18
Classmates
I feel a sinking in my stomach as I walk with the chattering mass
into the dining hall. It is overgrand—white marble oors, columns,
a holosky displaying birds in ight at sunset. The Institute is not
what I expected. According to Augustus, the classes are to be hard
on these little godlings. I snort down a laugh. Let the lot of them
spend a year in a mine.
There are twelve tables, each with one hundred place settings.
Our names oat above the chairs in golden letters. Mine oats to the
right of a table’s head. It is a place of distinction. The rstDraft. A
single bar oats to right of my name. A -1 is to the left. The rst to
get ve bars becomes Primus of his House. Each bar is bounty for an
act of merit. Apparently my high score on the test was the rst bit of
merit.
“Wonderful, a cutter in the lead for Primus,” a familiar voice says.
The girl from the exam. I read her name. Antonia au Severus. She
has cruel good looks—high cheekbones, a smirking smile, scorn in
her eyes. Her hair is long, full, and golden as Midas’s touch. She was
born to be hated and to hate. A -5 oats beside her name. It is the
second-closest score to mine at the table. Cassius, the boy I met at
178
testing, sits diagonal from me. A -6 shimmers by his broad smile. He
runs a hand back through his curls.
Another boy sits directly across from me; -1 and a golden bar oat
by his name. While Cassius lounges, this other boy, Priam, sits as
straight as a blade. His face is celestial. His eyes alert. His hair
coied. He’s tall as me, but broad in the shoulders. I don’t think I’ve
ever seen a more perfect human being. A bloodydamn statue. He
wasn’t in the Draft, I discover. He is what they call a Premier; they
cannot be drafted. His parents choose his House. Then I discover
why. His scandalous mother, a bannerwoman of the House Bellona,
owns our planet’s two moons.
“Fate brings us together again,” Cassius chuckles to me. “And
Antonia. My love! It seems our fathers conspired to place us side by
side.”
Antonia replies with a sneer, “Remind me to beam him a thank-
you.”
“Toni! No need for nastiness.” He wags a nger. “Now toss me a
smile like a good doll.”
She ips him the crux with her ngers. “Rather toss you out a
window, Cassi.”
“Rawr.” Cassius blows her a kiss. She ignores it. “So, Priam, I
suppose you and I will have to play gently with these fools, eh?”
“Oh, they look like swell sorts to me,” Priam replies primly. “I
fancy we’ll do very well as a group.”
They talk in highLingo.
179
“If the dregs of the Draft don’t weigh us down, my good man!” He
gestures to the end of the table and starts naming them: “Screwface,
for obvious reasons. Clown because of that ridiculous puy hair.
Weed because, well, he’s thin. Oy! You, you’re Thistle because your
nose looks hooked as one. And … that itty-bitty one right there next
to the Bronzie-looking fellow, that’s little Pebble.”
“I think they will rather surprise you,” Priam says in defense of
the far end of the table. “They may not be as tall or as athletic or
even as intelligent as you or myself, if intelligence really can be
measured by that test, but I do not think it charity to say that they
will be the spine of our group. Salt of the earth, if you will. Good
sorts.”
I see the small kid from the shuttle, Sevro, at the very bottom of
the table. The salt of the earth is not making friends. And neither
am I. Cassius glances at my -1. I see him concede that Priam might
have scored better than he, but Cassius makes a point in saying he’s
never heard of my parents.
“So, dear Darrow, how did you cheat?” he asks. Antonia glances
over from her conversation with Arria, a small girl made of curling
hair and dimples.
“Oh, come now, man.” I laugh. “They sent Quality Control after
me. How could I have cheated? Impossible. Did you cheat? Your
score is high.”
I speak the midLingo. It’s more comfortable than that highLingo
fartdust Priam jabbers on in.
180
“Me? Cheat! No. Just didn’t try enough, apparently,” Cassius
replies. “If I had my wits, I’d have spent less time with the girls and
more on studying, like you.”
He’s trying to tell me if he tried he could have done just as well.
But he’s too busy to put in as much eort. If I wanted him as a
friend, I’d let him get away with it.
“You studied?” I ask. I feel a sudden urge to embarrass him. “I
didn’t study at all.”
A chill goes through the air.
I shouldn’t have said it. My stomach plummets. Manners.
Cassius’s face sours and Antonia smirks. I’ve insulted him. Priam
frowns. If I want a career in the eet, then I likely need Cassius au
Bellona’s father’s patronage. Son of an Imperator. Matteo drilled this
into me. How easy it is to forget. The eet is where the power is.
