“Have much experience with robots?” I ask as she moves around the Victory Armor in a room off to the side of the entry hall. The Sovereign gave it to the Ash Lord when he burned Rhea. Mustang’s fingers play over the frost-hued metal.
“Father’s Oranges and Greens had a few robots in their engineering labs. Ancient, rusted things that Father had refurbished and put in the museums.” She laughs to herself. “He used to take me there back when I wore dresses and my mother was still alive. Absolutely detested the things. I remember Mother laughing about his paranoia, especially when Adrius tried restarting one of the combat models from Eurasia. Father was convinced that robots would have overthrown man and now rule the Solar System if Earth’s empires had never been destroyed.”
I snort out a laugh.
“What?” she asks.
“I’m just …” I catch my breath. “I’m trying to imagine the great ArchGovernor Augustus having nightmares of robots.” Another bout of laughter seizes me. “Does he suppose they’d want more oil? More vacation time?”
Mustang watches me, amused. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” My laughter gradually subsides. I hold my stomach. “I’m fine.” I can’t stop grinning. “Is he afraid of aliens too?”
“I never asked him.” She taps the armor. “But they’re out there, you know.”
I stare at her. “That’s not in the archives.”
“Oh, no no. I mean we’ve never found any. But the Drake-Roddenberry equation suggests the mathematic probability is N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L. Where R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy, where fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets … You’re not even listening anymore.”
“What do you suppose they would think of us?” I ask. “Of man?”
“I suppose they would think we’re beautiful, strange, and inexplicably horrible to one another.” She points down a hall. “Is that the training room?” She flips off her slippers and walks away down a marble hall, casting a look back at me over her shoulder. I follow. Lights come mutedly to life as we pass. She slips ahead faster than I care to follow. I find her moments later in the center of the circular training room. The white mat is soft under my feet. Carvings line the wooden walls. “The House of Grimmus is an old one,” she says, pointing to a frieze of a man in armor. “You can see the Ash Lord’s first ancestor there. Aucus au Grimmus, the first Gold to touch land in the Iron Rain that took the American eastern seaboard after one of Cassius’s ancestors, forget his name, broke through the Atlantic Fleet. Then there is Vitalia au Grimmus, the Great Witch, right there.” She turns to me. “Do you even know the history of the things you try to break?”
“It was Scipio au Bellona who defeated the Atlantic Fleet.”
“Was it?” she asks.
“I’ve studied the history,” I say. “Just as well as you.
“But you stand apart from it, don’t you?” She paces around me. “You always have. Like you’re an outsider looking in. It was growing up away from all this on your parents asteroid mine that did the trick, wasn’t it? That’s why you can ask a question like ‘What would aliens think of us?’”
“You’re just as much an outsider as I am. I’ve read your dissertations.”
“You have?” She’s surprised.
“Believe it or not, I can read too.” I shake my head. “It’s like everyone forgets I only missed one question on the Institute’s slangsmarts test.”
“Ew. You missed a question?” She wrinkles her nose as she picks a practice razor from a bench. “I suppose that’s why you weren’t in Minerva.”
“How did Pax manage to get picked by House Minerva, by the way? I’ve always wondered … he wasn’t exactly a scholar.”
“How did Roque end up in Mars?” she replies with a shrug. “Each of us have hidden depths. Now, Pax wasn’t as bright as Daxo is, but wisdom is found in the heart not the head. Pax taught me that.” She smiles distantly. “The one grace my father gave me after my mother died was letting me visit the Telemanus estate. He kept Adrius and me apart to make assassination of his heirs more difficult. I was lucky to be near them. Though if I hadn’t been, maybe Pax wouldn’t have been quite so loyal. Maybe he wouldn’t have asked to be in Minerva. Maybe he’d be alive. Sorry …” Shaking away the sadness, she looks back to me with a tight smile. “What did you think of my dissertations?”
“Which one?”
“Surprise me.”
“‘The Insects of Specialization.’” Snap. A practice razor slaps into my arm, stinging the flesh. I yelp in surprise. “What the hell?”
Mustang stands there looking innocent, swishing the practice blade back and forth. “I was making sure you were paying attention.”
“Paying attention? I was answering your question!”
She shrugs. “All right. Perhaps I just wanted to hit you.” She lashes at me again.
I dodge. “Why?”
“No reason in particular.” She swings. I dodge. “But they say even a fool learns something once it hits him.”
“Don’t quote …” She slashes, I twist aside. “… Homer … to me.”
“Why is that dissertation your favorite?” she asks coolly, swinging at me again. The practice razor has no edge, but it is as hard as a wooden cane. I leave my feet, twisting sideways out of the way like a Lykos tumbler.
“Because …” I dodge another.
“When you’re on your heels, you’re a liar. On your toes, you spit truth.” She swings again. “Now spit.” She hits my kneecap. I roll away, trying to reach the other practice razors, but she keeps me from them with a flurry of swings. “Spit!”
“I liked it …” I jump backward. “… because you said ‘Specialization makes us limited, simple insects; a fact … from … which Gold is not immune.’”
She stops attacking and stares accusatorially, and I realize I’ve fallen into a trap.
“If you agree with that, then why do you insist on making yourself only a warrior?”