Pliny’s lips crawl into a reptilian smile. “Then this shall be an easy transition.”
“To whom am I being sold?” I manage. Augustus doesn’t look in my eyes as he abandons me. He pets his lion. You would guess I’m not even in the room. Leto stares at the ground. Ashamed. He’s nobler than this charade, but Augustus wanted him here to watch, to learn how to amputate a rotten limb.
“You are not being sold, Darrow. Despite your birth, I would have expected you to understand your place. We are not Pinks or Obsidians to be sold as slaves. Your services are being traded at auction,” Pliny says.
“It’s the same gory thing,” I hiss. “You’re abandoning me. Whoever buys my services cannot protect me from the Bellona. Those curlyhair bastards will hunt me down and kill me. The only reason they didn’t two months ago was because …”
“Because you were an Augustan representative?” Pliny asks. “But the ArchGovernor does not owe you anything, Darrow. Is that the misapprehension you suffer? In fact, you owe him! Protecting you costs us money. It costs us opportunities, contracts, trade. And that cost has proven too dear. We must be seen to promote peace with the Bellona. The Sovereign wants peace. You? You’re a source of friction, a chafing burr in our proverbial saddle, and an instrument of war. So now we melt our sword into a plowshare.”
“But not before you use it to lop off my head.”
“Darrow, do not beg.” Pliny sighs. “Show some resolve, young man. Your time here has expired, yes, but you’ve got pluck. You’ve got the vigor of a young man. Now, straighten that spine of yours and leave with the dignity of a Gold who knows he tried his best.” His eyes laugh at me. “That means leave this office. Now, my goodman, before Leto throws you out on your preposterously toned buttocks.”
I stare at the ArchGovernor.
“Is this what you take me for? Some sniveling child to be pushed into a corner?”
“Darrow, it’d be best if—” Leto begins.
“It is you who have pushed us into a corner,” Pliny answers, putting a hand on my shoulder. “If you’re worried you won’t receive a severance package, you will. Enough money to—”
“The last time one of the ArchGovernor’s lackeys touched me, I buried a knife in his cerebellum. Six times.” I look at his hand as he quickly withdraws it. I square my shoulders. “I do not answer to a scarless Pixie whelp. I am a Peerless Scarred. ArchPrimus of the 542nd class of the Institute of Mars. I answer to the ArchGovernor alone.”
I take a step toward Augustus, causing Leto to take a protective angle. The length of my temper is well remembered. “You put Julian au Bellona in the Passage with me, my liege.” My eyes burn down at him. “I killed him there for you. I warred against Karnus for you. I kept my mouth, the mouths of my men, sealed after you tried to buy your son victory at the Institute.” Leto flinches at that. “I altered the recordings. I proved myself better than your blood heirs. Now, my liege, you say I’m a liability.”
“You are a Peerless Scarred,” the ArchGovernor agrees, examining data on his desk. “But you are of little substance. Your family is dead. They left you with no lands, no holdings of resources or industry, no position in government. All was seized as their debts came due, including their honor. What scraps you have been given by your betters, cherish. What favor you curried, remember.”
“I thought you favored deeds, not titles. My liege, Mustang has left you. Do not make the mistake of severing me from you as well.”
Finally he raises his head to look at me. Eyes inhuman, belonging to something else—a distant, callous calculation fueled by monstrous, inhuman pride. A pride that goes beyond him and stretches back to man’s first feeble steps into black space. It is the pride of a dozen generations of fathers and grandfathers and sisters and brothers, all distilled now into a single brilliant, perfect vessel that bears no failure, abides no flaws.
“My enemies embarrassed you. So they embarrassed me, Darrow. You told me you would win. But then you lost. And that changes everything.”
5
Supper
I will soon die.
That is the thought I carry with me as our shuttle coasts away from Augustus’s flagship and flits through the Scepter Armada. I sit amongst the lancers, but I am not one of them. They know. Appropriately, they do not speak to me. Whatever bond they could make does not matter. I have no political capital. I overhear Tactus being offered a wager to see how long I’ll last outside of Augustus’s protection. One lancer says three days. Tactus argues ferociously against the number, showing the true extent of the loyalty I earned from him at the Institute.
“Ten days,” he declares. “At least ten days.”
It was he who launched the escape pod without me. I always knew his friendship was conditional. Yet still the wound gnaws deep, carving in me a loneliness I can’t express. A loneliness that I’ve always felt amongst these Golds, but tricked myself into forgetting. I am not one of them. So I sit there in silence, staring out the window as we pass the gathered fleet and wait for Luna to appear.
My contract ends on the final evening of the Summit, where all ruling families gather on Luna to deal with matters pressing and frivolous. That is the three-day window I have to improve my stock, to make others think that I am undervalued by the ArchGovernor and ripe for recruitment. But no matter my value, I am marred. Someone had me, then threw me away. Who would want such a used thing?
This is my fate. Despite my Golden face and talents, I am a commodity. It makes me want to tear my bloodydamn Sigils out. If I’m to be a slave, I should at least look a slave.
To make matters worse, there’s the price on my head. Not officially, of course. That is illegal, because I am not an enemy of the state. Yet my enemy is far worse. Far crueler than any government. She is the woman who sent Karnus and Cagney to the Academy.
They say every night since I stole Julian’s life in the Passage, his mother, Julia au Bellona, has sat at the long table of her family’s high-hall upon the slopes of Olympus Mons and lifted the semicircular lid of the silver tray brought to her by the Pink manservants. Every night, the tray remains empty. And every night she sighs in sadness, peering down the table at her large family only to repeat the same vindictive words: “It is clear I am unloved. If I were loved, there would be a heart here to sate my hunger for vengeance. If I were loved, my boy’s murderer would no longer draw breath. If I were loved, my family would honor their brother. But I am not. He is not. They do not. What have I done to deserve such a hateful family?” Then the grand Bellona family will watch their matriarch uncoil from her chair, her body withering from hunger, nursing instead on hate and vengeance, and they will remain silent as she leaves the room, more wraith than woman.