Текст книги "Golden Son"

Автор книги: Brown Pierce

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Many others take my master aside, as though a hundred eyes did not watch their every move, and with voices like syrup, tell him of whispers in the night, of shifting winds and dangerous tides. The metaphors mix. The point is the same. Augustus has fallen out of favor with the Sovereign the same way I have fallen out of favor with him.

The ships flitting above in the night sky are as distant from the conversation as I. My attention has fallen upon the Sovereign herself. How strange a thing, to see the woman just there beyond the dance floor, at the raised podium, speaking with other house lords and men who rule the lives of billions. So close, so human and frail.

Octavia au Lune stands with her coterie of women, the three Furies—sisters she trusts above all others. For her part, the Sovereign is more handsome than beautiful, face impassive as a mountain’s. Her silence is her power. I see her speech is seldom, but she listens; always, she listens to words as the mountain listens to the whispering and screaming of wind through its crags, around its peaks.

I see a man standing alone near a tree. He’s near as thick around as its trunk. A hand dwarfs his small goblet, and he wears the mark of a sword with wings, a Praetor with a fleet. I approach him. He sees me coming and smiles.

“Darrow au Andromedus,” Karnus growls.

I snap my fingers at a passing Pink. Taking two of the wine goblets from his ice tray, I pass one to Karnus. “I thought that before you come to kill me, we might as well share a drink.”

“There’s a sport.” He downs his own drink and takes the one I offer him. He eyes me over the glass. “You’re not a poisoner, are you?”

“I’m not so subtle.”

“Equal company, then. All these snakes about …” He grins like a crocodile, dark Gold eyes tracing the men and women. The wine is gone in a moment. “It’s strangely decadent tonight.”

“I hear Quicksilver arranged the festivities,” I say.

“Only on Luna would they let a Silver pretend he’s a Gold.” Karnus grunts. “I hate this moon.” He takes a delicacy off a passing tray. “Food’s too heavy. Everything else too light. Though I hear the sixth course will be something to die for.”

Noting his strange tone, I cross my arms and watch the party. It’s a strange comfort being around this hateful man. Neither one of us has to pretend to like the other. No masks here, at least not as much as usual.

He chuckles deeply. “Julian would have liked this fancy fare. He was a simpering, vile child.”

I turn to examine the killer. “Cassius said only pretty things about him.”

“Cassius.” He snorts out something like a laugh. “Cassius once wounded a bird with a slingshot. Came to me crying, because he knew he had to kill it to put it out of its misery, but he couldn’t. I dropped a rock on it for him. Just like you did.” He smirks. “I should thank you for sweeping away the genetic chaff.”

“Julian was your brother, man.”

“He pissed the bed as a boy. Pissed the bed. Always tried hiding the sheets by giving them to the laundrywomen himself. Like we didn’t own the laundrywomen. He was a boy who did not deserve his mother’s favor or his father’s name.” He grabs another glass of wine from a passing Pink. “They try to make it tragedy, but it isn’t. It’s natural law.”

“Julian was more a man than you are, Karnus.”

Karnus laughs in delight. “Oh, do explain that one.”

“In a world of killers, it takes more to be kind than to be wicked. But men like you and me, we’re just passing time before death reaches down for us.”

“Which will be soon for you.” He nods to my razor. “Pity you weren’t raised in our house. We learn the blade before we learn to read. My father had us make our blades, had us name them and sleep beside them. You might have stood a chance then.”

“Wonder what you would have been if he had taught you something else.”

“I am what I am,” Karnus says, taking another drink. “And they sent me after you, me of all the sons and daughters, because I am the best at what I am.”

I watch him for a moment. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“You have everything, Karnus. Wealth. Power. Seven brothers and sisters. How many cousins? Nieces? Nephews? A father and mother who love you, yet … you are here, drinking alone, killing my friends. Setting the purpose of your life to ending me. Why?”

