by Pierce Brown
The valets carry the gifts Quicksilver’s given to our masters into the shuttle’s staff entrance. I follow behind with Sophocles’s kit and my own basket, now almost forgotten, in my arms. I see Pax and a mean-looking Gold girl about the same age, saying farewell to their important mothers. Both the Sovereign and Lady Barca are going back to the Citadel along with most of the staff for more meetings, and I’m bound for Lake Silene with the Telemanuses, Sophocles, and the children for the week.
I wonder if they’ll sack me now or wait till we reach the manor. Probably wait. These Golds hate causing a scene. Pax sullenly says farewell to his mother. She bends to ask him something. He shakes his head and leaves abruptly. On the passenger ramp to our shuttle, his eyes meet mine and he looks down and turns away.
In my seat in the staff cabin, I look back over the frantic rant I typed to Philippe while smoking on the balcony. He hasn’t yet replied. Odd for him to take so long. Did I scare him off with my ranting? You bloody fool. He’s sick of you already. I want to send a message apologizing, but that would look even more desperate. I glance down the aisle up to the passenger cabin. Sophocles sits in Kavax’s lap. Pax takes a seat across from the man.
Where will I go when they cut me? What will I do? Would Kavax send me back to Mars, pull Liam from a school he’s beginning to love, from friends he cares about? The thought of disappointing him crushes me. I should have just kept my mouth shut.
I look back out the window as our ship rises up, signals its lights in a salute to the Sovereign’s more heavily guarded caravan, and banks off to slither through Hyperion’s skyscrapers, heading north to Lake Silene.
The buildings burn with lights and are as dense as the trees of the jungle outside 121. Water slithers along the ship window, distorting the lights and making the night seem like it’s bleeding blue and green. Our escorts’ own lights blink rhythmically to the right of our ship. A strange red light blinks beyond them, against the skyscrapers.
It goes on. Off. On. I squint and then discover it is not outside the shuttle. It’s a reflection. I look down, and through my suit’s jacket, a red light throbs. “What’s that?” one of the valets asks, leaning to get a look from across the aisle. “Lyria…” I pull Philippe’s necklace out from the neck of my jacket. Bacchus’s silver face stares up at me. His gentle mouth pulling upward into a laugh. His face split in a grin. The eyes themselves blink red.
The face of Bacchus begins to shudder and tremble like an animal is inside. Startled, I drop it and the silver splits in half along a tiny seam. From the seam, out of a hidden compartment, a dull metal disk the size of three thumbnails spins up into the air inches from my face. It hisses, then darts away from me, down the aisle fast as a bullet. It reaches the front compartment before I even know what happened.
No one noticed but the servant. “Bomb!” she shouts.
The cabin bursts into chaos. Servants ducking, spilling drinks. Bethalia rising from her seat. Lionguards standing to protect the passenger cabin. I try to stand but my legs are ghosts of themselves. They won’t work. They crumple under me and I fall down into the aisle, head angled toward the front of the ship. Other servants collapse along with me till bodies litter the floor.
“Gas,” someone behind me gurgles. My own voice won’t work.
Lionguards start falling as they rush to the passenger cabin. Lights flash in the ship. Gas masks fall out of overhead compartments. But everyone has breathed it in already. Bodies are falling in the aisle, slumping in chairs.
I’ve lost all feeling. Kavax swings wildly at the disk, smashing apart the walls in a frenzy to destroy it. But he’s slowing, growing lethargic before he becomes the last to fall to the ground. Then there’s a high-pitched scream from the device and a pulse, like air being sucked in. The lights go out. Filtration units silence. Engines tremble no more. The drone falls to the floor.
And we plummet from the sky.
Buildings and lights and moving advertisement screens and avenues of ships flash past out the window. Our dead vessel spins sideways. Limp bodies flop and fly around the cabin. I slam against the sidewall, nose to the window, and see us passing through a layer of smog. We tilt again and I’m thrown back into the aisle. Glasses and datapads and gift baskets whirl around the cabin. Then the ship jerks to a stop and gravity reverses. Debris and people float through the ship. There’s buildings outside the windows, half-constructed and missing their façades.
