Iron Gold

  “Pytha?”

  She bolts upward and bowls toward me with her spindly limbs, shocking me by wrapping her arms around me in an embrace. She holds tight, the top of her head under my chin. The latticework of her rib cage presses against mine.

  “You’re alive,” she says into my chest. “You’re fucking alive.”

  I did not expect an embrace from her. I would not have given one myself.

  “Pytha…there’s something I have to tell you. About Cassius…”

  She pulls back, eyes red. “I know.”

  I swallow the stone in my throat. “Where have you been?”

  We sit sipping tea at the table as Pytha recounts her trials. She was not accorded the same comfort Cassius and I were. She was tortured by Pandora on the first night we were captured and has trouble remembering what she revealed. Here on Io, she’s been treated well, but she’s still famished and devours a plate of thin sandwiches that Aruka serves. I nibble on one without tasting it, mulling over what she’s told me. Gaia picks tobacco from her pipe with a short knife.

  “You still haven’t told me,” I say. Gaia looks up, confused. “What you want from me…from us.”

  “As you said, you are going to die. Soon. Both of you. I believe Dido will execute you after Romulus’s trial tomorrow. Perhaps before. It will be quiet. A blackblood scorpion in your room. A needle drone. A poisoned cup of tea.” I set down my cup uneasily. “She will want the grandson of Lune to disappear. You complicate her plans, Lysander. She can stand no challenges to her authority. So disappear you shall, regardless of Seraphina’s intervention.”

  “Damn, you’re depressing as an empty stimpack,” Pytha mutters, but she’s not depressed enough to stop eating the sandwiches. “So what do we do? Just wait to die like Cassius?”

  “No,” Gaia says. “I suggest an alternative: survive.”

  It’s not the answer I expected, but it fits. “And how do you propose we do that?” Pytha asks sharply. “Even if we get past the guards and steal a ship, we need to get past Sungrave’s guns. Then we need to get to orbit before warhawks shred us with railguns. Then we need to outrace the orbital guard. Then the fleets themselves. Prolly won’t even chase us. They’ll just send a long-distance missile and it’ll do the work. We run, we die a dozen ways.” She loses interest in her meal and pushes it away. “We’re trapped on this shithole moon.”

  “I understand you are angry,” Gaia says. “But speak to me in that way again, lowborn, and your tongue will fertilize my tobacco garden.” Gaia puffs away on her pipe as Pytha blanches. “And, yes, you are trapped…unless…”

  “Unless what…domina?” Pytha asks nervously.

  “Unless Dido’s not in power,” I guess. “Unless Romulus defeats her coup. Then he may let us go.”

  “Romulus, who let me be tortured by that Pandora…” Pytha spares a quick look at Gaia. “…woman? Didn’t you say he wanted to cut your head off and send the Archi into Jupiter? Aren’t you a little raw about that?”

  “It’s in the past. And it made sense, considering his predicament.”

  “Killing you made sense?”

  “Technically.”

  She considers. “Well, I have thought of it a few times.”

  I mull over an idea, seeing Gaia’s intention. “You want us to help you. You want us to free Romulus from the Dust Cells.” Gaia nods at me through her pipe smoke.

  “So we can get killed by those turbaned psychopaths? Are you spacemad?” Pytha crosses her arms. “Don’t you have your own men…domina?”

  “All my men have been arrested or displaced,” Gaia says. She gestures to Aruka and Goroth. “We crones are all that’s left. What mischief could we do, feeble as we are?” Goroth bares his black teeth, chilling me.

  “Golds wanting us to do their dirty work. Typical,” Pytha mutters. “I don’t want to die for them, Lysander.”

  “This might be the only way we don’t die today,” I say with a smile. But inside, behind the dancing mask, my logic is cold and clinical.

  “Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking about this!”

  “Dido is preparing for war, Pytha. We’re afterthoughts to her. She’ll delete us or use us…use me as a bargaining chip somehow. I won’t have that. Not at all.” I turn to Gaia. “Would Diomedes help?”

  “No. The vain boy is a slave to his honor. He’s bound by his oath to the Olympic Knights, and they’ve accepted Dido’s coup. Romulus’s trial begins tomorrow. Diomedes will deliver him to that trial for justice to be served there.”

