ON MY LEAVE DAY I wake up early and eat cold cereal in the commissary before anyone but the maids are awake. I dodge past their little packs of cleaning robots in the halls. With a week left in the bright month, the sky is bruise blue and leaks lazy rain. I make my way down the Esqualine Hills to the southern tram hub, which I take to the main station, on the eastern side of the grounds. Under the Silenius Arch, I show my leave pass and security ID to the Gray Lionguards there. I wanted to bring Liam, but it’s a school day, and I’m worried the sounds of the city will overwhelm him.
“First trip to Hyperion?” the sleepy Gray asks at the station checkpoint as he examines my pass. Lines of first-wave commuters from Hyperion pass through inspection on the other side of the station. He’s taking too long. He’ll find something wrong with the pass. I keep my hand on my billfold in my pocket. How much do I bribe him? I should have asked one of the maids, but you can’t count on a straight answer from any of them. They’d lead me astray for a laugh. More guards watch a holoprogram inside the guard station. “Seeing the sights?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Skip the Circada. Lines are dreadful.”
“I have a flexipass.” I hold up the shiny silver pass the steward handed out to all the Telemanus servants.
“Ripper,” he drolls sarcastically. “That’ll get you in but it won’t let you cut the queue. Tourist sites are flat out. Martians everywhere.” He eyes me like I would a mosquito in 121. “Any fourth-class IDs are subject to full-spectrum assessment upon return after 22:00.”
“I’m second class….”
“Only on Telemanus grounds,” he corrects, referencing my pass. “Extra-Citadel clearance is a different protocol. Savvy?” I nod. “Enjoy our moon, citizen.”
I board the rain-slick train and huddle near a window, bundling tight my overcoat against the chill. The train sets out from the Citadel with only six other passengers. It cuts across trees and the low-lying autumn fog that buffers the Citadel from the city, rising up and up toward the jungle of lights and metal that is Hyperion. I remember seeing the city from the sky for the first time. It was magical then, thinking there were so many people in the worlds. Now, thinking of the riots and protests, it puts dread in my belly.
I disembark at Hyperion Station and push my way through the mass of commuters that cluster on the platform to board the train for its return journey to the Citadel. There’s Greens and Silvers in the crowd, but most are Coppers. All buttoned up against the chill in expensive identical overcoats and scarves and dark broad-brimmed hats. I beg their pardon as I push through them, but they don’t hear. Glowing earbuds fill ears. Holocontacts flicker in eyes. I use my elbows. I’m so short I can’t see my way through and almost get trampled when a speaker pings. “Train doors closing. Mind the pinch. Train doors closing…”
Hyperion Station reminds me of Lagalos. It is a huge stone cavern of bustle and echoing noise, full of travelers from the farthest reaches of the Republic—scarf-wearing, leather-skinned Reds of Terran latifundias. Waifish Blue lads from some orbital flight school in snappy black jackets. Biomod manic Lunese Greens listening to thundering music from shoulder speakers, all stirred into a pot like one of Ava’s stews. I pass glittering shops with moving advertisements showing expensive-looking things on expensive-looking Pinks.
At a map vestibule, I accidentally touch the screen and the holo flips sideways, showing a pitviper’s scrum of travel options. It’s dizzying and I’m not sure how the bloodydamn ticket machines work. The Yellow behind me is tapping her foot impatiently.
I feel a sudden panic. I stick out like a blistered toe. I want to flee, go back to the Citadel, watch holoflicks in my bunk. Kavax took Sophocoles with him to Lake Silene for the day for some secret meeting, so I don’t have any duties.
No. Hyperion is the jewel of the empire. I look up at the carvings on the stone of the station. Ava, you would have killed to see this.
I owe it to her to give it a chance.
Overwhelmed by the transit maps, I leave the station and head out on foot. I can trust my feet at least, and the GPS in my datapad. Only a five-kilometer walk to the gallery. Half the distance Liam and I would walk from camp to the strawberry fields.
