Golden Son (Red Rising Trilogy, #2)(14)

“Looks like Bellona silver,” Roque says quietly, squinting against the sunset.

I chuckle.

He glances back at me. “What?”

“Just imagining having a pulseRocket right about now.”

“Well, that’s just … lovely of you.” He walks along. I follow, eyes lingering on the vessel. “I do love the sunsets of Luna. Like we’re in Homer’s world. Sky a hot shade of fresh-forged bronze.”

Above, the alien sky melts into night with the long setting of the sun. For two weeks, the daylight will disappear from this part of the moon. Two weeks of night. Luxury yachts cruise through this strange day’s end, while nimble Blue-piloted ripWings soar past on patrol like bats glued together from shattered ebony.

The one-sixth gravity lets these Luneborn build to their heart’s desire. And build they do. Beyond the Citadel grounds, the horizon is fenced with towers and cityscape. RungPaths wind everywhere so that citizens can pull themselves through the air with ease. The network of rungs stretch between high towers as would ivy, linking the heavens with the hells of the lowDistricts. Along them, thousands of men and women crawl like ants on vines, while Gray patrol skiffs buzz around the thoroughfares.

The household of Augustus is assigned a villa nestled between thirty acres of pines on Citadel grounds. It’s a pretty thing amongst other pretty things in this stately place. There are gardens, paths, fountains carved with little winged boys of stone. All that sort of frivolity.

“Fancy a session of kravat?” I ask Roque, nodding to the training facility beside the villa. “My mind’s running away with itself.”

“I can’t.” Roque winces, stepping out of the way of our fellow lancers and their attendants who file into the villa. “I have to attend the conference on Capitalism in the Governed Age.”

“If you wanted a nap, I’m sure they have beds in the villa.”

“You joking? Regulus ag Sun is giving the keynote.”

I whistle. “Quicksilver himself. So you’re going to learn how to make diamonds out of gravel? You hear the rumor about him owning the contracts of two Olympic Knights?”

“It’s not rumor. Least according to Mother. Reminds me of what Augustus said to the Sovereign at her coronation. ‘A man is never too young to kill, never too wise, never too strong, but he can damn well be too rich.’”

“Arcos said that.”

“No, I’m sure it was Augustus.”

I shake my head. “Check your facts, brother. Lorn au Arcos said it, and the Sovereign turned to reply, ‘You forget, Rage Knight, I am a woman.’”

Arcos is as much myth as man, at least to my generation. Reclusive now, he was the Sword of Mars and the Rage Knight for over sixty years. Peerless Knights across the Society have offered him the deeds to moons if he would but tutor them for a week in his form of kravat, the Willow Way. It was he who sent me the knifeRing that killed Apollo and then offered me a place in his house. I rejected it then, choosing Augustus over the old man.

“‘You forget, I am a woman,’” Roque repeats. He cherishes these stories of their empire the way I cherished stories of the reaper and the Vale. “When I get back, let’s talk. Not the usual banter.”

“You mean you won’t yammer on about a childhood crush, drink too much wine, wax poetical about the shape of Quinn’s smile and the beauty of Etruscan grave sites before falling asleep?” I ask.

His cheeks flush, but he puts a hand over his heart. “On my honor.”

“Then bring a bottle of foolishly expensive wine, and we can talk.”

“I’ll bring three.”

I watch him leave, eyes colder than my smile.

Several of the other lancers attend the conference with Roque. The rest make themselves comfortable as Augustus’s Gray security teams comb the grounds. Obsidian bodyguards trail Golds like shadows. Pinks sway gracefully into the villa in a constant stream, ordered from the Citadel’s Garden by members of the ArchGovernor’s household staff who find themselves bored from travel and seek a little merriment.

A Pink Citadel steward guides me to my room. I laugh when I arrive. “Perhaps there has been a mistake,” I say, looking around the small room with its adjoining washroom and closet. “I’m not a broom.”

“I don’t under—”

“He’s not a broom, so he won’t fit in this closet,” Theodora says, standing in the doorway behind us. “It is beneath his station.” She looks around, pert nose sniffing disdainfully. “These would not even suit as closet to my clothes on Mars.”

“This is the Citadel. Not Mars.” The steward’s pink eyes survey the lines on Theodora’s aged face. “There is less room for useless things.”

Theodora smiles sweetly and gestures to the rose-quartz tree pinned to the man’s breast. “I say! Is that the black poplar of Garden Dryope?”

“Your first time seeing it, I would guess,” he says haughtily before turning to me. “I don’t know how they raised your Pinks in Mars’s Gardens, dominus, but on Luna your slave should do her best to look less affected.”

“Of course. How rude of me,” Theodora apologizes. “I merely thought you would know Matron Carena.”

The steward pauses. “Matron Carena …”