Текст книги "Golden Son"

Автор книги: Brown Pierce

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

I shudder inside.

“My liege …,” I try to interject. This cannot happen. If he strips me of my place, nearly three years of work will have been for nothing. “If I may—”

“You may not.” He opens a drawer and idly tosses a slab of meat to his lion. The lion waits for Augustus to snap his fingers before eating. “The decision was made a month ago. There is no use bandying words with me. I’m not Quicksilver negotiating the price of lithium futures. Pliny …”

“The particulars are rather simple, Darrow. So they shall be easy to grasp.” Pliny hasn’t taken his eyes from me. “The ArchGovernor has been overly kind in giving you the fair warning in case of termination, as stipulated in your contract.”

“My contract says I’m to be given six months’ fair warning.”

“If you’ll recall section eight, subsection C, clause four, you’re to be given six months’ fair warning unless you fail to act in a manner befitting a lancer of the esteemed House Augustus.”

“Is this a joke?” I look to Leto and Augustus.

“Do you see us laughing?” Pliny asks primly. “No? Not even a scoff or chortle?”

“Of all the lancers, I came in second at the Academy! You couldn’t even make it through the Institute.”

“Oh, it’s not that! You did well … enough.”

“Then what?”

“It is your constant presence on HC talk shows.”

“I’ve never gone on the HC! I don’t even watch it!”

“Oh, please. You relish your own celebrity. Even though they mock you, you bathe in the limelight and cloak this house with shame. We know your datapad search histories. We see you preening at yourself on the HC as though it were your personal mirror. The stories run on you and the ArchGovernor’s daughter—”

“Mustang is in court on Luna!”

“Which you likely encouraged. Did you ask her to join the Sovereign’s court? Is it part of your plan to divide daughter from father?”

“You’re spinning horseshit, Pliny.”

“And you create a tawdry name for Augustus. You brawl with Bellona in baths set aside for refreshment and contemplation. This we cannot abide.”

I don’t even know what to say. He’s making it up. There’s enough in reality to make a case, but he lies just to spit in my eye, just to show that I am in his power.

Pliny continues. “The termination of the contract will occur in three days.”

“Three days,” I echo.

“Till then, you will accompany us to the surface of Luna and stay in the residence provided for the House Augustus for the Summit, though, as of this moment, you are no longer a lancer of this house. You do not represent the ArchGovernor and may not use his name to gain access to facilities nor curry favor with young ladies or young men, neither in boast, promise, or threat. Your house datapad will be confiscated. Your lancer ID codes have already been downgraded and you will cease and desist participation in all projects to which you were previously assigned.”

“I’ve only been assigned construction projects.”

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 belonging to some creature beyond man—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

ABANDONED

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 among 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 among 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 highhall 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.

What has kept my heart from her plate is the ArchGovernor’s arms, money, and name. Politics, the very thing I hate, has kept the breath in me. But in three days, that aegis will be a shadow of memory, and all that will protect me are the lessons my teachers have given me.

“It’ll be a duel,” one of the lancers says. Then louder. “Can’t turn that down and keep his honor for long. Not if Cassius himself offers it.”

“Old Reaper has a few tricks up his sleeve,” Tactus says. “You might not have been there, but he didn’t kill Apollo with his smile.”

“Used a razor, didn’t you, Darrow?” another lancer asks, tone mocking. “Haven’t seen you on the fencing grounds of late.”

“You’ve never seen him there,” says another. “The Pixie avoids what he’s not good at, eh?”

Roque stirs angrily beside me. I put a hand on his forearm and turn slowly to regard the offending lancer. Victra sits behind him, idly watching the scene.

“I don’t fence,” I say.

“Don’t? Or can’t?” someone asks with a laugh.

“Leave him be. Razormasters are expensive,” Tactus notes with a sly grin.

“Is that how it is, Tactus?” I ask.

He makes a face. “Oh, come now. Just having a go at you. So gorydamn serious. You used to be more playful.”

Roque says something to make Tactus scowl and turn away, but I don’t hear. I’ve sunken into memory, where this Golden game once seemed so easy. What has changed? Mustang.

“You’re more than this,” she whispered as I left her for the Academy. Tears swelled in her eyes, though her voice did not waver. “You don’t have to be a killer. You don’t have to court war.”

