Marduk's Rebellion Read online

that an observer saw more than a teasing glimpse. Her strawberry red curls were tied up and away from a scholar caste-mark of scar tissue on the center of her forehead. Leaf green ribbons fell in playful arabesques from hair to shoulders to the small of her back, drawing the eye down to perfect legs wrapped in matching green sandals. Vanessa was the rose incarnate. She was Spring and Beauty and Love, all rolled into a shapely subatomic physicist with off-the-chart intelligence scores, although she rarely let the later show.

  Most men in the room acted like they’d never seen a woman before.

  I felt sorry for them. Well, almost.

  Okay, fine. I wasn’t even a tiny bit sorry for them.

  “Stop it! Give them a chance. These are our peers, Mallory.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “My peers? These are scholar-castes.”

  “Which you should have been!”

  I tossed back my drink. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  “So are butterflies, but I wouldn’t fuck one.” She was right though. Everyone here was pretty. The high-castes were all beautiful. They’d been preened, pampered, plucked, dyed and nipped until they couldn’t be anything but pretty. Prettiness, like health and intelligence, had been an important survival trait under Sarcodinay rule.

  “Besides,” I added, swallowing bile. “There’d be no challenge to it. This is too easy.”

  “Too easy?”

  “Sure, why not? No more prohibition laws, no more penalties for unapproved sex. The guests here are just now starting to realize what the lower-castes figured out five minutes after the peace treaty was announced: they bring a girl or boy home with them and Ministry of Justice isn’t going to be knocking down their door in the middle of happy time. The only thing keeping this party from turning into one giant orgy is that these geniuses haven’t figured out how to have one without messing up their hair.”

  “Keepers, you’re cynical tonight.”

  I snagged a new drink from a rough-looking slave-caste waiter who was probably a lot more fun in the sack than any of these upstanding bootlickers. I winked at him. He looked surprised, then grinned back at me. “I’m cynical every day of the week, Nessa. Tonight I’m drunk enough to be honest.”

  A frown crossed that perfect face. “You’re not being nice.”

  “How many years have I known you? Ten? You’re only now figuring out that I’m not nice? Do you remember what I do for a living these days?”

  “Yes, you save lives.” She crossed her arms and stamped a silk-wrapped toe. “You are nice. Admit it.”

  “Will not. Do you have any idea how many years it took me to build up this reputation? Say I’m nice and people will start thinking they can push me around.” My eyes followed the waiter. He stole a whiskey from his own tray and drank it quickly, watching me with a hot dare in his eyes. He wasn’t pretty. He couldn’t be, not compared to this crowd, but he was refreshingly real, with a nose that had been broken and healed crooked and ragged hair cut by amateur hands. The fringe of his black mop almost covered the slave-caste on his forehead. A week ago, that would have been crime enough to warrant any number of final punishments. His eyes were a rare shade of green, full of mischief and fire. I was willing to bet an all-expense paid vacation on Liberty that his hands were rough and calloused and had never seen a manicure.

  Vanessa laughed. “It will be fun. Look at the one with black hair. Isn’t he cute?’

  “I don’t know if I’d call him cute, but I’m in love.”

  “You’re looking the wrong way.”

  “Not from where I’m standing.”

  She followed the direction of my stare and frowned. She couldn’t see what I saw. As far as Vanessa could tell, the waiters might as well have been wearing stealth suits and face camouflage: they were invisible.

  My waiter winked at me, handed his drink tray off to another surprised member of the service industry and strolled towards the back exit.

  I didn’t need a set of double-signed orders. I knew an invitation when I saw one.

  Vanessa grabbed my arm before I could follow him. “His name is Jonathan. I invited him here to meet you. You’ll like him. I swear you’ll like him. Give him a chance for me, Mallory.”

  I stopped. “Gala-Lee Vanessa, have you set me up on a date?”

  “You need to meet someone. Someone who’s not—”

  “Not what?”

