23
Fracture
Though we all still sleep under the same roof, it only took four days
for the House to dissolve into four tribes. Antonia, apparently the
scion of a family that owns a sizable asteroid belt, gets the
midDrafters: the talkers, the whiners, the brains, the dependents, the
wimps, the snobs, and the politicos.
Titus draws mostly highDrafts or midDrafts—the physical
specimens, the violent, the fast, the intrepid, the prototypically
intelligent, the ambitious, the opportunists, the obvious selection for
House Mars. The prodigy pianist, quiet Cassandra, is his. So is raspy
Pollux and the psychotic Vixus, who shivers with pleasure at the
mere idea of putting metal into esh.
If Cassius and I had been more political, we might have managed
to steal the highDrafts from Titus. Hell, we might have had everyone
ready to follow if we just told them they had to obey. After all,
Cassius and I were the strongest for a brief moment, but then we
gave Titus time to intimidate and Antonia time to manipulate.
“Damned Antonia,” I say.
Cassius laughs and shakes his golden head as we bound east along
the highlands in search of more hidden caches of supplies. My long
legs can easily cover a kilometer in under a minute.
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“Oh, you come to expect these things from her. If our families
hadn’t spent holidays together when we were little things, I might
have called her out as a demokrat on the rst day. But she’s hardly
that. More like Caesar or … what did they call them, Presidents?—a
tyrant in necessity’s clothing.”
“She’s a turd in the swillbowl,” I say.
“What the gory slag does that mean?” Cassius laughs.
Uncle Narol could have told him.
“Sorry? Oh. Heard it in Yorkton once from a highRed. Means she’s
a y in the wine.”
“A highRed?” Cassius snorts. “One of my nannies was a highRed. I
know. Odd. Should have been a Brown. But the woman would tell
me stories as I tried to go to sleep.”
“That’s nice,” I say.
“I thought her an uppity bugger. Tried to tell Mother to make her
shut up and leave me alone, because all she wanted to do was talk
about vales and dreary romances that always end in some sort of
sadness. Depressing creature.”
“What did your mother do when you complained?”
“Mother? Ha! She clapped me on the head and said there’s always
something to learn from anybody. Even a highRed. Her and Father
like to pretend they’re progressives. Confuses me.” He shakes his
head. “But Yorkton. Julian couldn’t believe you were from Yorkton.”
The darkness returns in me. Even thinking of Eo doesn’t dispel it.
Even thinking of my noble mission and all the license it gives me
doesn’t banish the guilt. I’m the only one who shouldn’t feel guilty
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for the Passage, yet besides Roque, I think I am the only one who
does. I look at my hands and remember Julian’s blood.
Cassius points up suddenly to the sky southwest of us. “What the
gory hell?”
Dozens of blinking medBots pour from oating Olympus’s castle.
We hear their distant whine. Proctors icker after them like aming
arrows toward the distant southern mountains. Whatever has
happened, one thing is certain: chaos reigns in the South.
Although my tribe continues to sleep in the castle, we’ve moved
from the high tower to the gatehouse so we don’t have to rub
shoulders with Titus’s lot. To keep safe, we leave our cooking as a
secret.
We meet our tribe for supper by a loch in the northern highlands.
They are not all highDrafts. We have some—Cassius and Roque. But
then no one above seventeenth pick. We’ve some midDrafts—Quinn
and Lea—but the rest are the dregs, the lowDrafts—Clown,
Screwface, Weed, Pebble, and Thistle. This bothers Cassius even
though the dregs of the Institute are still certiably superhuman
compared with the rest of the Colors. They are athletic. They are
resilient. They never ask you to repeat yourself unless they are
making a point. And they accept my orders, even anticipating what
next I’ll ask them to do. I credit their less privileged upbringings.
Most are smarter than me. But I have that unique thing they call
slangsmarts, proven by my high score in the extrapolational
intelligence test. Not that it matters, I have sulfur matches and that
makes me the god Prometheus. Neither Antonia nor Titus have re
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as far as I know. So I’m the only one who can ll bellies. I make
each of my tribe kill goats or sheep. No one is allowed to freeload,
even though Screwface tries his best. They don’t notice my hands
trembling when I cut my rst goat’s throat with a knife. There’s so
much trust in the beast’s eyes, followed by confusion as it dies, still
thinking me its friend. The blood is warm, like Julian’s. The neck
muscle tough. I have to saw with the dull knife, just as Lea does
when she kills her rst sheep, squealing as she does it. I make her
skin it too with Thistle’s help. And when she cannot, I take her
hands into my own and guide her along, giving her my strength.
“Daddy gonna have to cut up your meat for you too?” Thistle
taunts.
“Shut it,” Roque says.
“She can ght her own battles, Roque. Lea, Thistle asked you a
question.” Lea blinks over at me, wide eyes confused. “Ask her
another, Thistle.”
“What’s gonna happen when we get in a tight spot with Titus, will
you squeal then too? Child.” Thistle knows what I want her to do. I
asked her to do it thirty minutes ago, before I brought the goat to
Lea.
I motion my head at Lea to Thistle.
