Iron Gold

In her mid-thirties, a stout woman with thighs thick as water drums and a freckled, bluff face. She grins past the shoulders of the Obsidians and Golds around her. Blue and Red and Orange pilots wave to the crowd. Red, Gray, and Brown infantry smile and laugh as pretty young Pinks and Reds duck under barriers and rush to drape necklaces of flowers around their necks, push bottles of liquor into their hands and kisses onto their mouths. They are the only full legion in today’s parade. The rest remain on Mercury with Orion and Harnassus, battling with the Ash Lord’s legions stranded there when his fleet retreated.

Clunk.

“Remember, you are but mortal,” Sevro’s bored voice drawls in my ear as white-haired Wulfgar and the Republic Wardens descend to greet us midway up the Forum stairs. Sevro sniffs my neck and makes a noise of distaste. “By Jove. You wretch. Did you dip yourself in piss before the occasion?”

“It’s cologne,” I say. “Mustang bought it for me last Solstice.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Is it made out of piss?”

I scowl back at him, wrinkling my nose at the heaviness of liquor on his breath, and eye the ragged wolfcloak he wears over his ceremonial armor. He claims he hasn’t washed it since the Institute. “You’re really lecturing me about stenches? Just shut up and behave like an Imperator,” I say with a grin.

Snorting, Sevro drops back to where the legendary Obsidian, Sefi Volarus, stands in her customary silence. He feigns an air of domesticity, but next to the giant woman, he looks a little like some sort of gutter dog an alcoholic father might ill-advisedly bring home to play with the children—washed and rid of fleas, but still possessing that weird mania behind the eyes. Pinched, thin lipped, with a nose crooked as an old knifefighter’s fingers. He eyes the crowd with resigned distaste.

Behind him lope the pack of mangy Howlers he brought with us to Mercury. My bodyguards, now drunk as gallants at a Lykos Laureltide. Stalwart Holiday walks at their center, the snub-nosed woman doing her best to keep them in line.

There used to be more of them. So many more.

I smile as Wulfgar descends the stairs to meet me. A favorite son of the Rising, the Obsidian is a tree root of a man, gnarled and narrow, armored all in pale blue. He’s in his early forties. His face angular as a raptor’s, his beard braided like that of his hero, Ragnar.

One of the Obsidians to fight alongside Ragnar at the walls of Agea, Wulfgar was with the Sons of Ares that freed me from the Jackal in Attica. Now ArchWarden of the Republic, he smiles down at me from the step above, his black eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Hail libertas,” I say with a smile.

“Hail libertas,” he echoes.

“Wulfgar. Fancy meeting you here. You missed the Rain,” I say.

“You did not wait for me to return, did you?” Wulfgar clucks his tongue. “My children will ask where I was when the Rain fell upon Mercury, and you know what I will have to tell them?” He leans forward with a conspiratorial smile. “I was making night soil, wiping my ass when I heard Barca had taken Mount Caloris.” He rumbles out a laugh.

“I told you not to leave,” Sevro says. “You’d miss out on all the fun, I said. You should have seen the Ashies route. Trails of piss all the way to Venus. You’d have loved it.” Sevro grins at the Obsidian. It was Sevro who put a razor in his hand in the river mud of Agea. Wulfgar has his own razor now. Its hilt made from the fang of an ice dragon from Earth’s South Pole.

“My blade would have sung that day were I not summoned by the Senate,” he says.

Sevro sneers. “That’s right. You ran home like a good little dog.”

“A dog? I am a servant of the People, my friend. As are we all.” His eyes find me with mild accusation and I understand the true meaning to his words. Wulfgar is a believer, like all Wardens. Not in me, but in the Republic, in the principles for which it stands, and the orders that the Senate gives. Two days before the Iron Rain over Mercury, the Senate, led by my old friend Dancer, voted against my proposal. They told me to maintain the siege. To not waste men, resources, on an assault.

I disobeyed and let the Rain fall.

Now a million of my men lie in the sands of Mercury and we have our Liberation Day.

Were Wulfgar with me on Mercury, he would not have joined our Rain against the Senate’s permission. In fact, he might have tried to stop me. He’s one of the few men alive who might manage. For a spell at least.

