5
The First Song
Ugly Dan stands with three Tinpots. Their thumpers lie crackling in
their hands. Two of the men lean on the metal rails of the Webbery’s
girders. Behind them, the women of Mu and Upsilon wrap silk from
the worms around long silver poles. They shake their heads
insistently at me, as if telling me not to be foolish. We’ve gone
beyond the permitted zones. This will mean a ogging, but if I
resist, it will mean death. They will kill Eo and they will kill me.
“Darrow …,” Eo murmurs.
I set myself between Eo and the Tinpots, but I don’t ght. I won’t
let us die for a simple glimpse of the stars. I put my hands out to let
them know I will surrender.
“Helldivers,” Ugly Dan chuckles to the others. “The toughest ant
is yet but an ant.” He swings his thumper into my stomach. It’s like
being bitten by a viper and kicked by a boot. I fall gasping, hands
on the metal grate. Electricity slithers through my veins. I taste the
bile rising in my throat. “Take a swing, Helldiver,” Dan coos. He
drops one of the thumpers in front of me. “Please. Take a swing.
Won’t be any consequences. Just some fun between the boys. Take a
piggin’ swing.”
“Do it, Darrow!” Eo shouts.
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I’m not a fool. I thrust my hands up in surrender and Dan sighs in
disappointment as he clacks the magnetic manacles around my
wrists. What would Eo have had me do? She curses at them as they
lock her arms together and drag us away through the Webbery to
the cells. This will mean the lash. But it will be just the lash because
I did not pick up the thumper, because I did not listen to Eo.
It’s three days in a cell in the Pot before I see Eo again. Bridge, one
of the old, kinder Tinpots, takes us out together; he lets us touch. I
wonder if she’ll spit at me, curse me for my impotence. But she only
grips my ngers and brings her lips to mine.
“Darrow.” Her lips brush my ear. The breath is warm, the lips
cracked and trembling. She’s frail as she hugs me—a little girl, all
wire wrapped in pale skin. Her knees wobble and she shudders
against me. The warmth I saw in her face as we watched the sun
rise has ed and left her like a faded memory. But I hardly see
anything but her eyes and her hair. I wrap my arms around her and
hear the muttering of the crowded Common. The faces of our kin
and clan stare at us as we stand at the edge of the gallows, where
they will og us. I feel like a child under their stares, under the
yellowish lights.
It’s like a dream when Eo tells me she loves me. Her hand lingers
on mine. But there’s something strange to her eyes. They should
only whip her, yet her words are nal, her eyes sad but not afraid. I
see her making a goodbye. A nightmare is coming to my heart. I can
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feel it like a nail dragged along the bones of my spine as she
murmurs an epigram in my ear. “Break the chains, my love.”
And then I am jerked away from her by my hair. Tears stream
down her face. They are for me, though I do not yet understand
why. I cannot think. The world is swimming. I am drowning. Rough
hands shove me to my knees, then jerk me up. I’ve never heard the
Common so quiet. The shuing of my captors’ feet echoes as they
move me around.
The Tinpots t me into my Helldiver frysuit. Its acrid smell makes
me think I am safe, I am in control. I am not. I’m dragged away
from her into the very center of the Common and tossed at the edge
of the gallows. The metal stairs are rusted and stained. I grip them
with my hands and look to the top of the gallows. Twenty-four of
the headTalks each have a cord of leather. They wait for me atop
the platform.
“Oh, the horror of such occasions as this, my friends,” Magistrate
Podginus cries. His copper gravBoots hum above me as he oats
through the air. “Oh, how the ties that bind us are stretched when
one decides to break the laws which protect us all.
“Even the youngest, even the best, are subject to Law. To Order!
Without these we would be animals! Without obedience, without
discipline, there would be no colonies! And those few colonies there
are would be torn asunder by disorder! Man would be conned to
Earth. Man would wallow forevermore on that planet until the end
of days. But Order! Discipline! Law! These are the things which
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empower our race. Cursed is the creature who breaks with these
compacts.”
The speech is more eloquent than usual. Podginus is trying to
impress his intelligence upon someone. I look up from the stairs and
see a sight I did not ever think to see with my own two eyes. It
stings to look at him, to drink in the radiance of his hair, of his
Sigils. I see a Gold. In this drab place, he is what I imagine angels
would be like. Cloaked in gold and black. Wrapped in the sun. A
lion roaring upon his breast.