“Because you wronged my family. No one wrongs the Bellona and lives.”

“So it’s pride.”

“It’s always pride.”

“Pride is just a shout into the wind.”

He shakes his head, voice deepening. “I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind—how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.” He leans forward. “So you see, pride is the only thing.” His eyes leave mine and look across the room. “Pride, and women.”

I follow his eyes and I see her then.

She wears black amid a sea of gold, white, and reds. Like a dark specter, she glides in out of the lift near the edge of the fake forest. She rolls her flashing eyes, twists her smirking mouth at the heads that turn in her direction to stare at her funereal gown. Black. A color to show disdain for all the merry Golds about. Black like the color of the military uniform I now wear. I’m reminded of the warmth of her flesh, the mischief in her voice, the smell at the nape of her neck, the kindness of her heart. I stare so hard I almost miss her escort.

I wish I had missed him.

It is Cassius.

He of the bloodydamn golden curls is with the girl who nursed me to health in the winter, who helped me remember Eo’s dream. His hand on her waist. His lips whispering into her ear. As surely as Cassius au Bellona put a sword in my stomach, he now sticks a dagger in my heart.

His hair thick and lustrous. His chin cleft, hands steady. Shoulders powerful, made for war. Face made for the hearts of court. And he wears the rising sun of the Morning Knight. The rumors are true. It rips through the party. The Sovereign has made him one of the twelve. Despite the fact that I won the Institute, he’s risen higher, tearing through the Dueling Circuit on Luna like an ancestor possessed. I’ve watched him on the HC, watched him stalk around the Bleeding Place as another Gold lies near death.

But here, now, he dazzles, charms. Face split with a white smile. In his Golden body he has all I have and more. He is faster on his feet than I. As tall. More handsome. Wealthier. He has a better laugh and people think him kinder. Yet he has none of my burdens. Why too does he deserve this girl, who makes all but Eo pale in comparison? Does she not know how petty he is? How cruel his heart can be?

I cannot go to her, not even when I draw close enough to hear her laugh. If she saw me, I think I would shatter. Would there be guilt in her eyes? Awkwardness? Am I a shadow over her happiness? Will she even care that I see her with him? Or will she think me pathetic for approaching her?

It aches, not that I suspect Mustang is being petty in seeking my enemy, but because I know she is not petty. If she is with Cassius, it is because she cares for him. It aches deeper than I thought it would.

“And so you see …” Karnus’s hand falls heavily on my shoulder. “… you will not be missed.”

Tightness spreads through my chest as my shoulders carve a path out of the gala. I take a smaller lift down, away from these people who know only how to hurt. Away into the woods where I find a bridge that spans a fast-flowing stream. I lean over the polished railing, gasping for air, each breath a statement.

I do not need Mustang.

I do not need any of these greedy creatures.

I’m done with their games of power.

Done with trying to go it on my own.

I was not good enough to be a husband.

Not good enough that my wife would let me be a father.

Not good enough to be a Gold.

Now I’m not good enough for Mustang.

I’ve failed to do what I set out to do.

Failed to rise.

But I won’t fail now. Not now.

I take the ring the sons gave me. Hand trembling. Nerves stampeding. I want to retch, there’s so much wrong inside of me. I take the cold ring to my lips. Say the words and the corrupt perish. Say “Break the chains” and Victra vanishes. Cassius evaporates. Augustus melts. Karnus dissolves. Mustang dies. Across the Solar System, bombs ripple and Red rises to an uncertain future. Trust in Ares. Just trust he knows what he is doing.

Break the chains.

I try to say the words, Eo’s last before she hanged. But they do not come. Force it out. Dammit. Make my mouth work. But it won’t. It can’t, because inside I know that this is wrong. It isn’t the violence. It isn’t compassion for the people I would kill. It’s anger.

Killing them proves nothing. It solves nothing.

How could this be Ares’s plan?