“You going to cry?” Thistle asks. “Wipe your eyes in—”
Lea screams and jumps at her. The two roll around punching each
other in the face. It’s not long before Thistle’s got Lea in a
chokehold. Roque stirs beside me. Quinn pulls him back down. Lea’s
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face goes purple. Her hands slap at Thistle’s. Then she passes out. I
give Thistle a nod of thanks. The darkfaced girl gives a slow nod.
But Lea’s shoulders are squarer the next morning. She even
musters enough courage to hold Roque’s hand. She also claimed to
be a good cook; she isn’t. Roque tries his hand but he’s hardly any
better. Eating their grub is like taking down stringy, dry sponges.
Even Quinn, with all her stories, can’t muster up a recipe.
We cook goat and deer meat over our camp kitchen six kilometers
from the castle, and we do it at night in the gulches so the light and
smoke cannot be seen. We do not kill the sheep; instead we collect
and deposit them in a northern fort for safekeeping. I could bring
more over to my tribe with the food, but the food is as big a danger
as it is a boon. What Titus and his killers would do if he found that
we had re, food, clean water …
I am returning to the castle with Roque from a scouting trip to the
south when we hear noises coming from a small grove of trees.
Creeping closer, we hear grunts and hacking sounds. Expecting to
see a wolfpack ravaging a goat, we peer through the brush and nd
four of Titus’s soldiers squatting around a corpse. Their faces are
bloody, eyes dark and ravenous as they tear strips out of the dead
deer with their knives. Five days without re, ve days of bad
berries, and they have already turned into savages.
“We have to give them matches,” Roque tells me afterwards.
“No. If we give them matches, then Titus will have even more
power.”
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“Does it matter at this point? They are going to get sick if they
keep eating raw meat. They already are sick!”
“So they shit their pants,” I grunt. “There are worse things.”
“Tell me, Darrow. Would it be worse to have Titus in power and
have Mars strong or for Darrow to be in power with Mars weak?”
“Better for whom?” I ask petulantly.
He only shakes his head.
“Let them rot their gory bellies,” is Cassius’s opinion. “They made
their beds. Now let them shit in them.”
My army agrees.
I am fond of my army, the dregs, the lowDrafts. They aren’t as
entitled or wellbred as the highDrafts. Most remember to thank me
when I give them food—at rst they didn’t. They don’t prance o
after Titus on midnight axe-raids simply because it gets their jollies
o. No, they follow us because Cassius is as charismatic as the sun
and, in his light, the shadow I cast looks like it knows what it’s
doing. It doesn’t. It, like me, was born in a mine.
Still, it does seem like I have some strategy. I have us make maps
of our territory on digislates we found in a waterlogged cellar at the
bottom of a ravine, but we still have no weapons other than my
slingBlade and several knives and sharpened sticks. So whatever
strategy we have is based in acquiring information.
Funny thing is, only one tribe has a silvershit’s idea what is going
on. And it’s not ours. It’s not Antonia’s. And it sure as hell isn’t
Titus’s. It’s Sevro’s, and I’m nearly certain he’s the only member in
that tribe, unless he’s adopted wolves by now. It is hard to say if he
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has or hasn’t. Our House does not have family dinners. Though
occasionally we’ll see him running along the hillsides at night in his
wolfskin, looking, as Cassius put it best, “like some sort of hairy
demonchild on hallucinogens.” And once Roque even heard
something, not a wolf, howling in the shrouded highlands. Some
days Sevro walks around all normalish—insulting everything that
moves, except for Quinn. He makes an exception for her, delivering
meats and edible mushrooms instead of insults. I think he’s sweet on
her even though she’s sweet on Cassius.
We ask her to tell us stories about him, but she won’t. She’s loyal,
and maybe that’s why she reminds me of home. She’s always telling
good stories, most all of them certainly gilded lies. A life spark is in
her, just like the one that was in my wife. She is the last of us to call
Goblin “Sevro.” She’s also the only one who knows where he lives.
Even with all our scouting, we can’t nd a trace of him. For all I
know, he’s out taking scalps beyond the highlands. I know Titus has
sent scouts to stalk him, but I don’t think they are successful. They
can’t even follow me. I know that rubs Titus raw.
“I think he’s wanking o in the bushes,” Cassius chuckles. “Just
waiting for us to all kill each other.”
It’s when Lea comes limping back to the castle that Roque seeks
Cassius and me out.
“They beat her,” he says. “Not bad, but they kicked her in the
stomach and took her day’s labor.”
“Who?” Cassius bristles. “Who’s the slagger?”
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“Doesn’t matter. What matters is they are hungry. So stop playing
at an eye for an eye. This can’t go on,” Roque says. “Titus’s boys are
starving. What do you expect they’d do? Hell, the big brute is
hunting Goblin because he needs re and food. If we just give that
to him, we can unite the House, maintain civility. Maybe even
Antonia will bring her tribe to reason.”
“Antonia? Reason?” Cassius asks, guawing.
“Even if that happens, Titus will still be the most powerful,” I say.
“And that’s not the cure for anything.”