His face is older, severe, and pure with power. His hair shines,
combed back against his head. Neither a smile nor a frown mark his
thin lips, and the only line I see is that of a scar, which runs along
his right cheekbone.
I’ve learned from the HC that such a scar is borne only by the
nest of the Golds. The Peerless Scarred, they call them—men and
women of the ruling Color who have graduated from the Institute,
where they learn the secrets that will permit mankind to one day
colonize all the planets of the Solar System.
He does not speak to us. He speaks to another Gold, one tall and
thin, so thin I thought it a woman at rst. Without a scar, the man’s
face is coated with strange paste to bring out the color of his cheeks
and cover the lines on his face. His lips shine. And his hair glistens
in a way his master’s does not. He is a grotesque thing to look upon.
He thinks so of us. He snis the air, contemptuous. And the older
Gold speaks to him softly and not to us.
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And why should he speak to us? We are not worthy of a Gold’s
words. I scarcely want to look at him. I feel like I dirty his gold and
black nery with my red eyes. Shame creeps upon me and then I
realize why.
His is a face I know. It is a face every man and woman of the
colonies would know. Besides Octavia au Lune, this is the most
famous face on Mars—that of Nero au Augustus. The ArchGovernor
of Mars has come to see me ogged, and he has brought a retinue.
Two Crows (Obsidians to be technic) oat quietly behind him. Their
skull helmets suit their Color. I was born to mine the earth. They
were born to kill men. More than two feet taller than me. Eight
ngers on each massive hand. They breed them for war, and
watching them is like watching the coldblooded pitvipers who infest
our mines. Reptiles both.
There are a dozen others in his retinue, including another, slighter
Gold who seems his apprentice. He’s even more beautiful than the
ArchGovernor and he appears to dislike the thin, womanish Gold.
And there is an HC camera crew of Greens, tiny creatures compared
with the Crows. Their hair is dark. Not green like their eyes and the
Sigils on their hands. Frenetic excitement shimmers in those eyes.
It’s not often they have Helldivers to make into an example, so they
make a spectacle of me. I wonder how many other mining colonies
are watching. All of them, if the ArchGovernor is here.
They make a show of stripping away the frysuit they only just
dressed me in. I see myself on the HC display above, see my
wedding band dangling from the cord around my neck. I look
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younger than I feel, thinner. They jerk me up the stairs and bend me
over a metal box beside the noose where my father hanged. I shiver
as they lay me across the cold steel and tighten my hands in
restraints. I smell the synthleather of the lashes, hear one of the
headTalks cough.
“Forevermore, let justice be done,” Podginus says.
Then the lashes come. Forty-eight in all. They aren’t soft, not even
my uncle’s. They can’t be. The lashes bite and wail into my esh,
making a strange keening noise as they arch through the air. Music
of terror. I can barely see by the end of it. I pass out twice, and each
time I wake I wonder if you can see my spine on the HC.
It’s a show, all a show of their power. They let the Tinpot, Ugly
Dan, act sympathetic, as though he pities me. He whispers
encouragement in my ear loud enough for the cameras. And when
the last lash slashes my back, he steps in as if to stop another from
coming down. Subconsciously, I think he saves me. I’m thankful. I
want to kiss him. He is salvation. But I know I’ve had my forty-
eight.
Then they are dragging me to the side. They leave my blood. I’m
sure I screamed, sure I shamed myself. I hear them bring out my
wife.
“Even the young, even the beautiful cannot escape justice. It is for
all the Colors that we preserve Order, Justice. Without, we would
nd anarchy. Without Obedience, chaos! Man would perish upon
the irradiated sands of Earth. He would drink from the blasted seas.
There must be unity. Forevermore, let justice be done.”
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MineMagistrate Podginus’ words ring hollow.
No one is oended that I’m bloody and beaten. But when Eo is
dragged atop the gallows, there are cries. There are curses. Even
now she is beautiful, even drained of the light I saw in her three
days ago. Even as she sees me and lets the tears come down her
face, she is an angel.
All this for a little adventure. All this for a night under the stars
with the man she loves. Yet she is calm. If there is fear, it is in me,
because I feel a strangeness in the air. Her skin prickles as they lay
her across the cold box. She inches. I wish my blood had warmed
it better for her.
