20
The House Mars
There’s stillness in my soul as I look at the broken boy. Even Cassius
would not recognize Julian now. A cavity is carved into my heart.
My hands tremble as the blood dribbles o them onto cold stone.
Rivers along the golden Sigils upon my hands. I am a Helldiver, but
the sobs come even as the tears are gone. His blood trickles from my
knee down my hairless shin. It’s red. Not golden. My knees feel the
stone and my forehead touches it as I sob till exhaustion lls my
chest.
When I look up, he is still dead.
This wasn’t right.
I thought the Society only played games with its slaves. Wrong.
Julian didn’t score like I did on the tests. He wasn’t as physically
capable as me. So he was a sacricial lamb. One hundred students
per House and the bottom fty are only here to be killed by the top
fty. This is just a bloodydamn test … for me. Even the Bellona
Family, powerful as they are, could not protect their less capable
son. And that is the point.
I hate myself.
I know they made me do this, yet it still feels like a choice. Like
when I pulled Eo’s legs and felt the snap of her small spine. My
193
choice. But what other choice was there with her? With Julian?
They do this to make us wear the guilt.
There’s nowhere to wipe the blood, only stone and two naked
bodies. This is not who I am, who I want to be. I want to be a father,
a husband, a dancer. Let me dig in the earth. Let me sing the songs
of my people and leap and spin and run along the walls. I would
never sing the forbidden song. I would work. I would bow. Let me
wash dirt from my hands instead of blood. I want only to live with
my family. We were happy enough.
Freedom costs too much.
But Eo disagreed.
Damn her.
I wait, but no one comes to see the mess I’ve made. The door is
unlocked. I slip the golden ring over my nger after I close Julian’s
eyes, and walk naked into the cold hall. It is empty. A soft light
guides me up never-ending stairs. Water drips from the
subterannean tunnel’s ceiling. I use it to try and clean my body, but
all I do is lather the blood into my skin, thinning it. I cannot escape
it, what I’ve done, no matter how far I follow the tunnel. I am alone
with my sin. This is why they rule. The Peerless Scarred know that
dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They
must be worn if one is to rule. This is their rst lesson. Or was it
that the weak do not deserve life?
I hate them, but I hear them.
Win. Bear the guilt. Reign.
They want me pitiless. They want my memory short.
194
But I was raised dierently.
All my people sing of are memories. And so I will remember this
death. It will burden me as it does not burden my fellow students—I
must not let that change. I must not become like them. I’ll
remember that every sin, every death, every sacrice, is for
freedom.
Yet now I’m afraid.
Can I bear the next lesson?
Can I pretend to be as cold as Augustus? I now know why he did
not inch in hanging my wife. And I am beginning to understand
why Golds rule. They can do what I cannot.
Though I am alone, I know I will soon nd others. They want me to
soak in the guilt for now. They want me lonely, mournful, so that
when I meet the others, the winners, I will be relieved. The murders
will bind us, and I’ll nd the company of the winners a salve to my
guilt. I do not love my fellow students, but I will think I do. I will
want their comfort, their reassurances that I am not evil. And they
will want the same. This is meant to make us a family—one with
cruel secrets.
I am right.
My tunnel leads me to the others. I see Roque, the poet, rst. He
bleeds from the back of his head. Blood is slick on his right elbow. I
didn’t think him capable of killing. Whose blood? His eyes are red
from crying. We nd Antonia next. Like us, she is naked; she moves
195
like a golden ship, drifting along, quiet and aloof. Her feet leave
bloody footprints where she walks.
I dread nding Cassius. I hope he is dead, because I’m afraid of
him. He reminds me of Dancer—handsome, laughing, yet a dragon
just beneath the surface. But that’s not why I’m afraid. I’m afraid
because he has a reason to hate me, to want to kill me. No one in
my life has had just cause before. No one has ever hated me. He will
if he nds out. Then I realize it. How could the House ever be knit
tightly with such secrets? It can’t. Cassius will know someone here
killed his brother. Others will have lost friends, and so the House
will devour itself. The Society did this on purpose; they want chaos.
It will be our second test. Tribal strife.
The three of us nd the other survivors in a cavernous stone
dining hall dominated by a long wooden table. Torches light the
room. Night’s mist slithers through open windows. It is like
something from the old tales. The times they call Medieval. Toward
the far end of the long room is a plinth. A giant stone towers there;
embedded in its center is a golden Primus hand. Golden and black
tapestries ank the stone. A wolf howls upon the tapestries, as
though calling out a warning. It is the Primus hand that will tear
this House apart. Each one of these little princes and princesses will
think themselves deserved of the honor of leading the House. Yet
only one can.