“What other choice do I have?” I asked.

“Me. I’m the other choice. Stay for me. Stay for what might be. At the Institute, you made followers of boys and girls who have never known loyalty. If you go to the Academy, you abandon that to be my father’s warlord. That’s not what you are. That is not the man I …” She did not turn, but her face changed as her sentence trailed away, lips drawing a hard line.

Love? Was that what we built in the year after the Institute?

If so, the word stuck in her throat, because she knew, as I knew, that I had not given her all of me. I had not shared all that I am. Greedily, I kept secrets. And how could someone like her, someone with so much self-worth, bare herself and throw her heart at a man who gave so little in return? So she closed her golden eyes, shoved the razor into my hands, and told me to go.

I don’t fault her. She chose politics, governance—peace, which is what she thinks her people need. I chose the blade, because it is what my people need. It fills me with a strange emptiness knowing that I was enough for her when I was never enough for Eo. Roque was right. I pushed her away.

I didn’t push Sevro away. I asked him to be stationed with me, then suddenly he was reassigned to Pluto like many of the Howlers, relegated to protecting far construction operations from petty pirate raids. I now suspect Pliny’s hand in that.

My path has never felt lonelier.

“You’ll not be abandoned,” Roque says, leaning in close. “Other families will want you for themselves. Don’t let Tactus in your head. The Bellona won’t make a move against you.”

“Of course they won’t,” I lie. He can still sense my fear.

“Violence isn’t allowed in the Citadel, Darrow. Especially blood-feuds. Even duels are outlawed unless consent is given by the Sovereign herself. Simply stay on Citadel grounds till you’ve a new house, and all will be well. Bide your time, do what you must, and in a year, the ArchGovernor will feel like a fool when you’ve risen under the tutelage of another. There is more than one path to the top. Always remember that, brother.”

He grips my shoulder.

“You know I would ask my mother and father to bid for you … but they won’t go against Augustus.”

“I know.” They could spend the millions on the contract and not even notice the loss, but Roque’s mother has not sat a Senator for twenty years because of her charity. Her lot is thrown in with Augustus’s contingent in the Senate. What he wills, she supports.

“I’ll be fine. You’re right,” I say as Luna appears in the window, hushing the aides, and filling me with dread. The city moon of Earth. Orbiting satellites and installations encircle it like a steel angel’s halo wrapped around a ball of amber held to the sun. “I’ll be fine.”

6

ICARUS

We land near the Citadel. Sticky, polluted wind bends the towering trees near our landing pad. Perspiration quickly beads along the top of my high collar. Already I do not like this ugly place. Despite the fact that we land here on Citadel grounds, which are far from the nearest cities and surrounded by forests and lakes, Luna’s air cloys and sticks to the lungs.

On the horizon, just past the spiked spires of the Citadel’s western campus, Earth hovers, swollen and blue, reminding me that I am so far from home. The gravity here is less than Mars’s, only one-sixth Earth’s, and makes me feel unsettled and clumsy. I seem to float when I walk. And even though coordination quickly returns, my body suffers its own lightness with strange feelings of claustrophobia.

Another vessel lands to the north.

“Looks like Bellona silver,” Roque says quietly, squinting against the sunset.

I chuckle.

He glances back at me. “What?”

“Just imagining having a pulseRocket right about now.”

“Well, that’s just … lovely of you.” He walks along. I follow, eyes lingering on the vessel. “I do love the sunsets of Luna. Like we’re in Homer’s world. Sky a hot shade of fresh-forged bronze.”

Above, the alien sky melts into night with the long setting of the sun. For two weeks, the daylight will disappear from this part of the moon. Two weeks of night. Luxury yachts cruise through this strange day’s end, while nimble Blue-piloted ripWings soar past on patrol like bats glued together from shattered ebony.

The one-sixth gravity lets these Luneborn build to their heart’s desire. And build they do. Beyond the Citadel grounds, the horizon is fenced with towers and cityscape. RungPaths wind everywhere so that citizens can pull themselves through the air with ease. The network of rungs stretch between high towers as would ivy, linking the heavens with the hells of the lowDistricts. Along them, thousands of men and women crawl like ants on vines, while Gray patrol skiffs buzz around the thoroughfares.

