SUNGRAVE, THE GREATEST CITY of Io, surges up out of a white, frozen plain riven with fissures venting heat from subterranean magma. We fly toward it looking out the forward windows of one of Dido’s chimeras.
Carved into Io’s highest mountain, the eighteen-kilometer-high Boösaule, Sungrave is a city of black stone obelisks and spires that rides the shoulders of the mountain range. Centuries ago, after the use of Lovelock engines was deemed inefficient for Io, great mirrored lasers carved much of the mountain and part of its attending 540-kilometer-long range into a city of jagged towers. The builders followed the draconic predilections of their great progenitor, Akari, bringing creatures of childhood fables and ancient campfire stories to life in the stone.
A necropolis of animalistic spires flecked with topaz, zircon, and myriad nesosilicate rocks looms above us, blocking the sky like the petrified remains of a great dragon host. They perch rank upon rank along the Boösaule’s crest, some of them encompasing whole peaks, legs straddling frosted valleys, their wide wings buttressing their great heights as they crane their stone necks up as if to drink the gases of marbled Jupiter. Duroglass windows glitter with internal light, like scales. And deeper in the heart of the mountain, where long ago Red drillcrews dug out the interior, lies the city itself.
The city, like all the other mountain cities of Io, draws its energy from the tidal heating caused by the war of Jupiter’s gravity on Io against the gravitational pull of Europa and Ganymede. The cities of Raa need no helium-3 to survive or power the pulseFields that shield them from radiation and Io’s poisonous air. That is why they survived my grandmother’s siege ten years ago—their shields could resist bombardment longer than the helium-3 power generators of the Sword Armada’s ships could keep them in orbit. Still, I expected Io to be a desolate backwater, beset by rationing and scant starship flight; but the ship that captured the Archimedes was brand new. As are many of the trade and war vessels that flow into Sungrave’s high stone docks like itinerant gnats.
I look over at Cassius and feel his unease.
How were those ships built? On what dock?
New Olympic Knights, new ships, a new generation. The Rim has not been sleeping. And now, if they gain Seraphina’s evidence, they will awaken.
The scent of foreign incense fills my nose as the steam from the caldarium walls filters soundlessly up from the hypocaust beneath the floor into the dim room. Two sets of hands knead the knots of tension from my shoulders and legs. The bruises inflicted by Pandora’s men are now faded pools the color of sulfur on my shoulders and jaw. Somewhere in the steam, Cassius bathes alone in the solium, a large pool sunken into the rough-cut stone. Since Dido’s wafer, time has passed like a dream, my body flushed again with the life of water and food which Dido’s men gave us on the flight to Sungrave.
As a child, I surrendered to the disappointing reality that I would never see fabled Sungrave in person. It would be too great a risk to send the heir to a place where he might be captured and held for ransom. But I am heir no longer, and my eyes are greedy for all Sungrave’s sights, to see her depths, her botanical complexes, her great mountain cisterns filled with Europan water.
It is so different here from my home on Luna. Not just the acrid air and the dim sky, but the unforgiving stone, the Spartan decor—empty rooms, no chairs, and an incredible adherence to cleanliness and martial virtue. Seraphina gave me an all-too-brief tour after we arrived and I was taken to my quarters, but in her presence I noted less of the city than I would like. My eyes would drift to the back of her proud neck as she led me through her childhood corridors, like she was a black hole, pulling all light, all attention into her, not just from me, but from the servants, from the guards. She is much loved.
Little Hawk, they call her affectionately. Barely twenty. Not a Praetor or a Legate—those titles must be earned—just a woman of worth and promise. Yet despite her mother’s consolations, the guilt of her actions against her father seems to weigh heavily on her. She said little before depositing me in my quarters and disappearing before the door had closed.
When the Pinks have finished their massage, they scrape the oil and dead skin from my body with strigils, flattened bronze hooks, which they put into a clay pot for some recycled use. Nothing here goes to waste. One offers me a pipe of dried tharsal root. Head already woozy from the steam, I decline the mild hallucinogen. Then the slaves ask me how I would like to take them. Their legs are eerily long from the low gravity of their home. Their skin, unblemished by the sun, is burnished and smooth and without hair. The hair of their heads is thick, the male’s silver, the female’s a black so deep it shines blue near the lamps. She’s older than he is, with quartz eyes and the frailness of a small bird. But her mouth is truculent, her eyes not so empty as they should be. They startle me when they meet mine, and the spell the warmth and their hands cast is broken. She sees me.
A deep revulsion, physical and intellectual, twists the lust into a knotted, blackened thing.
I can’t look at them as my ancestors did, as consumable treats.
One could argue for the necessary industry of Reds or the cultlike military religion instilled in Grays, or the efficiency and neutered emotions in Coppers, but this…Pinks were not needed to make my grandmother’s world function. They were built for lechery, subjected to centuries of systematic breeding, abuse, psychological and sexual domination. Chemically neutered and twisted inside so that their suicide rate is eleven times higher than that of any other Color.
Gold is to blame for that. Gold lost its way.
And now this Pink woman looks at me with eyes too ancient for her face.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
“This one’s name is Aurae,” she says.
I gently take the Pink’s hand from my thigh. “That will be enough, Aurae.” The male Pink looks awash with shame, thinking himself not beautiful enough; but in the woman, I see a small tell, a spasm of relief at the corners of her eyes. Then she feigns shame like the other one. Strange.
“We shouldn’t insult them,” Cassius says from the pool. “Come, join me. There’s enough room for the two of you.” The Pinks rise to obey.
“Like the Brothers Rath, are we now?” I ask.
