“YE GODS, IT’S AMAZING. Better than a Rose spa,” Alban, the second valet to Kavax, says as a slender human-shaped robot massages his back with fifteen translucent fingers sprouting from four hands. The robot’s face and body are opaque white plastic. Beneath, a blue light pulses like it’s got a mechanical heart beating beneath its assembly-line shell. Is this what replaced my da in the mines?
The personal traveling staffs of Houses Telemanus and Augustus lounge in a sitting room in Regulus ag Sun’s tower. Electronics and consumer goods litter the room—basket gifts for all the staff, even me. He’s the only man I’ve ever heard of who gives gifts to everyone else on his birthday.
So what does Quicksilver want for this basket? I turn the attached card over in my hands. Lyria of Lagalos, it reads in flowery gold cursive, For your unsung service to the Republic. August wishes, Regulus ag Sun. Bribe or not, I cherish the card and rub my finger over the embossed winged heel.
“As if you’ve ever gotten a massage from a Rose,” one of Niobe’s valets says.
“I did one time, you know. Didn’t even have to pay.”
“Liar. You’ve silver dripping out of your ears.”
“Don’t I know. Oh gods, yes, robot, that is the spot.”
“Harder, sir?” the robot asks in a hollow human voice.
“Always! Ow! Ow! Not that hard, are you trying kill me?”
“Impossible, sir. The First Law of Robotics states—”
“I know what it states, you toaster.”
I sip my ginger tea, wishing Philippe were here to lend his wry opinion. My own is not needed among the servants. I’m still an outsider to this little club of valets. Most, except Alban, are in their forties or fifties and have served since they were younger than I am. Their parents served and their parents before them, just like Garla and the docker Reds.
Everything in Quicksilver’s tower is shiny and sparse and silver and white, except the racing ships that roar out sound from a holographic projector on the far side of the room. Some valets and political staff sit there in tuxedos smoking or tapping away importantly at their datapads. Bethalia enters from the hall, speaking with Quicksilver’s steward and the Sovereign’s, a happy, plump man with quick fingers. Looks a bit like a giddy pig surprised to find himself in a tuxedo.
We’re here for Quicksilver’s birthday. It was a sight as our caravan taxied in through the air to his skyscraper dock. Spotlights carved the November dark-cycle sky. Onlookers with cameras filled dirigibles and rooftops. I watched out a staff compartment window from one of our armored ships as the Sovereign and her son exited onto the silver carpet with the Telemanuses. For a moment I felt like I was back with my family watching the HC from half a billion kilometers away. The Augustans looked mighty fine. But I resented them all the same. This is their life. Galas and parties. I feel guilty for that resentment. I owe so much to Kavax.
The guilt dissipates when I remember the feel of mud. The sounds of the flies on my sister’s body. They’ll never hear that sound. None of these serious, pompous servants have heard that sound. I think of Philippe, feel the weight of his Bacchus pendant, and take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone.
My datapad vibrates on my wrist. I hesitantly approach Bethalia and wait till she notices me so I don’t interrupt her conversation.
“Yes, Lyria?”
“Kavax pinged me. Should I go in to the banquet?”
She adjusts my collar absently. Unlike the men, the women don’t wear a tie. Our collars are stiff and high, and without undershirt. “Yes, but they’re not at the main party. Cedric, could one of yours guide her?” The other servants watch me jealously as I leave the room. I grin back at them for a little fun.
One of Quicksilver’s security captains, a tall dead-eyed Gray, guides me through the halls past Lionguards. The woman has no interest in talking with me, so I return the favor. We divert to a small lift and take it down to a quieter level that’s more darkly lit by lights that run along the ceiling. Water sweeps under the glass floor. Strange shapes swim through it. I try to stop and get a better look, but the valet tuts at me, so I hurry along behind her. She leads me in to a large ivory door where several serious Grays in tuxedos with Augustus Lion pins on their chests loiter outside, weapons bulging under suit jackets. Two Obsidian men watch me from the shadows. I eye them warily, still terrified around their kind. They scarcely seem human.
