“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.”
“Who ride griffins?” The notion dazzles the girl. She’s not yet gotten there in her studies. “Where is he now?”
“He died, and we fired him toward the sun as we came to visit your father.”
“Oh. I’m sorry…,” she says with the blind kindness it seems only children still have. “Is that why you looked so sad?”
I flinch, not knowing it was so obvious. Romulus notices and spares me from answering. “Seraphina, your uncle was looking for you. The tomatoes won’t plant themselves. Will they?” Seraphina dips her head and gives me a farewell wave before departing back down the path. I watch her disappear and belatedly realize that my child would be her age now.
“Did you arrange that?” I ask Romulus.
He steps into the garden. “Would you believe me if I said no?”
“I don’t believe much from anyone these days.”
