The grapes were sour. Krrel spat them into the furrow and scowled at the sky. That damned atmospheric cross was blocking the sun again, casting shadow across the royal vineyards.

  His leg started shaking.

  Krrel grabbed a vine to steady himself. The Master Grower was watching—three paces away, trying not to look like he was watching.

  "I told them I didn't want a cross flying today."

  "When did you plant these?" Krrel crushed a handful of grapes until the juice bled between his fingers, staining the white cuff of his dress uniform. "They're sour. All of them. All the way to the northern rim."

  “Palace grapes, yes my king.” The grower muttered under his breath.

  Krrel’s mouth wrinkled when he looked down at his boot. Strands of green algae and red mud seeped from the sole as he walked between the mounds of soil. “This is your problem.”

  A kilometre to the east, the towers of Sisyphi Bastion reached into the southern sky. The ancient fortress guarded the food production zones of Hellas. Nearly ten thousand square kilometres of engineered fertility.

  The Master Gardener looked up in awe as the sky became even darker. The gold foil wings of the Atmospheric Tension Node stretched a kilometre in four directions, making a perfect X. At the wingtips, propellers spun like lazy maple seeds—one rotation every ten minutes.

  Krrel grabbed his arm. “Move that thing now or I’ll bury you right here.”

  "My king." The Master Grower tapped his wrist comm. Audio squelched. He covered his mouth and turned away from Krrel, speaking into the comm: "His majesty wants the ATN-X moved. Hellas north sector, over Sisyphi."

  A reply crackled back, too quiet for Krrel to hear.

  "I know it's automatic," the Master Grower hissed. "Just move it. Now."

  "The winds are favourable, my king. Atmospheric control is adjusting the position now. It won't be long."

  Shadow retreated and Krrel folded his hands behind his back to conceal the tremble. “I would have buried them too.”

  "My great grandfather killed a thousand men building this place." Krrel gestured at the vineyards, the mirrors above. "A thousand. And you can't even grow grapes that aren't sour."

  “I’ve never been afraid to watch men die for Mars.”

  Krrel lost his balance, tearing a branch from the vine, before the Master Grower caught him under the arms. Shredded leaves and grapes gathered in his fingers. “Are you alright, my king?”

  “Get your hands off me.” Struggling to regain balance he slapped his thigh with the branch as if the sharp pain would cure his disease.

  “Ensure the wine on my table never tastes like this swill.”

  “The wine is made in Tharsis, my king.” Looking at his feet he kicked dirt on an exposed root.

  Krrel’s nostrils flared. “Plant new grapes, or I’ll burn the vines themselves along with you.”

  Red and blue light converged on the wine grove as the orbital mirrors adjusted. Sol Malea. Overhead, the fragmented mirror array glittered like broken glass and butterflies, each piece tumbling in orbit, cascading focused sunlight first to the royal gardens, then across Hellas.

  “Change the light, you’ve put too much light on the worker's food.” Krrel grabbed the Master Grower by the scuff of the neck. “Are you an imbecile?"

  Shaking his head rapidly the man mumbled. “No, my king.”

  “You are not meeting the expectations of your king.” Krrel frowned, then looked to the sky and blinked as if he was trying to clear his mind.

  "Do you know when the sunfish appear in the sky, the cloud-seeding drones, they tell the future of Mars? Whispered truths?"

  The Master Grower squeezed his eyes together, confused by the king’s sudden change. "When they make the clouds, my king?"

  "That's right." Krrel patted the man's shoulder. "They don't just seed particles. They tell stories. Draw pictures in the sky. Omens."

  The grower was already inching away, when a voice spoke from behind. Measured. Formal. "If it pleases my king."

  Krrel turned. The Master of the Palace emerged from between the vine rows, robes dusty from travel.

  “Why haven’t you fired my gun yet, you redless excuse for a man?” Krrel’s stare dissected the Master of the Palace as he bowed.

  “Not—ready—yet—”

  “I will show the moon— You will have my gun ready, or I will feed your withering body into the breech myself.” Krrel clutched at a branch as if he intended to move forward. He hated Earth. He despised their moon. The moon doesn’t attack us, does it? He thought.

