Golden Son

“Me. I’m the other choice. Stay for me. Stay for what might be. At the Institute, you made followers of boys and girls who have never known loyalty. If you go to the Academy, you abandon that to be my father’s warlord. That’s not what you are. That is not the man I …” She did not turn, but her face changed as her sentence trailed away, lips drawing a hard line.

Love? Was that what we built in the year after the Institute?

If so, the word stuck in her throat, because she knew, as I knew, that I had not given her all of me. I had not shared all that I am. Greedily, I kept secrets. And how could someone like her, someone with so much self-worth, bare herself and throw her heart at a man who gave so little in return? So she closed her golden eyes, shoved the razor into my hands, and told me to go.

I don’t fault her. She chose politics, governance—peace, which is what she thinks her people need. I chose the blade, because it is what my people need. It fills me with a strange emptiness knowing that I was enough for her when I was never enough for Eo. Roque was right. I pushed her away.

I didn’t push Sevro away. I asked him to be stationed with me, then suddenly he was reassigned to Pluto like many of the Howlers, relegated to protecting far construction operations from petty pirate raids. I now suspect Pliny’s hand in that.

My path has never felt lonelier.

“You’ll not be abandoned,” Roque says, leaning in close. “Other families will want you for themselves. Don’t let Tactus in your head. The Bellona won’t make a move against you.”

“Of course they won’t,” I lie. He can still sense my fear.

“Violence isn’t allowed in the Citadel, Darrow. Especially blood-feuds. Even duels are outlawed unless consent is given by the Sovereign herself. Simply stay on Citadel grounds till you’ve a new house, and all will be well. Bide your time, do what you must, and in a year, the ArchGovernor will feel like a fool when you’ve risen under the tutelage of another. There is more than one path to the top. Always remember that, brother.”

He grips my shoulder.

“You know I would ask my mother and father to bid for you … but they won’t go against Augustus.”

“I know.” They could spend the millions on the contract and not even notice the loss, but Roque’s mother has not sat a Senator for twenty years because of her charity. Her lot is thrown in with Augustus’s contingent in the Senate. What he wills, she supports.

“I’ll be fine. You’re right,” I say as Luna appears in the window, hushing the aides, and filling me with dread. The city moon of Earth. Orbiting satellites and installations encircle it like a steel angel’s halo wrapped around a ball of amber held to the sun. “I’ll be fine.”

6

ICARUS

We land near the Citadel. Sticky, polluted wind bends the towering trees near our landing pad. Perspiration quickly beads along the top of my high collar. Already I do not like this ugly place. Despite the fact that we land here on Citadel grounds, which are far from the nearest cities and surrounded by forests and lakes, Luna’s air cloys and sticks to the lungs.

On the horizon, just past the spiked spires of the Citadel’s western campus, Earth hovers, swollen and blue, reminding me that I am so far from home. The gravity here is less than Mars’s, only one-sixth Earth’s, and makes me feel unsettled and clumsy. I seem to float when I walk. And even though coordination quickly returns, my body suffers its own lightness with strange feelings of claustrophobia.

Another vessel lands to the north.

“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.