He spares a nod for Sefi. “Njar ga hae, svester.” A rough translation is “Respect to you, sister” in nagal.

“Njar ga hir, bruder,” she replies. No love lost between them. They have different priorities.

“Your weapons.” Wulfgar gestures to my razor.

Sefi and I hand his Wardens our weapons. Muttering under his breath, Sevro hands over his as well. “Did you forget your toothpick?” Wulfgar asks, looking at Sevro’s left boot.

“Treasonous yeti,” Sevro mutters, and pulls a wicked blade long as a baby’s body from his boot. The Warden who takes it looks terrified.

“Odin’s fortune with the togas, Darrow,” Wulfgar says to me as he motions for us to continue upward. “You will need it.”

Arrayed at the top of the steps of the New Forum are the 140 Senators of the Republic. Ten per Color, all draped in white togas that flutter in the breeze. They peer down at me like a row of haughty pigeons on a wire. Red and Gold, mortal enemies in the Senate, bookend the row to either side. Dancer is missing. But I have eyes only for the lonely bird of prey that stands at the center of all the silly, vain, power-hungry little pigeons.

Her golden hair is bound tight behind her head. Her tunic is pure white, without the ribbons of their Color the others wear. And in her hand, she carries the Dawn Scepter—now a multi-hued gold baton half a meter long, with the pyramid of the Society recast into the fourteen-pointed star of the Republic at its tip. Her face is elegant and distant. A small nose, piercing eyes behind thick eyelashes, and a mischievous cat’s smile growing on her face. The Sovereign of our Republic. Here at the summit of the stairs, her eyes shed the weight from my shoulders, the fear from my heart that I would never see her again. Through war and space and this damnable parade, I have traveled to find her again, my life, my love, my home.

I bend to my knee and look up into the eyes of the mother of my child.

“’Lo, wife,” I say with a smile.

“’Lo, husband. Welcome home.”

SILENE MANOR, THE SOVEREIGN’S traditional Luna country retreat, is nestled five hundred kilometers north of Hyperion at the base of the Atlas Mountains on a small lake. The northern hemisphere of the moon, comprised of mountains and seas, is less populous than the belt of cities that girdle the equator. Though Mustang governs from the Palace of Light in the Citadel, Silene is the true home of my family, at least until we return to Mars. Built to resemble one of the papal villas on Earth’s Lake Como, the stone house sits along the edge of a rocky cove, and spills down to the lake by means of switchbacked stairs cut into the rock.

Here the thin conifers whisper to heights four times those possible on Earth. They sway nearly two hundred meters in the air around the raised concrete landing pad where the steward of House Augustus, Cedric cu Platuu, waits with my wife’s Lionguards as our shuttle lands. The small Copper greets Sevro and me with great alacrity, bowing deeply and flourishing his hand. Thraxa runs past him without even a greeting, eager to find her mother.

“ArchImperator,” he gushes, plump cheeks flushing with delight. He’s a short but ample man, built a bit like a plum with knobby arms and legs added as an afterthought. A whisper of a mustache, nearly as thin as the graying copper hair upon his head, wavers in the wind. “What gladness to see you again!”

“Cedric,” I say, greeting the short man warmly. “I hear you’ve just had a birthday.”

“Yes, my lord! My seventy-first. Though I do maintain one should stop counting after sixty.”

“Prime work,” Sevro says. “You look positively prepubescent.”

“Thank you, my lord!”

Few know the secrets of the Citadel as well as Cedric; he was one of the gems of the Sovereign’s court. Mustang, having thought highly of him during her time with Octavia, saw no need to dismiss a man so knowledgeable and dedicated to his duty.

“Where’s the welcoming party?” Sevro asks, looking for his wife, Victra. Mustang and Daxo remained behind in Hyperion to deal with their unruly Senate, but promised to rejoin by dinnertime.