“Ah. Yes. That’s something you can’t abide, someone else having
power. Fine then.” Roque tugs at his long hair. “Talk to Vixus or
Pollux. Take away his captains if you must. But heal the House,
Darrow. Otherwise, we’ll lose when another House comes
knocking.”
On the sixth day I take his advice. Knowing Titus is out raiding, I
risk seeking Vixus in the keep. Unfortunately, Titus returns earlier
than expected.
“You’re looking lively and spry,” he says to me before I can nd
Vixus in the keep’s stone halls. He blocks my path with his large
body—shoulders nearly spanning the width of the wall. I feel
another in the hallway behind me. Vixus and two others. My
stomach sinks a little. It was stupid to do this. “Where are you
going, if I may ask?”
“I wanted to compare our scouting maps to the main map in the
command room,” I lie, knowing I have a digislate in my pocket.
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“Oh, you wanted to compare scouting maps to the main map …
for the good of Mars, noble Darrow?”
“What other good is there?” I ask. “We are all on the same side,
no?”
“Oh, we are on the same side,” he says. Titus booms an insincere
laugh. “Vixus, if we are on the same side, don’t you think it would
be best if we shared your little maps with one another?”
“It would be for the very best,” Vixus agrees. “Mushrooms. Maps.
All the same.” So he assaulted little Lea. His eyes are dead. Like
raven eyes.
“Yes. So I’ll take a look for you, Darrow.” Titus snatches the
scouting maps from me. There’s nothing I can do to stop him.
“You’re welcome to them,” I say. “So long as you know there are
enemy res to the far east and likely enemies in the Greatwoods to
the south. Raid all you like. Just don’t get caught with your pants
down.”
Titus snis the air. He wasn’t listening to me.
“Since we are sharing, Darrow.” He snis again, closer to my
neck. “Perhaps you’ll share with us why you smell like woodsmoke.”
I stien, not knowing what to do.
“Look at him squirm. Look at him weave a lie.” Titus’s voice is all
disgust. “I can smell your deceit. Smell the lies dripping from you
like sweat.”
“Like a woman in heat,” Pollux says sardonically. He shrugs
apologetically at me.
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“Disgusting,” Vixus sneers. “He’s a vile thing. A wretched,
womanish thing.” I don’t know why I thought I’d be able to turn
him on Titus.
“You’re a little parasite,” Titus continues. “Nibbling away at
morale because you will not come to heel; waiting for my noble
boys and girls to starve.” They’re closing in on me from behind,
from the sides. Titus is huge. Pollux and Vixus are cruel, nearly as
big as me. “You’re a wretched creature. A worm in our spine.”
I shrug casually, trying to let them think I’m not worried.
“We can x this,” I say.
“Oh?” Titus asks.
“The solution is simple, big man,” I counsel. “Bring your boys and
girls home. Stop raiding Ceres every day before some other House
comes in and slaughters you all. Then we’ll talk about re. And
about food.”
“You think you can tell us what to do, Darrow? That the thrust of
it?” Vixus asks. “Think you’re better because you scored higher on a
stupid little test? Because the Proctors chose you rst?”
“He does,” Titus chuckles. “He thinks he deserves Primus.”
Vixus’s hawkish face leans close to mine, lips sneering each word.
Handsome in repose, his lips peel back cruelly now, and his breath
stinks as he looks me over, measuring me and trying to make me
think he’s not impressed. He snorts a contemptuous laugh. I see him
shifting his head to spit on my face. I let him. The glob of phlegm
hits and drips slowly down my cheek toward my lips.
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Titus watches with a wolsh smile. His eyes glimmer; Vixus looks
to him for encouragement. Pollux comes closer.
“You’re a pampered little prick,” Vixus says. His nose nearly
brushes mine. “So that’s what I’m gonna take from you, goodman—
your little prick.”
“Or you could let me leave,” I say. “You seem to be blocking the
door.”
“Oho!” he laughs, looking at his master. “He’s trying to show he’s
not afraid, Titus. Trying to avoid a ght.” He looks as me with those
golden, dead eyes. “I’ve broken uppity boys like you in the dueling
clubs a thousand times.”
“You have?” I ask incredulously.
“Broken them like twigs. And then taken their girls for sport.
What embarrassments I’ve made them in front of their fathers. What
weeping messes I make of boys like you.”
“Oh, Vixus,” I say with a sigh, keeping the tremble of anger and
fear out of my voice. “Vixus, Vixus, Vixus. There are no boys like
me.”
I look back at Titus to make sure our eyes are joined when I
casually, as if I were dancing, loop my Helldiver hand around and
slam it into the side of Vixus’s neck at the jugular with the force of a
sledgehammer strike. It ruins him, yet I hit him with an elbow, a
knee, my other hand, as he falls. Had his legs been anchored better,
the rst strike might have snapped his neck in half. Instead, he
cartwheels sideways in the low gravity, going horizontal and
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shuddering from my raining blows as he hits the ground. His eyes
go blank. Fear rises in my belly. My body is so strong.
Titus and the others are too startled by the sudden violence to
stop me as I spin past their outstretched hands and run down the
halls.
I did not kill him.
I did not kill him.
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