Eo said if I rose, others would follow. But I’ve not yet risen. I’ve not yet done as she asked of me. I am not an example. I am an assassin. I do not have an excuse to give up. To hand over her dream to others. Ares never knew Eo. He never saw the spark in her. I did. Before I draw my last breath, I must build the world she wanted to raise our child in. That was her dream. That was why she sacrificed, so others would not have to. And I will not let others decide my fate. Not now. I do not trust in Ares if it means I must reject Eo.

Not if it means I must sacrifice my trust in myself.

I wipe the tears from my face, anger replaced by purpose. There must be another way. A better way. I have seen the cracks in their Society, and I know what I must do. I know what the Golds most fear. And it has nothing to do with Reds rising. It has nothing to do with bombs or plots or revolution. What terrifies the Golds is simple, cruel, and as old as mankind itself.

Civil war.

PART II

BREAK

If you’re a fox, play the hare.

If you’re a hare, play the fox.

—LORN AU ARCOS

12

BLOOD FOR BLOOD

I stalk back into the gala.

The Golds have taken their seats and formalities have begun in earnest. I am not subtle as I duck beneath the table and scrounge around on the ground to find the pegasus pendant. I put it in my pocket. Straighten my jacket. Ignore the questioning glances and move boldly away from Augustus’s table toward the object of my interest. Pliny hisses my name. I pass him by. He knows nothing of what I have in store.

I weave through the tables that seat the noble families, gathering eyes as a stone rolling down the mountain gathers snow. I feel them adding to my velocity. My gait is careless, my hands coiled with danger, like the muscles of a pitviper. Thousands watch me. Whispers form a cloak behind as they realize my target; he sits at his long table surrounded by his family members—a perfect Golden man attentively listening to his Sovereign speak. She preaches of unity. Order and tradition are paramount. No one rises yet to challenge me. Perhaps they don’t understand. Or perhaps they feel the force of me now and dare not rise.

The Bellona notice the whispers now, and they turn, almost as one, a family of fifty and more, to see me—a martial man, all in black. Young, untested in war. Unblooded beyond the halls of the Institute and the asteroids of the Academy. Some have reasoned me mad. Some have called me brave. Tonight, I’m both. The weight is gone. All the pressure I let crush me as I worried about expectations, as I gentlefooted around making a decision. All velocity, I tell myself. Don’t freeze. Don’t stop. Never stop.

The Sovereign’s voice falters now.

Too late to go back. I dive in.

Smile.

And the gala goes dead silent as I spring thirty feet in the low gravity and land hard on the Bellona table. Dishes crack. Servers scatter. Bellonas fall back. Some shout at me. Some do not move even as their wine spills. The Sovereign watches, struck by curiosity, her Furies stirring at her side. Pliny looks about to die. He’s gripping his knees in panic. Beside him, the Jackal is as strange and unreadable as a lonely desert creature.

I did not wear dress shoes tonight. My boots are thick and heavy. They crack the porcelain as I trod along the Bellona table, shattering dishes of pudding and squishing tender steaks. My blood pumps through me. Intoxicating. I lift my voice.

“I’ll have your attention.” I crush a plate of peas underfoot. “You may know me.” There’s nervous laughter. Of course they know me. They know everyone of worth, though mine is more of rumor than substance. I see the Furies whispering to the Sovereign. See Tactus grinning his ass off. Karnus leans forward anxiously. Victra’s smiling at the Jackal. Even see Antonia nudging a tall, serene Gold. I avoid looking at Mustang. Pliny gibbers in Augustus’s ear. Augustus raises a hand to shut him up. “Do I have your attention?” I ask.

Yes. I do.

“Boy, sit down!” someone shouts.

“Make him,” Tactus replies drunkenly. “No? That’s what I surmised!”

“For those of you who do not know, I am a lancer of the House of Augustus, for another hour or so.” They laugh. “I am the one they call the Reaper of Mars, who struck down a full Peerless Knight, who stormed Olympus and made slaves of my Proctors. My name is Darrow au Andromedus, and I have been wronged.