He sighs. And motions for the Pinks to leave. They do. My eyes follow Aurae out the door. I ponder her relief. When they’ve left, Cassius casually taps his ear to show that we’re no doubt being listened to. Of course I know that. Does he forget where I grew up? “I think we deserve a little fun, Castor. Water torture, enduring that family squabbling, the beatings…” He laughs. “Besides, they’re slaves, and you’re not their savior. Romantic as you find the notion to be.”
“You know, not everything you say to me has to be a lesson,” I say.
“If you didn’t need them, I wouldn’t teach them. Anyway, looks like Pytha owes me fifty credits.” He sighs contentedly to himself and leans his broad shoulders back in the bath.
“What for?” I ask, unable to not take the bait.
“Friendly wager. She couldn’t possibly believe you were still a virgin.”
“What?”
“A virgin. It’s when a man or woman has not…”
“I hardly think that’s any of your concern. I’m not, as it is.”
He closes his eyes against the steam. “Then why turn them away? You sure it’s not because you’re afraid she’s watching?”
“Of course not,” I say sharply. Is Seraphina watching?
He chuckles. “See? Pent-up sexual aggression.”
“Just because I believe in actual romance instead of plundering the virtue from merchants’ daughters and buggering everything that moves like a gorydamn Gaul does not mean that I should be shamed.”
“ ‘Like a gorydamn Gaul?’ My goodman, you curse like you’re ninety.”
“And you’re a hypocritical fornicator.”
“Gods, you really haven’t been laid, brother.”
“Will you stop talking.” I throw one of the strigils at him. He ducks into the water before pulling himself out to join me on the tile bench. He nudges me with his shoulder after a spell to lighten the mood—difficult considering we both know they’re analyzing us now, attempting to peel back our story to see if we are spies. Neither one of us is convinced the brotherly spat is just for show, though that might be our excuse.
“Seraphina told me Pytha was alive,” I say, trying to change the subject.
“My guards said the same to me. But don’t get too comfortable. We’re not guests here. When when the coup is over, our heads will likely roll.”
“You don’t think it will succeed?”
“Tell me you didn’t see the doubt in the daughter.”
I nod. “I didn’t think that was the reason for it.”
He laughs. “Don’t be so easily impressed by a rogue century of Peerless. Dido’s sharp, but she’s Venusian. The Rim won’t forget that. The minor Lords of Io will be coming from all over the moon, loyal to Romulus. And if they don’t finish her off, the Lords of Europa and Ganymede, likely even Callisto, will do it. Not to mention the Far Rim. They like their Romulus out there.”
“And what about their evidence?”
“Did you see her bring anything back?”
“No.”
“Well then, either she hid it well, or it was a bluff.”
I know without him saying it that he blames me for our current predicament, but it was his decision to investigate the Vindabona. His decision to take away everything I had as a boy and then act like he was my savior.
He lives in a fiction, espousing a moral code to justify killing his Sovereign, turning his back on our Society, but I know why he really did it—because she let the Jackal kill his family. The sanctimonious morality came long afterwards. This noble Morning Knight is built on a foundation of self-interest. And now, because he trusts no Golds, he decides we will anger our hosts in hopes they will want our services, when instead he should swallow his pride and see if their hospitality is genuine, as I do.
He has little faith in our Color. I’m losing all mine in him.
I feel a despicable little creature, thinking all this of Cassius. Whatever his motives, I know his love for me is genuine. The nights of listening to music in the rec room of the Archimedes as he falls asleep holding his drink can’t be washed away. Neither can the protective warmth I felt all those times when Pytha and I helped him back to his bunk when he was so drunk he could not even stand but he could murmur Virginia’s name.
“I miss home,” I say in an attempt to find some common ground to ease the tension that’s grown between us these last months, before the Vindabona even.
“Mars?” he asks, and I know he means Luna. And I do miss that place, the libraries, the Esqualine Gardens, the warmth of Aja, the approval of my grandmother, stark and sparse though it was, the love of my parents. But most of all, I miss sitting in the sun, eyes closed, listening to the pachelbel in the trees. That was peace for me. That is where I feel safe.
“But I was thinking of the Archi. I’ve never had to miss her before. Two days on Ceres. Three on Lacrimosa…”
“She’s a good ship,” he says. “I’d give two years’ haul to be under way in the rec room with a tumbler of whiskey right now and a good concerto on the holo.”
“Playing chess?”
“Karachi,” he corrects. “We played chess all last year.”
“More like I taught you to play all last year…”
He rolls his eyes. “He wins five in a row and suddenly he’s Arastoo in the flesh.”
“It was seven, my good man. But I’ll relent and let you play Karachi, even though it’s a game entirely devoid of reason and mathematical skill.”
“It’s called reading people, Castor. Intuition.”
I make a face. “My only condition is we listen to Vivaldi and not Wagner.”
“My goodman, are you trying to kill me? You know I abhor Vivaldi.” He laughs. “Not that it matters. Won’t be able to hear a note over the sound of Pytha whining about immersion games or how it’s not her turn to cook.”
We grin at each other, indulging the fantasy that once seemed so commonplace, but now so nostalgic and impossible.
“Oh, don’t look so maudlin,” he says. “We’ll return to the Archi with Pytha in surly tow. We’ll be sharing a whiskey and burning black matter once this is sorted.” We both know it is a promise he cannot keep.
I see by the melancholy look in his eyes that we are united in understanding that something between us is breaking and neither one of us knows how to stop it. Even if we leave Io behind, we can never go back to the way things were, to the private world we shared.
I have outgrown it. I have even outgrown him.