  “His own father?” Pytha asks.

  “It is our way.”

  “You have a plan, I assume?” I ask Gaia.

  “So you’ll do it?” she says slyly.

  “I did not say that. What is your plan?”

  “My daughter, Vela, waits in the desert with legions loyal to Romulus. They will begin an assault on Sungrave to capture Dido. But she cannot attack if he is a hostage. I need you to go to the Dust Cells. Free him. I’ve arranged for hoverbikes in a garage. You will need them to cross the Waste and reach Vela.

  “It’s not just about my son,” she says, baring all her cards. “I was friends with your grandfather, Lorn. He was a stuck-up old goat, but so am I.” She could be lying. “He came to Europa because he tired of the ambition of the young and the pride of the old. I tire of empire, just like Old Stoneside did. War eats families. I told my husband that when he went to Augustus’s war and raced to fall in the Lion’s Rain. He did not listen. My son did. All he’s done, all he’s hidden, has been for the good of the Rim.”

  “Did Romulus know Darrow destroyed the docks?” I ask.

  “No. I suspected, and I counseled my son not to seek war with him.”

  “Logical, at the time, considering your losses. But dishonorable.”

  “Stupid boy. Do you know how many proud humans I’ve seen die for honor? Melted onto the floors of landing craft? Crying on the battlefield for their mothers as they try to push their guts back into their bodies? Honor.” She sips her tea. “Romulus knows the cost. A leader may not always be logical and honorable. At times, he must choose. I’m surprised, of all people, your grandmother did not teach you that. Or are you trying to be Lorn?”

  I say nothing. She makes a small noise of amusement.

  “My son, for all his power, is a humble man. He listened to me. Because of him, our civilization survived the destruction of the docks, and the starvation and economic collapse that followed. We built new ships out of the ruins of the very docks that fell on Ganymede. Now we have peace. I want to die knowing that it will last and that the Venusian strumpet won’t pull us into her planet’s endless war.”

  Gaia does this to protect her family and the Rim. She could care less about the Interior and their people. Seraphina suddenly seems so very noble compared with her grandmother. The young girl’s eyes were incandescent when she spoke of bringing peace to the Core.

  There’s only one answer I can give Gaia that will let me walk out of here.

  “I will do it,” I say carefully. “I will free your son. Pytha, you can stay here….”

  “Last time I did that, you slagged things up good and I got thrown in a cell,” she says. She pushes away her tea. “I come with.”

  I eye her frail arms.

  “Then you must hurry.” Gaia stands with Goroth’s help. “Dido is in council with her Praetors now. But soon she’ll learn I brought you both here.”

  We follow her back into the main room. “I’ll need something. A letter. A recording so Romulus knows you sent me,” I say.

  “You’ll have a guide,” she says. “He knows Goroth.”

  “Then why not just send him?”

  “Goroth is not what he once was.” She looks at the Obsidian with grave affection. “And he does not know how to pilot the hoverbikes. I assume you do.”

  I nod. Appraising Goroth, I look back at Gaia. “I’ll need a weapon.”

  “Yes…Aruka, my hasta.” Aruka rushes to the tokonoma an
d, using tongs instead of his hands, brings back the razor from its gravity perch. “Show him this. I have not held her for many years. Her name is Shizuka. She is yours until I ask for her again. Take it, boy.”

  I take the hasta in my hands. It is cold and alien and outlandishly long. Its handle is pale brown leather and is as long as my forearm. Its blade clear as glass, like Seraphina’s. My hand touches the small activation toggle near the top of the handle and the whip snaps rigid.

  Gaia glances nervously to the door, no longer the collected woman who sat with me at the piano. It took all her energy to make that show of confidence, to sell herself, the gambit. Now her own nerves and exhaustion betray her.

  “You must leave now. Goroth will lead you into the tunnels.” She guides me to a wall where she traces her fingers over the stone. The wall rumbles backward, revealing a dark passage. “We know the secrets of this mountain better than that Venusian tramp.” She hands me a transponder. “Remember, as soon as you have him and can hide, signal for the legions.”