“Oh, the children are recently returned from a three-day adventure,” Cedric says. “The Lady Telemanus took them to the ruins of the USS Davy Crockett in the Atlas Mountains. Merrywater’s own! I hear they had quite a time around that old wreck. Quite. A. Time, yes. Learned many lessons and expanded their individual initiative. As your curriculum requested, dominu—” Cedric’s eyes nearly pop out of his head before he corrects himself. “As your curriculum requested, sir.”

“Is my wife here yet?” Sevro asks gruffly.

“Not yet, sir. Her valet said she would be late to dinner. I believe there were labor strikes in her warehouses in Endymion and Echo City. It’s all over the holoNews.”

“She didn’t even show to the Triumph,” Sevro mutters. “I looked fabulous.”

“She has missed you at your most prime, sir.”

“Right. See, Darrow? Cedric agrees.” What he hasn’t noticed is Cedric shuffling away from the odious stench of his wolfcloak.

“Cedric, where is my son?” I ask the man.

He smiles. “I think you can guess, sir.”

The sounds of neoPlast swords knocking together and boots on stone greet Sevro and me as we enter the dueling grotto. There, vines crawl over granite fountains and along the damp stone floor. Evergreen needles drift in cumulous shapes from the top of the trees. And in the center of the grotto, under the watching eyes of the gargoyles adorning the fountains, a young boy and girl circle each other at the center of a chalk circle. The seven other children of their pack watch on, along with two Gold women. Sevro pulls me to the side so we remain unseen and sit out of sight on the edge of a granite fountain to watch.

The boy at the center of the circle is ten, lean and proud. He laughs like his mother and broods like his father. His hair is the color of straw, his face round and flushed with youth. Rose-gold eyes burn from under long lashes. He’s larger than I remember, older, and it feels so impossible that he could have come from me. That he could have thoughts of his own. That he’ll love, smile, die like the rest of us.

His brow is furrowed now in concentration. Sweat pours down his face, matting his hair as his opponent strikes his knee a glancing blow.

The girl is nine and narrow-faced like a sleek hunting dog. Electra, the eldest of Sevro’s three daughters, is taller than my son and twice as thin. But while Pax radiates an inner joy that makes adults’ eyes twinkle, there’s a deep grimness to the girl. Her eyes are dusky gold and hidden behind heavy lids. Sometimes when they look at me, I feel them judging with an aloofness that reminds me of her mother.

Sevro leans forward eagerly. “I’ll wager Aja’s razor against Apollonius’s helm that my wee monster beats the piss out of your boy.”

“I’m not going to bet on our children,” I whisper in indignation.

“I’ll throw Aja’s Institute ring in as well.”

“Have some decency, Sevro. They’re our children.”

“And Octavia’s cape.”

“I want the Falthe Ivory Tree.”

Sevro gasps. “I love the Ivory Tree. Where else will I hang my trophies?”

I shrug. “No Ivory Tree, no bet.”

“Bloodydamn savage,” he says, sticking out a hand to shake. “You have a deal.” Sevro’s become quite the collector—acquiring a hoard of trophies from Gold Imperators, knights, and would-be kings. He hangs their rings and weapons and crests from the boughs of the ivory tree he uprooted from the House Falthe compound on Earth and moved to his home on Luna.

We watch as Electra redoubles her onslaught against Pax. My son continues to back away, to sidestep, allowing her to overextend. Once she does, he twirls his plastic razor toward her rib cage. It connects lightly. “Point!” he shouts.

“I’m counting, Pax. Not you,” Niobe au Telemanus says. Kavax’s wife is a serene woman with a bird’s nest of untamable graying hair and skin the color of cherrywood. The tribal tattoos of her Pacific Islander ancestors cover her arms. “Three to two, for Pax.”

“Mind your balance, and stop overextending, Electra,” says Thraxa. “You’ll lose your footing if you’re on an unstable surface, like a ship deck or ice.” She sits on the edge of a fountain, miraculously already having found a bottle of beer.

Brow furrowed in anger, Electra rushes Pax again. They move fast for children, but since they’re still shy of puberty, their movements are not yet graceful. Electra feints high, then twists her wrist to slash savagely down, hitting Pax’s shoulder. “Point for Electra,” Niobe says. Sevro has to stop himself from clapping. Pax tries to recover, but Electra is on him. Three more quick blows knock his razor from his hand. He falls down and Electra lifts her razor to smash him hard on the head.