Along the way, I stop outside a little café on a glittering boulevard. Groups of Brown janitors in gray jumpsuits pluck at trash with metal claws. Vox Populi protesters are beginning to gather in a square to hear a man speak. Off the side of the tree-lined walkway, past flowering shrubs littered with trash, is a huge drop to the city levels below. Over the edge, apartments stretch as far beneath as they do above. My gut churns, having just realized I am kilometers above the surface of the moon.
Fliers trundle along in aerial boulevards like migrating beetles. Beneath them is a layer of pollution and fog. Lights glow beyond that. A whole other city concealed in the murk. It’s manic, Da. Would make even you look away from the holos. Might even give you a smile.
I go into a nearby café, feeling a bit heady from the vertigo. Confused by the huge menu, I order a coffee and pastry. It’s the first money I’ve ever spent outside 121, and the coffee alone costs a quarter of what I make in a day.
The Brown cashier sighs when I pay with bills instead of dataCreds and makes a show of rummaging through the cash register for change. Once she hands it back, I move to sip my coffee in the corner. The coffee is good, sure, but the pastry overwhelms me. Buttery and flaky, with chocolate and nuts inside. Woulda sold two of your children for a bite of this, Ava. See, I can enjoy myself. I’m a regular citizen.
I watch out the window at the pedestrians but still feel so alone. They’re part of this world. That’s how they can afford these coffees every day. They have skills. Went to school. Know computers and advanced things. I’m not like them.
All’s I know is to be a servant. Before that a slave. I imagine myself sitting across from a big man in a suit at an interview like they show in the holos. He’d ask my skills and I’d tell him I know how to tend silkspiders to keep them free of beetles, and how to put them to nest at night. I know how to bribe mine tinpots, how to haggle down an ounce of sugar, how to listen to rumors so I don’t get stuck by a 121 gang.
“Ruster smarts, my goodlady,” he’d say. “But we don’t need that around here. Have you tried janitorial?”
The museum is fine and clean and cluttered. The Dawn of the Space Age wing is packed. Full of ancient spaceships donated by Regulus ag Sun himself. I have to push through a group of Grays and Blues to even glimpse half the relics. Through a crook in a woman’s elbow, I recognize the winged heel of the Silver’s company logo. The same that was on our tents and our food packets and our water purifier. The same as on the robots that replaced us in our own unprofitable mine.
The History of the Conquerors exhibit is closed; Warden barriers block it off. A flock of Coppers in front of me titter like jungle helions about there being some sort of terrible theft a few weeks back. Through a gap in the tarp that covers the front of the exhibit, I see several Greens are installing hardware in the floor as a crew of Oranges and Reds fix a marble arch where CONQUERORS has been burned over with COCK SUCKERS.
I smile to myself.
I skip the wing devoted to the Rising—little Conn and Barlow would have wailed in disappointment—and instead join the line for the Liberty Wing. There I find a room of concrete that stretches several stories high, narrowing at the top to let in a thin stream of light; a million Red Sigils litter the floor. Small as thumbs, made of flexible metal just like those on my own hands. Each taken from the mines that the Jackal of Mars liquidated. They call it the Hall of Screams.
It’s grotesque and cold and I want to flee it. But I stay. Of all the art here, this is the straightest in the eye you can look at the horror. A man barely older than me falls down weeping, clutching one of the Sigils. He’s alone, but Reds behind him kneel to comfort him till there’s a thick cluster around him and they’re all weeping and I’m wiping my own eyes and looking away, wondering if I should join, but feeling too awkward and too moved to actually do it. Where was this love in Camp 121?
A pair of towering Golds stand on the far side with their young son, watching the display. They’re a handsome couple. Their eyes somber, respectful. But I want to shout at them. Tell them to slag off. This belongs to us.
Then the iron tinkles as their son slips from his mother’s grasp and walks out onto the Sigils. His shoes rattle the Sigils together. The sound bounces against the concrete, rising level by level, the noise growing with each ricochet till it reaches the top of the room’s cold concrete throat.
The clustered Reds stop and stare.