“We Peerless Scarred come from Golden ancestors. From conquerors with spines of iron. Honorable men, honorable women. But before you today, I see a family that is dishonorable. A family with spines made of chalk. A corrupt and fraudulent family of liars and cowards that conspires to steal my master’s Governorship, illegally.”

I crush a serving plate with my boots. Who knows if they conspire to do it or not? It sounds good. It seems like they conspire. And it’s the mask I need them to wear. Karnus replies beautifully by whipping out his razor and surging toward me. His father, the Imperator, waves him back. Praetor Kellan looks about to grab my feet and jerk me down where Cagney would no doubt cut my throat with my own razor. The younger girls of their family think me a demon. A demon that killed their cousin, brother. They have no idea what I really am. But perhaps Lady Bellona does. Cadaverous in her grief, she sits surrounded by her brood like a withered lioness. They look to her as much as to her husband. The last thing I note is the trembling of her long right hand, as though it aches for a knife with which to cut me.

“Twice I have been wronged by this family. Once in the mud of the Institute. Again at the Academy by that one … and this one … and that one.” I point out all those who beat me in the gardens. I see Cassius now near the head of the table, just by his father and mother. Mustang sits beside him. Her face a mask. Disappointed? Upset? Bored? When she quirks an eyebrow at me, I meet her eyes, walk toward her and set my foot on the edge of the wine decanter that sits in front of Cassius. All eyes focus there, like light falling into a black hole. Pausing time, space. Bending all forward. Breaths catch. “All courts of Golden law permit a man to defend his honor against any force that would desecrate it unjustly. From the old lands of Earth to the icy bowels of Pluto, the right of challenge exists for any man and any woman. My name, gentle lords and ladies, is Darrow au Andromedus. My honor has been pissed upon. And I demand satisfaction.”

I tip the wine over onto Cassius’s lap.

He explodes up at me. Golds all over the grand party burst up from their seats in a great roar. Tactus rushes from our table, joined with Leto, Victra, all of the aides and bannermen of the vassals to my ArchGovernor—the Corvos, the Julii, the Voloxes, the huge Telemanuses, Pax’s family. Razors snap into hands. Curses splinter the winter air. Aja, the largest and darkest of the Furies, leans down from the Sovereign’s table and bellows, “Stop this madness!”

It’s only begun.

My hands shake like they used to in the mine. Now, as then, serpents surround me.

You could never hear them, the pitvipers. Could rarely see them. Black as pupils, they slither in the shadows till they strike. But there’s a fear that comes when they near. A fear separate from the rumbling of the drill. Separate from the throbbing, nauseating heat that builds in your balls as you carve through a million tons of rock and all the friction radiates up, making a bog of piss and sweat inside your suit. It’s fearing the coming of death. Like a shadow has passed across your soul.

That fear fills me now as these Peerless stand around me, a mass of serpentine gold. Whispering. Hissing. Deadly as sin.

Snow on the ground crunches under my heavy boots. I bend down as the Sovereign speaks. She tells of honor and tradition. How martial duels mark the greatness of our race, so she makes an exception for the day. We may duel beyond the gaming grounds. This bloodfeud must be put to rest here, now, in front of the august of our race. So confident is she in her newest Olympic Knight. But why wouldn’t she be? He’s killed me before.

“Unlike the cowards of old, we settle flesh to flesh. Bone to bone. Blood to blood. Vendettas die in the Bleeding Place virtute et armis,” the Sovereign recites.

By valor and arms. No doubt she has already spoken to her advisors. They will say I am outmatched, that Cassius is the better swordsman. It never would have gone this far if she hadn’t been assured a beneficial outcome.

“As it was with our ancestors, it is now and again to the death,” she declares. “Are there any contentions?”

I hoped for this.