“She’s here for the fox,” the valet says.
“You class two, citizen?” The Gray at the door makes me show him my ID, another pushes open the door for me. Kavax’s voice is the first I hear.
“Come, now, Victra. Dancer is not so bad a creature….”
“He’s a pompous, churlish, three-inch backstabbing rat,” a woman drawls. “A little rust-livered rat that has half the Senate eating out of his germ-infested hands.”
“You do not have to defame the man’s honor,” Kavax says. “He’s still our friend.”
“You big idiot. Socialists don’t have honor, they have psychoses.”
The woman speaking is half naked. A pregnant Gold with jagged white-blonde hair and a profoundly scandalous black dress with green spikes on the shoulders and a neckline that plunges almost to her navel. Trying not to look at her is like trying not to look at a burning house. A dozen people join with her in intense conversation in a sitting room with a glass-domed ceiling. Several servants bring them coffee and liquor. I spy Sophocles and pat my leg. He looks blankly at me, comfortable on Kavax’s lap.
“Hear, hear,” a rotund bald man says through his jowls. He holds whiskey in his fist and has a ring with a Gold eyeball in it. Quicksilver in the flesh. A picturesque Pink man sits at his side, gently holding the stem of a wineglass. “Sadly, the diagnosis is terminal for that lot.”
“Does he really have six blocs?” Kavax’s wife, Niobe, asks a grandmotherly Pink.
“The Coppers have not yet decided,” the old Pink says, glancing at another woman, who stands with her back to the room, looking out the window at the glowing city.
“So we have six blocs and they have six. And the Obsidians still won’t talk. Who would have thought that war and peace comes down to Copper?” Kavax rumbles. “I warned you of this…demokracy.” He spits the word.
“Caraval told me in my office this morning that Dancer promised him a bill on lowColor and midColor reparations,” the old Pink says.
“Reparations…” the pregnant woman says with a laugh. “It was a fine Republic. A bold Republic. Until it went bankrupt in its eleventh year because of socialist lunacy. They take the Senate, they’ll gut the war effort to pay for their agenda. Or they’ll raise taxes.”
“Or?” the old Pink says with a smile. “They’ll do both.”
“I’m already being taxed into oblivion,” Quicksilver says. “How much more blood do they think they can draw from this stone?”
“I think you’re doing quite well enough,” Daxo says from behind his brandy.
“Well enough?” Quicksilver asks hotly. “Who the hell made you arbiter? Not enough you’re blocking my acquisition of Ventris Communications and curtailing the mechanization of mines, now you want to define when a man, who built a business and a resistance army with his own two hands, has done well enough. I had less trouble making Tinos than getting a bill through your quibbling Senate.”
“Monopolies are bad for the people….”
“Government is bad for the people.” Quicksilver makes a disgusted sound. “More regulations are bad for the people. You raise taxes, I have to raise prices, little people get crushed.”
“Regulus ag Sun, defier of tyranny, guardian of the…little people,” Niobe says. “How noble you are.”
I pull out a bit of duck liver that I carry with me as a lure for Sophocles. He stares on at me and lowers his head willfully to drink out of Kavax’s mug. Damn fox. He best not make me come get him. I’ll die if they notice me. Some already have. I’ve been too long in the room.
“I say we kill Dancer,” the pregnant woman says. “I’ve ten men that can make it look like an accident. Ten thousand that can make it look like an example.”
The old Pink looks at the servants bringing them drinks. “Really, Victra? Some digression.”
“I’ll buy a holobillboard above Hero Center. I don’t care—and don’t act like they aren’t your creatures.”
“You don’t mean that, Victra,” Niobe says.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s murder, and he’s a hero of the Republic. Akin to Darrow and Ragnar.” She grimaces. “Maybe more so these days. You can’t kill him. He’s the voice of Red. If he’s murdered, the mob will storm the Citadel. We’ll have an uprising, and not just here. Mars would disintegrate.”
“The Ash Lord would have a laugh at that,” Kavax says.