The household of Augustus is assigned a villa nestled within thirty acres of pines on Citadel grounds. It’s a pretty thing among other pretty things in this stately place. There are gardens, paths, fountains carved with little winged boys of stone. All that sort of frivolity.

“Fancy a session of kravat?” I ask Roque, nodding to the training facility beside the villa. “My mind’s running away with itself.”

“I can’t.” Roque winces, stepping out of the way of our fellow lancers and their attendants who file into the villa. “I have to attend the conference on Capitalism in the Governed Age.”

“If you wanted a nap, I’m sure they have beds in the villa.”

“You joking? Regulus ag Sun is giving the keynote.”

I whistle. “Quicksilver himself. So you’re going to learn how to make diamonds out of gravel? You hear the rumor about him owning the contracts of two Olympic Knights?”

“It’s not rumor. Least according to Mother. Reminds me of what Augustus said to the Sovereign at her coronation. ‘A man is never too young to kill, never too wise, never too strong, but he can damn well be too rich.’ ”

“Arcos said that.”

“No, I’m sure it was Augustus.”

I shake my head. “Check your facts, brother. Lorn au Arcos said it, and the Sovereign turned to reply, ‘You forget, Rage Knight, I am a woman.’ ”

Arcos is as much myth as man, at least to my generation. Reclusive now, he was the Sword of Mars and the Rage Knight for over sixty years. Peerless Knights across the Society have offered him the deeds to moons if he would but tutor them for a week in his form of kravat, the Willow Way. It was he who sent me the knifeRing that killed Apollo and then offered me a place in his house. I rejected it then, choosing Augustus over the old man.

“ ‘You forget, I am a woman,’ ” Roque repeats. He cherishes these stories of their empire the way I cherished stories of the Reaper and the Vale. “When I get back, let’s talk. Not the usual banter.”

“You mean you won’t yammer on about a childhood crush, drink too much wine, wax poetic about the shape of Quinn’s smile and the beauty of Etruscan grave sites before falling asleep?” I ask.

His cheeks flush, but he puts a hand over his heart. “On my honor.”

“Then bring a bottle of foolishly expensive wine, and we can talk.”

“I’ll bring three.”

I watch him leave, eyes colder than my smile.

Several of the other lancers attend the conference with Roque. The rest make themselves comfortable as Augustus’s Gray security teams comb the grounds. Obsidian bodyguards trail Golds like shadows. Pinks sway gracefully into the villa in a constant stream, ordered from the Citadel’s Garden by members of the ArchGovernor’s household staff who find themselves bored from travel and seek a little merriment.

A Pink Citadel steward guides me to my room. I laugh when I arrive. “Perhaps there has been a mistake,” I say, looking around the small room with its adjoining washroom and closet. “I’m not a broom.”

“I don’t under—”

“He’s not a broom, so he won’t fit in this closet,” Theodora says, standing in the doorway behind us. “It is beneath his station.” She looks around, pert nose sniffing disdainfully. “These would not even suit as closet to my clothes on Mars.”

“This is the Citadel. Not Mars.” The steward’s pink eyes survey the lines on Theodora’s aged face. “There is less room for useless things.”

Theodora smiles sweetly and gestures to the rose-quartz tree pinned to the man’s breast. “I say! Is that the black poplar of Garden Dryope?”

“Your first time seeing it, I would guess,” he says haughtily before turning to me. “I don’t know how they raised your Pinks in Mars’s Gardens, dominus, but on Luna your slave should do her best to look less affected.”

“Of course. How rude of me,” Theodora apologizes. “I merely thought you would know Matron Carena.”

The steward pauses. “Matron Carena …”

“We were girls together in the Gardens. Tell her Theodora says hello and would call on her if time is found.”

“You’re a Rose.” His face goes sheet white.

“Was. All petals wilt. Oh, but do tell me your name. I would so like to commend you to her for your hospitality.”

He mumbles something quite inaudible and departs, bowing lower to Theodora than to me.

“Was that fun?” I ask.

“Always nice to flex a little muscle. Even if everything else is starting to droop.”

“Seems my career ends where yours began.” I chuckle morbidly and walk over to the holoDisplay sitting near the bed.

“I wouldn’t,” she says.

I bite my bottom lip, our signal for spying devices.

“Well, of course, that. But the holoNet is … not where you want to be right now.”