  “You mean P-Pericles, my king.”

  “That’s what I said, stop repeating what I say.”

  “H-Hellas will be w-warm enough in two hours my king.” The Master of the Palace looked away from Krrel.

  “The… Mars must witness my power now.” Pushing on the branch as if it were a cane, Krrel righted himself and moved closer. “I will bleed you out here, if you don’t shoot the thing.”

  The Master stepped away and tapped into his comm. “Get me the Turret Master.”

  Voices from the king’s guard began to whisper. “Sun’s hitting only one side, we have to rotate it… bore’s distorted.”

  Ignoring them, Krrel pointed a shaking finger at his head servant.

  “The king will have your life!” The overheard reply broke in static.

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  The Master of the Palace returned to Krrel’s side. “Raising the bore now.”

  Three times as high, a broad sliver gleam elevated to nearly vertical between Sisyphi’s towers.

  “Shoot it now.”

  Beneath them the ground rumbled unevenly. Guards, growers, soldiers all looked to the gun with dismay.

  Gritting his teeth, Krrel spat. “The Novae Planitia speaks.”

  Before them a sound grew from the bastion: a sick metal on metal ache as if the bore was tearing itself apart from the inside. Chunks of rock began to fall from the crater’s rim toward the royal garden and workers started to cover their ears. A stench of scorched metal wafted over the vines and the tip of the bore changed from silver to blue.

  “It’s going to blow up.” Someone shouted.

  The gun groaned. A sound that shook his teeth. Then light. Orange fire and green plasma arcing into the sky like a comet tail.

  Krrel's chest swelled. There. Finally.

  Reaching his arm to the streaking metal, Krrel nearly fell again. “There. Witness the king’s power, you cowards.”

  Frantic radio chatter flared over the comms.

  “What is it?” The Master of the Palace pointed at one of the young soldiers.

  “Hit an array node. Nearly got the controller.”

  A palace guard spoke low, but Krrel heard him. “Heat distortion of the barrel.”

  Someone forgot to turn their radio down. ”Projected energy lands somewhere west on Hellas Planitia.”

  A thunder-like rumble echoed between the crater. Low. Slow. Threatening.

  Krrel stared at the dissipating plasma trail. His weapon. His power.

  And his people, burning.

  “I’ll kill every man who failed Mars!”

  "Ten square kilometres of winter wheat burned, my king." A soldier whispered to the Master of the Palace. His voice was hollow. "Over a hundred dead. The beam missed its target."

  Krrell heard. Heat washed over him, and his hand shook uncontrollably, pointing at the Master of the Palace. “Who told you to fire the damn gun?”

  Krrel pulled himself along the vine rows, hand over hand, trying to get close to the Master. “Fix my damn gun, or I'll quarter you and put you on a stake as a warning to….”

  “Pericles, my king.”

  The Novae Planitia, his gun had failed. Three hours ago, and Krrel could still smell it. Burnt wheat, scorched metal, a hundred bodies cooking under Martian sun.

  His weapon. His power. And it had missed.

  Someone would pay for this. Someone always did.

  He pushed through the hall doors harder than he needed to. The coarse rock walls of Sisyphi Bastion rose around him—red stone and iron, weapons lining every wall. Three centuries of conquest. His ancestors had built this place when Mars was nothing but dust and ambition.

  And now his gun couldn't even hit a target.

  Krrel sat at the half-metre thick rock-ore table, and reached for the soup bowl. His hand shook. He waited for it to stop.

  It didn't.

  ∞

  “What took you so long?” Krrel’s soup spoon clinked at the bowl searching for rabbit meat, but he did not look at the Master of the Palace. His voice reverberated through the one hundred metre room, beneath its steeply pitched voussoir.

  “The elixir, my king.” Each ceramic bottle thumped solidly on the rock table, until he counted six.

  Mashing his lips together, Krrel whetted them with his tongue, then swept it across his teeth before speaking. His words were not a question and not thankful. “You traded for my medicine at Palace Trianon.”

  "Spit it out you spineless—you're a redless Terran." Krrel's eyes moved to the low-gravity crossbow on the wall.

  “The princess.” Each word released softly as if it were a reason for the king to stab him in the heart. “Catharine.”