Fleet or government or army. And I don’t like government, not to
mention, this sort of insult is how duels begin. Fear trickles down
my spine as I realize how thin a line there is to tread. Cassius knows
how to duel. I, for all my new skills, do not. He would rip me to
pieces, and he looks like he wants to do just that.
“I joke.” I tilt my head to Cassius. “Come on, man. How could I
score so high and not have studied till my eyes were bleeding? Wish
I’d spent more time fooling o like you—we’re in the same spot
now, after all. Fat lot that studying did for me.”
Priam nods his approval at the peace oering.
“I bet it was a slog!” Cassius crows, tipping his head to
acknowledge my peculiar breed of apology. I expected the play to
181
go over his head. Thought his pride would blind him to my sudden
apology; the Gold may be proud, but he isn’t stupid. None of them
are. Have to remember that.
After that, I do Matteo proud. I irt with a girl named Quinn,
befriend and joke with Cassius and Priam—who has probably never
sworn in his life—throw my hand out to a tall brute named Titus
whose neck is as thick as my thigh. He squeezes too hard on
purpose. He’s surprised when I nearly break his hand, but damn is
his grip strong. The boy is even taller than Cassius and I, and he’s
got a voice like a titan, but he grins when he realizes that my grip, if
nothing else, is stronger than his. Something strange about his voice,
though. Something decidedly disdainful. There’s also a feather of a
boy named Roque who looks and speaks like a poet. His smiles are
slow, few, but genuine. Rare.
“Cassius!” Julian calls. Cassius stands and throws an arm around
his thinner, prettier twin. I didn’t piece it together before, but they
are brothers. Twins. Not identical. Julian did say his brother was
already in Agea.
“Darrow here is not what he seems,” Julian tells the table with a
very grave face. He has a knack for theatrics.
“You don’t mean …” Cassius puts a hand to his mouth.
My nger grazes my steak knife.
“Yes.” Julian nods solemnly.
“No.” Cassius shakes his head. “He’s not a Yorkton supporter?
Julian, tell me it isn’t so! Darrow! Darrow, how could you be? They
never win fauxWar! Priam, are you hearing this?”
182
I throw my hands up in apology. “A curse of birth, I suppose. I am
a product of my upbringing. I cheer for the underdog.” I manage not
to sneer the words.
“He confessed it to me on the shuttle.”
Julian is proud to know me. Proud his brother knows he knows
me. He looks for Cassius’s approval. Cassius isn’t oblivious to this
either; he gently doles out a compliment and Julian leaves the
highDrafts and returns to his midDraft seat halfway down the table
with a content smile and squared shoulders. I didn’t think Cassius
would be the kind sort.
Of those I meet, only Antonia openly dislikes me. She doesn’t
watch me like the others at the table. From her, I feel only a distant
breed of contempt. One moment she is laughing, irting with
Roque, and then she feels my gaze and becomes ice. The feeling is
mutual.
Director Clintus of the Institute is a woman. Thin and drab, she
commands the room only by virtue of her voice. It is cultured but
terrifying, like an eagle’s scream. I don’t know why. She gives us a
brief welcome, reiterates the same points that Augustus made
earlier, and is as bored as I am by what she has to say. She doesn’t
care about us.
“You are the highest percentile of your Color.” Et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. The ill feeling is still there in my stomach. “The Passage
will begin tomorrow. Until then, sleep well, students.”
My dormitory is from a dream. Gold trim lines a window that
looks out into the valley. A bed is laden with silks and quilts and
183
satins. I lie in it when a Pink masseur comes in and stays for an hour
kneading my muscles. Later, three lithe Pinks le through to tend to
my needs. I send them to Cassius’s room instead. To calm the
temptation, I take a cold shower and immerse myself in a
holoexperience of a digger in the mining colony Corinth. The
helldiver in the holoexperience is less talented than I was, but the
rattling, the simulated heat, the darkness and the vipers, they
comfort me so much that I wrap my old scarlet rag around my head.
More food comes. Augustus was all talk. Gob full of
exaggerations. This is their version of hardship. I feel guilty as I fall
asleep with a full stomach, clutching the locket with Eo’s ower
inside. My family will go to bed hungry tonight. I whisper her name.
I take the wedding band from my pocket and kiss it. Feel the ache.
They stole her. But she let them. She left me. She left me tears and
pain and longing. She left me to give me anger, and I cannot help
but hate her for a moment even though beyond that moment there
is only love.
“Eo,” I whisper, and the locket closes.
184
