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Red Rising is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright ©2013 by Pierce Brown

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

ISBN 978-0-345-53978-6

Ebook ISBN 978-0-345-53979-3

www.delreybooks

Book design by Caroline Cunningham

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To Father, who taught me to walk

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Acknowledgments

If writing is a work of the head and heart, then thank you to Aaron Phillips,

Hannah Bowman, and Mike Braff, who burnish my head with their wisdom

and advice.

Thank you to my parents, my sister, friends, and the Phillips Clan who

guard my heart with their love and loyalty:

And to the reader, thank you. You’re going to bloodydamn love the next

two books.

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Part I: Slave

Chapter 1: Helldiver

Chapter 2: The Township

Chapter 3: The Laurel

Chapter 4: The Gift

Chapter 5: The First Song

Chapter 6: The Martyr

Part II: Reborn

Chapter 7: Other Things

Chapter 8: Dancer

Chapter 9: The Lie

Chapter 10: The Carver

Chapter 11: The Carved

Chapter 12: Change

Chapter 13: Bad Things

Chapter 14: Andromedus

Chapter 15: The Testing

Chapter 16: The Institute

Chapter 17: The Draft

Chapter 18: Classmates

Chapter 19: The Passage

Part III: Gold

Chapter 20: The House Mars

Chapter 21: Our Dominion

Chapter 22: The Tribes

Chapter 23: Fracture

Chapter 24: Titus’s War

Chapter 25: Tribal War

Chapter 26: Mustang

Chapter 27: The House of Rage

Chapter 28: My Brother

Chapter 29: Unity

Chapter 30: House Diana

Chapter 31: The Fall of Mustang

Chapter 32: Antonia

Chapter 33: Apologies

Part IV: Reaper

Chapter 34: The Northwoods

Chapter 35: Oathbreakers

Chapter 36: A Second Test

Chapter 37: South

Chapter 38: The Fall of Apollo

Chapter 39: The Proctor’s Bounty

Chapter 40: Paradigm

Chapter 41: The Jackal

Chapter 42: War on Heaven

Chapter 43: The Last Test

Chapter 44: The Beginning

About the Author

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I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.

I watch twelve hundred of their strongest sons and daughters. Listening

to a pitiless Golden man speak between great marble pillars. Listening to

the beast who brought the flame that gnaws at my heart.

“All men are not created equal,” he declares. Tall, imperious, an eagle of

a man. “The weak have deceived you. They would say the meek should

inherit the Earth. That the strong should nurture the gentle. This is the

Noble Lie of Demokracy. The cancer that poisoned mankind.”

His eyes pierce the gathered students. “You and I are Gold. We are the

end of the evolutionary line. We tower above the flesh heap of man,

shepherding the lesser Colors. You have inherited this legacy,” he pauses,

studying faces in the assembly. “But it is not free.

“Power must be claimed. Wealth won. Rule, dominion, empire purchased

with blood. You scarless children deserve nothing. You do not know pain.

You do not know what your forefathers sacrificed to place you on these

heights. But soon, you will. Soon, we will teach you why Gold rules

mankind. And I promise, of those among you, only those fit for power will

survive.”

But I am no Gold. I am a Red.

He thinks men like me weak. He thinks me dumb, feeble, subhuman. I

was not raised in palaces. I did not ride horses through meadows and eat

meals of hummingbird tongues. I was forged in the bowels of this hard

world. Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love.

He is wrong.

None of them will survive.

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Part I

Slave

There is a flower that grows on Mars. It is red and harsh and fit for our soil. It is

called haemanthus. It means “blood blossom.”

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1

Helldiver

The first thing you should know about me is I am my father’s son. And

when they came for him, I did as he asked. I did not cry. Not when the

Society televised the arrest. Not when the Golds tried him. Not when the

Grays hanged him. Mother hit me for that. My brother Kieran was supposed

to be the stoic one. He was the elder, I the younger. I was supposed to cry.

Instead, Kieran bawled like a girl when Little Eo tucked a haemanthus into

father’s left workboot and ran back to her own father’s side. My sister

Leanna murmured a lament beside me. I just watched and thought it a

shame that he died dancing but without his dancing shoes.

On Mars there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break

the neck. They let the loved ones do it.

I smell my own stink inside my frysuit. The suit is some kind of nanoplastic

and is hot as its name suggests. It insulates me toe to head. Nothing gets in.

Nothing gets out. Especially not the heat. Worst part is you can’t wipe the

sweat from your eyes. Bloodydamn stings as it goes through the headband

to puddle at the heels. Not to mention the stink when you piss. Which you

always do. Gotta take in a load of water through the drinktube. I guess you

could be fit with a catheter. We choose the stink.

The drillers of my clan chatter some gossip over the comm in my ear as I

ride atop the clawDrill. I’m alone in this deep tunnel atop a machine built

like a titanic metal hand, one that grasps and gnaws at the ground. I control

its rockmelting digits from the holster seat atop the drill, just where the

elbow joint would be. There, my fingers fit into control gloves that

manipulate the many tentacle-like drills some ninety meters below my

perch. To be a Helldiver, they say your fingers must flicker fast as tongues

of fire. Mine flicker faster.

Despite the voices in my ear, I am alone in the deep tunnel. My existence

is vibration, the echo of my own breath, and heat so thick and noxious it

feels like I’m swaddled in a heavy quilt of hot piss.

A new river of sweat breaks through the scarlet sweatband tied around

my forehead and slips into my eyes, burning them till they’re as red as my

rusty hair. I used to reach and try to wipe the sweat away, only to scratch

futilely at the faceplate of my frysuit. I still want to. Even after three years,

the tickle and sting of the sweat is a raw misery.

The tunnel walls around my holster seat are bathed a sulfurous yellow by

a corona of lights. The reach of the light fades as I look up the thin vertical

shaft I’ve carved today. Above, precious helium-3 glimmers like liquid

silver, but I’m looking at the shadows, looking for the pitvipers that curl

through the darkness seeking the warmth of my drill. They’ll eat into your

suit too, bite through the shell and then try to burrow into the warmest place

they find , usually your belly, so they can lay their eggs. I’ve been bitten

before. Still dream of the beast—black, like a thick tendril of oil. They can

get as wide as a thigh and long as three men, but it’s the babies we fear.

They don’t know how to ration their poison. Like me, their ancestors came

from Earth, then Mars and the deep tunnels changed them.

It is eerie in the deep tunnels. Lonely. Beyond the roar of the drill, I hear

the voices of my friends, all older. But I cannot see them a half klick above

me in the darkness. They drill high above, near the mouth of the tunnel that

I’ve carved, descending with hooks and lines to dangle along the sides of

the tunnel to get at the small veins of helium-3. They mine with meter-long

drills, gobbling up the chaff. The work still requires mad dexterity of foot

and hand, but I’m the earner in this crew. I am the Helldiver. It takes a

certain kind—and I’m the youngest anyone can remember.

I’ve been in the mines for three years. You start at thirteen. Old enough to

screw, old enough to crew. At least that’s what Uncle Narol said. Except I

didn’t get married till six months back, so I don’t know why he said it.

Eo dances through my thoughts as I peer into my control display and slip

the clawDrill’s fingers around a fresh vein, melting and scraping away the

rock to isolate the mineral without destroying it. Eo. Sometimes it’s difficult

to think of her as anything but what we used to call her as children.

Little Eo—a tiny girl hidden beneath a mane of red. Red like the rock

around me, not true red, rust-red. Red like our home, like Mars. Eo is

sixteen too. And she may be like me—from a clan of Red earth diggers, a

clan of song and dance and soil—but she could be made from air, from the

ether that binds the stars in a patchwork. Not that I’ve ever seen stars. No

Red from the mining colonies sees the stars.

Little Eo. They wanted to marry her off when she turned fourteen, like all

girls of the clans. But she took the short rations and waited for me to reach

sixteen, wedAge for men, before slipping that cord around her finger . She

said she knew we’d marry since we were children. I didn’t.

“Hold. Hold. Hold!” Uncle Narol snaps over the comm channel.

“Darrow, hold, boy!” My fingers freeze. He’s high above with the rest of

them, watching my progress on his head unit.

“What’s the burn?” I ask, annoyed. I don’t like being interrupted.

“What’s the burn, the little Helldiver asks,” Old Barlow chuckles.

“Gas pocket, that’s what,” Narol snaps. He’s the headTalk for our two-

hundred-plus crew. “Hold. Calling a scanCrew to check the particulars

before you blow us all to hell.”

“That gas pocket? It’s a tiny one,” I say. “More like a gas pimple. I can

manage it.”

“A year on the drill and he thinks he knows his head from his hole! Poor

little pissant,” old Barlow adds dryly. “Remember the words of our golden

leader. Patience and obedience, young one. Patience is the better part of

valor. And obedience the better part of humanity. Listen to your elders.”

I roll my eyes at the epigram. If the elders could do what I can, maybe

listening would have its merits. But they are slow in hand and mind.

Sometimes I feel like they want me to be just the same, especially my

uncle.

“I’m on a tear,” I say. “If you think there’s a gas pocket, I can just hop

down and handscan it. Easy. No dilldally.”

They’ll preach caution. As if caution has ever helped them. We haven’t

won a Laurel in ages.

“Want to make Eo a widow?” Barlow laughs, voice crackling with static.

“Okay by me. She is a pretty little thing. Drill into that pocket and leave her

to me. Old and fat I be, but my drill still digs a dent.”

A chorus of laughter comes from the two hundred drillers above. My

knuckles turn white as I grip the controls.

“Listen to Uncle Narol, Darrow. Better to back off till we can get a

reading,” my brother Kieran adds. He’s three years older. Makes him think

he’s a sage, that he knows more. He just knows caution. “There’ll be time.”

“Time? Hell, it’ll take hours,” I snap. They’re all against me in this.

They’re all wrong and slow and don’t understand that the Laurel is only a

bold move away. More, they doubt me. “You are being a coward, Narol.”

Silence on the other end of the line.

Calling a man a coward—not a good way to get his cooperation.

Shouldn’t have said it.

“I say make the scan yourself,” Loran, my cousin and Narol’s son,

squawks. “Don’t and Gamma is good as Gold—they’ll get the Laurel for,

oh, the hundredth time.”

The Laurel. Twenty-four clans in the underground mining colony of

Lykos, one Laurel per quarter. It means more food than you can eat. It

means more burners to smoke. Imported quilts from Earth. Amber swill

with the Society’s quality markings. It means winning. Gamma clan has had

it since anyone can remember. So it’s always been about the Quota for us

lesser clans, just enough to scrape by. Eo says the Laurel is the carrot the

Society dangles, always just far enough beyond our grasp. Just enough so

we know how short we really are and how little we can do about it. We’re

supposed to be pioneers. Eo calls us slaves. I just think we never try hard

enough. Never take the big risks because of the old men.

“Loran, shut up about the Laurel. Hit the gas and we’ll miss all the

bloodydamn Laurels to kingdom come, boy,” Uncle Narol growls.

He’s slurring. I can practically smell the drink through the comm. He

wants to call a sensor team to cover his own ass. Or he’s scared. The drunk

was born pissing himself out of fear. Fear of what? Our overlords, the

Golds? Their minions, the Grays? Who knows? Few people. Who cares?

Even fewer. Actually, just one man cared for my uncle, and he died when

my uncle pulled his feet.

My uncle is weak. He is cautious and immoderate in his drink, a pale

shadow of my father. His blinks are long and hard, as though it pains him to

open his eyes each time and see the world again. I don’t trust him down

here in the mines, or anywhere for that matter. But my mother would tell

me to listen to him; she would remind me to respect my elders. Even though

I am wed, even though I am the Helldiver of my clan, she would say that

my “blisters have not yet become calluses.” I will obey, even though it is as

maddening as the tickle of the sweat on my face.

“Fine,” I murmur.

I clench the drill fist and wait as my uncle calls it in from the safety of the

chamber above the deep tunnel. This will take hours. I do the math. Eight

hours till whistle call. To beat Gamma, I’ve got to keep a rate of 156.5 kilos

an hour. It’ll take two and a half hours for the scanCrew to get here and do

their deal, at best. So I’ve got to pump out 227.6 kilos per hour after that.

Impossible. But if I keep going and squab the tedious scan, it’s ours.

I wonder if Uncle Narol and Barlow know how close we are. Probably.

Probably just don’t think anything is ever worth the risk. Probably think

divine intervention will squab our chances. Gamma has the Laurel. That’s

the way things are and will ever be. We of Lambda just try to scrape by on

our foodstuffs and meager comforts. No rising. No falling. Nothing is worth

the risk of changing the hierarchy. My father found that out at the end of a

rope.

Nothing is worth risking death. Against my chest, I feel the wedding

band of hair and silk dangling from the cord around my neck and think of

Eo’s ribs.

I’ll see a few more of the slender things through her skin this month.

She’ll go asking the Gamma families for scraps behind my back. I’ll act

like I don’t know. But we’ll still be hungry. I eat too much because I’m

sixteen and still growing tall; Eo lies and says she’s never got much of an

appetite. Some women sell themselves for food or luxuries to the Tinpots

(Grays, to be technic about it), the Society’s garrison troops of our little

mining colony. She wouldn’t sell her body to feed me. Would she? But then

I think about it. I’d do anything to feed her ...

I look down over the edge of my drill. It’s a long fall to the bottom of the

hole I’ve dug. Nothing but molten rock and hissing drills. But before I

know what’s what, I’m out of my straps, scanner in hand and jumping down

the hundred-meter drop toward the drill fingers. I kick back and forth

between the vertical mineshaft’s walls and the drill’s long, vibrating body to

slow my fall. I make sure I’m not near a pitviper nest when I throw out an

arm to catch myself on a gear just above the drill fingers. The ten drills

glow with heat. The air shimmers and distorts. I feel the heat on my face,

feel it stabbing my eyes, feel it ache in my belly and balls. Those drills will

melt your bones if you’re not careful. And I’m not careful. Just nimble.

I lower myself hand over hand, going feet first between the drill fingers

so that I can lower the scanner close enough to the gas pocket to get a

reading. The heat is unbearable and the air in my lungs nearly too hot to

breathe. This was a mistake. Voices shout at me through the comm. I almost

brush one of the drills as I finally lower myself close enough to the gas

pocket. The scanner flickers in my hand as it takes its reading. My suit is

bubbling and I smell something sweet and sharp, like burned syrup. To a

Helldiver, it is the smell of death.

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2

The Township

My suit can’t handle the heat down here. The outer layer is nearly melted

through. Soon the second layer will go. Then the scanner blinks silver and

I’ve got what I came for. I almost didn’t notice. Dizzy and frightened, I pull

myself away from the drills. Hand over hand, I tug my body up, going fast

away from the dreadful heat. Then something catches. My foot is jammed

just underneath one of the gears near a drill finger . I gasp down air in

sudden panic. The dread rises in me. I see my bootheel melting. The first

layer goes. The second bubbles. Then it will be my flesh.

I force a long breath and choke down the screams that are rising in my

throat. I remember the blade. I flip out my hinged slingBlade from its back

holster. It’s a cruelly curved cutter as long as my leg, meant for taking off

and cauterizing limbs stuck in machinery, just like this. Most men panic

when they get caught, and so the slingBlade is a nasty halfmoon weapon

meant to be used by clumsy hands. Even filled with terror, my hands are not

clumsy. I slice three times with the slingBlade, cutting nanoplastic instead

of flesh. On the third swing, I reach down and jerk free my leg. As I do, my

knuckles brush the edge of a drill. Searing pain shoots through my hand. I

smell crackling flesh, but I’m up and off, climbing away from the hellish

heat, climbing back to my holtster seat and laughing all the while. I feel like

crying.

My uncle was right. I was wrong. But I’ll be damned if I ever let him

know it.

“Idiot,” is his kindest comment.

“Manic! Bloodydamn manic!” Loran whoops.

“Minimal gas,” I say. “Drilling now, Uncle.”

The haulBacks take my pull when the whistle call comes. I push myself

out of my drill, leaving it in the deep tunnel for the nightshift, and snag a

weary hand on the line the others drop down the kilometer-long shaft to

help me up. Despite the seeping burn on the back of my hand, I slide my

body upward on the line till I’m out of the shaft. Kieran and Loran walk

with me to join the others at the nearest gravLift, just a kilometer along the

cavernous K-strip of the new mine. Yellow lights dangle like spiders from

the ceiling.

My clan and Gamma’s three hundred men already have their toes under

the metal railing when we reach the rectangular gravLift. I avoid my uncle

—he’s mad enough to spit—and catch a few dozen pats on the back for my

stunt. The young ones like me think we’ve won the Laurel. They know my

raw helium-3 pull for the month; it’s better than Gamma’s. The old turds

just grumble and say we’re fools. I hide my hand and duck my toes in.

Gravity alters and we shoot upward. A Gamma scab with less than a

week’s worth of rust under his nails forgets to put his toes under the railing.

So he hangs suspended as the lift shoots up six vertical kilometers. Ears

pop.

“Got a floating Gamma turd here,” Barlow laughs to the Lambdas.

Petty as it may seem, it’s always nice seeing a Gamma squab something.

They get more food, more burners, more everything because of the Laurel.

We get to despise them. But then, we’re supposed to, I think. Wonder if

they’ll despise us now.

Enough’s enough. I grip the rust-red nanoplastic of the kid’s frysuit and

jerk him down. Kid. That’s a laugh. He’s hardly three years younger than

me.

He’s deathly tired, but when he sees the blood-red of my frysuit, he

stiffens, avoids my eyes, and becomes the only one to see the burn on my

hand. I wink at him and I think he shits his suit. We all do it now and then. I

remember when I met my first Helldiver. I thought he was a god.

He’s dead now.

Up top in the staging depot, a big gray cavern of concrete and metal, we

pop our tops and drink down the fresh, cold air of a world far removed from

molten drills. Our collective stink and sweat soon make a bog of the area.

Lights flicker in the distance, telling us to stay clear of the magnetic

horizonTram tracks on the other side of the depot.

We don’t mingle with the Gammas as we head for the horizonTram in a

staggered line of rust-red suits. Half with Lambda Ls, half with Gamma

canes painted in dark red on their backs. Two scarlet headTalks. Two blood-

red Helldivers.

A cadre of Tinpots eye us as we trudge by over the worn concrete floor .

Their Gray duroArmor is simple and tired, as unkempt as their hair. It

would stop a simple blade, but not an ion blade, and a pulseBlade or razor

would go through it like paper. But we’ve only seen those on the holoCan.

The Grays don’t even bother to make a show of force. Their thumpers

dangle at their sides. They know they won’t have to use them.

Obedience is the highest virtue.

The Gray captain, Ugly Dan, a greasy bastard, throws a pebble at me.

Though his skin is darkened from exposure to the sun, his hair is gray like

the rest of his Color. It hangs thin and weedy over his eyes—two icecubes

rolled in ash. The Sigils of his Color, a curling gray symbol like the number

four with several bars beside it, wend along each hand hands and wrists.

Cruel and stark, like all the Grays.

I heard they pulled Ugly Dan off the frontline back in Eurasia, wherever

that is, after he got crippled and they didn’t want to buy him a new arm. He

has an old replacement model now. He’s insecure about it, so I make sure

he sees me give the arm a glance.

“Saw you had an exciting day, darling.” His voice is as stale and heavy as

the air inside my frysuit. “Brave hero now, are you, Darrow? I always

thought you’d be a brave hero.”

“You’re the hero,” I say, nodding to his arm.

“And you think you’re smart, doncha?”

“Just a Red.”

He winks at me. “Say hello to your little birdy for me. A ripe thing for

piggin’.” Licks his teeth. “Even for a Ruster.”

“Never seen a bird.” Except on the HC.

“Ain’t that a thing,” he chuckles. “Wait, where you going?” he asks as I

turn. “A bow to your betters won’t go awry, doncha think?” He snickers to

his fellows. Careless of his mockery, I turn and bow deeply. My uncle sees

this and turns from it, disgusted.

We leave the Grays behind. I don’t mind bowing, but I’ll probably cut

Ugly Dan’s throat if I ever get the chance. Kind of like saying I’d take a zip

out to Venus in a torchShip if it ever suited my fancy.

“Hey, Dago. Dago!” Loran calls to Gamma’s Helldiver. The man’s a

legend; all the other divers just a flash in the pan. I might be better than

him. “What’d you pull?”

Dago, a pale strip of old leather with a smirk for a face, lights a long

burner and puffs out a cloud.

“Don’t know,” he drawls.

“Come on!”

“Don’t care. Raw count never matters, Lambda.”

“Like bloodyhell it doesn’t! What’d he pull on the week?” Loran calls as

we load into the tram. Everyone’s lighting burners and popping out the

swill. But they’re all listening intently.

“Nine thousand eight hundred and twenty-one kilos,” a Gamma boasts.

At this, I lean back and smile; I hear cheers from the younger Lambdas. The

old hands don’t react. I’m busy wondering what Eo will do with sugar this

month. We’ve never earned sugar before, only ever won it at cards. And

fruit. I hear the Laurel gets you fruit. She’ll probably give it all away to

hungry children just to prove to the Society she doesn’t need their prizes.

Me? I’d eat the fruit and play politics on a full stomach. But she’s got the

passion for ideas, while I’ve got no extra passion for anything but her.

“Still won’t win,” Dago drawls as the tram starts away. “Darrow’s a

young pup, but he is smart enough to know that. Ain’t you, Darrow?”

“Young or not, I beat your craggy ass.”

“You sure ’bout that?”

“Deadly sure.” I wink and blow him a kiss. “Laurel’s ours. Send your

sisters to my township for sugar this time.” My friends laugh and slap their

frysuit lids on their thighs.

Dago watches me. After a moment, he drags his burner deep. It glows

bright and burns fast. “This is you,” he says to me. In half a minute the

burner is a husk.

After disembarking the horizonTram, I funnel into the Flush with the rest of

the crews. The place is cold, musty, and smells exactly like what it is: a

cramped metal shed where thousands of men strip off frysuits after hours of

pissing and sweating to take air showers. So, bad. It’s dark. Grime on the

floor . Cracking walls. Fissures in the cement where gather hair and human

detritus.

I peel off my suit, put on one of our haircaps, and walk naked to stand in

the nearest transparent tube. There are dozens of them lined up in the Flush.

The hum of motors and catcalls fills the place as naked men and boys jostle

past one another to take turns cleaning off. Here there is no dancing, no

boastful flips; the only camaraderie is exhaustion and the soft slapping of

hands on thighs, creating a rhythm with the whoosh and shoot of the

showers.

The door to my tube hisses closed behind me, muffling the sounds of

music. The contraption is decrepit. Dirt and deposits of dead skin and old

hair crust the holes at the bottom where the air goes out. I move my feet

away from the filth as the machine activates. A familiar hum comes from

the motor, followed by a great rush of atmosphere and a sucking resonance

as air filled with antibacterial molecules screams from the top of the

machine and shoots over my skin to whisk away dead skin and filth down

the drain at the bottom of the tube. It hurts.

After, I part with Loran and Kieran as they go to the Common to drink

and dance in the taverns before the Laureltide dance officially starts. The

Tinpots will be handing out the Allowances of foodstuffs and announcing

the Laurel at midnight. There will be dancing before and after for us of the

dayshift.

The legends say that the god Mars was the parent of tears, foe to dance

and lute. As to the former, I agree. But we of the colony of Lykos, one of

the first of the colonies under Mars’s surface, are a people of dance and

song and family. We spit on that legend and make our own birthright. It is

the one resistance we can manage against the Society that rules us. Gives us

a bit of spine. They don’t care that we dance or that we sing, so long as we

obediently dig. So long as we prepare the planet for the rest of them. Yet to

remind us of our place, they make one song and one dance punishable by

death.

My father made that dance his last. I’ve seen it only once, and I’ve heard

the song only once as well. I didn’t understand when I was little, one about

distant vales, mist, lovers lost, and a reaper meant to guide us to our unseen

home. I was small and curious when the woman sang it as her son was

hanged for stealing foodstuffs. He would have been a tall boy, but he could

never get enough food to put meat on his bones. His mother died next. The

people of Lykos did the Fading Dirge for them—a tragic thumping of fists

against chests, fading slowly, slowly, till the fists, like her heart, beat no

more and all dispersed.

The sound haunted me that night. I cried alone in our small kitchen,

wondering why I cried then when I had not for my father. As I lay on the

cold floo r, I heard a soft scratching at my family’s door. When I opened the

door, I found a small haemanthus bud nestled in the red dirt, not a soul to be

seen, only Eo’s tiny footprints in the dirt. That is the second time she

brought flowers after death.

Since song and dance are in our blood, I suppose it is not surprising that

it was in both that I first realized I loved Eo. Not Little Eo. Not as she was.

But Eo as she is. She says she loved me before they hanged my father. But

it was in a smoky tavern when her rusty hair swirled and her feet moved

with the zither and her hips to the drums that my heart forgot a couple of

beats. It was not her flips or cartwheels. None of the boastful foolery that so

marks the dance of the young. Hers was a graceful, proud movement.

Without me, she would not eat. Without her, I would not live.

She may tease me for saying so, but she is the spirit of our people. Life’s

dealt us a hard hand. We’re to sacrifice for the good of men and women we

don’t know. We’re to dig to ready Mars for others. That makes some of us

nastyminded folks. But Eo’s kindness, her laughter, her fierce will, is the

best that can come from a home such as ours.

I look for her in my family’s in our offshoot township, just a half mile’s

worth of tunnelroad away from the Common. The township is one of two

dozen townships surrounding the Common. It is a hivelike cluster of homes

carved into the rock walls of the old mines. Stone and earth are our ceilings,

our floors, our home. The Clan is a giant family. Eo grew up not a stone’s

throw from my house. Her brothers are like my own. Her father like the one

I lost.

A mess of electrical wires tangle together along the cavern’s ceiling like a

jungle of black and red vines. Lights hang down from the jungle, swaying

gently as air from the Common’s central oxygen system circulates. At the

center of the township dangles a massive holoCan. It’s a square box with

images on each side. Pixels are blacked out and the image is faded and

fuzzy, but never has the thing faltered, never has it turned off. It bathes our

cluster of homes in its own pale light. Videos from the Society.

My family’s home is carved into the rock a hundred meters from the

bottom floor of the township. A steep path leads from it to the ground,

though pulleys and ropes can also bear one to the township’s greatest

heights. Only the old or infirm use those. And we have few of either.

Our house has few rooms. Eo and I only recently were able to take a

room for ourselves. Kieran and his family have two rooms, and my mother

and sister take the lone second-story room.

All Lambdas in Lykos live in our township. Omega and Upsilon neighbor

us just a minute’s worth of wide tunnel over to either side. We’re all

connected. Except for Gamma. They live in the Common, above the

taverns, repair booths, silk shops, and trade bazaars. The Tinpots live in a

fortress above that, nearer the barren surface of our harsh world. That’s

where the ports lie that bring the foodstuffs from Earth to us marooned

pioneers.

The holoCan above me shows images of mankind’s struggles, which are

then followed by soaring music as the Society’s triumphs flas h past. The

Society’s sigil, a golden pyramid with three parallel bars attached to the

pyramid’s three faces, a circle surrounding all, burns into the screen. The

voice of Octavia au Lune, the Society’s aged Sovereign, narrates the

struggle man faces in colonizing the planets and moons of the System.

“Since the dawn of man, our saga as a species has been one of tribal

warfare. It has been one of trial, one of sacrifice, one of daring to defy

nature’s natural limits. Now, through duty and obedience, we are united, but

our struggle is no different. Sons and daughters of all Colors, we are asked

to sacrifice yet again. Here in our finest hour, we cast our best seeds to the

stars. Where first shall we flourish? Venus? Mercury? Mars? The Moons of

Neptune, Jupiter?”

Her voice grows solemn as her face with its regal cast peers down from

the HC. Her hands shimmer with the symbol of Gold emblazoned upon

their backs—a dot in the center of a winged circle. Only one imperfection

mars her golden face—a long crescent scar running along her right

cheekbone. Her beauty is like that of a cruel bird of prey.

“You brave Red pioneers of Mars—strongest of the human breed—

sacrifice for progress, sacrifice to pave the way for the future. Your lives,

your blood, are a down payment for the immortality of the human race as

we move beyond Earth and Moon. You go where we could not. You suffer so

that others do not.

“I salute you. I love you. The helium-3 that you mine is the lifeblood of

the terraforming process. Soon the red planet will have breathable air,

livable soil. And soon, when Mars is habitable, when you brave pioneers

have made ready the red planet for us softer Colors, we will join you and

you will be held in highest esteem beneath the sky your toil created. Your

sweat and blood fuels the terraforming!

“Brave pioneers, always remember that obedience is the highest virtue.

Above all, obedience, respect, sacrifice, hierarchy ...”

I find the kitchen room of the home empty, but I hear Eo in the bedroom.

“Stop right where you are!” she commands through the door. “Do not,

under any condition, look in this room.”

“Okay.” I stop.

She comes out a minute later, flustered and blushing. Her hair is covered

in dust and webs. I rake my hands through the tangle. She’s straight from

the Webbery, where they harvest the bioSilk.

“You didn’t go in the Flush,” I say, smiling.

“Didn’t have time. Had to skirt out of the Webbery to pick something

up.”

“What did you pick up?”

She smiles sweetly. “You didn’t marry me because I tell you everything,

remember. And do not go into that room.”

I make a lunge for the door. She blocks me and pulls my sweatband down

over my eyes. Her forehead pushes against my chest. I laugh, move the

band, and grip her shoulders to push her back enough to look into her eyes.

“Or what?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

She just smiles at me and cocks her head. I back away from the metal

door. I dive into molten mineshafts without a blink. But there are some

warnings you can buck off and others you can’t.

She stands on her tiptoes and pecks me good on the nose. “Good boy; I

knew you’d be easy to train,” she says. Then her nose wrinkles because she

smells my burn. She doesn’t coddle me, doesn’t berate me, doesn’t even

speak except to say, “I love you,” with just the hint of worry in her voice.

She picks the melted pieces of my frysuit out of the wound, which

stretches from my knuckles to my wrist, and pulls tight a webwrap with

antibiotic and nervenucleic.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask.

“If I don’t lecture you, you don’t quiz me on what’s what.”

I kiss her on the nose and play with the thin band of woven hair around

her ring finger. My hair wound with bits of silk makes her wedding band.

“I have a surprise for you tonight,” she tells me.

“And I have one for you,” I say, thinking of the Laurel. I put my

sweatband on her head like a crown. She wrinkles her nose at its wetness.

“Oh, well, I actually have two for you, Darrow. Pity you didn’t think

ahead. You might have gotten me a cube of sugar or a satin sheet or ...

maybe even coffee to go with the first gift.”

“Coffee!” I laugh. “What sort of Color did you think you married?”

She sighs. “No benefits to a diver, none at all. Crazy, stubborn, rash ...”

“Dexterous?” I say with a mischievous smile as I slide my hand up the

side of her skirt.

“Reckon that has its advantages.” She smiles and swats my hand away

like it’s a spider. “Now put these gloves on unless you want jabber from the

women. Your mother’s already gone on ahead.”

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OceanofPDF

3

The Laurel

We walk hand in hand with the others from our township through the

tunnelroads to the Common. Lune drones on above us on the HC, high

above, as the Goldbrows (Aureate to be technic) ought to be. They show the

horrors of a terrorist bomb killing a Red mining crew and an Orange

technician group. The Sons of Ares are blamed. Their strange glyph of Ares,

a cruel helmet with spiked sunbursts exploding from the crown, burns

across the screen; blood drips from the spikes. Children are shown mangled.

The Sons of Ares are called tribal murderers, called bringers of chaos. They

are condemned. The Society’s Gray police and soldiers move rubble. Two

soldiers of the Obsidian Color, colossal men and women nearly twice my

size, are shown along with nimble Yellow doctors carrying several victims

from the blast.

There are no Sons of Ares in Lykos. Their futile war does not touch us;

yet again a reward is offered for information on Ares, the terrorist king. We

have heard the broadcast a thousand times, and still it feels like fiction. The

Sons think we are mistreated, so they blow things up. It is a pointless

tantrum. Any damage they do delays the progress of making Mars ready for

the other Colors. It hurts humanity.

In the tunnelroad, where boys compete to touch the ceiling, the people of

the townships flow in merriment toward the Laureltide dance. We sing the

Laureltide song as we go—a swooping melody of a man finding his bride in

a field of gold. There’s laughter as the young boys try running along the

walls or doing rows of flips, only to fall on their faces or be bested by a girl.

Lights are strung along the lengthy corridor. In the distance, drunk Uncle

Narol, old now at thirty-five, plays his zither for the children who dance

about our legs; even he cannot scowl forever. He wears the instrument

suspended on shoulder straps so that it rests at his hips, with its plastic

soundboard and its many taut metal strings facing up toward the ceiling.

The right thumb strums the strings, except when the index finger drops

down or when the thumb picks single strings, all while the left hand picks

out the bass line string by string. It is maddeningly difficult to make the

zither sound anything but mournful. Uncle Narol’s are equal to the task,

though mine only make tragic music.

He used to play to me, teaching me to move to the dances my father

never had the chance to teach me. He even taught me the forbidden dance,

the one they’ll kill you for. We’d do it in the old mines. He would hit my

ankles with a switch till I pirouetted seamlessly through the swooping

movements, a length of metal in my hand like a sword. And when I got it

right, he would kiss my brow and tell me I was my father’s son. It was his

lessons that taught me to move, that let me best the other kids as we played

games of tag and ghosts in the old tunnels.

“The Golds dance in pairs, Obsidians in threes, Grays in dozens,” he told

me. “We dance alone, because only alone do Helldivers drill. Only alone

can a boy become a man.”

I miss those days, days when I was young enough that I didn’t judge him

for the stink of swill on his breath. I was eleven then. Only five years ago.

Yet it feels a lifetime.

I get pats on the back from those of Lambda and even Varlo the baker

tilts me his brow and tosses Eo a fist of bread. They’ve heard about the

Laurel, no doubt. Eo tucks the bread into her skirts for later and gives me a

curious look.

“You’re grinning like a fool,” she says to me, pinching my side. “What

did you do?”

I shrug and try to wipe the grin from my face. It is impossible.

“Well, you’re very proud of something,” she says suspiciously.

Reagan and Iro, Kieran’s son and daughter, my niece and nephew, patter

by. Three and three, the twins are just fast enough to outrace both Diona,

Kieran’s wife, and my mother.

My mother’s smile is one of a woman who has seen what life has to offer

and is, at best, bemused. “It seems you’ve burned yourself, my heart,” she

says when she sees my gloved hands. Her voice is slow, ironic.

“A blister,” Eo says for me. “Nasty one.”

Mother shrugs. “His father came home with worse.”

I put my arm around her shoulders. They are thinner than they used to be

when she taught me, as all women teach their sons, the songs of our people.

“Was that a hint of worry I heard, Ma?” I ask.

“Worry? Me? Oh, silly child,” Ma sighs with a slow smile. I kiss her on

the cheek.

Half the clans are already drunk when we arrive in the Common. In

addition to a dancing people, we’re a drunken people. The Tinpots let us

alone in that. Hang a man for no real reason and you might get some

grumblings from the townships. But force sobriety upon us, and you’ll be

picking up the pieces for a bloodydamn month. Eo is of the mind that the

fungus, grendel, which we distill, isn’t native to Mars and was instead

planted here to enslave us to the swill. She brings this up whenever my

mother makes a new batch, and my mother usually replies by taking a swig

and saying, “Rather a drink be my master than a man. These chains taste

sweet.”

They’ll taste even sweeter with the syrups we’ll get from the Laurel

boxes. They have flavors for alcohol, like berry and something called

cinnamon. Perhaps I’ll even get a new zither made of wood instead of

metal. Sometimes they give those out. Mine is an old, frayed thing. I’ve

played it too long. But it was my father’s.

The music swells ahead of us in the Common—bawdy tunes of

improvised percussion and wailing zithers. We’re joined by Omegas and

Upsilons, jostling about merrily toward the taverns. All the tavern doors

have been thrown open so their smoke and sound billow into the Common’s

plaza. Tables ring the plaza and a space is left clear surrounding the central

gallows so that there is room to dance.

The Common is a tiered circular spiral. Taverns and repair depots ring

the lowest level; Gamma homes fill the next several levels, followed by

supply depots, a sheer wall, and then, high above in the ceiling, a sunken

metal dome with nanoGlass viewports. We call that place the Pot. It is the

fortress where our keepers live and sleep. Beyond that is the uninhabitable

surface of our planet—a barren wasteland that I’ve only seen on the HC.

The helium-3 we mine is supposed to change that.

The dancers and jugglers and singers of the Laureltide have already

begun. Eo catches sight of Loran and Kieran and gives them a holler.

They’re at a long, packed table near the Soggy Drop, a tavern where the

oldest of our clan, Ol’ Ripper, holds court and tells tales to drunken folks.

He’s passed out on the table tonight. It’s a shame. I would have liked for

him to see me finally get us the Laurel.

At our feasts, where there’s hardly food enough for each soul to hold a bit

in their gob, the drink and dance take center. Loran pours me a mug of swill

before I even sit down. He’s always trying to get others to drink so he can

put ridiculous ribbons in their hair. He clears way for Eo to sit beside his

own wife, Dio, her sister, twin in looks if not birth.

Loran has a love for Eo like her brother Liam would, but I know he was

once as taken with her as he ever was with Dio. In fact, he bent a knee to

my wife when she turned fourteen. But then again, half the lads joined him

in that. No sweating it. She made her choice right and clear.

Kieran’s children swarm him. His wife kisses his lips; mine kisses his

brow and tousles his red hair. After a day in the Webbery harvesting

spiderworm silk, I don’t know how the wives manage to look so lovely. I

was born handsome, face angular and slim, but the mines have done their

part to change me. I’m tall, still growing. Hair still like old blood, irises still

as rust-red as Octavia au Lune’s are golden. My skin is tight and pale, but

I’m pocked with scars—burns, cuts. Won’t be long till I look hard as Dago

or tired as Uncle Narol.

But the women, they’re beyond us, beyond me. Lovely and spry despite

the Webbery, despite the children they bear. They wear layered skirts down

past their knees and blouses of half a dozen reds. Never anything else.

Always red. They’re the heart of the clans. And how much more beautiful

they will look wrapped in the imported bows and ribbons and laces

contained in the Laurel boxes.

I touch the Sigils on my hands, a bonelike texture. It’s a crude Red circle

with an arrow and cross-hatching. It feels right. Eo’s doesn’t. Her hair and

eyes may be ours, but she could be one of the Goldbrows we see on the

holoCan. She deserves it. Then I see her smack Loran hard on the head as

he throws back a mug of Ma’s rice-swill. God, if he’s placing about the

pieces, placed her well. I smile. But as I look behind her, my smile fades.

Above the leaping dancers, amid the hundred swirling skirts and thumping

boots and clapping hands, sways a single skeleton upon the cold, tall

gallows. Others do not notice it. To me, it is a shadow, a reminder of my

father’s fate.

Though we are diggers, we are not permitted to bury our dead. It is

another of the Society’s laws. My father swayed for two months till they cut

his skeleton down and ground his bones to dust. I was six but I tried to pull

him down the first day. My uncle stopped me. I hated him because he kept

me from my father’s body. Later, I came to hate him again because I

discovered he was weak: my father died for something, while Uncle Narol

lived and drank and squandered his life.

“He’s a mad one, you’ll see someday. Mad and brilliant and noble,

Narol’s the best of my brothers,” my father once said.

Now he’s just the last.

I never thought my father would do the Devil’s Dance, what the oldfolk

call death by hanging. He was a man of words and peace. But his notion

was freedom, laws of our own. His dreams were his weapons. His legacy is

the Dancer’s Rebellion. It died with him on the scaffold. Nine men at once

doing the Devil’s Dance, kicking and flailing, till only he was left.

It wasn’t much of a rebellion; they thought peaceful protest would

convince the Society to increase the food rations. So they performed the

Reaping Dance in front of the gravLifts and removed bits of machinery

from the drills so that they wouldn’t work. The gambit failed. Only winning

the Laurel can get you more food.

It’s on eleven when my uncle sits down with his zither. He eyes me

something nasty, drunk as a fool on Yuletide. We don’t share words, though

he has a kind one for Eo and she for him. Everyone loves Eo.

It’s when Eo’s mother come over and kisses me on the back of my head

and says very loudly, “We heard the news, you golden boy. The Laurel! You

are your father’s son,” that my uncle stirs.

“What’s the matter, Uncle?” I ask. “Have gas?”

His nostils flare wide. “You little shiteater!”

He launches himself across the table and soon we’re a muddle of fists and

elbows on the ground. He’s big, but I flip him down and pound his nose

with my bad hand till Eo’s father and Kieran pull me off. Uncle Narol spits

at me. It’s more blood and swill than anything else. Then we’re drinking

again at opposite ends of the table. My mother rolls her eyes.

“He’s just bitter he didn’t do a bloodydamn thing to get the Laurel.

Shown up is all,” Loran says of his father.

“Bloodydamn coward wouldn’t know how to win the Laurel if it landed

in his lap,” I say, scowling.

Eo’s father pats me on the head and sees his daughter fixing my burned

hand under the table. I slip my gloves back on. He winks at me.

Eo’s figu red out the fuss about the Laurel by the time the Tinpots arrive,

but she’s not excited as I’d hoped she’d be. She twists her skirts in her

hands and smiles at me. But her smiles are more like grimaces. I don’t

understand why she’s so apprehensive. None of the other clans are. Many

come to pay their respects; all of the Helldivers do, except Dago. He’s

sitting at a group of shiny Gamma tables—the only ones with more food

than swill—smoking down a burner.

“Can’t wait for the sod to be eating regular rations,” Loran chuckles.

“Dago’s never tasted peasant fare before.”

“Yet somehow he’s thinner than a woman,” Kieran adds.

I laugh along with Loran and push a meager piece of bread to Eo.

“Cheer up,” I tell her. “This is a night for celebrating.”

“I’m not hungry,” she replies.

“Not even if the bread has cinnamon on it?” Soon it will.

She gives me that half smile, as if she knows something I do not.

At twelve, a coterie of Tinpots descend in gravBoots from the Pot. Their

armor is shoddy and stained. Most are boys or old men retired from Earth’s

wars. But that’s not what matters. They carry their thumpers and scorchers

in buckled holsters. I’ve never seen either weapon used. There’s no need.

They’ve got the air, the food, the port. We haven’t a scorcher to shoot. Not

that Eo wouldn’t like to steal one.

The muscle in her jaw is flexing as she watches the Tinpots float in their

gravBoots, now joined by MineMagistrate, Timony cu Podginus, a minute

copper-haired man of the Pennies (Copper to be technic).

“Notice, notice. Grubby Rusters!” Ugly Dan calls. Silence falls over the

festivities as they float above us. Magistrate Podginus’s gravBoots are

substandard things, so he wobbles in the air like a geriatric. More Tinpots

descend on a gravLift as Podginus splays open his small, manicured hands.

“Fellow pioneers, how wonderful it is to see your celebrations. I must

confess,” he titters, “I have a fondness for the rustic nature of your

happiness. Simple drink. Simple fare. Simple dance. Oh, what fine souls

you have to be so entertained. Why, I wish I were so entertained. I cannot

even find pleasure off-planet in a Pink brothel after a meal of fine ham and

pineapple tart these days! How sad for me! How your souls are spoiled. If

only I could be like you. But my Color is my Color, and I am cursed as a

Copper to live a tedius life of data, bureaucracy, and managment.” He

clucks his tongue and his copper curls bounce as his gravBoots shift.

“But to the matter: All Quotas have been met, save by Mu and Chi. As

such, they will receive no beefs, milks, spices, hygenics, comforts, or dental

aid this month. Oats and substantials only. You understand that the ships

from Earth orbit can only bring so many supplies to the colonies. Valuable

resources! And we must give them to those who perform. Perhaps next

quarter, Mu and Chi, you will dally less!”

Mu and Chi lost a dozen men in a gas explosion like the one Uncle Narol

feared. They did not dally. They died.

He prattles on awhile before coming to the real matter. He produces the

Laurel and holds it in the air, pinched between his fingers. It’s painted in

fake gold, but the small branch sparkles nonetheless. Loran nudges me.

Uncle Narol scowls. I lean back, conscious of the eyes. The young take

their cues from me. The children adore all Helldivers. But the older eyes

watch me too, just as Eo always says. I’m their pride, their golden son. Now

I’ll show them how a real man acts. I won’t jump up and down in victory.

I’ll just smile and nod.

“And it becomes my distinct honor to, on behalf of the ArchGovernor of

Mars, Nero au Augustus, to award the Laurel of productivity and monthly

excellence and triumphant fortitude and obedience, sacrifice, and ...”

Gamma gets the Laurel.

And we don’t.

OceanofPDF

OceanofPDF

4

The Gift

As the Laurel-wreathed boxes come down to Gamma, I think about how

clever it really is. They won’t let us win the Laurel. They don’t care that the

math doesn’t work. They don’t care that the young scream in protest and the

old moan their same tired wisdoms. This is just a demonstration of their

power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by

birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never

conspiring.

Yet despite the disappointment, some part of us doesn’t blame the

Society. We blame Gamma, who receives the gifts. A man’s only got so

much hate, I suppose. And when he sees his children’s ribs through their

shirts while his neighbors line their bellies with meat stews and sugared

tarts, it’s hard for him to hate anyone but them. You think they’d share.

They don’t.

My uncle shrugs at me and others are red and mad. Loran looks like he

might attack the Tinpots or the Gammas. But Eo doesn’t let me boil in it.

She doesn’t let my knuckles turn white as I clench my fists in fury. She

knows the temper I have inside me better even than my own mother, and

she knows how to drain the rage before it rises. My mother smiles softly as

she watches Eo take me by the arm. How she loves my wife.

“Dance with me,” Eo whispers. She shouts for the zithers to get going

and the drums to get rolling. No doubt she’s pissin’ fire. She hates the

Society more than I do. But this is why I love my wife.

Soon the fast zither music swells and the old men slap their hands on

tables. The layered skirts fly . Feet tap and shuffle. And I grasp my wife as

the clans flow in dance throughout the square to join us. We sweat and we

laugh and try to forget the anger. We grew together, and now are grown. In

her eyes, I see my heart. In her breath, I hear my soul. She is my land. She

is my kin. My love.

She pulls me away with laughter. We wend our way through the crowd to

be alone. Yet she does not stop when we are free. She guides me along

metal walkways and low, dark ceilings to the old tunnels, to the Webbery,

where the women toil. It is between shifts.

“Where are we going exactly?” I ask.

“If you remember, I have gifts for you. And if you apologize for your

own gift going flat, I’ll smack you in the gob.”

Seeing a bloody-red haemanthus bulb peaking out from the wall, I snatch

it up and hand it to her. “My gift,” I said. “I did intend to surprise you.”

She giggles. “Well then. This inner half is mine. This outer half is yours.

No! Don’t pull at it. I’m keeping your half.” I smell the haemanthus in her

hand. It stinks like rust and Mother’s meager stews.

Inside the Webbery, thigh-thick spiderworms of brown and black fur,

with long skeletal legs, knit silk around us. They crawl along the girders,

thin legs disproportionate to their corpulent abdomens. Eo leads me into the

Webbery’s highest level. The old metal girders are laced with silk. I shiver

in looking at the creatures above and below; pitvipers I understand,

spiderworms I do not. The Society’s Carvers made the creatures. Laughing,

Eo guides me to a wall and pulls back a thick curtain of webbing, revealing

a rusted metal duct.

“Ventilation,” she says. “Mortar on the walls gave way to reveal it about

a week ago. An old tube too.”

“Eo, they’ll lash us if they find us. We’re not allowed ...”

“I’m not going to let them ruin this gift too.” She kisses me on the nose.

“Come on, Helldiver. There’s not even a molten drill in this tunnel.”

I follow her through a long series of turns in the small shaft till we exit

out a grate into a world of inhuman sounds. A buzz murmurs in the

darkness. She takes my hand. It’s the only familiar thing.

“What is that?” I ask of the sound.

“Animals,” she says, and leads me into the strange night. Something soft

is beneath my feet. I nervously let her pull me forward. “Grass. Trees.

Darrow, trees. We’re in a forest.”

The scent of flow ers. Then lights in the darkness. Flickering animals with

green abdomens flutter through the black. Great bugs with iridescent wings

rising from the shadows. They pulse with color and life. My breath catches

and Eo laughs as a butterfly passes so close I can touch it.

They’re in our songs, all these things, but we’ve only ever seen them on

the HC. Their colors are unlike any I could believe. My eyes have seen

nothing but soil, the flare of the drill, Reds, and the gray of concrete and

metal. The HC has been the window through which I’ve seen color. But this

is a different spectacle.

The colors of the floating animals scald my eyes. I shiver and laugh and

reach out and touch the creatures floating before me in the darkness. I cup

them and look up at the room’s clear ceiling. It is a transparent bubble that

peers at the sky.

Sky. Once it was just a word.

I cannot see Mars’s face, but I can see its view. Stars glow soft and

graceful in the slick black sky, like the lights that dangle above our

township. Eo looks as though she could join them. Her face is aglow as she

watches me, laughing as I fall to my knees and suck in the scent of the

grass. It is a strange smell, sweet and nostalgic, though I have no memories

of grass. As the animals buzz near in the brush, in the trees, I pull her down,

I kiss her with my eyes open for the first time. The trees and their leaves

sway gently from the air that comes through the vents. And I drink the

sounds, the smells, the sight as my wife and I make love in a bed of grass

beneath a roof of stars.

“That is Andromeda Galaxy,” she tells me later as we lie on our backs.

The animals make chirping noises in the darkness. The sky above me is a

frightening thing. If I stare too intently, I forget gravity’s pull and feel as

though I am going to fall into it. Shivers trickle down my spine. I am a

creature of nooks and tunnels and shafts. The mine is my home, and part of

me wants to run to safety, run from this alien room of living things and vast

spaces.

Eo rolls to look at me and traces the steam scars that run like rivers down

my chest. Further down she’d find scars from the pitviper along my belly.

“Mum used to tell me stories of Andromeda. She’d draw with inks given to

her by that Tinpot, Bridge. He always liked her, you know.”

As we lie together, she takes a deep breath and I know she has planned

something, saved something to talk about in this moment. This place is

leverage.

“You won the Laurel, we all know,” she says to me.

“You needn’t coddle me. I’m not angry any longer. It doesn’t matter,” I

say. “After seeing this, none of that matters.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks sharply. “It matters more than

ever. You won the Laurel, but they didn’t let you keep it.”

“It doesn’t matter. This place ...”

“This place exists, but they don’t let us come here, Darrow. The Grays

must use it for themselves. They don’t share.”

“Why should they?” I ask, confused.

“Because we made it. Because it’s ours!”

“Is it?” The thought is foreign. All I possess is my family and myself.

Everything else is the Society’s. We didn’t spend the money to send the

pioneers here. Without them, we’d be on the dying Earth like the rest of

humanity.

“Darrow! Are you so Red that you don’t see what they’ve done to us?”

“Watch your tone,” I say tightly.

Her jaw flexes. “I’m sorry. It’s just ... we are in chains, Darrow. We are

not colonists. Well, sure we are. But it’s more on the spot to call us slaves.

We beg for food. Beg for Laurels like dogs begging for scraps from the

master’s table.”

“You may be a slave,” I say very pointedly. “But I am not. I don’t beg. I

earn. I am a Helldiver. I was born to sacrifice, to make Mars ready for man.

There’s a nobility to obedience....”

She throws up her hands. “A talking puppet, are you? Spitting out their

bloodydamn lines. Your father had the right of it. He might not have been

perfect, but he had the right of it.” She grabs a clump of grass and tears it

out of the ground. It seems like some sort of sacrilege.

“We have claim over this land, Darrow. Our sweat and blood watered this

soil. Yet it belongs to the Golds, to the Society. How long has it been this

way? A hundred, a hundred and fifty years of pioneers mining and dying?

Our blood and their orders. We prepare this land for Colors that have never

shed sweat for us, Colors that sit in comfort on their thrones on distant

Earth, Colors that have never been to Mars. Is that something to live for?

I’ll say it again, your father had the right of it.”

I shake my head at her. “Eo, my father died before he was even twenty-

five because he had the right of it.”

“Your father was weak,” she mutters.

“What the bloodydamn is that supposed to mean?” Blood rises into my

face.

“It means he had too much restraint. It means your father had the right

dream but died because he would not fight to make it real,” she says

sharply.

“He had a family to protect!”

“He was still weaker than you.”

“Careful,” I hiss.

