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The rest of the table is filled out by Seraphina’s cousins, including Bellerephon the Bold and his wife, a slender woman with large eyes and a trident diadem of House Norvo of Titan. The well-married man stares at us with pale eyes set in a sullen, cruel face. His long body is hunched like a praying mantis waiting for supper. Despite the earlier violence, Diomedes is also in attendance. He sits serenely at his mother’s side and seems the favorite object of the children’s adoration.
“The heroes of the hour,” Dido says with a smile to her family. “May I introduce Castor au Janus and Regulus au Janus. The men responsible for bringing our Seraphina back to us.” Two bowls are handed to us. Dido stands, takes two pinches of rice from her own bowl, and drops one into Cassius’s bowl and one into mine. Her family follows the same custom, each walking over to us to share from their own bowls, even Bellerephon, who flicks the rice with boorish contempt. His wife smiles apologetically. Last in line, Seraphina meets my gaze as she honors the rite and returns to her seat.
I wonder if her mother knows she visited my room or if her claim of her mother’s ignorance was a deception in itself. I didn’t tell Cassius. He would think it some devious manipulation. Perhaps it is. I’ve not stopped replaying the exchange in my head.
With rice before us, the meal is delayed as per ancient custom, to demonstrate that the Golds are not slaves to the whims of their hunger. My stomach rumbles, but I dare not touch my rice. A Violet with short-cropped hair enters the room carrying a slender harp. He plays a gentle melody and is joined by one of the Pinks from earlier—the woman with the ancient eyes and truculent mouth, Aurae. She sings “A Memory of Ash,” a quiet, famous dirge written after my grandfather burned the rebel moon of Rhea in the First Moon Lord’s Rebellion. No one ever accused the Moon Lords of having short memories. Without the buzz of the cosmopolitan cities of the Core, it must be hard to forget.
When the Violet and Pink have finished, they depart the room to light applause.
Diomedes’s eyes follow Aurae in a way that he should hope no one in his family notices. I file it away for later.
The main course of the meal is served without further delay by minute Browns in dusky gray livery. Their eyes never rise higher than the knee of any Gold, but they are treated with politeness by their masters; thanked for their services and addressed by name. It’s a civility I’ve seen in the halls and the hangars and the bathhouses amongst the Colors from the top down. Each Color within their sphere. There is no undue rudeness, coarseness, or cruelty from Gray to Brown or Gold to Gray. I find it uniquely admirable, especially when I notice the children are not served by the Browns, but must get up and fetch their food from a cart at the far side of the room. Servants are earned with a Peerless Scar, I remember. The Browns skip Cassius and me as well until Dido motions them to serve us. “We’ll forgive the guests their naked faces, for now.”
A small bowl of flowered water sits beside each place setting along with a white linen towel. Recalling my lessons from my grandmother’s steward, Cedric, I dip my fingers and dry them on the towel.
The fare itself is as simple as the clothes: roasted fish from Europa with hearty seasonings of salt to mask the lack of pepper at the table. Flatbreads, hummus, plain rice, and roasted vegetables steam in unadorned bowls, which are passed around and served without utensils. The rice is in abundance, but the cuts of meat are meager in size.
“Regulus, the Archimedes is your ship, yes?” Dido asks.
“She is.”
“A sleek flier, who has seen more than a few years. Older than Gaia even.”
“Hmm?” Gaia asks, looking up from her pipe like a disheveled barn owl.
“I said his ship is almost as old as you. You remember the line, I’m sure. A GD-17 Whisper-class frigate.”
“Who is whispering?” Gaia asks. “No whispering at the table. It is rude.” She goes back to her pipe and stares up at us suspiciously through a bramble of eyebrows as if we mean to do her great harm. I’ve seen enough of intelligence to know how hard it is to hide. The woman does a fine enough effort for this backwater, but her guise wouldn’t last the length of a gala in the Luna courts. The dancing faces worn there are the best in the worlds. Deception, the language of life. But it seems Gaia has everyone at this table convinced she is senile.
Interesting woman.
“Your ship is a rare craft for simple merchants,” Bellerephon says coolly. He traces a finger along the stone table. The man’s a brutish clod with the petulance of a child. Devoid of mystery, a man must have dignity. I find the lack of either boorish. “Hard to see how it would be come by legally.”
“I’m not sure I like your tone, my goodman,” Cassius says. “But the pressure on your moon has befuddled my ears. Perhaps you might clarify so we might have no misunderstandings.” Again with the antagonism.
Bellerephon scowls at him. The rest of the Raa family look on with the faint amusement of people far too comfortable with violence to care much about verbal ripostes.
Seraphina raises an eyebrow and eats her fish.
“He means nothing by it,” Dido says smoothly. “Do you, nephew?”
“Nothing at all.” He stares on at Cassius.
“I won her in a bet six years back from a new-money Silver who couldn’t hold his amber,” Cassius explains now with a smile. “She was liberated from Rising sympathizers.”
Diomedes gracefully removes the bones from his fish with a single pull and shows Paleron how to do the same. “Regulus, you said you served,” he says without looking up.
“I did. I was a centurion within the Augustan legions during the Martian Civil War.”
Diomedes looks up. “Then you fell in the Lion’s Rain?” Respect fills his voice. The rest of the table listens raptly. Mention a battle and their ears perk up like a kennel of dogs hearing a can open.
“I did.”
“What was it like?” Seraphina asks.
“Hell,” Cassius says, disappointing them with his answer. He might not have fallen in the Reaper’s Rain, but it cost him his entire family, save his mother.
It’s a clever game Cassius is playing. By saying he’s an Augustan man, he’s one of the only Core Golds with the same sense of betrayal the Rim must have felt after the bloody Triumph and the failure of their rebellion. A dangerous gambit. He might claim to know the same people. And some of them might have sought refuge here.
