He sighs. And motions for the Pinks to leave. They do. My eyes follow Aurae out the door. I ponder her relief. When they’ve left, Cassius casually taps his ear to show that we’re no doubt being listened to. Of course I know that. Does he forget where I grew up? “I think we deserve a little fun, Castor. Water torture, enduring that family squabbling, the beatings…” He laughs. “Besides, they’re slaves, and you’re not their savior. Romantic as you find the notion to be.”
“You know, not everything you say to me has to be a lesson,” I say.
“If you didn’t need them, I wouldn’t teach them. Anyway, looks like Pytha owes me fifty credits.” He sighs contentedly to himself and leans his broad shoulders back in the bath.
“What for?” I ask, unable to not take the bait.
“Friendly wager. She couldn’t possibly believe you were still a virgin.”
“What?”
“A virgin. It’s when a man or woman has not…”
“I hardly think that’s any of your concern. I’m not, as it is.”
He closes his eyes against the steam. “Then why turn them away? You sure it’s not because you’re afraid she’s watching?”
“Of course not,” I say sharply. Is Seraphina watching?
He chuckles. “See? Pent-up sexual aggression.”
“Just because I believe in actual romance instead of plundering the virtue from merchants’ daughters and buggering everything that moves like a gorydamn Gaul does not mean that I should be shamed.”
“?‘Like a gorydamn Gaul?’ My goodman, you curse like you’re ninety.”
“And you’re a hypocritical fornicator.”
“Gods, you really haven’t been laid, brother.”
“Will you stop talking.” I throw one of the strigils at him. He ducks into the water before pulling himself out to join me on the tile bench. He nudges me with his shoulder after a spell to lighten the mood—difficult considering we both know they’re analyzing us now, attempting to peel back our story to see if we are spies. Neither one of us is convinced the brotherly spat is just for show, though that might be our excuse.
“Seraphina told me Pytha was alive,” I say, trying to change the subject.
“My guards said the same to me. But don’t get too comfortable. We’re not guests here. When when the coup is over, our heads will likely roll.”
“You don’t think it will succeed?”
“Tell me you didn’t see the doubt in the daughter.”
I nod. “I didn’t think that was the reason for it.”
He laughs. “Don’t be so easily impressed by a rogue century of Peerless. Dido’s sharp, but she’s Venusian. The Rim won’t forget that. The minor Lords of Io will be coming from all over the moon, loyal to Romulus. And if they don’t finish her off, the Lords of Europa and Ganymede, likely even Callisto, will do it. Not to mention the Far Rim. They like their Romulus out there.”
“And what about their evidence?”
“Did you see her bring anything back?”
“No.”
“Well then, either she hid it well, or it was a bluff.”
I know without him saying it that he blames me for our current predicament, but it was his decision to investigate the Vindabona. His decision to take away everything I had as a boy and then act like he was my savior.
He lives in a fiction, espousing a moral code to justify killing his Sovereign, turning his back on our Society, but I know why he really did it—because she let the Jackal kill his family. The sanctimonious morality came long afterwards. This noble Morning Knight is built on a foundation of self-interest. And now, because he trusts no Golds, he decides we will anger our hosts in hopes they will want our services, when instead he should swallow his pride and see if their hospitality is genuine, as I do.
He has little faith in our Color. I’m losing all mine in him.
I feel a despicable little creature, thinking all this of Cassius. Whatever his motives, I know his love for me is genuine. The nights of listening to music in the rec room of the Archimedes as he falls asleep holding his drink can’t be washed away. Neither can the protective warmth I felt all those times when Pytha and I helped him back to his bunk when he was so drunk he could not even stand but he could murmur Virginia’s name.
“I miss home,” I say in an attempt to find some common ground to ease the tension that’s grown between us these last months, before the Vindabona even.
“Mars?” he asks, and I know he means Luna. And I do miss that place, the libraries, the Esqualine Gardens, the warmth of Aja, the approval of my grandmother, stark and sparse though it was, the love of my parents. But most of all, I miss sitting in the sun, eyes closed, listening to the pachelbel in the trees. That was peace for me. That is where I feel safe.
“But I was thinking of the Archi. I’ve never had to miss her before. Two days on Ceres. Three on Lacrimosa…”
“She’s a good ship,” he says. “I’d give two years’ haul to be under way in the rec room with a tumbler of whiskey right now and a good concerto on the holo.”
“Playing chess?”
“Karachi,” he corrects. “We played chess all last year.”
“More like I taught you to play all last year…”
He rolls his eyes. “He wins five in a row and suddenly he’s Arastoo in the flesh.”
“It was seven, my good man. But I’ll relent and let you play Karachi, even though it’s a game entirely devoid of reason and mathematical skill.”
“It’s called reading people, Castor. Intuition.”
I make a face. “My only condition is we listen to Vivaldi and not Wagner.”
“My goodman, are you trying to kill me? You know I abhor Vivaldi.” He laughs. “Not that it matters. Won’t be able to hear a note over the sound of Pytha whining about immersion games or how it’s not her turn to cook.”
We grin at each other, indulging the fantasy that once seemed so commonplace, but now so nostalgic and impossible.
“Oh, don’t look so maudlin,” he says. “We’ll return to the Archi with Pytha in surly tow. We’ll be sharing a whiskey and burning black matter once this is sorted.” We both know it is a promise he cannot keep.
I see by the melancholy look in his eyes that we are united in understanding that something between us is breaking and neither one of us knows how to stop it. Even if we leave Io behind, we can never go back to the way things were, to the private world we shared.
I have outgrown it. I have even outgrown him.
I’M DEPOSITED IN MY ROOM to change for dinner with the Raa family. The room, like all Ionian rooms, was made with attention to geometrical energy. It is perfectly square, without frivolous comfort and with no furniture except for a thin sleeping mat on a slightly raised platform. A small window looks out onto the heavy darkness of a night nearly a billion kilometers from the sun. I doff my robe and stand naked before the window, pressing my nose to it, appreciating the chill of the rock on my bare skin, and imagine I am floating in the cool waves of Lake Silene. I wonder if the Reaper’s child now climbs the stone stairs there from the shore to Silene Manor and his waiting parents. Do they warm themselves by the fire pit? Sleep in the room I slept in when I was a boy, where all Lunes have slept since the children of Silenius? A deep anger fills me, but I push it into the void.
All is silent in the room.