But I do not see my love. I do not see the vale. I see nothing but phantom lights in darkness. I feel pressure, and I know, as would any miner, that I am buried beneath the earth. I loose a soundless scream. Dirt enters my mouth. Panic fills me. I cannot breathe, cannot move. The earth hugs me till finally I claw my way free, feel air, gasp oxygen, pant and spit dirt.
It is minutes before I look up from my knees. I crouch in an abandoned mine, an old tunnel long deserted but still connected to the ventilation system. It smells of dirt. A single flare burns beside my grave, splaying weird shadows over the walls. It singes my sight like the sun did as it rose over Eo’s grave.
I’m not dead.
The realization takes longer in coming than one might have thought. But there’s a bloody wound around my neck where the rope cut the skin. There’s dirt in the lashes on my back.
Still, I’m not dead.
Uncle Narol didn’t pull my feet hard enough. But surely the Tinpots would have checked, unless they were lazy. Not a stretch to think that, but something else is at play. I was too woozy when I walked to the gallows. I feel something in my veins even now, a lethargy as though I’ve been drugged. Narol did this. He drugged me. He buried me. But why? And how would he escape being caught when he pulled my body down?
When a low rumbling comes from the darkness beyond the flare, I know I will have answers. A tumbler, like a metal beetle on six wheels, crawls over the crest of a long tunnel. Its front grille hisses steam as it comes to a stop in front of me. Eighteen lights singe my vision; shapes exit the sides of the vehicle, cutting across the glare of the headlights to grab me. I’m too stunned to resist. Their hands are callused like miners’ and their faces are covered with Octobernacht demon masks. Yet they move me gently, guiding instead of forcing me into the tumbler’s hatch.
Inside the tumbler, the globe light is red and bloody. I sit in a worn metal bucket seat across from the two figures that fetched me from my grave. The female’s mask is pale white and gold, horned like a cacodemon. Her eyes glitter darkly out from the eyeholes. The other figure is a timid man. He’s willowy and quiet, seemingly frightened of me. His snarling batface mask can’t conceal his shy glances or the way in which he hides his hands—a trait of the frightened, as Uncle Narol always claimed when he taught me to dance.
“You’re Sons of Ares, aren’t you?” I guess.
The weakling flinches, while the woman’s eyes are mocking.
“And you’re Lazarus,” she says. I find her voice cold, lazy; it plays with the ears as a cat plays with a caught mouse.
“I am Darrow.”
“Oh, we know who you are.”
“Don’t tell him anything, Harmony!” the weakling gibbers. “Dancer didn’t tell us to discuss anything with him till we get home.”
“Thank you, Ralph.” Harmony sighs at the weakling and shakes her head.
After realizing his error, the weakling shifts uncomfortably in his bucket seat, but I’ve stopped paying him any mind. Here, the woman is king. Unlike the weakling’s, her mask is like that of an old crone, one of the witches of Earth’s fallen cities who made soup from the marrow of children’s bones.
“You’re a mess.” Harmony reaches to touch my neck. I grab her hand and squeeze. Her bones are brittle as hollow plastic in a Helldiver’s hand. The weakling reaches for his thumper, but Harmony motions him to calm down.
“Why am I not dead?” I ask. After the hanging, my voice is like gravel dragged over metal.
“Because Ares has a mission for you, little Helldiver.”
She winces as I squeeze her hand.
“Ares …” My mind flashes to images of bomb blasts, disembodied limbs, chaos. Ares. I know what sort of mission he’ll want. I’m too numb to even know what I’ll say when he asks. My mind is on Eo, not this life. I am a shell. Why could I not have stayed in the ground?
“May I have my hand back now?” Harmony asks.
“If you take off your mask. Otherwise, I’m keeping it.”
She laughs and strips away her mask. Her face is day and night—the right side a ragged and distended mess of skin running and folding together in smooth scar rivers. A steam burn. A familiar sight, but not on women. Rare for a woman to be on a drillteam.