  “You lie.” The king smashed his fists onto the table hard enough to make them bleed. If the table were not stone the soup would have spilled. “Pericles has her.”

  “No my king. I beg you, listen.”

  “The ring, I saw it. You gave it to me and told me she was a prisoner of Pericles.” His fist shook uncontrollably, raising it to the Master of the Palace, but this time he did not try to conceal his tremor. “Wound me. Lie to me. I’ll kill you all.”

  "The… lady Catharine—." The Master of the Palace stepped back, stumbling. His voice barely held. “Begging… the princess, she took the Harmonia Ruby and left the ring to be found.”

  “She was hoping, my king.”

  Grasping a bottle, he extracted the cork and swilled a mouthful of the acrid swill until it dripped at the corners of his mouth.

  His nostrils flared and his grimy teeth were glazed like syrup, as he clenched his fist and waited for the shaking to stop.

  Medicine slopped from the bottle when he put it back onto the table. Krrel’s eyes gained focus. “What did you give her for this, coward? Choose your words, or it will be your meat in my spoon.”

  “A name…” There was a long pause. He knew Krrel would understand and he knew the consequences of betrayal. “The name of the person who took the red diamond from the queen’s body when she died.”

  Krrel arranged the bottles in a semi-circle around him, like a defensive arc, or enemies on all sides. His shaking had quieted. "The gem you gave that scheming child? I ought to carve your lies onto your back as you weep."

  Unsheathing his blade, Krrel dragged the point across the table scratching a straight line. “The women of Strata Cydonia are all like you. Snivelling serf.”

  With an almost steady hand, he lifted the blade and held it before one eye, focusing on its fuller. “Without their king they are useless.”

  He sheathed the knife and raised both fists in symmetry to shoulder height and clenched them there, willing them to be still.

  Then waited.

  “Are you going to soil yourself? What did she say?”

  His mouth quivered but no words came out and then he stepped back two paces.

  “Did she beg to join me here, at my knee? And flee the white marble palace, like the rest of them.” The calculating voice of the king of Mars was returning.

  “She gave me the elixir… s-she said it was so your eyes would clear and so you could see the face of the one who kills you.” The polished iron sickle on the wall ten metres away drew his eye and his hand wavered.

  “Where is Pericles now?” Krrel drew the soup bowl to him. The spoon made no sound on the ceramic bowl as he fished out a square of rabbit meat. Blood vessels on the back of his hand bulged as if filled with blue ink.

  “My king, Demons, the fast armoured vehicles, are seen staging northwest of Sisyphi Bastion, along with heavier equipment.” Worry weaved through his words. “At the Pai-Solis canal terminus, my king. The head of the canal.”

  “He’s tricked you, fool. He’s attacking the palace. Palace Trianon.” He shook his head and tugged a rabbit bone from his mouth, then used it to pick at his teeth.

  “No my King, we’ve seen large equipment moving through Canal Pai-Solis just this hour. A mobilization point within striking distance of the bastion.”

  “Since when? Pericles wants the throne. This is wrong.”

  "Since your weapon fired, my king. The moment the plasma hit the sky, Pericles began moving forces. He saw it. Everyone saw it." Veins bulged on his temples and a bead of sweat appeared above his eye.

  “Recheck your information.” He cracked a bone between his molars and then spat it out.

  “What else did she say? She must have said something else.” Raising his eyebrows, he thumbed the crossed ice mauls over the Strata Angustus insignia that was cast into his spoon.

  "Begging you, my King." The Master of the Palace's body shook like a child's.

  "Tell me." Krrel's eyes were blades when he stared at the Master of the Palace.

  The Master's words came soft, but the king heard each one. “That she—she would strip your name and the crest of Strata Angustus from every keystone in the Palace.”

  He avoided eye contact with the king and swallowed dryly. Beads of moisture clung to his upper lip and then he looked to the walls where each column was adorned with the king’s family crest.

  The king held his over-filled soup spoon above the table, when it started to shake, slopping cream onto its rock surface. Where it landed on the dark stone, it looked like blood. Krrel’s knuckle was white.

  “She said that she would keep the name Trianon,”

  “She said it would be your reproof.”