“What are they saying about me?”

“They’re wondering where you’ll be buried.”

I haven’t time to reply before knuckles rap against the frame of my room’s doorway.

“Dominus, Lady Julii requests your presence.”

I follow Victra’s Pink to her room’s private terrace. Her bath alone is larger than my bed.

“It’s not fair,” a voice says from behind the ivory-white trunk of a lavender tree. I turn to see Victra playing with the thorns of a shrub. “You being cut loose like a Gray mercenary.”

“Since when have you been concerned with what’s fair, Victra?”

“Must you always fence with me?” she asks. “Come sit.” Even with the scars that distinguish her from her sister, her long form and luminous face is without true fault. She sits smoking some designer burner that smells like a sunset over a logged forest. She’s heavier of bone than Antonia, taller, and seems to have been melted into being, like a spearhead cooling into angular shape. Her eyes flash with annoyance. “I’m as far from an enemy as you have, Darrow.”

“So what are you? A friend?”

“A man in your position could use friends, no?”

“I’d rather have a dozen Stained bodyguards.”

“Who has the money for that?” she laughs.

I raise an eyebrow. “You do.”

“Well, they couldn’t protect you from yourself.”

“I’m a bit more worried about Bellona razors.”

“Worry? Is that what I saw on your face as we descended?” She lets a merry sigh escape her lips. “Curious. See, I thought it was dread. Terror. All the truly unsettling things. Because you know this moon will be your grave.”

“I thought we weren’t fencing anymore,” I say.

“You’re right. It’s just I find you very odd. Or, at least I find your choice in friends to be odd.” She is sitting in front of me on the lip of the fountain. Her heels scrape against the aged stone. “You’ve always kept me at arm’s length while bringing Tactus and Roque close. I understand Roque, even if he is as soft as butter. But Tactus? It’s like flossing with a viper and expecting not to get bitten. Is it because he was your man at the Institute that you think he’s your friend?”

“Friend?” I laugh at the idea. “After Tactus told me how his brothers broke his favorite violin when he was a boy, I had Theodora spend half my bank account on a Stradivarius violin from Quicksilver’s auction house. Tactus didn’t thank me. It was as if I’d handed him a stone. He asked what it was for. I said, ‘For you to play.’ He asked why. ‘Because we’re friends.’ He looked back down at it and walked away. Two weeks later, I discovered he took it and sold it and used the money for Pinks and drugs. He is not my friend.”

“He’s what his brothers made him to be,” she notes, hesitating as if reluctant to share her information with me. “When do you think he’s ever received something without someone wanting something in return? You made him uncomfortable.”

“Why do you think I’m wary with you?” I lean closer. “It’s because you always want something, Victra. Just like your sister.”

“Ah. I thought it might be Antonia. She’s always ruining things. Ever since the shewolf gnawed her way out of Mother’s womb and stole human clothes. Good that I was born first, else she might have strangled me in my crib. And she’s only my half sister anyway. Different fathers. Mother never saw much point in monogamy. You know Antonia even goes by Severus instead of Julii just to take a piss on Mother. Cantankerous brat. And I get saddled with her moral baggage. Ridiculous.”

Victra plays with the many jade rings on her fingers. I find them odd, contrasting with the Spartan severity of her scarred face. But Victra has always been a woman of contrasts.

“Why are you talking with me, Victra? I can’t do anything for you. I have no station. I have no command. I have no money. And I have no reputation. All the things you value.”

“Oh … I value other things too, darling. But you do have a reputation, all right. Pliny’s made sure of that.”

“So he did play a part in the gossip. Thought Tactus was just running his mouth.”

“A part? Darrow, he’s been at war with you since the moment you kneeled to Augustus.” She laughs. “Before then, even. He counseled Augustus to kill you then and there, or at least try you for the murder of Apollo. Didn’t you know?” She shakes her head at my blank stare. “The fact that you’re just now realizing this shows just how ill-equipped you are to play his game. And because of that, you’re going to be killed. That’s why I’m speaking with you. I’d rather you found an alternative instead of sulking in your beastly quarters. Otherwise, Cassius au Bellona is going to come and he’s going to take a knife and dig right here …” She caresses my chest with a long-nailed finger, etching the outline of my heart. “… and give his mother her first real meal in years.”