  “Not your usual class of one-night-stand. Look at him. He’s sweet, sane and drop-dead sexy, and I love you so much that I’m not even keeping him for myself.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong with him?” I turned and looked in the indicated direction, eyes narrowed. Two men stood by a low table, encircled by floating stars. One was golden and gleaming with long braided hair and elaborate Sarcodinay-styled khani robes cut from different shades of ruby and persimmon. Crystal beads in his hair caught the light in red flashes. He looked like the high priest of an ancient Terran religion. All he needed was a virgin and a knife. The second man was smaller, and wearing a lot less—nothing more than a pair of blue-black satin pajamas with matching slippers. He was a real scandal by Sarcodinay standards. He wasn’t wearing jewelry, which in a room where everyone was overdressed and glittering became its own kind of attention. A skillfully inked luminescent tattoo of an Asian dragon slowly migrated its way from his back to around one shoulder, tail coiling around a nipple. They both looked like demigods slumming it at a convention.

  “Isn’t it time you allowed yourself to have something a little more permanent than a fling?”

  “Since when have you—you of all people—had a problem with flings?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “You haven’t fallen for someone, have you? You always try to set me up with some idiot anytime you’ve gone all love sick.”

  “I am still perfectly single, thank you very much, and Jonathan is not an idiot. I met him here on Terra while liaising with the scholar’s office, and he is completely charming.”

  “That remains to be seen. Which one is he?” I knew, but I was feeling belligerent.

  “Why, the one with the tattoo.”

  The man in question looked up at us and smiled. More of a smirk, really, as if he were perfectly aware of his status in our discussion. “Not bad, I suppose. More daring than I would have expected from this crowd. You sure he’s not hitting on that skald he’s flirting with?”

  “Keepers! Do not call him a skald! That’s Randolph Patel, new director of social placement. He was handpicked by Lisa Keiler, so he is most certainly not a skald. In fact, Patel is going to be a good man to know when you go back to the private sector.”

  I looked for my waiter. He was gone. I couldn’t even be sure which door he’d exited. I mourned for the loss of my first true love of the evening.

  “I’ll introduce you. They’ll adore you.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. As if any man looked twice at me while I was standing next to the Goddess of Love. “You can have him. I have to leave soon anyway.”

  “Don’t want to keep the service staff waiting?” She gave me a hard, knowing look.

  I grinned. So she had seen him. “Watch yourself, Vanessa. Your dumb blonde routine is slipping.”

  “The waiter would have been just another one-night-stand.”

  “So would your friend. I guarantee it. Another time. I’m not ditching you for just anyone: I have a dinner date with Paul.”

  She hesitated. It was just a brief pause, a tightening of her brows, quickly passed. “You do? That’s wonderful!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”

  “I know you too well, Nessa. Why are you worried? Paul’s my oldest friend.”

  Vanessa ignored me, waved a hand at the godlings and marched me over to them like I was the latest sacrifice at the temple. “Randolph! Jonathan! This is my friend Mallory. I worked with her on the Janus Project!”

  Randolph smiled at me, a smile that faltered and froze as I approached. “My wo
rd.” He looked embarrassed as he took in my frothy white silk skirt and the clingy cloth-of-gold top. “Didn’t anyone tell you?” He shook my hand like it was made of wax.

  He turned to Vanessa. “You should have warned your Colonial friend.”

  Vanessa smiled as if she had no idea what Randolph was talking about.

  “Very bold,” his companion said. “I’m sure she wore the royal colors on purpose.” Jonathan smiled at me. “You’re making a statement, right?”

  “Maybe I like white and gold.” I smiled.

  My appearance may have amused Jonathan, but Randolph wasn’t ready to let go of such an impropriety. His stare was overt and hostile and raised my hackles. “You must be new on Terra.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him, drawing attention to the ring of scar tissue on my forehead. “Sure, genius. All the Colonists have caste marks. Gives the Sarcodinay something to aim at.”

  Patel’s eyes narrowed. “You must know it’s illegal to wear white and gold together.”

  I showed him my teeth. “Was illegal, you mean.”

  Vanessa laughed nervously. Jonathan joined her.

  Randolph scowled at me, then shrugged. “I suppose no one’s really enforcing the sumptuary laws now that the war’s all but over.”

  “I’d love to see them try.”

  He gave me a funny look. “You know something? I bet you would, and pity the man or woman trying to do their job.”

  I laughed. “Anyone who tries to enforce sumptuary laws with the Sarcodinay leaving has a stick shoved so far up their asses they deserve to choke on it a little.”

  “Mallory—”

  Jonathan