“Careful? This from Darrow, the mad Helldiver of Lykos?” She laughs

patronizingly. “Your father was born careful, obedient. But were you? I

didn’t think so when I married you. The others say you are like a machine,

because they think you know no fear. They’re blind. They don’t see how

fear binds you.”

She traces the haemanthus blossom along my collarbone in a sudden

show of tenderness. She is a creature of moods. The flower is the same

color as the wedding band on her finger.

I roll on an elbow to face her. “Spit it out. What do you want?”

“Do you know why I love you, Helldiver?” she asks.

“Because of my sense of humor.”

She laughs dryly. “Because you thought you could win the Laurel. Kieran

told me how you burned yourself today.”

I sigh. “The rat. Always jabbering. Thought that’s what younger brothers

were supposed to do, not elders.”

“Kieran was frightened, Darrow. Not for you, like you might be thinking.

He was frightened of you, because he can’t do what you did. Boy wouldn’t

even think it.”

She always talks circles around me. I hate the abstracts she lives for.

“So you love me because you believe that I think there are things worth

the risk?” I puzzle out. “Or because I’m ambitious?”

“Because you’ve a brain,” she teases.

She makes me ask it again. “What do you want me to do, Eo?”

“Act. I want you to use your gifts for your father’s dream. You see how

people watch you, take their cues from you. I want you to think owning this

land, our land, is worth the risk.”

“How much a risk?”

“Your life. My life.”

I scoff. “You’re that eager to get rid of me?”

“Speak and they will listen,” she urges. “It is that bloody simple. All ears

yearn for a voice to lead them through darkness.”

“Grand, so I’ll hang with a troop. I am my father’s son.”

“You won’t hang.”

I laugh too harshly. “So certain a wife I have. I’ll hang.”

“You’re not meant to be a martyr.” Sighing, she lies back in

disappointment. “You wouldn’t see the point to it.”

“Oh? Well then, tell me, Eo. What is the point to dying? I’m only a

martyr’s son. So tell me what that man accomplished by robbing me of a

father. Tell me what good comes of all that bloodydamn sadness. Tell me

why it’s better I learned to dance from my uncle than my father.” I go on.

“Did his death put food on your table? Did it make any of our lives any

better? Dying for a cause doesn’t do a bloodydamn thing. It just robbed us

of his laughter.” I feel the tears burning my eyes. “It just stole away a father

and a husband. So what if life isn’t fair? If we have family, that is all that

should matter.”

She licks her lips and takes her time in replying.

“Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom,

Darrow. Emptiness is living enchained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say

we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains

that bind us to the Golds, to the Society. Could you imagine it? Mars could

be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here.” Her

face is easier to see as night fades through the clear roof. It is alive, on fire.

“If you led the others to freedom. The things you could do, Darrow. The

things you could make happen.” She pauses and I see her eyes are

glistening. “It chills me when I think of the things you could do. You have

been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low.”

“You repeat the same damn points,” I say bitterly. “You think a dream is

worth dying for. I say it isn’t. You say it’s better to die on your feet. I say

it’s better to live on our knees.”

“You’re not even living!” she snaps. “We are machine men with machine

minds, machine lives....”

“And machine hearts?” I ask. “That’s what I am?”

“Darrow ...”

“What do you live for?” I ask her suddenly. “Is it for me? Is it for family

and love? Or is it for some dream?”

“It’s not just some dream, Darrow. I live for the dream that my children

will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the

land their father gave them.”

“I live for you,” I say sadly.

She kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

There’s a long, terrible silence that stretches between us. She does not

understand how her words wrench my heart, how she can twist me so

easily. Because she does not love me like I love her. Her mind is too high.

Mine too low. Am I not enough for her?

“You said you had another gift for me?” I say, changing the subject.

She shakes her head. “Some other time. The sun rises. Watch it with me

once, at least.”

We lie in silence and watch light slip into the sky as though it were a tide

of ink made from fire. It is unlike anything I could have ever dreamed of. I

can’t stop the tears that well in the corners of my eyes as the world beyond

turns to light and the greens and browns and yellows of the trees in the

room are revealed. It is beauty. It is a dream.

I am silent as we return to the grimness of the gray ducts. The tears linger

in my eyes and as the majesty of what I saw fades; I wonder what Eo wants

of me. Does she want me to take my slingBlade and start a rebellion? I

would die. My family would die. She would die, and nothing would make

me risk her. She knows that.

I am puzzling out what her other gift may be when we exit the ducts for

the Webbery. I roll first from the duct and extend a hand back to her when I

hear a voice. It is accented, oily, from Earth.

“Reds in our gardens,” it oozes. “Ain’t that a thing.”

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OceanofPDF

5

The First Song

Ugly Dan stands with three Tinpots. Their thumpers lie crackling in their

hands. Two of the men lean on the metal rails of the Webbery’s girders.

Behind them, the women of Mu and Upsilon wrap silk from the worms

around long silver poles. They shake their heads insistently at me, as if

telling me not to be foolish. We’ve gone beyond the permitted zones. This

will mean a flogging, but if I resist, it will mean death. They will kill Eo and

they will kill me.

“Darrow ...,” Eo murmurs.

I set myself between Eo and the Tinpots, but I don’t fight. I won’t let us

die for a simple glimpse of the stars. I put my hands out to let them know I

will surrender.

“Helldivers,” Ugly Dan chuckles to the others. “The toughest ant is yet

but an ant.” He swings his thumper into my stomach. It’s like being bitten

by a viper and kicked by a boot. I fall gasping, hands on the metal grate.

Electricity slithers through my veins. I taste the bile rising in my throat.

“Take a swing, Helldiver,” Dan coos. He drops one of the thumpers in front

of me. “Please. Take a swing. Won’t be any consequences. Just some fun

between the boys. Take a piggin’ swing.”

“Do it, Darrow!” Eo shouts.

I’m not a fool. I thrust my hands up in surrender and Dan sighs in

disappointment as he clacks the magnetic manacles around my wrists. What

would Eo have had me do? She curses at them as they lock her arms

together and drag us away through the Webbery to the cells. This will mean

the lash. But it will be just the lash because I did not pick up the thumper,

because I did not listen to Eo.

It’s three days in a cell in the Pot before I see Eo again. Bridge, one of the

old, kinder Tinpots, takes us out together; he lets us touch. I wonder if she’ll

spit at me, curse me for my impotence. But she only grips my fingers and

brings her lips to mine.

“Darrow.” Her lips brush my ear. The breath is warm, the lips cracked

and trembling. She’s frail as she hugs me—a little girl, all wire wrapped in

pale skin. Her knees wobble and she shudders against me. The warmth I

saw in her face as we watched the sun rise has fled and left her like a faded

memory. But I hardly see anything but her eyes and her hair. I wrap my

arms around her and hear the muttering of the crowded Common. The faces

of our kin and clan stare at us as we stand at the edge of the gallows, where

they will flog us. I feel like a child under their stares, under the yellowish

lights.

It’s like a dream when Eo tells me she loves me. Her hand lingers on

mine. But there’s something strange to her eyes. They should only whip her,

yet her words are final, her eyes sad but not afraid. I see her making a

goodbye. A nightmare is coming to my heart. I can feel it like a nail dragged

along the bones of my spine as she murmurs an epigram in my ear. “Break

the chains, my love.”

And then I am jerked away from her by my hair. Tears stream down her

face. They are for me, though I do not yet understand why. I cannot think.

The world is swimming. I am drowning. Rough hands shove me to my

knees, then jerk me up. I’ve never heard the Common so quiet. The

shuffling of my captors’ feet echoes as they move me around.

The Tinpots fit me into my Helldiver frysuit. Its acrid smell makes me

think I am safe, I am in control. I am not. I’m dragged away from her into

the very center of the Common and tossed at the edge of the gallows. The

metal stairs are rusted and stained. I grip them with my hands and look to

the top of the gallows. Twenty-four of the headTalks each have a cord of

leather. They wait for me atop the platform.

“Oh, the horror of such occasions as this, my friends,” Magistrate

Podginus cries. His copper gravBoots hum above me as he floats through

the air. “Oh, how the ties that bind us are stretched when one decides to

break the laws which protect us all.

“Even the youngest, even the best, are subject to Law. To Order! Without

these we would be animals! Without obedience, without discipline, there

would be no colonies! And those few colonies there are would be torn

asunder by disorder! Man would be confined to Earth. Man would wallow

forevermore on that planet until the end of days. But Order! Discipline!

Law! These are the things which empower our race. Cursed is the creature

who breaks with these compacts.”

The speech is more eloquent than usual. Podginus is trying to impress his

intelligence upon someone. I look up from the stairs and see a sight I did

not ever think to see with my own two eyes. It stings to look at him, to

drink in the radiance of his hair, of his Sigils. I see a Gold. In this drab

place, he is what I imagine angels would be like. Cloaked in gold and black.

Wrapped in the sun. A lion roaring upon his breast.

His face is older, severe, and pure with power. His hair shines, combed

back against his head. Neither a smile nor a frown mark his thin lips, and

the only line I see is that of a scar, which runs along his right cheekbone.

I’ve learned from the HC that such a scar is borne only by the finest of

the Golds. The Peerless Scarred, they call them—men and women of the

ruling Color who have graduated from the Institute, where they learn the

secrets that will permit mankind to one day colonize all the planets of the

Solar System.

He does not speak to us. He speaks to another Gold, one tall and thin, so

thin I thought it a woman at first. Without a scar, the man’s face is coated

with strange paste to bring out the color of his cheeks and cover the lines on

his face. His lips shine. And his hair glistens in a way his master’s does not.

He is a grotesque thing to look upon. He thinks so of us. He sniffs the air,

contemptuous. And the older Gold speaks to him softly and not to us.

And why should he speak to us? We are not worthy of a Gold’s words. I

scarcely want to look at him. I feel like I dirty his gold and black finery with

my red eyes. Shame creeps upon me and then I realize why.

His is a face I know. It is a face every man and woman of the colonies

would know. Besides Octavia au Lune, this is the most famous face on

Mars—that of Nero au Augustus. The ArchGovernor of Mars has come to

see me flogged, and he has brought a retinue. Two Crows (Obsidians to be

technic) float quietly behind him. Their skull helmets suit their Color. I was

born to mine the earth. They were born to kill men. More than two feet

taller than me. Eight fingers on each massive hand. They breed them for

war, and watching them is like watching the coldblooded pitvipers who

infest our mines. Reptiles both.

There are a dozen others in his retinue, including another, slighter Gold

who seems his apprentice. He’s even more beautiful than the ArchGovernor

and he appears to dislike the thin, womanish Gold. And there is an HC

camera crew of Greens, tiny creatures compared with the Crows. Their hair

is dark. Not green like their eyes and the Sigils on their hands. Frenetic

excitement shimmers in those eyes. It’s not often they have Helldivers to

make into an example, so they make a spectacle of me. I wonder how many

other mining colonies are watching. All of them, if the ArchGovernor is

here.

They make a show of stripping away the frysuit they only just dressed me

in. I see myself on the HC display above, see my wedding band dangling

from the cord around my neck. I look younger than I feel, thinner. They jerk

me up the stairs and bend me over a metal box beside the noose where my

father hanged. I shiver as they lay me across the cold steel and tighten my

hands in restraints. I smell the synthleather of the lashes, hear one of the

headTalks cough.

“Forevermore, let justice be done,” Podginus says.

Then the lashes come. Forty-eight in all. They aren’t soft, not even my

uncle’s. They can’t be. The lashes bite and wail into my flesh, making a

strange keening noise as they arch through the air. Music of terror. I can

barely see by the end of it. I pass out twice, and each time I wake I wonder

if you can see my spine on the HC.

It’s a show, all a show of their power. They let the Tinpot, Ugly Dan, act

sympathetic, as though he pities me. He whispers encouragement in my ear

loud enough for the cameras. And when the last lash slashes my back, he

steps in as if to stop another from coming down. Subconsciously, I think he

saves me. I’m thankful. I want to kiss him. He is salvation. But I know I’ve

had my forty-eight.

Then they are dragging me to the side. They leave my blood. I’m sure I

screamed, sure I shamed myself. I hear them bring out my wife.

“Even the young, even the beautiful cannot escape justice. It is for all the

Colors that we preserve Order, Justice. Without, we would find anarchy.

Without Obedience, chaos! Man would perish upon the irradiated sands of

Earth. He would drink from the blasted seas. There must be unity.

Forevermore, let justice be done.”

MineMagistrate Podginus’ words ring hollow.

No one is offended that I’m bloody and beaten. But when Eo is dragged

atop the gallows, there are cries. There are curses. Even now she is

beautiful, even drained of the light I saw in her three days ago. Even as she

sees me and lets the tears come down her face, she is an angel.

All this for a little adventure. All this for a night under the stars with the

man she loves. Yet she is calm. If there is fear, it is in me, because I feel a

strangeness in the air. Her skin prickles as they lay her across the cold box.

She flinches. I wish my blood had warmed it better for her.

When they whip Eo, I try not to watch. But it hurts more to abandon her.

Her eyes find mine. They shine like rubies, twitch every time the lash falls.

Soon this will be over, my love. Soon we will go back to life. Just last the

lash and we get everything back. But can she even take so many lashes?

“End it,” I say to the Tinpot beside me. “End it!” I beg of him. “I’ll do

anything. I’ll obey. I’ll take her lashes. Just end it, you bloodydamn

bastards! End it!”

The ArchGovernor looks down at me, but his face is golden, poreless,

and without care. I am nothing but the bloodiest of ants. My sacrifice will

impress him. He’ll feel compassion if I abase myself, if I throw myself into

the fire for love. He’ll feel pity. This is how the stories go.

“Your Excellency, give me her punishment!” I plead. “Please!” I beg

because in my wife’s eyes I see something that terrifies me. I see fight in her

as they streak her back bloody. I see anger building inside her. There is a

reason she is not afraid.

“No. No. No,” I plead to her. “No, Eo. Please, no!”

“Gag that wretched thing! He prickles the ArchGovernor’s ears,”

Podginus orders. Bridge forces a knot of stone into my mouth. I gag and

cry.

As the thirteenth lash falls, as I mumble for her not to do it, Eo stares into

my eyes one last moment and then she begins her song. It is a quiet sound, a

mournful sound, like the song the deep mines whisper as wind moves in the

abandoned shafts. It is the song of death and lament, the song that is

forbidden. The song I have only heard once before.

For this, they will kill her.

Her voice is soft and true, never as beautiful as her. It echoes across the

Common, rising up like a Siren’s unearthly call. The lashes pause. The

headTalks shiver. Even the Tinpots sadly shake their heads when they place

the words. Few men truly like seeing beauty burn.

Podginus glances embarrassedly over at ArchGovernor Augustus, who

descends on golden gravBoots to watch more closely. His shining hair

glistens against his noble brow. High cheekbones catch the light. Those

golden eyes examine my wife as though a worm had suddenly sprouted a

butterfly’s wings. His scar curves as he speaks with a voice dripping power.

“Let her sing,” he says to Podginus, not bothering to hide his fascination.

“But, my lord ...”

“No animal but man throws themselves willingly into the flames, Copper.

Relish the sight. You’ll not see it again.” To his camera crew: “Continue

recording. We will edit out the parts we find intolerable.”

How futile his words make her sacrifice seem.

But never has Eo been more beautiful to me than in that moment. In the

face of cold power, she is fire. This is the girl who danced through the

smoky tav with a mane of red. This is the girl who wove me a wedding

band of her own hair. This is the girl who chooses to die for a song of death.

My love, my love

Remember the cries

When winter died for spring skies

They roared and roared

But we grabbed our seed

And sowed a song

Against their greed

And

Down in the vale

Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing

the reaper swing

Down in the vale

Hear the reaper sing

A tale of winter done

My son, my son

Remember the chains

When gold ruled with iron reins

We roared and roared

And twisted and screamed

For ours, a vale

of better dreams

As her voice finally swells and the song runs out of words, I know I have

lost her. She becomes something more important; and she was right, I do

not understand.

“A quaint tune. But is that all you have?” the ArchGovernor asks her

when she is through. He looks at her but he speaks loudly, to the crowd, to

those who will watch in the other colonies. His entourage chuckles at Eo’s

weapon, a song. What is a song but notes unto the air? Useless as a match in

a storm against his power. He shames us. “Do any of you wish to join her in

song? I implore you, bold Reds of ...” He looks to his assistant, who

mouths the name. “... Lykos, join her now if you wish.”

I can barely breathe past the stone. It chips my molars. Tears stream

down my face. No voices rise from the crowd. I see my mother trembling

with anger. Kieran clutches his wife close. Narol stares at the ground. Loran

weeps. They are all here, all quiet. All afraid.

“Alas, Your Excellency, we find the girl alone in her zealotry,” Podginus

declares. Eo has eyes only for me. “’Tis clear her opinion is an outlier’s, an

outcast’s. Mayhaps we should proceed?”

“Yes,” the ArchGovernor says idly. “I have an appointment with Arcos.

Hang the rusty bitch lest she continue to howl.”

OceanofPDF

OceanofPDF

6

The Martyr

For Eo, I do not react. I am anger. I am hatred. Everything. But I hold her

gaze even as they take her away and fit the noose around her neck. I look up

at Bridge and he quietly takes the gag from my mouth. My teeth will never

be the same. Tears build in the Tinpot’s eyes. I leave him and stumble

numbly to the bottom of the scaffold so Eo can see me as she dies. This is

her choice. I will be with her to the end. My hands shake. Sobs come from

the crowd behind me.

“The last words, to whom will you speak them before justice is done?”

Podginus asks her. He drips sympathy for the camera.

I ready for her to say my name, but she does not. Her eyes never leave

mine, but she calls her sister out. “Dio.” The word trembles in the air. She is

frightened now. I do not react as Dio climbs the scaffold stairs; I do not

understand, but I will not be jealous. This is not about me. I love her. And

her choice is made. I do not understand, but I will not let her die knowing

anything but my love.

Ugly Dan has to help Dio climb the gallows; she’s stumbling and

senseless as she leans close to her sister. Whatever is said, I do not hear; but

Dio lets loose a moan that will haunt me forever. She looks at me as she

weeps. What did my wife tell her? Women are crying. Men wipe their eyes.

They have to stun Dio to pull her away, but she clings to Eo’s feet, weeping.

There is a nod from the ArchGovernor, though he doesn’t even care enough

to watch as, like my father, Eo is hanged.

“Live for more,” she mouths to me. She reaches into her pocket and pulls

out the haemanthus I gave her. It is smashed and flat. Then loudly she

screams to all those gathered, “Break the chains!”

The trapdoor beneath her feet opens. She falls, and for one moment, her

hair hangs suspended about her head, a flourish of red. Then her feet

scramble at air and she falls. Her slim throat gags. Eyes open so wide. If

only I could save her from this. If only I could protect her; but the world is

cold and hard to me. It does not bend as I wish it to bend. I am weak. I

watch my wife die and my haemanthus fall from her hand. The camera

records it all. I rush forward to kiss her ankle. I cradle her legs. I will not let

her suffer.

On Mars there is not much gravity, so you have to pull the feet to break

the neck. They let the loved ones do it.

Soon, there is no sound, not even the creaking of the rope.

My wife is too light.

She was only just a girl.

Then the thumping of the Fading Dirge begins. Fists on chests.

Thousands. Fast, like a racing heartbeat. Slower. A beat a second. A beat

every fiv e. Every ten. Then never again, and the mournful mass fades away

like dust held in the palm as the old tunnels wail with deep winds.

And the Golds, they fly away.

Eo’s father, Loran, and Kieran sit by my door through the night. They say

they are there to keep me company. But they are there to guard me, to

ensure I do not die. I want to die. Mother dresses my wound with silk my

sister, Leanna, stole from the Webbery.

“Keep the nervenucleic dry, or you will scar.”

What are scars? How little they matter. Eo will not see them, so why

should I care? She will not run her hand along my back. She will never kiss

my wounds.

She is gone.

I lie in our bed on my back so I can feel the pain and forget my wife. But

I cannot forget. She hangs even now. In the morning, I will pass her on the

way to the mines. Soon she will stink and soon she will rot. My beautiful

wife shone too bright to live long. I still feel her neck cracking against my

hands; they tremble now in the night.

There is a hidden tunnel I carved in my bedroom long ago in the rock so I

could sneak out as a child. I use it now. I leave out the secret path, climbing

stealthily down from my home, so my kin never see me slip away in the

low light.

It is quiet in the township. Quiet except for the HC, which makes my

wife die to a soundtrack. They intended to show the futility of disobedience.

And they succeed in that, but there is something else in the video. They

show my flogging, and Eo’s, and they play her song throughout. And as she

dies, they play it again, which seems to give the video the wrong effect.

Even if she were not my wife, I see a martyr, a young girl’s pretty song

silenced by the rope of cruel men.

Then the HC flashes black for several moments. It has never gone to

black before. And Octavia au Lune comes back on with the same old

message. It almost seems as though someone has hacked into the broadcast,

because my wife flickers onto the giant screen again.

“Break the chains!” she cries. Then she’s gone and the screen is black. It

crackles. The image comes back. She cries it again. Black once more.

Standard programming goes up, then it cuts to her screaming one last time

and then there’s me pulling her legs. Then static.

The streets are quiet as I make my way to the Common. The nightshift

will be returning soon. Then I hear a noise and a man steps into the street in

front of me. My uncle’s face leers at me from the shadows. A single bulb

hangs over his head, illuminating the flask in his hand and his tattered red

shirt.

“You are your father’s son, little bastard. Stupid and vain.”

My hands clench. “Come to stop me, Uncle?”

He grunts. “Couldn’t stop your father from killing his bloody self. And he

was a better bloodyman than you. More restraint in him.”

I step forward. “I don’t need your permission.”

“Nay, you little squabber, you don’t.” He runs a hand through his hair.

“Don’t do what you’re gonna do, though. It’ll break your mother; you might

think she didn’t know you’d slip out. She did. Told me so. Said you were

gonna go die like my brother, like your girl.”

“If Mother knew, she would have stopped me.”

“Nah. She lets us men make our own mistakes. But this ain’t what your

girl would’ve wanted.”

I point a finger at my uncle. “You don’t know a thing. Not a thing about

what she wanted.” Eo said I wouldn’t understand being a martyr. I will

show her I do.

“Righto,” he says with a shrug. “I’ll walk with you, then, since your head

is full of rocks.” He chuckles. “We Lambdas do love the noose.”

He tosses me his flask and I fall into tentative step beside him.

“I tried to talk your father out of his little protest, you know. Told him

words and dance mean as much as dust. Tried squaring up with him. I

squabbed that one up. He laid me down cold.” He throws a slow right.

“Comes a time in life when you know a man has his mind set and it’s an

insult to gainsay.”

I drink from his flask and hand it back. The swill tastes strange and

thicker than usual. Strange. He makes me finish the flask.

“Your’s set?” he asks, tapping his head. “Course it is. I forget, I taught

you how to dance.”

“Stubborn as a pitviper, wasn’t that how you put it?” I say quietly,

allowing a little smile.

I walk in silence for a moment with my uncle. He puts a hand on my

shoulder. A sob wants to come out of my chest. I swallow it.

“She left me,” I whisper. “Just left me.”

“Musta had a reason. Not a dumb girl, that one.”

The tears come as I enter the Common. My uncle takes me in a one-

armed hug and kisses the crown of my head. It’s all he can offer. He’s not a

man made for affection. His face is pale and ghostly. Thirty-five and so old,

so tired. A scar twists his upper lip. Gray streaks his thick hair.

“Tell them hello for me in the vale,” he says into my ear, his beard coarse

against my neck. “Give my brothers a toast and my wife a kiss, specially

Dancer.”

“Dancer?”

“You’ll know him. And if you see your gramp and gran, tell them we still

dance for them. They won’t be long alone.” He walks away, then pauses

and without turning says, “Break the chains. Hear?”

“Hear.”

He leaves me there in the Common with my swaying wife. I know the

cameras watch me from the can as I walk up the gallows. It is metal, so the

stairs don’t creak. She hangs like a doll. Her face is pale as chalk and her

hair shifts slightly as the ventilators rasp above.

When the rope has been cut with the slingBlade I stole from the mines, I

grab its frayed end and lower her down gently. I take my wife in my arms

and together wend our way from the square to the Webbery. A nightshift is

working their final hours. The women watch in silence as I carry Eo to the

ventilation duct. There I see Leanna, my sister. Tall and quiet like my

mother, she watches me with hard eyes, but she does nothing. None of the

women do. They will not gossip about where my wife is buried. They will

not speak, not even for the chocolate given to spies. Only five souls have

been buried in three generations—someone always hangs for it.

This is the ultimate act of love. Eo’s silent requiem.

Women begin to cry, and as I pass they reach to touch Eo’s face, to touch

mine and help me open the ventilation duct. I drag my wife through the

tight metal space, taking her to where we made love beneath the stars,

where she told me her plans and I did not listen. I hold her lifeless body and

hope her soul sees me in a place where we were happy.

I dig a hole near the base of a tree. My hands, covered with the dirt of our

land, are red like her hair as I take her hand and kiss her wedding band. I

place the outer bulb of the haemanthus atop her heart and take the inner and

put it near my own. Then I kiss her lips and bury her. But I sob before I can

finish. I uncover her face and kiss her again and hold my body to hers till I

see a red sun rising through the artificial bubbleroof. The colors of the place

scald my eyes and I cannot stop my tears. When I pull away, I see my

headband poking from her pocket. She made it for me to take my sweat. I

give it my tears now and take it with me.

Kieran strikes me in the face when he sees me back in the township. Loran

cannot speak, while Eo’s father slumps against a wall. They think they

failed me. I hear Eo’s mother’s cries. My mother says nothing as she makes

me a meal. I don’t feel well. It’s hard to breathe. Leanna comes in late and

helps her, kissing me on the head as I eat, lingering long enough to smell

my hair. I must use one hand as I move the food from plate to mouth. My

mother holds my other hand between her calloused palms. She watches it

instead of me, as though remembering when it was small and soft and

wondering how it became so hard.

I finish the meal just as Ugly Dan comes. My mother does not leave the

table as I’m pulled away. Her eyes stay fixed on where my hand lay. I think

she believes if she does not look up, this will not happen. Even she can only

bear so much.

They hang me before a full assembly at nine in the morning. I’m dizzy

for some reason. My heart feels funny, slow. I hear the ArchGovernor’s

words to my wife echo.

“Is that all your strength?”

My people sing, we dance, we love. That is our strength. But we also dig.

And then we die. Seldom do we get to choose why. That choice is power.

That choice has been our only weapon. But it is not enough.

They give me my last words. I call Dio up. Her eyes are bloodshot and

swollen. She’s a fragile thing, so unlike her sister.

“What were Eo’s last words?” I ask her, though my mouth moves slowly,

oddly.

She glances back to Mother, who finally followed but now shakes her

head. There is something they are not telling me. Something they don’t

want me to know. A secret held back even though I am about to die.

“She said she loved you.”

I don’t believe her, but I smile and kiss her forehead. She can’t handle

more questions. And I’m dizzy. Hard to speak.

“I’ll tell her you say hello.”

I do not sing. I am made for other things.

My death is senseless. It is love.

But Eo was right, I don’t understand this. This is not my victory. This is

selfish. She told me to live for more. She wanted me to fight. But here I am,

dying despite what she wanted. Giving up because of the pain.

I panic as suicides do when they realize their folly.

Too late.

I feel the door beneath me open. My body falls. Rope flays my neck. My

spine creaks. Needles lance my lumbar. Kieran stumbles forward. Uncle

Narol shoves him away. With a wink, he touches my feet and pulls.

I hope they do not bury me.

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Part II

Reborn

There is a festival where we wear the faces of demons to ward evil spirits from our

dead in the vale. Sometimes we fail.

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7

Other Things

I do not see Eo in death. My kin believe we see our loved ones when we

pass on. They wait for us in a green vale where woodfire smoke and the

scent of stews thicken the air. It is the Waiting Place. There is an Old Man

with dew on his cap who makes safe the vale, and he stands with our kin

waiting for us along a stone road beside which sheep graze. They say the

mist there is fresh and the flow ers sweet, and those who are buried pass

along the stone road faster.

But I do not see my love. I do not see the vale. I see nothing but phantom

lights in darkness. I feel pressure, and I know, as would any miner, that I am

buried beneath the earth. I loose a soundless scream. Dirt enters my mouth.

Panic fills me. I cannot breathe, cannot move. The earth hugs me till finally

I claw my way free, feel air, gasp oxygen, pant and spit dirt.

It is minutes before I look up from my knees. I crouch in an abandoned

mine, an old tunnel long deserted but still connected to the ventilation

system. It smells of dirt. A single flare burns beside my grave, splaying

weird shadows over the walls. It singes my sight like the sun did as it rose

over Eo’s grave.

I’m not dead. The realization takes longer in coming than I thought it

would. But there’s a bloody wound around my neck where the rope cut the

skin. My spine hurts so bad I can’t look sideways without moving my torso.

And there’s dirt in the lashes on my back.

Still, I’m not dead.

Uncle Narol didn’t pull my feet hard enough. But surely the Tinpots

would have checked, unless they were lazy. Not a stretch to think that, but

something else is at play. I was too woozy when I walked to the gallows. I

feel something in my veins even now, a lethargy as though I’ve been

drugged. Narol did this. He drugged me. He buried me. But why? And how

would he escape being caught when he pulled my body down?

When a low rumbling comes from the darkness beyond the flare, I know

I will have answers. A tumbler, like a metal beetle on six wheels, crawls

over the crest of a long tunnel. Its front grille hisses steam as it comes to a

stop in front of me. Eighteen lights singe my vision; shapes exit the sides of

the vehicle, cutting across the glare of the headlights to grab me. I’m too

stunned to resist. Their hands are calloused like miners’ and their faces are

covered with Octobernacht demon masks. Yet they move me gently, guiding

instead of forcing me into the tumbler’s hatch.

Inside the tumbler, the globe light is red and bloody. I sit in a worn metal

bucket seat across from the two figures that fetched me from my grave. The

female’s mask is pale white and horned like a cacodemon. Her eyes glitter

darkly out from the eyeholes. The other figure is a timid man. He’s willowy

and quiet, seemingly frightened of me. His snarling batface mask can’t

conceal his shy glances or the way in which he hides his hands—a trait of

the frightened, as Uncle Narol always claimed when he taught me to dance.

“You’re Sons of Ares, aren’t you?” I guess.

The weakling flinches, while the woman’s eyes are mocking.

“And you’re Lazarus,” she says. I find her voice cold, lazy; it plays with

the ears as a cat plays with a caught mouse.

“I am Darrow.”

“Oh, we know who you are.”

“Don’t tell him anything, Harmony!” the weakling gibbers. “Dancer

didn’t tell us to discuss anything with him till we get home.”

“Thank you, Ralph.” Harmony sighs at the weakling and shakes her

head.

Another masked figure drives the tumbler through the abandoned tunnels.

The interior shakes and rattles as we roll down a jagged run. After realizing

his error, the weakling shifts uncomfortably in his bucket seat, but I’ve

stopped paying him any mind. Here, the woman is king. Unlike the

weakling’s, her mask is made of a digital material. It shifts and could as

easily mimick the face of a man or woman as it does a demon. Fancy stuff.

At first it reminded me of a story I’d once heard of the pale demons in the

deep, forgotten tunnels of Mars; now it is like that of an old crone, one of

the witches of Earth’s fallen cities who made soup from the marrow of

children’s bones.

“You’re a mess.” Harmony reaches to touch my neck. I grab her hand and

squeeze. Her bones are brittle as hollow plastic in a Helldiver’s hand. The

weakling reaches for his thumper, but Harmony motions him to calm down.

“Why am I not dead?” I ask. After the hanging, my voice is like gravel

dragged over metal.

“Because Ares has a mission for you, little Helldiver.”

She winces as I squeeze her hand.

“Ares ...” My mind flashes to images of bomb blasts, disembodied limbs,

chaos. Ares. I know what sort of mission he’ll want. I’m too numb to even

know what I’ll say when he asks. My mind is on Eo, not this life. I am a

shell. Why could I not have stayed in the ground?

“May I have my hand back now?” Harmony asks.

“If you take off your mask. Otherwise, I’m keeping it.”

She laughs and strips away her mask. Her face is day and night—the

right side a ragged and distended mess of skin running and folding together

in smooth scar rivers. A steam burn. A familiar sight, but not on women.

Rare for a woman to be on a drillteam.

Yet it is the unburned side of her face that startles. She is beautiful, more

beautiful even than Eo. Skin soft, pale as milk, bones prominent and

delicate. Yet she looks so cold, so angry and cruel. Her bottom teeth are

uneven and her nails poorly maintained. She has knives in her boots. I can

tell by the way she flinched down when I grabbed her hand.

The weakling, Ralph, is unremarkably ugly—dark face like a hatchet,

teeth all ajar and grimy like the tubes in the Flush. He stares out the

tumbler’s window hatch as we rattle and roll through abandoned tunnels till

we reach lit paved tunnelroads meant for fast driving. I do not know these

Reds, and though they have the Red Sigil emblazoned on their hands, I do

not trust them. They are not of Lambda or Lykos. Might as well be Silvers.

Eventually I glimpse other utility vehicles and tumblers out the hatch. I

don’t know where we are, yet that bothers me less than the swelling sadness

in my chest. The further we ride and the more time I’m given to my

thoughts, the worse the pain becomes. I finger my wedding band. Eo is still

dead. She’s not waiting for me at the end of this ride. Why did I survive

when she did not? Why did I pull her feet so hard? Could she have lived

too? My guts feel like a black hole. A terrible weight compresses my chest,

and I ache to just jump from the tumbler into the path of a utility vehicle.

Death is easy when you’ve already tried to find it. But I don’t jump; I sit

with Harmony and Ralph. Eo wanted more for me. She died so I could be

more than another martyr, and then I killed myself. Or tried. The shame eats

at me. I clench the scarlet headband in my fist.

The tunnelroad widens slightly when we come to a checkpoint manned

by dirty Tinpots in worndown gear. The electric gate isn’t even charged.

They let the tumbler ahead of us through after scanning a panel on its side.

Then it’s our turn and I’m shifting uncomfortably in my seat right along

with Ralph. Harmony chuckles disdainfully as the grey hairedTinpot scans

the side of the tumbler and waves us through the gate.

“We have a passcode. There’s no brains in slaves. Mine Tinpots are

idiots. It’s the Grey elites, or the Obsidian monsters you watch out for. But

they don’t waste their time down here.”

I am trying to convince myself that this all is not some Gold trick, that

Harmony and Ralph are not enemies, when we pull off the main tunnelroad

into a cul-de-sac of utility warehouses not much larger than the Common.

Harsh sulfur lights hang down from utility fixtures. Half the bulbs are

burned out. One flickers on and off above a garage near a warehouse

marked with a queer symbol done in strange paint. We steer into the garage.

The door closes and Harmony motions for me to get out of the tumbler.

“Home sweet home,” she says. “Now time to meet Dancer.”

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8

Dancer

Dancer looks through me. He’s near enough my height, which is rare. But

he’s thick and terribly old, maybe in his forties. White swirls from his

temples. A dozen twin scars mark his neck. I’ve seen their sort before.

Pitviper bites. The arm on the left side of his body hangs limp. Nerve

damage. But his eyes arrest me; they are brighter than most, swirling with

patterns of true red, not rust red. He has a fatherly smile.

“You must be wondering who we are,” Dancer says gently. He’s big but

his voice is easy. Eight Reds are with him, all men except for Harmony, and

they watch him with adoring eyes. All miners, I think, each with the

scarred, strong hands of our kind. They move with the grace of our people.

No doubt some were jumpers and boasters, as we call those who run along

the walls and perform the flips at dances. Any Helldivers?

“He’s not wondering.” Harmony takes time with the words, rolling them

along her tongue. She squeezes Dancer’s hand as she passes around him to

look at me. “Bloodydamn runt pegged it an hour ago.”

“Ah.” Dancer smiles softly at her. “Of course he did, otherwise Ares

wouldn’t have asked us to risk extracting him here. Do you know where

here is, Darrow?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I murmur. I look around at the walls, the men, the

swaying lights. Everything is so cold, so dirty. “What matters is ...” I fail to

finish my own sentence. A thought of Eo severs my voice. “What matters is

that you want something from me.”

“Yes, that matters,” says Dancer. His hand touches my shoulder. “But that

can wait. I’m surprised you’re standing. The wounds on your back are

sullied. You’ll need antibac and skinres to stop the scarring.”

“Scars don’t matter,” I say. I stare at the two blood drops that trickle from

my shirttail to the floor . My wounds reopened when I climbed from the

grave. “Eo is ... dead, yes?”

“Yes. She is. We couldn’t save her, Darrow.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“We just couldn’t.”

“Why not?” I repeat. I glare up at him, glare at his followers and hiss the

words one by one. “You saved me. You could have saved her. She is the one

you would have wanted. The bloodydamn martyr. She cared about all this.

Or does Ares only need Sons, not Daughters?”

“Martyrs are a dime a dozen,” Harmony yawns.

I slip forward like a serpent and grab her around the throat; waves of

anger ripple through my face till it goes numb and I feel tears welling

behind my eyes. Scorchers whine as they’re primed around me. One jams

into the back of my neck. I feel its cold muzzle.

“Let her go!” someone shouts. “Do it, boy!”

I spit at them, shake Harmony once and toss her aside. She crouches on

the floor, hacking, and then a knife glimmers in her hand as she rises.

Dancer stumbles between us. “Stop it! Both of you! Darrow, please!”

“Your girl was a dreamer, boy,” Harmony spits at me from Dancer’s

other side. “As worthless as a flame over water ...”

“Harmony, shut your bloodydamn gob,” Dancer barks. “Put those damn

things away.” The scorchers go quiet. A tense silence follows and he leans

in close to speak with me. His voice lowers. My breath is fast. “Darrow,

we’re friends. We’re friends. Now, I can’t answer for Ares—why he

couldn’t help us save your girl; I am just one of his hands. I can’t wash

away the pain. I can’t bring your wife back to you. But, Darrow, look at me.

Look at me, Helldiver.” I do. Right into those blood-red eyes. “I can’t do

many things. But I can bring you justice.”

Dancer goes to Harmony and whispers something, likely telling her that

we’re to be friends. We won’t be. But I promise not to choke her and she

promises not to stab me.

She is quiet as she guides me from the others through cramped metal

hallways to a small door opened by twisting a knob. Our feet echo over

rusting walkways. The room is small and littered with tables and medical

supplies. She has me strip and sit on one of the cold tables so she can clean

my wounds. Her hands are not gentle as they scrub dirt from my lacerated

back. I try not to scream.

“You’re a fool,” she says as she scrapes rock out of a deep wound. I

wheeze in pain and try to say something, but she jams her fin ger into my

back, cutting me short.

“Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver.” She makes sure I

don’t speak. “Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The

harder they die, the louder their voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife

served her purpose.”

Her purpose. It sounds so cold, so distant and sad, as though my girl of

smiles and laughter was meant for nothing but death. Harmony’s words

carve into me and I stare at the metal grating before turning to look into her

angry eyes.

“Then what is your purpose?” I ask.

She holds up her hands, caked with dirt and blood.

“The same as yours, little Helldiver. To make the dream come true.”

After Harmony scours my back of dirt and gives me a dose of antibac, she

takes me to a room next to humming generators. The squat quarters are

lined with cots and a liquid flush. She leaves me to it. The shower is a

terrifying thing. Though it’s gentler than the air of the Flush, half the time I

feel like I’m drowning, the other half I find a mixture of ecstasy and agony.

I turn the heat nozzle till steam rises thick and pain lances my back.

The pain makes my thoughts of Eo seem like silly things. It gives false

perspective. I want to like the pain, but I can only handle so much. The

mixture of water and blood pools at my pale feet. The thought of Eo’s feet

dangling makes me fall sobbing to the floor . I push my back into the side of

the shower till the pain stops my thinking and I bite my tongue bloody. I’m

not as tough as I thought I was. No Helldiver really is. No man really is.

I’m a man, I remember, not a boy. A man of sixteen. When I married Eo,

I felt so strong and wise. When I buried her, all that went away. Sixteen.

Almost seventeen. Only nine years younger than my father when he died at

twenty and five. It seems a lifetime.

Clean, I dress in the strange garments they’ve set out for me. It’s not a

jumpsuit or homespun weave like I’m used to wearing. The material is

sleek, elegant, like something someone of a different Color would wear. It

is black, much like a short robe, and does not hurt my back as I slide it on.

There’s a high collar and epaulets. The pants are black and tight, the shoes

soft and strange.

Dancer comes into the room when I’m half dressed. His left foot drags

behind him, almost as useless as his left arm. Yet still he’s an impressive

man, thicker than Barlow, handsomer than me despite his age and the bite

scars on his neck. He carries a tin bowl and sits on one of the cots, which

creaks against his weight.

“We saved your life, Darrow. So your life is ours, do you not agree?”

“My uncle saved my life,” I say.

“The drunk?” Dancer snorts. “The best thing he ever did was tell us

about you. And he should have done that when you were a boy, but he kept

you a secret. He’s worked for us since before your father’s death as an

informer, you know.”

“Is he hanged now?”

“Now that he pulled you down? I should hope not. We gave him a

jammer to shut off their ancient cameras. He did the work of a ghost.”

Uncle Narol. HeadTalk, but drunk as a fool. I always thought him weak.

He still is. No strong man would drink like him or be so bitter. But he never

earned the disdain I gave him. Yet why did he not save Eo?

“You act like my uncle bloodydamn owed you,” I say.

“He owes his people.”

“People.” I laugh at the term. “There is family. There is clan. There may

even be township and mine, but people? People. And you act as though

you’re my representative, as though you have a right to my life. But you are

just a fool, all you Sons of Ares.” My voice is withering in its

condescension. “Fools who can do nothing but blow things up. Like

children kicking pitviper nests in rage.”

That’s what I want to do. I want to kick, to lash out. That’s why I insult

him, that’s why I spit on the Sons even though I have no real cause to hate

them.

Dancer’s handsome face curles into a tired smile, and it’s only then that I

realize how feeble his dead arm really is—thinner than his muscular right

arm, bent like a flower ’s root. But despite the withered limb, there’s a

twisted menace to Dancer, a less obvious sort than that in Harmony. It

comes out when I laugh at him, when I scorn him and his dreams.

“Our informants exist to feed us information and to help us find us the

outliers so we can extract the best of Red from the mines.”

“So you can use us.”

Dancer smiles tightly and picks the bowl up from the cot. “We will play a

game to see if you are one of these outliers, Darrow. If you win, I will take

you to see something few lowReds have seen.”

LowReds. I’ve never heard the term before.

“And If I lose?”

“Then you are not an outlier and the Golds win yet again.”

I flinch at the notion.

He holds out a bowl and explains the rules. “There are two cards in the

bowl. One bears the reaper’s scythe. The other bears a lamb. Pick the scythe

and you lose. Pick the lamb and you win.”

Except I notice his voice fluctu ate when he says this last bit. This is a

test. Which means there is no element of luck to it. It must then be

measuring my intelligence, which means there is a kink. The only way the

game could test my intelligence is if the cards are both scythes; that’s the

singular variable that could be altered. Simple. I stare into Dancer’s

handsome eyes. It is a rigged game; I’m used to these, and usually I follow

the rules. Just not this time.

“I’ll play.”

I reach into the bowl and pull free a card, taking care that only I can see

its face. It is a scythe. Dancer’s eyes never leave mine.

“I win,” I say.

He reaches for the card to see its face, but I shove it in my mouth before

he can take hold of it. He never sees what I drew. Dancer watches me chew

on the paper. I swallow and pull the remaining card from the bowl and toss

it at him. A scythe.

“The lamb card simply looked too good not to eat,” I say.

“Perfectly understandable.”

The red in his eyes twinkles and he sets the bowl aside. Warmth of

character returns to him, as if he’d never been a menace. “Do you know

why we call ourselves Sons of Ares, Darrow? To the Romans, Mars was the

god of war—a god of military glory, defense of the hearth and home.

Honorable and all. But Mars is a fraud. He is a romanticized version of the

Greek god Ares.”

Dancer lights a burner and hands a second one to me. The generators

buzz freshly and the burner fills me with a similar haze as its smoke curls

through my lungs.

“Ares was a bastard, an evil patron of rage, violence, bloodlust, and

massacre,” he says.

“So by naming yourselves after him, you’re pointing to the truth of things

within the Society. Cute.”

“Something like that. The Golds would prefer for us to forget history.

And most of us have, or were never taught it. But I know how Gold rose to

power hundreds of years ago. They call it the Conquering. They butchered

any who contested them. Massacred cities, continents. Not many years ago,

they reduced an entire world to ash—Rhea. Nuked it to oblivion. It was

with Ares’s wrath that they acted. And now we are the sons of that wrath.”

“Are you Ares?” I ask, voice hushed. Worlds. They’ve destroyed worlds.

But Rhea is so much farther out from Earth than Mars. It’s one of Saturn’s

moons, I think. Why would they nuke a world all the way out there?

“No. I’m not Ares,” he answers.

“But you belong to him.”

“I belong to no one but Harmony and my people. I am like you, Darrow,

born to a clan of earth diggers, miners from the colony Tyros. Only I know

more of the world.” He frowns at my impatient expression. “You think me a

terrorist. I am not.”

“No?” I ask.

He leans back and takes a drag on his burner.

“Imagine there was a table covered with fleas,” he explains. “The fleas

would jump and jump to heights unknown. Then a man came along and

upturned a glass jar over the fle as. The fleas jumped and hit the top of the

jar and could go no farther. Then the man removed the jar and yet the fleas

did not jump higher than they had grown accustomed, because they

believed there to still be a glass ceiling.” He breathes out smoke. I see his

eyes glow through it like the ember tip of his burner. “We are the fleas who

jump high. Now let me show you just how high.”

Dancer takes me down a rickety corridor to a cylindrical metal lift. It’s a

rusty thing, heavy, and it squeals as we rise steadily upward.

“You should know that your wife didn’t die in vain, Darrow. The Greens

who help us hijacked the broadcast. We hacked in and played the true

version over every HC on our planet. The planet, the clans of the hundred

thousand mining colonies and those in the cities, have heard your wife’s

song.”

“You tell tall tales,” I grumble. “There aren’t half that many colonies.”

He ignores me. “They heard her song and they call her Persephone

already.”

I flinch and look over at him. No. That is not her name. She is not their

symbol. She doesn’t belong to these brigands with trumped-up names.

“Her name is Eo,” I sneer. “And she belongs to Lykos.”

“She belongs to her people now, Darrow. And they remember the old

tales of a goddess stolen from her family by the god of death. Yet even

when she was stolen, death could not forever keep her. She was the Maiden,

the goddess of spring destined to return after each winter. Beauty incarnate

can touch life even from the grave; that’s how they think of your wife.”

“She’s not coming back,” I say to end the conversation. It is futile

debating with this man. He just rolls on.

Our lift comes to a halt and we exit into a small tunnel. Following it, we

come to another lift of sleeker metal, better maintained. Two Sons guard it

with scorchers. Soon we’re going upward again.

“She will not come back, but her beauty, her voice, will echo until the

end of time. She believed in something beyond herself, and her death gave

her voice power it didn’t have in life. She was pure, like your father. We,

you and I”—he touches my chest with the back of his index finger—“are

dirty. We are made for blood. Rough hands. Dirty hearts. We are lesser

creatures in the grand scheme of things, but without us men of war, no one

except those of Lykos would hear Eo’s song. Without our rough hands, the

dreams of the pure hearts would never be built.”

“Cut to the point,” I interrupt. “You want me for something.”

“You tried to die before,” Dancer says. “Do you want to do so again?”

“I want ...” What do I want? “I want to kill Augustus,” I say,

remembering the cold Golden face as it commanded my wife’s death. It was

so distant, so uncaring. “He will not live while Eo lies dead.” I think of

Magistrate Podginus and Ugly Dan. I will kill them too.

“Vengeance then,” he sighs.

“You said you could give it to me.”

“I said I would give you justice. Vengeance is an empty thing, Darrow.”

“It will fill me. Help me kill the ArchGovernor.”

“Darrow, you set your sights too low.” The lift picks up speed. My ears

pop. Up and up and up. How far does this lift rise? “The ArchGovernor is

merely one of the most important Golds on Mars.” Dancer hands me a pair

of tinted glasses. I put them on tentatively as my heart thuds in my chest.

We’re going to the surface. “You must widen your gaze.”

The lift stops. The doors open. And I am blind.

Behind the glasses, my pupils constrict to adjust to the light. When at last

I’m able to open my eyes, I expect to see a massive glowing bulb or a flare,

some source to the light. But I see nothing. The light is ambient, from some

distant, impossible source. Some human instinct in me knows this power,

knows this primal origin of life. The sun. Daylight. My hands tremble and I

step with Dancer from the elevator. He does not speak. I doubt I would hear

him even if he did.

We stand in a room of strange makings, unlike any I’ve imagined. There

is a substance underfoot, hard but neither metal nor rock. Wood. I know it

from the HC pictures of Earth. A carpet of a thousand hues spreads over it,

soft under my feet. The walls around are of red wood, carved with trees and

deer. Soft music plays in the distance. I follow the tune deeper into the

room, toward the light.

I find a bank of glass, a large wall that lets the sun in to shine across the

length of a squat black instrument with white keys, which plays itself in a

tall room with three walls and a long bank of glass windows. Everything is

so smooth. Beyond the instrument, beyond the glass, lies something I don’t

understand. I stumble toward the window, toward the light, and fall to my

knees, pressing my hands against the barrier. I moan one long note.

“Now you understand,” Dancer says. “We are deceived.”

Beyond the glass sprawls a city.

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9

The Lie

The city is one of spires, parks, rivers, gardens, and fountains. It is a city of

dreams, a city of blue water and green life on a red planet that is supposed

to be as barren as the cruelest desert. This is not the Mars they show us on

the HC. This is not a place unfi t for man. It is a place of lies, wealth, and

immense abundance.

I gasp at the grotesquerie.

Men and women fly . They shimmer Gold and Silver. Those are the only

Colors I see in the sky. Their gravBoots carry them about like gods, the

technology so much more graceful than the clumsy gravBoots our keepers

wear in the mines. A young man soars past my window, his skin burnished,

his hair fluttering loosely behind him as he carries two bottles of wine

toward a nearby garden spire; he’s drunk and his wobbling through the air

reminds me of a time I saw a drillBoy’s air system break down in his

frysuit; he gasped for oxygen as he died, twitching and dancing. This Gold

laughs like a fool and does a mirthful spin. Four girls, not at all older than

me, fly after him in a merry hunt, giddy and giggling. Their tight dresses

seem to be made of liquid and drip around their young curves. They look

my age, in a way, but seem so bloody foolish.

I do not understand.

Beyond them, ships flit through the air along beacon-lit avenues. Small

ships, ripWings, as Dancer calls them, escort the most intricate of air

yachts. On the ground, I see men and women moving through wide

avenues. There are automobiles, Color-coded lamps along the lower levels

—Yellow, Blue, Orange, Green, Pink, a hundred shades of a dozen Colors

to form a hierarchy so complex, so alien, I scarcely think it a human

concept. The buildings through which the paths wind are huge, some of

glass, some of stone. But many remind me of those I’ve seen on the HC,

those buildings of the Romans, made this time for gods instead of man.

Beyond the city, which stretches nearly as far as I can see, Mars’s red and

barren surface is scarred with the green of grass and struggling woods. A

queer bubble envelopes the city. It shimmers like some sort of magical

barrier. The sky above is blue, stained with stars. The terraforming is

complete.

This is the future. It should not be this way for generations.

My life is a lie.

So many times has Octavia au Lune told us of Lykos that we are the

pioneers of Mars, that we are the brave souls who sacrifice for the race, that

soon our toils for humanity will be over. Soon the softer Colors will join us,

once Mars is habitable. But they have already joined us. Earth has come to

Mars and we pioneers were left below, slaving, toiling, suffering to create

and maintain the foundation of this ... this empire. We are as Eo always

said—the Society’s slaves.

Dancer sits in a chair behind me and waits till I can speak. He says a

word and the windows darken. I can still see the city, but the sun no longer

blinds my eyes. Beside us, the squat instrument, called a piano, whispers a

dreary melody.

“They told us we were man’s only hope,” I say quietly. “That Earth was

overcrowded, that all the pain, all the sacrifice, was for mankind. Sacrifice

is good. Obedience the highest virtue ...”

The laughing Gold has reached the nearby spire; he surrenders to the

girls and their kisses. Soon they will drink their wine and have their

amusement.

