He was well mannered on the return trip from Mars when I was introduced to him by Kavax and told my duties by Bethalia, the terrifying old general of the army of Telemanus servants. Sophocles spent most of his days trotting around the ship with Liam and me, following along dutifully behind Kavax, or curled up in his master’s chambers, but now he catches one whiff of the pink birds and he’s nearly pulling my arm out of its socket to claw furrows in the trunks of trees.
Dr. Liago, the Telemanuses’ personal physician for fox and human alike, can’t figure out what’s wrong with the beast. Which leaves me picking up fox shit samples three times a day. Tedious, but compared with the muggy hell of Camp 121, it’s not a shabby life. I’m paid a good wage, fed three square, given four spare uniforms, and sleep in a climate-controlled bunk room. There’s no mosquitoes, and no fear when I walk the grounds late at night in the dark cycle. I go out most nights to look at the stars and watch ships come and go on the Citadel of Light’s landing pads atop the Palatine Hill to the northwest. The last time I can remember feeling this safe was nestled between my da and mum watching my brother Aengus dance with the lasses at Laureltide as Dagan glowered to himself.
Kavax has been just as kind to Liam as to me. He put Liam in the Citadel school with the children of the other employees who live on the grounds. They board near the north wall in dormitories set in a small forest of cypress. Even though the school is within the Citadel walls, it’s still twenty klicks north of the Telemanus estate, so I only manage to catch the tram to see him three times a week. I stop in at nighttime before they put the children to bed. Each time I have to leave, he clings to me, not wanting me to go. Breaks my heart every time. He says the other kids are kind. But he’s one of the only Reds there.
“Righto, you little beast, time’s up. Back inside,” I say, turning back from the bush. “Sophocles?” He’s gone. I search the sycamores and the elder shrubs. He slipped his leash again and ran off somewhere toward Lake Augustine. There’s no sign of him. “Dammit.” If he kills more pachelbel, I’ll be in for it with Bethalia.
I walk the gravel path that winds through the Esqualine Gardens in search of him. The gardens sprawl around the base of the Esqualine Hills, where the manicured stone estates of old Gold families sit inside the Citadel walls. They are now filled with the Sovereign’s most powerful supporters—chiefly Houses Arcos and Telemanus.
Little ponds and streams are nestled at the bases of the hills, amongst tranquil copses of rosebushes. It looks like a storybook painting of the Vale. But this garden has some deep shadows and the men and women who walk here are empire breakers.
It is early autumn now in Hyperion, a season far kinder than the grueling summers of Boetian Plains. Something of it reminds me of the tunnels of Lagalos, how dew would bead on the outside of the metal doors all throughout our township in the early mornings. You’d love it, Tiran. The way the fog catches on the walls and cloaks the Palatine spires. Just like one of your storybooks.
No. Don’t go there. Don’t think of them. I bite the inside of my cheek till I taste blood to draw me out of the quicksand of memory.
It’s morning. The small datapad on the underside of my wrist reads 7:32 A.M. Earth Standard on the sixteenth day of the bright month of October. Sixty degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy with afternoon showers. The datapad is unlike anything I had in the mines, let alone the camp. Sometimes I lay in bed staring at the slowly turning hologram of Mars before drifting off to sleep, guiltily wondering if I should miss it. I don’t. If anything, I miss Lagalos.
My body still has not welcomed the low gravity here; I feel more trapped on this moon than I did on the three-week journey from Mars. I felt it the moment I stepped off the shuttle that took us down from orbit and missed that first step down from the ramp. The lethargic gravity is at odds with the manic pace of the ships in the blue sky overhead, the constant flow of important people on important tasks. But the worst is the protocol and judgment from the other valets.
I thought Kavax would forget about me as soon as I boarded his ship; instead, he took a liking to me, hell knows why. He had me sup with him every breakfast, first teaching me the intricacies of Sophocles’s dietary and care requirements. But those lessons were forgotten when he gave me a book of lullabies that Sophocles requires sung to him before bedtime. I had to confess that I could not read more than half the words. He stared at me as if I had thirteen heads.
“That will not do,” he roared. “Not at all! Stories are the wealth of humanity! My wife would not forgive me if I denied you the key to that wealth.”
He took to giving me lessons after every breakfast in his stateroom. But they were abandoned after Xana burst into the room in a panic. I learned later that she had just heard news of the Reaper’s demotion at the hands of the Senate, his murder of the captain of the Wardens, and his disappearance from Luna.
Heavy shit.
The news has turned the moon into a madhouse. Protests clogged the boulevards on the day we returned. A crowd of hundreds of thousands flowing like a tide of Cimmerian ants, calling for the Reaper’s arrest, the Sovereign’s impeachment. But they were met violently by a mass of the Reaper’s worshippers. The Watchmen had to disperse the clashing mobs with heat beams and gas.
Does me good to know I’m not the only one who’s lost faith in the Sovereign.
“Sophocles!” I call out again, following a narrow track of gravel past the base of another estate. “Sophocles, where are you?” I feel watched. He’s playing games again. I crouch low and move off the path in between two sycamores to search the bank of the lake. A black swan stares at the shore. There! Jutting out from behind a tree trunk is a bushy red tail, swaying in the breeze.
I creep forward, minding the twigs under my new shoes. Quietly, carefully. The tail moves with excitement. I burst around the tree, and Sophocles pounces on me in a flurry of red fur. Laughing, I let his weight take me to the ground, where he licks my ears till I have to wrestle him off. His cold nose pokes at the side of my neck. I reattach his collar.
Then I hear a strange pop through the trees. I walk toward the sound. In a small clearing, I find a concrete block of a Gray warden speaking with a slender Copper with a familiar face. Though I crouch barely twenty meters away, I can’t hear either man. It’s almost like magic. The Gray shoves a finger into the Copper’s chest as if scolding him. The Copper looks away, my direction.