Made nauseous and claustrophobic from the Hall of Screams, I push my way out of the crowd, trying to find a place to sit down and recover. All the coffee shops are filled, so I aim for a small park outside the museum. I squeeze between a slow-moving gaggle of airy Blues, past jabbering Greens, the Colors all clustered together on the broad white steps that lead up to the museum. Carefully, I brush past a dreadful Gold woman who is stopped in the middle of the walkway, talking on an internal chip. A Red with eccentric piercings bumps into me, eager to get ahead. “Sorry, love,” he mumbles, and carries on, sliding through the crowd, trailing smoke from his burner.
Someone shouts behind me on the stairs. I turn around to see the Gold woman wheeling about in a frenzy, her eyes scanning the crowd till they settle on me. She points a long, jeweled finger. “You.” I look behind me to see who she’s talking to. “Thief!” She pushes in my direction and I realize she’s coming right for me. The people around me lurch away. I have the urge to flee, but I stand rooted to the spot on the sidewalk. “Watchmen!” the towering woman shouts. “Watchmen! Where is it, you little ruster?” the woman sneers down at me. Easily a foot taller than me. A hundred pounds heavier. More, despite how thin she is. She looks like an emaciated gold salamander wrapped in a fur coat, but her large eyes glitter like two evil gems. “I know you took it.”
“I didn’t take shit,” I snap. She grabs my arm and yanks so hard I feel my shoulder grind in its socket. My feet come clear off the ground.
“We’ll see about that. Watchmen!”
“They’re coming,” someone says.
I look around in confusion and squirm sideways so that she loses hold of my rain-slicked jacket. “Don’t let her leave.” A female Green and an old Silver man step into my path. The Silver grabs me and holds my arm until two Watchmen push their way through the gathering crowd. Grays. A spike of fear goes through me. They wear blue cloth caps and gray uniforms with titanium badges with a blindfolded woman holding the star of the Republic. The younger of the two tells the bystanders to move along as the oldest cranes his neck to look up at the Gold, nodding respectfully. “Is there a problem, citizen?”
“This one’s a thief.”
He looks at me calmly. “What, her?”
“The little urchin stole my bracelet! Took it right off my wrist.”
My eyes widen. “Like hell I did.”
“I saw her try to get away,” the Silver declares. “I detained her till you arrived.”
“It was a diamond and lyrconium bracelet. Incredibly expensive. I was talking on my com and she pickpocketed me. Slippery little fingers.”
My tongue is struck dumb. “Hold your head still, citizen,” the older, fatter Watchman says. A clear optic falls over his left eye from the thin plastic headset he wears just beneath his blue beret. “Gotta scan you in.”
“But I didn’t do anything….”
“Then you’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Did either of you see this happen?” the younger Gray asks the Green and Silver.
“Saw the ruster bump into her.”
“No. Just heard the shout.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Shut up or we’ll haul you in for running your mouth,” the younger Watchman says.
“Citizen, stop moving your head.” I hold very still, biting back a tinpot insult. The Gray’s eye flickers with light from the optic’s projection display. A kaleidoscope of faces streams against his pupil. “She’s not in the Archive,” he tells the other. “Where are you from, citizen?” He motions me to put my finger in his DNA sampler. I feel a small prick of a needle. He frowns at the results.
“Martian, obviously. Talks like she’s got mud in her mouth,” the Gold says. “Just arrest her already. I want my bracelet back.” She gestures to the buildings around. “Can’t you call up a camera feed?”
“Private property. Not linked to the Archive, so we’d need a warrant.”
“Ridiculous bureaucracy. Streets have turned to scum. Theft on the Promenade! If you’d stop heeding those plebeian senatorial scarecrows and just do your jobs…”
“Citizen, please,” the older Watchman says. He looks around at the Reds amidst the bystanders, probably wondering if they’re Vox Populi. Wrong eyes see and this turns into a riot. “Are you Martian, girl?”
Breathe. Breathe. “Aye. I’m Martian.”
“You’re not in the Archive. Where is your transit permit? Do you have it on your imbed ID?”
“What?”
“Do you have any ID?”
