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“Father always thought it would be Lorn who would do him in, one way or another,” she says, noting my interest in the painting and looking at her father, whose death shroud is freshly painted. “He wouldn’t have minded that, or even Nero. But a cur, a half-breed, and a slave?” She makes a faint sibilant sound. “What an indecorous age we inhabit, dear boy. No one gets the death they deserve. It is most uncouth.”

“What sort of farce is this, Atalantia?” mutters Scorpio au Votum’s hologram. He has always been a pedantic, mathematical creature. He has also just eclipsed one hundred years of age, and is on his sixteenth paramour. “We hardly have the time for this…sideshow. There are logistics to discuss.”

Atalantia rolls her eyes to me. As if saying “Look what I must bear,” but there’s still a gulf between us. She is wary of my intentions, as is only natural.

“Farce?” Ajax hisses, coming to my defense. “And what is farcical about Lysander returning from the grave, Scorpio?”

“At this late hour, a lost boy stumbles to us from the fringes of civilization on an enemy ship?” Scorpio scoffs. “Pardon my incredulity, but it seems devious engines are at work.”

“How I love the mausoleum of conspiracies in your mind, Scorpio. Such a delight. But I wonder, do you intend to accuse me of devious engineering?” Atalantia asks.

“I was suggesting the lupine variety.” He wasn’t. “But, since you ask, I would remind you that Mercury belongs to my family, not the gens Grimmus, not the gens Lune, not this confederacy of Two Hundred we have cobbled together to include even the most diluted blood. We built Mercury. We tamed its orbit.”

“Silenius and his heirs did pay for it….” Kalindora adds.

In the mind of the Votum Primus, the youth of Kalindora and her pitiful bloodline, one a scant three hundred years old, is of little concern. He rails on. “Pray tell, Atalantia, do you truly believe the support of the heir will make us forget our deed to this planet? No. No. Precocious as you are, you are not the only one with an army. You are first amongst equals, but that does not make you our Sovereign. Nor will it ever.”

Atalantia smiles at him. “If I mistook that for a threat, Scorpio, I might insist you have Atlas over for a midnight tea. I know, you can invite your lovely children: Cicero, Porcia, Ovidius, Horatia. Why not just invite the whole lot?”

Atlas’s name has a chilling effect on the room. But it goes deeper than their fear of just that man. In an era in which these Primuses have witnessed the extinction of genetic lines as old as their own, threats to family do not just endanger the heart, but the survival of their ancient names.

“Of course, I am no Sovereign,” Atalantia says, sharp as a tack now. “What need have I of groveling sycophants? Or the burden of planetary management? My province is war, my goodman. Only war. In it I have proven myself your superior, and enjoy your confidence in its prosecution.” None disagree, not even Falthe, and he’s seen as many battles as the Reaper himself. “This pertains to war. And I say this is Lysander. And this is the first time I have seen him in ten long years. Yet I am generous enough to share him with you. Why? Because I value your opinions. But if it is accusations you seek to levy at me…well…that would be disappointing.”

Silence. Ajax looms behind Atalantia like an unshaken fist. Atlas, like an unseen one. Yet for all that menace, the Golds know Atalantia could only kill them at gravest cost to herself. And it is not in the nature of those who rule planets to tuck their tails, nor do they. However, Scorpio’s reply is markedly more judicious.

“Lysander au Lune was in the Dragonmaw when it fell. Since he is here, one wonders how he survived. How do we know he is not an agent of the Rising? He may not even know himself. I know I need not remind you of the ruthlessness of our enemy. Or that you no longer hold the monopoly on certain…technologies.”

“I am willing to accept that he is Lysander,” purrs Asmodeus au Carthii. “Scorpio is just a paranoid arachnid.” As Atalantia’s strongest ally, Asmodeus will seek to support her, at my cost. He looks the same since I saw him last, drunk in the gardens of the Palatine with drugged young Pinks on each arm. Though well over one hundred, the eerie creature has the tanned, unnatural face of a forty-year-old, the blue veins of age rejuvenation no doubt covered by concealer. The Carthii, while always dear to Atalantia, are the very worst of the Core. I let him spill his poison, but remember to look out for the more dire variety.

“We all know that Bellona just barely escaped Gorgo and his assassins on Ceres not three years ago,” Asmodeus says. “The beast reported a sprightly catamite nipping at Bellona’s heels.” The famous letch gazes at me in the same hungry way he did when I was a boy. “I believe we now know the identity of that catamite.”

Kalindora laughs and slaps her armored thigh. “You old pervert. You sure that wasn’t a dream of yours?” Ajax snorts a surprised laugh. Asmodeus looks irritated, but does not interrupt the soldier. “Neither Lysander nor the Traitor would so debase themselves.” She gives me a wink. “But maybe we should ask the man himself. I suppose he may have some information on the subject, no?”

When I was a boy, Kalindora served on my protection unit before rising to the rank of Olympic Knight. I see she’s not lost her touch.

“Honored Primuses,” I say loud and clear. “I apologize for my tardiness to the war. But I fear I must clarify my absence. I was not kept prisoner of the Republic nor was I Cassius’s catamite. After the murders of Aja and Octavia, Darrow gave me to Cassius as a ward after he killed m

y grandmother. It was with him that I have spent these last ten years in the Belt.”

It was not exactly the reply Kalindora had in mind. Instead of defusing the Golds, it sends them into amazed laughter. Atalantia’s eyes widen slightly, while Ajax turns very slowly to face me. “Ward?”

“Yes.”

He goes silent, knowing better than to air our dirty laundry before the others. So he’s learned discretion. Perhaps I should have tried that instead of honesty, but it all would have come out eventually. Diomedes may be honorable, but if his duty required him to drop this bomb to gain leverage in the negotiations, he’d do it without flinching. Seraphina might tell them just for fun. The arch traitor of my people raised me just as long as our dead Sovereign did. While they might spit at me, it has a corrosive effect on their condescension. Bellona’s blood was as old as theirs, and he was a very dangerous man. What did he help raise?

“Well, that is truly abhorrent,” Atalantia says with a whistle. “But from what your communiqué relayed, we are to believe Cassius is dead.”

“Yes.”

She and Ajax share an intense look. “Good. We will take custody of the body so that his mother may honor it with sundeath, if she so chooses.”

“I do not have the body.”

Atalantia’s eyebrows float upward, and around her neck Hypatia begins to slither counterclockwise in agitation. “Why not?”

“The body was stolen and desecrated by familiars of Bellerephon au Raa, whom Cassius killed.”

“Desecrated in what manner?”