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“Yes. You’re used to knowing what’s what. You think like the rest of them.” I nod to the HC’s reflection. “Things are set in stone. Things are well ordered. Reds at the bottom, everyone else standing on our backs. Now you’re looking at me and you’re realizing that we don’t bloodydamn like it down there. Red is rising, Mickey.”
“Oh, you’ve got far to go …”
I reach up and grab his wrists so that he cannot move. He stares at me in the mirror’s reflection, struggling against my hold. Nothing is stronger than a Helldiver’s grip. I smile into the mirror, locking my golden eyes with his violet ones. He smells like fear. Primal terror. Like a mouse cornered by a lion.
“Be kind to Evey, Mickey. Don’t make her dance. Give her a plush life or I’ll come back to pull your hands off your body.”
13
BAD THINGS
Matteo is a tall wisp of a Pink with long limbs and a lean, beautiful face. He is a slave. Or was a slave for carnal pleasures. Yet he walks like a water lord. Beauty in his step. Manners and grace in the wave of his hand. He has a penchant for wearing gloves and sniffing at even the smallest bit of dirt. Body maintenance has been his life’s purpose. So he doesn’t find it strange when he helps me apply a hair follicle killer to my arms, legs, torso, and privates. But I do. When we’re done, we’re both cursing—me from the sting, him from the punch I threw at his shoulder. I accidentally dislocated it just by punching it. I still don’t know my own strength. And they do make their Pinks fragile. If he is the rose, I am the thorns.
“Bald as a toddler, you frenetic little baby,” Matteo sighs as properly as one can say such a thing. “Just as the newest Luna fashion requires. Now, with a bit of eyebrow sculpting—oh, how your brows are like fungus-nibbling caterpillars—and nose-hair eradication, cuticle readjustment, teeth whitening on those slick new chompers—which, if I may say, are yellow as mustard dappled with dandelions … tell me, have you ever brushed your new teeth?—and blackhead removal (which shall be like probing for helium-3), toner adjustment, and melatonin injections, and you’ll be prim and rose proper–ish.”
I snort at the foolishness of it all. “I already look like a Gold.”
“You look like a Bronze! A fool’s Gold! One of the lowbred bastards who looks more khaki than Gold. You must be perfect.”
“You’re a bloodydamn odd lark, Matteo.”
He smacks me. “Mind yourself! A Gold would rather die than use that slithering mineslang. ‘Gorydamn’ or ‘gory’; and ‘slag’ instead of ‘squab.’ Every time you say ‘bloody’ or ‘bloodydamn,’ I will smack not your gob, but your mouth. And if you say ‘squab’ or ‘gob,’ I will kick you in the scrotum—which I do know my way around—as I will do if you do not get rid of that horrible accent. You sound like you were born in a gorydamn dumpster.”
He frowns and sets his hands on his narrow hips.
“And then we’ll have to teach you manners. And culture, culture, goodman.”
“I have manners.”
“By the maker, we are so, so going to have to make you forswear that brogue as well as the cursing.”
He pokes me as he lists out my flaws.
“Might try adopting some manners of your own, buttboy,” I growl.
He pulls off one of my gloves and slaps me across the face and takes a bottle in hand and holds it to my throat. I laugh.
“You’ll have to get your Helldiver reflexes back soon to go with that gawky new body.”
I eye the bottle.
“Going to poke me to death?”
“It is a polyenne sword, goodman. A razor, in other words. One moment it is soft as hair, but with an organic impulse, it turns harder than diamond. It is the only thing that will cut through a pulseShield. One moment a whip, the next moment a perfect sword. It is the weapon of a gentleman. A Gold. For any other Color to carry it is death.”
“It is a bottle, you daft—”
He jams me in the throat so that I gag.
“And it was your manners that forced me to draw my razor and challenge you, thereby precipitously ending your impudent life. You may have fought with fists for honor in that hovel you called home. You were a bug then. An ant. An Aureate fights with a blade at the slightest provocation. They have honor the likes of which you know nothing about. Your honor was personal; theirs is personal, familial, and planetary. That is all. They fight for higher stakes, and they do not forgive when the bloodletting is done. Least of all the Peerless Scarred. Manners, goodman. Manners will protect you until you can protect yourself from my shampoo bottle.”
“Matteo …,” I say, rubbing my throat.
“Yes?” he sighs.
“What is shampoo?”
Another stint in Mickey’s carving room might have been preferable to Matteo’s tutelage. At least Mickey was afraid of me.