  “I will.”

  The old Obsidian joins us there and looks sadly down at Gaia, torn by the parting. Tears glisten in his black eyes. “Oh, don’t weep, you old brute,” she says to the giant. “Tears do not become us.” He bends down suddenly and kisses her upon the brow with his tattered lips. She’s so startled she barely has time to be offended.

  “Farewell, domina,” he rumbles.

  She shakes her head and shoves him weakly in the chest. “Go!”

  Goroth tears himself away and presses into the darkness of the tunnel. “Thank you for the sandwiches,” Pytha says to Gaia. “If they find out you helped us, won’t they kill you?”

  “Stupid girl, not all who live fear death.” She backs away, the door closes between us, but I hear her last words weakly through the stone. “Save my son.”

  GOROTH, PYTHA, AND I WIND through the bowels of the ancient city in a darkness so complete memory guides the man instead of his large eyes. Up and down and in twisting turns we go. Passing whispers that leak through the stone. Machines that shudder in unseen alcoves and rooms. Thin blades of light slice through the darkness from peepholes. I glance through them, hoping to catch sight of Seraphina, but the deeper we plunge, the farther from the Golds we go. What I see through the walls are Yellows hunched over holoDisplays, studying diagrams and videos, White hierophants reading in cloisters, carver laboratories alive with experiments, barracks of Grays, and great cisterns and botanical gardens abuzz with bees and Reds plucking fruits from rows of subterranean bushes growing under artificial light.

  The tunnels are old and have their own humors. Wind rolls through them, whispering eerily. And deep in the darkness, as it bends around turns and passes over apertures, the wind howls. I walk closely behind Goroth. Without him Pytha and I might wander until we starve to death.

  At each turn Goroth glances back to make sure we still follow, and I worry that he knows what I’m thinking. Knows what I plan. He continues to guide us until we reach a freezing stretch of tunnel where ice slicks the stone under our feet.

  “Here,” he says. We stop and I hear his finger on the wall. The stone grumbles in complaint and then light seeps in through the expanding aperture, revealing a storage room on the other side of the wall. Goroth goes through first. I put a hand on Pytha to stop her from following. My hand trembles on the hasta. What if I miss? I find the toggle with my thumb. My fingers shake.

  “Some ill wind, dominus?” Goroth asks, turning back when I do not follow. Now he senses my intentions in the air. I say nothing. His eyes narrow as he sees my finger on the toggle. Without a word, he lunges at me. His speed uncanny to his age and size. I activate the razor. The long blade springs into the space that separates us. I lunge for his kneecap, hoping not to kill him. It impales the bone and tendons, sliding through them as if they were not even there. Goroth’s momentum carries him through the blade. His huge hands reach for my throat. Pytha screams and slips on the ice. Her legs knock out mine from beneath me. I slam down just as Goroth sails over me and crashes into the wall. He rolls over, reaching for me. I scramble away down the tunnel, trying to gain my feet. He manages to grab only my left hand. I try to bring the razor around, but he jerks me down. I fall facedown and he almost throws his body atop mine. A narrow miss. Still on my belly, right arm and razor pinned under my body, I kick blindly backward at him, hitting his face and shoulders, leveraging my legs against him to prevent him from crawling up my facedown body to pin me there. With his strength and weight, he would nail me to the ground and shatter my skull into the stone. We flail there in the darkness, grunting, his immense strength slowly overwhelming my kravat-learned leverage. I can’t twist my right arm with the razor out from under me.

  “Pytha!” I shout. “Pytha! Kick him.”

  I glance back and see her in the dim light that bleeds from the storage room into the tunnel. She’s gained her feet and rushes up behind Goroth’s prone body to kick him in the back of his head. His grip doesn’t slacken. He’s reaching up my body, trying to take the transponder that will signal Vela. Pytha kicks him again with the heel of her foot and, using the distraction, I manage to wrench my body around so that I’m on my side and can free my arm. I stab down at him again with the razor, this time in the arm that holds me. The blade gores his shoulder. He doesn’t let go. His huge hand closes around my left hand, squeezing till I hear a popping like green wood over a campfire. The bones crackle and splinter under my flesh. Pain races up my left arm. I grunt and swing the blade down at his arm in frantic desperation. His grip slackens. I scramble to my feet, his severed hand still clutched around my left. I wheel around to kill him, but he’s rolled back away from me into the shadows of the tunnel past the storage room aperture.