Dancer tells me how it is.

“Earth ain’t overcrowded, Darrow. Seven hundred years back, they

expanded to their moon, Luna. Because it is so difficult to launch spacecraft

through Earth’s gravity and atmosphere, Luna became Earth’s port through

which it colonized the moons and planets of the Solar System.”

“Seven hundred years?” I gasp, feeling suddenly very stupid.

“On Luna, efficiency and order became the chief concern. In space, every

set of lungs must have a purpose. So the first Colors were gradually

instituted and the Reds were sent to Mars to gather the fuel for mankind.

The mining colonies were established there since Mars has the highest

concentration of helium-3, which is used to terraform the other worlds and

moons.”

At least that wasn’t a lie.

“Are they terraformed, the other moons and worlds?”

“The small moons, yes. Most of the planets. Obviously not the gas

giants.” He sits in a chair. “It was in the early stages of the Colonization

when the wealthy of Luna began to realize Earth was nothing more than a

drain on their profits. Even as Luna colonized the Solar System, they were

taxed and owned by corporations and countries on Earth, but those same

entities could not enforce their ownership. So Luna rebelled—the Golds and

their Society against the countries of Earth. Earth fought back and Earth

lost. That was the Conquering. Economics turned Luna into the power and

port of the Solar System. And the Society began to change into what it is

today—an empire built on Red backs.”

I watch the Colors move about below. They are small, hard to distinguish

from our height—and my eyes are not used to seeing so far or seeing so

much light.

“Reds were sent to Mars five hundred years ago. The other Colors came

to Mars about three hundred years back, while our ancestors still toiled

beneath the surface. They lived in these paraterraformed cities—cities with

bubbles of atmosphere over them—while the rest of the world terraformed

slowly. Now the bubbles are coming down and the world is fit for any man.

“HighReds live as maintenance workers, sanitation, grain harvesters,

assembly workers. LowReds are those of us born beneath the surface—the

truest slaves. In the cities, the Reds who dance disappear. Those who voice

their thoughts vanish. Those who bow their heads and accept the rule of the

Society and their place in Society, as all Colors do, live on with relative

freedom.”

He exhales a cloud of smoke. I didn’t even see the burner in his hand.

I feel outside my body, as though I’m watching the colonization of

worlds, the transformation of the human species, through eyes that are not

my own. The gravity of history drew my people into slavery. We are the

bottom of the Society, the dirt. Eo always preached something of the like,

though she never knew the truth. If she had known this, how much more

passionately would she have spoken? This existence is worse than she ever

could have imagined. It is not hard to understand the conviction with which

the Sons of Ares fight.

“Five hundred years.” I shake my head. “This is our bloodydamn planet.”

“Through sweat and toil it was made so,” he agrees.

“Then what will it take to take it back?”

“Blood.” Dancer smiles at me like a township alleycat. There’s a beast

behind this man’s fatherly smiles.

Eo was right. It comes to violence.

She was the voice, like my father. So what am I to be? The avenging

hand? I cannot grasp that someone so pure, so full of love, would want me

to play this part. But she did. I think of my father’s last dance. I think of my

mum, Leanna, Kieran, Loran, Eo’s parents, Uncle Narol, Barlow, everyone

I love. I know hard how they will live and how quickly they will die. And I

now know why.

I look down at my hands. They are what Dancer called them—cut,

scarred, burned things. When Eo kissed them, they grew gentle for love.

Now that she is gone, they grow hard for hate. I clench them into fists till

my knuckles are white as icecaps.

“What is my mission?”

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10

The Carver

I grew up with a quicksmiling girl of fifteen so in love with her young

husband that when he was burned in the mines and his wound festered, she

sold her body to a Gamma in return for antibiotics. She was stronger than

her husband. When he grew well and discovered what had been done on his

behalf, he killed the Gamma with a slingBlade snuck from the mines. Easy

to guess what happened after that. Her name was Lana and she was Uncle

Narol’s daughter. She lives no longer.

I think of her as I watch the HC in what Harmony called the penthouse as

Dancer makes preparations. I flip through the many channels with the

twitch of my finger . Even that Gamma had a family. He dug like me. He

was born like me, went through the Flush like me, and he never saw the sun

either. He was just given a little packet of medicine by the Society, and look

at the effect. How clever of them. How much hate they create between

people who should be kin. But if the clans knew what luxury exists on the

surface, if they knew how much had been stolen from them, they would feel

the hatred I feel, they would unite. My clan is a hot-tempered breed. What

would a rebellion of theirs look like? Probably like Dago’s burner—burning

hot but fast, till it was all ash.

I asked Dancer why the Sons streamed my wife’s death to the mines.

Why not instead show the lowReds the wealth of the surface? That would

sow anger.

“Because a rebellion now would be crushed in days,” Dancer explained.

“We must take a different path. A nation cannot be destroyed from without

till it is destroyed from within. Remember that. We’re nation-breakers, not

terrorists.”

When Dancer told me what I am to do, I laughed. I do not know if I can

do it. I am a speck. A thousand cities span the face of Mars. Metal

behemoths sail between the planets in fleets carrying weapons that can

crack the mantle of a moon. On distant Luna, buildings rise seven miles

high; there the Sovereign Consul, Octavia au Lune, rules with her

Imperators and Praetors. The Ash Lord, who made the world of Rhea

cinders, is her minion. She controls the twelve Olympic Knights, legions of

Peerless Scarred, and Obsidians as innumerable as the stars. And those

Obsidians are only the elite. The Gray soldiers prowl the cities ensuring

order, ensuring obedience to the hierarchy. The Whites arbitrate their justice

and push their philosophy. Pinks pleasure and serve in highColor homes.

Silvers count and manipulate currency and logistics. Yellows study the

medicines and sciences. Greens develop technology. Blues navigate the

stars. Coppers run the beauracracy. Every Color has a purpose. Every Color

props up the Golds.

The HC shows me Colors I did not know existed. It shows me fashion.

Ludicrous and seductive. There are biomodifications and flesh implants—

women with skin so smooth and polished, breasts so round, hair so glossed

that they appear a different species from Eo and all the women I’ve ever

known. The men are freakishly muscular and tall. Their arms and chests

bulge with artificial strength, and they flaunt their muscle like girls showing

off new toys.

I am a Lambda Helldiver of Lykos, but what is that compared with all

this?

“Harmony is here. Time to go,” Dancer says from the door.

“I want to fight, ” I tell him as we ride the gravLift down with Harmony.

They’ve doctored my Sigils so that they are brighter to match the highReds.

I wear the loose garb of a highRed and carry a pack of street-scrubbing

equipment. There’s dye in my hair and contacts in my eyes, all so that I

look a brighter shade of red. Less dirty. “I don’t want this mission. “Worse,

I can’t do it. Who could?”

“You said you would do anything that needed to be done,” Dancer says.

“But this ...” The mission he has given me is madness, yet that’s not why

I’m frightened. My fear is that I will become something Eo would not

recognize. I’ll become a demon from our Octobernacht stories.

“Give me a scorcher or a bomb. Let someone else do this.”

“We brought you out for this,” Harmony sighs. “And only this. It has

been Ares’s greatest goal since the Sons were born.”

“How many others have you brought out? How many others have tried

what you’re asking me to try?”

Harmony looks over at Dancer. He says nothing, so she answers

impatiently on his behalf. “Ninety-seven have failed the Carving ... that we

know of.”

“Bloodydamn,” I curse. “And what happened to them?”

“They died,” she says blandly. “Or they asked for death.”

“Maybe Narol should have let me hang.” I try to laugh.

“Darrow. Come here. Come.” He grabs my shoulder and pulls me in.

“Others may have failed. But you’ll be different, Darrow. I feel it in my

bones.”

My legs go shaky when I first look up at the night sky and the buildings

stretching around me. I slip into vertigo. I feel like I am falling, like the

world is off its axis. Everything is too open, so much so that it seems as

though the city should tumble into the sky. I look at my feet, look at the

street, and try to imagine that I am in the tunnelroads from the townships to

the Common.

The streets of Yorkton, the city, are a strange place at night. Luminescent

balls of light line the sidewalks and streets. HC videos run like liquid

streams along parts of the avenue in this hi-tech sector of the city, so most

walk upon the moving pathways or ride in public transportation with their

heads crooked down like cane handles. Garish lights make the night almost

as bright as day. I see even more Colors. This sector of the city is clean.

Teams of Red sanitation workers scour the streets. Its roads and walking

paths stretch in perfect order.

There’s a faint ribbon of red where we are to walk, a narrow ribbon in a

broad street. Our path does not move like the others. A Copper woman

walks along her wider path; her favorite programs play wherever she walks,

unless she strides beside a Gold, in which case all the HCs go quiet. But

most Golds do not walk; they are permitted gravBoots and coaches, as are

any of the Coppers, Obsidians, Grays, and Silvers with the proper license,

though the licensed boots are horribly shoddy things.

An advertisement for a blister cream appears on the ground in front of

me. A woman of strangely slender proportions slinks out of a red lace robe.

Suitably naked, she then applies the cream to a place on her body where no

woman has ever before gotten a blister. I blush and look away in disgust

because I’ve only ever seen one woman naked.

“You’ll want to forget your modesty,” Harmony advises. “It’ll mark you

worse than your Color.”

“It is disgusting,” I say.

“It’s advertising, darling,” Harmony purrs condescendingly. She shares a

chuckle with Dancer.

An elderly Gold soars overhead, older than any human I’ve ever seen.

We lower our heads as she passes.

“Reds up here have to get paid,” Dancer explains when we are alone.

“Not much. But they’re given money and enough treats to make them

dependent. What money they have, they spend on goods they’re made to

think they need.”

“Same with all the drones,” Harmony hisses.

“So they’re not slaves,” I say.

“Oh, they’re slaves,” Harmony says. “Enslaved by their suckling on the

teats of those bastards.”

Dancer struggles to keep up, so I slow down as he speaks. Harmony

makes an irritated noise.

“Golds structure everything to make their own lives easier. They have

shows produced to entertain and placate the masses. They give monies and

handouts to make generations dependent on the seventh day of each new

Earth month. They create goods to grant us a semblance of liberty. If

violence is the Gold sport, manipulation is their art form.”

We pass into a lowColor district where there are no designated walking

paths. The storefronts are lined with electronic Green ribbons. Some stores

peddle a month of alternate reality in an hour’s time for a week’s wages.

Two small men with quick green eyes and bald heads studded with metal

spikes and tattoed with shifting digital code suggest for me a trip to

someplace called Osgiliath. Other stores offer banking services or

biomodifications or simple personal hygiene products. They shout things I

don’t understand, speaking in numbers and acronyms. I have never seen

such commotion.

Brothels lined with Pink ribbon make me blush, as do the women and

men in the windows. Each has a flashing price tag playfully hanging from a

thread; it’s a moving number that suits demand. A lusty girl calls to me. Her

voice is sweet and raspy all at once. Along with the men and women are

machines covered in growFlesh. They are cheaper company and their

operators try to solicit me as Dancer explains the idea of money. In Lykos,

we traded only in goods and swill and burners and services.

Some blocks of the city are reserved for the use of high colors. Access to

these districts depends on badges of warrant. I cannot simply walk or ride

into a Gold or Copper district. But a Copper can always slum in a Red

district, frequenting a bar or brothel. Never the other way around, even in

the wild, free-for-all that is the Bazaar—a riotous place of commerce and

noise and air heavy with the scents of bodies and food and automobile

exhaust.

We walk deep into the Bazaar. I feel safer in the back alleys here than I

did in the open avenues in the high-tech sectors. I do not yet like vast

spaces, and seeing the stars above frightened me. The Bazaar is darker,

though lights still shine and people still bustle. The buildings seem to pinch

together. A hundred balconies form ribs in the alleyway’s heights.

Walkways crisscross above, and all around us, lights blink from devices.

Smells rise up like a palpable noise. It is more humid here, dirty. And I see

fewer Tinpots patrolling. Dancer says there are places in the Bazaar where

even an Obsidian should not go. “In the densest places of man, humanity

most easily breaks down,” he says.

It is strange being in a crowd where no one knows your face or cares for

your purpose. In Lykos, I would have been jostled by men I’d grown up

with, run across girls I’d chased and wrestled with as a child. Here, other

Colors slam into me and offer not even a faint apology. This is a city, and I

do not like it. I feel alone.

“This is us,” Dancer says, gesturing me into a dark doorway where an

electronic flying dragon shimmers on the surface of the stone. A massive

Brown with a modjob for a nose stops us. We wait for the metal nose to

snort and sniff. He’s bigger than Dancer.

“Dye in his hair,” he growls at me, taking a whiff of my hair. “A Ruster,

this one be.”

A scorcher peaks out from his belt. He’s got a shiv behind his wrist—I

can tell by the way his hand moves. Another thug joins him on the stoop.

He’s got jewelry processors on his eyeballs, little red rubies that flicker

when light catches them just right. I stare at the jewelry and the brown eyes.

“What’s what with this one? He want a go?” the thug spits. “Keep eyein’

me, and I’ll take your liver to sell at market.”

Thinks I’m challenging him. I’m actually just curious about the rubies,

but when he threatens me I smile at him and give a little wink like I would

in the mines. A knife flips into his hand. Rules are different up here.

“Boy, keep playin’. Dare ya. Keep playin’.”

“Mickey is expectin’ us,” Dancer tells the man.

I watch Modjob’s friend as he tries to stare me down like I’m some sort

of child. Modjob smirks and leers at Dancer’s leg and arm. “Don’t know a

Mickey, cripple.” He looks to his friend. “You know a Mickey?”

“Nah. Ain’t got no Mickey here.”

“What a relief.” Dancer sets a hand on the scorcher under his jacket.

“Since you don’t know Mickey, you won’t have to explain to Mickey why

my ... generous friend couldn’t reach him.” He moves his jacket so they

can see a glyph etched on the butt of his gun. The helmet of Ares.

When he sees the glyph, Modjob gulps and says, “Squab,” then they fall

over each other to open the door. “G-g-gotta take your shooters.” Three

others move toward us, scorchers half up. Harmony opens her vest and

shows them a bomb strapped to her stomach. She rolls a blinking detonator

over her nimble Red fingers.

“Nah. We’re good.”

Modjob swallows, nods. “You’re good.”

The interior of the building is dark. It is a darkness thick with smoke and

throbbing lights—much like my mine. Music pulses. Glass cylinders stand

as pillars amongst chairs and tables where men drink and smoke. Inside the

glass, women dance. Some writhe in water, their strange webbed toes and

sleek thighs moving to the music. Others gyrate to the thudding melody in

environs of golden smoke or silver paint. I blush as I stare at a naked

woman wreathed in blue and orange fire. Her smooth skin does not burn.

And I think I see wings on her back. She looks so young, younger still when

I see the men sitting around her on couches with little datapads. I cock my

head.

“They’re bidding on her,” Harmony says darkly. “Come on.”

More thugs guide us to a back table that seems to be made of iridescent

water. A slim man reclines there with several creatures of the strangest sort.

I thought them monsters at first , but the closer I look, the more confused I

become. They are humans. But they’ve been made differently. Carved

differently. A pretty young girl, no older than Eo, sits looking at me with

emerald eyes. The wings of a white eagle sprout from the flesh of her back.

She’s like something torn from a fever dream, except she should have been

left there. Others like her lounge in the smoke and strange lights.

Mickey the Carver is a scalpel of a man with a crooked smile and black

hair that hangs like a puddle of oil down one side of his head. A facial tattoo

of an amethyst mask wreathed in smoke winds around his left eye. It is the

Sigil of a Violet—the creatives—so it is always shifting Other violet

symbols stain his hands. He’s playing with a little electronic puzzle cube

that has changing faces. His fingers are fast, thinner and longer than they

should be; and there are twelve of them. Fascinating. I’ve never seen an

artist before, not even on the HC. They’re as rare as Whites.

“Ah, Dancer,” he sighs without looking up from his cube. “I could hear

you from the drag in your step.” He squints at the cube in his hands. “And

Harmony. I could smell you from the door, my darling. Terrible bomb, by

the bye. Next time you need real sneaky craftsmanship, look Mickey up,

yes?”

“Mick,” Dancer says, and seats himself at the table of dreamthings. I can

tell Harmony is growing a bit dizzy from the smoke. I’m used to breathing

worse stuff.

“Now, Harmony, my lovely love,” Mickey purrs. “Have you given up on

this cripple yet? Come to join my family, perhaps? Yes? Get yourself a pair

of wings? Claws on your hands? A tail? Horns—you would look fierce in

horns. Especially wrapped in my silken bedsheets.”

“Carve yourself a soul and you might get a shot,” Harmony sneers.

“Ah, if it takes being a Red to have a soul, on this I shall pass.”

“Then to business.”

“So abrupt, my darling. Conversation should be considered an art form,

or like a grand dinner. Each course in its own time.” His fingers fly over the

cube. He’s matching them based on their electronic frequency, but he’s a bit

too slow to match them before they change. He still hasn’t looked up.

“We have a proposition for you, Mickey,” Dancer says impatiently. He

glances down at the cube.

Mickey’s smile is long and crooked. He does not look up. Dancer repeats

himself.

“Straight to the main course then, eh, cripple? Well, propose away.”

Dancer swats the cube out of Mickey’s hands. The table goes silent. The

thugs bristle behind us and the music continues to pound. My heart is

steady and I eye the scorcher on the thigh of the nearest thug. Slowly,

Mickey looks up and cuts the tension with a crooked smile. “What’s what,

my friend?”

Dancer nods to Harmony and she slips a small box over to Mickey.

“A present? You shouldn’t have.” Mickey examines the box. “Cheap

stuff. Such a tasteless Color, Red.” Then he slides the box open and gasps in

horror. He recoils from the table, slamming the box shut. “You stupid

sodding bastards. What is this?”

“You know what they are.”

Mickey leans forward and his voice becomes one lone hiss. “You brought

them here? How did you get them? Are you insane?” Mickey glances at his

followers, who peer down at the box wondering what has so unbalanced

their master.

“Insane? We’re bloodydamn manic.” Dancer smiles. “And we need them

attached. Soon.”

“Attached?” Mickey starts laughing.

“To him.” Dancer points at me.

“Leave!” Mickey screams at his entourage. “Leave, you simpering

sycophantic miscreants! I’m talking to you ... you freaks! Get out!” When

his entourage has scurried away, he opens the box and dumps the contents

onto the table. Two golden wings, the Sigils of a Gold, clatter onto the table.

Dancer sits. “We want you to make our boy here into a Gold.”

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11

The Carved

“You’re mad.”

“Thank you.” Harmony smiles.

“I assume you misspoke; pray repeat yourself,” Mickey says to Dancer.

“Ares will pay you more money than you’ve ever seen if you can

successfully attach those to my young friend here.”

“Impossible,” Mickey declares. He looks over to me, measuring me for

the first time. He is unimpressed despite my height. I don’t blame him.

Once, I thought myself a handsome man of the clans. Strong. Muscular. Up

here, I am pale and wiry, young and scarred. He spits onto the table.

“Impossible.”

Harmony shrugs. “It’s been done before.”

“By whom? I ask.” He turns his head. “No. You cannot bait me.”

“Someone talented,” Harmony taunts.

“Impossible.” Mickey leans even farther forward; his thin face has not a

single pore. “Do you need a dictionary? I can have one installed in your

brain if you do. It is impossible. There’s DNA matching him with the

wings, cerebral extraction. Did you know they have subdermal markings in

their skulls? Of course you didn’t—datachips attached to their frontal

cortexes to substantiate their caste? Then there’s synapse linkage, molecular

bonding, tracking devices, the Quality Control Board. Then there’s the

trauma and the associative reasoning. Say we make his body perfect, there’s

still one problem: we cannot make him smarter. One cannot make a mouse

a lion.”

“He can think like a lion,” Dancer says plainly.

“Oho! He can think like a lion,” Mickey snickers.

“And Ares wants it done.” Dancer’s voice is cold.

“Ares. Ares. Ares. It doesn’t matter what Ares wants, you baboon. Never

mind the science. His physical and mental dexterity is probably daft as a

damn bowl cleaner’s. And his tangibles won’t match. He’s not their species!

He’s a Ruster!”

“I’m a Helldiver of Lykos,” I say.

Mickey raises his eyebrows. “Oho! A Helldiver! Clear the halls! A

Helldiver, you say!” He mocks me, but he squints suddenly as if he’s seen

me before. My whipping was televised. Many know my face. But if I’m a

Gold, carved in their august likeness and not that of my father? I will hardly

recognize myself. “Bugger me,” he mutters.

“You recognize my face,” I confirm.

He pulls up the viral video and watches it, looking back and forth

between it and me. “Aren’t you dead with that girlfriend of yours?”

“Wife,” I snap.

Mickey’s jaw muscles flicker under his skin as he ignores me. “You’re

making a savior,” he accuses, looking over at Dancer. “Dancer, you bastard.

You’re making a messiah for your gorydamn cause.”

I never looked at it that way. My skin prickles uneasily.

“Yes” is Dancer’s answer.

“If I make him a Gold, what will you do with him?”

“He will apply to the Institute. He will be accepted. There, he will excel

well enough to reach the ranks of the Peerless Scarred; as a Scarred, he can

train to be a Praetor, a Legate, a Politico, a Quaestor. Anything. He will

advance to a prime position, the primer the better. From there, he will be in

a position to do as Ares requires for the Cause.”

“Mother of God,” Mickey murmurs. He stares at Harmony, then at

Dancer. “You want him to be a bona fide Peerless Scarred. Not a Bronzey?”

A Bronze is a faded Gold. Of the same class, but looked down on for

inferior appearance, lineage, and capabilities. “Not a Bronze,” Dancer

confirms.

“Or a Pixie?”

“We don’t want him to go to nightclubs and eat caviar like the rest of

those worthless Golds. We want him to command fleets.”

“Fleets. You lot are mad. Mad.” Mickey’s violet eyes settle on mine after

a long moment. “My boy, they are murdering you. You are not a Gold. You

cannot do what a Gold can do. They are killers, born to dominate us; have

you ever met one of the Aureate? Sure, they may look all pretty and

peaceful now. But do you know what happened in the Conquering? They

are monsters.”

He shakes his head and laughs wickedly. “The Institute is not a school, it

is a culling ground where the Golds go to hack at one another till the

strongest in mind and body is found. You. Will. Die.”

Mickey’s cube lies at the opposite end of the table. I walk over to it

without saying a word. I don’t know how it works, but I know the puzzles

of the earth.

“My boy, what are you doing?” Mickey sighs in pity. “That is not a toy.”

“Have you ever been in a mine?” I ask him. “Ever used your fingers to

dig through a faultline at a twelve-degree angle while doing the math to

accomodate eighty percent rotation power and fifty-five percent thrust so

you don’t set off a gas-pocket reaction while sitting in your own piss and

sweat and worrying about pitvipers that want to burrow into your gut to lay

their eggs?”

“This is ...”

His voice fades as he sees how the clawDrill taught my fingers to move,

how the grace with which my uncle taught me to dance is converted into

my hands. I hum as I work. It takes a moment, maybe a minute or three. But

I learn the puzzle and then solve it easily according to frequency. There

seems another level to it, mathematical riddles. I don’t know the math, but I

know the pattern. I solve it and four more puzzles, then it changes once

more in my hands, becoming a circle. Mickey’s eyes widen. I complete the

circle’s puzzles and then toss him back the device. He stares at my hands

while working his own twelve fingers.

“Impossible,” he murmurs.

“Evolution,” Harmony replies.

Dancer smiles. “We will need to discuss price.”

OceanofPDF

OceanofPDF

12

Change

My life becomes agony.

My Sigils are attached to the metacarpus in each hand. Mickey removes

the old Red Sigils and cultivates new skin and bone over the wounds. Then

he sets to installing a stolen subdermal datachip into my frontal lobe. I am

told the trauma killed me and they had to restart my heart. I’ve died twice

then. They say I was in a coma for two weeks, but to me it was nothing but

a dream. I was in the vale with Eo. She kissed me on the forehead and then

I woke and felt the stitches and the pain.

I lie in bed as Mickey tests me. He has me move marbles from one

container into other containers coded by colors. I do this for what seems a

lifetime.

“We are forming synapses, my darling.”

He tests me with word puzzles and tries to make me read, but I don’t

know how to read. “You will have to learn that for the Institute,” he giggles.

My dreams are cruel things to wake from. In them, Eo comforts me, but

when I wake, she is nothing but a fleeting memory. I am hollow as I lie in

Mickey’s makeshift medical cell. An ion germ killer buzzes next to my bed.

Everything is white, yet I can hear the thumping of music from his club. His

girls change my diapers and empty my piss bags. A girl who never speaks

bathes me three times a day. Her arms are willowy, her face soft and sad as

when I first saw her sitting with Mickey at his liquid table. The wings that

curl outward from her back are bound with a crimson ribbon. She never

meets my eyes.

Mickey continues to make me develop synapse connections as he repairs

the scar tissue from my neural surgery. He’s all laughs and smiles and

lingering touches on my forehead as he calls me his darling. I feel like one

of his girls, one of the angels he sculpted for his own pleasure.

“But we must not be satisfied only with the brain,” he says. “There is

much work to be done on this Ruster body of yours if we want to make to

an iron Gold.”

“And that is?”

“The golden ancestors, they call them the iron Golds. They were hard

men. They stood lean and fierce upon their battlecruisers as they laid waste

to the armies and republic fleets of Earth. What creatures they were.” His

eyes go distant. “It took generations of eugenics and biological tampering to

make them. Forced Darwinianism.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and it seems an anger builds in him.

“They say Carvers will never duplicate the beauty of the Golden Man.

The Board of Quality Control taunts us. Personally, I do not want to make

you a man. Men are so very frail. Men break. Men die. No, I’ve always

wished to make a god.” He smiles mischeviously as he does some sketches

on a digital pad. He spins it around and shows me the killer I will become.

“So why not carve you to be the god of war?”

The scarred tissue on my back is peeled away with a laser and then the

raw flesh is sown with cultures of my own skin grown in tubes, which is

then irradiated to promote molecular bonding. It grows fast on my body,

like some sort of living creature apart from myself. It itches like a demon.

Mickey replaces the skin of my back and the skin of my hands where Eo

applied bandages to my burns. This, he says, is not to be my real skin. It is

only a homogeneous baselayer.

“Your skeleton is weak because Mars gravity is zero point three of

Earth’s, my delicate little bird. Also, you have a diet deficient in calcium.

Gold Standard bone density is five times stronger than naturally occurring

bone density on Earth. So we will have to make your skeleton six times

stronger; you must be of iron if you want to last the Institute. This will be

fun! For me. Not you.”

Mickey carves me again. The agony is beyond language or

comprehension. I watch videos of it afterwards to distract me from the

residual pain. He uses a vibroScalpel to slice the flesh of my thigh down the

middle. He parts my muscle and skin with clamps to expose the bones of

my legs. Then he peels off layers of the bone with a bonepeeler and paints

new layers with his improved-bone recipe.

“Someone has to dot God’s i’s.”

The next day, he opens my arms. Then he does my ribs, my spine, my

shoulders, my feet, my pelvis, and my face. He also alters the tensile

qualities of my tendons and inserts biocultures to increase the density of my

muscle tissue Mercifully, he does not let me wake from this last surgery for

several weeks. When I do wake, I see his girls around me applying new

cultures of flesh and kneading my muscles with their thumbs. I wonder

what will happen to them when we have finished with me. Then I fall back

asleep.

I sleep in a tubular machine in which a specialized blue light crosses my

body to solidify the calcium formula beneath my flesh. Slowly, my skin

begins to heal. I am a patchwork fleshquilt. They begin feeding me

synthesized protein, creatine, and growth hormone to promote muscle

growth and tendon regeneration. My body trembles in the nights and itches

as I sweat through new, smaller pores. I cannot use pain medication

sufficient enough to numb the agony, because the altered nerves must learn

to function with the new tissue and my altered brain.

He sits beside me on my worst nights telling me stories. It’s only then

that I like him, only then that I think he is not some monster cooked up by

this perverted Society.

“My profession is to create, little bird,” he says one night as we sit

together in the darkness. The blue light dances over my body, bathing his

face in queer shadows. “When I was young, I lived in a place they call the

Grove. It was what you might think of as a circus culture. We had

spectacles every night. Celebrations of color and sound and dance.”

“Sounds terrible,” I mutter sarcastically. “Just like the mines.”

He smiles softly and his eyes find that distant place. “I suppose it may

seem a plush life to you. Yet there was a madness to the Grove. They made

us take candies. Candies that would take us on journeys to hell, on

pilgrimages to heaven. Pills that could make us fly between the planets on

wings of dust to visit the faerie kings of Jupiter and the deep mermaids of

Europa. There was no escape to the journeys, no end to the trips of

childhood, my darling. There I drooled on the grass as the festivals swung

about. My mind always separate from body. No peace to it. No end to the

madness.” He clapped his hands then. “And now I Carve the things I saw in

my fever dreams, just as they always wished. I dreamed of you, I think. In

they end, I suppose they’ll wish I hadn’t dreamed at all.”

“Was it a good dream?” I ask.

“What?”

“The one with me.”

“No. No, it was a nightmare. One of a man from hell, lover of fire.” He’s

slient for a spell.

“Why is it so horrible?” I ask him. “Life. All this. Why do they need to

make us do this? Why do they treat us like we’re their slaves?”

“Power.”

“Power isn’t real. It’s just a word.”

Mickey ponders silently. Then he shrugs his thin shoulders. “Mankind

was always enslaved, they’ll say. Freedom enslaves us to lust, to greed.

Take freedom away, and they give me a life of dreaming. They gave you a

life of sacrifice, family, community. And society is stable. There is no

famine. No genocide. No great wars. And when the Golds fight, they obey

rules. They are ... noble about it when the great houses bicker.”

“Noble? They lied to me. Said I was a pioneer.”

“And would you have been happier if you knew you were a slave?”

Mickey asks. “No. None of the billion lowReds beneath Mars would be

happy if they knew what the highReds knew—that they are slaves. So is it

not better to lie?”

“It is better to not make slaves.”

When I am ready, he inserts a forceGenerator into my sleeping tube to

simulate increased gravity on my frame. I’ve never known pain like this.

My body aches. My bones and skin and muscles scream against the

pressure and the change till I’m on medication that turns the scream into a

dull forever-moan. Before my skeleton is finished, Mickey replaces my

teeth with straight ones taken from some lab or corpse; I don’t know. My

tongue plays over them. They are so slippery. Like cold tiles in my mouth.

I sleep for days. I dream of home and family. Every night I wake after

seeing Eo hang yet again. She sways across my mind. I miss her warmth in

bed beside me, even though they give me an HC immersion mask for

distraction.

Gradually, I am weaned from the pain medication. My muscles still

aren’t used to the density of my bones, so my existence becomes a melodic

ache. They begin to feed me real food. Mickey sits on the edge of my cot

stroking my hair well into the nights. I don’t care that his fingers feel like

spider legs. I don’t care that he thinks I am some piece of art, his art. He

gives me something called a hamburger. I love it. Red meats and thick

creams and breads and fruits and vegetables make my diet. I have never

eaten so well.

“You need the calories,” Mickey coos. “You have been so strong for me;

eat well. You deserve this food.”

“How am I doing?” I ask.

“Oh, the hard parts are over, my darling. You are a brilliant boy, you

know. They have shown me the tapes from the other procedures where

other Carvers tried this. Oh, how clumsy the other Carvers were, how weak

the other subjects. But you are strong and I am briliant.” He taps my chest.

“Your heart is like that of a stallion’s. I’ve never glimpsed one like it before.

You may not know this, but its so large because you were bitten by a

pitviper when you were young, I assume?”

“I was. Yes.”

“I thought so. Your heart had to adjust to counteract the effects of the

poison.”

“My uncle sucked most of the poison out when I was bitten,” I say.

“No,” Mickey laughs. “That’s a myth. The poison cannot be sucked out.

It still runs through your veins, forcing your heart to be strong if you want

to continue to live. You are something special, just like me.”

“Then I will not die in here?” I manage.

Mickey laughs. “No! No! We are beyond that now. There will be pain.

But we are past the threat of mortality. Soon we will have made man into

god. Red into Gold. Even your wife would not recognize you.”

That is all I’ve ever feared.

When they take my eyes and give me ones of gold, I feel dead inside. It’s

a simple matter of reconnecting the optic nerve to the “donor’s” eyes,

Mickey says. A simple thing he’s done a dozen times for cosmetic purposes;

the hard part was the frontal lobe surgery, he says. I disagree. There is the

pain, yes. But with the new eyes, I see things I once could not. Elements are

clearer, sharper, and more painful to bear. I hate this process. All it is is a

confirmation of the superiority of the Golds. It takes all this to make me

their physical equal, all this to correct what nature got wrong. Perhaps we

should serve them.

I don’t know how long I sleep. When I wake, my body rejects the carving

of my eyes. I’m screaming and sweating. I’ve gnawed my fist bloody in my

sleep and scratched the cornea of my left eye a millimeter deep. Not my left

eye. My eye is in a container somewhere. I’ve scratched someone else’s eye

and it hurts. How could it hurt? It’s not mine. None of this is mine. My skin

is too soft, too lustrous, too faultless. I don’t know my body without scars. I

don’t know the back of my own hands. Eo would not know me.

Mickey takes my hair next, ripping out the follicles and replacing them

with golden strands that itch like little golden weevils burrowing into my

scalp. Everything is changed.

It is weeks of physical therapy. Walking slowly around the room with

Evey, the winged girl, I’m left to my own thoughts. Neither one of us cares

much to speak. She has her demons and I have mine, so we are quiet and

calm except when Mickey comes to coo about what pretty children we

would make together. Evey sits by my bed when I have fever dreams. I

wake and she’s there, always quiet, never speaking.

One day, Mickey even brings an antique zither for me, with a soundboard

of wood instead of plastic. It is the kindest thing he’s ever done. I do not

sing, but I play the solemn songs of Lykos. The traditional ones of my clan

that no one beyond the mine will ever have heard. He and Evey sit with me

sometimes, and though I think Mickey a wretched sort of creature, I feel as

though he understands the music. Its beauty. Its importance. And

afterwards, he says nothing. I like him then, too. At peace. It must be so at

odds with the chaos of his childhood. What musics must they have played

for him as he ate their candies and they warped his mind?

“Well, you’re a bit sterner than I first measured,” Harmony says to me one

morning as I wake.

“Where have you been?” I ask, opening my eyes.

“Finding donors.” She flinches as she sees my irises. “The world does not

stop because you are here,” she says. “We had work to do. Mickey says you

can walk?”

“I am growing stronger.”

“Not strong enough,” she surmises, looking me over. “You look like a

baby giraffe. I’ll fix that.”

Harmony takes me beneath Mickey’s club to a grungy gymnasium lit by

sulfurous bulbs. I like the feel of the cold stone on my bare feet. My balance

has returned, and it is a good thing, because Harmony does not offer me her

arm; instead, she waves to the center of the dark gymnasium.

“We bought these for you,” Harmony says.

She points to two devices in the center of the dark space. The

contraptions are silver and remind me of the suits knights wore in past

centuries. The armor hangs suspended between two metal wires. “They are

concentraction machines.”

I slide my body into the machine. Dry gel hugs my feet, my legs, my

torso and arms and neck, till only my head is free. The machine is built to

resist my movements, yet it responds even to the tiniest stimuli. If the arch

of my foot flexes, resistance builds near the toe, stressing the muscle. It

cramps immediately. The idea of building muscle is to exercise it, which is

nothing more than using the muscle intensely enough to create

miscroscopic tears in the tissue fiber . This is the pain one feels in the days

after an intense workout—torn tissue—not lactic acid. When the muscle

repairs the tears, it builds on itself. This is the process the concentraction

machine is built to facilitate. It is the devil’s own invention.

Harmony slides the device’s faceplate over my eyes.

My body is still in the gym, but I see myself bounding across the rugged

landscape of Mars. The concentraction machine can pivot on independent

axes, so when I flip off a thirty-meter ledge, I flip in the concentraction

machine. Then I’m running again, pumping my legs against the

concentraction machine’s resistance, which increases according to

Harmony’s mood or the location of the simulation. Sometimes I venture to

the jungles of Earth, where I race panthers through the underbrush, or I take

to the pocked surface of Luna before it was populated. But always I return

home to Mars to run across its red soil and jump over its violent ravines. I

learn the planet this way, seeking the terraformed parts of the world where

rivers run from the hard red landscape into valleys of vegetation and trees.

Seas span thousands of miles, growing as great machines powered by

helium-3 thaw underground glaciers. Harmony sometimes accompanies me

in the other machine so I have someone to race.

She pushes me hard, and sometimes I wonder if she’s trying to break me.

I don’t let her.

“If you’re not vomiting thinking about a workout, you’re not trying,” she

says.

The days are excruciating. My body is a misery of aches from the arches

of my feet to the back of my neck. Mickey’s Pinks massage me every day.

There is no better pleasure in the world, but three days after beginning my

training with Harmony, I wake up vomiting in my bed. I shiver and shake

and hear cursing.

“There’s a science to this, you wicked little witch,” Mickey is shouting.

“He will be a work of art, but not if you pour water on the paint before it’s

set. Do not ruin him!”

“He must be perfect,” Harmony says. “Dancer, if he is weak in any way,

the other children will butcher him like a freshmade drillboy.”

“You are butchering him!” Mickey whines. “You are ruining him! His

body cannot handle the muscle breakdown.”

“He has not objected to the treatment,” Harmony reminds him.

“Because he does not know he can object!” Mickey says. “Dancer, she

has no understanding of the biomechanics involved in this. Do not let her

ruin my boy.”

“He is not your boy!” Harmony sneers.

Mickey’s voice becomes softer. “Dancer, Darrow is like a stallion, one of

the old stallions of Earth. Beautiful beasts that will run as hard as you push

them. They will run. And run. And run. Until they don’t. Until their hearts

explode.”

There is silence for a moment, then Dancer’s voice.

“Ares once told me that it is the hottest fire that forms the sternest steel.

Keep pushing the boy.”

I resent two of my teachers after overhearing their words: Mickey for

thinking me weak; Dancer for thinking me his tool. Only Harmony doesn’t

anger me. Her voice, her eyes, seethe with an anger I feel in my own soul.

She may have Dancer now, but she lost someone. The unscarred part of her

face tells me that. It is as cold as space. She is no schemer like Dancer or

his master, Ares. She is like me—brimming with a rage that makes all else

so inconsequential.

That night I cry.

Over the next days, they feed me drugs to expedite the protein synthesis

and muscle regeneration. After my muscle tissue has recovered from the

initial trauma, they train me harder than before, even Mickey—though his

eyes are underlined with dark rings and his thin face is sallow, he does not

object. He has grown distant these last weeks, no longer telling me stories

—as though he fears what he has created, now that I’m taking fuller shape.

Harmony and I speak very little to one another, but there is a subtle shift

in our relationship, some sort of primal understanding that we are the same

sort of creature. But as my body grows stronger, Harmony can no longer

keep up even though she is a hardened woman of the mines. That is after

only two weeks. The distance between our capabilities continues to grow.

After another month, she is like a child to me. Graceful, but a child. Small.

Weak. Quick, still. Very quick. But that is all. Even then I do not plateau.

My body begins to change. I thicken. My muscles become strong and

corded in the concentraction machine, which I now supplement with weight

workouts in highGrav. At first it’s like I’m being crushed by the new gravity

and I can hardly move the free weights from one side of the room to the

other. Gradually, strength builds. My shoulders grow broader, rounded; I

see tendons emerge in my forearms; a tense mass of hard muscles bind my

torso, like armor. Even my hands, which were always stronger than the rest

of me, grow more powerful in the concentraction machines. With a simple

squeeze, I can pulverize rock. Mickey jumped up and down when he saw

that. No one shakes my hand any longer.

I sleep in highGrav, so that when I move about on Mars, I feel fast, quick,

more agile than ever before. My fasttwitch fibers form. My hands move like

lightning, and when they hit the gymnasium’s human-shaped punching bag,

it leaps like it’s been struck by a scorcher. I can punch through it now. It is

difficult to exert myself, so fit do I become. Sometimes it takes thirty

minutes to sweat through my scarlet headband.

My body is becoming that of a Gold, one of the prime stock, not a Pixie,

not a Bronze. This is the body of the race that conquered the Solar System.

My hands are freaks. They are smooth, tanned, and dexterous, as any Gold’s

should be. But there is a power in them out of proportion with the rest of

me. If I am a blade, they are my edge.

My body is not all that changes. Before I sleep, I drink a tonic laden with

processing enhancers and speed-listen to The Colors, The Iliad, Ulysses,

Metamorphosis, the Theban plays, The Draconic Labels, and restricted

works like The Count of Monte Cristo, Lord of the Flies, Lady Casterly’s

Penance, 1984, and The Great Gatsby. I wake knowing three thousand

years of literature and legal code and history. The side effect is that I

sometimes go spasmodic from “brain shock” when I pass a strong

electromagnetic signal. Mickey says that will go away. All Golds go

through the process as children. There are no long-term cognition

improvements. Only short-term processing.

My last day at Mickey’s comes two months after my last surgery.

Harmony smiles with me after our workout as she drops me off in my room.

Music thuds in the background. Mickey’s dancers are going full tilt tonight.

“I’ll get you your clothing, Darrow. Dancer and I want to have dinner

with you to celebrate. Evey will clean you up.”

She leaves me alone with Evey. Today, as always, her face is as quiet as

the snow I’ve seen on the HC. I watch her in the mirror as she cuts my hair.

The room is dark but for the light over the mirror. It shines from above, so

she looks like an angel. Innocent and pure. But she’s not innocent, not pure.

She’s a Pink. They breed them for pleasure, for the curves of their breasts

and hips, for the tautness of their stomachs and the plump folds of their lips.

Yet she is a girl and her spark has not yet gone out. I remember the last time

I failed to protect one like her.

And me? It’s hard to look at myself in the mirror. I’m what I know the

devil to be. I am arrogance and cruelty, the sort of man who killed my wife.

I am Gold. And I am as cold as it.

My eyes shine like ingots. My skin is soft and rich. My bones are

stronger. I feel the density in my lean torso. When Evey is done cutting the

golden hair, she stands back and stares at me. I can feel her fear, and I suffer

it in myself. I am no longer a human. Physically, I’ve become something

more.

“You’re beautiful,” Evey says quietly, touching my golden Sigils.

They’re much smaller than her feather wings. The circle is set in the center

of each hand’s backside. Wings swoop back along the flesh, curving like

scythes up the sides of my wristbones.

I look at Evey’s white wings and know how ugly she must think them to

be on her back, how she must hate them. I want to say something kind to

her. I want to make her smile, if she can. I would tell her that she is

beautiful, but she’s lived a life of men saying that for some gain or another.

She wouldn’t believe a boy like me. And I don’t believe her words to me.

Eo was beautiful. I still remember the flush of blood in her cheeks as she

danced. She had all the raw colors of life, the crude beauty of nature. I am

the human concept of beauty. Gold made soft and supple into man’s form.

Evey kisses the top of my head before darting away and leaving me alone

to watch the HC in the mirror’s reflection. I did not notice her slip a feather

from her wings into my breast pocket.

I’m tired of watching the HC. I know their history now and I’m learning

more every day. But I’m tired of being inside, tired of listening to Mickey’s

club thump its music and smelling the minty leaves he smokes. Tired of

seeing the girls he brings into his family only to sell away when someone

bids high enough. Tired of seeing all the full eyes go hollow. This is not

Lykos. There is no love, no family or trust. This place is sick.

“My boy, you look fit to captain a fleet of torchShips,” Mickey says from

the door. He slides in, smelling like his burners. His spindly fingers take

Evey’s feather from my breast pocket and roll it back and forth over his

knuckles. He taps the feather to each of my golden Sigils. “Wings are my

favorite. Aren’t they yours? They go to mankind’s better aspirations.”

He comes up behind me as I sit staring into the mirror. His hands go to

my shoulders and he speaks down at my head, resting his chin upon it as

though I am his property. It’s easy to see he thinks I am. My left hand goes

to the Sigil on my right, lingering there.

“I told you you were brilliant. Now it’s your time to fly.”

“You give the girls wings, but you don’t let them fly. Do you?” I ask.

“It’s impossible to make them fly . They are simpler things than you. And

I can’t afford to buy a license to have gravBoots. So they dance for me.

Their bones aren’t hollow like birdies’, you see,” Mickey explains. “There

was one I made hollow, Navia. But you know what’s what? Didn’t fly .

Don’t have the physics for it. But you, you’ll fly , won’t you, my brilliant

boy?”

I stare at him but say nothing. His lips slice into a smile because I

unnerve him. I always have. “You’re frightened of me,” I tell him.

He laughs. “Am I? Oho! Am I now, my boy?”

“Yes. You’re used to knowing what’s what. You think like the rest of

them.” I nod to the HC’s reflection. “Things are set in stone. Things are well

ordered. Reds at the bottom, everyone else standing on our backs. Now

you’re looking at me and you’re realizing that we don’t bloodydamn like it

down there. Red is rising, Mickey.”

“Oh, you’ve got far to go ...”

I reach up and grab his wrists so that he cannot move. He stares at me in

the mirror’s reflection, struggling against my hold. Nothing is stronger than

a Helldiver’s grip. I smile into the mirror, locking my golden eyes with his

violet ones. He smells like fear. Primal terror. Like a mouse cornered by a

lion.

“Be kind to Evey, Mickey. Don’t make her dance. Give her a plush life or

I’ll come back to pull your hands off your body.”

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13

Bad Things

Matteo is tall wisp of a Pink with long limbs and a lean, beautiful face. He

is a slave. Or was a slave for carnal pleasures. Yet he walks like a water

lord. Beauty in his step. Manners and grace in the wave of his hand. He has

a penchant for wearing gloves and sniffing at even the smallest bit of dirt.

Body maintenance has been his life’s purpose.. So he doesn’t find it strange

when he helps me apply a hair follicle killer to my arms, legs, torso, and

privates. But I do. When we’re done, we’re both cursing—me from the

sting, him from the punch I threw at his shoulder. I accidentally dislocated it

just by punching it. I still don’t know my own strength. And they do make

their Pinks fragile. If he is the rose, I am the thorns.

“Bald as a toddler, you frenetic little baby,” Matteo sighs as properly as

one can say such a thing. “Just as the newest Luna fashion requires. Now,

with a bit of eyebrow sculpting—oh, how your brows are like fungus-

nibbling caterpillars—and nose-hair eradication, cuticle readjustment, teeth

whitening on those slick new chompers—which, if I may say, are yellow as

mustard dappled with dandelions ... tell me, have you ever brushed your

new teeth?—and blackhead removal (which shall be like probing for

helium-3), toner adjustment, and melatonin injections, and you’ll be prim

and rose proper–ish.”

I snort at the foolishness of it all. “I already look like a Gold.”

“You look like a Bronze! A fool’s Gold! One of the lowbred bastards who

looks more khaki than Gold. You must be perfect.”

“You’re a bloodydamn odd lark, Matteo.”

He smacks me. “Mind yourself! A Golden would rather die than use that

slithering mineslang. ‘Gorydamn’ or ‘gory’; and ‘slag’ instead of ‘squab.’

Every time you say ‘bloody’ or ‘bloodydamn,’ I will smack not your gob,

but your mouth. And if you say ‘squab’ or ‘gob,’ I will kick you in the

scrotum—which I do know my way around—as I will do if you do not get

rid of that horrible accent. You sound like you were born in a gorydamn

dumpster.”

He frowns and sets his hands on his narrow hips.

“And then we’ll have to teach you manners. And culture, culture,

goodman.”

“I have manners.”

“By the maker, we are so, so going to have to make you forswear that

brogue as well as the cursing.

He pokes me as he lists out my flaws.

“Might try adopting some manners of your own, buttboy,” I growl.

He pulls off one of my gloves and slaps me across the face and takes

bottle in hand and holds it to my throat. I laugh.

“You’ll have to get your Helldiver reflexes back soon to go with that

gawky new body.”

I eye the bottle.

“Going to poke me to death?”

“It is a polyenne sword, goodman. A razor, in other words. One moment

it is soft as hair, but with an organic impulse, it turns harder than diamond.

It is the only thing that will cut through a pulseShield. One moment a whip,

the next moment a perfect sword. It is the weapon of a gentleman. A Gold.

For any other Color to carry it is death.”

“It is a bottle, you daft—”

He jams me in the throat so that I gag.

“And it was your manners that forced me to draw my razor and challenge

you, thereby precipitously ending your impudent life. You may have fought

with fists for honor in that hovel you called home. You were a bug then. An

ant. An Aureate fights with a blade at the slightest provocation. They have

honor the likes of which you know nothing about. Your honor was personal;

theirs is personal, familial, and planetary. That is all. They fight for higher

stakes, and they do not forgive when the bloodletting is done. Least of all

the Peerless Scarred. Manners, goodman. Manners will protect you until

you can protect yourself from my shampoo bottle.”

“Matteo ...,” I say, rubbing my throat.

“Yes?” he sighs.

“What is shampoo?”

Another stint in Mickey’s carving room might have been preferable to

Matteo’s tutelage. At least Mickey was afraid of me. Matteo is all insults

and jibes, which I wouldn’t mind if I could hit the scrawny man, but if I did,

I know I might break him. Yet for all his insults, I don’t dislike him. He

reminds me of Loran, what with his wit and energy, only supplied with

Uncle Narol’s grumbling attitude. I miss them both.

The next morning Dancer tries to rename me.

“You will be the son of a relatively unknown family from the far asteroid

clusters. Soon, the family will be dead in a shipping accident. You will be

the lone survivor and the only heir to their debts and poor status. His name,

your name, will be Caius au Andromedus.”

“Slag that,” I reply. “I will be Darrow or I will be nothing.”

He scratches his head. “Darrow is an ... odd name.”

“You have made me give up the hair Father gave me, the eyes Mother left

me, the Color I was born to, so I will keep the name they granted me, and

you can make it work.”

“I liked it better when you didn’t act like a Gold,” Dancer grumbles.

“Now, the key to dining like an Aureate is to eat slowly,” Matteo says as we

sit together at a table in the penthouse where Dancer first showed me the

world. “You will find yourself subjected to many Trimalchian feasts. On

such occasions, there will be seven courses—appetizer, soup, fish, meat,

salad, dessert, and libations.”

He gestures to a small tray laden with silverware and explains the various

methods for eating with each.

Then he tells me, “If you must urinate or defecate during the meal, you

hold it in. Controlling one’s bodily functions is expected of an Aureate.”

“So these namby-pamby Goldbrows aren’t allowed to shit? And when

they do, I wonder, does it come out gold?”

Matteo slaps my cheek with his glove. “If you’re so eager to see red

again, let your tongue slip in their presence, goodman, and they’ll be happy

to remind you what color all men bleed. Manners and control! You have

neither.” He shakes his head. “Now, tell me what this fork is used for.”

I want to tell him it’s used for picking his arse, but I sigh and give him

the correct answer. “Fish, but only if the bones are still in the dish.”

“And how much of this fish are you to eat?”

“All of it,” I guess.

“No!” he cries. “Were you even listening?” His small hands clutch his

hair and he takes a deep breath. “Must I remind you? There are Bronzies,

There are Golds. And there are Pixies.”

He leaves the rest for me to finish.

“Pixies have no self-control,” I remember aloud. “They take in all the

treats of power, but do pissall to merit them. They are born and they chase

pleasure. Righto?”

“Prime, not righto. Now what is expected of a Gold? Of a Peerless

Scarred?”

“Perfection.”

“Which means?”

My voice is cold as I mimic a Gold’s accent. “It means control, goodman.

Self-control. I am permitted to indulge in vices so long as I never permit

them to usurp control. If there is a key to understanding Aureates, it is

found in understanding control in all its forms. Eat the fish, leave twenty

percent to indicate its deliciousness did not overpower my resolve or make

slaves of my tastebuds.”

“So you were listening after all.”

Dancer finds me the next day as I practice my Aureate accent in the

penthouse’s holomirror. I can see a three-dimensional depiction of my head

in front of me. The teeth move strangely, catching my tongue as I try to roll

my words. I am still becoming used to my body, even months after the last

of the surgeries. My teeth are larger than I initially thought them. It also

doesn’t help that the Goldbrows speak as though they’ve had golden

shovels stuck up their bloodydamn stinkholes. So I find it easier to speak

like one if I see that I am one. The arrogance comes easier.