I reach quickly for my pockets, where I keep the Citadel ID. Both Grays step back, their hands dropping to their sidearms. The younger one pulls his and I stare down the metal barrel, two meters from my face. “Don’t move!” I quiver at the order, a gene-deep terror of Grays with guns racing through me. “Hands out of your pockets! Hands out of your fucking pockets! Do it!”
I freeze, whole body locking up and trembling. I’m too frightened to even pull my hands out. Hostile eyes stare at me, loathing me, validated that I’ve fulfilled some twisted fantasy of theirs. “Pull your hands out! Slowly! Slowly!” I pull my hands out. The older Gray sees Reds and Browns watching from the crowd. Several are speaking into their coms. One steps our way. The Gray lowers his gun, a flicker of fear in his eyes. The younger Gray doesn’t see the onlookers and rushes to slam me against a nearby wall. He shoves my hands out and kicks my legs apart. With a baton, he scans my body then pats me down and then cuffs my hands behind my back with magnetic shackles. I don’t know what to do.
“No shooter or bomb,” the young one says, still not seeing the older one’s trepidation. “No bracelet either.” He takes my ID out of my pocket and steps back. “Lyria of Lagalos.” He pauses. “Eh, Stefano, look at this.”
“Then she must have an accomplice,” the Gold is saying.
“Did see another Red…” the Green pipes up.
“I saw him too. Gang member, no doubt. Tats, piercings. Look, Officers, can I just give you my testimony or card?” the Silver asks, glancing at a timepiece. “I have a meeting….”
“Rico, take their testimony and IDs.” The older Watchman’s com crackles. He holsters his weapons. “We’ll need a wagon at Promenade Level, 116th and Eurydice. Send crowd suppression. Got some Vox watchers. Could escalate.” To me, “You can turn around, citizen.”
Hands behind my back, I shuffle awkwardly around. Rain’s started falling again. I shiver. The younger Gray looks over my ID. “Citadel staff, eh?” I nod. “Janitorial?” Then he notices the fox sigil to the right of my name. “Telemanus personnel. Second-class clearance. Look at that. That’s why she’s not in the Archive.”
I’m not sure if it’s a question.
“Probably stole the ID too,” the Gold says.
The older Watchman wheels on her. “Citizen, please! Look around you.”
“Do you not know who I am?” the woman sneers. “I’m Agilla au Vorelius, Officer. That’s right. Why aren’t you trying to find her accomplice? She has one. They run in packs, you know. Little savage offworlders gone wild. Nowhere is safe. What’s your name? I’m going to report you to my dear friend Senator Adulius. You’ll be guarding water filtration plants on Phobos with one com call.” She leans forward, her bright eyes narrowing as she reads his badge. “Officer Gregorovich.”
The older Gray pales. “Citizen Vorelius, we’re taking her in….”
“Taking me in?” I howl. “I didn’t do—”
“Shut up,” he tells me with an instinctive shove. I’m so angry and scared I just stumble and stare at the ground. “We’ll take her in and perform a full investigation and get feeds from all the cameras, after we get a warrant. If she helped steal your bracelet, she’ll pay.”
“Good. Good. You should report it to the Telemanus steward. They should know they have a thief in their midst. Not that that would bother Martian warlords. But she should at least lose her job. Must keep the streets clean.”
That terrifies me more than the Grays.
I’m led away as a battered gray flier shaped like a loaf of bread with Hyperion cyan stripes sets down on the street. They open the back up. It’s filled with rows of rough-looking bastards, most tattooed lowColors, drunks and vagrants.
“What’d she do?” an old Red shouts from the bystanders.
“Move along, citizen,” one of the Grays orders.
“Bullshit!” someone else shouts. A bottle smashes on the ground near the officers. “Fuck you, tinmen!”
“Get her in.”
“Slag you…” I hiss, resisting as the Watchmen try to push me into the back of the jail wagon. I feel like a child throwing a tantrum. My face has gone numb. One of them pulls out a stunbaton.
“Get in with your pants pissed. Or get in without your pants pissed. Comply, citizen.”
