“Can do.” He bumps my fist with his and winks. “Happy diplomacy, kids.” He keeps his fist out for Mustang. “You too horsey. We’re in this shit together, eh?”
She happily bumps his knuckles with her own. “Bloodydamn right.”
The home of the most powerful man in the Galilean Moons is a simple, wandering place of little gardens and quiet nooks. Set in the shadow of a dormant volcano, it looks out over a yellow plain that stretches to the horizon where another volcano smolders and magma creeps westward. We set down in a small covered hangar in the side of a rock formation, one of only two ships. The other a sleek black racing craft Orion would die to fly next to a row of several dust-covered hover bikes. No one comes to service our vessel as we disembark and approach the home along a white stone walkway set into the sulfur chalk. It curves around to the side of the home. The entirety of the small property enclosed by a discreet pulseBubble.
Our escorts are at ease on the property. They file in ahead of us through the iron gate that leads to the grass courtyard into the home, removing their dust-caked skipper boots and setting them just inside the entryway beside a pair of black military boots. Mustang and I exchange a glance then remove our own. It takes me the longest to remove my bulky gravBoots. Each weighing nearly nine kilos and having three parallel latches around the boot that lock my legs in. It’s oddly comforting to feel the grass between my toes. I’m conscious of the stink of my feet. Odd seeing the boots of a dozen enemies stacked by the door. Like I’ve walked in on something very private.
“Please wait here,” Vela says to me. “Virginia, Romulus wishes to speak with you alone first.”
“I’ll scream if I’m in danger,” I say with a grin when Mustang hesitates. She winks as she leaves to follow Vela, who noticed the subtlety of the exchange. I feel there’s little the older woman misses, even less that she doesn’t judge. I’m left alone in the garden with the song of a wind chime hanging from a tree above. The courtyard garden is an even rectangle. Maybe thirty paces wide. Ten deep from the front gate to the small white steps that lead into the home’s front entrance. The white plaster walls are smooth and covered with thin creeping vines that wander into the home. Little orange flowers erupt from the vines and fill the air with a woodsy, burning scent.
The house rambles, rooms and gardens unfolding out from each other. There is no roof to the house. But there’s little reason for one. The pulseBubble seals off the property from the weather outside. They make their own rain here. Little misters drip water from the morning’s watering of the small citrus trees whose roots crack the bottom of the white stone fountain in the center of the garden. A little glance at a place like this was what led my wife to the gallows.
How strange a journey she’d think this was.
But also, in a way, how marvelous.
“You can eat a tangerine if you like,” a small voice says behind me. “Father won’t mind.” I turn to find a child standing by another gate that leads off from the main courtyard to a path that winds around the left of the house. She might be eight years old. She holds a small shovel in her hands, and the knees of her pants are stained with dirt. Her hair is short-cropped and messy, her face pale, eyes a third again as large as any girl of Mars. You can see the tender length of her bones. Like a fresh-born colt. There’s a wildness in her. I’ve not met many Gold children. Core Peerless families often guard them from the public eye for fear of assassination, keeping them in private estates or schools. I’ve heard the Rim is different. They do not kill children here. But everyone likes to pretend that they don’t kill children.
“Hello,” I say kindly. It’s a fragile, awkward tone I haven’t used since I saw my own nieces and nephews. I love children, but I feel so alien to them these days.
“You’re the Martian, aren’t you?” she asks, impressed.
“My name is Darrow,” I reply with a nod. “What’s yours?”
“I am Sera au Raa,” she says proudly. “Were you really a Red? I heard my father speaking.” She explains. “They think just because I don’t have this”—she runs a finger along her cheek in an imaginary scar—“that I don’t have ears.” She nods up to the vine-covered walls and smiles mischievously. “Sometimes I climb.”
“I still am a Red,” I say. “It’s not something I stopped being.”
“Oh. You don’t look like one.”
She must not watch holos if she doesn’t know who I am. “Maybe it’s not about what I look like,” I suggest. “Maybe it’s about what I do.”
Is that too clever a thing to say to a six-year-old? Hell if I know. She makes a disgusted face and I fear I’ve made a mistake.
“Have you met many Reds, Sera?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve only seen them in my studies. Father says it’s not proper to mingle.”
“Don’t you have servants?”
She giggles before she realizes I’m serious. “Servants? But I haven’t earned servants.” She taps her face again. “Not yet.” It darkens my mood to think of this girl running for her life through the woods of the Institute. Or will she be the one chasing?
“Nor will you ever earn them if you don’t leave our guest alone, Seraphina” a low, husky voice says from the main entry to the house. Romulus au Raa leans against the doorframe of his home. He is a serene and violent man. My height, yet thinner with a twice broken nose. His right eye a third larger than mine set in a narrow, wrathful face. His left eyelid is crossed with a scar. A smooth globe of blue and black marble stares out at me in place of eyeball. His full lips are pinched, the top lip bearing three more scars. His dark gold hair is long and held in a ponytail. Except for the old wounds, his skin is perfect porcelain. But it’s how he seems more than how he looks that makes the man. I feel his steady way. His easy confidence, as if he’s always been at the door. Always known me. It’s startling how much I like him from the moment he winks at his daughter. And also how much I want him to like me, despite the tyrant I know him to be.
“So what do you make of our Martian?” he asks his daughter.
“He is thick,” Seraphina says. “Larger than you, father.”
“But not as large as a Telemanus,” I say.
She crosses her arms. “Well, nothing is as large as a Telemanus.”
I laugh. “If only that were true. I knew a man who was nearly as large to me as I am to you.”
“No,” Seraphina says, eyes widening. “An Obsidian?”
I nod. “His name was Ragnar Volarus. He was Stained. A prince of an Obsidian tribe from the south pole of Mars. They call themselves the Valkyrie. And they are ruled by women who ride griffins.” I look at Romulus. “His sister is with me.”