The tears leave warm paths down my cheeks. I wipe them away.
“Mother.”
Still on my knees, I throw my arms around her and let the silent tears come. We say nothing for the longest time. Her scent is of grease, rust, and the musty tang of haemanthus. Her lips kiss my hair as they used to. Her hands scratch my back as though she remembers it just as broad as it is now, just as strong.
“I have to take the kettle off,” she says. “Before someone wakes and see you like …”
“Of course.”
“You have to let go of me.”
“Sorry.” I do, laughing at myself.
“How …?” she asks me, standing there looking at the Sigils on my hands, shaking her head. “How could this be? You … your accent. Everything.”
“I was carved. Uncle Narol saved me. I can explain.”
She shakes her head, trembling so slightly she must think I can’t see it. The kettle shrieks louder. “Take a seat.” She turns her back to me and takes the kettle off the stove. She sets out another mug. One from the high shelf. I remember it was my father’s. Dust covers the molded clay. She pauses, saying nothing as she cradles it close, slipping into a moment not meant for me, where she remembers those morning when they would ready for the day together. With a long breath, she drops the loose-leaf tea into the mug and pours hot water after. “Would you like anything else? We have those biscuits you liked.”
“No, thank you.”
“And I took my portion from the feast tonight. It’s delicate Gold food. Did you do that?”
“I’m not a Gold.”
“There are beans too. Fresh from Leora’s garden. You remember her?”
I spare a look at my datapad. Mustang is gone, heading back to the ship after she watched the holoCube. I feared this. I read a message from Sevro. “Stop her?” he asks. Two choices. Let Sevro and Ragnar catch her, and contain her till I can speak with her. Or trust her to make her own decisions. But if I trust her, she could leave, tell her father what I am, and it could all end. Yet she may just need time. I’ve given her so much to digest. If Ragnar and Sevro capture her prematurely, it may set her against me. Or they may act on their own and kill her.
Cursing silently, I type a quick reply.
“I remember everyone,” I say to my mother, looking back up. “I’m still me.”
She pauses at that, still facing the stove. When she turns, a lopsided smile crosses her stroke-ravaged face. Her hand fumbles one of the mugs, but swiftly she recovers.
“Got something against the chairs?” she asks sharply, noticing I saw the clumsiness of her hand.
“Other way around, I’m afraid …” I hold up the chair. It’s better suited for a Gold child than a Peerless Scarred who stands just over seven feet and weighs as much as any three Reds put together. She chuckles that dark chuckle of hers, the one that, as a child, always made me think she’d done something particularly sinister. Gracefully, she folds her legs and sits on the ground. I follow, feeling gangly and clumsy here. She sets the steaming cups between us.
“You don’t seem terribly surprised to see me,” I say.
“You talk funny now.” She pauses so long I wonder if she’ll continue. “Narol told me you were alive. Failed to say you’d gone and dipped yourself Gold, though.” She sips her tea. “I bet you’ve got questions.”
I laugh. “I thought you’d have more.”
“I would. But I know my son.” She eyes my Sigils. “I’m more patient. Go on now.”
“Narol … is he …?”
“Dead? Aye. He’s dead.”
The breath goes out of me.
“How long?”
“Two years ago,” she chuckles. “Fell down a mineshaft with Loran. Never found the bodies.”
“Why the hell are you laughing?”
“Your father’s brother was always the black sheep of the bunch.” She sips her tea. It’s still too hot for me. “Suppose it makes sense he’d be as hard to kill as a cockroach. So I’ll believe he’s dead when I see him in the Vale. Shifty bugger.” She speaks slowly, like most Reds. The lisp from the stroke is faint, but always there. “I think he left this place and took Loran with him.” The way she says it makes me know she understands there’s more beyond the mines. Perhaps she doesn’t know the whole truth, but she knows a part. Maybe my uncle and cousin aren’t dead. Maybe they left to be with the Sons.
“What of Kieran? Leanna? Dio?”
“Your sister is remarried. Lives with her husband in Gamma Township in the house of his family.”
“Gamma?” I sneer. “You let her—” I stop as soon as I see the fresh twist in my mother’s mouth. I might wear the trappings of a Gold, but I better shut the hell up about her daughter.
“She’s got two girls that look more like you than her or any Gamma I’ve ever seen. And Kieran’s well.” She smiles to herself. “You’d be right proud of him. Not the sniveling child you might remember squabbing up his chores and talking in his sleep. Man of the house. HeadTalk for the crew after Narol slipped down. Kora, his wife, died in childbirth, though. He took another a few months back.”
My poor brother.
“And what of Dio? Eo’s parents?”
“Her father is dead. Killed himself not long after you tried the same.”
My head sags. “So many deaths.”
She touches my knee. “It’s the way of it.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
“It was a hard time after you and Eo left us. But Dio’s well. Fact, she’s upstairs.”
“Upstairs? What do you … Did she marry Kieran?”
“Aye. And she’s pregnant. I’m hoping for a girl, but with my luck it’ll be a boy who wants to dodge pitvipers and steam burns his whole life. If he’s got the choice, that is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things are tough. Changed. Mine isn’t giving the way it ought. Some of the men are whispering this corner of the world is all used up. And it makes them start fearing—what happens to the miners when there’s nothing left to mine? They’re hoping the terraforming will catch on before we run through our helium deposits.”
“Nothing will happen to you. I promise I will protect this mine. No matter what.”
“How?”
“I just will.”
“My turn.” She eyes me over her tea. “Where you been, child?”
“I … I don’t even know where to start.”
“With Eo’s death, I think.”
I flinch. My mother was always blunt. Made Kieran cry his way through his childhood. But that bluntness makes calluses out of blisters. So I owe her a reply in kind. I tell her everything, starting with the moments after Eo’s death and ending with the promise I made to the ArchGovernor.
Our tea is long gone when I finish.
“That’s quite a tale,” she says.
“Tale? It’s the truth.”
“They won’t believe you, the rest of them.”
“You do, though?”
“I’m your mother.” She takes my hand and runs her crooked fingers over the Sigils that run from the back of my hands up my forearms, smirking when she reaches the metal wings embedded on the outside of my forearms. “I never liked Eo,” she says quietly.
I twist my head up to look at her.
“Not for you. She could be manipulative. She kept some things from you.…”
“I know about the child,” I say. “I know what she told Dio on the scaffold.”
Mother scoots closer to me, her hands grasping mine and bringing my knuckles to her lips. She never gave much comfort. She’s awkward in it now. But I don’t mind. Father loved her for the same reason I do. Everything she does, she means. There’s no falseness to her. No deception. So when she tells me she loves me, I know she means it with every part of her.