“It’s not just some dream, Darrow. I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”
“I live for you,” I say sadly.
She kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”
There’s a long, terrible silence that stretches between us. She does not understand how her words wrench my heart, how she can twist me so easily. Because she does not love me like I love her. Her mind is too high. Mine too low. Am I not enough for her?
“You said you had another gift for me?” I say, changing the subject.
She shakes her head. “Some other time. The sun rises. Watch it with me once, at least.”
We lie in silence and watch light slip into the sky as though it were a tide made from fire. It is unlike anything I could have dreamed of. I can’t stop the tears that well in the corners of my eyes as the world beyond turns to light and the greens and browns and yellows of the trees in the room are revealed. It is beauty. It is a dream.
I am silent as we return to the grimness of the gray ducts. The tears linger in my eyes and as the majesty of what I saw fades; I wonder what Eo wants of me. Does she want me to take my slingBlade and start a rebellion? I would die. My family would die. She would die, and nothing would make me risk her. She knows that.
I am puzzling out what her other gift may be when we exit the ducts for the Webbery. I roll first from the duct and extend a hand back to her when I hear a voice. It is accented, oily, from Earth.
“Reds in our gardens,” it oozes. “Ain’t that a thing.”
5
THE FIRST SONG
Ugly Dan stands with three Tinpots. Their thumpers perch crackling in their hands. Two of the men lean on the metal rails of the Webbery’s girders. Behind them, the women of Mu and Upsilon wrap silk from the worms around long silver poles. They shake their heads insistently at me, as if telling me not to be foolish. We’ve gone beyond the permitted zones. This will mean a flogging, but if I resist, it will mean death. They will kill Eo and they will kill me.
“Darrow …,” Eo murmurs.
I set myself between Eo and the Tinpots, but I don’t fight. I won’t let us die for a simple glimpse of the stars. I put my hands out to let them know I will surrender.
“Helldivers,” Ugly Dan chuckles to the others. “The toughest ant is yet but an ant.” He swings his thumper into my stomach. It’s like being bitten by a viper and kicked by a boot. I fall gasping, hands on the metal grate. Electricity slithers through my veins. I taste the bile rising in my throat. “Take a swing, Helldiver,” Dan coos. He drops one of the thumpers in front of me. “Please. Take a swing. Won’t be any consequences. Just some fun between the boys. Take a piggin’ swing.”
“Do it, Darrow!” Eo shouts.
I’m not a fool. I thrust my hands up in surrender and Dan sighs in disappointment as he clacks the magnetic manacles around my wrists. What would Eo have had me do? She curses at them as they lock her arms together and drag us away through the Webbery to the cells. This will mean the lash. But it will be just the lash because I did not pick up the thumper, because I did not listen to Eo.
It’s three days in a cell in the Pot before I see Eo again. Bridge, one of the old, kinder Tinpots, takes us out together; he lets us touch. I wonder if she’ll spit at me, curse me for my impotence. But she only grips my fingers and brings her lips to mine.
“Darrow.” Her lips brush my ear. The breath is warm, the lips cracked and trembling. She’s frail as she hugs me—a little girl, all wire wrapped in pale skin. Her knees wobble and she shudders against me. The warmth I saw in her face as we watched the sun rise has fled and left her like a faded memory. But I hardly see anything but her eyes and her hair. I wrap my arms around her and hear the muttering of the crowded Common. The faces of our kin and clan stare at us as we stand at the edge of the gallows, where they will flog us. I feel like a child under their stares, under the yellowish lights.
It’s like a dream when Eo tells me she loves me. Her hand lingers on mine. But there’s something strange to her eyes. They should only whip her, yet her words are final, her eyes sad but not afraid. I see her making a goodbye. A nightmare is coming to my heart. I can feel it like a nail dragged along the bones of my spine as she murmurs an epigram in my ear. “Break the chains, my love.”
And then I am jerked away from her by my hair. Tears stream down her face. They are for me, though I do not yet understand why. I cannot think. The world is swimming. I am drowning. Rough hands shove me to my knees, then jerk me up. I’ve never heard the Common so quiet. The shuffling of my captors’ feet echoes as they move me around.
The Tinpots fit me into my Helldiver frysuit. Its acrid smell makes me think I am safe, I am in control. I am not. I’m dragged away from her into the very center of the Common and tossed at the edge of the gallows. The metal stairs are rusted and stained. I grip them with my hands and look to the top of the gallows. Twenty-four of the headTalks each have a cord of leather. They wait for me atop the platform.
“Oh, the horror of such occasions as this, my friends,” Magistrate Podginus cries. His copper gravBoots hum above me as he floats through the air. “Oh, how the ties that bind us are stretched when one decides to break the laws which protect us all.
“Even the youngest, even the best, are subject to Law. To Order! Without these we would be animals! Without obedience, without discipline, there would be no colonies! And those few colonies there are would be torn asunder by disorder! Man would be confined to Earth. Man would wallow forevermore on that planet until the end of days. But Order! Discipline! Law! These are the things which empower our race. Cursed is the creature who breaks with these compacts.”
The speech is more eloquent than usual. Podginus is trying to impress his intelligence upon someone. I look up from the stairs and see a sight I did not ever think to see with my own two eyes. It stings to look at him, to drink in the radiance of his hair, of his Sigils. I see a Gold. In this drab place, he is what I imagine angels would be like. Cloaked in gold and black. Wrapped in the sun. A lion roaring upon his breast.
His face is older, severe, and pure with power. His hair shines, combed back against his head. Neither a smile nor a frown mark his thin lips, and the only line I see is that of a scar, which runs along his right cheekbone.
I’ve learned from the HC that such a scar is borne only by the finest of the Golds. The Peerless Scarred, they call them—men and women of the ruling Color who have graduated from the Institute, where they learn the secrets that will permit mankind to one day colonize all the planets of the Solar System.
He does not speak to us. He speaks to another Gold, one tall and thin, so thin I thought it a woman at first. Without a scar, the man’s face is coated with strange paste to bring out the color of his cheeks and cover the lines on his face. His lips shine. And his hair glistens in a way his master’s does not. He is a grotesque thing to look upon. He thinks so of us. He sniffs the air, contemptuous. The older Gold speaks to him softly and not to us.
And why should he speak to us? We are not worthy of a Gold’s words. I scarcely want to look at him. I feel like I dirty his gold and black finery with my red eyes. Shame creeps upon me and then I realize why.
His is a face I know. It is a face every man and woman of the colonies would know. Besides Octavia au Lune, this is the most famous face on Mars—that of Nero au Augustus. The ArchGovernor of Mars has come to see me flogged, and he has brought a retinue. Two Crows (Obsidians to be technic) float quietly behind him. Their skull helmets suit their Color. I was born to mine the earth. They were born to kill men. More than two feet taller than I. Eight fingers on each massive hand. They breed them for war, and watching them is like watching the coldblooded pitvipers who infest our mines. Reptiles both.