My body hovers upward along with cracked datapads and the gift baskets. Then the suspension of gravity vanishes. Everything slams back down. The ship jerks downward again and crashes into the ground. Out the cracked window, I see a retracting door closing over the ship, shutting us off from the light of the city.
We lie in graveyard silence.
Then a metallic sound echoes outside the hull, coming from the servants’ passenger door. Something whirs and a stone-on-bone reverberation goes through the ship. A teardrop in the door begins to glow.
WE ARRIVE FOR DINNER after the Raa family has been seated around the low-lying table in a warm stone room that looks out through a glass wall over the plains and an escarpment of uncarved mountain. Oxygen-making ivy creeps along the walls and the domed ceiling, emitting a pale luminescence from white floral bulbs. More than a dozen Raa are in attendance. Rangy and austere even in their own home, they wear handmade rough fabrics of earth tones and sit rigidly on thin cushions around an ovular stone table, at the center of which is a single floating orb of blue light. The table is the only furniture in the room, and the ivy the only decoration.
Cassius and I join, both wearing dark Ionian kimonos and cloth slippers. There were no mirrors in my room to see how the clothing hangs. Ionian Golds believe mirrors promote vanity and obsession with the self. It’s a crime for even a lowColor to possess one. “Of course they don’t want mirrors,” Aja would say. “I’ve dogs handsomer than those Rim dusteaters.”
To be fair, the Raa family is not beautiful by Luna standards. Their faces are too long in the jaw, as though someone took the clay of their visages and pressed them between a vise. Except for Dido, their skin is incredibly pale, their eyes slightly larger than desirable, their hair darker. On Luna they would seem dour, cold creatures without proper refinement. But Seraphina’s words ring true. The absence of courtly behavior and affectation has a brutal purity to it. Grandmother despised most of the fops at court, and while I know she was not fond of Rim Golds, she did respect their stubborn fidelity to the old ways. It is the reason why she had my godfather obliterate Rhea: the hardest iron cannot be bent, only broken.
The serenity in the Raa’s movement and the dignity in their conversation are more impressive to me than all the carver-enhanced visages and pompous exchanges of Luna’s upper echelons. The family is not eviscerating the work of a new artist or lampooning a socialite for some faux pas. Instead, as we join, a quiet conversation debating the moral high ground between the Cyclops Polyphemus and the warrior Odysseus is under way.
“Poor Polyphemus,” says a young girl with wispy hair and dark-ringed eyes. “All he wanted to do was to eat his supper, but Odysseus had to come in and put out his one eye. He didn’t even have one to spare like Father!”
“To be fair, Polyphemus did eat two of Odysseus’s men,” Seraphina says, sparing a smile for me as I sit. “He’s a lesson on how not to be a bad host.”
There’s an empty space at the table beside her where a silver flower rests in place of a table setting. Probably for her sister, eleven years dead but still remembered every dinner. It is not the only empty seat. Though their patriarch is missing, we’re joined by the rest of Romulus’s brood. I’m introduced to them. Young Paleron, a thirteen-year-old silent boy. His laughing delight of a sister, Thalia, the Polyphemus sympathizer, who can’t be more than nine, and is utterly besotted with the color of my eyes. And Romulus’s mother, Gaia, a desiccated old harridan with larva-pale skin who drinks heavily and smokes bitter-smelling weed from a long pipe, which she clutches with spider-l
eg fingers. She does not touch her food and speaks only to the children in a wandering, frivolous voice.
The rest of the table is filled out by Seraphina’s cousins, including Bellerephon the Bold and his wife, a slender woman with large eyes and a trident diadem of House Norvo of Titan. The well-married man stares at us with pale eyes set in a sullen, cruel face. His long body is hunched like a praying mantis waiting for supper. Despite the earlier violence, Diomedes is also in attendance. He sits serenely at his mother’s side and seems the favorite object of the children’s adoration.