Neither Cassius nor I say a thing. Mustang steps forward to object, but the Fury, Aja, shakes her head, stopping her.

“Then today, res, non verba.” Actions, not words.

I speak with my master before stepping into the center of the circle that now forms as Browns cart away the tables from the snowy plain. Pliny hovers beside Augustus. As do Leto, Tactus, Victra, and the great Praetors of Mars. So many famous faces, so many warriors and politicians. The Jackal stands farther away, shorter than the rest, impassive, speaking to no one. I wonder what he would say to me were there fewer ears to hear. He does not look angry. Perhaps he’s learned to trust in my plans. He nods his head, as if reading my thoughts. We are still allied.

“Is this spectacle for me? For vanity? For love?” Augustus asks as I stand before him. His eyes dig into me, trying to find meaning. I can’t help but glance over at Mustang. Even now, she draws me from my task.

“You’re so young,” he nearly whispers. “What they tell you in the storybooks is wrong; love does not survive things like this. Not the love of my daughter, at least.” He pauses, reflecting. “Her soul is like her mother’s.”

“I don’t do it for love, my liege.”

“No?”

“No.” I bow my head to him and remember Matteo’s highLingo. “The duty of the son is the father’s glory. Is it not?” I fall to a knee.

“You are not my son.”

“No. The Bellona killed him, stole him from you. Your firstborn son, Claudius, was all a man could hope for—a son better and wiser than his father. So let me make you a present of their favorite son’s head. Enough quibbling. Enough of their politics. Blood for blood.”

“My liege, Julian was one thing. But Cassius …,” Pliny tries.

Augustus ignores him.

“I weep for your blessing,” I say again, pressing my master. “How long will you keep the Sovereign’s favor? A month? A year? Two? Soon she will replace you with the Bellona. Look how she favors Cassius. Look how she steals your child. Look how the other goes the way of a Silver. Your heirs are depleted. Your time as ArchGovernor will end. Let it. For you are not a man fit to be ArchGovernor of Mars. You are a man fit to be king of it.”

His eyes flash. “We have no kings.”

“Because none have dared craft themselves a crown,” I say. “Let this be the first step. Spit in the Sovereign’s eye. Make me the sword of your family.”

I pull a knife from my boot and make a quick cut beneath my eye. The blood falls like teardrops. This is an old blessing, from the iron ancestors, the Conquerors. And it will chill those who see it—a relic of a bygone, harder age. It is a Mars blessing. One of iron and blood. Of the raging ships that burned the famed Britannic Armada above Earth’s North Pole, and dashed the fastkillers from the land of the Rising Sun amid the asteroid belt. My master’s eyes ignite like dormant coals breathed upon, slowly, then all at once.

I have him.

“I give my blessing freely. What you do, do in my honor.” He leans toward me. “Rise, goldenborn. Rise, ironmade.” Augustus touches his finger to the blood and then presses the mark beneath his own eye. “Rise, Man of Mars, and take with you my wrath.”

I rise to whispers. This is no simple squabble now between boys. It is the battle of houses. Champion against champion.

“Hic sunt leones,” he says, tilting his head—part challenge, part benediction. What a vain swine of a man. He knows my desperation to stay in his good graces. He knows he stands playing with matches on a powder keg. Yet his eyes glitter lustfully, hungering for blood and the promise of power as I hunger for air.

“Hic sunt leones,” I echo.

I pace back to the center of the circle, nodding to Tactus and Victra. They touch the handles of their razors, as do the other aides. Our pack mentality is keen. “Prime luck,” Tactus says.

High above, ships swim quietly through the long-night. Trees sway in the breeze. Cities sparkle in the distance. Earth hovers like a swollen moon as I unravel my razor from my forearm.

Mustang comes to me as Cassius’s mother kisses his forehead.

“So you’re a pawn now?” she asks quickly.

“And you’re a trophy?”

