“You would go mad, Father,” Mustang says from the end of the table. “No scheming, no plots or stratagems. Just family and time to spend with Adrius and me.”
His smile is tight, unreadable. “How well my daughter knows me.”
“What worries me most,” Pliny says, “is that the Galileans, in their own words, doubt the validity of our cause.”
“That’s because we don’t have a cause,” I moan, remembering my role. “At least not so far as anyone else cares.”
“Explain,” the ArchGovernor demands.
“He’s getting to it, father,” Mustang says. “Darrow plays for drama.”
I make a show of looking around the room. “It’s safe to say that the gentle Golds in this room understand human nature. Yes? Even if we did not, what motivates us? A cause? No. None of us have a cause. Freedom? Liberty? Justice?” I roll my eyes. “Hardly. What do we care that the Sovereign acts like an Empress? What do we care about the Compact and the liberties it extends Golds? Nothing.
“This is about power. It is always about power. We fight her because we attached ourselves to a star, the ArchGovernor. But the star falls, fades …”
Kavax half rises from his seat. “Don’t insult your lord as if—”
“As if he’s what? A fool? He’s not, so come off it. The Bellona take Mars. They will get the contracts, the government positions. We will be pushed to the fringe, dead or irrelevant.” My voice plays with the audience. “Power is the only thing of worth in this world. Consider Tactus au Valii-Rath—a loyal ally of mine for three years. But as soon as my star began to fall, he stole from me and departed out the back door. A thief in the night.
“How many empty seats are here that were filled before Luna? So many men and women who would have bled for Augustus. So many men and women who would have given their eyes for him when he sat on his dais in Agea. Now …”
I dust off my hands.
“We are losing. To run is to wither and die. If we want to rise again, draw the Galileans to our cause, marshal the Governors of Saturn to our banners, then we show them we are not powerless. Show them we drip with power. We are arbiters of life and death. We, not the Bellona, are the House of Mars.”
Pliny begins to say something, but Augustus motions him to be quiet.
“What would you propose?”
“The Galilean families are soft for Luna for one reason. Commerce. Ganymede has her shipyards. Calisto is little more than a factory of Grays and Obsidians for the Society’s armies. Europa is an oceanworld of banking and deepsea mining and vacation homes. Io is the breadbasket to any world along Jupiter’s orbital path. They depend too much on commerce with the Core to run to our side. And even the basest child knows what happened when the Ash Lord descended upon Rhea.” The Praetors nod along. “So we must impress them. We must terrify them so that they know our power can touch them at any time and they cannot risk alienating us.”
“How?” Augustus asks. They’re all on the hook now.
I set my razor on the table so they know what business I propose. “We take their ships. We take their children. We take them as allies as the Spartans took their wives. By force, in the night.”
Silence forms around me. Then comes the uproar. Pliny lets his Praetors slash at the idea. His energy he spends whispering in Augustus’s ear. I glance at Mustang, but she watches the others, gauging them.
“Boasts.” The ArchGovernor quiets the room and readdresses me. “I’ve not heard a plan.”
“One plan. Two parts.”
I touch a datapad, and the holo the Jackal’s agents gave me expands over the table to show Ganymede. The moon shines bright with blues and greens from its oceans and forests, brilliant against the marbled white and orange of Jupiter’s vaporous surface. Gray shipyards ring the moon. I zoom in so that they stretch across and above the table. I list the ships registered, highlighting one in particular. “Ganymede has a moonBreaker.”
Whistles from around the table. “A moonBreaker?” someone whispers.
“Is this information reliable?” Augustus asks.
I nod. “Very.” My fingers twitch, rotating the image of the docks. In the shadow of an orbital dock floats a ship like my Pax, but newer, larger. Black as night, and eight kilometers in length. “The Sovereign herself commissioned it as a present for her grandson.”
Kavax nearly drools at the sight of the monster of a ship. “What a loving woman.”
“Assuming this is not contrived.” Pliny inspects the holo. “How did you come upon the information?”
“Little birds whisper into my ears too.”
“Don’t be coy. It is important.”
“My sources are mine, just as yours are your own, Pliny.”
“So you want to steal the moonBreaker from Ganymede?” Pliny asks. “That’s an act of war.”
I chuckle. “No. You misunderstand. I want to steal all of the ships.”
26
Puppet Master
Pliny glances worriedly at Augustus. “Do this, and this war does not end till one side is ash.”
“It’s already that way …,” Kavax begins.
“This is different,” Pliny crows. “It expands the scope.”
“My father is right,” Daxo declares. “We are already in open rebellion.”
Pliny slaps his hand down. “This is different. This declares war on the Society, not the Bellona, not the Sovereign as a singular person. Ganymede has not harmed us. This will fracture everything.”
Augustus sits quietly, his cold eyes staring at the moonBreaker on the holo. Without looking at me, he asks, “You said there were two parts to this plan. What is the second?”
I change the holo. The Academy replaces the shipyards. Ships ring its dull gray surface. Asteroids rotate in the backdrop.
“Those ships are ancient,” a balding Praetor named Licenus says before I can begin. “Useless in a fight. Is your plan to steal them too?”
“No, Praetor Licenus. My plan is to steal the students.” I add another visual. Mars’s Institute joins the Academy. Then another Institute, Venus’s. Then Earth’s two Institutes. Then the Galilean Institutes and Saturn’s. Then more till nearly a dozen images float in the air. “I want to steal all of the students. Not to fight. But to ransom.”