Yet it is the unburned side of her face that startles. She is beautiful, more beautiful even than Eo. Skin soft, pale as milk, bones prominent and delicate. Yet she looks so cold, so angry and cruel. Her bottom teeth are uneven and her nails poorly maintained. She has knives in her boots. I can tell by the way she flinched down when I grabbed her hand.
The weakling, Ralph, is unremarkably ugly—dark face like a hatchet, teeth all ajar and grimy. He stares out the tumbler’s window hatch as we drive through abandoned tunnels till we reach lit paved tunnelroads meant for fast moving. I do not know these Reds, and though they have the Red Sigil emblazoned on their hands, I do not trust them. They are not of Lambda or Lykos. Might as well be Silvers.
Eventually I glimpse other utility vehicles and tumblers out the hatch. I don’t know where we are, yet that bothers me less than the swelling sadness in my chest. The farther we ride and the more time I’m given to my thoughts, the worse the pain becomes. I finger my wedding band. Eo is still dead. She’s not waiting for me at the end of this ride. Why did I survive when she did not? Why did I pull her feet so hard? Could she have lived too? My guts feel like a black hole. A terrible weight compresses my chest, and I ache to just jump from the tumbler into the path of a utility vehicle. Death is easy when you’ve already tried to find it.
But I don’t jump; I sit with Harmony and Ralph. Eo wanted more for me. I clench the scarlet headband in my fist.
The tunnelroad widens slightly when we come to a checkpoint manned by dirty Tinpots in worndown gear. The electric gate isn’t even charged. They let the tumbler ahead of us through after scanning a panel on its side. Then it’s our turn and I’m shifting uncomfortably in my seat right along with Ralph. Harmony chuckles disdainfully as the grey-haired Tinpot scans the side of the tumbler and waves us through the gate.
“We have a passcode. No brains in slaves. Mine Tinpots are idiots. It’s the Grey elites, or the Obsidian monsters you watch out for. But they don’t waste their time down here.”
I am trying to convince myself that this all is not some Gold trick, that Harmony and Ralph are not enemies, when we pull off the main tunnelroad into a cul-de-sac of utility warehouses not much larger than the Common. Harsh sulfur lights hang down from utility fixtures. Half the bulbs are burned out. One flickers on and off above a garage near a warehouse marked with a queer symbol done in strange paint. We steer into the garage. The door closes and Harmony motions for me to get out of the tumbler.
“Home sweet home,” she says. “Now time to meet Dancer.”
8
DANCER
Dancer looks through me. He’s near enough my height, which is rare. But he’s thick and terribly old, maybe in his forties. White swirls from his temples. A dozen twin scars mark his neck. I’ve seen their sort before. Pitviper bites. The arm on the left side of his body hangs limp. Nerve damage. But his eyes arrest me; they are brighter than most, swirling with patterns of true red, not rust red. He has a fatherly smile.
“You must be wondering who we are,” Dancer says gently. He’s big but his voice is easy. Eight Reds are with him, all men except for Harmony, and they watch him with adoring eyes. All miners, I think, each with the scarred, strong hands of our kind. They move with the grace of our people. No doubt some were jumpers and boasters, as we call those who run along the walls and perform the flips at dances. Any Helldivers?
“He’s not wondering.” Harmony takes time with the words, rolling them along her tongue. She squeezes Dancer’s hand as she passes around him to look at me. “Bloodydamn runt pegged it an hour ago.”
“Ah.” Dancer smiles softly at her. “Of course he did, otherwise Ares wouldn’t have asked us to risk extracting him here. Do you know where ‘here’ is, Darrow?”
r /> “It doesn’t matter,” I murmur. I look around at the walls, the men, the swaying lights. Everything is so cold, so dirty. “What matters is …” I fail to finish my own sentence. A thought of Eo severs my voice. “What matters is that you want something from me.”
“Yes, that matters,” says Dancer. His hand touches my shoulder. “But that can wait. I’m surprised you’re standing. The wounds on your back are sullied. You’ll need antibac and skinres to stop the scarring.”
“Scars don’t matter,” I say. I stare at the two blood drops that trickle from my shirttail to the floor. My wounds reopened when I climbed from the grave. “Eo is … dead, yes?”
