“An acquired taste, no doubt.”
I shiver as I slurp down another oyster. I chewed the first one and almost retched, but now I know to take them down all at once, I’m beginning to like them if I sauce them with enough vinegar. Or maybe I like that I like them. I feel very important when the waiter comes and asks if we’d like anything else and I say, “That’s right, another flight please.”
“And two more martinis,” Philippe demands. “Insidiously dirty, you charmer.”
The waiter blushes and patters away. I watch him go, dreading what this will all cost when I could barely afford a coffee. Philippe tosses his empty shell into a pail. “These don’t hold a candle to true Venusian crustaceans, but with the war, Earth does its best.”
“I heard trade might reopen with the Peace,” I say knowingly. Heard that bit from one of Quicksilver’s men who visited Kavax couple weeks back.
“Ha! The Peace won’t last. It never lasts. Golds can’t handle conditional victory. They simply must have it all.”
“Vox Populi might pass it without the Golds.”
“And how do you know that?”
I shrug, knowing I’ve said too much. “I hear things.”
He examines me. “Doesn’t that bother you? Making peace with the slavers?”
I consider it, relieved he didn’t ask where I’ve heard these “things.” “I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you’d know if it bothers you.”
“That senator…Dancer O’Faran. He was the one who freed my mine.”
He whistles. “That’s something.”
I nod. “Took me a while to remember. But if you saw how he looked at us…He just wants to make things better. Here and on Mars. Seems all the Sovereign thinks about is her personal score—finishing things with the Ash Lord. And the small people get left behind. She hasn’t even been to Mars in six years, and the place is a…quagmire.”
He smiles at the word. “And what about the Reaper?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug, drunk and wanting to talk about something else. “It’s like he’s one of them now.”
“A Gold.”
I nod, thinking of my brothers in the legions, wondering if I should tell Philippe about them. No. I don’t want the pity to ruin the night. “I just want it to end,” I say. “Just want that life we were all promised.”
“Don’t we all. Ah, the oysters!”
We finish the next flight, and, after the two martinis, Philippe gets the bill without me noticing. I make a show of scolding him, but inside I’m thanking the Vale and feeling stupid for worrying so much about it.
Tottering drunk, we stumble away from the restaurant arm in arm, singing a Red ballad Philippe insisted I teach him about a boy so charming he seduced a pitviper. Though Philippe’s at least thirty kilos heavier and two hands taller, he’s drunker than I am.
“Red constitution, damnably impressive,” he says with a sigh, sitting down midway through Hero Center despite the light drizzle that falls from the cloud layer. The dimness of the light makes it feel almost like a Martian night. “Must rest the leg. It aches so.”
We sit together on a bench in the middle of the Hero Center’s plaza. Statues ring the expanse. My favorite, Orion xe Aquarii’s, towers seven stories high over a riot of red maples. The notoriously curmudgeonly Blue stands with her hands on her hips and a parrot on her shoulder. The largest of the statues is at the center of the plaza. At night, lights in the ground blaze up to illuminate the Iron Reaper: a Red boy ten times the size of a real man stands chained to two huge iron pillars. He is not grand. He is half starved. His back is bent. But his mouth is open in a roar. The chains seem to crack and snap. The columns are shattered and in their shards are more shapes and icons and screaming faces. Philippe strokes his necklace as he leans back looking at the statue.
“What’s that?” I ask him after a moment. His eyebrows rise. “Under your shirt. You been stroking it like it’s a pet all night.”
“Hm?” he sits up straighter and takes out the necklace. The size of a small egg, it is the face of a youthful man with curly hair and a crown of grapes. “A little something given to me by a special someone. It is Bacchus. Lord of frivolity and wine. My kindred spirit.”
“Who gave it to you?” I ask. “Sorry. I got shit for manners.”
“Dispense with thy manners, my darling. I’m too drunk for them.” Still, he pauses, his face losing its natural amusement, replaced by a darker, more intense emotion. “It was a man. My fiancé.”
“Fiancé?”
“That a problem?” he snaps in a clipped, new voice.
“No…I just…”
“Because I know lowReds are primitive little shits ’bout that sort of thing. Part of your mine conditioning. The nuclear family! No efficiency in homosexuality. A waste of sperm, declares the Board of Quality Control!”
I glower. “We’re not all like that.” Da was, though.
“No,” he says with a little, airy laugh, himself again. In that moment, I understand him. All the big words, all the dandy eccentricity, are a shield. There’s pain beneath, and for a moment, he trusted me enough to share it. “I’m sorry, love. I’m terribly tight. Easier to see only ahead when you’re terribly tight.” He sighs and watches water drip down the Reaper’s statue. Birds huddle in the armpits of the monument.
“What was your fiancé like?” I ask softly.
“Husband. I hate calling him fiancé. Cheapens it. He…was a good man. The best. Nothing in common with me, except an infatuation with the lord’s wine. Our private joke. He’s gone now. But you probably guessed that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We all have our shadows.” He smiles bravely.
“My family was killed on Mars,” I say, surprised to find myself speaking the words out loud. So many people have asked, and dug, but I sealed them off because how could they ever understand? That sadness in Philippe understands me. In his eyes, I don’t feel pitied. I feel seen. “I was in one of the assimilation camps. We were there too long, and the Red Hand came.”
“What were their names?”
I make a small, pained sound. “No one’s asked that.”
“Then I’m honored to be the first to know.”
“My brother’s name was Tiran. My father’s name was Arlow. My sister was Ava. Her children: Conn, Barlow, and Ella. The littlest one…” My voice catches. “She was a baby.” I try to smile. “But I got my nephew out, and I got brothers alive too.”
His silence is that of a man wrestling with something inside himself. The battle plays out in the muscles of his jaw and the shifting of his hands against the bench. After a time, not knowing which side has won, I follow his eyes to the Iron Reaper.
“Know what I see when I look at that?” he asks. “A thief.” He laughs. “Suppose that’s blasphemy to you. He’s your great hero. Your messiah.”
“He’s not my messiah.”
“No?”
“No.”
“It’s incredible,” he says, looking at me.