“Father is right. Might be his intention,” Daxo adds. “Darrow certainly thought so.”
“Ridiculous,” the pregnant woman says. I’ve just realized who she is. Victra au Barca. “Politics is such a bore without a little murder. Honestly, I don’t know how you people sit in the Senate listening to blowhard softbodies yammer on about universal welfare at a time of war. I’d cut my gorydamn ears off.”
“Dancer is going to take the Senate,” the woman at the window says. My heart skips a beat. I know the voice. Virginia the Lionheart turns around. My heart rushes under my sternum. Years of anger, resentment, now compromised by the subtle beauty of her, by the rolling power of her calm voice. The muted magnetism strikes me dumb, even as I realize she is barefoot. “He will take the Senate when we vote next week,” she repeats. “It’s not a matter of if. It’s only a matter of when. Caraval will fold. He’s just drawing this out to get a deal for his people.”
“And the Obsidians?” Niobe asks.
“Sefi will not meet with me.”
“What does that mean?” Victra asks.
“I don’t know. But we must assume it means we don’t have their votes; so Dancer will have the majority needed to ratify the peace accord. Seven blocs to six. Then I’ll veto it. No senator will sit across the negotiating table with that Bellona. It will pit the executive against the legislative….I’m afraid Darrow was right, this is a ploy by the Ash Lord to distract us. But Dancer will have to keep his flock of senators from straying, while I just have to mind myself. Who do you think will cave first? Me or a few senators?” They laugh. “His momentum will run upon the mountain and founder. Dancer is smart enough to know this. So the question that keeps me up at night is: where’s the twist? How will he break the impasse?”
Her eyes settle on me and I feel their massive weight, knowing I look like I’m eavesdropping. The others follow her gaze and suddenly all are staring at me. “Lyria…” Kavax says, rising. He brings me Sophocles, who claws as he’s handed over. “This little man needs to go piddly. Go on now, lass.” My cheeks are aflame. The most powerful people in the Republic staring down a ruster of Lagalos.
“Now can we please talk about who the hell stole my ship?” Quicksilver rumbles. I finally let out the breath I’d been holding. I grab Sophocles by the collar and rush out of the room. My blood is pumping so loud in my ears I can hear no more of the conversation. The door shuts behind me. Directed by the valet, I follow a trail of golden footprints that appear on the floor toward the garden and mull over what I heard.
Sophocles suddenly growls, his hackles rising as a small chrome globe no larger than my fists held together floats toward us in the center of the quiet hall. One of Quicksilver’s drone sentries. Sophocles snarls at it as it draws closer. The drone floats politely upward to wait for me to pass.
“Good day, Lyria of Lagalos,” it says.
“Good day,” I reply with a laugh. Sophocles sniffs the air, less impressed, and then squats and takes a piss right in the center of the floor. A light on the drone glows red through its silver carapace.
“Bad,” it says, and shoots a thin line of rancid liquid onto Sophocles. He yelps and darts down the hall. I’m pulled right along with him.
“Have a splendid day, citizen,” the drone says.
“Damn robot,” I curse as I catch up to Sophocles.
In the garden, I free the fox. He sniffs under bushes searching for the perfect spot. I sit down, still thinking of the Sovereign. I’ve seen her from afar, but never been seen by her. Under her gaze I felt she could hear all my evil thoughts. All my anger toward her and the Republic. She may have been larger than life on the HC. Brilliant, perfect. But never once did I think about her as flesh and bone.
She was tall, beautiful. But that’s not the impression she left on me. No, the Sovereign is tired. What would it be like, I begin to wonder, to be responsible for so many lives? Is that what you felt, Ava, when your children ran with you in the mud?
“Who are you?” a voice asks. I jump and look to see a boy in a tuxedo sitting on a rock amidst the garden’s trees. A holo plays in his irises. I recognize his strange eyes and his dusty gold hair, and for a moment I think I’m looking at the Reaper himself. But he’s a child, one I’ve only ever seen on the HC and from a distance. I look at the ground.