Flinching, I step up into the bed of the flier and let them push me into a seat between a ragged old Pink with chattering black teeth and a drunk Obsidian with vomit and blood on his flashy racing jacket. My shackles clank as the magnetics lock me into my seat. A deep animal fear rises up in me. I tug at the shackles. “Please. Please don’t…” There’s shouts now outside. The sound of sirens and more bottles breaking.
“Officers,” someone says on the street before they shut the doors. A slim Gray man in an overcoat approaches them. He has a forked goatee and a bad limp in his right leg.
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake,” he says. “That girl’s a friend of mine.”
“The pickpocket?” the older Watchman asks, glancing at the gathering crowd.
“That’s a ripper!” The stranger laughs. “If she’s a pickpocket, I’m a worlds-renowned art thief! Known her family going on eight years. We were out for a day on the town. To take in the sights. First stop was the Liberty Wing, then Hero Center—tedious, I know. Wanted to show her a bit of my past. Make sure this flashy new generation knows the sacrifices our kin made back in the day.”
“Your past?” the old Watchman says. “Were you a Son?”
The man shrugs as if embarrassed. “We all do our part. Worked the Watch first.” The massive Obsidian beside me snorts phlegm out of the bowels of his nose and spits it at my feet. His cracked teeth smile at me and he whispers something in a language I don’t understand. His breath smells like a Flush tube. Meanwhile, the Grays rattle at each other in military lingo while I watch on, utterly lost.
“What cohort?” one of the Watchmen asks.
“Cohors XV.”
“Serenia Center?”
“Crater town itself.”
One of the men whistles. “A smokejack in the flesh.”
“Then you were a first responder….”
“So they say.”
“Was there too,” the old Watchman says. “Was Thirteenth then.”
“Helluva day,” the stranger replies.
“Helluva day.” The men shake hands.
“Philippe,” the stranger says.
“Stefano,” the older Watchman replies. “That’s Rico. He’s a jackass.”
“So, what’s the flak, Stefano? My friend there looks like she’s about to be that crow’s lunch. And you look like you’re about to be the mob’s.”
“A citizen says your friend stole her bracelet,” Officer Rico says peevishly, annoyed at being left out of the conversation.
“Her bracelet?” The stranger named Philippe laughs. “Did you find it on her?”
“No, but…”
“Then why’s she in the wagon? Rusters ad portas?”
The older one nods. “Citizen threatened to cause a fuss. Threatened to call up the pyramid. Connected, you know.”
“Ah.” The stranger lifts his eyebrows. “A Gold, then?”
Stefano looks ashamed. “You know the story.”
“Same gears, new oil.”
“So it goes.”
“So it goes. How long till your pension?”
“Three. They bumped them all back five years.”
“Bastards.”
“Yut. New recruits ain’t up to scratch. Reds and Browns…even an Obsidian. It’s fuckin’ madness. No discipline. So they’re keeping the old dogs in the kennel.”
“Criminal.”
“So it goes.”
The stranger steps close and drops his voice. “Listen…I know you got a job to do, Stefano. I know that. But look around you. Fuse is lit. Cart her away and Vox goes boom. I vouch for this little lady. Told her mother I’d watch out for her. She’s the right sort. It’d get me killed if I had to go back and tell her parents what’s what. You know Reds: small Color, big temper. And you take her to the station, this all gets messy. Especially since she’s done jack all. Any way you could forget to log this one in?” He looks back at the crowd. “Save everyone a headache.”
“Stefano…” Officer Rico starts.
“Quiet, squib.” Officer Stefano looks at me, back to the street, and then at the other older Watchmen who brought the wagon and nods. He jumps in the back of the wagon and disconnects the magnetic coupling on my shackles. I follow warily out the back.
“I owe you a chit,” the stranger says. “Damn fine of you.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The stranger sticks out his hand. “Semper fratres.”
“Semper fratres.”
The Watchmen shut the wagon and stride off into the crowd, shoving any lowColor that gets too close. The wagon levitates back into the air and merges back into the air traffic, leaving me standing with the stranger. The crowd, robbed of its martyr, evaporates as quickly as it gathered. Some come to ask if I’m all right. I nod, still rattled.