“Soften your r’s,” Dancer tells me. He sits attentively as I read from a

datapad. “Pretend as though there is an h in front of each one.” His burner

reminds me of home and I remember how ArchGovernor Augustus seemed

in Lykos. I remember the man’s serenity. His patient condescension. His

smirk. “Elongate the l’s.”

“Is that all the strength you have?” I say into the mirror.

“Perfect,” Dancer praises with a humorous shiver. He claps his good

hand on his knee.

“Soon I’ll be dreaming like I’m a bloodydamn Goldbrow too,” I say in

disgust.

“You shouldn’t say ‘bloodydamn.’ Say ‘gory’ or ‘gorydamn’ instead.”

I glare at him. “If I saw myself on the street, I would hate me. I would

want to take a slingBlade and carve me from pucker to stinker and then

burn the remains. Eo would puke to look at me.”

“You’re young still,” Dancer laughs. “God, I sometimes forget how

young.” He takes a flask out of his boot and downs some before tossing it to

me.

I laugh. “Last time I drank, Uncle Narol drugged me.” I take a drink.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten what the mines are like. I’m not young.”

Dancer frowns. “I didn’t mean to insult, Darrow. It’s just you understand

what you’re to do. You understand why you’re to do it. But you still lose

perspective and judge yourself. Right now you probably get sick looking at

your golden self. Righto?”

“Righto there.” I drink deep from the flask.

“But you’re only playing a part, Darrow.” He twitches his fin ger and a

hooked blade slips from the ring on his finger . My reflexes are back and

quick enough that I might have shoved it up into his throat if I thought he

meant me harm, but I let him swipe the blade across my index finger. Blood

wells out. Red blood. “Just in case you need reminding what you really

are.”

“Smells like home,” I say, sucking on the finger . “Mum used to make

blood soup out of the pitvipers. Not half bad to the truth of it.”

“You dip flaxbread in it and sprinkle in okrablossom?”

“How’d you know?” I ask.

“My mum did the same,” Dancer laughs. “We’d have it at Dancetide, or

before the Laureltide when they’d announce the winner. Always squabbing

Gamma.”

“Here’s to Gamma.” I laugh and finish another swig.

Dancer watches me. The smile eventually slips from his face and his eyes

grow cold. “Matteo’s to teach you to dance tomorrow.”

“Thought you’d be the one doing that,” I say.

He thumps his bad leg. “Been a while since I’ve done that. Best dancer in

Oikos. I could move like a deeptunnel draft. All our best dancers were

Helldivers. I was one for several years, you know.”

“I figured.”

“Did you, now?”

I gesture to his scars. “Only a Helldiver would be bit so many times

without drillBoys around to help pull the vipers off. Been bitten too. Got a

bigger heart for it, at least.”

He nods and his eyes go distant. “Fell into a nest when fixing to repair a

nodule on the clawDrill. They were up in one of the ducts and I didn’t see

them. They were the dangerous kind.”

I see where he’s going with this. “They were babies,” I say.

He nods.

“They have less venom. Much less than their parents, so they weren’t

burrowers bent on laying eggs inside of me. But when they bit, they used all

the evil in them. Fortunately, we had antivenom with us. Traded some

Gammas for it.” In Lykos we had no antivenom.

He leans toward me.

“We’re tossing you into a nest of baby vipers, Darrow. Mark that.

Admissions testing is three months from now. I will be tutoring you in

conjunction with your lessons from Matteo now. But if you do not quit

judging yourself, if you continue to hate your guise, then you will fail the

test or worse—you will pass it and then slip up and be found out while at

the Institute. And everything will be squabbed.”

I shift in my seat. For once, there’s another fear in me—not of becoming

something Eo would not recognize, but a more primal fear, a mortal fear of

my enemies. What will they be like? I already see their sneers, their

contempt.

“Doesn’t matter if they find me out.” I clap Dancer’s knee. “They’ve

taken what they can from me already. That is why I am a weapon you can

use.”

“Wrong,” Dancer snaps. “You’re of use because you’re more than a

weapon. When your wife died, she didn’t just give you a vendetta. She gave

you her dream. You’re its keeper. It’s maker. So don’t be spitting anger and

hate. You’re not fighting against them, no matter what Harmony says.

You’re fighting for Eo’s dream, for your family that is still alive, your

people.”

“Is that Ares’s opinion? I mean, is it yours?”

“I am not Ares,” Dancer repeats. I don’t believe him. I’ve seen the way

his men look at him, how even Harmony pays him deference. “Look into

yourself, Darrow, and you’ll realize that you are a good man who will have

to do bad things.”

My hands are unscarred and feel strange when I clench them till the

knuckles turn that familiar shade of white.

“See. That’s what I don’t get. If I am a good man, then why do I want to

do bad things?”

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14

Andromedus

Matteo cannot teach me to dance. He shows me what each of the five form

dances of the Aureate looks like and we are through. More emphasis is put

on your partner in Gold dances than the dances my uncle taught me, but the

movements are similar. I perform all five with greater skill than he can

manage. To show off, I blindfold myself and perform each dance again in

succession without music, by memory. Uncle Narol taught me to dance, and

with a thousand nights of filling time with nothing but dance and song, I am

masterful in recording the motions of my body, even this new body. It can

do things my old one could not. The muscle fibers contract differently, the

tendons stretch further, the nerves fire faster. There’s a sweet burn in the

muscles as I flow through the movements.

One dance, the Polemides, has a nostalgic feel. Matteo has me hold a

baton as I move about in swirling steps, baton arm outstretched as though

fighting with a razor. Even as my body moves, I hear the echoes of the past.

I feel the vibrations of the mine, the scent of my clan. I have seen this dance

before, and I perform it better than all the others. It is a dance my body is

made for, one so very similar to the illegal Reaping Dance.

When I finish, Matteo is angry.

“Is this some sort of game?” he snarls.

“What do you mean?”

He glares at me and taps his foot. “You have never been beyond the

mines?”

“You know that answer,” I reply.

“You have never fought with a sword or shield?”

“Yes. I have. I’ve also captained starcruisers and dined with Praetors.” I

laugh and ask what this is about.

“This is no game, Darrow.”

“Did I say it was?” I’m confused. What did I do to provoke him? I make

a mistake in laughing to relieve the tension.

“You laugh? Boy, this is the Society with which you tangle. And you

laugh? They are not some distant idea. They are cold reality. If they find out

who you are, they will not hang you.” His face looks lost as he says it. As

though he knows only too well.

“I know this.”

He ignores me. “The Obsidians will catch you and give you to the Whites

and they will take you to their dark cells and they will torture you. They

will pull out your eyes and cut away anything that makes you a man. They

have more sophisticated methods, but I wager information won’t be their

only aim; they have chemicals for that if they want. Soon after you tell them

everything, they will kill me, Harmony, Dancer. And they will kill your

family with fleshPeelers and stomp on the heads of your nieces and

nephews. These are the things they don’t put on the HC. These are the

consequences when the rulers of planets are your enemies. Planets, boy.”

I feel a chill creep into my bones. I know these things. Why does he keep

hammering me with them? I’m already frightened. I don’t want to be, but I

am. My task is swallowing me whole.

“So I ask you again, are you who Dancer says you are?”

I pause. Ah. I assumed that trust ran deep with the Sons of Ares, that they

were of one mind. Here is a crack, a division. Matteo is Dancer’s ally, but

not a friend. Something in my dancing made him think twice. Then I realize

it. He did not see Mickey carve me. He is taking this all on faith that I was

once a Red, and how difficult that must be. Something in my dancing made

him think I was born to this. Something to do with that last dance, the one

called the Polemides.

“I am Darrow, son of Dale, Lambda’s Helldiver of Lykos. I have never

been anyone else, Matteo.”

He crosses his arms. “If you are lying to me ...”

“I do not lie to Reds.”

Later that evening, I research the dances I performed. Polemides is Greek

for “child of war.” It is the dance that reminded me so much of Uncle

Narol’s dances. It is the Gold’s dance of war, the one they teach children

when they are young to prepare them for the motions of martial warfare and

the use of the razor. I watch a holo of Golds in battle, and my heart falls into

my stomach. They fight like a summer song. Not like the thunderous,

monstrous Obsidians. But like birds banking into a fresh wind. They fight in

pairs, swerving, dancing, killing, ripping through a field of Obsidian and

Gray as though they were at play with scythes and all the bodies that fell to

them were like stalks of grain that sprayed blood instead of sallow chaff.

Their golden armor shines. Their razors flash. They are gods, not men.

And I mean to destroy them?

I sleep poorly in my bed of silk that night. Long after kissing Eo’s

haemanthus blossom, I fall asleep and dream of my father and what it

would have been like to have known him into manhood, to have learned to

dance from him instead of from his drunken brother. I clutch the scarlet

headband in my hand as I wake. Holding it as dearly as I clutch my

wedding band. All those things that remind me of home.

Yet they are not enough.

I am afraid.

Dancer finds me at my morning breakfast.

“You’ll be happy to know, our hackers have spent two weeks hacking

into the Board of Quality Control’s cloud to change Caius au Andromedus’s

name to Darrow au Andromedus.”

“Good.”

“That’s all you have to say? Do you know how much ... never mind.” He

shakes his head and gives a chuckle. “Darrow. It is so offColor. There will

be raised eyebrows.”

I shrug to conceal my fear. “So I’ll butcher their gorydamn test and

they’ll care less than a lick.”

“Spoken like a Gold.”

The next day, Matteo takes me by ship to the stables of Ishtar, not far

from Yorkton. It’s a place by the sea, where green fields stretch over rolling

hills.. I’ve never been in so wide a place. I’ve never seen the land curve

away from me. Never seen a true horizon or animals so terrifying as the

beasts Matteo arranged for our lesson. They stomp and stamp and snort,

flicking their tails and baring their monstrous yellow teeth. Horses. I’ve

always been scared of horses, despite Eo’s story of Andromeda.

“They’re monsters,” I whisper to Matteo.

“Nevertheless,” he whispers back, “it is the gentleman’s way. You must

ride well, lest you find yourself embarrassed in some formal situation.”

I look at the other Golds riding past. There are only three at the stables

today, each accompanied by a servant like Matteo, Pinks and Browns.

“A situation like this one?” I hiss at him. “Fine. Fine.” I point to a

massive black stallion with hooves that paw the ground. “I’ll take that

beast.”

Matteo smiles. “This one is more your speed.”

Matteo gives me a pony. A big pony, but a pony. There is no social

interaction here; the other riders trot past and tip their heads to say good

day, but that is all. So their smiles are enough for me to know how

ridiculous I look. I do not take to riding well. And I take to it even more

poorly when my pony bolts as Matteo and I navigate a path into a copse of

trees. Out the other side of the copse, I jump off the creature and land deftly

in the grass. Someone laughs in the distance, a girl with long hair. She rides

the stallion I pointed to earlier.

“Maybe you ought to stick to the city, Pixie,” she shouts at me, then kicks

her horse away. I rise from my knee and watch her ride into the distance.

Her hair spills out behind her, more golden than the setting sun.

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15

The Testing

My test comes after two months of training my mind with Dancer. I do not

memorize. I do not even really learn when with him. Instead, his training is

designed to help my mind adapt to paradigm shifts. For instance, if gravity

were suddenly reversed, most brains would be unable to comprehend or

adjust to the shift in paradigms. Mine processes, digests, and calculates.

Another example: If a fish has 3,453 scales on its left side and 3,453 on its

right side, which side of the fish has the most scales? The outside. They call

it extrapolational thinking. It was how I knew that I should eat the scythe

card when I first met Dancer. I am very good at it.

I find it ironic that Dancer and his friends can create a fake history for

me, a fake family, a fake life, but they cannot fake my admittance test. So,

three months after my training begins, I take the test in a bright room next

to a noisy mouse of a Goldbrow girl who incessantly taps her stylus on a

jade bracelet. She may be part of the test for all I know. When she’s not

looking, I snatch the stylus from her fingers and hide it down my sleeve. I

am a Helldiver of Lykos. So yes, I can steal a stupid girl’s stylus without her

knowing anything about it. She gawks around as if magic has been done.

Then she begins to whine. They don’t give her another stylus, so she runs

out in tears. Afterwards, the Penny Proctor looks at his datapad and rewinds

a video from a nanoCamera. He looks at me and smiles. Such traits are

apparently admirable.

A Golden razor blade of a girl disagrees and sneers “Cutter” in my ear as

she slices past me in the hall outside. Matteo told me not to speak to anyone

because I am not yet ready to socialize, so I barely bite back a very Red

reply. Her words linger. Cutter. Cutthroat. Machiavellian. Ruthless. They all

describe what she thinks of me. Funny thing is, most Golds would see the

term as an accolade.

A musical voice addresses me.

“I think she actually just paid you a compliment. So don’t mind her.

She’s pretty as a peach, but she’s all rotten inside. I took a bite once, if you

catch my flow . Tasty, then putrid. Fantastic grab in there, by the bye. I was

about to rip that ninny’s eyes from her skull myself. Damnable tapping!”

The shining voice comes from a young man torn from Greek verse.

Arrogance and beauty drip off of him. Impeccable breeding. I’ve never seen

a smile so wide and white, skin so smooth and lustrous. He’s all I despise.

He claps me on the shoulder and grasps my hand in one of the several

ways of semiformal introduction. I squeeze slightly. He has a firm grip too,

but when he tries to establish dominance, I squeeze his hand till he jerks it

back. A flash of worry in his eyes.

“By God, your hand is like a vise!” he chuckles. He calls himself Cassius

very quickly, and I’m lucky he gives me little time to speak, because his

brow wrinkles when I do. My accent is still not perfect.

“Darrow,” he repeats. “Well, that’s quite the offColor name. Ah ...” He

looks at his datapad, pulling up my personal history. “Well, you come from

no one at all. A farplanet hayseed. No wonder Antonia sneered your way.

But listen, I’ll forgive you for it if you tell me how you fared on the test.”

“Oh, you’ll forgive me?”

His brows knit together. “I’m trying to be kind here. We Bellonas aren’t

reformers, but we know that good men can come from low origins. Work

with me, mate.”

Because of the way he looks, I feel a need to provoke him.

“Well, I daresay I expected the test to be more difficult. I might have

missed the one about the candle, but besides that ...”

Cassius watches me with a forgiving grin. His lively eyes dance over my

face as I wonder if his mother coils his hair with golden irons in the

morning.

“With hands like yours, you must be a terror with the razor,” he says

leadingly.

“I’m fair,” I lie. Matteo won’t let me touch the thing.

“Modesty! Were you raised by the Whitecowls, man? Never mind, I’m

off to Agea after the physical tests. Join me? I hear the Carvers have done

some splendid work with the new ladies at Temptation. And they just had

gravfloors installed at Tryst; we can float about without gravBoots. What

say you, man? Does that interest you?” He taps one of his wings and winks.

“Plenty of peaches there. None of them rotten.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot.”

“Oh.” He jumps as if just remembering I’m a farplanet hayseed. “Don’t

worry about it, my goodman, I’ll pay and all that.”

I politely decline, but he’s already moving on. He taps my datapad before

he leaves. The holoscreen cast over the inside my left arm flickers. The

dimensions of his face and information about our conversation are left

behind—the address for the clubs he spoke of, the encyclopedic reference

for Agea, and his family’s information. Cassius au Bellona, it reads. Son of

Praetor Tiberius au Bellona, Imperator of the Society’s Sixth Fleet and

perhaps the only man on Mars to rival ArchGovernor Augustus in power.

Apparently the families hate one another. Seems like they have a nasty

habbit of killing each other off. Baby pitvipers indeed.

I thought I would be frightened of these people. I thought they would be

little godlings. But aside from Cassius and Antonia, many are unimpressive.

There are only seventy in my testing room. Some look like Cassius. But not

all are beautiful. Not all are tall and imperious. And very few strike me as

men and women. For all their physical stature, they are children with

exaggerated senses of self-worth; they don’t know hardship. Babies. Pixies

and Bronzies, mostly.

They test my physical properties next. I sit naked in an airchair in a white

room as the Copper testers of the Quality Control Board watch me through

nanoCams. “Hope you’re getting a good look,” I say.

A Brown worker comes in and applies a pinch to my nose. His eyes are

blank. No fight in this one, no contempt for me. His skin is pallid and his

movements awkward and clumsy.

I am instructed to hold my breath as long as my lungs will allow. Ten

minutes. Afterwards, the Red removes the clamp and leaves. Next, I’m to

take a breath and exhale. I do and realize there is suddenly no oxygen in the

chamber. When I start to tilt in my seat, the oxygen returns. They freeze the

room and measure how long it takes for me to shiver uncontrollably. Then

they heat it to see when my heart begins to struggle. They amplify the grav

in the room till my heart can’t push sufficient blood and oxygen to my

brain. Then they see how much motion I can take till I vomit. I’m used to

riding a ninety-meter drill, so they have to give up.

Once I’m good and ready to kill whoever is at the switch of this little hell

chamber, they send in Brown attendants to slip me into a biometric suit and

guide me to a gymnasium. There they measure the flow of oxygen to my

muscles, the beats of my heart, the density and length of my muscle fibers,

the tensile ratings of my bones. All this after I’ve sprinted a few laps and

climbed a rock wall against highGrav. It’s like a walk in the park after my

hell with Harmony.

They have me throw balls, then line me up against a wall and ask me to

stop small balls that they shoot at me with a circular machine. My Helldiver

hands are faster than their machine, so they bring in a Green techie to adjust

the thing till it’s shooting veritable rockets. Eventually, I’m hit with a ball in

the forehead. I black out briefly. They measure that too.

An eye, ear, nose, and mouth test later and I am done. I feel vaguely

distant from myself after the test. Like they measured my body and my

brain but not me. I’ve had no personal interactions except that one with

Cassius. The whole thing felt very cold, very institutionalized.

I stumble into the locker rooms, sore and confused. There’s a couple

others changing, so I take my clothes and move along to a more discreet

section of the long rows of plastic lockers. Then I hear a strange whistling.

A tune I know. One that echoes through my dreams. The one Eo died to. I

follow the sound and come upon a girl changing in the corner of the locker

room. Her back is to me, muscles lean as she dons her shirt. I make a noise.

She turns suddenly, and for an awkward moment, I stand there blushing.

Golds are not supposed to care about nudity. But I can’t help my reaction.

She’s beautiful—heart-shaped face, full lips, eyes that laugh at you. They

laugh like they did as she rode away on the horse. It’s the same girl who

called me a Pixie when I rode the pony.

One of her eyebrows arches upward. I don’t know what to say, so, in a

panic, I turn and walk fast as I can out of the locker rooms.

A Gold wouldn’t have done that. But as I sit with Matteo on the shuttle as

it ferries us from Yorkton back home to Towton, I remember the girl’s face.

She blushed too.

It is a short fligh t, not long enough. I watch Mars through the duroglass

floor . Though the planet is terraformed, vegetation is sparse along our

flightplath. The planet’s surface is streaked with ribbons of green in its

valleys and around her equator. The vegetation looking like green scars that

cut across her pocked surface. I’ve taken virtual tours of the planet nearly

every day since I received my golden eyes.

Water fills her impact craters, creating grand lakes. And the Borealis

basin, which stretches across the northern hemisphere, brims with fresh

water and teams with bizarre marine life. Great plains where dust devils

gather cloaks of topsoil and tear through croplands. Storms and ice rule the

poles where the Obsidians train and live. The weather there is said to be

brutal and cold, though temperate climes are prevalent throughout much of

Mars’s surface now.

There are one thousand cities on Mars, each ruled by a Governor, the

ArchGovernor presiding over all. Each city is set in the center of a hundred

mining colonies. The Governors manages these colonies, with the

individual MineMagistrates like Podginus managing the day-to-day. The

citadel of the ArchGovernor is located in Agea, in the Valles Marineris—the

largest canyon in the Solar System.

With so many mines and so many cities, it was chance, I suppose, that

brought the ArchGovernor to my home with his camera crew. Chance and

my position as a Helldiver. They wanted to make an example out of me; Eo

was an afterthought. And she would not have sung if the ArchGovernor had

not been there. Life’s ironies are not charming.

“What will the Institute be like if I get in?” I ask Matteo as I peer out the

window.

“Full of classes, I imagine. How should I know?”

“Is there no intel?”

“No.”

“No?” I ask.

“Well, some, I suppose,” Matteo admits. “Three sorts of people graduate:

the Peerless Scarred, the Graduates, and the Shamed. The Peerless can

ascend in society; the Graduates can as well, but their prospects are

relatively limited and they still must earn their scars; and the Shamed are

sent to the distant, hard colonies like Pluto to oversee the first years of

terraforming.”

“How does one become a Peerless?”

“I imagine there is some sort of ranking system; perhaps a competition. I

do not know. But the Golds are a species of built upon conquest. It would

make sense if that were to be part of your competition.”

“How vague.” I sigh. “You’re as helpful as a legless dog sometimes.”

“I will explain.”

“No one is gorywell stopping you.”

“The game, goodman, in Gold society is patronage. Your actions in the

Institute will serve as an extended audition for that patronage. You need an

apprenticeship. You need a powerful benefactor.” He grins. “So if you want

to help our cause, you’ll do as bloodydamn well as you can. Imagine if you

became an apprentice to a Praetor. In ten years time, you could be a Praetor

yourself. You could have a fleet! Imagine what you could do with a fleet,

my goodman. Just imagine.”

Matteo never speaks about such flights of fancy, so the excitement in his

eyes in contagious. It makes me imagine.

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OceanofPDF

16

The Institute

My test results come when I am practicing my cultural recognition and

accent modulation with Matteo in our high-rise penthouse. We have a view

of the city, the setting sun behind. I’m midway through a clever retort about

the Yorkton Supernova fauxWar sports club when my datapad beeps with a

priority message sent to my datapad stream. I almost spill my coffee.

“My datapad has been slaved by another,” I said. “It’s the Board of

Quality Control.”

Matteo shoots up from his chair. “We have perhaps four minutes.” He

runs into the suite’s library, where Harmony is reading on an ergocouch.

She jumps up and is down and out of the suite in less than three breaths. I

make sure that the holopictures of me with my fake family are arranged in

my bedroom and throughout the penthouse. Four hired servants—Browns

and a Pink—go about domestic tasks in the penthouse. They wear the

Pegasus livery of my fake family.

One of the Browns goes to the kitchen. The other, a Pink woman,

massages my shoulders. Matteo shines my shoes in my room. Of course

there are machines to do these things, but an Aureate would never use a

machine for something a person could do. There is no power in that.

The towncraft appears like a distant dragonfly. It grows as it buzzes

closer and hovers outside my penthouse window. Its boarding door slides

open and a man in a Copper suit gives a bow of formality. I let my datapad

open the duroglass window and the man floats in. Three Whites are with

him. Each has a white Sigil upon their hands. Members of the Academians

and a Copper bureaucrat.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing one Darrow au Andromedus, son

of the recently deceased Linus au Andromedus and Lexus au

Andromedus?”

“You have the honor.”

The bureaucrat looks me up and down in a very deferential, but impatient

manner. “I am Bondilus cu Tancrus of the Institute’s Board of Quality

Control. There are some questions we must beg to ask of you.”

We sit across from one another at my oak kitchen table. There, they hook

my fing er to a machine and one of the Whites dons a pair of glasses that

will analyze my pupils and other physiological reactions. They will be able

to tell if I am lying.

“We will start with a control question to assess your normal reaction

when telling truths. Are you of the Family Andromedus?”

“Yes.”

“Are you of the Aureate genus?”

“Yes.” I lie through my teeth, ruining their control questions.

“Did you cheat in your admissions test two months prior?”

“No.”

“Did you use nervenucleic to stimulate high comprehension and

analytical functions during the test itself?”

“No.”

“Did you use a networkWidget to aggregate or synthesize outside

resources in real time?”

“No.” I sigh impatiently. “There was a jammer in the room, ergo it would

have been impossible. I’m glad you’ve done your research and are not

wasting my time, Copper.”

His smile is bureaucratic.

“Did you have prior knowledge of the questions?”

“No.” I deem an angry response proper at this point. “And what is this

about? I’m not accustomed to being called a liar by someone of your ilk.”

“It is procedure with all elite scorers, lord Aureate. I beg your

understanding,” the bureaucrat drones. “Any upward outlier far removed

from the standard deviation is subject to inquiry. Did you slave your widget

to that of another individual during the test?”

“No. As I said, there was a jammer. Thank you for keeping up,

pennyhead.”

They take a sample of my blood and scan my brain. The results are

instantaneous, but the bureaucrat will not share them. “Protocol,” he

reminds me. “You will have your results in two weeks.”

We receive them in four. I pass the Quality Control examination. I did not

cheat. Then comes my exam score, two months after I took the damn thing,

and I realize why they thought I did cheat. I missed one question. Just one.

Out of hundreds. When I share the results with Dancer, Harmony, and

Matteo, they simply stare at me. Dancer falls into a chair and begins to

laugh; it’s an hysterical sort.

“Bloodyhell,” he swears. “We’ve done it.”

“He did it,” Matteo corrects.

It takes Dancer a minute before he has wits enough to fetch a bottle of

champagne, but I still feel his eyes watching me as though I am something

different, something strange. It’s like they suddenly don’t understand what

it is they have created. I touch the haemanthus blossom in my pocket and

feel the wedding band around my neck. They didn’t create me. She did.

It is when a valet arrives to escort me to the Institute that I say my

goodbyes to Dancer inside the penthouse. He holds tight to my hand as we

shake and gives me the look my father gave me before he was hanged. It’s

one of reassurance. But behind that is worry and doubt. Did he prepare me

for the world? Did he do his duty? My father was twenty-five when he

looked at me like that. Dancer is forty-one. It makes no difference. I

chuckle. Uncle Narol never gave me such a look, not even when he let me

cut Eo down. Probably because he’d taken enough of my right hooks to

know the answer. But if I think about my teachers, my fathers, Uncle Narol

shaped me the most. He taught me to dance; he taught me how to be a man,

perhaps because he knew this would be my future. And though he tried to

stop me from being a Helldiver, it was his lessons that kept me alive. I’ve

learned new lessons now. Let’s hope they do the trick.

Dancer gives me the knifeRing he used to slice my finger months before.

But he’s reshaped it to look like an L.

“They will think it the chevron the Spartans bore on their shields,” he

said. “L for Lacadaemonia.” But it is for Lykos. For Lambda.

Harmony surprises me by taking my right hand, kissing where once my

Red Sigil was emblazoned. She’s got tears in one eye, the cold, unscarred

eye. The other cannot cry.

“Evey will be coming to live with us,” she tells me. She smiles before I

can ask why. It looks strange on her face. “You think you’re the only one

who notices things? We’ll give her a better life than Mickey would.”

Matteo and I share a smile and a bow. We exchange proper honorifics and

he extends his hand. It doesn’t grasp mine. Instead, it snatches the flower

from my pocket. I reach after it, but he’s still the only man I’ve ever met

who is faster than me.

“You cannot take this with you, goodman The wedding band on your

hand is queer enough. The flower is too much.”

“Give me a petal then,” I say.

“I thought you would ask for that.” He pulls out a necklace. It is the Sigil

of Andromedus. My Sigil, I remember. It is golden. He drops it in my hand.

“Whisper her name.” I do and the Pegasus unfurls like a haemanthus bud.

He sets a petal in the center. It closes again. “This is your heart. Then guard

it with metal.”

“Thank you, Matteo,” I say, tears in my eyes. I pick him up and hug him

despite his protests. “If I live more than a week, I’ll have you to thank, my

goodman.” He blushes when I set him down.

“Manage your temper,” he reminds me, his small voice darkening.

“Manners, manners, then burn their bloodydamn house to the ground.”

I clutch the Pegasus in my hand as the shuttle crosses over the Martian

countryside. Fingers of green stretch over the earth I’ve lived to dig. I

wonder who the Helldiver of Lambda is now. Loran is too young. Barlow is

too old. Kieran? He’s too responsible. He’s got children to love, and he’s

seen enough of our family die. There’s no fire in his belly. Leanna’s got

enough, but women aren’t allowed to dig. It is probably Dain, Eo’s brother.

Wild, but not bright. The typical Helldiver. He’ll die fast. The thought

makes me nauseous.

It’s not just the thought. I’m nervous. I realize it slowly as I look around

the shuttle’s interior. Six other youths sit quietly. One, a slender boy with an

open gaze and pretty smile, catches my eye. He’s the sort who still laughs at

butterflies.

“Julian,” he declares properly, and takes my forearm. We have no data to

offer each other through our datapads; they took them when we boarded the

shuttle. So instead I offer him the seat across from me. “Darrow, a very

interesting name.”

“Have you ever been to Agea?” I ask Julian.

“Course,” he says, smiling. He always smiles. “What, you mean you

haven’t? It’s strange. I thought I knew so many Golds, but hardly any of

them managed to get past the entrance exams. It’s a brave new world of

faces, I fear. Anyway, I envy you the fact you haven’t been to Agea. It’s a

strange place. Beautiful, no doubt, but life there is fast, and cheap, so they

say.”

“But not for us.”

He chuckles. “I suppose not. Not unless you play at politics.”

“I don’t much like playing.” I notice his reaction, so I laugh my

seriousness off with a wink. “Not unless there’s a wager, man. You hear?”

“I hear! What’s your game? Bloodchess? Gravcross?”

“Oh, bloodchess is all right. But fauxWar takes the prize,” I say with a

Golden grin.

“Especially if you’re a Nortown fan!” he agrees.

“Oh ... Nortown. I don’t know if we’ll get along,” I say, wincing. I jab

myself with a thumb. “Yorkton.”

“Yorkton! I don’t know if we’ll ever get along!” he laughs.

And though I smile, he doesn’t know how cold I am inside; the

conversation, the jibes, the smiles, are all a pattern of sociality. Matteo’s

done me well, but to Julian’s credit, he doesn’t seem a monster.

He should be a monster.

“My brother must already have arrived at the Institute. He was already in

Agea at our family’s estate, causing trouble no doubt!” Julian shakes his

head proudly. “Best man I know. He’ll be the Primus, just you watch. Our

father’s pride and joy, and that’s saying something with how many family

members I have!” Not a flicker of jealousy in his voice, just love.

“Primus?” I ask.

“Oh, Institute talk; it means leader of his House.”

The Houses. I know these. There are twelve loosely based on underlying

personality traits. Each is named for one of the gods of the Roman

pantheon. The SchoolHouses are networking tools and social clubs outside

of school. Do well, and they’ll find you a powerful family to serve. The

families are the true powers in the Society. They have their own armies and

fleets and contribute to the Sovereign’s forces. Loyalty begins with them.

There is little love for the denizens of one’s own planet. If anything, they

are the competition.

“You sobs done beating each other off yet?” an impish kid sneers from

the corner of the shuttle. He’s so drab he is khaki instead of Gold. His lips

are thin and his face like a cruel hawk just as it spies a mouse. A Bronzie.

“Are we bothering you?” My sarcasm has a polite nip.

“Does two dogs humping bother me? Likely, yes. If they are noisy.”

Julian stands. “Apologize, cur.”

“Go slag yourself,” the small kid says. In half a second, Julian has drawn

a white glove from nowhere. “That to wipe my ass, you golden pricklick?”

“What? You little heathen!” Julian says in shock. “Who raised you?”

“Wolves, after your mother’s cootch spat me out.”

“You beast!”

Julian throws the glove at the small kid. I’m watching thinking this is the

height of comedy. The kid seems pulled straight from Lykos crop, Beta

maybe. He’s like an ugly, tiny, irritable Loran. Julian doesn’t know what to

do, so he makes a challenge.

“A challenge, goodman.”

“A duel? You’re that offended? “ The ugly kid snorts at the princeling.

“Fine. I’ll stitch your family pride together after the Passage, pricklick.” He

blows his nose into the glove.

“Why not now, coward?” Julian calls. His slender chest is puffed out just

as his father must have taught him. No one insults his family.

“Are you stupid? Do you see razors about? Idiot. Go away. We’ll duel

after the Passage.”

“Passage ...?” Julian finally asks what I’m thinking.

The scrawny kid grins wickedly. Even his teeth are khaki.

“It’s the last test, idiot. And the best secret this side of the rings around

Octavia au Lune’s cootch.”

“Then how do you know about it?” I ask.

“Inside track,” the kid says. “And I don’t know about it. I know of it, you

giant pisshead.”

His name is Sevro, and I like his angle.

But the talk of a Passage worries me. There is so little I know, I realize as

I listen in as Julian strikes up a conversation with the last member of our

shuttle. They talk about their test scores. There is a severe disparity between

their low scores and mine. I notice Sevro snort as they say theirs aloud.

How did applicants with such low scores get in? I’ve got an ill feeling in

my gut. And what did Sevro score?

We come to the Valles Marineris in darkness. It is a great strip of light

across Mars’s black surface, going as far as eyes can see. At the center of it,

the capital city of my planet rises in the night like a garden of jewelswords.

Nightclubs flick er on rooftops, dancefloors made made of condensed air.

Scanty girls and foolish boys rise and fall as gravMixers play with physics.

NoiseBubbles separate city blocks. We cut through them and hear worlds of

different sounds.

The Institute is beyond Agea’s night districts and is built into the side of

the eight-kilometer-high walls of the Valles Marineris. The walls rise like

tidal waves of green stone cradling civilization with flora. The Institute

itself is made of white stone—a place of columns and sculpture, Roman to

its core.

I have not been here before. But I have seen the columns. Seen the

destination of our voyage. Bitterness wells in me like bile rising from

stomach to throat as I think of his face. Think of his words. His eyes as they

scanned the crowd. I watched on the HC as the ArchGovernor gave his

speech time and again to the classes before my own. Soon I’ll hear it from

his lips myself. Soon I’ll suffer the rage. Feel the fire lick over my heart as I

see him in person once again.

We land on a drop pad and are shepherded into an open-aired marble

square looking over the vast valley. The night air is crisp. Agea sprawls

behind and the gates of the Institute stretch before us. I stand with over a

thousand Goldbrows, all glancing about with the cocksureness of their race.

Many clump together, friends from beyond the white walls of the school. I

did not think their classes so large.

A tall Golden man flanked by Obsidians and a coterie of Gold advisors

rises on a pair of gravBoots before the gate. My heart goes cold as I

recognize his face and hear his voice and see the glimmer in his ingot eyes.

“Welcome, children of Aureate,” ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus says

in a voice as smooth as Eo’s skin. It is preternaturally loud. “I assume you

understand the gravity of your presence here. Of the thousand cities of

Mars. Of all the Great Families, you are the chosen few. You are the peak of

the human pyramid. Today, you will begin your campaign to join the best

caste of our race. Your fellows stand like you in the Institutes of Venus, of

the Eastern and Western Hemispheres of Earth, of Luna, of the Gas Giant

Moons, of Europa, of the Astrodian Greek Cluster and the Astrodian Trojan

Cluster, of Mercury, of Callisto, of the joint venture Enceledas and Ceres,

and of the farpioneers of Hildas.”

It seems only a day ago that I knew I was a pioneer of Mars. Only a day

ago that I suffered so that humanity, desperate to leave a dying Earth, could

spread to the red planet. Oh, how well my rulers lied.

Behind Augustus, in the stars, there’s movement but it is not the stars that

move. Nor is it asteroids or comets. It is the Sixth and Fifth Fleets. The

Armada of Mars. My breath catches in my chest. The Sixth Fleet is

commanded by Cassius’s father, while the smaller Fifth Fleet is under the

ArchGovernor’s direct control. Most of the ships are owned by families

who owe allegiance to either Augustus or Bellona.

Augustus shows us why we, they, rule. My flesh tingles. I am so small. A

billion tons of durosteel and nanometal move through the heavens, and I

have never been beyond Mars’s atmosphere. They are like specks of silver

in an ocean of ink. And I am so much less. But those specks could ravage

Mars. They could destroy a moon. Those specks rule the ink. An Imperator

commands each fleet; a Praetor commands squadrons within that fleet.

What I could do with that power ...

Augustus is haughty as he gives his speech. I swallow the bile in my

throat. Because of the impossible distance of my enemies, my anger was

once a cold, quiet sort. Now it burns in me.

“Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great

rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of

their own Decadence.”

He tells us how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed

because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He

prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese

regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient

names.

“Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against the

tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy, from

the Noble Lie—the idea that men are brothers and are created equal.”

Augustus weaves lies of his own with that golden tongue of his. He tells

of the Goldens’ suffering. The Masses sat on the wagon and expected the

great to pull, he reminds. They sat whipping the great until we could no

longer take it.

I remember a different whipping.

“Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages. There

are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This would not be if

we were all equal. A Red can no more command a starship than a Green can

serve as a doctor!”

There’s more laughter across the square as he tells us to look at pathetic

Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call demokracy. Look how it fell to

Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It made their citizens turn on

their best general, Alcibiades, because of jealousy.

“Even the nations of Earth grew jealous of one another. The United

States of America exacted this idea of equality through force. And when the

nations united, the Americans were surprised to find that they were disliked!

The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a dream it would be if all men

were created equal! But we are not.

“It is against the Noble Lie that we fight. But as I said before, as I say to

you now, there is another evil against which we war. It is a more pernicious

evil. It is a subversive, slow evil. It is not a wildfire. It is a cancer. And that

cancer is Decadence. Our Society has passed from Savagery to Ascendance.

But like our spiritual ancestors, the Romans, we too can fall into

Decadence.”

He speaks of the Pixies.

“You are the best of humanity. But you have been coddled. You have

been treated like children. Were you born to a different Color, you would

have calluses. You would have scars. You would know pain.”

He smiles as if he knows pain. I hate this man.

“You think you know pain. You think the Society is an inevitable force of

history. You think Her the end of history. But many have thought that

before. Many ruling classes have believed theirs to be the last, the pinnacle.

They grew soft. Fat. They forgot that calluses, wounds, scars, hardship,

preserve all those fine pleasure clubs you young boys love to frequent and

all those fine silks and diamonds and unicorns you girls ask for on

birthdays.

“Many Aureates have not sacrificed. That is why they do not wear this.”

He shows a long scar on his right cheek. Octavia au Lune has the same scar.

“The Scar of a Peer. We are not the masters of the Solar System because we

are born. We are the masters because we, the Peerless Scarred, the iron

Golds, made it that way.”

He touches the scar on his cheek. I’d give him another if I were closer.

The children around me suck down this man’s garbage like oxygen.

“Right now, the Colors who mine this planet are harder than you. They

are born with calluses. Born with scars and hatred. They are tough as

nanosteel. Fortunately, they are also very stupid. For instance, this

Persephone you have no doubt heard of is nothing more than a dim girl

who thought singing a song was worth a hanging.”

I bite a bloody hole in my cheek. My skin shivers from the emotion that

seems to shoot over my body as I find out that my wife is part of this

bastard’s speech.

“The girl did not even know the video would be leaked. Yet it is her

willingness to suffer hardship that gave her power. Martyrs, you see, are

like bees. Their only power comes in death. How many of you would

sacrifice yourself to not kill, but merely hurt your enemy? Not one of you, I

wager.”

I taste blood in my mouth. I have the knifeRing Dancer gave me. But I

breathe the fury down. I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I am Eo’s

dream. Still, doing nothing while her murderer gloats feels like a betrayal.

“In time you will receive your Scars from my sword,” Augustus closes.

“But first you must earn them.”

OceanofPDF

OceanofPDF

17

The Draft

“Son of Linus and Lexus au Andromedus, both of the House Apollo. Would

you prefer to mark yourself as requesting House Apollo preferentiality?” a

tedious Aureate administrator asks me.

Goldbrows’ first loyalty is to Color, then family, then planet, then House.

Most Houses are dominated by one or two powerful families. On Mars, the

Family Augustus, the Family Bellona, and the Family Arcos influence all

others.

“No,” I reply.

He shuffles over his datapad. “Very well. How do you believe you

performed on the slangSmarts test? That is the extrapolational test,” he

clarifies.

“I think my results speak for themselves.”

“You were not paying attention, Darrow. I shall mark that against you.

I’m asking for you to speak for your results.”

“I think I took a gory piss on your test, sir.”

“Ah.” He smiles. “Well, you did. You did. House Minerva for brains

might be right for you. Perhaps Pluto, for the deviousness. Apollo for the

pride. Yes. Hmm. Well, I have a test for you. Please complete it to the best

of your ability. Interviews will commence when you have finished.”

The test is quick and it is in the form of an immersion game. There is a

goblet on a hill that I need to acquire. Many obstacles stand in my way. I

pass them as rationally as possible, trying to hide my anger when a little elf

steals a key I acquire. But every step of the way, there’s some damn

setback, some inconvenience. And it is always unforeseen. It is always

something beyond the bound of extrapolation. In the end, I reach the goblet,

but only after killing an annoying wizard and cruelly enslaving the race of

elves by means of said wizard’s magic wand. I could have left the elves be.

But they annoyed me.

Soon, the interviewers come in intervals. I learn they are called Proctors.

Each one of them is a Peerless Scarred. They are chosen by the

ArchGovernor to teach and represent the students of the House within the

Institute.

All said, the Proctors are impressive. There’s a huge Scarred man with

hair like a lion and a lightning bolt on his collar for Jupiter, a matronly

woman with gentle golden eyes, and a quickwitted man with winged feet on

his collar. He can’t sit still and his baby face seems immensely fascinated

by my hands. He makes me play a game with him in which he puts out both

hands fla t and facing up and I put mine atop facing down. He tries slapping

my hands, but never quite manages. He leaves after clapping his hands

together in joy.

Another strange encounter comes when a beautiful man with coiled hair

interviews me. A bow marks his collar. Apollo. He asks me how attractive I

believe myself to be and is displeased when I undershoot his estimate. Still,

I think he likes me, because he asks me what I would like to be one day.

“An Imperator of a fleet,” I say.

“You could do great things with a fleet. But a lofty notion,” he sighs,

accenting every word with a feline purr. “Perhaps too lofty for your family.

Maybe if you had a benefactor of better familial origin. Yes, maybe then.”

He looks at his datapad. “But unlikely due to your birth. Hm. Best of luck.”

I sit alone for an hour or more till a sullen man comes to join me. His

unfortunate face is pinched like a hatchet, but he has the Scar and a razor

hilt hangs on his hip. His name is Fitchner. A wad of gum fills his mouth.

The uniform he wears is black with gold, and it nearly conceals the slight

belly paunch that sticks outward despite the faint smell of metabolizers.

Like many of the others, he wears badges about his personage. A golden

wolf with two heads decorates his collar. And a strange hand marks his cuff.

“They give me the mad dogs,” he says. “They give me the killers of our

race, the ones full of piss and napalm and vinegar.” He sniffs the air. “You

smell full of shit.”

I say nothing. He leans against the door and frowns at it as though it

offended him in some way. Then back to me, sniffing improperly.

“Problem is, we of House Mars always burn out. Kids rule the Institute at

first. Then they find out that napalm lasts about ...” He snaps his fingers. I

have no reply. He sighs and plops down in a chair. After a while of

watching me, he stands and punches me in the face. “If you punch me back,

you will be sent home, Pixie.”

I kick him in the shin.

He limps away, laughing like a drunk Uncle Narol.

I’m not sent home. Instead, I find myself escorted with one hundred

others into a large room with floatChairs and a large wall dominated by

ivory gridwork. The gridwork forms a checkerboard square on the wall, ten

rows high, ten rows across. I’m taken on a lift to the middle row, some fifty

feet off the ground. Ninety-nine other students are ushered in till each box is

filled. This is the prime crop, the best of the students. I look out from my

box, peering up above me. A girl’s feet dangle out of the box above my

head. Numbers and letters appear in front of my box. My statistics.

Supposedly I am very rash and have upper-outlier characteristics in

intuition and loyalty and, most noticeably, rage.

There are twelve groups in the audience. Each group sits close together in

floatChairs around vertical golden standards. I see an archer, a lightning

bolt, an owl, a wolf with two heads, an upside-down crown, and a trident,

amongst others. One of the Proctors accompanies each group. They alone

do not have their faces covered. The others wear ceremonial masks,

featureless and golden and slightly like the animals of their Houses. If only

I had known this was going to happen. I might have brought a nuke. These

are the Drafters, the men and women of highest prestige. Praetors and

Imperators and Tribunes and Adjudicators and Governors sit there watching

me, trying to choose the new students for their House, trying to find young

men and women they can test and offer apprenticeships. With one bomb, I

could have destroyed the best and the brightest of their Golden rule. Maybe

that’s the rashness speaking.

The Draft begins when a titan of a genAlt boy is chosen first to the House

of the lightning bolt. House Jupiter. Then go more girls and boys of

unnatural beauty and physical prowess. I can only guess they are geniuses

as well. The fift h pick comes. The babyfaced interviewer with the winged

feet floa ts up to me on golden boots. Several of the Drafters of House

Mercury float along with him. They speak quietly amongst themselves

before asking me questions.

“Who are your parents? What are their family’s accomplishments?”

I tell them about my modest false family. One of them seems to think

highly of a relative of mine who has long since passed away. But despite the

Proctor’s objections, they pass me over for another student from a family

with the ownership of ninety mines and a stake on one of Mars’s southern

continents.

The Mercury Proctor curses and shoots me a quick smile.

“Hope you’re available next round,” he says.

Next goes a delicate girl with a mocking smile. I can barely pay attention,

and, at times, it is difficult to see who else is being selected. We’re arrayed

in an odd way. With the tenth pick, the Proctor who struck me in the

interviews floats my way. There is disagreement amongst the Drafters. I

have two ardent advocates: one is as tall as Augustus, but her hair flows

down to her spine in three golden braids. And the second is broader, not

very tall. He’s old. Can tell by the scars and wrinkles on his thick hands.

Hands that bear the signet ring of an Olympic Knight. I know him

immediately even without seeing his face. Lorn au Arcos. The Rage Knight,

the third-greatest man on Mars, who chose to serve the Society by

safeguarding the Society’s Compact, instead of reaching for crowns in

politics. When he points to me, Fitchner grins.

I am chosen tenth. Tenth out of one thousand.

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18

Classmates

I feel a sinking in my stomach as I walk with the chattering mass into the

dining hall. It is overgrand—white marble floors, columns, a holosky

displaying birds in flight at sunset. The Institute is not what I expected.

According to Augustus, the classes are to be hard on these little godlings. I

snort down a laugh. Let the lot of them spend a year in a mine.

There are twelve tables, each with one hundred place settings. Our names

float above the chairs in golden letters. Mine floats to the right of a table’s

head. It is a place of distinction. The firstDraft. A single bar float s to right of

my name. A -1 is to the left. The first to get five bars becomes Primus of his

House. Each bar is bounty for an act of merit. Apparently my high score on

the test was the first bit of merit.

“Wonderful, a cutter in the lead for Primus,” a familiar voice says. The

girl from the exam. I read her name. Antonia au Severus. She has cruel

good looks—high cheekbones, a smirking smile, scorn in her eyes. Her hair

is long, full, and golden as Midas’s touch. She was born to be hated and to

hate. A -5 floats beside her name. It is the second-closest score to mine at

the table. Cassius, the boy I met at testing, sits diagonal from me. A -6

shimmers by his broad smile. He runs a hand back through his curls.

Another boy sits directly across from me; -1 and a golden bar float by his

name. While Cassius lounges, this other boy, Priam, sits as straight as a

blade. His face is celestial. His eyes alert. His hair coiffed. He’s tall as me,

but broad in the shoulders. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more perfect

human being. A bloodydamn statue. He wasn’t in the Draft, I discover. He

is what they call a Premier; they cannot be drafted. His parents choose his

House. Then I discover why. His scandalous mother, a bannerwoman of the

House Bellona, owns our planet’s two moons.

“Fate brings us together again,” Cassius chuckles to me. “And Antonia.

My love! It seems our fathers conspired to place us side by side.”

Antonia replies with a sneer, “Remind me to beam him a thank-you.”

“Toni! No need for nastiness.” He wags a finger . “Now toss me a smile

like a good doll.”

She flips him the crux with her fingers. “Rather toss you out a window,

Cassi.”

“Rawr.” Cassius blows her a kiss. She ignores it. “So, Priam, I suppose

you and I will have to play gently with these fools, eh?”

“Oh, they look like swell sorts to me,” Priam replies primly. “I fancy

we’ll do very well as a group.”

They talk in highLingo.

“If the dregs of the Draft don’t weigh us down, my good man!” He

gestures to the end of the table and starts naming them: “Screwface, for

obvious reasons. Clown because of that ridiculous puffy hair. Weed

because, well, he’s thin. Oy! You, you’re Thistle because your nose looks

hooked as one. And ... that itty-bitty one right there next to the Bronzie-

looking fellow, that’s little Pebble.”

“I think they will rather surprise you,” Priam says in defense of the far

end of the table. “They may not be as tall or as athletic or even as intelligent

as you or myself, if intelligence really can be measured by that test, but I do

not think it charity to say that they will be the spine of our group. Salt of the

earth, if you will. Good sorts.”

I see the small kid from the shuttle, Sevro, at the very bottom of the table.

The salt of the earth is not making friends. And neither am I. Cassius

glances at my -1. I see him concede that Priam might have scored better

than he, but Cassius makes a point in saying he’s never heard of my parents.

“So, dear Darrow, how did you cheat?” he asks. Antonia glances over

from her conversation with Arria, a small girl made of curling hair and

dimples.

“Oh, come now, man.” I laugh. “They sent Quality Control after me.

How could I have cheated? Impossible. Did you cheat? Your score is high.”

I speak the midLingo. It’s more comfortable than that highLingo fartdust

Priam jabbers on in.

“Me? Cheat! No. Just didn’t try enough, apparently,” Cassius replies. “If

I had my wits, I’d have spent less time with the girls and more on studying,

like you.”

He’s trying to tell me if he tried he could have done just as well. But he’s

too busy to put in as much effort. If I wanted him as a friend, I’d let him get

away with it.

“You studied?” I ask. I feel a sudden urge to embarrass him. “I didn’t

study at all.”

A chill goes through the air.

I shouldn’t have said it. My stomach plummets. Manners.

Cassius’s face sours and Antonia smirks. I’ve insulted him. Priam frowns.

If I want a career in the fleet, then I likely need Cassius au Bellona’s

father’s patronage. Son of an Imperator. Matteo drilled this into me. How

easy it is to forget. The fleet is where the power is. Fleet or government or

army. And I don’t like government, not to mention, this sort of insult is how

duels begin. Fear trickles down my spine as I realize how thin a line there is

to tread. Cassius knows how to duel. I, for all my new skills, do not. He

would rip me to pieces, and he looks like he wants to do just that.

“I joke.” I tilt my head to Cassius. “Come on, man. How could I score so

high and not have studied till my eyes were bleeding? Wish I’d spent more

time fooling off like you—we’re in the same spot now, after all. Fat lot that

studying did for me.”

Priam nods his approval at the peace offering.

“I bet it was a slog!” Cassius crows, tipping his head to acknowledge my

peculiar breed of apology. I expected the play to go over his head. Thought

his pride would blind him to my sudden apology; the Gold may be proud,

but he isn’t stupid. None of them are. Have to remember that.

After that, I do Matteo proud. I flirt with a girl named Quinn, befriend

and joke with Cassius and Priam—who has probably never sworn in his life

—throw my hand out to a tall brute named Titus whose neck is as thick as

my thigh. He squeezes too hard on purpose. He’s surprised when I nearly

break his hand, but damn is his grip strong. The boy is even taller than

Cassius and I, and he’s got a voice like a titan, but he grins when he realizes

that my grip, if nothing else, is stronger than his. Something strange about

his voice, though. Something decidedly disdainful. There’s also a feather of

a boy named Roque who looks and speaks like a poet. His smiles are slow,

few, but genuine. Rare.

“Cassius!” Julian calls. Cassius stands and throws an arm around his

thinner, prettier twin. I didn’t piece it together before, but they are brothers.

Twins. Not identical. Julian did say his brother was already in Agea.

“Darrow here is not what he seems,” Julian tells the table with a very

grave face. He has a knack for theatrics.

“You don’t mean ...” Cassius puts a hand to his mouth.

My finger grazes my steak knife.

“Yes.” Julian nods solemnly.

“No.” Cassius shakes his head. “He’s not a Yorkton supporter? Julian, tell

me it isn’t so! Darrow! Darrow, how could you be? They never win

fauxWar! Priam, are you hearing this?”

I throw my hands up in apology. “A curse of birth, I suppose. I am a

product of my upbringing. I cheer for the underdog.” I manage not to sneer

the words.

“He confessed it to me on the shuttle.”

Julian is proud to know me. Proud his brother knows he knows me. He

looks for Cassius’s approval. Cassius isn’t oblivious to this either; he gently

doles out a compliment and Julian leaves the highDrafts and returns to his

midDraft seat halfway down the table with a content smile and squared

shoulders. I didn’t think Cassius would be the kind sort.

