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I’ve ht choice

I move so Seraphina can replace me in front of the safe She carefully sets ils of our houses stand out in the diht on the wood and ivory “It’s in my box,” I say

Seraphina reverently opens the lid Inside she findsShe shows it to heraside reen leather edges of the poe up Karnus’s razor She produces a small tool, unfastens the screws smoothly on the bottom of the hilt, and pops open the mechanism The holodrop is stuck to the che dew She deposits it in the receiver plate of the holoprojector Dido’s ht into the roo makes her look back at the box and the crescent moon there

I hate her eyes lingering on it It feels somehow shameful that my family’s last relics are held in so small a box, bare now for the world to see

“I did not want this path to be taken,” Dido says to the Moon Lords in a grand, sweeping voice The sort great statesmen and tyrants all seeainst my own husband…” She shakes her head wearily “It is a travesty” There are whispers of agreement there “You all know I have labored for years to convince Romulus that the Pax Ilium was made under false pretenses I have been ridiculed Mocked that this obsession is a n birth Perhaps the hot blood of Venus is not gone from my veins entirely But I am a child of the Dust now I know I am not above the law” The Golds fron at her “The actions taken by me and my men are not above the law In fact, they were enacted to ensure that the law is followed Which is hen I have finished speaking, I will set myself at your mercy Like my husband, I will set e if I am mad, if you like And if my actions are found treasonous, I will meet the dust But until then, I ask you for your ears…”

Greeted by silence, and a nod froht of the Olympics, she continues

“Ten years ago, the Dockyards of Ganymede were destroyed A hundred thousand died on the station Ten million Ganymedi died when the rubble fell upon New Troy It was a cala of the Ash Lord We blan” She looks at me “But what if I told you there was a hidden truth? Another ainst our people?”

She paces along the floor

“Four o, I received word from a broker in the Core, who claimed to have information that would be of interest to me The broker, a White of the Ophion Guild, represented an unknown seller ished to exchange the data for information in our archives The information was purported to be sensitive; they could not risk trans my husband was required to uphold the Pax Iliuardless of the inforent, hter, Seraphina, into the Interior This is what she returned with”

She activates the holoprojector

The audio co Metal on flesh Then the video appears in the air in the center of the roohostly radiance It shows the bloodied deck of a starship, a grand one judging by the size of the bridge The ed by her hair by a pair of huge pale hands covered with tribal runes They could only belong to an Obsidian wo her teeth open with a curved wedge of cerehly into the Gold’s s Then, with a hooked knife, the hands saw at the base of the tongue till it co sound The hands pierce the tongue with an iron barb and push it along to join the dozen others already hanging there on the Obsidian’s belt Racial indignation rises in

This is the true face of the world The darkness beneath civilization that randmother warned uidance, watched it leak through her fallen empire

The Obsidian leaves the corpse behind and walks past the body of a second fallen Gold At her feet, the epaulets of an ArchPraetor are flecked with blood but the body is seely unmolested The face of Roque au Fabii is pale and bloodless The Obsidian joins a coterie of battle-scarred women in spoilt armor who fore White hair stained with blood and soot hangs down their backs In front of thenar Volarus She clutches a battle-axe and gazes out the viewport as the ship slides across space toward a reenwith a stocky Asiatic Gray looking out at the pride of Ilium—the Dockyards of Ganymede Two hundred eleven kiloineers, refineries, assereat dockyards of hu shipyards over Phobos All suspended above the pale splendor of Ganymede’s equatorial seas and at the n as the worlds have believed forOf the despised Slave King

“Men built this?” Sefi asks in aard Common

“It took two hundred fifty years…it’s how old the first dock there is,” says the Gold woman at her side, the traitor, Julii The Gray co to the second Gold, a man He stands with his back to us, but I would know him by his shadow or even the faint whisper of his hoarse voice