“Pretend like we’re friends,” the man says as he guides me away. “They’re still watching.”
“Why’d you do that?” I ask him when he sits down on a bench to have a smoke. I take one from him and he lights it with a flame from his pinky ring.
“It was another Red who did it,” he says. “Saw the kid make his move.”
“Why didn’t you say something right off?” I ask hotly.
“I don’t know you,” he says. “Trouble starts easy these days.”
“Looks like it,” I mutter.
“Are you always this…aggressive with people who take time out of their day to help you?”
“No…I just…I’m sorry.”
“And no point in my coming to chat with that Gold hovering like a feral wasp. They’ve got nasty stings. Easy way to get into a quagmire.”
“Quagmire?” I ask.
“Messy situation,” he explains. “Philippe.” He sticks out a hand. His voice is lighter, more playful than it was with the Watchmen. He has a wicked face and smart eyes that look bored by most things they’ve seen, but they focus on me intently.
“Lyria of Lagalos.”
“Martian?” He laughs. “Well, then I’m relieved they didn’t ask how the devil I knew you. Martian. Ha. That’s a rip. Could have undone it all.” He rubs out his burner and gets to his feet, about to leave.
“Why’d you help me?” I ask again.
“You look like someone I used to know.” He pauses. “And I hate that highColor piss. Flexing muscles, as if they haven’t already had their run. You have a lovely day now, Lyria of Lagalos. Mind your tongue when talking with tinpots. That Stefano was a nice one. Most are all twitchy as flies these days with all the terrorists and Vox firestarters.”
He walks off.
“Wait!”
He stops. “Yes?”
“I owe you,” I say, reaching for my billfold. “You mind me, I mind you. That’s how it’s done.”
“You want to pay me?” He’s offended. “Heavens no. Don’t cheapen the serendipity, love.” He pauses as people pass between us. He seems to be contemplating something. His hand rests on his sternum, touching something under his shirt. “Well, damnation,” he says with a sigh. “You do look like a lost thing. How long have you resided in our fair city?”
“It’s my first day.”
He coos. “You poor little rabbit.”
“I’m not a rabbit,” I snap.
He laughs. “True. Your teeth are much bigger. So, day one. And what have you seen?” He snatches my brochure when I hold it up. “Piteous child. You’ll stand in line all day. Well, just so happens I need to walk. It’s for the knee, you see. Old wound. How about you thank me by giving me some company and lending me an ear so I don’t have to talk to myself the entire time. It’s an even trade, I think.”
I hesitate.
“I promise you a splendid day of revelry and fraternity.”
He’s got mischievous eyes. On the whole, I trust those more than I do kind eyes. Those are the ones that pity me. “I can do that.”
“Splendid.” He turns to walk away. “We’re going now, Lyria of Lagalos.” He pats his leg. “Hop, hop.”
I find Philippe hilarious. We walk and talk across the Promenade level, stopping at the unpopular but beautiful Pallas Gallery to see glass sculptures that look like Laureltide dancers frozen in time, and at the Cerebian Zoo, where kangaroos and zebras and other extinct creatures have been brought back to flesh and blood by carvers. He introduces me to caramel and cardamom popcorn and flavored ice. We smoke burners amongst lamplit trees in Aristotle Park and watch loose dogs chase mourning doves that gather to drink at the fountains. Philippe narrates as if I asked him to. He has a way with words, using many I don’t know, and some in ways I’m not familiar with. There’s something worldly about him, something cultured, so cultured that he mocks the uppity manners of the ladies in the furs and jewelry that I at first thought so intimidating.
Ava, you’d love this man. Nothing like the stupid boys of the township.
He also seems to want to know me. Not about me like everyone else, but about what I think. I ramble on, forgetting to feel self-conscious, and he watches, touching that something beneath his shirt.
He might be older than my father, but he’s got something youthful about him that makes me smile. He hides something, a deep sadness maybe. And sometimes I catch him watching the trees or a fountain like he’s been here before with someone else a long time ago. When he does this, he always touches his chest.
I wonder who I remind him of.
