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“I liked it better when you didn’t act like a Gold,” Dancer grumbles.
namby-pamby
“Pixies have no self-control,” I remember aloud. “They take in all the treats of power, but do pissall to merit them. They are born and they chase pleasure. Righto?”
My voice is cold as I mimic a Gold’s accent. “It means control, goodman. Self-control. I am permitted to indulge in vices so long as I never permit them to usurp control. If there is a key to understanding Aureates, it is found in understanding control in all its forms. Eat the fish, leave twenty percent to indicate its deliciousness did not overpower my resolve or make slaves of my taste-buds.”
“Smells like home,” I say, sucking on the finger. “Mum used to make blood soup out of the pitvipers. Not half bad to the truth of it.” “You dip flaxbread in it and sprinkle in okrablossom?” “How’d you know?” I ask. “My mum did the same,” Dancer laughs. “We’d have it at Dancetide, or before the Laureltide when they’d announce the winner. Always squabbing Gamma.”
“Only a Helldiver would be bit so many times without drillBoys around to help pull the vipers off. Been bitten too. Got a bigger heart for it, at least.”
“You’re of use because you’re more than a weapon. When your wife died, she didn’t just give you a vendetta. She gave you her dream. You’re its keeper. Its maker. So don’t be spitting anger and hate. You’re not fighting against them, no matter what Harmony says. You’re fighting for Eo’s dream, for your family that is still alive, your people.”
“Look into yourself, Darrow, and you’ll realize that you are a good man who will have to do bad things.”
“See. That’s what I don’t get. If I am a good man, then why do I want to do bad things?”
“The Obsidians will catch you and give you to the Whites and they will take you to their dark cells and they will torture you. They will pull out your eyes and cut away anything that makes you a man. They have more sophisticated methods, but I wager information won’t be their only aim; they have chemicals for that if they want. Soon after you tell them everything, they will kill me, Harmony, Dancer. And they will kill your family with fleshPeelers and stomp on the heads of your nieces and nephews. These are the things they don’t put on the HC. These are the consequences when the rulers of
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trust ran deep with the Sons of Ares, that they were of one mind. Here is a crack, a division.
Later that evening, I research the dances I performed. Polemides is Greek for “child of war.” It is the dance that reminded me so much of Uncle Narol’s dances. It is the Gold’s dance of war, the one they teach young children to prepare them for the motions of martial warfare and the use of the razor.
Ishtar, not far from Yorkton.
Mesopotamian goddess
Andromeda.
Greek mythology
copse,
Funny thing is, most Golds would see the term as an accolade.
vise!”
Cassius
Of Cassius Dio or Brutus and Cassius
Cassius au Bellona, it reads. Son of Praetor Tiberius au Bellona, Imperator of the Society’s Sixth Fleet and perhaps the only man on Mars to rival ArchGovernor Augustus in power. Apparently the families hate one another. Seems like they have a nasty habit of killing each other off. Baby pitvipers indeed.
Golds are not supposed to care about nudity. But I can’t help my reaction. She’s beautiful—heart-shaped face, full lips, eyes that laugh at you. They laugh like they did as she rode away on the horse. It’s the same girl who called me a Pixie when I rode the pony.
terraformed,
There are one thousand cities on Mars, each ruled by a Governor, the ArchGovernor presiding over all. Each city is set in the center of a hundred mining colonies. The Governors manage these colonies, with the individual MineMagistrates like Podginus overseeing the day-to-day.
They wanted to make an example out of me; Eo was an afterthought. And she would not have sung if the ArchGovernor had not been there. Life’s ironies are not charming.
“Three sorts of people graduate: the Peerless Scarred, the Graduates, and the Shamed. The Peerless can ascend in society; the Graduates can as well, but their prospects are relatively limited and they still must earn their scars; and the Shamed are sent to the distant, hard colonies like Pluto to oversee the first years of terraforming.”
“The game, goodman, in Gold society is patronage. Your actions in the Institute will serve as an extended audition for that patronage. You need an apprenticeship. You need a powerful benefactor.”
Imagine if you became an apprentice to a Praetor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praetor
could be a Praetor yourself. You could have a fleet! Imagine what you could do with a fleet, my goodman. Just imagine.”
Aureate
ergo
like they suddenly don’t understand what it is they have created.
Uncle Narol shaped me the most. He taught me to dance; he taught me how to be a man, perhaps because he knew this would be my future. And though he tried to stop me from being a Helldiver, it was his lessons that kept me alive. I’ve learned new lessons now.
“Evey will be coming to live with us,” she tells me. She smiles before I can ask why. It looks strange on her face. “You think you’re the only one who notices things? We’ll give her a better life than Mickey would.”
“I thought you would ask for that.” He pulls out a necklace. It is the sigil of Andromedus. My sigil, I remember. It is iron. He drops it in my hand. “Whisper her name.” I do and the Pegasus unfurls like a haemanthus bud. He sets a petal in the center. It closes again. “This is your heart. Guard it with iron.”
“If I live more than a week, I’ll have you to thank, my goodman.”
“Manage your temper,” he reminds me, his small voice darkening. “Manners, manners, then burn their bloodydamn house to the ground.”
And though I smile, he doesn’t know how cold I am inside; the conversation, the jibes, the smiles, are all a pattern of sociality. Matteo’s done me well, but to Julian’s credit, he doesn’t seem a monster.
Each is named for one of the gods of the Roman pantheon.
impish
“It’s the last test, idiot. And the best secret this side of the rings around Octavia au Lune’s cootch.”
“Inside track,” the kid says. “And I don’t know about it. I know of it, you giant pisshead.” His name is Sevro, and I like his angle.
I notice Sevro snort as they say theirs aloud. How did applicants with such low scores get in? I’ve got an ill feeling in my gut. And what did Sevro score?
The Sixth Fleet is commanded by Cassius’s father, while the smaller Fifth Fleet is under the ArchGovernor’s direct control. Most of the ships are owned by families who owe allegiance to either Augustus or Bellona.
Bellona is the ancient Roman goddess of war
“Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence.”
He tells us how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names.
“Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages. There are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This would not be if we were all equal. A Red can no more command a starship than a Green can serve as a doctor!”
pathetic Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call Demokracy. Look how it fell to Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It made their citizens turn on their best general, Alcibiades, because of jealousy.
The United States of America exacted this idea of equality through force. And when the nations united, the Americans
were surprised to find that they were disliked! The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a dream it would be if all men w...
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“You are the best of humanity. But you have been coddled. You have been treated like children. Were you born to a different Color, you would have calluses. You would have scars. You would know pain.”
He shows a long scar on his right cheek. Octavia au Lune has the same scar. “The Scar of a Peer. We are not the masters of the Solar System because we are born. We are the masters because we, the Peerless Scarred, the iron Golds, made it that way.”