When they whip Eo, I try not to watch. But it hurts more to
abandon her. Her eyes nd mine. They shine like rubies, twitch
every time the lash falls. Soon this will be over, my love. Soon we will
go back to life. Just last the lash and we get everything back. But can
she even take so many lashes?
“End it,” I say to the Tinpot beside me. “End it!” I beg of him. “I’ll
do anything. I’ll obey. I’ll take her lashes. Just end it, you
bloodydamn bastards! End it!”
The ArchGovernor looks down at me, but his face is golden,
poreless, and without care. I am nothing but the bloodiest of ants.
My sacrice will impress him. He’ll feel compassion if I abase
myself, if I throw myself into the re for love. He’ll feel pity. This is
how the stories go.
“Your Excellency, give me her punishment!” I plead. “Please!” I
beg because in my wife’s eyes I see something that terries me. I see
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ght in her as they streak her back bloody. I see anger building
inside her. There is a reason she is not afraid.
“No. No. No,” I plead to her. “No, Eo. Please, no!”
“Gag that wretched thing! He prickles the ArchGovernor’s ears,”
Podginus orders. Bridge forces a knot of stone into my mouth. I gag
and cry.
As the thirteenth lash falls, as I mumble for her not to do it, Eo
stares into my eyes one last moment and then she begins her song. It
is a quiet sound, a mournful sound, like the song the deep mines
whisper as wind moves in the abandoned shafts. It is the song of
death and lament, the song that is forbidden. The song I have only
heard once before.
For this, they will kill her.
Her voice is soft and true, never as beautiful as her. It echoes
across the Common, rising up like a Siren’s unearthly call. The
lashes pause. The headTalks shiver. Even the Tinpots sadly shake
their heads when they place the words. Few men truly like seeing
beauty burn.
Podginus glances embarrassedly over at ArchGovernor Augustus,
who descends on golden gravBoots to watch more closely. His
shining hair glistens against his noble brow. High cheekbones catch
the light. Those golden eyes examine my wife as though a worm had
suddenly sprouted a buttery’s wings. His scar curves as he speaks
with a voice dripping power.
“Let her sing,” he says to Podginus, not bothering to hide his
fascination.
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“But, my lord …”
“No animal but man throws themselves willingly into the ames,
Copper. Relish the sight. You’ll not see it again.” To his camera
crew: “Continue recording. We will edit out the parts we nd
intolerable.”
How futile his words make her sacrice seem.
But never has Eo been more beautiful to me than in that moment.
In the face of cold power, she is re. This is the girl who danced
through the smoky tav with a mane of red. This is the girl who wove
me a wedding band of her own hair. This is the girl who chooses to
die for a song of death.
My love, my love
Remember the cries
When winter died for spring skies
They roared and roared
But we grabbed our seed
And sowed a song
Against their greed
And
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing
the reaper swing
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper sing
A tale of winter done
My son, my son
Remember the chains
When gold ruled with iron reins
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We roared and roared
And twisted and screamed
For ours, a vale of better dreams
As her voice nally swells and the song runs out of words, I know
I have lost her. She becomes something more important; and she
was right, I do not understand.
“A quaint tune. But is that all you have?” the ArchGovernor asks
her when she is through. He looks at her but he speaks loudly, to
the crowd, to those who will watch in the other colonies. His
entourage chuckles at Eo’s weapon, a song. What is a song but notes
unto the air? Useless as a match in a storm against his power. He
shames us. “Do any of you wish to join her in song? I implore you,
bold Reds of …” He looks to his assistant, who mouths the name.
“… Lykos, join her now if you wish.”
I can barely breathe past the stone. It chips my molars. Tears
stream down my face. No voices rise from the crowd. I see my
mother trembling with anger. Kieran clutches his wife close. Narol
stares at the ground. Loran weeps. They are all here, all quiet. All
afraid.
“Alas, Your Excellency, we nd the girl alone in her zealotry,”
Podginus declares. Eo has eyes only for me. “’Tis clear her opinion is
an outlier’s, an outcast’s. Mayhaps we should proceed?”
“Yes,” the ArchGovernor says idly. “I have an appointment with
Arcos. Hang the rusty bitch lest she continue to howl.”
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