14
Andromedus
Matteo cannot teach me to dance. He shows me what each of the
ve form dances of the Aureate looks like and we are through. More
emphasis is put on your partner in Gold dances than the dances my
uncle taught me, but the movements are similar. I perform all ve
with greater skill than he can manage. To show o, I blindfold
myself and perform each dance again in succession without music,
by memory. Uncle Narol taught me to dance, and with a thousand
nights of lling time with nothing but dance and song, I am
masterful in recording the motions of my body, even this new body.
It can do things my old one could not. The muscle bers contract
dierently, the tendons stretch further, the nerves re faster. There’s
a sweet burn in the muscles as I ow through the movements.
One dance, the Polemides, has a nostalgic feel. Matteo has me hold
a baton as I move about in swirling steps, baton arm outstretched as
though ghting with a razor. Even as my body moves, I hear the
echoes of the past. I feel the vibrations of the mine, the scent of my
clan. I have seen this dance before, and I perform it better than all
the others. It is a dance my body is made for, one so very similar to
the illegal Reaping Dance.
When I nish, Matteo is angry.
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“Is this some sort of game?” he snarls.
“What do you mean?”
He glares at me and taps his foot. “You have never been beyond
the mines?”
“You know that answer,” I reply.
“You have never fought with a sword or shield?”
“Yes. I have. I’ve also captained starcruisers and dined with
Praetors.” I laugh and ask what this is about.
“This is no game, Darrow.”
“Did I say it was?” I’m confused. What did I do to provoke him? I
make a mistake in laughing to relieve the tension.
“You laugh? Boy, this is the Society with which you tangle. And
you laugh? They are not some distant idea. They are cold reality. If
they nd out who you are, they will not hang you.” His face looks
lost as he says it. As though he knows only too well.
“I know this.”
He ignores me. “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
eshPeelers and stomp on the heads of your nieces and nephews.
These are the things they don’t put on the HC. These are the
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consequences when the rulers of planets are your enemies. Planets,
boy.”
I feel a chill creep into my bones. I know these things. Why does
he keep hammering me with them? I’m already frightened. I don’t
want to be, but I am. My task is swallowing me whole.
“So I ask you again, are you who Dancer says you are?”
I pause. Ah. I assumed that trust ran deep with the Sons of Ares,
that they were of one mind. Here is a crack, a division. Matteo is
Dancer’s ally, but not a friend. Something in my dancing made him
think twice. Then I realize it. He did not see Mickey carve me. He is
taking this all on faith that I was once a Red, and how dicult that
must be. Something in my dancing made him think I was born to
this. Something to do with that last dance, the one called the
Polemides.
“I am Darrow, son of Dale, Lambda’s Helldiver of Lykos. I have
never been anyone else, Matteo.”
He crosses his arms. “If you are lying to me …”
“I do not lie to Reds.”
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 children when they are young to prepare them for the motions
of martial warfare and the use of the razor. I watch a holo of Golds
in battle, and my heart falls into my stomach. They ght like a
summer song. Not like the thunderous, monstrous Obsidians. But
like birds banking into a fresh wind. They ght in pairs, swerving,
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dancing, killing, ripping through a eld of Obsidian and Gray as
though they were at play with scythes and all the bodies that fell to
them were like stalks of grain that sprayed blood instead of sallow
cha. Their golden armor shines. Their razors ash. They are gods,
not men.
And I mean to destroy them?
I sleep poorly in my bed of silk that night. Long after kissing Eo’s
haemanthus blossom, I fall asleep and dream of my father and what
it would have been like to have known him into manhood, to have
learned to dance from him instead of from his drunken brother. I
clutch the scarlet headband in my hand as I wake. Holding it as
dearly as I clutch my wedding band. All those things that remind me
of home.
Yet they are not enough.
I am afraid.
Dancer nds me at my morning breakfast.
“You’ll be happy to know, our hackers have spent two weeks
hacking into the Board of Quality Control’s cloud to change Caius au
Andromedus’s name to Darrow au Andromedus.”
“Good.”
“That’s all you have to say? Do you know how much … never
mind.” He shakes his head and gives a chuckle. “Darrow. It is so
oColor. There will be raised eyebrows.”
I shrug to conceal my fear. “So I’ll butcher their gorydamn test
and they’ll care less than a lick.”
“Spoken like a Gold.”
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The next day, Matteo takes me by ship to the stables of Ishtar, not
far from Yorkton. It’s a place by the sea, where green elds stretch
over rolling hills.. I’ve never been in so wide a place. I’ve never seen
the land curve away from me. Never seen a true horizon or animals
so terrifying as the beasts Matteo arranged for our lesson. They
stomp and stamp and snort, icking their tails and baring their
monstrous yellow teeth. Horses. I’ve always been scared of horses,
despite Eo’s story of Andromeda.
“They’re monsters,” I whisper to Matteo.
“Nevertheless,” he whispers back, “it is the gentleman’s way. You
must ride well, lest you nd yourself embarrassed in some formal
situation.”
I look at the other Golds riding past. There are only three at the
stables today, each accompanied by a servant like Matteo, Pinks and
Browns.
“A situation like this one?” I hiss at him. “Fine. Fine.” I point to a
massive black stallion with hooves that paw the ground. “I’ll take
that beast.”
Matteo smiles. “This one is more your speed.”
Matteo gives me a pony. A big pony, but a pony. There is no
social interaction here; the other riders trot past and tip their heads
to say good day, but that is all. So their smiles are enough for me to
know how ridiculous I look. I do not take to riding well. And I take
to it even more poorly when my pony bolts as Matteo and I navigate
a path into a copse of trees. Out the other side of the copse, I jump
o the creature and land deftly in the grass. Someone laughs in the
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distance, a girl with long hair. She rides the stallion I pointed to
earlier.
“Maybe you ought to stick to the city, Pixie,” she shouts at me,
then kicks her horse away. I rise from my knee and watch her ride
into the distance. Her hair spills out behind her, more golden than
the setting sun.
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