Of those I meet, only Antonia openly dislikes me. She doesn’t watch me

like the others at the table. From her, I feel only a distant breed of contempt.

One moment she is laughing, flirting with Roque, and then she feels my

gaze and becomes ice. The feeling is mutual.

Director Clintus of the Institute is a woman. Thin and drab, she

commands the room only by virtue of her voice. It is cultured but terrifying,

like an eagle’s scream. I don’t know why. She gives us a brief welcome,

reiterates the same points that Augustus made earlier, and is as bored as I

am by what she has to say. She doesn’t care about us.

“You are the highest percentile of your Color.” Et cetera, et cetera, et

cetera. The ill feeling is still there in my stomach. “The Passage will begin

tomorrow. Until then, sleep well, students.”

My dormitory is from a dream. Gold trim lines a window that looks out

into the valley. A bed is laden with silks and quilts and satins. I lie in it

when a Pink masseur comes in and stays for an hour kneading my muscles.

Later, three lithe Pinks file through to tend to my needs. I send them to

Cassius’s room instead. To calm the temptation, I take a cold shower and

immerse myself in a holoexperience of a digger in the mining colony

Corinth. The helldiver in the holoexperience is less talented than I was, but

the rattling, the simulated heat, the darkness and the vipers, they comfort

me so much that I wrap my old scarlet rag around my head.

More food comes. Augustus was all talk. Gob full of exaggerations. This

is their version of hardship. I feel guilty as I fall asleep with a full stomach,

clutching the locket with Eo’s flower inside. My family will go to bed

hungry tonight. I whisper her name. I take the wedding band from my

pocket and kiss it. Feel the ache. They stole her. But she let them. She left

me. She left me tears and pain and longing. She left me to give me anger,

and I cannot help but hate her for a moment even though beyond that

moment there is only love.

“Eo,” I whisper, and the locket closes.

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19

The Passage

I vomit as I wake. A second fist strikes my full stomach. Then a third. I’m

empty and gasping for air. Drowning in my sick. Coughing. Hacking. I try

to scramble away. A man’s hand grabs me by the hair and throws me into

the wall. God, he’s bloody strong. And he’s got extra fingers. I reach for my

knifeRing, but they’ve already dragged me into the hall. I’ve never been so

manhandled; even my new body can’t recover from their strikes. There’s

four of them in black—Crows, the killers. They’ve discovered me. They

know what I am. It’s over. All over. Their faces are expressionless skulls.

Masks. I pull the knife I took from dinner from my waist and am about to

stab one of them in the groin. Then I see the flash of gold on their wrists and

they hit me till I drop the knife. It’s a test. Their strikes against a higher

Color are sanctioned by the issuer of the bracelets. They haven’t found me

out at all. A test. That is what this is. It is a test.

They could have used stunners. There’s a purpose to the beating. It’s

something most Golds have never experienced. So I wait. I curl up and let

them beat me. When I don’t resist, they think they’ve done their job. They

sort of do; I’m raggedshit by the time they’re satisfied.

I’m dragged through the hallway by men nearly three meters tall. A bag

is shoved over my head. They’re staying away from technology to scare me.

I wonder how many of these kids have felt physical force like this? How

many have been so dehumanized? The bag smells like death and piss as

they drag me along. I start laughing. It’s like my bloodydamn frysuit. Then

a fist hits my chest and I crumple, gasping.

The hood also has a sound device installed. I’m not breathing hard, but

my breaths come back louder than they should. There are over a thousand

students. Dozens at a time must suffer this same fate, yet I hear nothing.

They don’t want me to hear the others. I’m supposed to think I’m alone,

that my Color means nothing. Surprisingly, I find myself offended that they

dare strike me. Don’t they know I’m a bloodydamn Gold? Then I snort back

a laugh. Effective tricks.

I’m lifted up and thrown hard onto a floor . I feel a vibration, the smell of

exhaust. Soon we’re in the air. Something in the bag covering my head

disorients me. I can’t tell which direction we’re flying, how high we’ve

risen. The sound of my own raspy breath has become terrible. I think the

bag also filters out the oxygen, because I’m hyperventilating. Still, it’s not

worse than a frysuit.

Later. An hour? Two? We land. They drag me by my heels. Head bumps

on stone, jarring me. It’s not till much later that they take the bag off of my

head in a barren stone room lit by a single light. Another person is already

here. The Crows strip away my clothing, rip away the precious Pegasus

pendant. They leave.

“Cold in here, Julian?” I chuckle as I stand, the red headband still around

my forehead. My voice echoes. We’re both naked. I fake a limp with my

right leg. I know what this is.

“Darrow, is that you?” Julian asks. “Are you well?”

“I’m prime. They busted up my right leg, though,” I lie.

He stands too, pushing himself up with his left hand. That’s his dominant

one. He looks tall and feeble in the light. Like bent hay. I caught more kicks

and punches than him, though, loads more. My ribs might be cracked.

“What do you think this is?” he asks. He’s covering his privates.

“The Passage, obviously.”

“But they lied. They said it would be tomorrow.”

The thick wooden door squeals on rusted hinges and Proctor Fitchner

saunters in popping a gumbubble.

“Proctor! Sir, you lied to us,” Julian protests. He brushes his pretty hair

back out of his eyes.

Fitchner’s movement is sluggish but his eyes are like a cat’s. “Lying

takes too much effort,” he grunts idly.

“Well ... how dare you treat us like this!” Julian snaps. “You must know

who my father is. And my mother is a Legate! I can have you up on charges

for assault in a moment’s notice. And you hurt Darrow’s leg!”

“It’s one A.M., dipstick. It’s tomorrow.” Fitchner pops another

gumbubble. “There are also two of you. Alas, only one spot is available in

your class.” He tosses a golden ring emblazoned with the wolf of Mars and

a star shield of the Institute onto the dirty stone ground. “I could make it

ambiguous, but you look like rustyheaded lads. Only one comes out alive.”

He leaves the way he came. The door squeals and then slams shut. Julian

flinches at the sound. I do not. We both stare at the ring and I have a sick

feeling in my gut that I’m the only one in the room who knows what just

happened.

“What do they think they are doing?” Julian asks me. “Do they expect us

to ...”

“Kill each other?” I finish. “Yes. That’s what they expect.” Despite the

knot in my throat. I ball my fists, Eo’s wedding band tight on my finger . “I

intend to wear that ring, Julian. Will you let me have it?”

I am bigger than he. Not quite as tall. But that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t

stand a chance.

“I have to have it, Darrow,” he murmurs. He looks up. “I am of the

Family Bellona. I can’t go home without it. Do you know who we are? You

can go home without shame. I can’t. I need it more than you!”

“We’re not going home, Julian. One person comes out alive. You heard

him.”

“They wouldn’t do that....” he tries.

“No?”

“Please. Please, Darrow. Just go home. You don’t need it like I do. You

don’t. Cassius ... he would be so ashamed if I didn’t make it. I wouldn’t be

able to look at him. Every member of my family is Scarred. My father is an

Imperator. An Imperator! If his son did not even make it through the

Passage ... what would his soldiers think?”

“He would still love you. Mine would.”

Julian shakes his head. He takes a breath and stands tall.

“I am Julian au Bellona of the Family Bellona, my goodman.”

I don’t want to do this. I can’t explain how badly I don’t want to hurt

Julian. But when has what I wanted ever mattered? My people need this. Eo

sacrificed happiness and her life. I can sacrifice my wants. I can sacrifice

this slender princeling. I can even sacrifice my soul.

I make the first move toward Julian.

“Darrow ...,” he murmurs.

Darrow was kind in Lykos.

I am not. I hate myself for it. I think I’m crying, because my vision is

unclear.

The rules and manners and morals of society are pulled away. All it takes

is a stone room and two people needing the same scarce thing. Yet the shift

isn’t instantaneous. Even when I punch Julian in the face and his blood

smears my knuckles, it doesn’t seem a fight. The room is quiet. Awkward. I

feel rude punching him. Like I’m acting. The stone is cold on my feet. My

skin prickles. Breath echoes.

They want me to kill him because he didn’t do well on their tests. This is

a mismatch. I am Darwin’s scythe. Nature scrapping away the chaff. I don’t

know how to kill. I’ve never killed a man. I have no blade, no thumper, no

scorcher. It seems impossible that I could make this boy of meat and muscle

bleed dry just with my hands. I want to laugh and Julian does. I am a naked

child slapping at another naked child in a cold room. His hesitancy is

obvious. His feet move like he’s trying to remember a dance. But when his

elbows come to eye level, I panic. I don’t know how he is fighting. He

strikes halfheartedly at me in a foreign, artistic way. He’s tentative, slow,

but his timid fist gets my nose.

Rage overtakes me.

My face goes numb. My heart thunders. It’s in my throat. My veins

prickle.

I break his nose with a straight. God, my hands are strong.

He wails and ducks into me, grappling my arm into an odd angle. It pops.

I use my forehead. It takes him just at the bridge of his nose. I grab the back

of his neck and hit him again with my forehead. He can’t break away. I do it

again. Something cracks. Blood and spit lather my hair. His teeth cut my

scalp. I drop back like I’m dancing, reverse off my left foot, weave forward

and hit him with all my weight behind my right fist in his chest. My

Helldiver knuckles shatter his reinforced sternum.

There’s a great wheezing gasp. And a crackling noise like snapping

twigs.

He tips backward onto the ground. I’m dazed from striking him with my

forehead. Seeing red. Seeing double. I stumble toward him. Tears stream

down my cheeks. He’s twitching. When I grab his golden hair, I find him

already limp. Like a wet golden feather. Blood pulses from his nose. He is

quiet. He no longer moves. No longer smiles.

I mutter my wife’s name as I fall to cradle his head. His face has become

like a blood blossom.

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Part III

Gold

“This is your slingBlade, son. It will scrape the earth’s veins for you. It will kill

pitvipers. Keep it sharp and if you get stuck in the drills, it will save your life for the

price of a limb.” So said my uncle.

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20

The House Mars

There’s stillness in my soul as I look at the broken boy. Even Cassius would

not recognize Julian now. A cavity is carved into my heart. My hands

tremble as the blood dribbles off them onto cold stone. Rivers along the

golden Sigils upon my hands. I am a Helldiver, but the sobs come even as

the tears are gone. His blood trickles from my knee down my hairless shin.

It’s red. Not golden. My knees feel the stone and my forehead touches it as I

sob till exhaustion fills my chest.

When I look up, he is still dead.

This wasn’t right.

I thought the Society only played games with its slaves. Wrong. Julian

didn’t score like I did on the tests. He wasn’t as physically capable as me.

So he was a sacrificial lamb. One hundred students per House and the

bottom fifty are only here to be killed by the top fifty . This is just a

bloodydamn test ... for me. Even the Bellona Family, powerful as they are,

could not protect their less capable son. And that is the point.

I hate myself.

I know they made me do this, yet it still feels like a choice. Like when I

pulled Eo’s legs and felt the snap of her small spine. My choice. But what

other choice was there with her? With Julian? They do this to make us wear

the guilt.

There’s nowhere to wipe the blood, only stone and two naked bodies.

This is not who I am, who I want to be. I want to be a father, a husband, a

dancer. Let me dig in the earth. Let me sing the songs of my people and

leap and spin and run along the walls. I would never sing the forbidden

song. I would work. I would bow. Let me wash dirt from my hands instead

of blood. I want only to live with my family. We were happy enough.

Freedom costs too much.

But Eo disagreed.

Damn her.

I wait, but no one comes to see the mess I’ve made. The door is

unlocked. I slip the golden ring over my finger after I close Julian’s eyes,

and walk naked into the cold hall. It is empty. A soft light guides me up

never-ending stairs. Water drips from the subterannean tunnel’s ceiling. I

use it to try and clean my body, but all I do is lather the blood into my skin,

thinning it. I cannot escape it, what I’ve done, no matter how far I follow

the tunnel. I am alone with my sin. This is why they rule. The Peerless

Scarred know that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be

outrun. They must be worn if one is to rule. This is their first lesson. Or was

it that the weak do not deserve life?

I hate them, but I hear them.

Win. Bear the guilt. Reign.

They want me pitiless. They want my memory short.

But I was raised differently.

All my people sing of are memories. And so I will remember this death.

It will burden me as it does not burden my fellow students—I must not let

that change. I must not become like them. I’ll remember that every sin,

every death, every sacrifice, is for freedom.

Yet now I’m afraid.

Can I bear the next lesson?

Can I pretend to be as cold as Augustus? I now know why he did not

flinch in hanging my wife. And I am beginning to understand why Golds

rule. They can do what I cannot.

Though I am alone, I know I will soon find others. They want me to soak in

the guilt for now. They want me lonely, mournful, so that when I meet the

others, the winners, I will be relieved. The murders will bind us, and I’ll

find the company of the winners a salve to my guilt. I do not love my fellow

students, but I will think I do. I will want their comfort, their reassurances

that I am not evil. And they will want the same. This is meant to make us a

family—one with cruel secrets.

I am right.

My tunnel leads me to the others. I see Roque, the poet, first. He bleeds

from the back of his head. Blood is slick on his right elbow. I didn’t think

him capable of killing. Whose blood? His eyes are red from crying. We find

Antonia next. Like us, she is naked; she moves like a golden ship, drifting

along, quiet and aloof. Her feet leave bloody footprints where she walks.

I dread finding Cassius. I hope he is dead, because I’m afraid of him. He

reminds me of Dancer—handsome, laughing, yet a dragon just beneath the

surface. But that’s not why I’m afraid. I’m afraid because he has a reason to

hate me, to want to kill me. No one in my life has had just cause before. No

one has ever hated me. He will if he finds out. Then I realize it. How could

the House ever be knit tightly with such secrets? It can’t. Cassius will know

someone here killed his brother. Others will have lost friends, and so the

House will devour itself. The Society did this on purpose; they want chaos.

It will be our second test. Tribal strife.

The three of us find the other survivors in a cavernous stone dining hall

dominated by a long wooden table. Torches light the room. Night’s mist

slithers through open windows. It is like something from the old tales. The

times they call Medieval. Toward the far end of the long room is a plinth. A

giant stone towers there; embedded in its center is a golden Primus hand.

Golden and black tapestries flank the stone. A wolf howls upon the

tapestries, as though calling out a warning. It is the Primus hand that will

tear this House apart. Each one of these little princes and princesses will

think themselves deserved of the honor of leading the House. Yet only one

can.

I move like a ghost with the other students, drifting around the stone halls

of what seems to be a giant castle. There is a room in which we are to clean

ourselves.

A trough runs icy water along the cold floor . Now blood runs with the

water to the right and disappears into the stone. I feel like some sort of

specter in a land of fog and rock.

Black and gold fatigues are laid out for us in a relatively barren armory.

Each student fin ds the fatigue bundle tagged with his or her name. A golden

symbol of a howling wolf marks the high collars and sleeves of our

clothing. I take my clothing with me and dress alone in some storage room.

There, I fall into the corner and cry, not because of Julian, but because this

place is so cold and quiet. It is so far from home.

Roque finds me. He’s striking in his uniform—lean like a strand of

golden summer wheat, with high cheekbones and warm eyes, but his face is

pale. He sits on his haunches across from me for several minutes before he

reaches over to clasp my hands. I draw back, but he holds on till I look at

him.

“If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown,” he

says, and raises his thin eyebrows. “So keep swimming, right?”

I wipe away my silent tears and force a chuckle.

“A poet’s logic.”

He shrugs. “Doesn’t count for much. So I’ll give you facts, brotherman.

This is the system. The lower Colors have their children by use of catalysts.

Fast births, sometimes only five months of gestation before labor is

induced. Except for the Obsidians, only we wait nine months to be born.

Our mothers receive no catalysts, no sedatives, no nucleics. Have you asked

yourself why?”

“So the product can be pure.”

“And so that nature is given a chance to kill us. The Board of Quality

Control is firmly convinced that 13.6213 percent of all Gold children should

die before one year of age. Sometimes they make reality fit this number.”

He splays out his thin hands. “Why? Because they believe civilization

weakens natural selection. They do nature’s work so that we do not become

a soft race. The Passage, it seems, is a continuation of that policy. Only we

were the tools they used. My ... victim ... was, bless his soul, a fool. He

was from a family of no worth, and he had no wits, no intelligence, no

ambition,” he frowns at the words before sighing, “he had nothing the

Board values. There is a reason he was to die.”

Was there a reason Julian was to die?

Roque knows what he does because his mother is on the Board. He

loathes his mother, and only then do I realize I should like him. Not only

that, I take refuge in his words. He disagrees with the rules, but he follows

them. It is possible. I can do the same until I have power enough to change

them.

“We should join the others.” I say, standing.

In the dining hall, our names flo at above the chairs in golden letters. Our

test scores are gone. Our names have also appeared beneath the Primus

hand in the black stone. They float, golden, upward toward the golden hand.

I’m closest, though there’s still much distance to cover.

Some of the students cry together in small groups by the long wooden

table. Others sit against the wall, heads in their hands. A limping girl looks

for her friend. Antonia glares over at the table where small Sevro sits eating.

Of course he’s the only one with an appetite. Frankly, I’m surprised he

survived. He is tiny and was our ninety-ninth and last draft pick. By

Roque’s proposed rules, he should be dead.

Titus, the giant, is alive and bruised. Those knuckles of his look like a

dirty butcher’s block. He stands arrogantly apart from the rest, grinning like

this is all splendid fun. Roque speaks quietly with the limping girl, Lea. She

falls down crying and throws her ring. She looks like a deer, eyes wide and

glistening. He sits with her and holds her hand. There’s a peacefulness to

him that is unique in the room. Wonder how peaceful he seemed when

strangling some other kid to death. I roll my ring on and off my finger.

Someone smacks my head lightly from behind.

“Oy, brotherman.”

“Cassius.” I nod.

“Cheers to your victory. I was worried you were all brains,” Cassius

laughs. His golden curls are not even touseled. He throws an arm around me

and surveys the room with a wrinkled nose. He feigns this nonchalance; I

can tell he’s worried.

“Ah. Is there anything more ugly than self-pity? All this crying.” He

smirks and points at a girl with a busted nose. “And she just became

aggressively unpleasant. Not that she was ever much to sniff at. Eh? Eh?”

I forget to speak.

“Shell-shocked, man? They get your windpipe?”

“Just not much for joking about right now,” I say. “Took some knocks to

the head. Shoulder is a bit slagged too. This isn’t my usual scene.”

“Shoulder can be fixed straight off. Let’s get it back in the socket.” He

casually grips my dislocated shoulder and jerks it into its socket before I

can protest. I gasp in pain. He chuckles. “Prime. Prime.” He slaps me on the

same shoulder. “Help me out, won’t you?”

He extends his left hand. His dislocated fingers look like lightning bolts. I

pull them straight. He laughs with the pain, not knowing his brother’s blood

is under my fingernails. I’m trying not to hyperventilate.

“Spotted Julian yet, man?” he finally asks. He speaks in midLingo now

that Priam is nowhere to be seen.

“Not a sight.”

“Meh, the kid is probably trying to be gentle with his fight. Father taught

us the Silent Art, Kravat. Julian is a prodigy at it. He thinks I’m better.”

Cassius frowns. “Thinks I’m better at everything—which is understandable.

Just got to get him going. Speaking of it, who’d you slag?”

My insides knot.

I make up a lie, and it is a good one. Vague and boring. He only wants to

talk about himself now anyway. After all, this is what Cassius was bred for.

There are roughly fifteen kids who have that same quiet gleam in their eye.

Not evil. Just excited. And those are the ones to watch, because they’re the

born killers.

Looking around, it’s easy to see that Roque was right. There weren’t

many tough fights. This was forced natural selection. Bottom of the heap

getting slaughtered by the top. Hardly anyone is severely injured except a

couple of small lowDrafts. Natural selection sometimes has its surprises.

Cassius’s fight was easy, he says. He did it right and fair and quick.

Crushed the windpipe with a bladejab ten seconds into squaring up. Caught

his fingers oddly, though. Prime. I’ve made a corpse of the best killer’s

brother. Dread trickles into me.

Cassius grows quieter when Fitchner saunters in and orders us to the

table. One by one, the fifty seats fill. And bit by bit, his face darkens as each

chance for Julian to join the table disappears. When the last seat fills, he

does not move. It is a cold anger that radiates. Not hot as I thought it would

be. Antonia sits across from us, opposite me, and watches him. Her mouth

works but she says nothing. You don’t comfort his sort. And I didn’t think

her the kind to try.

Julian isn’t the only one missing. Arria, all curls and dimples, is lying

limp on a cold floor somewhere. And Priam is gone. Perfect Priam the

Premier, heir of Mars’s moons. I heard he was the First Sword in the Solar

System for his birthyear. A duelist without peer. I guess he wasn’t too lethal

with his fists. I look around the tired faces. Who the hell killed him? The

Board messed that one up, and I wager his mother will cause hell, because

he certainly wasn’t meant to die.

“We’re wasting the best of us,” Cassius murmurs measuredly.

“Hello, you little shiteaters.” Fitchner yawns and kicks his feet up onto

the table. “Now, it might have dawned on you that the Passage may as well

be called the Culling.” Fitchner scratches his groin with his razor’s hilt.

His manners are worse than mine.

“And you may think it a waste of good Golds, but you’re an idiot if you

think fifty children make a dent in our numbers. There are more than one

million Golds on Mars. More than one hundred million in the Solar System.

Not all get to be Peerless Scarred, though, eh?

Now if you still think this was vile, consider that the Spartans would kill

more than ten percent of all children born to them; nature would kill another

thirty. We are gory humanitarians in comparison. Of the six hundred

students that are left, most were in the top one percent of applicants. Of the

six hundred that are dead, most were in the bottom one percent of

applicants. There was no waste.” He chuckles and looks around the table

with a suprising amount of pride. “Except for that idiot, Priam. Yeah.

There’s a lesson for you lot. He was a brilliant boy—beautiful, strong, fast,

a genius who studied day and night with a dozen tutors. But he was

pampered. And someone, I won’t say who, because that’d undermine the

fun of this whole curriculum, but someone knocked him down onto the

stone and then stomped on his trachea till he died. It took awhile.”

He puts his hands behind his head.

“Now! This is your new family. House Mars—one of twelve Houses. No,

you are not special because you live on Mars and are in House Mars. Those

in House Venus on Venus are not special. They merely fit the House. You

get the flow . After the Institute, you’re looking for apprenticeships—

hopefully with the families Bellona, Augustus, or Arcos, if you want to do

me proud. Prior graduates from House Mars may help you find these

apprenticeships, may offer you apprenticeships of their own, or maybe

you’ll be so successful that you don’t need anyone’s help.

“But let us make it crystal. Right now you are babies. Stupid little babies.

Your parents handed you everything. Others wiped your little asses. Cooked

your food. Fought your wars. Tucked your little shiny noses in at night.

Rusters dig before they get a chance to screw; they build your cities and

find your fuel and pick up your shit. Pinks learn the art of getting someone’s

jollies off before they even need to shave. Obsidians have the worst gory

life you could imagine—nothing but frost and steel and pain. They were

bred for their work, trained early for it. All you little princelings and

princesses have had to do was look like little versions of Mommy and

Daddy and learn your manners and play piano and equestrian and sport. But

now you belong to the Institute, to House Mars, to the Prefecture of Mars,

to your Color, to the Society. Blah. Blah.”

Fitchner’s smirk is lazy. His veiny hand rests on his paunch.

“Tonight you finally did something yourselves. You beat a baby just like

you. But that’s worth about as much as a Pinkwhore’s fart. Our little Society

balances on the tip of a needle. The other Colors would rip your gorydamn

hearts out given the chance. And then there’s the Silvers. The Coppers. The

Blues. You think they’d be loyal to a bunch of babies? You think the

Obsidians will follow little turds like you? Those babystranglers would

make you their little cuddleslaves if they saw weakness. So you must show

none.”

“So, what, the Institute is supposed to make us tough?” huge Titus grunts.

“No, you colossal oaf. It’s supposed to make you smart, cruel, wise, hard.

It’s supposed to age you fifty years in ten months and show you what your

ancestors did to give you this empire. May I continue?”

He blows a gumbubble.

“Now, House Mars.” His thin hand scratches his belly. “Yeah. We’ve got

a proud House that could maybe even match some of the Elder Families.

We’ve got Politicos, Praetors, and Judiciars. The current ArchGovernors of

Mercury and Europa, a Tribune, dozens of Praetors, two Justices, an

Imperator of a fleet. Even Lorn au Arcos of the Family Arcos, third most

powerful family on Mars, for those not keeping track, maintains his bonds

with us.

“All of those highUps are looking for new talent. They picked you from

the other candidates to fill the roster. Impress these important men and

women and you’ll have an apprenticeship after this. Win and you’ll have

your pick of apprenticeships within the House or an Elder Family; maybe

even Arcos himself will want you. If that happens, you’ll be on the fast

track to position, fame, and power.”

I lean forward.

“But win?” I ask. “What is there to win?”

He smiles.

“At this moment, you are in a remote terraformed valley in the

southernmost part of Valles Marineris. In this valley, there are twelve

Houses in twelve castles. After orientation tomorrow, you will go to war

with your fellow students to dominate the valley by any means at your

disposal. Consider it a case study in gaining and ruling an empire.”

There are murmurs of excitement. It is a game. And here I thought I

would have to study something in a classroom.

“And what if you are Primus of the winning House?” Antonia asks. She

twirls a finger through her golden curls.

“Then welcome to glory, darling. Welcome to fame and power.”

So, I must be Primus.

We eat a plain dinner. When Fitchner leaves, Cassius stirs, his voice

coming cold and filled with dark humor.

“Let us all play a game, my friends. We will each say whom we killed. I

will start. Nexus au Celintus. I knew him when we were children, as I know

some of you. I broke his trachea with my fingers.” No one speaks. “Come

now. Families should not keep secrets.”

Still, no one answers.

Sevro is the first to leave, making his derision for Cassius’s game clear.

First to eat. First to sleep. I want to follow. Instead, I make small talk with

peaceful Roque and massive Titus after Cassius gives up on his game and

retires as well. Titus is impossible to like. He’s not funny, but everything is

a joke to him. It’s like he’s sneering at me, at everyone, even though he is

smiling. I want to hit him, but he doesn’t give me a reason. Everything he

says is perfectly innocuous. Yet I hate him. It’s like he doesn’t think me a

human; instead I’m just a chess piece and he’s waiting to move me around.

No. Shove me around. He somehow forgot to be seventeen or eighteen like

the rest. He is a man. Taller than two meters, easy. Maybe nearing two and a

half meters. Lithe Roque, on the other hand, reminds me so much of my

brother Kieran, if Kieran could kill. His smiles are kind. His words patient

and wistful and wise, just as they had been earlier. Lea, the girl who looks

like a limping baby deer, follows him everywhere. He’s patient with her in a

way I couldn’t be.

Late in the night, I look for the places where the students died. I cannot

find them. The stairs no longer exist. The castle has swallowed them. I find

rest in a long dormitory filled with thin matresses. Wolves howl from the

shifting mists that cloak the highlands beyond our castle. I find sleep

quickly.

OceanofPDF

OceanofPDF

21

Our Dominion

Fitchner wakes us from the long dormitories in the dark of morning.

Grumbling, we roll out of double bunk beds and set out from the keep to the

castle’s square, where we stretch, then set off at a run. We lope easily in the

.37grav.

Clouds drop soft showers. The canyon walls fifty kilometers west and

forty kilometers east of our little valley tower six kilometers high. Between

them is an ecosystem of mountains, forests, rivers, and plains. Our

battlefield.

Ours is a highland territory. There rise mossy hills and craggy peaks that

dip into U-shaped, grassy glens. Mist blankets all, even the thick forests that

lie like homespun quilts over the foothills. Our castle stands on a hill just

north of a river in the middle of a bowl-like glen—half grass, half woods.

Greater hills cup the glen in a semicircle to the north and south. I should

like it here. Eo would have. But without her, I feel as lonely as our castle

looks on its high, removed hill. I reach for the locket, for our haemanthus.

Neither is with me. I feel empty in this paradise.

Three walls of our hill castle stand atop eighty-meter stone cliffs. The

castle itself is huge. Its walls rise thirty meters. The gatehouse swells out

from the walls as a fortress with turrets. Inside the walls, our square keep is

part of the northwestern wall and rises fifty meters. A gentle slope leads up

from the glen’s floor to the castle’s western gate, opposite the keep. We run

down this slope along a lonely dirt road. Mist embraces us. I relish the cold

air. It purifies me after hours of fitful sleep.

The mist burns away as the summer day dawns. Deerling, thinner and

faster than the creatures of Earth, graze in the fir woods. Birds circle above.

A single raven promises eerie things. Sheep litter the field and goats wander

the high rocky hills we run up in a line of fifty and one. Others of my House

may see animals of Earth, or curious creatures the Carvers decided to make

for fun. But I see only food and clothing.

The sacred animals of Mars make their home in our territory.

Woodpeckers hammer oak and fir . At night, wolves howl across the

highlands and stalk during the day through the woodlands of our territory.

There are snakes near the river. Vultures in the quiet gulches. Killers

running beside me. What friends I have. If only Loran or Kieran or Matteo

were here to watch my back. Someone I could trust. I’m a sheep wearing

wolves clothing in a pack of wolves.

As Fitchner runs us up the rocky heights, Lea, the girl with the limp,

falls. He lazily nudges at her with his foot till we carry her on our shoulders.

Roque and I bear the load. Titus smirks, and only Cassius helps when

Roque tires. Then Pollux, a lean, craggy-voiced boy with buzzed hair, takes

over for me. He sounds like he’s been smoking burners since he was two.

We trudge through a summer valley of forests and fields. Bugs nip at us

there. The Goldbrows drip with sweat, but I do not. This is an icy bath

compared to the rigors of my old frysuit. All about me are trim fit, but

Cassius, Sevro, Antonia, Quinn (the bloodydamn fastest girl or thing I’ve

ever seen on two feet), Titus, three of his new friends, and I could leave the

rest behind. Only Fitchner with his gravBoots would outpace us. He bounds

along like a deerling, then he chases one down and his razor whips out. It

encircles the deerling’s throat, and he contracts the blade to kill the animal.

“Supper,” he says, grinning. “Drag it.”

“You could have killed it closer to the castle,” Sevro mutters.

Fitchner scratches his head and looks around. “Did anyone else hear a

squat ugly little Goblin go ... well, whatever sound Goblins make? Drag

it.”

Sevro grabs the deer’s leg. “Dickwit.”

We reach the summit of a rocky height five kilometers southwest of our

castle. A stone tower dominates the peak. From the top, we survey the

battlefield. Somewhere out there, our enemies do the same. The theater of

war stretches to the south farther than we can see. A snowy mountain range

fills the western horizon. To the southeast, a primordial wood knots the

landscape. Dividing the two is a lush plain split by a massive southbound

river, the Argos, and its tributaries. Farther south, past the plains and rivers,

the ground dips away into marshes. I cannot see beyond. A great floating

mountain hovers two kilometers up in the bluish, star-spackled sky. It is

Olympus, Fitchner explains, an artificial mountain where the Proctors watch

each year’s class. Its peak shimmers with a fairy-tale castle. Lea shuffles

closer to stand beside me.

“How does it float?” she asks sweetly.

I haven’t the faintest clue.

I look north.

Two rivers in a forested valley split our northern highland territory, which

is at the edge of a vast highland wilderness. They form a V pointing

southwest to the lowlands, where they eventually form one tributary to the

Argos. Surrounding the valley are the highlands—dramatic hills and dwarf

mountains scarred with gulches where mist still clings.

“This is Phobos Tower,” Fitchner says. The tower lies in the far

southwest of our territory. He drinks from a canteen while we go thirsty,

and points northwest where the two rivers meet in the valley to form their

V. A massive tower crowns a distant dwarf mountain range just beyond the

junction. “And that is Deimos.” He traces an imaginary line to show us the

bounds of House Mars’s territory.

The eastern river is called the Furor. The western, which runs just south

of our castle, is the Metas. A single bridge spans the Metas. An enemy

would have to cross it to enter between the V into the valley and strike

northeast across easy, wooded ground to reach our castle.

“This is a slaggin’ joke, isn’t it?” Sevro asks Fitchner.

“Whatever do you mean, Goblin?” Fitchner pops a gumbubble.

“Our legs are wide as a Pinkwhore’s. All these mountains and hills and

anyone can just walk right in the front door. It’s a perfect flat passage from

the lowlands right to our gate. Just one stinking river to cross.”

“Pointing out the obvious, eh? You know, I really do not like you. You

foul little Goblin.” Fitchner stares at Sevro for a purposeful moment and

then shrugs. “Anyway, I’ll be on Olympus.”

“What does that mean, Proctor?” Cassius asks sourly. He doesn’t like the

look of things either. Though his eyes are red from weeping through the

night for his dead brother, it hasn’t dulled his impressiveness.

“I mean it’s your problem, little prince. Not mine. No one’s going to fix

anything for you. I am your Proctor. Not your mommy. You’re in school,

remember? So if your legs are open, well, make a chastity belt to protect the

softspot.”

There’s general grumbling.

“Could be worse,” I say. I point past Antonia’s head toward the southern

plains where an enemy fortress spans a great river. “We could be exposed

like those poor bastards.”

“Those poor bastards have crops and orchards,” Fitchner muses. “You

have ...” He looks over the ledge to find the deer he killed. “Well, Goblin

here left the deer behind, so you have nothing. The wolves will eat what

you do not.”

“Unless we eat the wolves,” Sevro mutters, drawing strange looks from

the rest of our House.

So we have to get our own food.

Antonia points to the lowlands.

“What are they doing?”

A black dropship slides down from the clouds. It settles in the center of

the grassy plain between us and the distant enemy river fortress of Ceres.

Two Obsidians and a dozen Tinpots stand guard as Browns hustle out to set

hams, steaks, biscuits, wine, milk, honey, and cheeses onto a disposable

table eight kilometers from Phobos Tower.

“A trap, obviously,” Sevro snorts.

“Thank you, Goblin,” Cassius sighs. “But I haven’t had breakfast.”

Circles ring his reckless eyes. He glances over at me through the crowd of

our fellows and offers a smile. “Up for a race, Darrow?”

I start with surprise. Then I smile. “On your mark.”

And he’s off.

I’ve done dumber things to feed my family. I did dumber things when

someone I loved died. Cassius is owed the company as he races down the

steep hillside.

Forty-eight kids watch us scamper to fill our bellies; none follow.

“Bring me a slice of honeyed ham!” Fitchner shouts. Antonia calls us

idiots. The dropship floats away as we leave the highlands behind for

gentler terrain. Eight kilometers in .376grav (Earth standard) is a cinch. We

scramble down rocky hillsides, then hit the lowland plains at full tilt

through ankle-high grass. Cassius beats me to the tables by a body length.

He’s fast. We each take a pint of the ice water on the table. I drink mine

faster. He laughs.

“Looks like the House Ceres’s mark on their flagpole. The Harvest

Goddess.” Cassius points over across the green plains to the fortress. A few

trees dot the several kilometers between us and the castle. Pennants flap

from their ramparts. He pops a grape into his mouth. “We should take a

closer look before chowin’ down. A little scouting.”

“Agreed ... but something isn’t right here,” I say quietly.

Cassius laughs at the open plain. “Nonsense. We’d see trouble if it was

coming. And I don’t think any one of them is going to be faster than us two.

We can strut up to their gates and take a shit if we so like.”

“I do have something brewing.” I touch my stomach.

Yet still, something is wrong. And not just in my belly.

It’s six kilometers of open ground between the river fortress and us. The

river gurgles in the distance to the right. Forest to the far left. Plains in

front. Mountains beyond the river. Wind rustles the long grass and a

sparrow coasts in with the breeze. It swoops low to the ground before

flinching up and away. I laugh loudly and lean against the table.

“They are in the grass,” I whisper. “A trap.”

“We can steal sacks from them and carry more of this back,” he says

loudly. “Run?”

“Pixie.”

He grins, though neither of us is sure if we’re allowed to start the fighting

during orientation day. Whatever.

On three, we kick apart the disposable table’s legs till we each have a

meter of duroplastic as a weapon. I scream like a madman and sprint toward

the spot where the sparrow fled. Cassius at my side. Five House Ceres

Golds rise from the grass. They’re startled by our mad rush. Cassius catches

the first in the face with a proper fencer’s lunge. I’m less graceful. My

shoulder is stiff and sore. I scream and break my weapon across one of their

knees. He goes down howling. Duck someone’s swing. Cassius deflects it.

We dance as two. There’s three of them left. One squares up with me. He

doesn’t have a knife or a bat. No, he has something I’m far more interested

in. A question mark of a sword. A slingBlade for reaping grain. He faces me

with his back hand on his hip and the crooked blade out like a razor. If it

were a razor, I’d be dead. But it’s not. I make him miss, block one of

Cassius’s attackers’ blows. Lurch forward at my attacker. I’m much quicker

than he and my grip is like durosteel to his. So I take his slingBlade and his

knife before I punch him down.

When he sees how I twirl the slingBlade in my hand, the last uninjured

boy knows it’s time to surrender. Cassius jumps high in the .376grav and

executes an unnecessary twirling sideways kick to the boy’s face. Reminds

me of the dancers and leapers of Lykos

Kravat. The Silent Dance. Eerily similar to the boast dancing of young

Reds.

Nothing is silent about the boys’ curses. I feel no pity for these students.

They all murdered someone the night before, just like me. There are no

innocents in this game. The only thing that worries me is seeing how

Cassius dispatched his victims. He is grace and finesse. I am rage and

momentum. He could kill me in a second, if he knew my secret.

“What a lark!” he croons. “You were gory terrifying! You just took his

weapon! Gory fast! Glad we weren’t paired earlier. Prime stuff! What have

you to say for yourselves, you sneaking fools?”

The captured Golds just swear at us.

I stand over them and cock my head. “Is this the first time you’ve lost at

something?” No answer. I frown. “Well, that must be embarrassing.”

Cassius’s face shines—for a moment he’s forgotten his brother’s death. I

haven’t. I feel darkness. Hollow. Evil when the adrenaline fades. Is this

what Eo wanted? For me to play games? Fitchner arrives in the air above

us, clapping his hands. His gravBoots glimmer golden. He’s got his ham

slice between his teeth.

“Reinforcements come!” he laughs.

Titus and a half dozen of the faster boys and girls run toward us from the

highlands. Opposite, a golden shape rises from the distant river fortress and

flies toward us. A beautiful woman with short-cropped hair settles next to

Fitchner in the air. The Proctor of House Ceres. She carries a bottle of wine

and two glasses.

“Mars! A picnic!” she calls, referring to him by his House’s deity.

“So who arranged for this drama, Ceres?” Fitchner asks.

“Oh, Apollo, I suppose. He’s lonely up in his mountain estates. Here, this

is zinfandel from his vines. Much better than last year’s varietal.”

“Delicious!” Fitchner proclaims. “But your boys were squatting in the

grass. Almost as if they expected the picnic to spontaneously manifest.

Suspicious, no?”

“Details!” Proctor Ceres laughs. “Pendantic details!”

“Well, here’s a detail. It seems two of mine are worth five of yours this

year, my dear.”

“These pretty boys?” Ceres snickers. “I thought the vain ones went to

Apollo and Venus.”

“Oho! Well, yours certainly fight like housewives and farmers. Well

placed, they were.”

“Don’t judge them yet, you cad. They are midDraft picks. My highDrafts

are elsewhere, earning their first calluses!”

“Learning the ovens? Huzzah,” Fitchner declares ironically. “Bakers do

make the best rulers, so I’ve heard.”

She nudges him. “Oh, you devil. No wonder you interviewed for the

Rage Knight post. Such a scoundrel!”

They clink their glasses together as we watch from the ground.

“How I love orientation day,” Ceres titters. “Mercury just let a hundred

thousand rats loose in Jupiter’s citadel. But Jupiter was ready because Diana

tattled and arranged the delivery of a thousand cats. Jupiter’s boys won’t go

hungry like last year. Cats will be as fat as Bacchus.”

“Diana is a harlot,” Fitchner declares.

“Be kind!”

“I was. I sent her a great phallic cake filled with live woodpeckers.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You beast!” Ceres caresses his arm and I note the free-loving demeanor

these people have. I wonder if other Proctors are lovers as well. “Her

fortress will be riddled with holes. Oh, the sound must be horrible. Well

played, Mars. They say Mercury is the trickster, but your japes always have

a certain ... flair!”

“Flair, eh? Well, I’m sure I could rustle up some tricks for you on

Olympus ...”

“Huzzah,” she coos suggestively.

They toast again, floating above their sweating and bloody students. I

can’t help but laugh. These people are mad. Bloodydamn crazy in their

empty Golden heads. How are they my rulers?

“Oy! Fitch! If you don’t mind. What are we supposed to do with these

farmers?” Cassius calls up. He pokes one of our injured captives on the

nose. “What are the rules?”

“Eat them!” Fitchner cries. “And Darrow, put down that gory scythe. You

look like a grain reaper.”

I don’t drop it. It is close to the shape of my slingBlade from home. Not

as sharp, because it isn’t meant to kill, but the balance is no different.

“You know you could let my children go and give them back the reaping

scythe,” Ceres suggests down to us.

“Give me a kiss and you have a deal,” Cassius calls up.

“The Imperator’s boy?” she asks Fitchner. He nods. “Come ask for one

when you’re Scarred, little prince.” She looks over her shoulder. “Until

then, I would advise that you and the reaper run.”

We hear the hooves before we see the painted horses galloping at us

across the plain. They come from the opened gates of House Ceres’s castle.

The girls on the horses’ backs carry nets.

“They gave you horses! Horses!” Fitchner complains. “That is so unfair!”

We run and barely make it to the woods. I didn’t like my first encounter

with horses. They still scare the piss out of me. All snorting and stomping.

Cassius and I gasp for breath. My shoulder aches. Two of Titus’s

reinforcements are captured as they find themselves stranded in open

ground. Bold Titus knocks a horse over and is laughing as he’s about to lay

waste to one of the girls with his boot. Ceres zaps him with a stunfist and

makes peace with Fitchner. The stunfist causes Titus to piss himself. Only

Sevro is careless enough to laugh. Cassius says something about bad

manners, but he snickers quietly. Titus notices.

“Are we allowed to kill them or not?” he growls that night at dinner. We eat

the leftovers from Bacchus’s feast. “Or am I going to get stunned every

time?”

“Well, the point isn’t to kill them,” Fitchner says. “So no. Let’s not go

around massacring your classmates, you mad ape.”

“But we did before!” Titus protests.

“What is wrong with you?” Fitchner asks. “The Passage was where the

culling is done. It’s no longer survival of the fittest, you mad, stupid,

colossal sack of muscle. What would be the point if we now had the fittest

just murder each other till only a few are left? There are new tests to pass

now.”

“Ruthlessness.” Antonia crosses her arms. “So now it’s not acceptable? Is

that what you’re saying?”

“Oh, it better be acceptable.” Titus grins broadly. He’s been boasting all

night about knocking over the horse, as if it’d make everyone forget the piss

that stained his pants. Some have. He’s already gathered a pack of hounds.

Only Cassius and I seem to have an ounce of his respect, but even we’re

smirked at. So is Fitchner.

Fitchner sets down his honeyed ham.

“Let us clarify, children, so this water buffalo doesn’t go around

stomping on skulls. Ruthlessness is acceptable, dear Antonia. If someone

dies by accident, that is understandable. Accidents happen to the best of us.

But you will not murder each other with scorchers. You will not hang

people from your ramparts unless they’re already dead. MedBots are on

standby in case any medical attention is direly needed. They are fast enough

to save lives, most of the time.”

He pops a gumbubble. “Remember, though, the point is not to kill. We

don’t care if you’re as ruthless as Vlad Dracula. He still lost. The point is to

win. That’s what we want.”

And that simple test of cruelty is already past.

“We want you to show us your brilliance. Like Alexander. Like Caesar,

Napoleon, and Merrywater. We want you to manage an army, distribute

justice, arrange for provisions of food and armor. Any fool can stick a blade

into another’s belly. The school’s role is to find the leaders of men, not the

killers of men. So the point, you silly little children, is not to kill, but to

conquer. And how do you conquer in a game where there are eleven enemy

tribes?”

“Take them out one at a time,” Titus answers knowingly.

“No, ogre.”

“Dumbass,” Sevro snickers to himself. Titus’s pack quietly watches the

smallest boy in the Institute. No threats are snarled. No faces twitch. Just a

silent promise. It’s hard to remember that they are all geniuses. They look

too pretty. Too athletic. Too cruel to be geniuses.

“Anyone besides Ogre have a guess?” Fitchner asks.

No one answers.

“You make one tribe out of twelve,” I finally say. “By taking slaves.”

Just like the Society. Build on the backs of others. It isn’t cruel. It is

practical.

Fitcher claps mockingly. “Prime, Reaper. Prime. Looks like someone is

bucking for Primus.” Everyone shifts in agitation at that last bit. Fitchner

pulls a long box from under the table. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is

what you use to make the slaves.” He pulls out our standard. “Protect this.

Protect your castle. And conquer all the others.”

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22

The Tribes

Fitchner is gone in the morning. In his chair lies the standard. It is a one-

foot length of iron tipped with our howling wolf; a serpent coils beneath the

wolf’s feet, the star-tipped pyramid of the Society beneath that. A five-foot

oak pole connects to the iron end. If the castle is our home, the standard is

our honor. With it, we are able to turn enemies into our slaves by pressing it

to their forehead. There a wolf sigil will appear until another standard is

pressed to the forehead. Slaves must obey our express commands or forever

be Shamed.

I sit across from the standard in the morning dark, eating Apollo’s

leftovers. A wolf calls out in the mist. Its howl comes through the keep’s

high window. Tall Antonia is the first to join me. She glides in like a lonely

tower or a beautiful golden spider. I haven’t decided which way her

personality runs. We exchange glances but no greetings. She wants Primus.

Cassius and raspy Pollux saunter in next. Pollux grumbles about having

to go to bed without having Pinks to tuck him in.

“A positively hideous standard, don’t you think?” Antonia complains.

“They could at least have given it a splash of color. I think it should be

draped with red for rage and blood.”

“It’s not too heavy.” Cassius hefts the standard by its pole. “Reckoned

it’d be gold.” He admires the golden Primus hand within the block of black

stone. He wants it too. “And they gave us a map. Swell.”

A new stone map dominates one of the walls. The detail near our castle is

remarkable. The rest less so. The fog of war. Cassius claps me on the back

and joins in eating. He doesn’t know I heard him weep again in the night.

We shared a new bunk in a barracks in the keep’s high tower. Many others

still sleep in the main tower. Titus and his friends have taken the low tower

even though they don’t have enough bodies to fill it.

Most of the House has woken by the time Sevro drags in a dead wolf by

its legs. It’s already gutted and skinned.

“Goblin has brought victuals!” Cassius applauds daintily. “Hmm. We will

need firewood. Does anyone know how to make a fire?” Sevro does.

Cassius grins. “Of course you do, Goblin.”

“Found the sheep too easy to kill?” I ask. “Where’d you get the

weapon?”

“Born with them.” His fingernails are bloody.

Antonia wrinkles her nose. “Where in the hell were you raised?”

Sevro presents his middle finger to her, the crux.

“Ah,” Antonia sniffs. “Hell, then.”

“So, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed, it will be some time before anyone

has enough bars of merit to become Primus,” Cassius declares when we’ve

all gathered around the table. “Naturally, I was thinking that we need a

leader before Primus is chosen.” He stands and scoots away from Sevro so

that his fingers rest on the edge of the standard. “In order for us to function,

we must have immediate and coordinated decisions.”

“And which of you two fools do you think it should be?” Antonia asks

dryly. Her large eyes glance from him to me. She turns to regard the others,

voice sweet like thick syrup. “At this point, what makes any of us better

suited to lead than anyone else?”

“They got us dinner ... and breakfast,” Lea says meekly from beside

Roque. She gestures to the leftover picnic victuals.

“While running right into a trap—” Roque reminds everyone.

Antonia nods sagely. “Yes, yes. A wise point. Rashness can hurt us.”

“—but they did fight free,” Roque finishes, earning a glare from Antonia..

“With table legs against real weapons,” Titus rumbles his approval, with

a qualification. “But then they fled and left the food behind. So it was

Fitchner who gave us the food. They would have given it to the enemy,

delivering food like Browns.”

“Yeah, that’s a twist on what happened,” Cassius says.

Titus shrugs. “I only saw you running like a little Pixie.”

Cassius goes cold.

“Watch your manners, goodman.”

Titus holds up his hands. “Merely observing; why so angry, little prince?”

“You watch your manners, goodman, or we’ll have to trade our words for

blades.” Cassius wields his looted pitchfork and points it at Titus. “You

heed, Titus au Ladros?”

Titus holds gaze with him, then glances over at me, grouping me with

Cassius. Suddenly Cassius and I form a tribe in everyone’s eyes. The

paradigm shifts that quickly. Politics. I take my time twirling my looted

knife between my fingers. The whole table watches the knife. Sevro

especially. My Red right hand has collected a million metric tones of

helium-3 with its dexterity. My left, half a million. The dexterity of an

average lowRed would startle these Golds. I dazzle them. The knife is like a

hummingbird’s wings in my nimble fingers. I look calm but my mind is

racing.

We have all killed. Those were the stakes. What are they now? Titus has

already made it clear that he wants to kill. I could stop him now, I wager.

Drive my knife into his neck. But the thought almost makes me drop my

blade. I feel Eo’s death in my hands. I hear the wet thump of Julian dying. I

can’t bear the blood, especially when it doesn’t seem necessary. I can back

this huge puppy down.

I level my eyes coldly at Titus. His smile is slow, the disdain barely

noticeable. He’s calling me out. I have to fight him or something if he

doesn’t look away—that’s what wolves do, I think.

My knife spins and spins. And suddenly Titus is laughing. He looks

away. My heart slows. I’ve won. I hate politics. Especially in a room full of

alphas.

“Of course I hear you, Cassius. You’re standing ten feet away,” Titus

chuckles.

Titus doesn’t think he’s strong enough to challenge Cassius and me

openly, even with his pack. He saw what we did to the Ceres boys. But just

like that the lines are drawn. I stand suddenly, confirming that I am with

Cassius. It strips Titus of any momentum.

“Is there anyone who wouldn’t want either of us to lead?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t want Antonia to lead. She’s a bitch,” Sevro says.

Antonia shrugs her agreement but cocks her head.

“Cassi, why are you in such a rush to find us a leader?” she asks.

“If we do not have one leader, then we will fracture and do as we each

think is best,” Cassius says. “That’s how we lose.”

“Instead of what you think is best,” she says with a soft smile and a nod.

“I see.”

“Don’t give me that condescension, Antonia. Priam even agreed we

needed one leader.”

“Who is Priam?” Titus laughs. He’s trying to get attention back on

himself once more. Every Gold kid on the planet knew Priam. Now Titus

tries to make it clear who killed him, and the others take note. Momentum

regained. Except I know Titus didn’t kill Priam. They wouldn’t put

someone like him in with Priam. They would have put a weakling in there.

So Titus is a liar as well as a bully.

“Ah, I see. Because you plotted with Priam, you know what needs to be

done, Cassius? You know better than all of us?” Antonia waves at the table.

“You’re telling us we’re helpless without your guidance?”

She’s trapped him, and me too.

“Listen, boys, I know you’re eager to lead,” she continues, “I get that. We

are all leaders by nature. Each person in this room is a born genius, a born

captain. But that is why the Primus merit system exists. When someone has

earned five fingers of merit and is ready to be Primus, then we will have a

leader.

“Until then, I say we hold out. If Cassius or Darrow earns it, then so be it.

I’ll do whatever they command, obedient as a Pink, simple as a Red.” She

gestures to the others. “Until then, I think one of you should also have a

chance to earn it.... After all, it may decide your career!”

She’s clever. And she’s sunk us. Every brat in the room was no doubt

wishing they’d been more assertive from the get-go, wishing they could

have another chance to make people notice them. Now Antonia gives it to

them. This will be chaos. And she may end up as Primus. Definitely a

spider.

“Look!” Lea says from Roque’s side.

A horn bellows beyond the castle.

The standard chooses that moment to shimmer. Snake and wolf shed iron

for gleaming gold. Not only that, but the stone map on the wall comes alive.

Our wolf banner ripples over a miniature of our castle. Ceres’s banner does

the same. No other castles mark the map, but the banners of the

undiscovered Houses flap off in the map’s key. No doubt they’ll find a home

as soon as we scout the surrounding territory.