“Lyria, sir.”
“The foxwalker.” I’m surprised he knows me. “I’m Pax.”
“I know, sir.” It’s a false humility, introducing himself. He’s the most famous boy in the Solar System. The bloodydamn First Child. Head’s as bare of sigils as his father’s.
“Sir.” He wrinkles his nose. “Don’t start with that.” I bend awkwardly at the waist, forgetting I should bow even though he’s a boy. “Or that!”
“Sorry.”
“Can’t be helped, it seems. Were you lot watching the race?”
“The race?” I ask. He taps the corner of his eye. “No. I mean the others were. Don’t know slag about races.”
“Really? Well, time for an education, I think!”
“I really should just—”
“Oh, Uncle Kavax can stand a moment without the beast.” He smiles sincerely. “Please. It’d be nice to talk about anything but politics. Mother makes me sit in on those little councils of theirs. Had to listen to Senator Caraval for two hours yesterday. That man can bloodydamn talk.”
I flinch.
That is not his word.
He pats the bench beside him. I awkwardly join, fearing what Bethalia would say if she walked in, but I can’t very well say no. He switches the feed from his eye back to his datapad and then into the air. Ships suddenly fill the garden. The cherry racer is still out in front, darting between three star constellations suspended above the Hyperion cityscape. A pack of other ships follow in a tight line. “The Circada Maxima,” he says over the roar. “I begged Mother to let me go, but she said it would be bad form to miss Quick’s birthday. And a security risk.” He points at the cherry racer. “That’s Alexia xe Rex. Best pilot in the Solar System.”
“I thought Colloway xe Char was the best,” I say.
“The Warlock? Psh. You’re brainwashed already. Pity.” He examines me with a wide smile.
“I heard Char has one hundred and twenty-six kills.”
“If we’re counting kills as skill…sure, he’s good. Class to himself. But he’s a gunslinger. Rex is a ballerina. Both outliers. Both artists, but…here, here, watch this turn. Most’ll ease up on the accelerator so they don’t crash into the wall. But they lose speed. She’ll cut her rear engines, shunt power to her starboard thruster, and then pump the energy back to the rear, all without stalling or blacking out. Watch.”
I watch him.
He’s not like any boy I’ve ever known. He’s aware of himself. Who he is. Who his parents are. I think he knows how nervous I am. So he goes out of his way to be kind, cheery. But if he really was so chummy with servants all the time, he’d be watching in the break room, not skulking here in the garden. But in the race he loses the self-consciousness and the boyish energy bursts out, reminding me of my brothers.
We watch as the cherry racer speeds toward a huge white pylon. Behind the pylon is a floating wall on the edge of the racecourse. All the other ships slow to take the pylon turn. But Rex’s banks around the pylon, arcing like a kite on a tight line, and then rockets back the way it came, rounding the obstacle in a blink. “Hohoho,” Pax cheers. “That’s flying.”
His enthusiasm is infectious and I find myself cheering with him as the cherry racer speeds across the finish line several minutes later, the rest of the pack trailing far behind.
“So?” he asks.
“She’s good,” I admit. “But I still like Char.”
“Because he’s handsome.”
“No.”
“But he is.”
“Maybe you think he is….”
“Funny. Then why?”
“My brothers are in the legion. Infantry. Anyone who takes Society rippers out of the sky has got my love.”
“That’s a damn good reason.” He winces. “Sorry, not supposed to curse. Don’t tell Mother. It’s not genteel.”
“I’d be too terrified to tell your mother anything,” I say, trying to hide my bitterness with a smile.
“She can be a fright, can’t she? She’s really the kindest person you’re likely to meet.”
Sophocles has done his business and is staring at me impatiently. “I reckon I should get Sophocles back.”
“That’s right. Kavax might start weeping from separation anxiety.”
“Kavax is a great man.”
He looks horrified. “No, of course he is. He’s my godfather. Well, co-godfather? I think him and Uncle Sevro arm-wrestled for it. There was cheating. Anyway, I was just japing. Where are your brothers stationed?” he asks, joining me on my walk back.