Thraxa slips forward and catches the blade mid-swing with her metal hand. “Temper, temper, little lady.” She pours a little beer on her head.

Electra glares up at her.

Sevro can’t contain himself any longer. “My little harpy!” He lunges up off the bench and I follow through to the grotto. “Daddy’s home!” A smile slashes across Electra’s dour face as she turns to see her father. She runs to him and lets him scoop her up off the ground. Looks rather like he’s hugging a limp fish. Some of the children flinch back when they see Sevro. And when they see me emerge from behind the vines, they stiffen and bow with perfect manners. Not one born since the fall of House Lune has the sigils implanted on their hands.

We raise them in packs of nine now, setting children of disparate Colors together early in their schooling with hopes of creating the bonds that I found at the Institute, but without the murder and starvation. Pax’s best friend, Baldur, a quiet gap-toothed Obsidian boy who is already nearly as tall as Sevro, helps Pax up. He tries to dust Pax off before Pax shoos him away and looks over at us.

I expected him to rush to me like Electra, but he doesn’t. And in that moment, a very sharp spasm of pain goes through the deeper part of me. When I left him, he was a boy, brimming with reckless life, but the hesitation, the coldness in him now, is from the world of men. Minding his pack, he walks forward very calmly and bows at the waist, no deeper than manners require. “Hello, Father.”

“My boy,” I say with a smile. “You’ve grown like a weed.”

“That’s what happens when you age,” he says, an edge to his words. I always thought when I became a man, I’d feel more confident, but towering over this boy, I feel so very small. I lost my own father to a cause; have I doomed Pax to the same fate?

“He’s not generally such a snot,” Niobe says later as we stand to the side after the children are dismissed from the day’s practice. Pax leaves quickly and in a mood. Baldur rushes to keep up.

“Take the angst as a compliment, Darrow,” Thraxa mumbles. “He just misses his father. I felt the same way anytime the old man was away on one of Augustus’s errands.” She pulls a slim burner from her pocket and lights it in the coals of one of the copper braziers that line the crumbling walls of the grotto. Niobe plucks it from her fingers and puts it out on her daughter’s metal arm.

“Was Daxo ever like that?” I ask.

“Daxo?” Niobe laughs. “Daxo was born stoic as a stone.”

“Plotting in the womb from conception,” Thraxa mutters, and sips her beer. “We used to make owl hoots at him. Always watching the rest of us out the window. Big brother never wanted to play our games. Only his own.”

“And you were such a paragon?” Niobe asks. “You used to eat cow pies.”

Thraxa shrugs. “Better than your cooking.” She steps out of range of her mother’s reach and lights a replacement burner. “Thank Jove we had Browns.”

Niobe rolls her eyes and touches my arm. “The miscreant is right, Darrow. Pax just missed you. You’ve time to make up.”

I smile at her but watch Sevro walking away toward the water with Electra. “You know you’re Daddy’s favorite, don’t you?” he’s saying to her. I fight back my jealousy. He always seems able to pick right back up where he left off with his family. I wish I had that same gift.

I seek my mother out in the garden that runs along the side of one of the stone storage sheds. She’s hunched in the black dirt with two other Red servant women and a Red man, her bare feet sticking out behind her as she plants bulbs in the ground in tidy rows. I pause a moment at the edge of the garden to watch her, just as I used to watch from the stairwell in our little home in Lykos as she made her night tea. I was afraid of her after Father died. She was always quick with a swat or a barbed word. I thought I deserved the treatment. How much easier the love between us would have been if I’d known as a child that her anger and my fear came from a pain neither one of us deserved. The love in me wells up for her as I remember what she’s endured, and for a brief flicker, I ache to see my father again. For him to see my mother free.

“Are you just going to watch like a wastrel or are you going to help us plant?” she asks without looking up.

“I’m not sure I’d be a good farmer,” I say.