  One breath. Two. He does not reappear.

  I rush to Pytha, razor pointed warily at the darkness, and shove her inside the storage room. “Lysander, what the blackhell was that?” My hand throbs with pain. In the light I can see the mangled fingers and the swelling underneath the skin. We weave through boxes, fleeing the tunnels till we find a door and go through it into a cold hallway. We’re in the Dust Cells prison facility. Cameras blink on the ceiling from behind small glass globes. “They’ll see you!” I go to my knees in front of one and throw the razor on the ground. She retreats to the doorway of the storage room. “Lysander…” An alarm begins to howl out of the camera. Doors slam somewhere in the distance. Boots hammer the ground.

  “Pytha, get on your knees with me. They’ll be here soon.”

  “Lysander, what are you doing?”

  “Choosing a side.”

  —

  An hour later, Dido watches me after I finish my story. Pytha stands nervously with me; we’re surrounded by a handful of soldiers, along with Dido and Seraphina, both of whom look to have been woken from their sleep. My left hand is in agony, swollen like a waterskin and throbbing a deep black-purple. The shock wore off half an hour ago. My teeth don’t chatter anymore, but I’m sweating bullets. I compartmentalize the pain along with the fear, putting it in the void and focusing on my breathing. The pain becomes manageable.

  “He had this with him.” The centurion of the platoon that captured us hands Dido a plastic container that holds Gaia’s razor, taking care not to touch the blade with his own hand. “It is the matron’s razor, is it not?”

  My evidence.

  “It is. Seraphina, what do you think?” Dido asks.

  Seraphina scrutinizes me from the corner of the room. “I wouldn’t trust a Lune farther than I can spit.” She looks at her datapad as it glows. “But they found a hand in the tunnel and Obsidian blood. Field DNA inspection says it’s Goroth’s.”

  “And that monster wouldn’t take a piss if Gaia didn’t tell him to.” Dido cradles the transponder that Gaia gave me. “So he is telling the truth. Your grandmother is not so senile as she appears.”

  “Should we send a platoon to her quarters, domina?” the centurion asks. Dido’s finger glides along
the activation button.

  “No…no, that would look tawdry. More family squabble.” Seraphina breathes a sigh of relief. Dido’s eyes glitter over at me. “We’re not Lunes, after all. She is my mother-in-law. No. Search for Goroth, centurion.” His men swallow nervously behind him. Dido doesn’t notice, but Seraphina seems to have a better gauge on the pulse of the men. “Even with one arm, I don’t like the idea of a Stained in the walls. And not a word of this to anyone. Last thing I need is all our new allies shitting themselves for fear of being skinned in their sleep.” The soldier waits expectantly. “Something else? Pray tell.”

  “I don’t have clearance for the tunnels, domina. Or maps.”

  “Did you know they existed before today?” Seraphina asks.

  “Only rumors. And I was born in Sungrave.”

  “I can go, Mother,” Seraphina says. “I know most of the—”

  “No, I won’t risk you chasing a Stained in the dark. Who else knows the damn tunnels?”

  “Some Dragonguard,” Seraphina says. “But most of the centurions are loyal to Father.”

  “Goryhell. Isn’t there a map in the servers or something?”

  “There was,” Seraphina says. “When Fabii’s hacker battalions corrupted the mainframe, the tunnel maps were casualties of the data purge.”

  “You mean they’re lost and we’re strangers in our own gorydamn home?” Dido laughs to me. “See? Always at siege.”

  “Marius was mapping them with the Krypteia, but I don’t know how far he got,” Seraphina says.

  “Of course he would.”

  “He won’t help us, not without Father’s permission.”

  “I know. I know.” Dido rubs her fingers into her temples, thinking. “Sera, summon Kurath. I want a hundred Obsidian bloodstalkers and kuon hounds in the tunnels by morning. Let them hunt their own.” The Grays breathe a sigh of relief.