She flinches before her lips curl into a slight sneer. “You say that to me? I don’t even recognize you.”

“Nor I you, Virginia. Serving the Sovereign now?”

But I do recognize her, despite the terrible gulf that now makes her feel more stranger than friend. The tightness in my chest is of her making. So too is the awkward tension in my hands as they yearn to touch her, yearn to hold her and tell her this is all a false guise. I’m not a pawn to her father. I’m more than that. All this is for good. Just not their good.

“ ‘Virginia.’ ” She cocks her head at me, smiling sadly as she spares a glance for the two thousand waiting Peerless. “You know, I’ve wondered over these last years … I suppose I should have wondered from the start, but you cut such a rare character—it was distracting. But I’ll ask now.” Her bright eyes cut through me, searching, judging. “Are you insane?”

I look over at Cassius. “Are you?”

“Jealousy? That’s ripe.” She leans in with a harsh whisper. “Shame you don’t respect me enough to suppose that I have my own plan. You think I’m here because my aching loins thrust me into Bellona arms. Please. I’m no bitch in heat. I protect my family by any means necessary. Who do you protect but yourself?”

“You betray your family by being with him.” I have no false answer that may parallel the truth. I must suffer being a villain in her eyes. Yet I can’t meet them. “Cassius is a wicked man.”

“Grow up, Darrow.” She looks like she’s going to say something deeper, but she just shakes her head and, turning, says, “He’s going to kill you. I’ll try to convince Octavia to end it early.” Her words fail her at first. “I wish you hadn’t come to this moon.”

She leaves me, giving Cassius a squeeze on the hand before joining the Sovereign’s entourage on the raised dais.

“Alone at last, my old friend,” Cassius says, slashing me with a smile.

Once we were like brothers. We shared food and raced that first day at the Institute. Stormed House Minerva together. How he laughed when I stole their cook and Sevro their standard. We galloped over the plains that night underneath the light of twin moons. I remember the woe in his eyes when they captured Quinn. When my kin, Titus, beat him and pissed on him. How I felt the tears welling then, when we were like brothers, before it all fell apart.

The cinnamon-and-orange-flavored snow still falls. It settles in his curly hair. On his broad shoulders. It was in the snow that he last fought me. Buried rusty steel into my lower gut and left me dying in my own filth. I have not forgotten how he twisted that blade to make sure the wound did not close.

His blade is ebony now.

It curls in front of him, over a meter of narrow sword when solid. More than two meters of lashing razor whip when loosed with the toggle on the handle, which sends a chemical impulse through the blade’s molecular structure. Golden marks line the blade, telling the lineage of his family. Their conquests. The Triumphs thrown in their honor. Old, arrogant, powerful. My blade is naked, absent of embellishment.

“So, I’ve taken what’s yours,” he says, walking closer and nodding to Mustang.

I laugh, “She was never mine. And she’s certainly not yours.”

The White arrives, hustling forward in his robes. Head bald. Back crooked.

“But I’ve had her in ways you haven’t.” His voice lowers so only we might hear, “I wonder, do you lie alone at night, thinking of the pleasures I give her? Does it vex you that I know how she kisses? How she sighs when you touch her neck just so?”

I don’t answer.

“That she moans my name instead of yours?” He doesn’t laugh. He may loathe what he says, but he’d say anything to hurt me. In most ways, he’s not a bad man. He’s just my bad man. “In fact, she moaned as I went inside her this morning.”

“What would Julian say if he could see you now?” I ask.

“He’d echo mother and beg me to kill you.”

“Or would he weep at the devil you’ve become?”

He uncoils his razor and ignites his aegis. My own aegis hums as I activate it—an ion-blue transparent energy shield that bows slightly outward from my left glove, one foot long by two feet wide. Snow melts when I sweep the aegis near the ground. A corona of haze forms around the blue light.