“They’re in the Eighth,” I say. “They were on Mercury.”
“Harnassus’s Own,” he says knowingly. “He’s ArchLegate. A Red general. They’re in the dune cities doing aid work, I think.”
“They said it was classified.”
He nods. “Our secret? You haven’t talked to them?”
“Most of the satellites are down. Too expensive.”
“Because most were blasted out of the sky.” He says it like it just happened naturally, not like his father led ten million men in warships down onto the planet. I want to hate him. I have hated him. I hated him when he walked by his mother’s side on the silver carpet, and when I saw him on the news with all the photographers and journalists swarming. But it feels wrong now to have hated him. He’s not so different than Liam—just a boy with circles under his eyes who misses his father and has to hide in a garden to find a moment’s peace.
“May I ask you something, Lyria?” he asks awkwardly. “I don’t know how to ask….” Then don’t. “I know where you’re from. And I’ve always wondered, because my grandmother and father won’t tell me much. What’s it like? The mines?”
There it is.
I keep walking. “How did you know I was in the mines?”
“Father says it’s important to know everyone’s name and something about them. Not like a fact or something to memorize. But something real. I go over the new staff members so I can better understand them, and Kavax mentioned you offhand the other day. Said you saved his life, so I looked up your dossier….”
“My dossier?”
“Your history.”
I stop walking.
Then he knows about my family. Suddenly the attention makes sense. It’s guilt. Pity. All over again I feel sick and viciously angry at him in his perfect tuxedo with his white teeth and parted hair. Who is this little spoiled brat to try to bring my grief back to the light of day just so he can live like a peeping neighbor through my pain? My family didn’t die so he could learn a lesson or satisfy his curiosity.
“What was it like…” I murmur, turning on him and feeling the anger coming. Temper, temper, Ava would say.
“Yes. They keep me in a bubble here. I want to understand.”
“Understand?” He steps back from me and my cruel eyes. “Little Gold wants to hear about the nasty shit? The cancer, the pitvipers? Maybe you wanna go on about how they force us to marry at fourteen so we can get to breeding. Or how mine guards rape us for meds. They did that, you know, boys and girls. Don’t show that on the HC for all you highColors.”
“I’m not a highColor,” he says. “I’m a Red too….”
White anger flashes. “The fuck you are. You’re just as Gold as your da is.”
His face falls and it feels good to see it, to know I can hurt too. I turn away from him, pulling Sophocles along on the leash. They all want a part of it. A part of pain that’s not theirs. Nod their heads. Wrinkle their foreheads. Now they want to pity it, gorge on my pain. And when they’re done or bored or too sad, they whisk themselves away to stare at a screen or stuff their fat faces, thinking How lucky I am to be me. And then they forget the pain and say we should be good citizens. Get a job. Assimilate. Maybe the Vox are right.
They planted us in stones, watered us with pain, and now marvel we have thorns. Slag them. Slag the lot of them.
Stewing mad, I return Sophocles to the guards outside the conference room door, too sick in the stomach to face the hypocrites, and go back to the break room. I get so nauseous from all these lowColors buying the snakeshit myth that they matter, pretending they’re important because they shine shoes and carry capes and clone bloodydamn foxes. In moments I am back outside, smoking burners on a balcony, touching Philippe’s pendant and trying not to cry.
I watch the cold, ancient light of the stars and wonder which of them are already dead out there in the blackness. I miss my sister, my family. And though I speak to them still, all I want in all the worlds is for them to speak, to answer. Some proof that the Vale is real. That they are not simply gone into the dark.
But they do not speak to me.
When the Augustuses and Telemanuses have finally had their fill of partying and conspiring, we depart. I slump along with the procession with my head down, crushed with guilt, not just because of how cruel I was, but because I know a little prince with his feelings hurt will go and tell his mother and I’ll be sacked within the day. I feel Bethalia’s eyes on me and know she knows. I’m just as the other servants pegged me: a rusty bitch with mine manners and no place in their fine company.
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.