Fitchner claps his gloved hands together. “Mars? Mars? What is Mars but a gorydamn hunk of rock? It’s done nothing for me.”

“Mars is home, Fitchner.” Augustus waves to those around us. “The Sovereign bid you to find us. Well, here we are—kin from your own planet. Will you join your loyalty to us? Or will you give us up?”

“Oh, you are a jokester, Augustus! A prime jokester. My loyalties are to the Compact and to myself, as yours are to yourself, my liege. Not to a rock. Not to false kin. And it benefits me to be loyal to the Sovereign. Now, I’ve been told to place you and your kin under house arrest. You recall we set aside a prime villa for your pleasure? It’d be dandyfine if you could scamper on back there. Enjoy our hospitality, eh, boyo?”

“You forget yourself,” Augustus hisses.

“I forget much. Where I put my pants. Who I’ve kissed. Who I’ve killed.” Fitchner touches his arms, his belly, his face. “But forget myself? Never!” He points to the Obsidians around him. “And I’ve certainly not forgotten my dogs.”

“And where are mine? Where is Alfrún?”

“I killed your Stained mutts. Both of them.” Fitchner smiles. “They were barking, Augustus. Barking so loudly.”

Rage burns across Augustus’s face.

“I hope they weren’t expensive, boyo,” Fitchner says with a smile.

“You speak as though we are familiars, Bronzie.”

“We are familiar.”

“As though we were equal. We are not equal. I am a descendant of the Conquerors, of the Iron Golds. I am the lord of a planet. What are you? A—”

“I’m a man with a stunFist.” He shoots Augustus in the chest. Augustus crumples backward as his Praetors gasp. “That’ll show him to not wear his armor to galas. Now!” Fitchner smiles. “Who can I reason with?”

“Me.” The Jackal takes a step forward. “I am heir to this house.”

“Hmm … pass! You’re creepy.”

He shoots the Jackal in the chest with the stunFist.

“Foolishness! Enough foolishness.” Kavax steps forward, pushing his son back. “Speak with me or Darrow. It’s plain enough, your intentions.”

“Indeed. Darrow. You shall come with me.”

“Like hell,” Victra sneers, stepping in front of me.

Fitchner rolls his eyes. “Telemanus, you and your son take the ArchGovernor back to his villa and then return to your own. Matters must be sorted.” Fitchner gazes quietly at the bald Gold. His words now scrape out like raw iron on slate. “This is not a request, Telemanus.”

Telemanus looks to me. “My boy trusted this one. So shall I.”

“I need your assurance my friends will not be hurt,” I say to Fitchner.

He looks at Victra. “They won’t be.”

“Convince me.”

He sighs, bored.

“The Sovereign can’t gorywell execute an entire house absent a trial for treason. Can she? That violates the Compact. And you know how that would make us Olympic Knights feel, not to mention the other houses. Remember how her father met his end. But if you resist, well, that’s another matter entirely.” Fitchner flips a piece of gum into his mouth. “Do you resist?”

I cast a look at my company, favoring Kavax au Telemanus and his son with smile of gratitude. What trust they give the man who led their son to his death.

I clench my teeth and bow. “Then I suppose I am at the Sovereign’s service.”

“As are we all.”

14

The Sovereign

“Once upon a time, there was a family of strong wills,” she says, voice slow and measured as a pendulum. “They did not love one another. But together they presided over a farm. And on that farm, there were hounds, and bitches, and dairy cows, and hens, and cocks, and sheep, and mules, and horses. The family kept the beasts in line. And the beasts kept them rich, fat, and happy. Now, the beasts obeyed because they knew the family was strong, and to disobey was to suffer their united wrath. But one day, when one of the brothers struck his brother over the eye, a cock said to a hen, ‘Darling, matronly hen, what would really happen if you stopped laying eggs for them?’”

Her eyes burn into mine. Neither of us look away. Silence in the sparse suite, except the sound of rain at the windows of her skyscraper. We’re amongst the clouds. Ships pass in the haze outside like silent, glowing sharks. The leather creaks as she leans forward and steeples her long fingers, which are painted red, a lone splash of color. Then her lips curl in condescension, accenting each syllable as though I were an Agea street child only just learning her language.

“You remind me of my father.”

The one she beheaded.

That’s when she fixes me with the most enigmatic smile I may ever have seen. Mischief dances in her eyes, subdued and quiet beneath the cold trappings of power. Somewhere inside is the nine-year-old girl who infamously started a riot by throwing diamonds from an aircar.

I stand before her. She sits on a couch by a fire. Everything is Spartan. Hard. Cold. A Gold woman of iron and stone. All this drabness as if to say she needs not luxury or wealth, just power.

Her face is creased but not faded by time. A hundred years, or so I hear, not cracked by the pressures of office. If anything, pressure has made her like those diamonds she scattered. Unbreakable. Ageless. And she will be without age for some time longer, if the Carvers continue their cellular rejuvenation therapy.

That is the problem. She will cling to power far too long. A king reigns and then he dies. That is the way of it. That is how the young justify obeying their elders—knowing it will one day be their turn. But when their elders do not leave? When she rules for forty years, and may rule for a hundred more? What then?

She is the answer to that question. This is not a woman who inherited the Morning Throne. This is a woman who took it from a ruler who had not the courtesy to die in a timely fashion. For forty years others have tried to take it from her. Yet here she sits. Timeless as those fabled diamonds.

“Why did you disobey me?” she asks.

“Because I could.”

“Explain.”

“Nepotism shrivels under the light of the sun. When you changed your mind to protect Cassius, the crowd rejected your moral and legal authority. Not to mention, you contradicted yourself. That in itself is weakness. So I exploited it, knowing I could get what I wanted without consequence.”