The game has begun. And now everyone wants to be the Primus.

I see why demokracy is illegal. First comes yelling. Frustration.

Indecision. Disagreements. Ideas. Scout. Fortify. Gather food. Lay traps.

Blitz. Raid. Defense. Offense. Pollux spits. Titus knocks him out cold.

Antonia leaves. Sevro says something snide to Titus and drags his wolf off

to God knows where, never having lit a fire. It’s like my Lambda drillteam

whenever a headTalk would take an hour sick. That’s how I learned I could

drill. Barlow snuck off to take a smoke and I hopped on the rig and did as I

thought was best. I do the same now as the children bicker.

Cassius, Roque, and Lea—who follows Roque everywhere—come with

me, though Cassius likely thinks we follow him. We agree that the others

will not know what to do and so will inevitably do nothing today. They will

guard the castle or seek out wood for a fire or cluster around the standard

for fear of it walking off.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if our enemies are slinking

through the hills toward us. I don’t know if they are making alliance against

Mars. I don’t know how the damn game is even played. But for some

reason, I assume that not all of the other Houses will fall to discord like this.

We of Mars seem more prone to disagreement.

I ask Cassius what he thinks we should do.

“Once, I challenged this prancing oaf to a duel for disrespecting my

family—an Augustus fop. He was very methodical—tightened his gloves,

tied back his pretty hair, swished his razor as he did before every gory

practice bout he’s ever had in at the Agea Martial Club.”

“And?”

“And I hooked him and stabbed him through the kneecap while he was

still swishing his razor in preparation.” He catches Lea’s disapproval.

“What? The duel had begun. I’m foxy, but I’m not a beast. I just win.”

“I feel like you all think that,” I say. “We all, I mean.”

They don’t notice my slipup.

His point stands. Our House can’t attack an enemy in our state, but an

enemy could attack us as we run about preparing, and ruin all my hopes of

rising within the Society. So, information. We need to know if our enemies

are in a glen half a kilometer to the north or if they are fifteen kilometers

south. Are we at a corner of the playing field or in the center? Are there

enemies in the highlands? North of the highlands?

Cassius and I agree. We must scout.

We split up. Cassius and I head to Phobos and then move

counterclockwise. Lea and Roque strike to Deimos and scout clockwise.

We’re to meet at dusk.

We don’t see a soul from the top of Phobos. The lowlands are empty of

horses and Ceres’s fighters, and the highland range to the south is full of

lochs and goats. Southeast, atop a high dwarf mountain, we glimpse part of

the Greatwoods to the south and southeast. An army of giants could be

hiding there for all we know, and we can’t investigate; it would take half a

day to cover the distance to even make it close to the treeline.

Some ten kilometers from our castle, we find a weatherworn stone fort

upon a low hill guarding a pass. Inside is a rustic survival box of iodine,

food, a compass, rope, six durobags, a toothbrush, sulfur matches, and

simple bandages. We store the items in a clear durobag.

So supplies have been hidden about the valley. Something tells me there

are more important items hidden in the countryside than little survivor kits.

Weapons? Transportation? Armor? Technology? They can’t mean for us to

make war with sticks and stones and metal tools. And if they don’t want us

to kill each other, stun weapons must soon replace our metal ones.

We earn nasty sunburns that first day. The mist chills them as we return.

Titus and his pack, six now, have just returned from a fruitless incursion to

the plains. They’ve killed two goats but don’t have a fire to cook with, since

Sevro slipped off somewhere. I don’t tell them about my matches. Cassius

and I agree that Titus, if he wants to be the big man, should at least be able

to conquer fire. Sevro, wherever he is, must agree as well. Titus’s boys hit

metal on stone trying to create sparks, but the stones of the castle don’t

spark. Clever Proctors.

Titus’s pack makes the dregs, the lowDrafts, fetch wood despite the fact

that they have no fires. They all go hungry that night. Only Roque and Lea

don’t. They get some of our survival bars. I like the pair even if they are

Golds, and I excuse befriending them by telling myself that I do it only to

build my own tribe. Cassius seems to think that fast midDraft girl, Quinn,

will be useful. But he can make himself think that about most pretty girls.

The tribes grow, and the first lesson is already under way.

Antonia finds friends with a squat, sour, curlyheaded fellow named

Cipio, and she manages to send groups armed with shovels and axes found

in the castle to garrison Deimos and Phobos. The girl may be a spoiled

witch, but at least she isn’t stupid. Then Titus’s pack steals their axes as

they sleep and I revise my opinion.

Cassius and I scout together. On the third day, we see smoke rising in the

distance, maybe some twenty kilometers to the east. It is like a beacon in

the dusk. Enemy scouting parties would be out like us. If it were closer or

we had horses, we would investigate. Or if we had more men, we might set

out overnight and plan a raid for slaves. The distance and our lack of

coherence make all the difference. Between us and the smoke are ravines

and gulches that could hide warbands. Then there’s many kilometers of

plains to walk exposed. We won’t make the trek. Not when some Houses

have horses. I don’t tell Cassius this, but I am afraid. The highlands feel

safe, but just out there in the landscape beyond are roving bands of

psychotic godlings. Godlings I do not want to run across quite yet.

The thought of meeting other Houses is made all the more terrifying by

the idea that even home is not safe. It’s like Octavia au Lune always says:

no man can pursue any endeavor in the face of tribal warfare. We can’t

afford to leave Titus alone for too long. He’s already stolen berries Lea and

Quinn collected. And this morning he tried to use the standard on Quinn to

see if it could make slaves for his raiding parties out of the House’s own

members. It couldn’t.

“We have to bind the House together somehow,” Cassius tells me as we

scout the northern highlands. “The Institute is with us for the rest of our

lives. If we lose, we may never gain position, ever.”

“And if we’re enslaved during the course of the game?” I ask.

He looks worriedly over at me. “What worse loss could there be?”

As if I needed more motivation.

“Your father won his year, I wager. He was Primus?” I ask. To be an

Imperator, he’d have to have won his year.

“Right. Always knew he won his year, though I had no slagging idea

what that meant till we got here.”

We both agree that in order to bind our House back together, Titus must

go. But it is futile to fight him outright; that chance passed after the first

day. His tribe has grown too large.

“I say we kill him in his sleep,” Cassius suggests. “You and I could do

it.”

His words chill me. We make no decision, yet the proposition serves to

remind me that he and I are different creatures. Or are we really? His wrath

is a cruel, cold thing. Yet I never see the anger again, not even around Titus.

He’s all smiles and laughter and challenging members of Titus’s pack to

races and wrestling when they aren’t going out on raids—just as I am

around my enemies.

Yet while I’m regarded warily by most, Cassius is loved by all except

Titus’s pack. He’s even started sneaking off with Quinn. I like her. She

killed a deer with a trap, then told a story about how she killed the thing

with her teeth. Even showed us evidence—hair between her teeth and gums

along with bitemarks on the deer. We thought we had a prettier Sevro on our

hands till she laughed too hard to go on with the tall tale. Cassius helped her

get the deer hair out of her teeth. I like a committed liar.

Conditions worsen in the first few days. People remain hungry because

we’ve yet to build a fire in the castle, and hygiene is quickly forgotten when

two of our girls are snatched up by Ceres horsemen as they bathe in the

river just beneath our gate. The Golds are confused when even their fine

pores begin clogging and they gain pimples.

“Looks like a beesting!” Roque laughs to Cassius and me. “Or a radial,

distant sun!”

I pretend to be fascinated by it, as though I didn’t have them all my Red

life.

Cassius leans forward to inspect it. “Brotherman, that is just—” Then

Roque pops the pimple right into Cassius’s face, causing him to reel back

and gag from disgust. Quinn falls over giggling.

“I do wonder sometimes,” Roque begins after Cassius has recovered, “as

to the purpose of all this. How can this be the most efficient method of

testing our merit, of making us into beings who can rule the Society?”

“And do you ever come to a conclusion?” Cassius asks warily. He keeps

his distance now.

“Poets never do,” I say.

Roque chuckles. “Unlike most poets, I sometimes manage. And I have

our answer to this.”

“Spit it out,” Cassius urges.

“As though I wasn’t going to without instruction from our resident

primadonna.” Roque sighs. “They have us here because this valley was

humanity before Gold ruled. Fractured. Disunited even in our very own

tribe. They want us to go through the process that our forefathers went

through. Step by step, this game will evolve to teach us new lessons.

Hierarchies within the game will develop. We’ll have Reds, Golds,

Coppers.”

“Pinks?” Cassius asks hopefully.

“Makes sense,” I say.

“Oh, that would be ripe strange,” Cassius laughs, twisting his wolf ring

on his finger . “Mothers and fathers would be throwing fits if that went on.

Probably why Titus leers at the girls. He likely wants a toy. Speaking of

toys, where did he send Vixus?”

I laugh. Vixus, likely the most dangerous of Titus’s followers, and the

others departed nearly two hours ago on Titus’s orders to use Phobos

Tower’s height advantage to scout the plains in preparation for a raid on

House Ceres.

“It’d be best to have Vixus on our side if we make a play,” I say. “He’s

Titus’s right hand.”

Roque continues on a different train of thought.

“I ... don’t know about Pinks,” Roque says. The idea of a Gold being a

Pink offends him. “But ... the rest is simple. This is a microcosm of the

Solar System.”

“Seems like capture the flag, if you recall that game, with swords to me,”

I reply. I never played the sport, but my studying with Matteo brought me

up to speed on the games these children played in their parents’ gardens.

“Mhm.” Cassius nods. He shoves a mock-serious finger in Roque’s chest.

“Agreed. So you can take your quick talk and put it where the sun dare not

shine, Roque. We two great minds have decided. It’s a game of capture the

flag.”

“I see.” Roque laughs. “Not all men can understand metaphor and

stubtlty like I. But do not fear, muscular friends, I will be here to guide you

through the mind-bending things. For instance, I can tell you that our first

test will be to piece the House back together again before an enemy comes

a-knocking.”

“Hell,” I mutter, looking out over the edge of the parapet.

“Something in your bum?” Cassius asks.

“Looks like the game just started.” I point downward.

Across the glen, just where the forest meets the grass plain, Vixus drags a

girl by her hair. The first slave of House Mars. And far from being revolted,

I’m jealous. Jealous that I did not capture her. Titus’s minion did, and that

means that Titus now wields credibility.

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23

Fracture

Though we all still sleep under the same roof, it only took four days for the

House to dissolve into four tribes. Antonia, apparently the scion of a family

that owns a sizable asteroid belt, gets the midDrafters: the talkers, the

whiners, the brains, the dependents, the wimps, the snobs, and the politicos.

Titus draws mostly highDrafts or midDrafts—the physical specimens, the

violent, the fast, the intrepid, the prototypically intelligent, the ambitious,

the opportunists, the obvious selection for House Mars. The prodigy pianist,

quiet Cassandra, is his. So is raspy Pollux and the psychotic Vixus, who

shivers with pleasure at the mere idea of putting metal into flesh.

If Cassius and I had been more political, we might have managed to steal

the highDrafts from Titus. Hell, we might have had everyone ready to

follow if we just told them they had to obey. After all, Cassius and I were

the strongest for a brief moment, but then we gave Titus time to intimidate

and Antonia time to manipulate.

“Damned Antonia,” I say.

Cassius laughs and shakes his golden head as we bound east along the

highlands in search of more hidden caches of supplies. My long legs can

easily cover a kilometer in under a minute.

“Oh, you come to expect these things from her. If our families hadn’t

spent holidays together when we were little things, I might have called her

out as a demokrat on the first day. But she’s hardly that. More like Caesar or

... what did they call them, Presidents?—a tyrant in necessity’s clothing.”

“She’s a turd in the swillbowl,” I say.

“What the gory slag does that mean?” Cassius laughs.

Uncle Narol could have told him.

“Sorry? Oh. Heard it in Yorkton once from a highRed. Means she’s a fly

in the wine.”

“A highRed?” Cassius snorts. “One of my nannies was a highRed. I

know. Odd. Should have been a Brown. But the woman would tell me

stories as I tried to go to sleep.”

“That’s nice,” I say.

“I thought her an uppity bugger. Tried to tell Mother to make her shut up

and leave me alone, because all she wanted to do was talk about vales and

dreary romances that always end in some sort of sadness. Depressing

creature.”

“What did your mother do when you complained?”

“Mother? Ha! She clapped me on the head and said there’s always

something to learn from anybody. Even a highRed. Her and Father like to

pretend they’re progressives. Confuses me.” He shakes his head. “But

Yorkton. Julian couldn’t believe you were from Yorkton.”

The darkness returns in me. Even thinking of Eo doesn’t dispel it. Even

thinking of my noble mission and all the license it gives me doesn’t banish

the guilt. I’m the only one who shouldn’t feel guilty for the Passage, yet

besides Roque, I think I am the only one who does. I look at my hands and

remember Julian’s blood.

Cassius points up suddenly to the sky southwest of us. “What the gory

hell?”

Dozens of blinking medBots pour from floating Olympus’s castle. We

hear their distant whine. Proctors flicker after them like flaming arrows

toward the distant southern mountains. Whatever has happened, one thing is

certain: chaos reigns in the South.

Although my tribe continues to sleep in the castle, we’ve moved from the

high tower to the gatehouse so we don’t have to rub shoulders with Titus’s

lot. To keep safe, we leave our cooking as a secret.

We meet our tribe for supper by a loch in the northern highlands. They

are not all highDrafts. We have some—Cassius and Roque. But then no one

above seventeenth pick. We’ve some midDrafts—Quinn and Lea—but the

rest are the dregs, the lowDrafts—Clown, Screwface, Weed, Pebble, and

Thistle. This bothers Cassius even though the dregs of the Institute are still

certifiably superhuman compared with the rest of the Colors. They are

athletic. They are resilient. They never ask you to repeat yourself unless

they are making a point. And they accept my orders, even anticipating what

next I’ll ask them to do. I credit their less privileged upbringings.

Most are smarter than me. But I have that unique thing they call

slangsmarts, proven by my high score in the extrapolational intelligence

test. Not that it matters, I have sulfur matches and that makes me the god

Prometheus. Neither Antonia nor Titus have fire as far as I know. So I’m the

only one who can fill bellies. I make each of my tribe kill goats or sheep.

No one is allowed to freeload, even though Screwface tries his best. They

don’t notice my hands trembling when I cut my first goat’s throat with a

knife. There’s so much trust in the beast’s eyes, followed by confusion as it

dies, still thinking me its friend. The blood is warm, like Julian’s. The neck

muscle tough. I have to saw with the dull knife, just as Lea does when she

kills her first sheep, squealing as she does it. I make her skin it too with

Thistle’s help. And when she cannot, I take her hands into my own and

guide her along, giving her my strength.

“Daddy gonna have to cut up your meat for you too?” Thistle taunts.

“Shut it,” Roque says.

“She can fight her own battles, Roque. Lea, Thistle asked you a

question.” Lea blinks over at me, wide eyes confused. “Ask her another,

Thistle.”

“What’s gonna happen when we get in a tight spot with Titus, will you

squeal then too? Child.” Thistle knows what I want her to do. I asked her to

do it thirty minutes ago, before I brought the goat to Lea.

I motion my head at Lea to Thistle.

“You going to cry?” Thistle asks. “Wipe your eyes in—”

Lea screams and jumps at her. The two roll around punching each other

in the face. It’s not long before Thistle’s got Lea in a chokehold. Roque stirs

beside me. Quinn pulls him back down. Lea’s face goes purple. Her hands

slap at Thistle’s. Then she passes out. I give Thistle a nod of thanks. The

darkfaced girl gives a slow nod.

But Lea’s shoulders are squarer the next morning. She even musters

enough courage to hold Roque’s hand. She also claimed to be a good cook;

she isn’t. Roque tries his hand but he’s hardly any better. Eating their grub

is like taking down stringy, dry sponges. Even Quinn, with all her stories,

can’t muster up a recipe.

We cook goat and deer meat over our camp kitchen six kilometers from

the castle, and we do it at night in the gulches so the light and smoke cannot

be seen. We do not kill the sheep; instead we collect and deposit them in a

northern fort for safekeeping. I could bring more over to my tribe with the

food, but the food is as big a danger as it is a boon. What Titus and his

killers would do if he found that we had fire, food, clean water ...

I am returning to the castle with Roque from a scouting trip to the south

when we hear noises coming from a small grove of trees. Creeping closer,

we hear grunts and hacking sounds. Expecting to see a wolfpack ravaging a

goat, we peer through the brush and find four of Titus’s soldiers squatting

around a corpse. Their faces are bloody, eyes dark and ravenous as they tear

strips out of the dead deer with their knives. Five days without fire, five

days of bad berries, and they have already turned into savages.

“We have to give them matches,” Roque tells me afterwards.

“No. If we give them matches, then Titus will have even more power.”

“Does it matter at this point? They are going to get sick if they keep

eating raw meat. They already are sick!”

“So they shit their pants,” I grunt. “There are worse things.”

“Tell me, Darrow. Would it be worse to have Titus in power and have

Mars strong or for Darrow to be in power with Mars weak?”

“Better for whom?” I ask petulantly.

He only shakes his head.

“Let them rot their gory bellies,” is Cassius’s opinion. “They made their

beds. Now let them shit in them.”

My army agrees.

I am fond of my army, the dregs, the lowDrafts. They aren’t as entitled or

wellbred as the highDrafts. Most remember to thank me when I give them

food—at first they didn’t. They don’t prance off after Titus on midnight

axe-raids simply because it gets their jollies off. No, they follow us because

Cassius is as charismatic as the sun and, in his light, the shadow I cast looks

like it knows what it’s doing. It doesn’t. It, like me, was born in a mine.

Still, it does seem like I have some strategy. I have us make maps of our

territory on digislates we found in a waterlogged cellar at the bottom of a

ravine, but we still have no weapons other than my slingBlade and several

knives and sharpened sticks. So whatever strategy we have is based in

acquiring information.

Funny thing is, only one tribe has a silvershit’s idea what is going on.

And it’s not ours. It’s not Antonia’s. And it sure as hell isn’t Titus’s. It’s

Sevro’s, and I’m nearly certain he’s the only member in that tribe, unless

he’s adopted wolves by now. It is hard to say if he has or hasn’t. Our House

does not have family dinners. Though occasionally we’ll see him running

along the hillsides at night in his wolfskin, looking, as Cassius put it best,

“like some sort of hairy demonchild on hallucinogens.” And once Roque

even heard something, not a wolf, howling in the shrouded highlands. Some

days Sevro walks around all normalish—insulting everything that moves,

except for Quinn. He makes an exception for her, delivering meats and

edible mushrooms instead of insults. I think he’s sweet on her even though

she’s sweet on Cassius.

We ask her to tell us stories about him, but she won’t. She’s loyal, and

maybe that’s why she reminds me of home. She’s always telling good

stories, most all of them certainly gilded lies. A life spark is in her, just like

the one that was in my wife. She is the last of us to call Goblin “Sevro.”

She’s also the only one who knows where he lives. Even with all our

scouting, we can’t find a trace of him. For all I know, he’s out taking scalps

beyond the highlands. I know Titus has sent scouts to stalk him, but I don’t

think they are successful. They can’t even follow me. I know that rubs Titus

raw.

“I think he’s wanking off in the bushes,” Cassius chuckles. “Just waiting

for us to all kill each other.”

It’s when Lea comes limping back to the castle that Roque seeks Cassius

and me out.

“They beat her,” he says. “Not bad, but they kicked her in the stomach

and took her day’s labor.”

“Who?” Cassius bristles. “Who’s the slagger?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is they are hungry. So stop playing at an

eye for an eye. This can’t go on,” Roque says. “Titus’s boys are starving.

What do you expect they’d do? Hell, the big brute is hunting Goblin

because he needs fire and food. If we just give that to him, we can unite the

House, maintain civility. Maybe even Antonia will bring her tribe to

reason.”

“Antonia? Reason?” Cassius asks, guffawing.

“Even if that happens, Titus will still be the most powerful,” I say. “And

that’s not the cure for anything.”

“Ah. Yes. That’s something you can’t abide, someone else having power.

Fine then.” Roque tugs at his long hair. “Talk to Vixus or Pollux. Take away

his captains if you must. But heal the House, Darrow. Otherwise, we’ll lose

when another House comes knocking.”

On the sixth day I take his advice. Knowing Titus is out raiding, I risk

seeking Vixus in the keep. Unfortunately, Titus returns earlier than

expected.

“You’re looking lively and spry,” he says to me before I can find Vixus in

the keep’s stone halls. He blocks my path with his large body—shoulders

nearly spanning the width of the wall. I feel another in the hallway behind

me. Vixus and two others. My stomach sinks a little. It was stupid to do

this. “Where are you going, if I may ask?”

“I wanted to compare our scouting maps to the main map in the

command room,” I lie, knowing I have a digislate in my pocket.

“Oh, you wanted to compare scouting maps to the main map ... for the

good of Mars, noble Darrow?”

“What other good is there?” I ask. “We are all on the same side, no?”

“Oh, we are on the same side,” he says. Titus booms an insincere laugh.

“Vixus, if we are on the same side, don’t you think it would be best if we

shared your little maps with one another?”

“It would be for the very best,” Vixus agrees. “Mushrooms. Maps. All the

same.” So he assaulted little Lea. His eyes are dead. Like raven eyes.

“Yes. So I’ll take a look for you, Darrow.” Titus snatches the scouting

maps from me. There’s nothing I can do to stop him.

“You’re welcome to them,” I say. “So long as you know there are enemy

fires to the far east and likely enemies in the Greatwoods to the south. Raid

all you like. Just don’t get caught with your pants down.”

Titus sniffs the air. He wasn’t listening to me.

“Since we are sharing, Darrow.” He sniffs again, closer to my neck.

“Perhaps you’ll share with us why you smell like woodsmoke.”

I stiffen, not knowing what to do.

“Look at him squirm. Look at him weave a lie.” Titus’s voice is all

disgust. “I can smell your deceit. Smell the lies dripping from you like

sweat.”

“Like a woman in heat,” Pollux says sardonically. He shrugs

apologetically at me.

“Disgusting,” Vixus sneers. “He’s a vile thing. A wretched, womanish

thing.” I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to turn him on Titus.

“You’re a little parasite,” Titus continues. “Nibbling away at morale

because you will not come to heel; waiting for my noble boys and girls to

starve.” They’re closing in on me from behind, from the sides. Titus is

huge. Pollux and Vixus are cruel, nearly as big as me. “You’re a wretched

creature. A worm in our spine.”

I shrug casually, trying to let them think I’m not worried.

“We can fix this,” I say.

“Oh?” Titus asks.

“The solution is simple, big man,” I counsel. “Bring your boys and girls

home. Stop raiding Ceres every day before some other House comes in and

slaughters you all. Then we’ll talk about fire. And about food.”

“You think you can tell us what to do, Darrow? That the thrust of it?”

Vixus asks. “Think you’re better because you scored higher on a stupid

little test? Because the Proctors chose you first?”

“He does,” Titus chuckles. “He thinks he deserves Primus.”

Vixus’s hawkish face leans close to mine, lips sneering each word.

Handsome in repose, his lips peel back cruelly now, and his breath stinks as

he looks me over, measuring me and trying to make me think he’s not

impressed. He snorts a contemptuous laugh. I see him shifting his head to

spit on my face. I let him. The glob of phlegm hits and drips slowly down

my cheek toward my lips.

Titus watches with a wolfish smile. His eyes glimmer; Vixus looks to him

for encouragement. Pollux comes closer.

“You’re a pampered little prick,” Vixus says. His nose nearly brushes

mine. “So that’s what I’m gonna take from you, goodman—your little

prick.”

“Or you could let me leave,” I say. “You seem to be blocking the door.”

“Oho!” he laughs, looking at his master. “He’s trying to show he’s not

afraid, Titus. Trying to avoid a fight.” He looks as me with those golden,

dead eyes. “I’ve broken uppity boys like you in the dueling clubs a

thousand times.”

“You have?” I ask incredulously.

“Broken them like twigs. And then taken their girls for sport. What

embarrassments I’ve made them in front of their fathers. What weeping

messes I make of boys like you.”

“Oh, Vixus,” I say with a sigh, keeping the tremble of anger and fear out

of my voice. “Vixus, Vixus, Vixus. There are no boys like me.”

I look back at Titus to make sure our eyes are joined when I casually, as

if I were dancing, loop my Helldiver hand around and slam it into the side

of Vixus’s neck at the jugular with the force of a sledgehammer strike. It

ruins him, yet I hit him with an elbow, a knee, my other hand, as he falls.

Had his legs been anchored better, the first strike might have snapped his

neck in half. Instead, he cartwheels sideways in the low gravity, going

horizontal and shuddering from my raining blows as he hits the ground. His

eyes go blank. Fear rises in my belly. My body is so strong.

Titus and the others are too startled by the sudden violence to stop me as

I spin past their outstretched hands and run down the halls.

I did not kill him.

I did not kill him.

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24

Titus’s War

I did not kill Vixus. But I killed the chance of uniting the House. I sprint

down the keep’s winding stairwells. Shouts behind me. I pass Titus’s

lounging students; they’re sharing bits of raw fish they managed to spear

from the river. They could trip me if they knew what I’ve done. Two girls

watch me go by and, hearing their leaders shouts, are too late in moving.

I’m past their hands, past the keep’s lower gatehouse and into the main

square of the castle.

“Cassius!” I call up at the gatehouse to the castle where my men sleep.

“Cassius!” He peeks his head out the window and sees my face.

“Oh. Shit. Roque!” he shouts. “It happened! Raise the Dregs!”

Three of Titus’s boys and one of his girls chase after me across the

courtyard. They’re slower than me, but another is coming from her post on

the wall to cut me off, Cassandra. Her short hair jingles with bits of metal

she’s woven in. Effortlessly, she hops down the eight meters from the

parapet, an axe in hand, and races to intersect my path before I reach the

stairs. Her golden wolf ring glimmers in the ebbing light. She’s a beautiful

sight.

Then my entire tribe pours out from the gatehouse. They bring their

makeshift packs, their knives and the beating sticks we carved from felled

branches taken from our woods. But they do not set toward me. They are

bright, so they crank open the huge double gates that separate the castle

from the long sloping path leading down to the glen. Mist seeps through the

open gate and they disappear into the murk. Only Quinn is left behind.

Quinn, the fastest of Mars. She bounds along the cobblestone like a

gazelle, coming to my aid. Her beating stick twirls in the air. Cassandra

doesn’t see her. A long golden ponytail flops in the chill night air as Quinn

winds up, a smile on her face, and blindsides Cassandra from the flank,

hitting her full-force in the knee with her beating stick. The crack of wood

on strong Gold bone is loud. So is Cassandra’s scream. Her leg doesn’t

break, but she flips onto the cobblestone. Quinn does not slow her stride.

She swoops in beside me, and together we leave Titus’s pack behind.

We catch up with the others in the bowl of the glen. Setting across the

rugged hills, we aim toward our northern fort in the deep mist-shrouded

highlands. Vapor clings to our hair, dripping off in pearls. We reach the fort

well past midnight. It is a cavernous, barren tower that leans over a ravine

like a drunken wizard. Lichen covers the thick gray stone. Mist swaddles its

parapets and we make our first meal of the birds in the eaves of the single

tower. Some escape. I hear their wings in the dark night. Our civil war has

begun.

Unfortunately, Titus is not a stupid enemy. He does not come for us as we

thought he would. I had hoped he would come try and lay siege to our

northfort, that his army would see our fires inside the stone walls and smell

the meat as it sizzled in fat. The sheep we gathered earlier would have

lasted us weeks, months if we had water. We could have feasted every

night. They would have broken then. They would have left Titus behind.

But Titus knows of my weapon, fire, so he avoids us so that his boys and

girls cannot see what luxuries we have.

He does not let his tribe alone long enough to think. Frenzy, war, numb

the sense in man. So they raid House Ceres from the sixth day on, and he

creates trophies for acts of bravery and violence, giving boys and girls

marks in blood on their cheeks that they bear proudly. We slink along

watching their war parties from the brush and the tall grasses of the plains.

Sometimes we gain a vantage on the southern highland peaks near Phobos.

From there we witness the siege of House Ceres.

Around House Ceres, the smoke rises in a sullen crown. Apple trees are

hewn down. Horses crippled or stolen. Titus’s raiders even lasso a torch

from one of the Ceres ramparts in an attempt to bring fire to Mars’s castle.

Ceres horsemen ride them down with pails of water before they reach

home. Titus shrieks in rage when this happens and the Ceres horses fly by,

dashing the flame with water before circling home. With his best soldier, the

raspy Pollux, he upends one of the horses with a tree branch fashioned like

a pike. The rider spills from the saddle and Pollux is on her. They take two

more slaves that day.

It is on our eighth day in the Institute that I watch the siege with Cassius

and Roque from the highlands. Today, Titus rides the captured horse

beneath the wall of House Ceres with a lasso, daring their archers to shoot

their arrows at him and his horse. One poor girl leans her head out to get a

better angle with her bow. She draws the arrow back to her ear, aims, and

just before she is about to loose the arrow, Titus hurls his lasso upward. It

flails through the air. She jerks back. Not fast enough. The lasso loops her

neck and Titus kicks his horse away from the wall, tightening the lasso. Her

friends scramble to grab her. They hold tight but are forced to let go before

her neck snaps.

Her friend’s screams echo across the plains as she’s jerked violently

down from the top of the wall and dragged by Titus back to his cheering

followers. There, Cassandra kicks the girl to her knees and enslaves her

with our standard. The flames from the burning crops lick up into the

twilight where several Proctors hover with flagons of wine and a tray of

some rare delicacy.

“And violent hearts set harshest flame,” Roque murmurs from his knee.

“He’s bold,” I say deferentially, “and he likes this.” His eyes sparkled

when I struck Vixus in the throat. Cassius nods along. “Too much.”

“He is lethal,” Cassius agrees, but he means something different. I look

over at him. There’s a raw edge to his voice. “And he’s a liar.”

“Is he?” I ask

“He didn’t kill Priam.”

Roque becomes quiet. Smaller than us, he seems a child as he remains on

a knee. His long hair is held in a ponytail. Dirt crusts his nails, which

scrabble in tying his shoes as he looks up.

“He didn’t kill Priam,” Cassius repeats. The wind moans over the hills

behind us. Night comes slow today. Cassius’s cheeks sink into shadow; still,

he’s handsome. “They wouldn’t have put Priam with a monster like Titus.

Priam’s a leader, not a warlord. They’d put Priam with someone easy like

one of our Dregs.”

I know where Cassius is going with this. It’s in the way he watches Titus;

the coldness in his eyes reminds me of a pitviper’s gaze as it follows its

prey. My insides turn sour as I do it, but I lead Cassius in the direction he

seems to want to go, inviting him to bite. Roque tilts his head at me,

noticing something strange in my interaction with Cassius.

“And they would give Titus someone else,” I say.

“Someone else,” Cassius repeats, nodding.

Julian, he is thinking. He doesn’t say it. Neither do I. Better to let it fester

in his mind. Let my friend think our enemy killed his brother. This is a way

out.

“Blood begets blood begets blood begets blood ...” Roque whispers

words into the wind, which carry themselves west toward the long plain and

toward the flames that dance in the low horizon. Beyond, the mountains

hunker cold and dark. Snow already gathers on their peaks. It’s a sight to

steal one’s breath, yet Roque’s eyes never leave my face.

I fin d it a small pleasure that Titus’s slaves are not very effective allies for

him. Far from being indoctrinated as thoroughly as a Red might be, these

newly made slaves are stubborn creatures. They follow orders or risk being

labeled Shamed after graduation. But they purposefully never do more or

less than he demands; it is their act of rebellion. They fight where he tells

them to fight, whom he tells them to fight, even when they should retreat.

They gather the berries he shows them, even if they know they are

poisonous, and pile stones till the pile falls over. But if there is an open gate

leading to the enemy’s fortress and Titus doesn’t tell them to go into it,

they’ll stand there and pick their butts.

Despite the addition of slaves and the razing of Ceres’s crops and

orchards, Titus’s force, which is quite sound at violence, is pitiful when they

attempt to do anything else. His men empty their bowels in shallow latrines

or behind trees or in the river in an attempt to poison the students of House

Ceres. One of his girls even falls in after emptying her bowels into the

water. She flails around in her own waste. It’s a scene of comedy, but

laughter has become seldom except from the students of Ceres. They sit

behind their high walls and catch fish from the river and eat breads from

their ovens and honey from their apiaries.

In response to the laughter, Titus drags one of the male slaves up in front

of the gate. The slave is a tall one with a long nose and a mischievous smile

meant for the ladies. He thinks this is all a game till Titus cuts off one of his

ears. Then he cries for his mother like a young child.

The Proctors, even House Ceres’s, do not stop the violence. They watch

from the sky in twos and threes, floating about as medBots whine down

from Olympus to cauterize a wound or treat severe head trauma.

On the twentieth morning of the Institute, the defenders throw a basket of

bread loaves down as Titus’s men attempt to batter in the tall gate with a

felled tree. The besiegers end up fighting each other for the food only to

find that the bread was baked around razor blades. The screams last till the

afternoon.

Titus’s reply comes just before night falls. With five newly minted slaves,

including the male with the missing ear, he approaches the gate till he’s near

a mile off. He parades in front of the slaves, holding four long sticks in his

hand. These he gives to each of the slaves except the girl he pulled down

from the ramparts with a lasso.

With a low bow to the Ceres gate, he waves a hand and orders the slaves

to commence beating the girl. Like Titus, she is tall and powerful, so it is

difficult to pity her. At first.

The slaves hit the girl gingerly with the initial swings. Then Titus

reminds them of the shame that will forever mark their names if they do not

obey; they swing harder; they aim for the girl’s golden head. They hit her

and hit her till her shouts have long faded and blood mats her blonde hair.

When Titus grows bored, he drags the wounded girl back to his camp by her

hair. She slides limply over the earth.

We watch from our place in the highlands, and it takes Lea and Quinn

both to stop Cassius from sprinting down into the plains. The girl will live, I

tell him. The sticks are all show. Roque spits bitterly into the grass and

reaches for Lea’s hand. It’s odd seeing her give him strength.

The next morning, we discover that Titus’s reply did not stop with the

beating. After we retired to our castle, Titus snuck back in the dead of night

to hide the girl directly in front of the Ceres gate underneath a thick blanket

of grass, gagged and tied. Then he had one of his female followers shriek

during the night to pretend she was the slave at the camp. She screamed of

rape and violations.

Maybe the captured Ceres girl thought she was safe under the grass.

Maybe she thought the Proctors would save her and she would go home to

mother and father, home to her equestrian lessons, home to her puppies and

her books. But in the early dark of morning she is trampled as riders,

enraged by the fake screams, gallop from the Ceres fortress to rescue her

from Titus’s makeshift camp. They only learn of their folly when they hear

the medBots descending behind them to carry her broken body up to

Olympus.

She never returns. Still the Proctors do not interfere. I’m not sure why

they even exist.

I miss home. Lykos, of course, but also the place where I was safe with

Dancer, Matteo, and Harmony.

Soon there are no more slaves to take. House Ceres does not come out after

dark anymore, and their high walls are guarded without flame s. The trees

outside the wall have all been cut down, but there are crops and further

orchards inside their long walls. Bread still bakes and the river still flows

within their ramparts. Titus can do nothing but savage their land and steal

what remains of their apples. Most have been sown with needles and

stingers from wasps. Titus has failed. And so, as do those of any tyrant after

a failed war, his eyes turn inward.

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25

Tribal War

Thirty days into the Institute and I’ve not seen evidence of another enemy

House except for the smoke signs of distant fires. House Ceres’s soldiers

roam the eastern fringes of our land. They ride with impunity now that

Titus’s tribe has retreated back into our castle. Castle. No. It has become a

hovel.

I come upon it with Roque in the early morning. Fog still clings to the

four spires and light struggles to penetrate the dreary sky of our highland

climate. Sounds from inside the stonewalls echo into the quiet morning like

coins rattling about in a tin can. Titus’s voice. He’s cursing at his tribesmen

to get up. Apparently few do. Someone tells him to go slag himself, and it’s

little wonder. The bunk beds are the only real amenity the castle has, no

doubt put there to encourage slothfulness. My tribe has no such amenities;

we sleep on stone curled next to one another around our crackling fires. Oh,

what I’d give for a bed again.

Cassius and I slink along the slanted dirt road that leads to the gatehouse.

We can hardly even see it, the fog is so thick. More sounds from inside. It

seems like the slaves are up. I hear coughs, grumbling, and a few shouts. A

long creak and the clatter of chains means the gate is opening. Cassius pulls

me off to the side of the road, tucking us into the mist as the slaves shuffle

past. Their faces are pallid in the low light. Hollows make homes in their

sunken cheeks, and their hair has been dirtied. Mud caked skin around their

Sigils. He passes near enough to me that I smell his body odor. I stiffen

suddenly, worried he will again smell the smoke on me, but he doesn’t.

Beside me, Cassius is quiet, yet I feel his anger.

We sneak back down the path and watch the slaves toil from the relative

safety of the woods. They are not Aureates as they scrub shit and scavenge

for berries in the sharp thistlebushes. One or two are missing ears. Vixus,

recovered from my attack except for a huge purple bruise on his neck,

walks around slapping at them with a long stick. If the test is to unite a

fractious House, I am failing.

As early morning fades and appetites change with the arrival of warm

sunshine, Cassius and I hear a sound that makes our skin prickle. Screams.

Screams from the high tower of Mars. They are a particular sort, a kind to

darken the spirits.

When I was a boy in Lykos, my mother was serving me soup at our stone

family table the night of a Laureltide. It was a year after my father died.

Kieran and Leanna sat with me, neither yet older than ten. A single light

unit flick ered on and off above the table, so Mum was shrouded in darkness

except her arm from the elbow down. Then came the scream, muffled by

distance and the twists of our cavern township. I still see how the broth

quivered in the ladle, how my mother’s hand shook when she heard it.

Screams. Not of pain, but of horror.

“What he’s doing to the girls ...,” Cassius hisses to me as we slink away

from the castle as night descends. “He’s a beast.”

“This is war,” I say, though the words sound hollow even in my own ears.

“It’s school!” he reminds me. “What if Titus did this to our girls? To Lea

... to Quinn?”

I say nothing.

“We would kill him,” Cassius answers for me. “We would kill him, cut

his prick off and shove it in his mouth.” And I know he’s also thinking of

what Titus must have done to Julian.

Despite Cassius’s mutterings, I take his arm and pull him away from the

castle. The gates are locked against the night. There is nothing we can do. I

feel helpless again. Helpless as when Ugly Dan took Eo from me. But I am

different now. My hands turn to fists. I am more than I was then.

On our way back to our northfort, we see a glimmer in the air. Golden

gravBoots shimmer as Fitchner descends. He’s chewing gum and holds his

heart when he sees our evil glances.

“Whatever did I do, young friends, to earn such glares?”

“He’s treating the girls like animals!” Cassius seethes. Veins in his neck

stand out. “They are Golds and he is treating them like dogs, like Pinks.”

“If he is treating them like Pinks, then it is because they merited no better

in this little world than Pinks do in our big world.”

“You’re joking.” Cassius can’t understand. “They are Golds, not Pinks.

He’s a monster.”

“Then prove you’re a man and stop him,” Fitchner says. “As long as he’s

not murdering them one by one, it is not our concern. All wounds heal.

Even these.”

“That’s a lie,” I tell him. I’ll never be healed of Eo. That pain will last

forever. “Some things do not fade. Some things can never be made right.”

“Yet we do nothing because he has more fighters,” Cassius spits.

An idea sweeps over me. “We can fix that.”

Cassius turns to me. He hears the deadness in my voice just as I see it in

his eyes when he speaks of Titus. That’s a peculiar thing we share. We’re

made of fire and ice—though I am not sure which of us is ice and which is

fire. Nevertheless, extremes rule us more than we’d like; that is why we are

of Mars.

“You have a plan,” Cassius says.

I nod coldly.

Fitchner watches us two and he grins. “About gorydamn time.”

The plan starts with a concession only someone once a husband could

make. Cassius cannot stop laughing when I tell him the details. Even Quinn

snorts a laugh the next morning. Then she’s off, running like a deer to

Deimos Tower to bring my formal apology to Antonia. She’s to meet me

with Antonia’s response at one of our supply caches near the Furor River,

north of the castle.

Cassius guards our new fort with the remainder of our tribe, in case Titus

tries to attack while Roque and I go to the supply cache during the day.

Quinn does not come. Dusk does. Despite the dark, we trace the path she

would have taken from Deimos Tower. We go till we reach the tower itself,

which sits in the low hills surrounded by thick woods. Five of Titus’s men

lounge around its base. Roque grabs me and pulls me down into the woods’

brush. He points to a tree fifty meters distant where Vixus sits hidden in

wait on a high branch. Did they catch Quinn? No, she’s too fast to be

caught. Did someone betray us?

We return to our fort by early morning. I’m sure I’ve been more tired, but

I can’t remember when. Blisters ruin my feet despite the fitted shoes, and

my neck peels from long days in the sun. Something is wrong.

Lea meets me by the fort’s gate. She hugs Roque and looks up at me like

I’m her father or something. She is not her usual timid self. Her birdlike

body shakes not from fear, but anger.

“You have to kill that piece of filth, Darrow. You have to cut his slagging

balls off.”

Titus. “What happened?” I look around. “Lea. Where is Cassius?”

She tells me.

Titus captured Quinn as she was on her way back from the tower. They

beat her. Then Titus sent one of her ears here. It was meant for me. They

thought Quinn was my girl, and Titus thinks he knows my temper. They got

the reaction they wanted, just not from me.

Cassius was on watch and as the others slept he snuck away to the castle

to challenge Titus. Somehow the brilliant young man was arrogant enough

to think hundreds of years of Aureate honor and tradition would survive the

sickness that has consumed Titus’s tribe in only a few weeks. The

Imperator’s son was wrong. And he is also unused to having his heritage be

of such little consequence. In the real world, he would have been safe. In

this small one, he is not.

“But he’s alive,” I say.

“Yeah, I’m alive, you Pixie!” Cassius stumbles shirtless out of the fort.

“Cassius!” Roque gasps. His face pales suddenly.

Cassius’s left eye is swollen shut. Lips are split. Ribs purple as grapes.

His other eye is bloody. Three dislocated fingers shoot out like tree roots,

and his shoulder is odd. The others stare at him with such sadness. Cassius

was the Imperator’s boy—their shining knight. And now his body is a ruin,

and the looks upon their faces, the pallid cast to their skin, tell me that they

have never before seen someone beautiful mutilated.

I have.

He smells like piss.

He tries to play it off as some lark. “They beat the slag out of me when I

challenged him. Hit me with a shovel on the side of the head. Then stood

around and had themselves a circle piss. Then they tied me up in that

stinkhole keep, but Pollux set me free, like a good lad, and he’s agreed to

open the gate if we need it done.”

“I didn’t think you were so stupid,” I say.

“Of course he is, he wants to be one of the Sovereign’s knights,” Roque

mutters. “And all they do is duel.” He shakes his long hair. Dirt crusts the

leather band that holds it in a ponytail. “You should have waited for us.”

“What’s done is done,” I say. “We go ahead with the plan.”

“Fine,” Cassius snorts. “But when the time comes, Titus is mine.”

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26

Mustang

Part of Cassius is gone. That invincible boy I first met is somehow different.

The humiliation changed him. I can’t decide how, though, as I straighten his

fingers and help him fix his shoulder. He falls down from the pain.

“Thank you, brother,” he says to me, and cups the side of my head to

help himself up. It is the first time he says it. “I failed the test.” I don’t

disagree with him. “I went in there like a plum fool. If this were anywhere

else, they would have killed me.”

“Least it didn’t cost you your life,” I say.

Cassius chuckles. “Just my pride.”

“Good. Something you have in abundance,” Roque says with a smile.

“We have to get her back.” Cassius’s own grimace fades as he looks at

Roque, then at me. “Quinn. We have to get her back before he takes her up

to his tower.”

“We will.” We bloody will.

Cassius and I go east according to my plan, farther than we have gone

before. We stay to the northern highlands, but we make sure we walk along

the high crests visible to the open plains below. East and east, our long legs

taking us fast and far.

“A rider to the southeast,” I say. Cassius doesn’t look.

We pass through a humid glen where a dark loch offers us the chance to

catch a drink across from a family of deerling. Mud covers our legs. Bugs

flit over the cold water. The earth feels good between my fingers as I bend

to drink. I dunk my head and join Cassius in eating some of our aging lamb.

It needs salt. My belly cramps from all the protein.

“How far east of the castle do you reckon we are?” I ask Cassius,

pointing behind him.

“Maybe twenty klicks. Hard to peg it. Feels farther but my legs are just

tired.” He straightens and looks where I point. “Ah. Got it.”

A girl on a dappled mustang watches us from the edge of the glen. She

has a long covered bar tied to her saddle. Can’t make out her House, but I

have seen her before. I remember her like it was yesterday. The girl who

called me a Pixie when I fell off that pony Matteo put me on.

“I want her horse to ride back,” Cassius tells me. He can’t see out his left

eye but his bravado is back, a little too forcefully. “Hey, darling!” he calls.

“Shit, that hurts the ribs. Prime ride! What House are you?”

I’m worried about this.

The girl rides to within ten meters, but she has the sigils on sleeve and

neck covered with two lengths of sewn cloth. Her face is streaked with

three diagonal lines of blue berry juice mixed with animal fat. We don’t

know if she is from Ceres. I hope not. She could be from the southern

woods, from the east, from the far northeastern highlands even.

“Lo, Mars,” she says smugly, looking at the sigil on our jackets.

Cassius bows pathetically. I don’t bother.

“Well, this is swell.” I kick a stone with my shoe. “Lo ... Mustang. Nice

sigil. And horse.” I let her know having a horse is something rare.

She is small, delicate. Her smile is not. It mocks us. “What are you boys

about in the hinterlands? Reaping grain?”

I pat my slingBlade. “We have enough back home.” I gesture south of

our castle.

She suppresses a laugh at my feeble lie.

“Sure you do.”

“I will be even with you.” Cassius forces his battered face into a smile.

“You are stunningly beautiful. You must be from Venus. Hit me with

whatever is under that cloth on your saddle and take me back to your

fortress. I’ll be your Pink if you promise not to share me and to keep me

warm every night.” He takes an unsteady step forward, offers a wing. “And

every morning.” Her mustang takes four back till he gives up trying to steal

her horse.

“Well, aren’t you the charmer, handsome. And by that pitchfork in your

hand, you must be a prime fighter too.” She bats her eyes.

Cassius puffs out his chest in agreement.

She waits for him to understand.

Then he frowns.

“Yup. Uh-oh. You see, we didn’t have any tools in our stronghold except

those pertaining to our deity, soooo you must have encountered House

Ceres already.” She leans forward in the saddle sardonically. “You don’t

have crops. You just fought those who do, and you don’t have any better

weapons, clearly, or you would be carrying them with you. So Ceres is in

these parts as well. Likely in the lowlands near the woods for crops. Or near

that big river everyone is talking about.”

She’s all laughing eyes and a smirking mouth in a face shaped like a

heart. Long hair so golden it sparkles in the sun flows down her back in

braids.

“So you are in the woods?” she asks. “North in the highlands, probably.

Oh, this is fun! How bad are your weapons? You clearly don’t have horses.

What a poor House.”

“Slag,” Cassius makes a point of saying.

“You seem pretty proud of yourself.” I put my slingBlade on my

shoulder.

She raises a hand and wiggles it back and forth. “Sort of. Sort of. More

proud than Handsome there should be. He’s full of tells.” I shift my weight

on my toes to see if she notices. She moves her horse back. “Now, now,

Reaper, are you going to try and get in my saddle too?”

“Just trying to knock you out of it, Mustang.”

“Fancy a roll in the mud, do we? Well, how about I promise to let you up

here with me if you give me more clues as to where your castle squats?

Towers? Sprawls? I can be a kind master.”

She looks me up and down playfully. Her eyes sparkle like a fox’s might.

This is still a game to her, which means her House is a civil place. I’m

envious as I examine her in kind. Cassius didn’t lie; she is something to

look at. But I’d rather knock her off her mustang. My feet are tired and

we’re playing a dangerous game.

“What Draft number were you?” I ask, wishing I’d paid more attention.

“Higher than you, Reaper. I remember Mercury wanted you something

awful, but his Drafters wouldn’t let him pick you in the first round.

Something about your rage metric.”

“You were higher than me? So you’re not Mercury then, because they

chose a boy instead of me, and you’re not a Jupiter, because they took a

gorydamn monstrous kid.” I try to remember who else was chosen before

me, but I can’t, so I smile. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so vain. Then I

wouldn’t know what Draft you were.”

I notice the knife under her black tunic, but I still can’t remember her

from the Draft. Wasn’t paying attention. Cassius should have remembered

her the way he looks at girls, but maybe he can only think of Quinn and her

missing ear.

Our job is done. We can leave Mustang. She’s smart enough to figure out

the rest. But leaving might be a problem without a horse, and I don’t think

Mustang really needs hers.

I feign boredom. Cassius keeps an eye on the hills around. Then I start

suddenly as if I’ve noticed something. I whisper “Snake” into his ear while

looking at the horse’s front hooves. He looks too, and at this point, the girl’s

movement is involuntary. Even as she realizes it’s a trick, she leans forward

to peer at the hooves. I lunge to close the ten-meter gap. I’m fast. So is she,

but she’s just a hair off balance and has to lean back in order to jerk her

horse away. It scrambles back in the mud. I dive for her and my strong right

hand grips her long braids just as the horse darts away. I try to jerk her out

of the saddle, but she’s all hellfire.

I’m left with a handful of coiled gold. The mustang is off and the girl

laughs and curses about her hair. Then Cassius’s pitchfork wobbles through

the air and trips the horse. Girl and beast go down in the muddy grass.

“Dammit, Cassius!” I shout.

“Sorry!”

“You might have killed her!”

“I know! I know! Sorry!”

I run to see if she’s broken her neck. That would ruin everything. She’s

not moving. I lean in to feel her pulse and sense a blade graze my groin. My

hand is already there to twist her wrist away. I take the knife and pin her

down.

“I knew you wanted to roll me in the mud.” Her lips smirk. Then they

purse as if she wants a kiss. I recoil. Instead, she whistles and the plan

becomes a bit more complicated.

I hear hooves.

Everyone has bloodydamn horses but us.

The girl winks and I force the cloth from her sigil. House Minerva.

Greeks would have called it Athena. Of course. Seventeen horses tear down

the glen from the crest of the hill. Their riders have stunpikes. Where the

hell did they get stunpikes?

“Time to run, Reaper,” Mustang taunts. “My army comes.”

There’s no running. Cassius dives into the loch. I jump off Mustang, run

after him through the mud, and throw myself over the bank to join him in

the water. I cannot swim, but I learn quickly.

The horsemen of House Minerva taunt Cassius and me as we tread water

in the center of the small loch. It’s summer but the water is cold and deep.

Dusk is coming. My limbs are numb. The Minervans still circle the lake,

waiting for us to tire. We won’t. I had three of the durobags in my pockets. I

blow them full of air and give two to Cassius, keeping one for myself. They

help us float, and since none of the Minervans seem intent on swimming to

meet us, we’re safe for the time being.

“Roque should have lit it by now,” I tell Cassius some hours into our

swim. He’s in bad shape from his wounds and the cold.

“Roque will light it. Faith ... goodman ... faith.”

“We’re also supposed to be almost home.”

“Well, it’s still going better than my plan did.”

“You look bored, Mustang!” I shout out with chattering teeth. “Come in

for a swim.”

“And get hypothermia? I’m not stupid. I’m in Minerva, not Mars,

remember!” She laughs from the shore. “I’d rather warm myself by your

castle’s hearth. See?” She points behind us and speaks quickly to three tall

boys, one of whom looks as big as an Obsidian—shoulders like a huge

thunderhead.

A thick column of smoke rises in the distance.

Finally.

“How the slag did those pricks pass the test?” I ask loudly. “They’ve

given our castle away.”

“If we get back, I’m going to drown them in their own piss,” Cassius

replies even louder. “Except for Antonia. She’s too pretty for that.”

Our teeth chatter.

The eighteen raiders think House Mars is stupid, horseless, and

unprepared.

“Reaper, Handsome, I must leave you now!” Mustang calls to us. “Try

not to drown before I return with your standard. You can be my pretty

bodyguards. And you can have matching hats! But we’ll have to teach you

to think better!”