“We’re all devils.” His sudden laugh floats up like a silk ribbon carried away with the breeze. “This was always your problem, Darrow. You have an inflated view of yourself. You think you have some sort of morality tucked away. You think you are better than us, when really you are less. Forever playing games you cannot master against people you cannot match.”

“I matched Julian well enough.”

“Bastard.” His face contorts, and he lashes forward, bellowing wordlessly, knocking me back before the White can give the benediction. They shout for us to stop, but as the razors scream, the shouts fade away and all eyes widen as man-killing metal wails through slow-falling snow. He uses the tenets of kravat. Four seconds of precise, kinetic violence, retreat. Assess. Engage.

We are the only sound in this strange place. The odd, high-pitched keen of an arching whip. The thrum of the solid blade. The crack as aegises on left arms spark white when blades slash into them. The crunch of snow and the creaking of leather.

Despite his anger, Cassius is perfect in his form. His feet shuffle, never crossing; his hips swivel as he lunges in the compact salvos. His breath comes measured, paced. He lashes his whip forward in a sweep, then hardens the blade and swings it up, aiming for my groin. His movements flicker fast. Trained. Honed by masters and Swords of the Society. It’s easy to see why he has devastated his opponents since childhood, why he gutted me at the Institute. Because his enemies fight like him, but slower. I don’t fight like them. I learned that lesson.

Now he will learn his.

“You’ve been practicing. You can match six moves a set,” he says, drawing back. He darts forward, feinting high and sweeping low to claim my ankles. “But you’re still a novice.” He sends a flurry of seven blows at me, almost skewering me through the right shoulder. I recognize the engagement pattern, but am still a fraction off his speed. I barely escape, throwing myself out of the way of a thrust at the last moment. Two more sets of seven come in quick succession. I barely escape the last, falling to a knee, panting, looking around at the gathered guests.

“Do you hear that?” he asks. I hear nothing but the wind and the throbbing of my heart. “That is the sound of dying alone. No one to weep. No one to care.”

“Arcos will care,” I whisper.

He stiffens. “What did you say?”

“Lorn au Arcos will care if his last student dies,” I say, dropping the falsely ragged breath, straightening proudly. Cassius stares at me as if he’s seen a ghost. He hesitates. So too do those who hear what I say. “While you ate, I trained. While you drank, I trained. While you sought pleasure, I trained from the weeks after the Institute to the days before the Academy.”

“Lorn au Arcos doesn’t accept students,” Cassius hisses. “Not for thirty years.”

“He made an exception.”

“Liar.”

“Oh?” I laugh. “Did you think I came here to be killed? Did you think yourself entitled to my life? No, Cassius. I came here to cut you down before your parents.”

He steps backward, eyes dancing to his father, to Karnus. I cock my head at him. “Come now, brother. Don’t you want to see how well I can really fight?”

He pauses and I charge him like some night carnivore, shoulders hunched with primeval economy, quiet as the dark itself.

Lorn’s words come back to me. “A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.” And so I peel apart his legs, sending set after set into him. Not for the four seconds the Golds teach. But for seven. Then six, alternating, then breaking the pattern. Twelve moves a set.

His defense is precise. And if I fought as he taught me to fight, I would die to him. But I was taught to move by my uncle, and to kill by a legend. I rage and spin, leaving my feet and striking down, beating him as a great hurricane slapping and smashing and hammering him back. And when he attacks, I bow to the side until such time that I can break him, as Lorn au Arcos trained me to do. Move in a circle. Never retreat backward. No attack opens when a man allows himself to be pushed backward. Use their force to create new angles. Flow around him. The Willow Way. Pretty, fluid, like a spring song in defense, then lashing and horrible as the branches of a willow in deep winter as glacial winds scream down from the mountains.

Inside me, Red meets Gold.

My blade flashes between whip and curved slingBlade. It crashes into his sword, and the aegis on his left side crackles from the force of my blows. Cassius falters. He’s a prizefighter getting pummeled by a back-alley brawler.