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f ar dead Bone white with a crude crescent welded onto the front and back

Glirastes is incorrigible

“So you’re Cicero’s Blood of Empire,” I say to the horse set out before the rest For once, Cicero was not hyperbolic It is as if every horse I have seen before this day, even Atalantia’s prized creatures, were nothing more than early drafts of this ulti twenty-five hands at the withers with still more muscled shoulder to measure His hooves are the size of dinner plates, his e as his irises His white coat dappled steel gray Haughty eyes watchthe two Obsidian stablehands off their feet

When they wrangle him back down, I cut my hand and wave the blood over his nose so he can s erous custom with sunbloods He could snap offand he lets s in obeisance

The Obsidians cheer They had wondered if the horse would find e,” their old stablemaster rumbles “He will bear you over a sea of slaves”

—

The ramp used by charioteers to enter the Hippodrome slams down in a cloud of dust Blood of Empire has been here before even if I have not His hooves paw the sand, ilory to which he has become entitled It has been years since I’ve ridden a horse, and in all of huraced the back of such a terrible prize as this? I fear disgracing this king of horsesviolence With an intake of breath, I grip the Horn of Helios and dig my heels into his sides

It is like riding lightning

The ramp blurs past underneath Suddenly we are upon the surface of the Hippodrome No sea of faces awaits us No adulation Only a black sky, the e across the sand in tattered uniforms, Rhone and Kalindora at their lead The loyalists who led the attack on the Republic prison led them here for me

The Praetorians and Kalindora are shocked to find me alive

I spare no time for pleasantries as I circle them atop Blood of Empire “Upon Luna, upon Earth, upon Mars, they say that the Praetorian Guard is dead!” I shout “That they have faded into thereiants that once walked the worlds! Rhone ti Flavinius!” I cry “Before all things, what are the Praetorian Guard?”

“Equestrians!” he bellows

“And what is your duty?”

“To protect the blood of Lune!”

“Will you ride with me today, Rhone ti Flavinius?”