I move like a ghost with the other students, drifting around the
stone halls of what seems to be a giant castle. There is a room in
which we are to clean ourselves.
196
A trough runs icy water along the cold oor. Now blood runs with
the water to the right and disappears into the stone. I feel like some
sort of specter in a land of fog and rock.
Black and gold fatigues are laid out for us in a relatively barren
armory. Each student nds the fatigue bundle tagged with his or her
name. A golden symbol of a howling wolf marks the high collars
and sleeves of our clothing. I take my clothing with me and dress
alone in some storage room. There, I fall into the corner and cry, not
because of Julian, but because this place is so cold and quiet. It is so
far from home.
Roque nds me. He’s striking in his uniform—lean like a strand of
golden summer wheat, with high cheekbones and warm eyes, but
his face is pale. He sits on his haunches across from me for several
minutes before he reaches over to clasp my hands. I draw back, but
he holds on till I look at him.
“If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will
drown,” he says, and raises his thin eyebrows. “So keep swimming,
right?”
I wipe away my silent tears and force a chuckle.
“A poet’s logic.”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t count for much. So I’ll give you facts,
brotherman. This is the system. The lower Colors have their children
by use of catalysts. Fast births, sometimes only ve months of
gestation before labor is induced. Except for the Obsidians, only we
wait nine months to be born. Our mothers receive no catalysts, no
sedatives, no nucleics. Have you asked yourself why?”
197
“So the product can be pure.”
“And so that nature is given a chance to kill us. The Board of
Quality Control is rmly convinced that 13.6213 percent of all Gold
children should die before one year of age. Sometimes they make
reality t this number.” He splays out his thin hands. “Why?
Because they believe civilization weakens natural selection. They do
nature’s work so that we do not become a soft race. The Passage, it
seems, is a continuation of that policy. Only we were the tools they
used. My … victim … was, bless his soul, a fool. He was from a
family of no worth, and he had no wits, no intelligence, no ambition,”
he frowns at the words before sighing, “he had nothing the Board
values. There is a reason he was to die.”
Was there a reason Julian was to die?
Roque knows what he does because his mother is on the Board.
He loathes his mother, and only then do I realize I should like him.
Not only that, I take refuge in his words. He disagrees with the
rules, but he follows them. It is possible. I can do the same until I
have power enough to change them.
“We should join the others.” I say, standing.
In the dining hall, our names oat above the chairs in golden
letters. Our test scores are gone. Our names have also appeared
beneath the Primus hand in the black stone. They oat, golden,
upward toward the golden hand. I’m closest, though there’s still
much distance to cover.
Some of the students cry together in small groups by the long
wooden table. Others sit against the wall, heads in their hands. A
198
limping girl looks for her friend. Antonia glares over at the table
where small Sevro sits eating. Of course he’s the only one with an
appetite. Frankly, I’m surprised he survived. He is tiny and was our
ninety-ninth and last draft pick. By Roque’s proposed rules, he
should be dead.
Titus, the giant, is alive and bruised. Those knuckles of his look
like a dirty butcher’s block. He stands arrogantly apart from the rest,
grinning like this is all splendid fun. Roque speaks quietly with the
limping girl, Lea. She falls down crying and throws her ring. She
looks like a deer, eyes wide and glistening. He sits with her and
holds her hand. There’s a peacefulness to him that is unique in the
room. Wonder how peaceful he seemed when strangling some other
kid to death. I roll my ring on and o my nger.
Someone smacks my head lightly from behind.
“Oy, brotherman.”
“Cassius.” I nod.
“Cheers to your victory. I was worried you were all brains,”
Cassius laughs. His golden curls are not even touseled. He throws an
arm around me and surveys the room with a wrinkled nose. He
feigns this nonchalance; I can tell he’s worried.
“Ah. Is there anything more ugly than self-pity? All this crying.”
He smirks and points at a girl with a busted nose. “And she just
became aggressively unpleasant. Not that she was ever much to sni
at. Eh? Eh?”
I forget to speak.
“Shell-shocked, man? They get your windpipe?”
199
“Just not much for joking about right now,” I say. “Took some
knocks to the head. Shoulder is a bit slagged too. This isn’t my usual
scene.”
“Shoulder can be xed straight o. Let’s get it back in the socket.”
