“Careful? This from Darrow, the mad Helldiver of Lykos?” She laughs patronizingly. “Your father was born careful, obedient. But were you? I didn’t think so when I married you. The others say you are like a machine, because they think you know no fear. They’re blind. They don’t see how fear binds you.”
She traces the haemanthus blossom along my collarbone in a sudden show of tenderness. She is a creature of moods. The flower is the same color as the wedding band on her finger.
I roll on an elbow to face her. “Spit it out. What do you want?”
“Do you know why I love you, Helldiver?” she asks.
“Because of my sense of humor.”
She laughs dryly. “Because you thought you could win the Laurel. Kieran told me how you burned yourself today.”
I sigh. “The rat. Always jabbering. Thought that’s what younger brothers were supposed to do, not elder.”
“Kieran was frightened, Darrow. Not for you, like you might be thinking. He was frightened of you, because he can’t do what you did. Boy wouldn’t even think it.”
She always talks circles around me. I hate the abstracts she lives for.
“So you love me because you believe that I think there are things worth the risk?” I puzzle out. “Or because I’m ambitious?”
“Because you’ve a brain,” she teases.
She makes me ask it again. “What do you want me to do, Eo?”
“Act. I want you to use your gifts for your father’s dream. You see how people watch you, take their cues from you. I want you to think owning this land, our land, is worth the risk.”
“How much a risk?”
“Your life. My life.”
I scoff. “You’re that eager to be rid of me?”
“Speak and they will listen,” she urges. “It is that bloody simple. All ears yearn for a voice to lead them through darkness.”
“Grand, so I’ll hang with a troop. I am my father’s son.”
“You won’t hang.”
I laugh too harshly. “So certain a wife I have. I’ll hang.”
“You’re not meant to be a martyr.” Sighing, she lies back in disappointment. “You wouldn’t see the point to it.”
“Oh? Well then, tell me, Eo. What is the point to dying? I’m only a martyr’s son. So tell me what that man accomplished by robbing me of a father. Tell me what good comes of all that bloodydamn sadness. Tell me why it’s better I learned to dance from my uncle than my father.” I go on. “Did his death put food on your table? Did it make any of our lives any better? Dying for a cause doesn’t do a bloodydamn thing. It just robbed us of his laughter.” I feel the tears burning my eyes. “It just stole away a father and a husband. So what if life isn’t fair? If we have family, that is all that should matter.”
She licks her lips and takes her time in replying.
“Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains that bind us to the Golds, to the Society. Could you imagine it? Mars could be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here.” Her face is easier to see as night fades through the clear roof. It is alive, on fire. “If you led the others to freedom. The things you could do, Darrow. The things you could make happen.” She pauses and I see her eyes are glistening. “It chills me. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low.”
“You repeat the same damn points,” I say bitterly. “You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn’t. You say it’s better to die on your feet. I say it’s better to live on our knees.”
“You’re not even living!” she snaps. “We are machine men with machine minds, machine lives.…”
“And machine hearts?” I ask. “That’s what I am?”
“Darrow …”
“What do you live for?” I ask her suddenly. “Is it for me? Is it for family and love? Or is it for some dream?”
“It’s not just some dream, Darrow. I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.”