“Yes. She is. We couldn’t save her, Darrow.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“We just couldn’t.”
“Why not?” I repeat. I glare up at him, glare at his followers and hiss the words one by one. “You saved me. You could have saved her. She is the one you would have wanted. The bloodydamn martyr. She cared about all this. Or does Ares only need Sons, not Daughters?”
“Martyrs are a dime a dozen.” Harmony yawns.
I slip forward like a serpent and grab her around the throat; waves of anger ripple through my face till it goes numb and I feel tears welling behind my eyes. Scorchers whine as they’re primed around me. One jams into the back of my neck. I feel its cold muzzle.
“Let her go!” someone shouts. “Do it, boy!”
I spit at them, shake Harmony once and toss her aside. She crouches on the floor, hacking, and then a knife glimmers in her hand as she rises.
Dancer stumbles between us. “Stop it! Both of you! Darrow, please!”
“Your girl was a dreamer, boy,” Harmony spits at me from Dancer’s other side. “As worthless as a flame over water …”
“Harmony, shut your bloodydamn gob,” Dancer barks. “Put those damn things away.” The scorchers go quiet. A tense silence follows and he leans in close to speak with me. His voice lowers. My breath is fast. “Darrow, we’re friends. We’re friends. Now, I can’t answer for Ares—why he couldn’t help us save your girl; I am just one of his hands. I can’t wash away the pain. I can’t bring your wife back to you. But, Darrow, look at me. Look at me, Helldiver.” I do. Right into those blood-red eyes. “I can’t do many things. But I can bring you justice.”
Dancer goes to Harmony and whispers something, likely telling her that we’re to be friends. We won’t be. But I promise not to choke her and she promises not to stab me.
She is quiet as she guides me from the others through cramped metal hallways to a small door opened by twisting a knob. Our feet echo over rusting walkways. The room is small and littered with tables and medical supplies. She has me strip and sit on one of the cold tables so she can clean my wounds. Her hands are not gentle as they scrub dirt from my lacerated back. I try not to scream.
“You’re a fool,” she says as she scrapes rock out of a deep wound. I wheeze in pain and try to say something, but she jams her finger into my back, cutting me short.
“Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver.” She makes sure I don’t speak. “Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the louder their voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose.”
Her purpose. It sounds so cold, so distant and sad, as though my girl of smiles and laughter was meant for nothing but death. Harmony’s words carve into me and I stare at the metal grating before turning to look into her angry eyes.
“Then what is your purpose?” I ask.
She holds up her hands, caked with dirt and blood.
“The same as yours, little Helldiver. To make the dream come true.”
After Harmony scours my back of dirt and gives me a dose of antibac, she takes me to a room next to humming generators. The squat quarters are lined with cots and a liquid flush. She leaves me to it. The shower is a terrifying thing. Though it’s gentler than the air of the Flush, half the time I feel like I’m drowning, the other half I find a mixture of ecstasy and agony. I turn the heat nozzle till steam rises thick and pain lances my back.
Clean, I dress in the strange garments they’ve set out for me. It’s not a jumpsuit or homespun weave like I’m used to wearing. The material is sleek, elegant, like something someone of a different Color would wear.
Dancer comes into the room when I’m half dressed. His left foot drags behind him, almost as useless as his left arm. Yet still he’s an impressive man, thicker than Barlow, handsomer than me despite his age and the bite scars on his neck. He carries a tin bowl and sits on one of the cots, which creaks against his weight.
“We saved your life, Darrow. So your life is ours, do you not agree?”
“My uncle saved my life,” I say.
“The drunk?” Dancer snorts. “The best thing he ever did was tell us about you. And he should have done that when you were a boy, but he kept you a secret. He’s worked for us since before your father’s death as an informer, you know.”
“Is he hanged now?”
“Now that he pulled you down? I should hope not. We gave him a jammer to shut off their ancient cameras. He did the work of a ghost.”
