Golden Son (8 page)

“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.”

“How much support?”

“Enough. We’re just the transporters,
dominus
.” His mouth twitches into a smile and I take his word for it. “Bigger problem than the Bellona is third parties thinking an opportunity’s just stumbled their way. Where we’re going, there will be a hell of a lot of third parties,
dominus
. Shit complicates our ROI. Sun-hwa?”

“Wear this.” Sun-hwa tosses me a bag of plain clothing. Her voice drones on in a monotone drawl.

“You’re tall can’t do shitall about that but we’ll do a quick dye job with this this and this.” She tosses Victra another bag. “For you. Boss thought you’d dress too fancy.”

Victra laughs at that.

“Muzzles off, boys,” Valentin barks as the ship trembles and rises in the air. “We’re live.”

Thumpers and burners prime in practiced hands. Staccato sound of steel on steel. Like metal knuckles cracking as magnetic rounds go into chambers. The lurchers conceal weapons in hidden holsters over tight scarabSkin armor. Three wear illegal wrist weapons. I eye the contraband as I slip into my scarabSkin. It drinks in the light, a strange pupil-like black. More the absence of color than anything else. Better than the duroArmor we had at the Institute, it’ll stop some blades and the occasional projectile weapon like the common scorcher.

The ship shudders as its main engines overtake the vertical thrusters.

“Talon and Minotaur, be advised. Icarus is on the move,” Valentin rasps into his com. “Repeat.

Icarus is on the move.”

7

THE AFTERBIRTH

On Luna, there is no dark. No true dark, at least. Lights of a million shades swim together, glossing over the moon’s jagged, cracking steel skin of cityscape. Snaking public trams and air thoroughfares, flashing communication centers, bustling restaurants, and austere police stations weave into the metal dermis of the city like blood capillaries, nerve endings, sweat glands, and hair follicles.

We fall away from Gold districts, forsaking the high reaches of the city where stately shuttles and gravBoots ferry Golds to opera houses atop kilometers-high towers. We dive down past the wealthy Silver and Copper districts, wending our way through rungPaths and aerial trains, through the midDistricts where the Yellows, Greens, Blues, and Violets reside, past the lowDistrict where Grays and Oranges make their homes.

Down and down we go to the gutters of the city where the roots of this colossal steel jungle burrow into the ground. Myriad lowColors ride public transportation from factories to their windowless apartments, some no larger than one meter by three. Only room enough for a bed. Cars rattle out exhaust in clogged beacon-lit boulevards. The deeper we go, the fewer the lights, the dirtier the buildings, the stranger the animals, but the more brilliant the graffiti. I glimpse Gray police standing over arrested Brown vandals who covered an apartment complex with the image of a hanging girl.

My wife. Ten stories tall, hair burning, rendered in digital paint. My chest constricts as we pass, cracking the walls I’ve built around her memory. I’ve seen her hanged a thousand times now as her martyrdom spreads across the worlds, city by city. Yet each time, it strikes me like a physical blow, nerve endings shivering in my chest, heart beating fast, neck tight just under the jaw. How cruel a life, that the sight of my dead wife means hope.