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Shouts boon calls for peace But it is beyond her A woney’s ruined body Dozens of men and women, all with blades, slash into each other Tactus takes a razor through the shoulder defending ain I spin to my friend’s aid and hack the arm off the Bellona man as he pulls his blade out of Tactus I jerka path clear A blade scratchesCassius’s wounded body I don’t know if the Bellona will kill her They let her sit at the table Still, I don’t know I rush toward her, throwing ht into the bodies between us Tactus helps

I ss a knife up to my stomach, but Victra, her sister, punches her in the face and Tactus starts kicking her in the head as she falls Victra offerssht off as Leto enters the fray, turning back the tide with the precise thrusts of his rainbow razor The Tele the Golds who come before them with razors half the size of , but he’s up and howling ether, we ju But the Bellona are too thick Razors too deadly

"Mustang!" I shout, fending two Bellonas off Slash away one’s face and punch another in the throat with is Another joins theshouts atme feel an idiot obsessed with chivalry Of course she does not need h I can’t see her a, I obey

I let Tactus jerkline, which is being assailed froustus Others scream to defend Imperator Bellona and Cassius Many family lords have been carried away by armed cadres of family members, who back out of the chaos with their blades at the ready They flee the spire, using the lifts to take theravBoots were forbidden It’s nearly deserted The Sovereign’s Praetorians--purple-and-black-clad Obsidians and Golds--cluster around and fly her froala Razors and pulseBlades fill calloused hands Grays come led by Golds in Praetorian purple to disperse us They wear riot gear and their scorchers shoot painballs and scatterwaves at the battling fa the Golds like sue Karnus screah the scatterwaves like a madman He knocks someone doith his shoulder, shatters a lancer’s face with his aegis, and charges headlong at Augustus, hoping to kill his family’s rival in one fell swoop "AUGUSTUS!"

Leto, our best swordsustus’s ward, intercepts him in front of the ArchGovernor

"Hic sunt leones!" he calls to the sky

Leto race He crashes Karnus back and is about to open hi Karnus stuhtens, perhaps confused that he is still alive He cocks his head at Leto, who reaches for his thigh, as though stung

Leto sinks slowly to a knee, ar hair tumbles over his face, then he seems to freeze in place, suddenly loith the engine plu ship as it coasts peacefully into the horizon He is beautiful in that ustus roars

His eyes widen and he pushes against the Tele his silver stylus into his sleeve, the one he spun on his fingers as he proposed our secret alliance

We lock eyes

He grins toothily

And I know I’ve s

We flee the top of the spire I had to leave Mustang behind She knohat she is doing Soet that She always knohat she’s bloody doing

"They won’t hurt her," Augustus says to me, and I believe it’s the first time I’ve seen emotion on his face No The second time When he screamed for Leto, it was as if he’d lost a son He looks that way now, face slack and older by twenty years He lost his eldest son He lost his second wife, the mother of his children Now he loses the man he adopted to replace that son, and he fears for the woman who reminds him of that wife

If they do hurt her, it’s on one better Blood trickles downaround the cuticles in a horseshoe Knuckles flex white where there is no blood It disgusts me, but this is what my hands weredrenched it red Many carry our wounded, nearly a dozen in number Seven dead Barely twenty unscathed in the entire entourage Others are one, Pliny’s aide was cut apart, and one of our Praetors took a blade in her neck from Kellan au Bellona

I carry the Praetor inas we take the lift down the spire Hard chance Victra presses a piece of her dress against the wound

I’d give anything for a pair of gravBoots We cluster tight around our lord Razors out Blood soaks my arm to the elboeat dribbles down ainst the lift’s floor, dripping fro the faces around me

I’m hot in my uniform, so I undo the top buttons Tactus bleeds beside h his left shoulder Clean thrust

"It’s just blood," he tells Victra, orries over hi" He smiles at her waistline "Goryhell You’ve hole in you, and you don’t see e frohs in pain a second more, then looks atwith Lorn au Arcos, ney I nod and buers on otten

Many of the other Golds, the Praetors, the knights, the martial men and women in particular--and we have more in proportion to our Politicos and econo ruddy smears These are the sort of Golds ould tell you the proble a Gold is that everyone is already conquered Means no one worth fighting No one to use all that training and all that power against Well, I just gave theh their Governor’s ward is dead, even though their chief Praetor bleeds out onis in eneame of the day