She gallops away with fifteen riders, the huge Gold reining his horse in

beside hers like some sort of colossal shadow. Her followers whoop as they

ride. She also leaves us company. Two horsemen with stunpikes. Our

farming tools lie in the mud on the shore.

“M-mustang is a s-sexp-p-pot,” Cassius manages to shiver out.

“She’s s-s-scary.”

“R-r-reminds m-m-me of my m-mother.”

“S-s-something is wrong w-with y-ou.”

He nods in agreement. “So ... the p-plan is sort of w-w-working.”

If we can get out of the loch without being captured.

Night falls in earnest, and with the darkness come the howls of the

wolves in the misty highlands. We begin to sink as our durobags leak air

from small stress holes. We might have had a chance to slink away in the

night, but the remaining Minervans are not lazily sitting around a fire. They

stalk through the darkness so that we never even know where they are. Why

can’t they be stupidly sitting in their castle infighting like our fellows?

I’m going to be a slave again. Maybe not a real slave, but it doesn’t

matter. I won’t lose. I cannot lose. Eo will have died for nothing if I let

myself sink here, if I let my plan fail. Yet I do not know how to beat my

enemies. They are clever and the odds are stacked heavily against me. Eo’s

dream sinks with me into the darkness of the loch, and I’m about to swim to

shore, regardless the outcome, when something spooks the horses.

Then a scream slices across the water.

Fear trickles down my spine as something howls. It is not a wolf. It can’t

be what I think it is. Blue light flashes as a stunpike flails in the air. The boy

screams another curse. A knife got him. Someone runs to his aid and

electricity flares blue again. I see a black wolf standing over one body as

another falls. Darkness again. Silence, then the mournful whine of medBots

descending from Olympus.

I hear a familiar voice.

“Clear now. Come out of the water, fishies.”

We paddle to shore and pant in the mud. Mild hypothermia has set in. It

won’t kill us but my fingers are still slow as mud squishes between them.

My body shakes like a drillBoy at work.

“Goblin, you psychopath. Is that you?” I call.

The fourth tribe slides out of the darkness. He’s wearing the pelt of the

wolf he killed. It covers his head to his shins. Damn small kid. The gold of

his black fatigues is coated in mud. So’s his face.

Cassius crawls from his knees to clasp Sevro in a hug. “Oh, y-you are b-

beautiful, Goblin. B-beautiful, beautiful b-b-oy. And smelly.”

“He been nibbling on mushrooms?” Goblin asks over Cassius’s

shoulders. “Stop touching me, you Pixie.” He pushes Cassius away, looking

embarrassed.

“Did you k-kill these t-two?” I ask, shivering. I bend over them and take

off their dry clothing to exchange for my own. I feel pulses.

“No.” Sevro cocks his head at me. “Should I have?”

“W-w-why are you asking m-me like I’m your P-praetor?” I laugh. “You

know what’s what.”

Sevro shrugs. “You’re like me.” He looks at Cassius with disdain. “And

somehow still like him. So, should I kill them?” he asks casually.

Cassius and I share startled glances.

“N-n-no,” we agree just as the medBots arrive to take the Minervans

away. He hurt them badly enough to end their time in the game.

“So what, p-p-pray tell, are you doing w-w-wandering ab-b-bout in a

wolfsk-k-kin all the way out h-here?” Cassius asks.

“Roque said you lot would be out east,” Sevro replies curtly. “Plan is still

a go, says he.”

“Hav-v-ve the Minervans arrived at the castle?” I ask.

Sevro spits in the grass. The twin moons cast eerie shadows over his dark

face.“How the piss should I know? They passed me on the way. But you

have no leverage, you know. It is a dead-end plan.” Is Sevro actually

helping us? Of course his help begins with listing out our inadequacies. “If

the Minervans get to the keep, they will destroy Titus and take our

territory.”

“Yes. That is the point,” I say.

“They will also take our standard—”

“That’s a r-risk we have to take.”

“—so I stole the standard from the keep and buried it in the woods.”

I should have thought of that.

“You just stole it. Just like that.” Cassius starts laughing. “Crazy little

sod. You’re prime mad. One hundredth pick. Prime mad.”

Sevro looks annoyed. Pleased. But annoyed. “Even then, we cannot

guarantee they leave our territory.”

“Your sug-g-g-gestion?” I ask, still shivering but impatient. He could

have helped us before.

“Get leverage to get them out after they do their job of taking Titus down,

obviously.”

“Yes. Y-yes. I get it.” I shake off the last of my shivers. “But how?”

Sevro shrugs. “We’ll take Minerva’s standard.”

“W-wait,” Cassius says. “You know how to do that?”

Sevro snorts. “What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time, you

silky turd? Wanking off in the bushes?”

Cassius and I look at each other.

“Kind of,” I say.

“Yeah, actually,” Cassius agrees.

We ride the Minervan horses east of the highlands. I’m not a sound

equestrian. Of course Cassius is, so I learn to clutch his bruised ribs very

well. Our faces are painted with mud. It will look like shadow in the night,

so they will see our horses, our pikes, our sigils, and will think us their own.

The Minervan castle lies in rolling country quilted with wildflowers and

olive trees. The moons glimmer bright over the pitching landscape. Owls

hoot in the gnarled branches above. As we reach their sprawling sandstone

fortress, a voice challenges us from the rampart above the gate. Sevro is not

very presentable in his wolfcloak, so he guards the escape.

“We found Mars,” I call up. “Oy! Open the damn gate.”

“Password,” the sentry demands lazily from the battlements.

“Bosombutthead!” I shout up. Sevro heard it last time he was here.

“Prime. Where’s Virginia and the raiders?” the sentry calls down.

Mustang?

“Took their standard, man! The pissers didn’t even have horses. We

might still manage to take the castle!”

The sentry bites.

“Prime news! Virginia is a devil. June’s made supper. Fetch some in the

kitchen and then join me, if you like. I’m bored and need to be entertained”

The gate creaks open very, very slowly. I laugh when it finally parts

enough for us to ride in abreast. Cassius and I aren’t even met by guards.

Their castle is different— drier, cleaner, and less oppressive. They have

gardens and olive trees that wend between the sandstone columns of the

bottom level.

We hide in the shadows as two girls pass with cups of milk. They have no

torches or fires an enemy can spot from the distance, only small candles. It

makes it easy to slink about. Apparently the girls are pretty, because Cassius

makes a face and pretends to follow them up the stairs.

After fla shing me a smile, he sneaks toward the sounds of the kitchen as I

look for their command room. I find it on the third level. Windows overlook

the dark plain. In front of the windows lies Minerva’s atlas. A burning flag

floats above my House’s castle. I don’t know what it means, but it can’t be

good. Another fortress, House Diana’s, lies south of Minerva’s in the

Greatwoods. Those are all that have been discovered.

They have their own score sheets to keep track of accomplishments.

Someone named Pax seems a bloody nightmare. He’s taken eight slaves

personally, and caused medBots to come down to fetch nine students, so I

assume he’s the one that stood as tall as an Obsidian.

I don’t find their standard anywhere in the command room. Like us, they

weren’t stupid enough to leave it just lying about. No problem, we’ll find it

our own way. On cue, I smell Cassius’s smokefires seeping through the

windows. What a pretty warroom they have. Much prettier than Mars’s.

I break everything.

And when I have ruined their map and am finished defacing a statue of

Minerva, I use the axe I found to chop the name of Mars into their long,

beautiful war table. I’m tempted to etch another House’s name into the

debris to confuse them, but I want them to know who did this. This House

is too put together, too ordered and level-headed. They have a leader,

raiders, sentries (naïve ones), cooks, olive trees, warm milk, stunpikes,

horses, honey, strategy. Minervans. Proud piggers. Let them feel a bit more

like House Mars. Let them feel rage. Chaos.

Shouts come. Cassius’s fire spreads. A girl runs into the warroom. I

nearly make her faint as I lift my axe. There’s no point in hurting her. We

can’t take prisoners, not easily. So I pull out both the slingBlade and the

stunpike. Mud on my face. My golden hair wild. I look a terror.

“Are you June?” I growl.

“N-no ... why?”

“Can you cook?”

She laughs despite her fear. Three boys turn the corner. Two are thicker

but shorter than me. I scream like a rage god. Oh, how they run.

“Enemies!” they scream. “Enemies!”

“They’re in the towers!” I roar to confuse them again and again as I

descend the stairs. “The top levels! Everywhere! Too many! Dozens!

Dozens! Mars is here! Mars has come!” Smoke spreads. So do their cries.

“Mars!” they shout. “Mars has come!”

A young man flashes past me. I grab his collar and throw him out a

window into the courtyard below, scattering the Minervans massed there. I

go to the kitchen. Cassius’s fir e is not bad. Mostly grease and brush. A

howling girl beats at it.

“June!” I call out. She turns into my stunpike and shudders as the

electricity dumbs down her muscles. That’s how I steal their cook.

Cassius finds me running with June over my shoulder through their

gardens.

“What the hell?”

“She’s a cook!” I explain.

He laughs so hard he can barely breathe.

Minervans fall into chaos, running from their barracks. They think the

enemy is in their towers. They think their citadel is burning down. They

think Mars has come in full force. Cassius pulls me along into their stables.

Seven horses have been left behind. We steal six after tossing a candle into

their hay stores and ride out the main gate as smoke and panic consumes the

fortress. I don’t have the standard. Just as we planned. Sevro said there was

a hidden back gate to the fortress. We wagered that someone very desperate

to flee a fallen fortress would use it to escape, someone trying to protect the

standard. We were right.

Sevro joins us two minutes later. He howls out from under his wolfcloak

as he comes. Far behind, the enemy chases him on foot with stunpikes.

Now they’re the ones without horses. And they’ve no chance to get back the

owl standard that glitters in his muddy hands. The cook unconscious across

my saddle, we ride under the starry night back to our battle-torn highlands,

the three of us laughing, cheering, howling.

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27

The House of Rage

We find Roque at Phobos Tower with Lea, Screwface, Clown, Thistle,

Weed, and Pebble. We have eight horses—two stolen at the lake, six stolen

in the castle. We add them to our plan. Cassius, Sevro, and I cross the

bridge that spans the river Metas. An enemy scout bolts north to warn

Mustang. Our other stolen horses, led by Antonia, follow once the scout is

away, looping north. Roque, horseless, loops south.

My horse alone is not covered with mud. She is a bright mare. And I am

a bright sight. I carry Minerva’s golden standard in my left hand. We could

have hidden it. Could have kept it safe. But they need to know we have it,

and even though Sevro stole it, he doesn’t want to carry it. He likes his

curved knives too much. I think he whispers to them. And Cassius we need

for other things besides carrying the standard. Plus, if he carried it, then he

would look the leader. And that will not do.

Dead silence as we ride through our lowlands. Fog seeps around the

trees. I cut through it. Cassius and Sevro ride to either side. I cannot see or

hear them now, but wolves howl somewhere. Sevro howls back. I struggle

to keep my seat as the mare spooks. I fall off twice. Cassius’s laughs come

from the darkness. It’s hard to remember I’m doing all this for Eo, all this to

start a rebellion. It feels like a game this night; in a way it is, because I’m

finally beginning to have fun.

Our castle is taken. Firelight along its ramparts tells me this. The castle

stands high above the glen on its hill, its torches making strange halos in the

fog-quilted darkness. My horse’s hooves thump softly on wet grass as to my

right the Metas gurgles like a sick child in the night. Cassius rides there but

I cannot see him.

“Reaper!” Mustang shouts through the mist. Her voice is not playful.

She’s forty meters off, near the base of the sloped road that leads to the

castle. She leans forward, arms crossed over the pommel of her saddle. Six

riders flank her. The rest must be garrisoning the castle. Otherwise I’d hear

about it. I look at the boys behind her. Pax is so large that his pike looks like

a scepter in his huge mitts.

“Lo, Mustang.”

“So, you didn’t drown. That would have been easier.” Her quick face is

dark. “You are a vile breed, you know that?” She’s been inside the keep and

she doesn’t have words for her anger. “Rape? Mutilation? Murder?” She

spits.

“I did nothing,” I say. “And neither did the Proctors.”

“Yes. You did nothing. Yet now you have our standard and what?

Handsome somewhere out there in the mist? Go ahead, pretend like you’re

not their leader. Like you’re not responsible.”

“Titus is responsible.”

“The big bastard? Yes, Pax laid him low.” She gestures to the monster of

a boy beside her. Pax’s hair is shorn short, his eyes small, chin like a heel

with a dent in it. Beneath him, his horse looks like a dog. His bare arms are

flesh stretched over boulders.

“I didn’t come to talk, Mustang.”

“Come to cut my ear off?” she sneers.

“No. Goblin did.”

Then one of her men slips screaming from his saddle.

“What the ...,” a rider murmurs.

Behind them, knives already dripping, Sevro howls like a maniac. A half

dozen other howls join his as Antonia and half her Phobos garrison ride

from the north hills on the stolen mudblack steeds. They howl like mentals

in the mist. Mustang’s soldiers wheel about. Sevro takes another one down.

He doesn’t use stunpikes. MedBots scream through the sky, which is

suddenly filled with Proctors. All of them have come to watch. Mercury

trails behind the rest, carrying an armful of spirits, which he tosses to his

fellows. Each of us peers up to watch their strange appearance; the horses

continue to run. Time pauses.

“To the fray!” dark Apollo mocks from on high. His golden robes show

he’s just risen from bed. “To the fray.”

Then chaos hits as Mustang shouts orders, strategy. Four more horsemen

ride down the sloped road from the gate to support her troop. My turn. I

slam Minerva’s standard upright into the earth and scream bloody murder. I

kick my heels into my mare. She lurches forward, almost losing me. My

body shudders as she pounds the moist earth with her hooves. My strong

left hand grips the reins and I draw my slingBlade. I feel a Helldiver again

when I howl.

The enemy scatters as they see me raging toward them. It is the rage that

confuses them. It is the insanity of Sevro, the manic brutality of Mars. The

horsemen scatter, except one. Pax jumps from his horse and sprints at me.

“Pax au Telemanus” he screams, a titan possessed, foaming at the mouth.

I dig my heels into my horse and howl. Then Pax tackles my horse. His

shoulder hits my horse’s sternum. The beast screams. My world flips. I fly

out of my saddle, over my horse’s head, and crash to the ground.

Dazed, I stumble to my knee in the hoof-churned field.

Madness consumes the field. Antonia’s force crashes into Mustang’s

flank. They have primitive weapons, but their horses are shock enough.

Several Minervans fly from the saddle. Others kick their mounts toward

their abandoned standard, but Cassius appears out of the fog at a gallop and

swipes the standard away to the south. Two enemies give chase, dividing

their force. The other six soldiers from Antonia’s tower garrisons are

waiting to ambush them in the woods, where the horses cannot gallop.

Reflexes make me duck as a pike sweeps toward my skull. I’m up with

my slingBlade. I slash it at a wrist. Too slow. I move as if in a dance,

remembering the thumping pattern my uncle taught me in the abandoned

mines. The Reaping Dance carries my motions into one another like flowing

water. I swoop the slingBlade into a kneecap. The Aureate bone does not

break, but the force knocks the rider from the saddle. I spin sideways and

strike again, and again, and sweep the hoof of a horse away, breaking a

fetlock. The animal falls.

A different stunpike stabs at me. I avoid the point and rip it free with my

Red hands and jam the electrocuting tip into another assailant’s horse’s

belly. The beast falls. A mountain pushes it aside and runs at me. Pax. In

case I am an idiot, he roars his name at me. His parents bred him to lead

Obsidian landing parties into hull breaches.

“Pax au Telemanus!” He beats his huge pike against his chest and hits

puffy-haired Clown so hard, my friend literally flies backward. “Pax au

Telemanus.”

“Is a pricklicker!” I mock.

Then a horse’s flank thumps into my back and I stumble toward the

monstrous boy. I’m doomed. He could have gotten me with his pike.

Instead, he hugs me. It’s like being embraced by a golden bear that keeps

screaming its own damn name. My back cracks. Mothermercy. He’s

squeezing my skull. My shoulder aches. Bloodyhell. I can’t breathe. I’ve

never met a force like this. Dear God. He’s a bloodydamn titan. But

someone is howling. Dozens of howls. Back popping.

Pax roars his personal victory. “I have your captain! I piss on you, Mars!

Pax au Telemanus has slagged your captain! Pax au Telemanus!”

My vision flickers black and fades. But the rage in me does not.

I roar out one last bit of wrath before I faint. It’s cheap. Pax is honorable.

I still mash his grapes flat with my knee. I make sure to get both as many

times as I can. One. Two. Three. Four. He gawps and collapses. I faint atop

him in the mud to the sound of Proctors cheering.

Sevro tells me the story as he picks through the pockets of our prisoners

after the battle. After Pax and I finished one another off, Roque sallied into

the glen with Lea and my tribe. Mustang, the crafty girl, escaped into the

castle and manages yet to hold it with six fighters. All the prisoners of Mars

she captured won’t be hers until she touches them with the tip of her

standard. Fat chance. We have eleven of her men and Roque digs up our

standard to make them our slaves. We could besiege our own castle—

there’s no storming its high walls—but Ceres or the rest of Minerva could

come at any time. If they do, Cassius is supposed to ride to give Ceres

Minerva’s standard. It also keeps him away while I cement my position as

leader.

Roque and Antonia come with me to negotiate with Mustang at the gate.

I limp up and favor a cracked rib. It hurts to breathe. Roque takes a step

back so that I am most prominent when we reach the gate itself. Antonia

wrinkles her nose and eventually does the same. Mustang is bloody from

the skirmish and I can’t find a smile on her pretty face.

“The Proctors have been watching all of this,” she says scathingly.

“They’ve seen what that happened in that ... place. Everything—”

“Was done by Titus,” Antonia drawls tiredly.

“And no one else?” Mustang looks at me. “The girls won’t stop crying.”

“No one died,” Antonia says in annoyance. “Weak as they are, they will

repair themselves. Despite what happened, there’s been no depletion of

Golden stock.”

“The Golden stock ...,” Mustang murmurs. “How can you be so cold?”

“Little girl,” Antonia sighs, “Gold is a cold metal.”

Mustang looks up at Antonia incredulously and then shakes her head.

“Mars. A gruesome deity. You’re fit for this, aren’t you lot? Barbarity? Past

centuries. Dark ages.”

I don’t have a mind to be lectured by an Aureate about morality.

“We would like you to leave the castle,” I tell her. “Do so with your men

and you may have those we captured. We won’t turn them into slaves.”

Down the hill, Sevro stands beside the captives with our standard in

hand, he’s tickling a disgruntled Pax with a horse hair.

Mustang jams a finger into my face.

“This is a school. You realize that, yes? No matter the rules your House

decides to play by. Be ruthless all you gorywell like. But there are limits.

There are slagging limits to what you can do in this school, in the game.

The more brutal you are, the more foolish you look to the Proctors, to the

adults who will know what you’ve done—what you’re capable of doing.

You think they want monsters to lead the Society? Who would want a

monster for an apprentice?”

I see a vision of Augustus watching my wife dangle, eyes dead as a

pitviper’s. A monster would want a student in his own image.

“They want visionaries. Leaders of men. Not reapers of them. There are

limits,” she continues.

I snap. “There are no goddamned limits.”

Mustang’s jaw tightens. She understands how this will play out. In the

end, giving us back our horrible castle won’t cost her anything; trying to

keep it would. She might even end up like one of the girls in the high tower.

She never thought of that before. I can tell she wants to leave. It’s her sense

of justice that is killing her. Somehow she thinks we should pay, that the

Proctors should come down and interfere. Most of the kids think that about

this game; hell, Cassius said it a hundred times as we scouted together. But

the game isn’t like that, because life isn’t like that. Gods don’t come down

in life to mete out justice. The powerful do it. That’s what they are teaching

us, not only the pain in gaining power, but the desperation that comes from

not having it, the desperation that comes when you are not a Gold.

“We will keep the Ceres slaves,” Mustang demands.

“No, they are ours,” I drawl. “And we will do with them what we like.”

She watches me for a long moment, thinking.

“Then we get Titus.”

“No.”

Mustang snaps. “We will keep Titus or there are no terms.”

“You will keep no one.”

She’s not used to being told no.

“I want assurances they are safe. I want Titus to pay.”

“It doesn’t matter a flying piss what you want. Here you get what you

take. That’s part of the lesson plan.” I pull out my slingBlade and set its tip

into the soil. “Titus is of House Mars. He is ours. So please, try and take

him.”

“He’ll be brought to justice,” Roque says to Mustang to reassure her.

I turn to him, eyes blazing. “Shut up.”

He looks down, knowing he should not have spoken. It doesn’t matter.

Mustang’s eyes don’t look to Antonia or Roque. They don’t look down the

slope where Lea and Cipio have her warband on their knees in the glen, and

Thistle sits on Pax’s back with Weed, taking their turn tickling him. Her

eyes don’t look at the blade. They are only for me. I lean in.

“If Titus raped a little girl who happened to be a Red, how would you

feel?”

She doesn’t know how to answer. The Law does. Nothing would happen.

It isn’t rape unless she wears the sigil of an elder House like Augustus.

Even then, the crime is against her master.

“Now look around,” I say quietly. “There are no Golds here. I’m a Red.

You’re a Red. We are all Reds till one of us gets enough power. Then we get

rights. Then we make our own law.” I lean back and raise my voice. “That

is the point of all this. To make you terrified of a world where you do not

rule. Security and justice aren’t given. They are made by the strong.”

“You should hope that is not true,” Mustang says quietly to me.

“Why?”

“Because there is a boy here like you.” Her face takes on a gloomy

aspect, as though she regrets what she must say. “My Proctor calls him the

Jackal. He is smarter and crueler and stronger than you, and he will win this

game and make us his slaves if the rest of us go about acting like animals.”

Her eyes implore me. “So please, hurry up and evolve.”

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28

My Brother

I pretend the matches came from one of the Minervans when I light our first

fire inside castle Mars. June is fetched from her makeshift prison, and soon

she has prepared us a feast from the meat of goats and sheep and herbs

fetched by my tribe. My tribe pretends it’s the first meal they’ve had in

weeks. The others of the House are hungry enough to believe the lie.

Minerva and her warband have long since slunk on home.

“What now?” I ask Roque as the others eat in the square. The keep is a

place of squalor still, and the light of the fire does nothing but illuminate the

filth. Cassius has gone to see Quinn, so I am alone for the moment with

Roque.

Titus’s tribe sits in quiet groups. The girls will not speak to the boys

because of what they’ve seen some of them do. All eat with their heads

down. There’s shame there. Antonia’s people sit with mine and glare at

Titus’s. Disgust fills their eyes. Betrayal too, even as they fill their bellies.

Several scuffles have already escalated from minor words to thrown fists. I

thought the victory might bring them together. But it did not. The division is

worse than ever, only now I cannot define it and I think there is only one

way to mend it.

Roque doesn’t have the answer I want to hear.

“The Proctors aren’t interfering, because they want to see how and if we

handle justice, Darrow. It is the deeper trait that this situation probes. How

do we manage Law?”

“Brilliant,” I say. “So what? We’re supposed to whip Titus? Kill him?

That would be Law.”

“Would it? Or would it just be vengeance?”

“You’re the poet. You figure it out.” I kick a stone off the ramparts.

“He can’t stay tied up in the cellars. You know this. We will never move

on from this torpor if he does, and it has to be you who decides what to do

with him.”

“Not Cassius?” I ask. “I think he’s earned a say. After all, he did claim

him.” I don’t want Cassius to share leadership, but I don’t want him to

come out of the Institute without any prospects. I owe him.

“Claim him?” Roque coughs. “And how barbaric does that sound?”

“So Cassius should play no role?”

“I love him like a brother, but no.” Roque’s narrow face tenses as he sets

a hand on my arm. “Cassius cannot lead this House. Not after what

happened. Titus’s boys and girls might obey him, but they won’t respect

him. They won’t think him stronger than them, even if he is. Darrow, they

pissed on him. We are Golds. We do not forget.”

He’s right.

I pull my hair in frustration and glare at Roque as though he were being

difficult.

“You don’t understand how much this means to Cassius. After Julian’s

death ... He has to succeed. He cannot be remembered solely for what

happened. He can’t.”

Why do I care so much?

“Doesn’t matter a flying piss how much it means to him,” Roque echoes

my words with a smile. His fing ers are thin like hay on my bicep. “They’ll

never fear him.”

Fear is necessary here. And Cassius knows it. Why else is he absent in

victory? Antonia has not left my side. Pollux, the gate opener, hasn’t either.

They linger several meters away to associate with my power. Sevro and

Thistle watch them with sly grins.

“Is that why you’re here too, you scheming weasel?” I ask Roque.

“Sharing the glory?”

He shrugs and gnaws on the leg of mutton Lea brings him.

“Slag that. I’m here for the food.”

I find Titus in the cellar. The Minervans tied him and beat him bloody after

they saw the slave girls in his tower. That’s their justice. He smiles as I

stand over him.

“How many of House Ceres did you kill in your raids?” I ask.

“Suck my balls.” He spits bloody phlegm. I dodge.

I resist kicking him there, barely. Already got Pax for the day. Titus has

the gall to ask what has happened.

“I rule House Mars now.”

“Outsourced your dirty work to the Minervans, eh? Didn’t want to face

me? Typical Golden coward.”

I am afraid of him. I don’t know why. Yet I bend on a knee and stare him

in the eye.

“You are a pissing fool, Titus. You never evolved. Never got past the first

test. You thought this whole thing is about violence and killing. Idiot. It’s

about civilization, not war. To have an army, you must first have a

civilization—you went straight to violence like they wanted us to. Why do

you think they gave us of Mars nothing and the other Houses have so many

resources? We’re meant to fight like mad, but we’re meant to burn out like

you did. But I beat that test. Now I’m the hero. Not the usurper. And you’re

just the ogre in the dungeon.”

“Oh, huzzah. Huzzah!” He tries clapping his bound hands. “I don’t give a

piss.”

“How many did you kill?” I ask.

“Not enough.” He tilts his large head. His hair is greasy and dark with

dirt, almost as though he’s tried to black out the gold. He seems to like the

dirt. It’s under his fingernails, coats his burnished skin. “I tried to bash their

heads in. Kill them before the medBots came. But they were always so

fast.”

“Why did you want to kill them? I don’t understand what the point is.

They are your own people.”

He smirks at this. “You could have changed things, you bastard.” His

large eyes are calmer, sadder than I remember. He does not like himself, I

realize. Something about him is too mournful. The pride I thought he had is

not pride; it is just scorn. “You say I’m cruel, but you had matches and

iodine. Don’t think I didn’t know even before I smelled you. We starved,

and you used what you found to become leader. So do not lecture me on

morality, you backstabbing piss-sucker.”

“Then why didn’t you do something about it?”

“Pollux and Vixus were frightened of you. So the rest were too. And they

thought Goblin would kill them in their sleep. What could I do if I was the

only one who wasn’t scared?”

“Why aren’t you?”

He laughs hard. “You’re just a boy with a slingBlade. First I thought you

were hard. Thought we saw things similarly.” He licks a bloody lip.

“Thought you were like me, only worse because of that coldness in your

eyes. But you’re not cold. You care about these pisspricks.”

My eyebrows pinch together. “How’s that?”

“Simple. You made friends. Roque. Cassius. Lea. Quinn.”

“So did you. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus.”

Titus’s face contorts horribly. “Friends?” he spits. “Friends with them?

Those Goldbrows? They are monsters, soulless bastards. Nothing but a

bunch of cannibals, all of them. They did the same as I did, but ... pfah.”

“I still don’t understand why you did what you did to the slaves,” I say.

“Rape, Titus. Rape.”

His face is quiet and cruel. “They did it first.”

“Who?”

But he’s not listening. Suddenly he’s telling me about how they took

“her” and raped “her” in front of him. Then the slaggers came back a week

later to do it some more. So he killed them; bashed their heads in. “I killed

the bloodydamn monsters. Now their daughters bloodywell get what she

got.”

It’s like I’ve been punched in the face.

Oh hell.

A chill spreads through me.

Bloodydamn.

I stumble back.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Titus asks. If I were a Gold, I

might have not noticed, might’ve just been befuddled by the odd word. I’m

no Gold. “Darrow?”

I pull my way into the hall. I move in a haze. It all makes sense. The hate.

The disgust. The vengeance. Cannibals eat their own. He called them

cannibals. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus—who are their own? Their own.

Golden. Bloodydamn. Not gory. Titus said bloodydamn. No Gold says that.

Ever. And he called it a slingBlade, not a reaper’s scythe.

Oh hell.

Titus is a Red.

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29

Unity

Titus is what Dancer did not want me to become. He is like Harmony. He is

a creature of vengeance. A rebellion with Titus at the helm would fail in

weeks. Worse, if Titus continues this way, continues unstably, he puts me at

risk. Dancer lied, or else he did not know that there are other Reds who’ve

been carved, other Reds who have donned the mask of the Golds. How

many more are there? How many has Ares planted here, in the Society? In

the Institute? It doesn’t matter if it is a thousand or just one. Titus’s

instability puts every Red ever carved into a Gold at risk. He puts Eo’s

dream at risk. And that is something I cannot abide. Eo did not die so that

Titus can kill a few kids.

I sob in the armory as I resolve what must be done.

More blood will stain these hands, because Titus is a mad dog and must

be put down.

In the morning, I pull him into the square in front of the House. They clear

away the remnants of the night’s feast. I even have the slaves there to

watch. A few Proctors flicker high above. There is no medBot floating

beside them, which must stand as their silent consent.

I push Titus down on the ground in front of his former tribe. They watch

quietly, mist hanging in the air above them, nervous feet scraping the cold

cobblestones of the courtyard. A chill seeps into my hands through the

durosteel of my slingBlade.

“For crimes of rape, mutilation, and attempted murder of fellow House

members, I sentence Titus au Ladros to death.” I list the reasons. “Does

anyone contest my right to do so?” First, I glance to the Proctors above. Not

one makes a sound.

I stare at cruel Vixus. His bruise is not yet gone. My eyes go to Cassandra

next. I even look at craggy Pollux, the one who saved Cassius and opened

the gates for us. He stands by Roque. How loyalties shift here.

How my own shift. I will make a Red die because he killed Golds. He

dug the earth like me. He has a soul like mine. In death, it will go to the

vale, but in life he was stupid and selfish with his grief. He should have

been better than this. Reds are better than him, aren’t we?

Titus’s tribe stays silent; their guilt is bound up with their leader. When

he goes, it’ll go. That is what I tell myself. Everything will be well.

“I contest the sentence,” Titus says. “And issue a challenge to you,

turdlicker.”

“I accept, goodman.” I bow curtly.

“Then a duel per custom of the Order of the Sword,” Roque announces.

“I choose then,” Titus says, eying my slingblade. “Straight blades.

Nothing curved.”

“As you have it,” I say, but as I step forward, I feel a hand at my elbow

and feel my friend come close behind.

“Darrow, he is mine,” Cassius whispers coldly. “Remember?” I make no

sign of acknowledgment. “Please, Darrow. Let me honor House Bellona.”

I look to Roque; he shakes his head. As does Quinn, who stands behind

Cassius. But I am leader here. And I did promise my friend, who now

recognizes my ascendance. He requests instead of demands, and so I make

a show of considering and then accepting his request. I stand aside as

Cassius steps forward with a straight blade held in his fencer’s grip. It is an

ugly weapon, but he’s sharpened it on stones.

“Pisser,” Titus snickers. “Wonderful. I’ll be happy to drench your corpse

with piss again when we’re through.”

Titus is meant for brawls. Meant for muddy battlefields and civil wars. I

wonder if he knows how easily he will die today.

Roque draws a circle in ash around the two combatants. Clown and

Screwface walk out with arms full of weapons. Titus picks a long

broadsword he took from a Ceres soldier five days before. The metal

scrapes over stone. Echoes around the courtyard. He swings it once, twice

to test the metal. Cassius does not move.

“Pissing your pants already?” Titus asks. “No fretting, I’ll be quick about

it.”

Roque performs the necessities and commences the fight.

Cassius is not quick about it.

The ugly blades sound brittle against each other. The clangs are harsh.

The blades chip. They grind. But how silent they are when they find flesh.

The only sound is Titus’s gasp.

“You killed Julian,” Cassius says quietly. “Julian au Bellona of House

Bellona.”

He pulls his blade free of Titus’s leg and slides it in somewhere else. He

rips it out.

Titus laughs and swings feebly. It is pathetic at this point.

“You killed Julian.” A thrust accompanies the words, words he repeats

until I no longer watch. “You killed Julian.” But Titus is long dead. Tears

stream down Quinn’s face. Roque takes her and Lea away. My army is

silent. Thistle spits on the cobbles and puts her arm over Pebble’s shoulders.

Clown looks even more dejected than usual. Even the Proctors make no

comment. It is Cassius’s rage that fills the courtyard, a cruel lament for a

kind brother. He said he did it for justice, for the honor of his family and

House. But this is revenge, and how hollow it seems.

I grow cold.

This was meant for me. Not for my poor brother, Titus—if that was ever

really his name. He deserved better than this.

I’m going to cry. The anger and sadness well in my chest as I push

through the army. Roque looks at me when I pass him. His face is like a

corpse’s.

“That wasn’t justice,” he murmurs without looking me in the eyes.

I failed the test. He’s right. It wasn’t justice. Justice is dispassionate; it is

fair. I am the leader. I passed the sentence. I should have done it. Instead, I

gave license to vengeance and vendetta. The cancer will not be cut away; I

made it worse.

“At least Cassius is feared again,” Roque mutters. “But that’s the only

thing you got right.”

Poor Titus. I bury him in a grove near the river. I hope it speeds him on

his way to the vale.

That night I do not sleep.

I don’t know if it was his wife or his sister or his mother they hurt. I do

not know what mine he came from. His pain is my own. His pain broke him

as mine broke me on the scaffold. But I was given a second chance. Where

was his?

I hope his pain fades in death. I did not love him till he was dead; and he

should be dead, but he is still my brother. So I pray he finds peace in the

vale and that I will see him again one day and we’ll embrace as brothers as

he forgives me for what I did to him, because I did it for a dream, for our

people.

My name, three bars beside it now, floats nearer the Primus hand.

Cassius has risen too.

But there can be only one Primus.

Since I cannot sleep, I take the guard shift from Cassandra. Mist curls

around the battlements, so we tie sheep around the walls. They will bleat if

an enemy comes. I smell something strange, rich and smoky.

“Roast duck?” I turn and find Fitchner standing beside me. His hair is

messy over his narrow brow and he wears no golden armor today, only a

black tunic striped with gold. He hands me a piece of duck. The smell

makes my stomach rumble.

“We should all be pissed at you,” I say.

His face is one of surprise. “Tots who say that usually mean to explain

why they are not pissed.”

“You and the Proctors can see everything, yes?”

“Even when you wipe your ass.”

“And you didn’t stop Titus, because it’s all part of the curriculum.”

“The real question is why we did not stop you.”

“From killing him.”

“Yes, little one. He would have been valuable in the military, don’t you

think? Perhaps not a Praetor with ships in the ink. But what a Legate he

would have made, leading men in starShells through enemy gates as fire

rained down against their pulseShields. Have you ever seen an Iron Rain?

Where men are launched from orbit to take cities? He was meant for that.”

I do not answer.

Fitchner wipes grease from his lips with the black sleeve of his tunic.

“Life is the most effective school ever created. Once upon a time they

made children bow their heads and read books. It would take ages to get

anything across.” He taps his head. “But we have widgets and datapads

now, and we Golds have the lower Colors to do our research. We need not

study chemistry or physics. We have computers and others to do that. What

we must study is humanity. In order to rule, ours must be the study of

political, psychological, and behavioral science—how desperate human

beings react to one another, how packs form, how armies function, how

things fall apart and why. You could learn this nowhere else but here.”

“No, I understand the purpose,” I murmur. “I learn more when I make

mistakes, so long as they don’t kill me.” How well I learned from trying to

be a martyr.

“Good. You make plenty of them. You’re an impulsive little turd. But this

is the place to fragup. To learn. This is life ... but with medBots, second

chances, artificial scenarios. You might have guessed that the first test, the

Passage, was the measurement of necessity versus emotion. The second was

tribal strife. Then there was a bit of justice. Now there will be more tests.

More second chances, more lessons learned.”

“How many of us can die?” I ask suddenly.

“Don’t worry about that.”

“How many.”

“There is a limit set each year by the Board of Quality Control, but we’re

well within the bounds despite what happened with the Jackal.” Fitchner

smiles.

“The Jackal ...,” I say. “Is that what happened the other night when the

medBots blitzed south?”

“Did I say his name? Oops.” He grins. “I mean to say that the medBots

are very effective. They heal nearly all wounds. But will they be so

effective when Cassius finds out who really killed his brother?”

My stomach tightens.

“He already killed Julian’s murderer. Apparently you weren’t watching.”

“Of course. Of course. Mercury thinks you brilliant. Apollo thinks you’re

the softest one here. He really does not like you, you know.”

“I could give a piss.”

“Oh, you should care much more than that. Apollo’s a peach.”

“Right. So what do you think? You are my Proctor.”

“I think you are an ancient soul.” He watches me and leans against the

rampart. The night is misty beyond the castle. From its depths, a wolf

howls. “ I think you’re like that beast out there. Part of a pack but deeply

sad, deeply alone. And I can’t puzzle out why, my dear boy. This is all so

much fun! Enjoy it! Life doesn’t get better.”

“You’re the same,” I say. “Lonely. You’re all japes and snide comments,

just like Sevro, but it’s just a mask. It’s because you don’t look like the

others, isn’t it? Or are you poor? Somehow you’re an outsider.”

“My looks?” He barks a laugh. “What does that matter? Think I’m a

Bronzie because I’m not an Adonis?” He leans forward, because he really

does care about what I’m going to say.

“You are ugly and you eat like a pig, Fitchner, but you chew metabolizers

when you could just go to a Carver and fix yourself to look like the others.

They could take care of that paunch in a second.”

Fitchner’s jaw muscle flickers. Is it anger?

“Why should I have to visit a Carver?” he hisses suddenly. “I can kill an

Obsidian with my bare hands. An Obsidian. I can outwit a Silver in parlance

and negotiation. I can do math Greens only dream of. Why should I make

myself look any different?”

“Because it is what holds you back.”

“Despite my low birth, I am of note. I am important.” His hatchet face

dares me to contradict. “I am Gold. I am a king of man. I do not change to

suit others.”

“If that’s true, why do you chew metabolizers?” He does not answer.

“And why are you only a Proctor?”

“Becoming a Proctor is a position of prestige, boy,” Fitchner snaps. “The

Drafters voted me to represent the House.”

“Yet you’re no Imperator. You lead no fleets. You’re not even a Praetor in

command of a squadron. Nor are you any sort of Governor. How many men

can do the things you say you can do?”

“Few,” he says very quietly, face all anger. “Very few.” He looks up.

“What is the bounty you desire for capturing the Minervan standard?”

“Isn’t that Sevro’s deal?” I say, understanding the conversation is nearing

its end.

“He has passed it to you.”

I ask for horses and weapons and matches. He agrees curtly and turns to

leave before I can ask him one last question. I grab his arm as he starts to

ascend. Something happens. My nerves fry. Like needles in acid through

my hand and arm. I gasp. My lungs can’t function for a second.

“Gory hell,” I cough out, and fall to the ground. He wears pulseArmor. I

can’t even see the generator. It’s like a pulseShield, but inlaid in the armor

itself.

He waits without a smile.

“The Jackal,” I say. “You mentioned him. The Minervan girl mentioned

him. Who is he?”

“He’s the ArchGovernor’s son, Darrow. And he makes Titus look like a

blubbering child.”

Large horses graze in the fields the next morning. Wolves try to take down a

small mare. A pale stallion rides up and kicks one of the wolves to death. I

claim him. The others call him Quietus. It means “the final stroke.”

He reminds me of the Pegasus that saved Andromeda. The songs we sang

in Lykos spoke of horses. I know Eo would have liked a chance to ride one.

I do not realize till days later that when they named my horse Quietus,

they were mocking me for my part in Titus’s death.

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30

House Diana

A month passes. In the wake of Titus’s death, House Mars becomes

stronger. The strength comes not from the highDrafts but from the dregs,

from my tribe and the midDrafts. I have outlawed the abuse of slaves. The

Ceres slaves, though still skittish around Vixus and a few of the others,

provide our food and fires; they are good for little else. Fifty goats and

sheep have been gathered in the castle in case of a siege; so too has

firewood been stockpiled. But we have no water. The pumps to the

washroom shut off after the first day, and we have no buckets to store water

inside in case of a siege. I doubt it was an accident.

We hammer shields into basins and use helmets to bring water from the

river glen below our high castle. We cut down trees and carve them hollow

to make troughs in which to store the water. Stones are pulled up and a well

is dug, but we cannot dig far enough to get past the mud. Instead, we line

the well with stone and timber and try to use it as a tank for water. It always

leaks. So we have our troughs, and that is it. We cannot let ourselves be

besieged.

The keep is cleaner.

After seeing what happened to Titus, I ask Cassius to teach me the blade.

I’m an unreasonably fast study. I learn with a straight. I never use my

slingBlade; it already is like part of my body. And the point is not to learn

how to use the straight blade, which is much like the razors, but to learn

how it will be used against me. I also do not want Cassius to learn how to

fight the curved blade. If he ever finds out about Julian, the curve is my only

hope.

I am not as proficient in Kravat. I can’t do the kicks. I learn how to break

tracheas, though. And I learn how to properly use my hands. No more

windmill punches. No more foolish defense. I am deadly and fast, but I do

not like the discipline Kravat requires. I want to be an efficient fighter . That

is all. Kravat seems intent on teaching me inner peace. That is a lost cause.

Yet now I hold my hands like Cassius, like Julian, in the air, elbows at

eye level so I am always striking or blocking downward. Sometimes

Cassius will mention Julian and I will feel the darkness rise. I think of the

Proctors watching and laughing about this; I must look like an evil,

manipulative thing.

I forget that Cassius, Roque, Sevro, and I are enemies. Red and Gold. I

forget that one day I might have to kill them all. They call me brother, and I

cannot but think of them in the same way.

The battle with House Minerva has broken down into a series of warband

skirmishes, neither side gaining enough advantage over the other to ever

score a decisive victory. Mustang will not risk the pitched battle that I want,

nor can they really be goaded. They are not so easily tempted as my soldiers

are to bouts of glory or violence.

The Minervans are desperate to capture me. Pax turns into a madman

when he sees me. Mustang even tried offering Antonia, or so Antonia

claims, a mutual defense compact, a dozen horses, six stunpikes, and seven

slaves in exchange for me. I don’t know if she is lying when she tells me

this.

“You would betray me in a heartbeat if it got you to Primus,” I tell her.

“Yes,” she says irritably, as I interrupt her fastidious nail maintenance.

“But since you expect it, it shan’t really be a betrayal, darling.”

“Then why didn’t you accept the offer?”

“Oh, the dregs look up to you. It would be disastrous at this point. Maybe

after you have failed at something, yes, maybe then when momentum is

against you.”

“Or you’re waiting for a higher price.”

“Exactly, darling.”

Neither of us mentions Sevro. I know she’s still afraid he’ll cut her throat

if she touches me. He follows me now, wearing his wolfskin. Sometimes he

walks. Sometimes he rides a small black mare. He does not like armor.

Wolves approach him at random, as though he were one of their own pack.

They come to eat deer he kills because they’ve grown hungry as we lock

away the goats and sheep. Pebble always leaves them food at the walls

whenever we slaughter a beast. She watches them like a child as they come

in fours and threes.

“I killed their pack leader,” Sevro says when I ask why the wovles follow

him. He looks me up and down and flashes me an impish grin from beneath

the wolf pelt. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t fit in your skin.”

I’ve given Sevro the dregs to command because I know they might be the

only people he’ll ever like. At first he ignores them. Then slowly, I begin

noticing that more unearthly howls fill the night than before. The others call

them the Howlers, and after a few nights under Sevro’s tutelage, each wears

a black wolfcloak. There are six: Sevro, Thistle, Screwface, Clown, Pebble,

and Weed. When you look at them, it seems as though each of their passive

faces stares out from the open, fanged maw of a wolf. I use them for quiet

tasks. Without them, I’m not sure I would still be leader. My soldiers

whisper slurs about me as I pass. The old wounds have not healed.

I need a victory, but Mustang will not meet in combat, and the thirty-

meter walls of House Minerva are not as easy to pass as they were initially.

In our warroom, Sevro paces back and forth and calls the game stupidly

designed.

“They had to know we couldn’t gorywell get past each other’s walls. And

no one is dumb enough to send out a force they can’t afford to lose.

Especially not Mustang. Pax might. He’s an idiot, built like a god, but an

idiot and he wants your balls. I hear you popped one of his.”

“Both.”

“Should just put Pebble or Goblin in a catapault and launch them over the

wall,” Cassius suggests. “Course we’d have to find a catapault ...”

I’m tired of this war with Mustang. Somewhere in the south or west, the

Jackal is building his strength. Somewhere my enemy, the ArchGovernor’s

son, is readying to destroy me.

“We are looking at this the wrong way,” I tell Sevro, Quinn, Roque, and

Cassius. They’re alone with me in the warroom. An autumn breeze brings in

the smell of dying leaves.

“Oh, do share your wisdom,” Cassius says with a laugh. He’s lying on

several chairs, his head in Quinn’s lap. She plays with his hair. “We’re

dying to hear.”

“This is a school that has existed for, what, more than three hundred

years? So every permutation has been seen. Every problem we face has

been designed to be overcome. Sevro, you say the fortresses cannot be

taken? Well, the Proctors have to know that. So that means we have to

change the paradigm. We need an alliance.”

“Against whom?” Sevro asks. “Hypothetically.”

“Against Minerva,” Roque answers.

“Stupid idea,” Sevro grunts, and cleans a knife and slides it into his black

sleeve. “Their castle is tactically inconsequential. No value. None. The land

we need is near the river.”

“Think we need Ceres’s ovens?” Quinn asks. “I could do with some

bread.”

We all could. A diet of meat and berries has made us muscle and bones.

“If the game lasts till winter, yeah.” Sevro pops his knuckles. “But these

fortresses don’t break. Stupid game. So we need their bread and their access

to the water.”

“We have water,” Cassius reminds him.

Sevro sighs in frustration. “We have to leave the castle to get it, Sir

Numbnuts. A real siege? We’d last five days without replenishing our water.

Seven if we drank the animals’ blood before the salt jacks us up. We need

Ceres’s fortress. Also, the harvest pricks can’t fight to save their lives, but

they have something in there.”

“Harvest pricks? Hahaha,” Cassius crows.

“Stop talking, everyone,” I say. They don’t. To them this is fun. It is a

game. They have no urgency, no desperate need. Every moment we waste is

a moment the Jackal builds his strength. Something in the way Mustang and

Fitchner talked about him scares me. Or is it the fact that he is the son of

my enemy? I should want to kill him; instead, I want to run and hide at the

thought of his name.

It’s a sign of my fading leadership that I have to stand up.

“Quiet!” I say, and finally they are.

“We’ve seen fires on the horizon. War consumes the South where the

Jackal roams.”

Cassius chuckles at the idea of the Jackal. He thinks him a ghost I

conjured up.

“Will you stop laughing at everything?” I snap at Cassius. “It’s not a

gorydamn joke, unless you think your brother died for amusement.”

That shuts him up.

“Before we do anything else, “ I stress, “we must eliminate House

Minerva and Mustang.”

“Mustang. Mustang. Mustang. I think you just want to snake Mustang,”

Sevro sneers. Quinn makes a sound of objection.

I snatch Sevro’s collar and lift him up into the air with one hand. He tries

to dart away, but he’s not as fast as me, so he dangles from my grip, two

feet off the ground.

“Not again,” I say, lowering him nearer my face.

“Registers, Reap.” His beady eyes are inches from my own. “Off limits.”

I set him down and he straightens his collar. “So, it’s to the Greatwoods for

this alliance, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s to be a merry quest!” Cassius declares, sitting up. “We’ll be a

troop!”

“No. Just me and Goblin. You aren’t going,” I say.

“I’m bored, I think I’ll come with.”

“You’re staying,” I say. “I need you here.”

“Is that an order?” he asks.

“Yes,” Sevro says.

Cassius stares at me. “You giving me orders?” he says in a strange way.

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten that I go where I want.”

“So you’ll leave control to Antonia while we both go risk our necks?” I

ask.

Quinn’s hand tightens on his forearm. She thinks I don’t notice. Cassius

looks back at her and smiles. “Of course, Reaper. Of course I’ll stay here.

Just as you’ve suggested.”

Sevro and I make camp in the southern highlands within view of the

Greatwoods. We do not light a fire. Our scouts and others roam these hills at

night. I see two horses on a far hill, silhouetted against the setting sun

behind the bubbleroof. The way the sun catches on the roof makes sunsets

of purples and reds and pinks; it reminds me of the streets in Yorkton as

seen from the sky. Then it is gone and Sevro and I sit in darkness.

Sevro thinks this is a stupid game.

“Then why do you play it?” I ask.

“How was I to know what it’d be like? Think I got a pamphlet? Did you

get a slagging pamphlet?” he asks irritably. He’s picking his teeth with a

bone. “Stupid.”

Yet he seemed to know on the shuttle what the Passage was. I tell him

that.

“I didn’t.”

“And you seem to have every gory skill required for this school.”

“So? If your mother was good in bed, you suppose she’s a Pink?

Everyone adapts.”

“Lovely,” I mutter.

He tells me to cut to the point of it.

“You snuck into the keep and stole our standard and buried it. Saving it.

And then you managed to steal Minerva’s piece. Yet you don’t get a single

bar of merit for Primus. Doesn’t strike you as odd?”

“No.”

“Be serious.”

“What should I say? I’ve never been liked.” He shrugs. “I wasn’t born

pretty and tall like you and your buttboy, Cassius. I had to figh t for what I

want. That doesn’t make me likeable. Just makes me a nasty little Goblin.”

I tell him what I’ve heard. He was the last one drafted. Fitchner didn’t

want him, but the Drafters insisted. Sevro watches me in the dark. He

doesn’t speak.

“You were picked because you were the smallest boy. The weakest

looking. Terrible scores and so small. They drafted you like they drafted all

the other lowDrafts, because you’d be easy to kill in the Passage. A

sacrificial lamb for someone they had plans for, big plans. You killed Priam,

Sevro. That’s why they won’t let you be Primus. Am I on target?”

“You’re on target. I killed him like I’d kill a pretty dog. Quick. Easy.” He

spits the bone onto the ground. “And you killed Julian. Am I on target?”

We never speak of the Passage again.

In the morning, we leave the highlands behind for the foothills. Trees

intersperse with grass. We move at a gallop in case Minerva’s warbands are

near. I see one in the distance as we reach the trees. They didn’t see us. Far

to the south, the sky is smoke. Crows gather there where the Jackal roams.

I would like to say more to Sevro, ask about his life. But his gaze

penetrates too deep. I don’t want him to ask about me, to see through me as

easily as I saw through Titus. It is strange. This boy likes me. He insults me,

but he likes me. Even stranger, I desperately want him to like me. Why? I

think it is because I feel as though he is the only one, including Roque and

Cassius, who understands life. He is ugly in a world where he should be

beautiful, and because of his deficiencies, he was chosen to die. He, in

many ways, is no better than a Red.

I want to tell him I’m a Red. Some part of me thinks he is too. And some

other part of me thinks he’ll respect me more if he knows I am a Red. I was

not born privileged. I am like him. But I guard my tongue; there’s no doubt

the Proctors watch us.

Quietus does not like the woods. At first the shrubbery is so thick that we

must cut our way forward with our swords. But soon the shrubbery thins

and we enter the realm of godTrees. Little else can exist here. The

colossuses block the light, their roots stretching up like tentacles to sap the

energy from the soil as they grow tall as buildings. I am in a city again, one

where animals bustle and tree trunks instead of metal and concrete obstruct

my view. Then, as we venture deeper into the woods, I’m reminded of my

mine—dark and cramped beneath the boughs, as though there is no sky or

sun.

Autumn leaves the size of my chest crinkle underfoot. I know we are

being watched. Sevro does not like this. He wants to slink away to find the

eyes at our backs.

“That would defeat the purpose,” I tell him.

“That would defeat the purpose,” he mocks.

We break for a lunch of pillaged olives and goat meat. The eyes in the

trees think I’m too stupid to shift my paradigm, as though I would never

suppose they’d hide above me instead of on the ground. Yet I don’t look up.

