2. Aureus

aureus ~a ~um, a.

1. covered with gold, gilded

I redouble my strides as I head down the tourney hall toward hangar six. I have to move fast—I lost precious minutes shoving Father’s body out of the airlock. The cavernous walkway looms in cold marble and steel. The Station is large enough to house three wards—Low Ward, Mid Ward, and the Noble Ward—but the tourney hall is grander than any building on the Station save for the king’s palace. As riding is the only sport approved by both the king and the church, the tourney hall is a beacon of entertainment and leisure—one of the few places commoners are welcome to spend their credits and fill the stands.

I pick up my speed as I take a left down to hangar six, following the orange lights carved in the shape of angels. How easy the nobles must have it if they can waste time making lights this beautiful. They have food aplenty and medicine enough to heal whatever sniffle they may catch, while the red pox ravages the rest of us with no end in sight. The pockmarks on my own cheeks burn—I caught it long ago and barely survived. My father’s face, on the other hand, was terrifyingly smooth. Nobles never have to survive. They decide who survives.

A duke is the highest position within a House. He oversees a handful of lords, and the handful of lords then oversees the many barons who keep the rest of us impoverished, at the mercy of the aristocracy and their myriad friends in all places. They decide who lives, who gets protein rations, and who dies.

But this time, I’ve decided. From now on, I’m the only one who gets to decide when and where I die.

And it will be inside a steed.

I glare up at the stately banners of the noble Houses lining the tourney hall: the purple-gold dragon of the king’s House—House Ressinimus—hangs more prominently than any other. Fans aren’t allowed near the hangars, but a group has snuck in anyway, waiting with hothouse flowers and autograph books—real, precious paper; real, unprecious fanaticism—for their favorite riders to pass by.

“Who’s that?” a girl whispers, eyes on me.

“Hauteclare’s rider,” a man next to her asserts. “The only House who wears a white that bright is Hauteclare.”

“But…she’s a girl. I thought Duke Hauteclare rode their steed?”

The man shakes his head. “Lady Mirelle Ashadi-Hauteclare rides for them now. The duke retired three years ago. His head injury in the last Supernova Cup—”

I tune them out as easily as turning the dial down on a vis. I used the vis on his dying wrist to ping this “Lady Mirelle” and told her the tourney match was delayed by thirty minutes. She will be the least of my problems.

Riding is a pure noble’s profession with an entire academy dedicated to it. Steeds themselves are highly tuned, highly complex machines—and one wrong move spells the end. Despite watching the sport, I will surely make many wrong moves that end in my own death today.

Still, the court won’t know I’m a bastard until they crack open the steed’s cockpit and take the helmet off my dead body. The pockmarks on my cheeks will prove me a commoner without the credits to fix them, and the DNA test will prove me worse—House Hauteclare’s bastard. They will be the first and only House in history to taint the hallowed world of riding.

A shiver races down my spine. This death will hurt more than the judiciary plasma-vent burning, but it will hurt them more than me.

A tall rider with broad shoulders draws my attention as he walks toward me. He’s in a red rider’s suit so crimson it hurts to look at. Blood in Father’s carpet; blood on Mother’s throat. A brown hawk sigil screeches over the rider’s crested helmet, but I’m ignorant of the House it belongs to—there are fifty-one Houses in the king’s court, and only nobles bother with memorizing the sigils of dozens of their fellow assholes.

I lift my chin. Once, I might’ve felt fear at this rider’s sheer height looming over mine, the way their tight crimson suit highlights every hard-won muscle on their impressive body. I might’ve felt unease at how seamlessly they move over the marble floor—like liquid fire. Something that big shouldn’t move that gracefully. But all I feel now is the end, pulling me in as inexorably as a gravity generator.

We draw even, and Red Rider’s shoulder collides with mine. On purpose. I stagger, but they don’t so much as raise their visor to apologize. A deep voice comes out flanged by the in-helmet speakers.

“Tipsy, Mirelle? Interesting way to start your season. Should I send you a bottle of nice old Earth whiskey? Let’s toast after I beat you in a single round.”

I keep silent. He circles me like a hungry dog.

“Huh—you look thinner. Been skimping on your veggies?”

My voice will give me away, but if I don’t react at all, it’ll draw even more suspicion. Red Rider reaches for me, and I shoot my hand out to intercept him instantly. Our palms freeze flat against each other’s, and adrenaline surges hot in my stomach. He cocks his helmet, the hawk sigil’s eye watching me beadily.

“Feisty today, aren’t we? We’ve still got fifteen minutes till launch. Should we take this to the showers, just you and me?”