He casually grips my dislocated shoulder and jerks it into its socket
before I can protest. I gasp in pain. He chuckles. “Prime. Prime.” He
slaps me on the same shoulder. “Help me out, won’t you?”
He extends his left hand. His dislocated ngers look like lightning
bolts. I pull them straight. He laughs with the pain, not knowing his
brother’s blood is under my ngernails. I’m trying not to
hyperventilate.
“Spotted Julian yet, man?” he nally asks. He speaks in midLingo
now that Priam is nowhere to be seen.
“Not a sight.”
“Meh, the kid is probably trying to be gentle with his ght. Father
taught us the Silent Art, Kravat. Julian is a prodigy at it. He thinks
I’m better.” Cassius frowns. “Thinks I’m better at everything—which
is understandable. Just got to get him going. Speaking of it, who’d
you slag?”
My insides knot.
I make up a lie, and it is a good one. Vague and boring. He only
wants to talk about himself now anyway. After all, this is what
Cassius was bred for. There are roughly fteen kids who have that
same quiet gleam in their eye. Not evil. Just excited. And those are
the ones to watch, because they’re the born killers.
200
Looking around, it’s easy to see that Roque was right. There
weren’t many tough ghts. This was forced natural selection.
Bottom of the heap getting slaughtered by the top. Hardly anyone is
severely injured except a couple of small lowDrafts. Natural
selection sometimes has its surprises.
Cassius’s ght was easy, he says. He did it right and fair and
quick. Crushed the windpipe with a bladejab ten seconds into
squaring up. Caught his ngers oddly, though. Prime. I’ve made a
corpse of the best killer’s brother. Dread trickles into me.
Cassius grows quieter when Fitchner saunters in and orders us to
the table. One by one, the fty seats ll. And bit by bit, his face
darkens as each chance for Julian to join the table disappears. When
the last seat lls, he does not move. It is a cold anger that radiates.
Not hot as I thought it would be. Antonia sits across from us,
opposite me, and watches him. Her mouth works but she says
nothing. You don’t comfort his sort. And I didn’t think her the kind
to try.
Julian isn’t the only one missing. Arria, all curls and dimples, is
lying limp on a cold oor somewhere. And Priam is gone. Perfect
Priam the Premier, heir of Mars’s moons. I heard he was the First
Sword in the Solar System for his birthyear. A duelist without peer. I
guess he wasn’t too lethal with his sts. I look around the tired
faces. Who the hell killed him? The Board messed that one up, and I
wager his mother will cause hell, because he certainly wasn’t meant
to die.
“We’re wasting the best of us,” Cassius murmurs measuredly.
201
“Hello, you little shiteaters.” Fitchner yawns and kicks his feet up
onto the table. “Now, it might have dawned on you that the Passage
may as well be called the Culling.” Fitchner scratches his groin with
his razor’s hilt.
His manners are worse than mine.
“And you may think it a waste of good Golds, but you’re an idiot
if you think fty children make a dent in our numbers. There are
more than one million Golds on Mars. More than one hundred
million in the Solar System. Not all get to be Peerless Scarred,
though, eh?
Now if you still think this was vile, consider that the Spartans
would kill more than ten percent of all children born to them;
nature would kill another thirty. We are gory humanitarians in
comparison. Of the six hundred students that are left, most were in
the top one percent of applicants. Of the six hundred that are dead,
most were in the bottom one percent of applicants. There was no
waste.” He chuckles and looks around the table with a suprising
amount of pride. “Except for that idiot, Priam. Yeah. There’s a
lesson for you lot. He was a brilliant boy—beautiful, strong, fast, a
genius who studied day and night with a dozen tutors. But he was
pampered. And someone, I won’t say who, because that’d
undermine the fun of this whole curriculum, but someone knocked
him down onto the stone and then stomped on his trachea till he
died. It took awhile.”
He puts his hands behind his head.
202
“Now! This is your new family. House Mars—one of twelve
Houses. No, you are not special because you live on Mars and are in
House Mars. Those in House Venus on Venus are not special. They
merely t the House. You get the ow. After the Institute, you’re
looking for apprenticeships—hopefully with the families Bellona,
Augustus, or Arcos, if you want to do me proud. Prior graduates
from House Mars may help you nd these apprenticeships, may
oer you apprenticeships of their own, or maybe you’ll be so
successful that you don’t need anyone’s help.