No need to frighten the idiots or let them know I know their game; I’ll have

to conquer them soon, if I still am the leader of my House. I wonder if they

have ropes to traverse the trees. Or are the limbs wide enough?

Sevro still itches to pull out his knives and scale one of the trees. I

shouldn’t have brought him. He’s not meant for diplomacy.

At last someone chooses to speak at me.

“Hello, Mars,” one says. Other voices echo it to my right. Stupid

children. Should have saved their tricks for the night. It would be miserable

in these woods in the dark, voices coming from all around. Something

startles the horses. The goddess Diana’s animals are the bear, the boar, and

the deer. We brought spears for the first two. There are supposed to be huge

bloodbacks in these woods—monstrous bears made by Carvers because,

most likely, the Carvers grew bored of making deerlings. We hear the

bloodbacks roaring in the deeper parts of the wood. I settle Quietus.

“My name is Darrow, leader of House Mars. I’m here to meet with your

Primus, if you have one. If you don’t, your leader will suffice. And if you

don’t have one of those either, take me to whoever has the biggest balls.”

Silence.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Sevro calls out.

I raise an eyebrow at him, and he just shrugs. The silence is silly. It is to

make me think they aren’t taking orders from me. They do things on their

own schedule. What big boys and girls they are. Then two tall girls come

from behind a distant tree. They wear fatigues the color of the woods. Bows

hang from their backs. Knives in their boots. I think one has a knife in her

coiled hair. They’ve used the berries of the woods to paint the hunting moon

on their faces. Animal pelts dangle from their belts.

I do not look like war. I have washed my hair till it shines. My face is

clean, wounds covered, the tears in my black fatigues stitched. I even

washed out the sweat stains with sand and animal fat. I look, as Quinn and

Lea both confirmed, devilishly handsome. I do not want House Diana

intimidated. That’s why I let Sevro come. He looks ridiculous and childish,

so long as his knives are kept away.

These two girls smirk at Sevro and can’t help but soften their eyes when

they see me. More come down. They take most of our weapons—those they

can find. And they throw furs over our faces so we cannot know the way to

their fortress. I count the steps. Sevro counts too. The furs stink of rot. I

hear woodpeckers and I remember Fitchner’s prank. We must be close, so I

stumble and fall to the ground. No shrubbery. We’re spun around again,

then led away from the woodpeckers. At first I’m worried that these hunters

are smarter than I gave them credit for. Then I realize they are not.

Woodpeckers again.

“Hey, Tamara, we got him down here!”

“Don’t bring them up, you chowderheads!” a girl shouts. “We’re not

letting them have a free scouting party. How many times do I ... Just wait.

I’ll come down.”

They walk me somewhere and shove me against a tree.

A boy speaks over my shoulder. His voice is slow and languid, like a

drifting knife blade. “I say we peel their balls off.”

“Shut up, Tactus. Just make them slaves, Tamara. There isn’t diplomacy

here.”

“Look at his blade. Fragging reaper scythe.”

“Ah, so that’s him,” someone says.

“I claim his blade when we decide spoils. I’d also like his scalp, if no one

else has intentions on it.” Tactus sounds like a very unpleasant boy.

“Shut up. All of you,” a girl snaps. “Tactus, put that knife away.”

They take the fur from my head. I stand with Sevro in a small grove of

trees. I see no castle but I can hear the woodpeckers. I look around and

receive a sharp strike to the head from a lean, wiry youth with bored eyes

and bronze hair spiked up with sap and red berry juice. His skin is dark like

oak honey and his high cheekbones and deepset eyes give him a look of

permanent derision.

“So, you’re who they call the Reaper,” Tactus drawls. He swings my

blade experimentally. “Well, you just look too pretty to be much damage at

all.”

“Is he flirting with me?” I ask the Tamara girl.

“Tactus, go away! Thank you, but now go away,” says the thin, hawkish

girl. Her hair is shorter than mine. Three large boys flank her. The way they

glare at Tactus confirms my judgment of his character.

“Reaper, why are you with a pygmy?” Tactus asks, gesturing to Sevro.

“Does he shine your shoes? Pick things out of your hair?” He chuckles to

the other boys. “Maybe a butler?”

“Go away, Tactus!” Tamara snarls.

“Of course,” Tactus bows. “I shall go play with the other children,

Mother.” He tosses the blade on the ground and winks at me like we alone

know the joke that’s about to be played.

“Sorry about that,” Tamara says. “He’s not quite polite.”

“It’s fine,” I say.

“I am Tamara of ... I almost said my real family,” she laughs. “Of

Diana.”

“And they are?” I ask about the boys.

“My bodyguard. And you are ...” She holds up a finger . “Let me guess.

Let me guess. Reaper. Oh, we’ve heard of you. House Minerva doesn’t like

you at all.”

Sevro snorts at my infamy.

“And he is?” she asks with raised eyebrows.

“My bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard? But he is so very short!”

“And you look like—” Sevro growls.

“So are wolves,” I reply, interrupting Sevro mid-curse.

“We’re more afraid of Jackals here than wolves.”

Maybe Cassius should have come along, just to know I’m not making the

bastard up. I ask her about the Jackal, but she ignores my question.

“Help me out here,” Tamara says cordially. “If someone were to say that

Reaper of the butcher House would come to my glade and ask for

diplomacy, I would think it a Proctor’s joke. So, what do you really want?”

“House Minerva off my back.”

“So you can come here and fight us instead?” one of her bodyguards

growls.

I turn to Tamara with a reasonable smile and tell her the truth. “I want

Minerva off my back so I can come here and beat you, sure.” And then win

the stupid game and destroy your civilization, please.

They laugh.

“Well, you’re honest. But not too bright, so it seems. Fitting. Let me tell

you something, Reaper. Our Proctor says your House has not won in years.

Why? Because you butchers are like a wildfire. In the early stages of the

game, you burn everything you touch. You destroy. You consume. You ruin

Houses because you can’t sustain yourselves. But then you starve because

there is nothing more to burn. The sieges. The winter. The advance in

technology. It kills your bloodlust, your famous rage. So tell me, why

would I shake hands with a wildfire when I can just sit back and watch it

run out of things to consume?”

I nod and dangle the bait.

“Fire can be useful.”

“Explain.”

“We may starve while you watch, but will you watch as a slave of some

other House? Or will you watch from your strong fortress, your armies

twice as large and ready to sweep up the ashes?”

“Not enough.”

“I will personally promise that House Mars will brook no aggression

toward House Diana so long as our agreement is not violated. If you help

me take Minerva, I will help you take Ceres.”

“House Ceres ...,” she says, looking over to her bodyguards.

“Don’t be greedy,” I say. “If you go after Ceres on your own, both Mars

and Minerva will set upon you.”

“Yes. Yes.” She waves an annoyed hand. “Ceres is near?”

“Very. And they have bread.” I look at the pelts her men wear. “Which I

imagine would be a nice change from all that meat.”

Her weight shifts on her toes and I know I have her. Always negotiate

with food. I make a note.

Tamara clears her throat. “So you were saying I could make my army

twice as large?”

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31

The Fall of Mustang

I ride dressed for war. All in black. Hair wild and bound by goatgut.

Forearms covered with durosteel vambraces looted in battle. My durosteel

cuirass is black and light; it will deflect any edge less than an ion blade or a

razor. My boots are muddy. Streaks of black and red go across my face.

SlingBlade on my back. Knives everywhere. Nine red crossbones and ten

wolves cover Quietus’s flank. Lea painted them. Each bone is an

incapacitated opponent, who are often healed by medBots and then thrown

back into the fray. Each wolf a slave. Cassius rides at my side. He

shimmers. The durosteel he received as a bounty is polished as bright as his

glimmering sword and his hair, which bounces like coiled golden springs

about his regal head. It’s as though he’s never been stood around and pissed

on.

“Well, I do believe I am the lightning,” Cassius declares. “And you, my

brooding friend, are the thunder.”

“Then what am I?” Roque asks, kicking his horse up beside us. Mud

flies. “The wind?”

“You’re full enough of it,” I snort. “The hot sort.”

The House rides behind us. All of it except Quinn and June, who stay

behind as our castle’s garrison. It is a gamble. We ride slowly so that

Minerva knows we are coming. What they do not know is that I was there

in the night just hours before and that Sevro is there now. Mud still sticks

underneath my fingernails.

Minerva’s scouts dart across their rocky hilltops. They make a show of

mocking us, but really they count our number to better know our strategy.

Yet they seem confused when we ride into their country of high grass and

olive trees. So confused that they withdraw their scouts behind their walls.

We’ve never come in full force like this. The Howlers, our scouts, ride in

full view on their black horses, black cloaks fluttering like crow wings. Our

highDraft killers move as the vanguard of the main body—cruel Vixus,

craggy Pollux, spiteful Cassandra, many of Titus’s band. The slaves jog

about their owners, those who captured them.

I ride forward with Cassius and Antonia flanking me. She carries the

standard today. Only a few archers man the walls, so I tell Cassius to make

sure we are not ambushed from the flanks in case any of Minerva are about.

He gallops away.

Minerva’s fortress is ringed by a hundred meters of barren earth made

mud from the torrential rains of the last week. It is the killing field. Step

into the ring and the archers will try and kill your horse. If you still do not

retreat, they will try to kill you. Nearly twenty horses of both Houses litter

the field . Cassius led a bloody assault on a Minervan warband up to the very

gates of the castle itself just two days before.

Beyond the killing field is grass. Oceans of grass so high in some places

that Sevro could stand tall and still not be seen. We stand at the edge of the

mud ring amidst a meadow of autumn wildflowers. The ground squishes

underfoot and Quietus whinnies beneath me.

“Pax!” I then shout. “Pax.”

I hurl the name against the walls until their main gate opens ponderously,

as ponderously as it once opened that night when Cassius and I snuck

inside. Mustang rides out. She trots slowly through the mud and pulls short

of us. Her eyes take in everything.

“Is it to be a duel?” she asks with a grin. “Pax of Wise and Noble

Minerva versus the Reaper of the Bloody Butcher House?”

“You make it sound so exciting,” Antonia yawns. She’s not got a spot of

dirt on her.

Mustang ignores her.

“And you’re sure you’ve no one hiding in that grass waiting to ambush

us when we come out to support our champion?” Mustang asks me.

“Should we burn it and find out?”

“We’ve brought everyone,” Antonia says. “You know our numbers.”

“Yes. I can count. Thank you.” Mustang doesn’t look at her. Just at me.

She seems worried; her voice lowers. “Pax will hurt you.”

“Pax, how are your balls?” I shout over her head. She winces as a drum

beats suddenly from inside the fortress. Except it’s not a drum. Pax comes

out of the gate. His war axe thumps his shield. Mustang shouts him back

and he obeys like a dog, but the beating of the axe on the shield does not

cease. We agree that the stakes should be all the remaining slaves between

the two of us. A hefty bounty.

“I thought Handsome was the duelist?” Mustang says, then shrugs. Her

eyes keep going to the grass. “Where is that mad fellow? Your shadow—the

one who leads that wolfpack? Is he hiding in the grass? I don’t want him

popping up behind me again.”

I shout for Sevro. A hand rises amongst the Howlers. Mud covers the

faces that peer out from beneath the black wolfcloaks. Mustang counts. All

five Howlers accounted for. In fact, all our forces save one, Quinn, are

accounted for. Still Mustang isn’t satisfied. We are to remove our army six

hundred meters from the edge of the mud ring. She will burn away all the

grass within one hundred meters of where we now stand. When the grass is

done burning, the scorched earth will be the duel field. Ten men of her

choosing will join ten of my choosing in creating a circle in which to fight.

The rest of hers will stay inside the city, and mine will stay six hundred

meters removed.

“Don’t trust me?” I ask. “I don’t have men in the grass.”

“Good. Then no one will burn.”

No one burns. When the fire dwindles and the ground is all ash and

smoke and mud within the killing field, I leave my army. Ten of mine

accompany me. Pax thumps his war axe on a shield emblazoned with a

woman’s head, her hair all of snakes. Medusa. I’ve never fought a man with

a shield before. His armor is tight and covers everything but his joints. I

heft a stunpike in the hand I’ve painted red and my slingBlade in the hand

I’ve painted black.

My heart rattles as the circle forms around us. Cassius motions me over.

Even in the muted light, he glows with color. He shares an ironic smile.

“Never stop moving. It’s like Kravat, this.” He eyes Pax. “And you’re

faster than this gory bastard. Right?” I get a wink. He thumps me on the

shoulder. “Right, brother?”

“Damn right.” I return his wink.

“Thunder and lightning, brother. Thunder and lightning!”

Pax is built like an Obsidian. He’s over seven feet tall, easliy, and he

moves like a bloodydamn panther. In this .37grav, he could throw me thirty

meters or more. I wonder how high he can jump. I jump to stretch my legs.

Nearly three meters. I can easily clear his head. The ground still smokes.

“Jump. Jump, little grasshopper,” he grumbles. “It’ll be the last time you

use your legs.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“I said it’ll be the last time you use your legs.”

“Odd,” I murmur.

He blinks at me and frowns. “What’s ... odd?”

“You sound like a girl. Did something happen to your balls?”

“You little ...”

Mustang trots up with their standard and says something about girls

never challenging each other to stupid duels. “The duel is to—”

“Yielding,” Pax says impatiently.

“To the death,” I correct. Really it doesn’t matter. I’m just screwing with

them at this point. All I have to do is give the signal.

“To yielding,” Mustang confirms. She finishes necessaries and the duel

begins. Almost. A series of pops in the sky above signal sonic booms as the

Proctors come join us from Olympus. They spin down from their high-

floating mountain, coming from several different towers. Each wears his or

her sign today, great headpieces of glittering gold. Their armor is a

spectacle. They do not need it, but they love to dress up. Today they’ve

brought a table with them. It floats on its own gravLift, supporting huge

flagons of wine and trays of food as they set to having a dinner party.

“I hope we’re sufficient entertainment,” I cry up. “Mind dropping some

wine? It’s been a while!”

“Good luck against the titan, little mortal!” Mercury cries down. His

baby face laughs jovially and he showily brings a flagon of wine to his lips.

Some of it tumbles the quarter mile from the sky to fall on my armor. It

drips down like blood.

“I suppose we ought to give them a show,” Pax booms.

Pax and I share a real grin. It’s a compliment, of sorts, that they would all

come to watch. Then Neptune, her trident headdress wobbling as she

swallows a quail egg, shouts for us to get on with it, and Pax’s axe sweeps

at my legs like an evil broom. I know he wants me to jump, because he’s

about to charge forward with his shield to swat me from the air like a fly . So

I step back, then spring forward as his arm finishes its stroke. He’s moving

too, but upward in anticipation, so I shoot right past his right arm and jam

the stunpike into his armpit with all of my strength. It snaps in half. But he

doesn’t fall even as electricity courses through him. Instead, he backhands

me so hard that I fly through the circle and into the mud. Broken molar.

Mouthful of mud and blood. Whiplash. I’m already rolling.

I stumble to my feet with my slingBlade. Mud covers me. I glance at the

walls. Their army rings the parapet—couldn’t help but watch the champions

fight. This is the point. I could give the signal. The gates are open in case

they have to send aid. Our nearest horseman is six hundred meters away,

much too far. I planned for that. Yet I do not signal. I want my own victory

today, even if it’s a selfish one. My army has to know why I lead.

I come back into the circle. I have nothing clever to say. He’s stronger.

I’m faster. That’s all we’ve learned about one another. This is not like

Cassius’s fight. There is no pretty form. Only brutality. He bashes me with

his shield. I stay close so he can’t swing his axe. The shield is ruining my

shoulder. Every strike shoots agony into my molar. He lunges with it again

and I jump, pull on the shield with my left hand and launch myself over

him. A knife flic kers from my wrist and I stab it at his eyes as I pass. I miss

and scrape his helmet’s visor.

Putting a little distance between us, I reach for a knife and try a familiar

trick. He bats the flying blade away contemptuously with his shield. But

when he lowers it to look at me, I’m in the air, landing on his shield with all

my weight. The suddenness of it pulls the shield down just a hair. I slam

mud into his helmet with my off hand.

He’s blind. One hand holds the axe. One holds the shield. Neither can

wipe his visor clean. It’d be a simple matter if he could just do that. But he

can’t. I hit him a dozen times on his wrist till he drops his axe. Then I take

the monstrous thing and hit him on the helmet with it. The armor still

doesn’t break. He almost knocks me unconscious with his shield. I swing

the heavy axe again and finally Pax crumples. I fall to a knee, panting.

Then I howl.

They all howl.

Howls fill the lands of Minerva. Howls from my far-distant army. Howls

from my ten highDraft killers who help make this dueling circle. Howls

from the killing field. Mustang hears the dread sound behind her and she

wheels her horse. Her face is one of terror. Howls from the laughing

Proctors, except Minerva, Apollo, and Jupiter. Howls from the bellies of the

dead horses in the middle of the killing field. The ones near her open gate.

“They’re in the mud!” Mustang shouts.

She’s almost right. But she thinks like a Gold. Someone screams as they

see Sevro and his Howlers cutting their way out of the stitched-up bellies of

the dead and bloated horses that litter the mud up to the gate. Like demons

being born, they slither from swollen guts and parted stomachs. A half-score

of House Diana’s best soldiers exit with them. Tactus and his spiked hair

burst from the belly of a pale mare. He runs with Weed and Thistle and

Clown. All within fifty meters of the ponderously slow gates.

The Minervan guards all stand upon the ramparts watching the duel.

They cannot repel the sudden blitz of demon soldiers by closing their slow

gates. They hardly manage to nock and draw their bows before Sevro, the

Howlers, and our allies slip through the closing gate. On the other side of

the city, the House Diana’s soldiers will be slowly scaling the walls with the

ropes they use to climb their silly trees. Yes. The whistle sounds now from

the other side. A guard there has seen them. No one will come help him. My

army moves forward, even the fake Howlers we borrowed from Diana and

dressed up to look like Sevro and his band.

We destroy House Minerva in minutes. High above, the Proctors still

howl and laugh. I think they are drunk. It is over before Mustang can do

anything except gallop away across the muddy field through the still-

smoldering grass. A dozen horses set off in pursuit, Vixus and Cassandra

amongst them. She’ll be caught before nightfall, and I’ve seen what Vixus

does to prisoners and their ears, so I mount Quietus and set off in pursuit.

Mustang abandons her horse at the edge of a small wood to the south. We

dismount and leave three men to guard the horses in case she doubles back.

Cassandra plunges into the woods. Vixus follows me, purposefully stalking

as though I might know where Mustang is hiding. I do not like this. I do not

like being in the woods with Vixus and Cassandra. All it would take is a

blade in the spine. Either would do it. Unlike Pollux, they still hate me, and

my Howlers and Cassius are far away. Yet no knife comes.

I fin d Mustang by mistake. Two golden eyes peer out from a pit of mud.

They meet mine. Vixus is with me. He swears something about how excited

he is to break the gorydamn mare, see what she looks like with a bridle on.

Standing there, leering into the brush, he looks bent and twisted and evil—

like a withered tree after a fire. He has less bodyfat than anyone I’ve ever

seen, so each of his veins and tendons ripple beneath his tight skin. His

tongue flits over his perfect teeth. I know he’s goading me, so I lead him

away from the mud pit.

Eo didn’t deserve to die a slave to the Society. And despite her Color,

Mustang doesn’t deserve any sort of bridle.

OceanofPDF

OceanofPDF

32

Antonia

I passed this test. The interminable war with House Minerva is done. And

I’ve also trapped House Diana.

House Diana had three choices before the battle. They could have

betrayed me to Minerva and taken my House as slaves, but I had Cassius

send pickets to intercept any rider. They could have accepted my proposal.

Or they could have gone to our castle and tried to take it. I could care less if

they chose that option; it was a trap. We left no water inside and could have

besieged them easily.

Now they have the Minervan fortress and we are outside in the plains.

They could honor their agreement. We would get the standard; they would

get the city and all its inhabitants. But I know they’ll become greedy. And

they do. The gates close and they think they’ve a strategic bastion. Good.

That’s why I have Sevro inside with them.

Smoke plumes soon rise. He destroys the food stores as they enslave the

Minervans and guard the walls from my army. Then he fouls the wells with

feces and hides with his Howlers in the cellars.

House Diana is not used to this sort of warfare. They have never really

left their woods behind. It is hardly an effort to wait them out. Three days in

and they are apparently still surprised we do not leave. Instead, we camp

north and south of the city with our horses and light bonfires all around so

they cannot slip away in the night. They are thirsty. Their leader, Tamara,

does not receive me. She is too embarrassed at being caught in her betrayal.

Eventually, on the fourth day, Tamara offers me ten Minervan slaves and

all our enslaved soldiers if I allow her passage home. I send Lea to tell her

to go slag herself. Lea giggles like a child when she returns. She flips her

hair, grabs my arm, and leans in close to mock Tamara’s desperateness.

“Have decency!” she cries. “Are you not a man of your word?”

When they try to break out the fifth night, we capture every last one of

them. Except Tamara. She fell from her horse and was trampled to death in

the mud.

“Her saddle was cut through underneath.” Sevro shows me the cleanly

severed strip of leather. “Tactus?”

“Probably.

“His mother’s a Senator, Father’s a Praetor.” Sevro spits. “Met him when

we were children. Beat a girl half to death when she wouldn’t kiss him on

the cheek. Mad bastard.”

“Let it slide,” I say. “We can’t prove anything.” Tactus is our slave, as is

all of Diana and Minerva. Even Pax. I sit with Cassius and Roque atop our

horses as we watch our new slaves labor in stacking wood and hay

throughout the Minervan fortress. They set a massive blaze and we three

toast each other in victory.

“This will be your last bar of merit,” Cassius tells me. “That makes you

Primus, brother.” He pats my shoulder, and I see only a twinge of jealousy

in his eyes. “Couldn’t be a better pick.”

“Lord on high, I never thought I would see this side of our handsome

friend,” Roque says. “Humility! Cassius, is that truly you?”

Cassius shrugs. “This game is but a year of our lives, maybe less. After

that, we have our apprenticeships or academies. After that, we have our

lives. I’m only glad that we three were in the same House—just rewards

will be there eventually for all of us.”

I squeeze his shoulder. “Agreed.”

He’s still looking down, unable to meet our eyes till he finds his voice

again.

“I ... may have lost a brother here. That pain won’t fade. But I feel like

I’ve gained two more.” He looks up fiercely. “And I mean that, lads. I

gorywell mean that. We’ll have to do ourselves proud here. Beat some more

Houses, win the whole damn thing; but my father will need officers for the

ships in his armada ... if you are interested, that is. The House Bellona

always needs Praetors to make us stronger.”

He says that last part timidly, as though we’d have something better to

do.

I grip his shoulder once more and nod even as Roque says something

smartass about being a politician because he’d rather send people to their

deaths than go to his own. The Sons of Ares would drool if I became a

Praetor to House Bellona.

“And don’t worry, Roque, I’ll mention your poetry to Father,” Cassius

laughs. “He’s always wanted a warrior bard.”

“Of course,” Roque embellishes. “Be sure to let dear Imperator Bellona

know that I am a master with metaphor and a rogue with assonance.”

“Roque a rogue ... oh God,” I laugh as Sevro rides up with Quinn and a

girl on a type of horse I have not seen before. The girl wears a bag over her

head. Quinn announces her as an emissary from House Pluto.

Her name is Lilath and they found her waiting near the edge of the

woods. She wishes to speak with Cassius.

Lilath was once a moonfaced girl with cheeks that did smile but now

don’t. They are drawn and newly burned, pocked and cruel. She’s seen

hunger, and there’s a coldness to her that I don’t recognize. I’m frightened. I

feel like Mickey when he looked at me. I was a cold, quiet thing he didn’t

understand. So is she. It’s like looking at a fish from an underground river.

Lilath’s words come slow and linger in the air.

“I come from the Jackal.”

“Call him by his real name, if you will,” I suggest.

“I did not come to speak with you,” she says without a hint of emotion. “I

came for Cassius.”

Her horse is small and lean. Its hooves nicked. Extra clothing makes her

saddle fat. I see no weapons other than a crossbow. They are a mountain

House—more clothing for colder climates, smaller horses for harder rides.

Unless it is deception. I make her show me her ring. It is a mourning tree—

the cypress of Pluto. Its roots leak into the ground. Two of her fingers are

gone. Burns seal the stumps, so they have ion weapons. Her hair clatters

when she moves. I don’t know why.

She looks me over quietly, as though judging me against her master.

Apparently I am lacking.

“Cassius au Bellona, my master desires the Reaper.” She goes on before

either of us can say a word. We’re too surprised. “Alive. Dead. We don’t

care. In return for him, you will receive fifty of these for your ... army.”

She tosses him two ionBlades.

“You can tell your master he should come face me himself,” I say.

“I make no words with dead boys,” Lilath says to the air. “My master has

put the mark on the Reaper. Before winter comes, he will be dead. By one

hand or another.”

“You can go slag yourself,” Cassius replies.

She tosses Cassius a small pouch. “To help you make your decision.”

She does not speak again. Quinn raises her eyebrows and shrugs her

confusion as she leads Lilath away.

I look at the small pouch Cassius holds in his hands. Paranoia

overwhelms me. What is inside?

“Open it,” I say.

“Nah. She’s mad as a Violet, that one,” Cassius laughs. “Don’t need her

to infect us.” Yet he tucks the pouch in his boot. I want to scream at him to

open it, but I smile as though there is nothing to worry about.

“Something was wrong in her. Didn’t seem human,” I say casually.

“Looked like one of our starved wolves.” Cassius gives the ionBlade a

swing. The air shrieks. “At least we got these two. Now I can teach you

how to duel properly. These’ll go straight through duroArmor. Dangerous

things, really.”

The Jackal knows about me. The thought makes me shiver. Roque’s

words are worse.

“Did you notice how her hair clattered?” he asks. His face is white. “Her

braids were laced with teeth.”

We must prepare to meet the Jackal’s army. That means consolidating my

forces and eliminating lingering threats. I need the remainder of House

Diana in the Greatwoods destroyed. And I need House Ceres. I send

Cassius with the Howlers and a dozen horsemen to destroy the remainder of

Diana. The rest of my army and slaves I take back to our castle to prepare

for the Jackal. I’ve not yet devised a plan, but I’ll be ready for him if he

rears his head.

“After sleeping in dead horses, our Howlers will probably stink them out

of the Greatwoods!” Cassius laughs as he spurs his horse away from the

main column. “I’ll sick Goblin on them and be back before you’re even in

bed.”

Sevro does not want to go without me. He does not understand why

Cassius needs his help to mop up the remainders of Diana. I tell him the

truth.

“Cassius has a pouch in his boot, the one Lilath gave him. I need you to

steal it.”

His eyes do not judge. Not even now. There are times when I wonder

what I did to earn such loyalty, then others when I try not to press my luck

by looking the gift horse in the mouth.

That night as Cassius lays siege to Diana in the Greatwoods, the rest of my

army feasts behind our tall highland walls in Mars Castle. The keep is clean

and the square merry. Even the slaves are given June’s thyme-roasted goat

and venison drizzled with olive oil. I watch over it all. The slaves look

down out of embarrassment as I pass, even Pax. The howling wolf on his

forehead has crushed his pride. Tactus alone meets my eyes. His dark honey

skin is like Quinn’s, but his eyes remind me of a pitviper’s.

He winks at me.

After my victory over Pax, my highDrafts seem to have finally fully

embraced my leadership, even Antonia. It reminds me of how I was treated

on the streets after Mickey carved me. I am the Gold here. I am the power.

It’s the first time I’ve felt this way since sentencing Titus to death. Soon

Fitchner will come down and give me the Primus hand from the stone and

all will be well.

Roque, Quinn, Lea, and now Pollux eat with me. Even Vixus and

Cassandra, who normally sit in commune with Antonia, have come to give

their congratulations on the victory. They laugh and clap me on the

shoulder. Cipio, Antonia’s plaything, is counting the many slaves. Antonia

herself does not venture my way, but she does tilt her golden head in

approval. Miracles do happen.

I am Primus. I have five golden bars. Soon Fitchner will come to bestow

the honorifics. In the morning, House Ceres will fall. They have less than

one-third our number. With their grain to feed my army and their fortress to

use as a base of operations, I will have the power of four Houses. We will

sweep away whatever is left in the North and then descend upon the South

before the first snow even falls. Then I will face the Jackal.

Roque comes to stand beside me as we watch the feast.

“I’ve been thinking of kissing Lea,” he says suddenly to me. I see her

laughing with several midDrafts near one of the fires. She’s cut her hair

short, and she spares us a glance, coquettishly ducking her head when

Roque holds her gaze. He blushes too and looks away.

“I thought you didn’t like her. She follows you about like a puppy,” I

laugh.

“Well, yes. At first I she didn’t intrigue me because I thought she was

attaching herself to me as one would to a ... life raft to stop from sinking.

But ... she’s grown ...”

I look over at him and laugh. I can’t stop laughing.

We look like blond wolves. We’re leaner than when the Institute began.

Dirtier. Our hair is long. We have scars. Me more than most. I’m likely too

dependent on red meat. One of my molars is split. But I laugh. I laugh till

my molar can’t take it anymore. I’d forgotten that we are people, kids who

have crushes.

“Well, don’t waste the first kiss,” I say. “That’s my only advice.”

I tell him to take her somewhere special. Take her somewhere here that

means something to him, or them. I took Eo to my drill—Loran and Barlow

made jokes about that. The thing was off and in a ventilated tunnel, so we

didn’t have to wear frysuit lids, just had to watch for pitvipers. Still she

sweated from excitement. Hair clinging to her face, to the nape of her neck.

She gripped my wrist so hard, and only let go when she knew she had me.

When I kissed her.

I grin and slap Roque on the butt for luck. Uncle Narol says it’s tradition.

He used the flat of a slingBlade on me. I think he was lying.

I dream of Eo in the night. I do not often sleep without dreaming of her.

The castle’s high tower bunk beds are empty. Roque, Lea, Cassius, Sevro,

the Howlers, are gone. Except for Quinn, all my friends are off. I am

Primus, yet I feel so alone. The fire crackles. Cold autumn wind comes in. It

moans like a wind from the abandoned mine tunnels and makes me think of

my wife.

Eo. I miss her warmth in the bed beside me. I miss her neck. I miss

kissing her soft skin, smelling her hair, tasting her mouth as she whispered

how she loved me.

Then I hear feet and she fades.

Lea bursts through the dormitory door. She talks frantically. I can barely

understand her. I stand, towering over her, and put a hand on her shoulder to

calm her. It’s impossible. Manic eyes look at me from behind her short-cut

hair.

“Roque!” she wails. “Roque has fallen into a crevice. His legs are

broken. I can’t reach him!”

I follow her so fast I don’t even bring my cloak or slingBlade. The castle

is asleep except for the guards. We fly through the gate, forgetting the

horses. I shout for one of the guards to come help me. I don’t watch to see if

she does. Lea runs ahead, guiding me down into the glen and then up over

the northern hills to the highland gulch where we made our first fires as a

tribe. The mists are thick. The night is dark. And I realize how stupid I am.

It’s a trap.

I stop following Lea. I don’t tell her. I don’t know if they’ll come from

behind me, so I dive to my belly and shuffle to a gulley so that I am lost in

the mist. I put ferns over myself. I hear them now. The sound of swords. Of

feet and stunpikes. Curses. How many are there? Lea calls my name

frantically. She is not alone now. She’s led me to them. I hear crooked

Vixus. I smell Cassandra’s flow ers. She’s always rubbing them on her skin

to cover her body odor.

Their voices call to each other in the mist. They know I discovered their

trap. How can I get back to my army? I dare not move. How many are

there? They look for me. If I run, would I make it? Or would I end up on the

end of a sword? I have two knives in my boots. That is it. I pull them out.

“Oh, Reaper!” Antonia calls from the mist. She’s somewhere above me.

“Fearless leader? Oh, Reaper. There’s no need to hide, darling. We’re not

mad at you ordering us about like you’re our king. We’re not indignant

enough to bury knives in your eyes. Not at all. Darling?”

They call taunts, playing on my vanity. I’ve never had much, but they

can’t understand that. A boot steps near my head. Green eyes peer through

the darkness. I think they see me. They don’t. NightOptics. Someone gave

them nightOptics. I hear Vixus and Cassandra. Antonia grows frustrated.

“Reaper, if you do not come out to play, there shall be consequences.”

She sighs. “What consequences, you ask? Why, I will cut little Lea’s throat

to the bone.” I hear a yelp as Lea’s hair is seized. “Roque’s lover....”

I don’t come out. Goddammit. I don’t come out. My life is more than my

own. It is Eo’s, my family’s. I cannot throw it away, not for my pride, not

for Lea, not to avoid the pain of losing another friend. Do they have Roque

too?

My jaw aches. I clench my teeth. My molar screams. Antonia won’t do it.

She can’t.

“Last chance, my darling. No?” There’s a meaty sound followed by a

gurgle and a thump as a body crumples to the ground. “Pity.”

I loose a silent scream as I see the medBot whine through the night’s

mist. For all the power in my hands, in my body, I’m powerless to stop this,

them.

I do not move until the early morning, when I am sure they are gone. The

medBots did not take Lea’s body away. The Proctors left it so I would know

she died, so I could not hold on to hope that somehow she lived. The

bastards. Her body is fragile in death. Like a little bird that has fallen from

the nest. I build a cairn over her. The stones are high but they will not keep

the wolves away.

I do not find Roque’s body, so I do not what has become of him. Is my

friend dead?

I feel a ghost as I pick my way along the highlands, circling around the

castle to avoid Antonia’s henchmen. I put myself in the path Cassius will

take in returning from the Greatwoods, hiding beneath shrubs to stay from

sight. It is midday when he returns at the head of a small column of horse

and slaves. He kicks his horse forward to greet me as I come from the

shrubs.

“Brother!” he calls. “I brought you a gift!” He hops off and gives me a

hug before pulling out one of Diana’s tapestries and wrapping it about my

shoulders. He pulls back from me. “You’re as pale as a ghost. What’s the

matter?” He picks a leaf out of my hair. Maybe that’s when he sees the

sadness in my eyes.

Sevro rides up behind him as I tell them what has happened.

“The bitch,” Cassius murmurs. Sevro is silent. “Poor Lea. Poor Lea. She

was a sweetheart. Do you think Roque is dead?”

“I don’t know.” I say. “I just don’t know.”

“Gorydamn.” Cassius shakes his head.

“A Proctor must have given Antonia nightOptics,” Sevro speculates. “Or

the Jackal bribed her. It fits.”

“Who cares about that?” Cassius cries, flinging out his arm. “Roque may

be wounded or dead out there, man. Don’t you register?” He grips the back

of my neck and brings my forehead to his. “We’ll find him, Darrow. We’ll

find our brother.”

I nod, feeling a numbness spreading in my chest.

Antonia never returned to our castle. Neither did her henchmen, Vixus

and Cassandra. They failed to kill me and must have fled. But to where?

Quinn flings her hands up in the air and shouts at us as we come through

the gate.

“I didn’t know where the goryblazes anyone was! The slaves

outnumbered us four to one till you got back. But it’s fine. It’s fine.” She

grips Cassius’s hand when we tell her what’s happened. The tears well in

her eyes for Lea, but she refuses to believe Roque is dead. She keeps

shaking her head. “We can use the slaves to search for Roque. Probably

wounded and hiding out there. That’s it. That has to be it.”

We do not find him. The entire army searches. Not a sign. We convene in

our warroom around the long table.

“He’s probably dead at the bottom of a ditch,” Sevro says that night. I

almost hit him. But he’s right.

“The Jackal did this,” I mutter.

“Tough shit,” he says.

“Come again?”

“Doesn’t matter if he did it, is what Sevro means. We can’t do anything

against the Jackal now. Even if he tried to take your life, we’re not in a

position to hurt him,” Quinn declares. “Let’s deal with our neighbors first.”

“Stupid,” Sevro mutters.

“What a surprise. It looks like Goblin disagrees,” Cassius snaps. “Speak

up if you got something in your craw, pygmy.”

“Don’t talk down to me,” Sevro sneers.

Cassius chuckles. “Don’t piss on my foot because you only come to my

knees.”

“I’m every bit your equal.” The look on Sevro’s face is such that I lean

forward suddenly, frightened a knife will suddenly appear in Cassius’s eye.

“My equal? At what? Birth?” Cassius grins. “Oh, wait, I meant height,

looks, intelligence, money? Shall I stop?”

Quinn kicks his chair hard with her foot.

“What the hell is your problem?” she snaps at him. “Never mind. Just

shut the hell up.”

Sevro looks at the ground. I have the sudden urge to put a hand on his

shoulder.

“What were you saying, Sevro?” Quinn asks.

“Nothing.”

“Come on.”

“He said nothing,” Cassius chuckles.

“Cassius.” My voice alone shuts him up. “Sevro, please.”

Sevro sighs and looks up at me, cheeks flushed with anger. “Just thought

we should not pick our butts here while the Jackal does whatever he wants.”

He shrugs. “Send me south. And let me cause trouble.”

“Trouble?” Cassius asks. “What you going to do, kill the Jackal?”

“Yes.” Sevro looks quietly at Cassius. “I’ll put a dagger in his throat and

then carve a hole till I see his spine.”

The tension is enough to make me uneasy.

“You can’t be serious,” Quinn says quietly.

“He’s serious.” Cassius’s forehead creases. “And he’s wrong. We’re not

monsters. Not you and I, at least, Darrow. Bellona Praetors aren’t knives in

the night. We have five hundred years of honor to guard.”

“Piss and lies.” Sevro dismisses him with a wave.

“It’s in the breeding.” Cassius elevates his nose ever so slightly.

Sevro’s mouth twists cruelly. “You’re a Pixie if you buy all that. Think

your papa cut his way up to Imperator by being honorable?”

“Call it chivalry, Goblin,” Cassius sneers. “It wouldn’t be right trying to

murder someone in cold blood, particularly not at a school.”

“I agree with Cassius,” I say, breaking my silence.

“Small wonder.” Sevro stands to leave very suddenly. I ask him where he

is going.

“You obviously don’t need me. Have all the advice you can handle.”

“Sevro.”

“I’m gonna search the ditches. Again. Bet Bellona wouldn’t do that.

Wouldn’t get his precious knees dirty.” He bows mockingly to Cassius

before leaving.

Quinn, Cassius, and I remain in the warroom until Cassius yawns

something about catching a bit of REM before the dawn hits in six hours.

Quinn and I are left alone. Her hair has been cut short and jagged, though

the bangs hang just over her narrow eyes. She slouches boyishly in her

chair and picks at her nails.

“What are you thinking on?” she asks me.

“Roque ... and Lea.” I hear the gurgle in my mind. With it echoes all the

sounds of death. Eo’s pop. Julian’s silence as he twitched in his own blood.

I am the Reaper and death is my shadow.

“Is that all?” she asks.

“I think we should grab some sleep,” I reply.

She says nothing as she watches me leave.

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33

Apologies

Cassius wakes me in the middle of the night.

“Sevro found Roque,” he says quietly. “He’s a mess. Come.”

“Where?”

“North. They can’t move him.”

We gallop away from the castle under the light of the two moons. An

early winter snow fills the air with dancing fluries. Sucking sounds come

from the mud as we head toward the north Metas. No sounds but the

gurgling of the water and the wind in the trees. Wiping sleep from my eyes,

I look over to Cassius. He has our two ionSwords, and suddenly a pit opens

in my stomach as I realize what’s what. He doesn’t know where Roque is.

But he knows something else.

He knows what I’ve done.

This is a trap I cannot ride away from. I guess there are those times in

life. It’s like staring at the ground as you fall from a height. Seeing the end

coming doesn’t mean you can dodge it, fix it, stop it.

We ride for twenty more minutes.

“It was no surprise,” Cassius says suddenly.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve known for over a year that Julian was meant to die.” The snow falls

silently as we move together through the mud. The hot horse moves

between my legs. Step by step through the mud. “He made a mess of his

test. He was never the brightest, not in the way they wanted. Oh, he was

kind and bright with emotions—he could sense sadness or anger a klick

away. But empathy is a lowColor thing.”

I say nothing.

“There are feuds that do not change, Darrow. Cats and dogs. Ice and fire.

Augustus and Bellona. My family and the ArchGovernor’s.”

Cassius’s eyes are fixed ahead even as his horse stumbles and his breath

makes fog in the air.

“So despite what it portended, Julian was excited when he received the

acceptance letter stamped with the ArchGovernor’s personal seal. Didn’t

seem right to me or my other brothers. Never thought Julian would be the

sort to make it in. I loved him, all my brothers and cousins did; but you met

him. Oh, you’ve met him—he wasn’t the keenest of mind, but he wasn’t the

dullest; he wouldn’t have been the bottom one percent. No need to cull him

from the stock. But he had the name Bellona. A name which our enemy

loathes. And so our enemy used beauracracy, used his title, his duly

appointed powers, to murder a kind boy.

“To turn down an invitation to the Institute is an illegal act. And he was

so delighted, and we—my mother and father and brothers and sisters and

cousins and loved ones—were so hopeful for him. He trained so hard.” His

voice takes a mocking tone. “But in the end, Julian was fed to the wolves.

Or should I say wolf?”

He pulls his horse to a halt, eyes burning into me.

“How did you find out?” I ask, staring ahead over the dark water. Flakes

of snow disappear into the black surface. The mountains are but shadowed

mounds in the distance. The river gurgles. I do not dismount.

“That you did Augustus’s dirty work?” He laughs scornfully. “I trusted

you, Darrow. So I did not need to see what the Jackal sent me. But when

Sevro tried to steal it from me as I slept in in the Greatwoods, I knew

something was the matter.” He notices my reaction. “What? You thought

you consorted with dullards?”

“Sometimes. Yes.”

“Well, I watched it tonight.”

A holo.

With Roque and Lea, I had forgotten about the package. Better that I had.

Better that I had trusted him and not sent Sevro to steal it. Maybe he would

have discarded it then. Maybe things would be different.

“Watched what?” I ask.

“A holo that shows you killing Julian, brother.”

“The Jackal got a holo,” I snort. “His Proctor gave it to him then. Guess

that means the game is rigged. Suppose it doesn’t matter to you that the

Jackal is the ArchGovernor’s son and that he’s manipulating you into

getting rid of me.”

He flinches.

“Didn’t know the Jackal was his son, eh? I reckon you’d recognize him if

you saw him and that’s why he sent Lilath.”

“I wouldn’t recognize him. I’ve never met the bastard’s spawn. He kept

them hidden from us before the Institute. And my family kept me from him

after ...” His voice fades as his eyes sink into a distant memory.

“We can beat him, together, Cassius. We needn’t be divided—”

“Because you killed my brother?” He spits. “There is no we, you feckless

quim. Get off your gorydamn horse.”

I dismount and Cassius throws me one of the ionSwords. I stand facing

my friend in the mud. No one to watch but the crows and the moons. And

the Proctors. My slingBlade is on the saddle; it at least has a curve, but it’s

useless against an ionBlade. Cassius is going to kill me.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I tell him. “I hope you know that.”

“You will rot in hell, you manipulative son of a bitch,” he cries. “You

allowed me to call you brother!”

“So what would you have had me do? Should I have let Julian kill me in

the Passage? Would you?”

That freezes him.

“It’s how you killed him.” He’s quiet for a moment. “We come as princes

and this school is supposed to teach us to become beasts. But you came a

beast.”

I laugh bitterly. “And what were you when you ripped apart Titus?”

“I was not like you!” Cassius shouts.

“I let you kill him, Cassius, so the House wouldn’t remember that a

dozen boys took a good long piss on your face. So don’t treat me as though

I’m some monster.”

“You are,” he sneers.

“Oh, shut your goddamned gob and let’s just cut to it. Hypocrite.”

The duel is not long. I have been practicing with him for months. He has

played duels his entire life. The blades echo across the moving river. Snow

falls. Mud sticks and sloshes. We pant. Breath billows. My arms rattle as

the blades clang and scrape. I’m faster than him, more fluid. Almost get his

thigh, but he knows the mathematics of this game. With a little flick of his

wrists to move my sword sideways, he steps in and drives his ionBlade

through my armor into my belly. It should cauterize instantly and destroy

the nerves, leaving me damaged though alive, but he has the ion charge off,

so I only feel a horrible tightness as alien metal slides into my body and

warmth gushing out.

I forget to breathe. Then I gasp. My body shivers. Hugs the sword. I

smell Cassius’s neck. He’s close. Close as when he used to cup my head

and call me brother. His hair is oily.

Dignity leaves me and I begin to whimper like a dog.

Throbbing pain blossoms—begins like a pressure, a fullness of metal in

my stomach, becomes an aching horror. I shudder for breaths, gulp at them.

Can’t breathe. It’s like a black hole in my gut. I fall back moaning. There is

pain. That is one thing. This is different. It is terror and fear. My body

knows this is how life ends. Then the sword is gone and the misery begins.

Cassius leaves me bleeding and sniveling in the mud. Everything that I am

goes away and I am a slave to my body. I cry.

I become a child again. I curl around the wound. Oh God, it is horrible. I

don’t understand the pain. It consumes me. I’m no man; I’m a child. Let me

die faster. I sink in the cold, cold mud. I shiver and weep. I can’t help it. My

body does things. It betrays me. The metal went through my guts.

My blood goes out. With it go Dancer’s hopes, my father’s sacrifice, Eo’s

dream. I can hardly think of them. The mud is dark and cold. This hurts so

much. Eo. I miss her. I miss home. What was her second gift? I never found

out. Her sister never told me. Now I know pain. Nothing is worth this.

Nothing. Let me be a slave again, let me see Eo, let me die. Just not this.

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Part IV

Reaper

The Elderwomen of Lykos says that when a man is bitten by a pitviper, all the poison

must be drawn out of the bite, for the poison is wicked. When I was bitten, I wager

Uncle Narol left some in on purpose.

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34

The Northwoods

There is agony.

And claustrophobia.

I am sick and wounded.

The pain is in dreams.

It is in darkness. In the pit of my stomach.

I wake up and scream into a gentle hand.

I glimpse someone.

Eo? I whisper her name and reach up. My muddy hand smears her face.

Her angel’s face. She’s come to take me to the vale. Her hair has turned

Golden. I always thought she could be Golden. Her Colors are golden

wings. No Red Sigil on her hands. It took death.

I sweat despite the rains and snows that come. Something shelters me. I

shiver. Clutch my scarlet headband. Mud in my hair. Eo washes it away.

Tenderly strokes my brow. I love her. Something inside me bleeds. I hear

Eo speak to herself, to someone. I haven’t long. Have I time at all? Am I in

the vale? There is mist. There is sky and a great tree.

I shiver and sweat. Rot in hell, Cassius. I was your friend. I might have

killed your brother, but I had no choice. You did. You arrogant slag. I hate

him. I hate Augustus. I see them hanging Eo together. They mock me. They

laugh at me. I hate Antonia. I hate Fitchner. I hate Titus. I hate. I hate. I am

burning and mad and sweating. I hate the Jackal. The Proctors. I hate. I hate

myself for all I’ve done. All I’ve done. For what? To win a game. To win a

game for someone who will never know about anything I do. Eo is dead. It

isn’t as if she will ever be coming back to see all I have done for her.

Dead.

Then I wake. The pain is there in my gut. It goes through me. But I no

longer sweat. The fever is gone, and the angry red lines of infection have

faded. I’m in a cave’s mouth. There’s a small fire and a sleeping girl just

inches away. Furs cover her. She breathes softly the smoky air. Her hair is

tousled and gold. She isn’t Eo. Mustang.

I cry silently. I want Eo. Why can’t I have her? Why can’t I will her back

into life? I want Eo. I don’t want this girl beside me. It aches worse than the

wound. I can never fix what happened to Eo. I couldn’t even run my army. I

couldn’t win. I couldn’t beat Cassius, not to mention the Jackal. I was the

best Helldiver; I’m nothing here. The world is too big and cold. I am too

small. The world has forgotten Eo. It has already forgotten her sacrifice.

There’s nothing left.

I sleep again.

When I wake, Mustang sits by the fire. She knows I’m awake but lets me

pretend otherwise. I lie there with my eyes closed, listening to her hum. It’s

a song I know. It is a song I hear in dreams. The echo of my love’s death.

The song sung by the one they call Persephone. Hummed by an Aureate, an

echo of Eo’s dream.

I weep. If ever I’ve felt there was a God, it is now as I listen to the

mournful chords. My wife is dead, but something of hers lingers still.

I speak to Mustang the next morning.

“Where did you hear that song?” I ask her without sitting up.

“From the HC,” she says, blushing. “A little girl sang it. It’s soothing.”

“It’s sad.”

“Most things are.”

It has been four weeks, Mustang tells me. Cassius is Primus. Winter has

come. Ceres is no longer under siege. Jupiter’s soldiers sometimes come

into the woods. There are sounds of battle between the two superpowers of

the North, Jupiter and Mars. Jupiter to the west, Mars to the east. Since the

river froze, they’ve been able to cross and raid one another. Our buzzards

have risen out of their winter gulches. Hungry wolves howl at night. Crows

flock from the south. But Mustang really knows very little, and I grow

impatient with her.

“Keeping you breathing was a little distracting,” she reminds me. Her

standard lies underneath a blanket near my feet. She’s the last of House

Minerva. Yet unbridled. And she didn’t enslave me.

“Slaves are stupid,” she says. “And you’re already a gimp. Why make

you stupid too?”

It is days before I’m able to walk. I wonder where those nifty medBots

are now. Tending someone the Proctors like, no doubt. I won Primus and

they never gave it to me. Now I know why the Jackal will win. They are

getting rid of his competition.

Mustang stalks with me through the woods during the next weeks. I move

stiffly through the thick snow but my strength is returning. She credits

medicine she found lying conspicuously under a bush. A friendly Proctor

placed it there. We pause when we spot the deer. I draw the bow, but I can’t

get the string to my ear. My wound aches. Mustang watches me. I try again.

Pain deep inside. I let the arrow fly . We eat leftover rabbit that night. It

tastes funny and gives me cramps. I always have cramps now. It’s the water

too. We have nothing to boil it in. No iodine. Just snow and a little creek to

drink from. Sometimes we can’t have fire.

“You should have killed Cassius or sent him away,” Mustang tells me.

“Would have thought you nobler than that,” I say as I skin the rabbit we

caught.

“I like to win. Family trait. And sometimes cheating is in the rulebook.”

She smiles. “You get a merit bar every time you recapture your standard. So

I arranged for it to be lost to House Diana by someone else several times.

Then rode out to capture it. Got to Primus in a week.”

“Tricky. Yet your army liked you,” I say.

“Everyone likes me. Now eat your damn rabbit. You’re skinny as a

cadaver.”

The winter grows colder. We live in the deep north woods, far north of

Ceres, northwest of my former highlands. I have not yet seen a soldier of

Mars. I don’t know what I would do if I did.

“I’ve hidden from everyone but you,” Mustang says. “It keeps me alive

and ticking.”

“What’s your plan?” I ask.

She laughs at herself. “To be alive and ticking.”

“You’re better at it than I am.”

“How do you mean?”

“No one in your House would have betrayed you.”

“Because I didn’t rule like you,” she says. “You have to remember,

people don’t like being told what to do. You can treat your friends like

servants and they’ll love you, but you tell them they’re servants and they’ll

kill you. Anyway, you put too much stock in hierarchy and fear.”

“Me?”

“Who else? I could spot it a mile away. All you cared about was your

mission, whatever it is. You’re like a driven arrow with a very depressing

shadow. First time I met you, I knew you’d cut my throat to get whatever it

is you want.” She waits for a moment. “What is it that you want, by the

way?”

“To win,” I say.

“Oh, please. You’re not that simple.”

“You think you know me?” The rabbit hisses out fat over the fire.

“I know you cry in your sleep for a girl named Eo. Sister? Or a girl you

loved? It is a very offColor name. Like yours.”

“I’m a farplanet hayseed. Didn’t they tell you?”

“They wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t get out much.” She waves a

hand. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. All that matters is that no one trusts you

because it’s obvious you care more about your goal than you do about

them.”

“And you’re something different?”

“Oh, very much so, Sir Reaper. I like people more than you do. You are

the wolf that howls and bites. I am the mustang that nuzzles the hand.

People know they can work with me. With you? Hell, kill or be killed.”

She’s right.

When I had a tribe, I did it right. I made every boy and every girl love

me. Made them earn their keep. I taught them how to kill a goat as if I knew

how. I gave them fire as if I had created the matches. I shared a secret with

them—that we had food and Titus didn’t. They saw me as their father. I

remember it in their eyes. When Titus was alive, I was a symbol of