He tries to lace his fingers between mine, and he might be taller and stronger, but my time at the brothel digging for information on my father taught me the art of the armlock very well.

I crank his elbow back, his grunt of pain resounding as I kick forward with the momentum and slam him to the ground, pinning him beneath me. My chest heaves as I look down into his soulless black visor, my gold-white helmet reflected back at me.

The only hint of human in Red Rider is the way his broad chest caves with every shallow breath. My wrists are nothing but bones compared to his. He’s so ridiculously massive that breaking this pin should be child’s play, but for some inscrutable reason, he stays beneath me far longer than he needs to. A breath. Three.

The heat of his torso burns the insides of my thighs. A heat moves on the small of my back…his fingers, trying to get the upper hand. I grab and twist, slamming his arm to the ground above his head. Our helmets are suddenly too close, black visor on black visor. The feeling of a band stretching too far tightens in my chest.

He breaks first. He raises his visor just enough, the shiny black hard-light dissolving to reveal brown eyes the color of redwood—like Mother’s pendant, warm and auburn and rich, with dark eyelashes.

“If you wanted me like this”—he laughs softly—“all you had to do was ask.”

He’s a noble through and through—pleasure-seeking, arrogant, ignorant. The sports cup does little to hide his excitement, but that excitement does a terrific job of distracting him from the impostor who sits atop him. My disgusted sneer behind my visor is the first expression I’ve made at another human in…weeks? Months?

The tourney fans close in around us to record everything on their vis, wrists flashing with the blue glow of a dozen projected holoscreens.

“A bodily altercation between riders before a match is a foul!” someone cries out.

“Should we call a ref?” another asks.

Ref. It’s less a word and more a stab into my brain, a warning—authority is the only thing that can stop you now. I stand up and move off him quickly.

“No,” Red Rider blurts as he hefts himself to his feet. “Don’t call the ref—it’s my fault. I was pretty much asking for an ass-kicking.”

“But she twisted your—”

“You all saw,” he interrupts the shrilling fan, his gaze holding mine. Assessing me. He continues without looking away. “I tried to get touchy-feely without asking for the lady’s permission first. I’d consider her reaction justified.”

He presses the button on the side of his visor and hides his eyes behind the darkness again, but like every noble who swears fealty to King Ressinimus, he’s painted a blacklight halo on his forehead. With its dim blue glow, I catch the bare outline of his lips quirking into an affectionate smile—affection meant for Hauteclare’s real rider, Mirelle.

I press onward down the hall, leaving Red Rider to drown in his own fans, his deep laugh scraping against my ears.

Finally, hangar six comes into view. The Hauteclare winged-lion banner undulates above in white and gold. A row of Hauteclare pit crew in bright-white uniforms bows as I walk up. The crewhead takes his goggles off, face smooth. He should be heavily scarred by constant laser-torch exposure, but I suppose the nobles pay for even their pit crews to be kept “beautiful.”

“Just in time.” He grins. “Ghostwinder’s in fine form today, milady. Decon is ready and waiting for you.”

I nod, hands trembling as I push past the crewhead. I need to get into this Ghostwinder steed as fast as possible—the ping I sent from Father’s wrist won’t keep Mirelle away for long. Thankfully, she must have a similar figure to mine; otherwise, I would’ve been discovered by now.

My eyes find the white door of the steed’s hangar. Something is carved in it, embossed gently and grandly—a story, but not of the church’s usual angels and demons. This is a man riding a horse, his projection spear aimed at what looks like a thousand undulating snakes. I squint—not snakes at all but tendrils, joined at a labyrinthine central mass, each with a row of fangs on its underbelly.

The enemy.

There are no true pictures left of them—the king’s ministers insist the War razed all the databanks, and the priests echo them by saying evil’s work is often difficult to see. The twisted enemy whom Saint Jorj rides against depicted on the hangar door has no real shape, fewer defining features than the typical overblown church metaphor. I’ve always had doubts that’s the enemy’s true form; history is rarely accurate and written only by the victors.

“Saint Jorj looks well today, does he not, milady?” the crewhead asks. When I’m silent, he presses. “Always comforted by him. Reminds me of the War—all those steeds and brave knights lost against the enemy. Reminds me there’s a great sacrifice what came from riding and…well. I’m just honored to be a part of it all, milady.”

Of course you are. The nobles gladly hand out their table scraps to keep us grateful.

I give a nod, and the crewhead presses a button on the synth-marble wall. The hangar door slides up slowly, and I walk into the bright light alone, embossed tendrils weaving shut behind me. There is no war anymore. The enemy is gone. We won. We fight against ourselves now.

I am no knight.

But I will die like one today.