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“This … it just pisses me off.” She takes her feet off the table and leans forward to shake her head. “We’re meant to be better than this. That’s all Peerless are supposed to be—transcendent of the urges that”—she holds up ironic airquotes—“enslave the weaker Colors.”

“It isn’t about urges.” I tap the table in frustration. “It’s about power.”

“Tactus is of House Valii!” Mustang exclaims. “His family is ancient. How much power does that asshole want?”

“Power over me, I mean. I told him he couldn’t do something. Now he’s trying to prove he can do whatever he wants.”

“So he’s not another heathen like Titus.”

“You’ve met him. Of course he’s a heathen. But no. This was tactical.”

“Well, the clever shit has put you in a tight spot.”

I slap the table. “I don’t like this—someone else picking the battles or the battlefield. That’s how we will lose.”

“It’s a no-win, really. We can’t come out ahead. Someone is going to hate you either way. So we just have to figure out which way is the least damaging. Prime?”

“What about justice?” I ask.

Her eyebrows float upward. “What about winning? Isn’t that what matters?”

“You trying to trap me?”

She grins. “Just testing you.”

I frown. “Tactus killed Tamara, his Primus. Cut her saddle and then rode over her. He’s wicked. He deserves any punishment we give him.”

Mustang raises her eyebrows as if this is all to be expected. “He sees what he wants, and he takes it.”

“How admirable,” I mutter.

She tilts her head at me, lively eyes going over my face. “Rare.”

“What’s that?”

“I was wrong, about you. That’s rare.”

“Am I wrong about Tactus?” I ask. “Is he wicked, really? Or is he just ahead of the curve? Does he just grasp the game better?”

“No one grasps the game.”

Mustang puts her muddy boots on the table again and leans back. Her golden hair falls past her shoulders in a long braid. The fire crackles in the hearth, her eyes dance over my face. I don’t miss my old friends when she smiles like that. I ask her to explain.

“No one grasps the game, because no one knows the rules. No one follows the same set of rules. It is like life. Some think honor universal. Some think laws binding. Others know better. But in the end, don’t those who rise by poison die by poison?”

I shrug. “In the storybooks. In life there’s no one left to poison them, often.”

“They expect an eye for an eye, the House Ceres slaves. Punish Tactus, you piss off the Diana kids. They get you a fortress and you spit on them for it. Remember, as far as they are concerned, Tactus hid in a horse’s belly half a day for you when you took my castle. Resentment will swell like a Copper bureaucracy. But if you don’t punish him, you’ll lose

all of Ceres.”

“Can’t do that.” I sigh. “I failed this test before. I put Titus to death and thought I was meting out justice. I was wrong.”

“Tactus is an Iron Gold. His blood is as old as the Society. They look at compassion, at reform, as a disease. He is his family. He will not change. He will not learn. He believes in power. Other Colors are not people to him. Lesser Golds are not people to him. He is bound to his fate.”

Yet I’m a Red acting like a Gold. No man is bound to his fate. I can change him. I know I can. But how?

“What do you think I should do?” I ask.