“Then what is your suggestion?”

“You stop being such a little bitch.” She smiles up at me and holds out a dataSlip. Grudgingly, I take the edge of the thin metal slip, but she holds on, pulling me toward the edge of the fountain, between her legs. Her lips part, her tongue playing along the top as her eyes trace my face, up and up to my eyes, where they try to spark a fire. But there’s none there; with a feline sigh, she lets the dataSlip go. I run it over my personal datapad and an advertisement for a tavern appears on my display.

“This isn’t on Citadel grounds,” I say.

“So?”

“So, if I leave, it’s open season on my head.”

“Then don’t advertise your leaving.”

I take a step back. “How much are they paying you?”

“You think this is a setup!”

“Is it?”

“No.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Most people can’t afford the truth. I can.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You never lie.”

“I am of the gens Julii.” She stands slowly, anger uncoiling like a razor. “My family trades in commerce enough to buy continents. Who could afford to purchase my honor? If … one day I become your enemy, I will tell you. And I will tell you why.”

“Everyone’s honest till they’re caught in a lie.”

Her laugh is husky and makes me feel small and boyish, reminding me she’s seven years older than I. “Then stay, Reaper. Trust in chance. Trust in friends. Hide here till someone buys your contract, and pray they didn’t do it just to serve you up to the Bellona like a suckling pig.”

I weigh the odds and extend a hand to help her up. “Well, when you put it that way …”

“Colonel Valentin?” Victra asks the shorter of the two Grays who wait for us on the ramp of the shuttle. It’s a shit can. One of the ugliest fliers I’ve ever seen. Like the front half of a hammerhead shark. I eye the taller of the Grays warily.

“Yes, domina,” Valentin says, nodding his cinderblock head with the rigid precision of a man risen through the ranks. “You are sure you were not followed?”

“Certain as death,” Victra says.

“We should depart fastlike, then.”

I follow Victra into the shuttle, scanning the grounds behind us. We wore ghostCloaks as soon as we departed Augustus’s villa. A dozen hidden hallways and six old gravLifts later, we arrived in a dusty, seldom-used section of the Citadel’s launch pads. Theodora left us there. She wanted to come, but I won’t take her where we’re going.

A Gray scans Victra and me for bugs as we board the ship.

The ship’s ramp slides closed behind us. Twelve craggy Grays fill the small passenger hold of the shuttle. They’re not the dashing sort. Just craftsmen of a dark trade.

Though there are averages, Colors are diverse in composition due to human genetics and the differing ecosystems throughout the Society. The Grays of Venus are often darker and more compact than those of Mars, but families move and mix and breed. The talent levels in each Color are even more variable than appearance. Most Grays aren’t destined for anything more than patrolling shopping centers and city streets. Some go to the armies. Some to the mines. But then there are the Grays who were born a special breed of wicked and clever and have been trained all their lives to hunt the Gold enemies of their Gold masters. Like these in the shuttle with us. They call them lurchers—after the mutt dogs of Earth crossbred for uncommon stealth, cunning, and speed, all for one purpose: killing things bigger than they are.

“We’re bound for Lost City and it’s just the twelve of you?” I ask.

I know they’re enough. I just don’t like Grays. So I push their buttons.

They eye me with the quiet reserve of a family meeting a stranger on the road. Valentin’s the father. He’s built like a squat block of dirty ice carved by a rusted blade, and his sun-blasted face is dark and set with quick eyes. His lieutenant, Sun-hwa, leans toward us, tough and gnarled as an olive tree.

Both are Earthborn by the looks of their continentally ethnic features. These Grays wear no triangular badge of the Society’s Legion on their civilian street clothes. Means they’ve served their mandatory twenty years.

“We’re tasked with your protection, dominus,” says Valentin as Sun-hwa loads an exotic circular weapon on the inside of her left wrist. Looks plasma based. “My team has prepared a secure route. Estimated traveling time: twenty-four minutes.”

“If Pliny finds out where I’m going, or if the Bellona know I’m out of the Citadel …”

“The lurchers know the situation,” Victra says.

“I don’t see a Gold badge. Mercenaries?”

“Means we are good enough to live this long, dominus,” Valentin says flatly. “We’ve prepared for all eventualities. Contingency plans and support have been organized.”