“The heroes of the hour,” Dido says with a smile to her family. “May I introduce Castor au Janus and Regulus au Janus. The men responsible for bringing our Seraphina back to us.” Two bowls are handed to us. Dido stands, takes two pinches of rice from her own bowl, and drops one into Cassius’s bowl and one into mine. Her family follows the same custom, each walking over to us to share from their own bowls, even Bellerephon, who flicks the rice with boorish contempt. His wife smiles apologetically. Last in line, Seraphina meets my gaze as she honors the rite and returns to her seat.
I wonder if her mother knows she visited my room or if her claim of her mother’s ignorance was a deception in itself. I didn’t tell Cassius. He would think it some devious manipulation. Perhaps it is. I’ve not stopped replaying the exchange in my head.
With rice before us, the meal is delayed as per ancient custom, to demonstrate that the Golds are not slaves to the whims of their hunger. My stomach rumbles, but I dare not touch my rice. A Violet with short-cropped hair enters the room carrying a slender harp. He plays a gentle melody and is joined by one of the Pinks from earlier—the woman with the ancient eyes and truculent mouth, Aurae. She sings “A Memory of Ash,” a quiet, famous dirge written after my grandfather burned the rebel moon of Rhea in the First Moon Lord’s Rebellion. No one ever accused the Moon Lords of having short memories. Without the buzz of the cosmopolitan cities of the Core, it must be hard to forget.
When the Violet and Pink have finished, they depart the room to light applause.
Diomedes’s eyes follow Aurae in a way that he should hope no one in his family notices. I file it away for later.
The main course of the meal is served without further delay by minute Browns in dusky gray livery. Their eyes never rise higher than the knee of any Gold, but they are treated with politeness by their masters; thanked for their services and addressed by name. It’s a civility I’ve seen in the halls and the hangars and the bathhouses amongst the Colors from the top down. Each Color within their sphere. There is no undue rudeness, coarseness, or cruelty from Gray to Brown or Gold to Gray. I find it uniquely admirable, especially when I notice the children are not served by the Browns, but must get up and fetch their food from a cart at the far side of the room. Servants are earned with a Peerless Scar, I remember. The Browns skip Cassius and me as well until Dido motions them to serve us. “We’ll forgive the guests their naked faces, for now.”
A small bowl of flowered water sits beside each place setting along with a white linen towel. Recalling my lessons from my grandmother’s steward, Cedric, I dip my fingers and dry them on the towel.
The fare itself is as simple as the clothes: roasted fish from Europa with hearty seasonings of salt to mask the lack of pepper at the table. Flatbreads, hummus, plain rice, and roasted vegetables steam in unadorned bowls, which are passed around and served without utensils. The rice is in abundance, but the cuts of meat are meager in size.
“Regulus, the Archimedes is your ship, yes?” Dido asks.
“She is.”
“A sleek flier, who has seen more than a few years. Older than Gaia even.”
“Hmm?” Gaia asks, looking up from her pipe like a disheveled barn owl.
“I said his ship is almost as old as you. You remember the line, I’m sure. A GD-17 Whisper-class frigate.”
“Who is whispering?” Gaia asks. “No whispering at the table. It is rude.” She goes back to her pipe and stares up at us suspiciously through a bramble of eyebrows as if we mean to do her great harm. I’ve seen enough of intelligence to know how hard it is to hide. The woman does a fine enough effort for this backwater, but her guise wouldn’t last the length of a gala in the Luna courts. The dancing faces worn there are the best in the worlds. Deception, the language of life. But it seems Gaia has everyone at this table convinced she is senile.
Interesting woman.
“Your ship is a rare craft for simple merchants,” Bellerephon says coolly. He traces a finger along the stone table. The man’s a brutish clod with the petulance of a child. Devoid of mystery, a man must have dignity. I find the lack of either boorish. “Hard to see how it would be come by legally.”
“I’m not sure I like your tone, my goodman,” Cassius says. “But the pressure on your moon has befuddled my ears. Perhaps you might clarify so we might have no misunderstandings.” Again with the antagonism.
Bellerephon scowls at him. The rest of the Raa family look on with the faint amusement of people far too comfortable with violence to care much about verbal ripostes.
Seraphina raises an eyebrow and eats her fish.
“He means nothing by it,” Dido says smoothly. “Do you, nephew?”
