I pause. Ah. I assumed that trust ran deep with the Sons of Ares, that they were of one mind. Here is a crack, a division. Matteo is Dancer’s ally, but not a friend. Something in my dancing made him think twice. Then I realize it. He did not see Mickey carve me. He is taking this all on faith that I was once a Red, and how difficult that must be. Something in my dancing made him think I was born to this. Something to do with that last dance, the one called the Polemides.
“I am Darrow, son of Dale, Lambda’s Helldiver of Lykos. I have never been anyone else, Matteo.”
He crosses his arms. “If you are lying to me …”
“I do not lie to Reds.”
Later that evening, I research the dances I performed. Polemides is Greek for “child of war.” It is the dance that reminded me so much of Uncle Narol’s dances. It is the Gold’s dance of war, the one they teach children when they are young to prepare them for the motions of martial warfare and the use of the razor. I watch a holo of Golds in battle, and my heart falls into my stomach. They fight like a summer song. Not like the thunderous, monstrous Obsidians. But like birds banking into a fresh wind. They fight in pairs, swerving, dancing, killing, ripping through a field of Obsidian and Gray as though they were at play with scythes and all the bodies that fell to them were like stalks of grain that sprayed blood instead of sallow chaff. Their golden armor shines. Their razors flash. They are gods, not men.
And I mean to destroy them?
I sleep poorly in my bed of silk that night. Long after kissing Eo’s haemanthus blossom, I fall asleep and dream of my father and what it would have been like to have known him into manhood, to have learned to dance from him instead of from his drunken brother. I clutch the scarlet headband in my hand as I wake. Holding it as dearly as I clutch my wedding band. All those things that remind me of home.
Yet they are not enough.
I am afraid.
Dancer finds me at my morning breakfast.
“You’ll be happy to know, our hackers have spent two weeks hacking into the Board of Quality Control’s cloud to change Caius au Andromedus’s name to Darrow au Andromedus.”
“Good.”
“That’s all you have to say? Do you know how much … never mind.” He shakes his head and gives a chuckle. “Darrow. It is so offColor. There will be raised eyebrows.”
I shrug to conceal my fear. “So I’ll butcher their gorydamn test and they’ll care less than a lick.”
“Spoken like a Gold.”
The next day, Matteo takes me by ship to the stables of Ishtar, not far from Yorkton. It’s a place by the sea, where green fields stretch over rolling hills.. I’ve never been in so wide a place. I’ve never seen the land curve away from me. Never seen a true horizon or animals so terrifying as the beasts Matteo arranged for our lesson. They stomp and stamp and snort, flicking their tails and baring their monstrous yellow teeth. Horses. I’ve always been scared of horses, despite Eo’s story of Andromeda.
“They’re monsters,” I whisper to Matteo.
“Nevertheless,” he whispers back, “it is the gentleman’s way. You must ride well, lest you find yourself embarrassed in some formal situation.”
I look at the other Golds riding past. There are only three at the stables today, each accompanied by a servant like Matteo, Pinks and Browns.
“A situation like this one?” I hiss at him. “Fine. Fine.” I point to a massive black stallion with hooves that paw the ground. “I’ll take that beast.”
Matteo smiles. “This one is more your speed.”
Matteo gives me a pony. A big pony, but a pony. There is no social interaction here; the other riders trot past and tip their heads to say good day, but that is all. So their smiles are enough for me to know how ridiculous I look. I do not take to riding well. And I take to it even more poorly when my pony bolts as Matteo and I navigate a path into a copse of trees. Out the other side of the copse, I jump off the creature and land deftly in the grass. Someone laughs in the distance, a girl with long hair. She rides the stallion I pointed to earlier.
“Maybe you ought to stick to the city, Pixie,” she shouts at me, then kicks her horse away. I rise from my knee and watch her ride into the distance. Her hair spills out behind her, more golden than the setting sun.
15
The Testing
My test comes after two months of training my mind with Dancer. I do not memorize. I do not even really learn when with him. Instead, his training is designed to help my mind adapt to paradigm shifts. For instance, if gravity were suddenly reversed, most brains would be unable to comprehend or adjust to the shift in paradigms. Mine processes, digests, and calculates. Another example: If a fish has 3,453 scales on its left side and 3,453 on its right side, which side of the fish has the most scales? The outside. They call it extrapolational thinking. It was how I knew that I should eat the scythe card when I first met Dancer. I am very good at it.
I find it ironic that Dancer and his friends can create a fake history for me, a fake family, a fake life, but they cannot fake my admittance test. So, three months after my training begins, I take the test in a bright room next to a noisy mouse of a Goldbrow girl who incessantly taps her stylus on a jade bracelet. She may be part of the test for all I know. When she’s not looking, I snatch the stylus from her fingers and hide it down my sleeve. I am a Helldiver of Lykos. So yes, I can steal a stupid girl’s stylus without her knowing anything about it. She gawks around as if magic has been done. Then she begins to whine. They don’t give her another stylus, so she runs out in tears. Afterwards, the Penny Proctor looks at his datapad and rewinds a video from a nanoCamera. He looks at me and smiles. Such traits are apparently admirable.
A Golden razor blade of a girl disagrees and sneers “Cutter” in my ear as she slices past me in the hall outside. Matteo told me not to speak to anyone because I am not yet ready to socialize, so I barely bite back a very Red reply. Her words linger. Cutter. Cutthroat. Machiavellian. Ruthless. They all describe what she thinks of me. Funny thing is, most Golds would see the term as an accolade.
A musical voice addresses me.
“I think she actually just paid you a compliment. So don’t mind her. She’s pretty as a peach, but she’s all rotten inside. I took a bite once, if you catch my flow. Tasty, then putrid. Fantastic grab in there, by the bye. I was about to rip that ninny’s eyes from her skull myself. Damnable tapping!”