Uncle Narol. HeadTalk, but drunk as a fool. I always thought him weak. He still is. No strong man would drink like him or be so bitter. But he never earned the disdain I gave him. Yet why did he not save Eo?
“You act like my uncle bloodydamn owed you,” I say.
“He owes his people.”
“People.” I laugh at the term. “There is family. There is clan. There may even be township and mine, but people? People. And you act as though you’re my representative, as though you have a right to my life. But you are just a fool, all you Sons of Ares.” My voice is withering in its condescension. “Fools who can do nothing but blow things up. Like children kicking pitviper nests in rage.”
That’s what I want to do. I want to kick, to lash out. That’s why I insult him, that’s why I spit on the Sons even though I have no real cause to hate them.
Dancer’s handsome face curls into a tired smile, and it’s only then that I realize how feeble his dead arm really is—thinner than his muscular right arm, bent like a flower’s root. But despite the withered limb, there’s a twisted menace to Dancer, a less obvious sort than that in Harmony. It comes out when I laugh at him, when I scorn him and his dreams.
“Our informants exist to feed us information and to help us find the outliers so we can extract the best of Red from the mines.”
“So you can use us.”
Dancer smiles tightly and picks up the bowl from the cot. “We will play a game to see if you are one of these outliers, Darrow. If you win, I will take you to see something few lowReds have seen.”
LowReds. I’ve never heard the term before.
“And if I lose?”
“Then you are not an outlier and the Golds win yet again.”
I flinch at the notion.
He holds out a bowl and explains the rules. “There are two cards in the bowl. One bears the reaper’s scythe. The other bears a lamb. Pick the scythe and you lose. Pick the lamb and you win.”
Except I notice his voice fluctuate when he says this last bit. This is a test. Which means there is no element of luck to it. It must then be measuring my intelligence, which means there is a kink. The only way the game could test my intelligence is if the cards are both scythes; that’s the singular variable that could be altered. Simple. I stare into Dancer’s handsome eyes. It is a rigged game; I’m used to these, and usually I follow the rules. Just not this time.
“I’ll play.”
I reach into the bowl and pull free a card, taking care that only I can see its face. It is a scythe. Dancer’s eyes never leave mine.
“I win,” I say.
He reaches for the card to see its face, but I shove it in my mouth before he can take hold of it. He never sees what I drew. Dancer watches me chew on the paper. I swallow and pull the remaining card from the bowl and toss it at him
. A scythe.
“The lamb card simply looked too good not to eat,” I say.
“Perfectly understandable.”
The red in his eyes twinkles and he sets the bowl aside. Warmth of character returns to him, as if he’d never been a menace. “Do you know why we call ourselves Sons of Ares, Darrow? To the Romans, Mars was the god of war—a god of military glory, defense of the hearth and home. Honorable and all. But Mars is a fraud. He is a romanticized version of the Greek god Ares.”
Dancer lights a burner and hands a second one to me. The generators buzz freshly and the burner fills me with a similar haze as its smoke curls through my lungs.
“Ares was a bastard, an evil patron of rage, violence, bloodlust, and massacre,” he says.
“So by naming yourselves after him, you’re pointing to the truth of things within the Society. Cute.”
“Something like that. The Golds would prefer for us to forget history. And most of us have, or were never taught it. But I know how Gold rose to power hundreds of years ago. They call it the Conquering. They butchered any who contested them. Massacred cities, continents. Not many years ago, they reduced an entire world to ash—Rhea. The Ash Lord nuked it to oblivion. It was with Ares’s wrath that they acted. And now we are the sons of that wrath.”
“Are you Ares?” I ask, voice hushed. Worlds. They’ve destroyed worlds. But Rhea is so much farther out from Earth than Mars. It’s one of Saturn’s moons, I think. Why would they nuke a world all the way out there?
“No. I’m not Ares,” he answers.
“But you belong to him.”
“I belong to no one but Harmony and my people. I am like you, Darrow, born to a clan of earth diggers, miners from the colony Tyros. Only I know more of the world.” He frowns at my impatient expression. “You think me a terrorist. I am not.”
“No?” I ask.
He leans back and takes a drag on his burner.