“If you could go anywhere in the world,” he asked me then, his face turned toward the horizon, “where would you go?”
“Basea,” I signed without hesitation.
“It’s probably different now, you know,” he signed gently in return. “After the Federation took over.” There was no malice or pity in his expression, just a grave truth. “It’s not the home you remember.”
“I know. I’m just curious.” I looked back at him. “Why does it matter to you?”
“Why does what matter?”
“How I feel about Basea?”
“I don’t know. Shouldn’t it matter to everyone?” He shoved a grape in his mouth and offered me another cluster of the fruit. “It might be how I feel someday about Mara,” he signed. “If we lose.”
He was sympathetic, but also afraid. I’d never heard a highborn Maran put himself on equal footing with a Basean before. I stared at him, surprised, and then took the cluster of grapes he offered.
“To our home.” I lifted the grapes to his.
“To our home,” he repeated.
Those same grapevines now wind brown and lifeless along the walls. This place flanks the beginning and end of our bond.
The guards stop at the front door and motion for me to enter. “Master Barra is already expecting you,” one of them tells me.
I nod at him and step inside.
A rush of warm, dry air hits me. The faint smell of wood burning in a marble fireplace permeates the space. My boots echo against the floors. When I turn my head up, I see the soaring atrium of the estate’s main hall, a space that stretches up at least three stories, the arched ceiling painted into rainbows from the multicolored glass windows through which shines the weak winter light. Original architecture salvaged from the Early Ones. Beyond the main atrium, the Barra family had installed their own embellishments—a second floor lined with balconies, a spiraling staircase, and a main floor dotted with soft, cushioned seats and speckled cow pelts. The white engraving around the marble fireplace is embellished with gold. Arched windows reach from the floor to the ceiling, divided by thin black lines of metal, and the light stretches long against white-and-gray wooden floors. Stark beauty, everywhere, of a family centuries old.
Here, I feel myself clash against the pale floors and white walls like a stain. My mother and I had survived our first few years in this nation by running odd errands in the Outer City’s shantytowns. I’d deliver messages crumpled in my fists, shovel horse manure for the people who ran stalls rimming the walls, steal and sell metal from the scrapyards dotting the muddy, crowded landscape. I’d collect what little money I could for my mother. I’d huddle on the side of the narrow paths, surrounded by the stench of grease, fried fish, and sewage. No one spared me a glance. There were too many kids like me fighting to survive in the shanties. I was just another face lost in the crowd.
Now I’m here, standing inside the home of a family with obscene wealth, and all I can do is imagine myself as a child, dirty and startled, lost here. How did Corian come out of a house like this? He must have looked like the sun running through these halls, golden hair and skin and laughter against these white surroundings. And I feel the pit of my grief all over again, its pain the same as the hollow bite of a hungry stomach, tipping the world around me until I can no longer see.
No one is in here. I wait for a moment, wondering if maybe I’d come to the wrong room, except that the guards ushered me to this spot.
Finally, I hear the faint echo of footsteps coming from down the corridor. They are the solid, sure steps of an aristocrat.
I don’t wait to kneel. Before the figure emerges into the hall, I lower myself onto both knees so that I can feel the cold floor through the fabric of my trousers. I hold Corian’s folded uniform out, presenting it flat before me with both hands. Then I bow my head deeply. There is still a faint scent of Corian from his Striker coat. I catch it now in my bent state, the smell of smoke and sugar, still lingering there from the candies he always kept tucked in his pockets.
The footsteps enter the hall. From the corner of my eyes, I catch sight of a pair of black boots, polished to perfection,