I lose track of time, forgetting that the sun doesn’t set at the end of the day here. When I say I should get back to the Citadel, Philippe demands to escort me after we cap the day with a dinner at a little Venusian place he knows. I hesitate despite the growling in my stomach, about to make an excuse because I’ve never been to a real restaurant, and I’m self-conscious of my terrible coat, and I’m fretting I won’t be able to afford it; but he twists my arm. Damn well he did. The little Venusian place is the finest place I’ve ever seen. Napkins and plates as white as hardboiled eggs. Silver utensils. Music trickling from a Violet zitherist playing underneath an ivy gazebo that looks out at the Citadel and the mountains to the north.
“Pains me to think you’ve lived a life without oysters,” Philippe says, slurping one down.
“Well, you haven’t ever had fried pitviper eggs.”
“An acquired taste, no doubt.”
I shiver as I slurp down another oyster. I chewed the first one and almost retched, but now I know to take them down all at once, I’m beginning to like them if I sauce them with enough vinegar. Or maybe I like that I like them. I feel very important when the waiter comes and asks if we’d like anything else and I say, “That’s right, another flight please.”
“And two more martinis,” Philippe demands. “Insidiously dirty, you charmer.”
The waiter blushes and patters away. I watch him go, dreading what this will all cost when I could barely afford a coffee. Philippe tosses his empty shell into a pail. “These don’t hold a candle to true Venusian crustaceans, but with the war, Earth does its best.”
“I heard trade might reopen with the Peace,” I say knowingly. Heard that bit from one of Quicksilver’s men who visited Kavax couple weeks back.
“Ha! The Peace won’t last. It never lasts. Golds can’t handle conditional victory. They simply must have it all.”
“Vox Populi might pass it without the Golds.”
“And how do you know that?”
I shrug, knowing I’ve said too much. “I hear things.”
He examines me. “Doesn’t that bother you? Making peace with the slavers?”
I consider it, relieved he didn’t ask where I’ve heard these “things.” “I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you’d know if it bothers you.”
“That senator…Dancer O’Faran. He was the one who freed my mine.”
He whistles. “That’s something.”
I nod. “Took me a while to remember. But if you saw how he looked at us…He just wants to make things better. Here and on Mars. Seems all the Sovereign thinks about is her personal score—finishing things with the Ash Lord. And the small people get left behind. She hasn’t even been to Mars in six years, and the place is a…quagmire.”
He smiles at the word. “And what about the Reaper?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug, drunk and wanting to talk about something else. “It’s like he’s one of them now.”
“A Gold.”
I nod, thinking of my brothers in the legions, wondering if I should tell Philippe about them. No. I don’t want the pity to ruin the night. “I just want it to end,” I say. “Just want that life we were all promised.”
“Don’t we all. Ah, the oysters!”
We finish the next flight, and, after the two martinis, Philippe gets the bill without me noticing. I make a show of scolding him, but inside I’m thanking the Vale and feeling stupid for worrying so much about it.
Tottering drunk, we stumble away from the restaurant arm in arm, singing a Red ballad Philippe insisted I teach him about a boy so charming he seduced a pitviper. Though Philippe’s at least thirty kilos heavier and two hands taller, he’s drunker than I am.
“Red constitution, damnably impressive,” he says with a sigh, sitting down midway through Hero Center despite the light drizzle that falls from the cloud layer. The dimness of the light makes it feel almost like a Martian night. “Must rest the leg. It aches so.”
We sit together on a bench in the middle of the Hero Center’s plaza. Statues ring the expanse. My favorite, Orion xe Aquarii’s, towers seven stories high over a riot of red maples. The notoriously curmudgeonly Blue stands with her hands on her hips and a parrot on her shoulder. The largest of the statues is at the center of the plaza. At night, lights in the ground blaze up to illuminate the Iron Reaper: a Red boy ten times the size of a real man stands chained to two huge iron pillars. He is not grand. He is half starved. His back is bent. But his mouth is open in a roar. The chains seem to crack and snap. The columns are shattered and in their shards are more shapes and icons and screaming faces. Philippe strokes his necklace as he leans back looking at the statue.
