I find myself idiosyncratically flipping through his hours, unwilling to get out of my chair. I watch him walk the garden, laugh at old vids, converse with the guards, sketch idly the shadows of a lone flower, eat breakfast, yawn over evening drinks with Glirastes, retire to bed at a drunkard’s hour.

A knock comes at the door. I let the video continue playing and answer.

Thraxa stands there with her hands behind her back. “Did you eat dinner? Ration bars don’t count.” She produces two fish pies.

“Come on in.”

She tosses them on the table and looks around for plates. “We’re both just going to eat them all anyway,” I say. She shrugs and plops down in a chair, digging into hers with a utility knife. She waves the knife at the holo.