“Nothing at all.” He stares on at Cassius.
“I won her in a bet six years back from a new-money Silver who couldn’t hold his amber,” Cassius explains now with a smile. “She was liberated from Rising sympathizers.”
Diomedes gracefully removes the bones from his fish with a single pull and shows Paleron how to do the same. “Regulus, you said you served,” he says without looking up.
“I did. I was a centurion within the Augustan legions during the Martian Civil War.”
Diomedes looks up. “Then you fell in the Lion’s Rain?” Respect fills his voice. The rest of the table listens raptly. Mention a battle and their ears perk up like a kennel of dogs hearing a can open.
“I did.”
“What was it like?” Seraphina asks.
“Hell,” Cassius says, disappointing them with his answer. He might not have fallen in the Reaper’s Rain, but it cost him his entire family, save his mother.
It’s a clever game Cassius is playing. By saying he’s an Augustan man, he’s one of the only Core Golds with the same sense of betrayal the Rim must have felt after the bloody Triumph and the failure of their rebellion. A dangerous gambit. He might claim to know the same people. And some of them might have sought refuge here.
“Did you know the Reaper?” Diomedes asks Cassius. I don’t mind being relegated to the background. Grandmother thought talkative men the most hilarious of creatures, so busy projecting that they never notice anything until the jaws of the trap close around their legs. The key to learning, to power, to having the final say in everything, is observation. By all means, be a storm inside, but save your movement and wind till you know your purpose. It’s a pity Darrow and Fitchner au Barca were better students than the last generation of Gold.
“I did not know him personally, no. He was Augustus’s lancer,” Cassius answers. “Peerless don’t socialize with men like me.” He taps his scarless face.
“Then you’ve come up in the world,” Bellerephon says.
“Did you ever see him fight?” Diomedes asks.
“Once.”
“They say he slayed the Storm Knight of Earth and defeated Apollonius au Valii-Rath in single combat. They say he is a true blademaster, the heir of Arcos. That not even Aja au Grimmus could stand against him now.” The dark spirit in me bucks against that claim. I almost break my silence.
“They say many things,” Cassius replies.
“What was your measure of him?”
Cassius shrugs. “Overrated.”
Diomedes booms a laugh.
“Diomedes is the Sword of Io. A blademaster,” Seraphina says proudly. “One of six left in the Rim. He also studied with Arcos on Europa—became a stormson.”
I feel a spike of envy.
“Lorn taught me how to fish with Alexandar and Drusilla,” Diomedes corrects. “His last student misused his gifts.” The understatement of the millennium. “He had no desire to make better warriors, only better men.”
“In that he succeeded.” Seraphina smiles at her brother. “One day, Diomedes will test the Reaper for himself.”
Bellerephon watches as Diomedes humbly returns his attention to his younger siblings. I smile at his jealousy and watch Diomedes with growing respect. We eat in silence for a time. I nurse the small fish on my plate. Cassius is already finished with his. Always a man of appetites. I’m more practiced than he in the art of self-deprivation at the dinner table.
Doesn’t feel so long ago that I was a knobby-kneed boy sitting at my grandmother’s dinner table when she turned her long neck to me and peered down that peregrine nose, and, in a kindly manner, inquired if I intended to sleep outside in the gutter instead of in my bedchamber, because by virtue of the fact that I’d eaten three whole tarts I’d clearly abdicated being a man in favor of being a little pig. It was two days after my parents had died. I seldom eat sweets any longer.
Cassius makes a show of looking around for more food.
“Pardon the portions,” Dido says with the faint hint of apology. “They’re more conservative than you’re accustomed to, I’m sure. We’re in the midst of a ration cycle.”
“Thought you were sitting on a breadbasket here. And Europa is just one big sea. Or did you already eat all the fish?” Cassius asks.
I wait in trepidation. This line of inquiry is dangerous. An innocent observation that will lead inexorably to a casual inquiry about the new ships we’ve seen and the state of their docks and their stores of helium-3. I fear him asking that question.
Dido smiles obligingly. “On the contrary, the fisheries and latifundia have never been more productive.”