“But let us make it crystal. Right now you are babies. Stupid little
babies. Your parents handed you everything. Others wiped your
little asses. Cooked your food. Fought your wars. Tucked your little
shiny noses in at night. Rusters dig before they get a chance to
screw; they build your cities and nd your fuel and pick up your
shit. Pinks learn the art of getting someone’s jollies o before they
even need to shave. Obsidians have the worst gory life you could
imagine—nothing but frost and steel and pain. They were bred for
their work, trained early for it. All you little princelings and
princesses have had to do was look like little versions of Mommy
and Daddy and learn your manners and play piano and equestrian
and sport. But now you belong to the Institute, to House Mars, to
the Prefecture of Mars, to your Color, to the Society. Blah. Blah.”
Fitchner’s smirk is lazy. His veiny hand rests on his paunch.
“Tonight you nally did something yourselves. You beat a baby
just like you. But that’s worth about as much as a Pinkwhore’s fart.
Our little Society balances on the tip of a needle. The other Colors
203
would rip your gorydamn hearts out given the chance. And then
there’s the Silvers. The Coppers. The Blues. You think they’d be
loyal to a bunch of babies? You think the Obsidians will follow little
turds like you? Those babystranglers would make you their little
cuddleslaves if they saw weakness. So you must show none.”
“So, what, the Institute is supposed to make us tough?” huge Titus
grunts.
“No, you colossal oaf. It’s supposed to make you smart, cruel,
wise, hard. It’s supposed to age you fty years in ten months and
show you what your ancestors did to give you this empire. May I
continue?”
He blows a gumbubble.
“Now, House Mars.” His thin hand scratches his belly. “Yeah.
We’ve got a proud House that could maybe even match some of the
Elder Families. We’ve got Politicos, Praetors, and Judiciars. The
current ArchGovernors of Mercury and Europa, a Tribune, dozens of
Praetors, two Justices, an Imperator of a eet. Even Lorn au Arcos
of the Family Arcos, third most powerful family on Mars, for those
not keeping track, maintains his bonds with us.
“All of those highUps are looking for new talent. They picked you
from the other candidates to ll the roster. Impress these important
men and women and you’ll have an apprenticeship after this. Win
and you’ll have your pick of apprenticeships within the House or an
Elder Family; maybe even Arcos himself will want you. If that
happens, you’ll be on the fast track to position, fame, and power.”
I lean forward.
204
“But win?” I ask. “What is there to win?”
He smiles.
“At this moment, you are in a remote terraformed valley in the
southernmost part of Valles Marineris. In this valley, there are
twelve Houses in twelve castles. After orientation tomorrow, you
will go to war with your fellow students to dominate the valley by
any means at your disposal. Consider it a case study in gaining and
ruling an empire.”
There are murmurs of excitement. It is a game. And here I
thought I would have to study something in a classroom.
“And what if you are Primus of the winning House?” Antonia
asks. She twirls a nger through her golden curls.
“Then welcome to glory, darling. Welcome to fame and power.”
So, I must be Primus.
We eat a plain dinner. When Fitchner leaves, Cassius stirs, his
voice coming cold and lled with dark humor.
“Let us all play a game, my friends. We will each say whom we
killed. I will start. Nexus au Celintus. I knew him when we were
children, as I know some of you. I broke his trachea with my
ngers.” No one speaks. “Come now. Families should not keep
secrets.”
Still, no one answers.
Sevro is the rst to leave, making his derision for Cassius’s game
clear. First to eat. First to sleep. I want to follow. Instead, I make
small talk with peaceful Roque and massive Titus after Cassius gives
up on his game and retires as well. Titus is impossible to like. He’s
205
not funny, but everything is a joke to him. It’s like he’s sneering at
me, at everyone, even though he is smiling. I want to hit him, but
he doesn’t give me a reason. Everything he says is perfectly
innocuous. Yet I hate him. It’s like he doesn’t think me a human;
instead I’m just a chess piece and he’s waiting to move me around.
No. Shove me around. He somehow forgot to be seventeen or
eighteen like the rest. He is a man. Taller than two meters, easy.
Maybe nearing two and a half meters. Lithe Roque, on the other
hand, reminds me so much of my brother Kieran, if Kieran could
kill. His smiles are kind. His words patient and wistful and wise, just
as they had been earlier. Lea, the girl who looks like a limping baby
deer, follows him everywhere. He’s patient with her in a way I
couldn’t be.
Late in the night, I look for the places where the students died. I
cannot nd them. The stairs no longer exist. The castle has
swallowed them. I nd rest in a long dormitory lled with thin
matresses. Wolves howl from the shifting mists that cloak the
highlands beyond our castle. I nd sleep quickly.
206