She stands with the help of one of her companions, dusts the dirt from her pants, and takes her time setting her tools away before coming to say hello. She’s only eighteen years older than I am, but she wears the years hard. Still, she is stronger by leagues than when she lived below. Her joints are worn from years in the mines. But her cheeks are ruddy with life now. Our physicians have helped relieve most of the symptoms of the stroke and heart condition that ravaged her. I know she feels guilty for this life. This luxury, when my father and so many others wait for us in the Vale. Her work in the garden and on the grounds is a penance for surviving.

My mother gives me a hard hug. “My son.” She breathes me in before pulling back to look all the way up to my face. “You put the death in me when I heard of that damn Iron Rain. You put the death in all of us.”

“I’m sorry. They shouldn’t have told you before that I was unaccounted for.”

She nods and says nothing, and I realize how deep her worry went. How they must have huddled in the living room here or in the Citadel and listened to the holoNews just like everyone else. The Red man shuffles to join us, his bad leg dragging behind.

“ ’Lo, Dancer,” I say past my mother. My old mentor wears laborer’s garments instead of his senatorial robes. His hair is gray, his face fatherly and creased from hard years. But there’s still mischief in his rebel eyes. “Given up the Senate for gardening, have you?”

“I’m a man of the people,” he says with a shrug. “Good to have dirt under the nails again. The gardeners in that museum the Senate gave me won’t let me touch a damn weed. ’Lo, Sevro.”

“Politician,” Sevro says, joining me from behind. Heedless of the mood, he pretends like he’s going to scoop my mother up into the air, but she scowls at him and he turns the scoop into a gentle hug.

“Better,” she says. “You nearly broke my hip the last time.”

“Oh, don’t be such a Pixie,” he mutters.

“Say that again?”

He steps back. “Nothing, ma’am.”

“What word from Leanna?” I ask.

“They’re well. Was hoping to visit them soon. Maybe take Pax along to Icaria in the winter. This place gets too cold for these old bones.”

“All the way to Mars?” I ask.

“It’s his home,” she says sharply. “You want him to forget where he came from? Red’s as deep in his blood as Gold. Not that he’s ever reminded it, ’cept by me.”

Dancer looks away, as if to give us privacy.

“He’ll go to Mars,” I say. “We all will when it’s safe.”

We might control Mars, but that’s a far cry from it being a world of harmony. The Sirenian continent is still infested by a Gold army of iron-skinned veterans, just like the battleground of South Pacifica on Earth. The Ash Lord hasn’t risked putting a major fleet in orbit in years, but ground wars are decidedly more stubborn than their astral counterparts.

“And when will it be safe, according to you?” my mother asks.

“Soon.”

Neither Dancer nor my mother is impressed by that answer. “And how long are you staying here?” she asks.

“A month, at least. Rhonna and Kieran will be coming, like you asked.”

“About bloody time. Thought Mercury had stolen them.”

“Victra and the girls will come up for a spell too. Though I do have business in Hyperion at the end of the week.”

“With the Senate. Asking for more men.” Her tone’s as sour as her eyes.

I sigh and look at Dancer. “Infecting my mother with your politics now?”

He laughs. “Deanna most certainly has a mind of her own.”

“With both of you in my ears I’ll go deaf,” she says.

“Plug your ears,” Sevro replies. “It’s what I do when they jabber about politics.”

Dancer snorts. “If only your wife did the same.”

“Careful, boyo. She’s got ears everywhere. She could be listening now.”

“Why weren’t you at the Triumph?” I ask Dancer.

He grimaces. “Please. We both know I’ve got no stomach for pomp. Especially on this damn moon. Give me dirt and air and friends.” He looks fondly at the trees around. A shadow passes over his face at the thought of returning to Hyperion. “But I must be heading back to the mechanized Babylon. Deanna, thank you for letting me garden with you. It’s just what I needed.”

“You’re not staying for supper?” my mother asks.

“Unfortunately, there are other gardens that need tending. Speaking of which…Darrow, could I have a moment?”

Dancer and I leave my mother and Sevro bickering about the smell of his wolfcloak to walk along a dirt footpath leading into the trees toward the lake. A patrol skiff skims the water on the far shore. “How are you?” he asks me. “None of that patriotic hero shit. Remember, I know all your tells.”