“What’s that?” I ask him after a moment. His eyebrows rise. “Under your shirt. You been stroking it like it’s a pet all night.”
“Hm?” he sits up straighter and takes out the necklace. The size of a small egg, it is the face of a youthful man with curly hair and a crown of grapes. “A little something given to me by a special someone. It is Bacchus. Lord of frivolity and wine. My kindred spirit.”
“Who gave it to you?” I ask. “Sorry. I got shit for manners.”
“Dispense with thy manners, my darling. I’m too drunk for them.” Still, he pauses, his face losing its natural amusement, replaced by a darker, more intense emotion. “It was a man. My fiancé.”
“Fiancé?”
“That a problem?” he snaps in a clipped, new voice.
“No…I just…”
“Because I know lowReds are primitive little shits ’bout that sort of thing. Part of your mine conditioning. The nuclear family! No efficiency in homosexuality. A waste of sperm, declares the Board of Quality Control!”
I glower. “We’re not all like that.” Da was, though.
“No,” he says with a little, airy laugh, himself again. In that moment, I understand him. All the big words, all the dandy eccentricity, are a shield. There’s pain beneath, and for a moment, he trusted me enough to share it. “I’m sorry, love. I’m terribly tight. Easier to see only ahead when you’re terribly tight.” He sighs and watches water drip down the Reaper’s statue. Birds huddle in the armpits of the monument.
“What was your fiancé like?” I ask softly.
“Husband. I hate calling him fiancé. Cheapens it. He…was a good man. The best. Nothing in common with me, except an infatuation with the lord’s wine. Our private joke. He’s gone now. But you probably guessed that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We all have our shadows.” He smiles bravely.
“My family was killed on Mars,” I say, surprised to find myself speaking the words out loud. So many people have asked, and dug, but I sealed them off because how could they ever understand? That sadness in Philippe understands me. In his eyes, I don’t feel pitied. I feel seen. “I was in one of the assimilation camps. We were there too long, and the Red Hand came.”
“What were their names?”
I make a small, pained sound. “No one’s asked that.”
“Then I’m honored to be the first to know.”
“My brother’s name was Tiran. My father’s name was Arlow. My sister was Ava. Her children: Conn, Barlow, and Ella. The littlest one…” My voice catches. “She was a baby.” I try to smile. “But I got my nephew out, and I got brothers alive too.”
His silence is that of a man wrestling with something inside himself. The battle plays out in the muscles of his jaw and the shifting of his hands against the bench. After a time, not knowing which side has won, I follow his eyes to the Iron Reaper.
“Know what I see when I look at that?” he asks. “A thief.” He laughs. “Suppose that’s blasphemy to you. He’s your great hero. Your messiah.”
“He’s not my messiah.”
“No?”
“No.”
“It’s incredible,” he says, looking at me.
“What is?”
“Everyone is so loud these days. But you, you’re silent when you’ve all the right to scream. Luna isn’t made for silence. Neither am I.” I say nothing. With him I don’t feel a need to, and maybe that’s why I told him about my family. It was a secret I wanted to hold close because I didn’t want the pity. I don’t want to demean their deaths or prostitute them for attention. “What do you see?” he asks of the statue.
“Rust.” I pause. “And shadows.”
We walk to the train depot in silence. Steam from the heat of the friction on rails billows from the tracks. “Thank you,” I say, “for everything.”
“The pleasure was all mine, Lyria of Lagalos.” He pauses, considering his words carefully. “I know Hyperion may seem too big to reckon. And the people here grander than you. But don’t let them make you feel small.” He pokes my chest and smiles wryly. “You are a world entire. You are grand and lovely. But you have to see it before anyone else does.” He smiles at me, a little embarrassed. “You have my pad number. Don’t be a stranger, little rabbit.” He kisses my forehead paternally and turns into the rain. “Till we meet again.” He hops twice like a rabbit before his bad knee buckles comically. He grins back at me. I can’t help but laugh.
In my bunk back in the Citadel, with the covers tight around my neck, I curl up, too tired to pull up the holo of Mars, and think it marvelous to have finally made a friend.