The Red Rising: Golden Son Part 44

"Bryn," I repeat the word and see Fitchner rock slightly on his feet. A shortness of breath.

"So you're half Red," I say to Sevro.

Sevro nods. "Found out couple days ago. Weird as s.h.i.+t, righto?"

"Weird as s.h.i.+t. You'll make a good Ruster."

"I like to think I'm an endangered species."

Dancer rolls a match through his fingers. "We all are."

"You knew about t.i.tus," I say to Fitchner.

"But Dancer didn't. Don't blame him for that. I thought you'd be brothers at the Inst.i.tute. A natural affection for your own race. But he went dark, and there was no way to reel him in. I met with him-jammer, ghostCloak-like I met with you. But his mind broke under the strain. I didn't want to see you break."

"I did break." I look over at Sevro, Dancer. "I just had friends to piece me back together. Why didn't you tell t.i.tus and me about each other?"

"Then his mistakes would have been yours and yours would have been his. In a storm, you don't tie two boats together. They'll drag each other down." He clears his throat.

"I always knew a Gold couldn't lead this rebellion. It has to be from the bottom up, boyo. Red is about family. More than any other Color, it is about love amid all the horror of our world. If Red rises, they have a chance to bind the worlds together. MidColors won't. Pinks, Browns, can't. Obsidians have failed before. And if they succeeded alone, they'd break the worlds instead of freeing them."

"So what's the plan?" I ask. "I squabbed up your position next to the Sovereign."

"You're hard to manipulate, Darrow, so I'll just cut to it. Augustus is going to adopt you. You're not surprised...."

"It would make sense. He wants to tie my fate to his family. Probably make me marry Mustang. It'll fracture my alliance with the Jackal if I become an heir, though."

"Does the Jackal care about that?" Sevro asks. "Seems like he's abandoned hope of ever gaining approval. b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.d's building his own empire."

"I'll have to see," I say.

Fitchner continues. "Dispose of the Jackal or make him part of the plan, it doesn't matter. Augustus will adopt you as his heir. And he will use you as a Praetor in his armada. And if you defeat the Sovereign, he won't settle for being King of Mars. He'll want to be Sovereign himself. Help him be. And a year into his reign, Sevro will kill him and pin it on a rival, maybe the Jackal...."

My turn to rock on my feet.

"You want me to inherit the empire," I guess. "The entire Society."

I gawk at him. At Dancer. How can they look so serious?

"Yes," Fitchner says. "After he dies, all will look to the strongest. Be the strongest. Win the game of succession and you can be Sovereign just as you were Primus. Just as you are Praetor. It's all games. Except this time we're helping you cheat. We will feed you information, guard you against a.s.sa.s.sination attempts. With me on your side, you will have a spy network even the Jackal and Sovereign cannot rival. We will bribe who we need to bribe and kill who we need to kill."

I sit reflectively looking at my hands. "I thought the lies were nearly over. I want to declare what I am. I want to declare war."

"We can't yet. You know that."

I do, but I don't want to leave these people. "I won't be in the dark again. We will communicate. We will plan. No more gray areas. Do you understand? I can't be alone like before."

"Say yes, Fitchner," Sevro says. "Or I'm not going either."

"We'll communicate every day, if you need. I can't come with you. There's a ghost war being fought that I have to manage. But in my stead, I'll send some of my best agents. You'll have a cabal you can trust. Spies. a.s.sa.s.sins. Courtesans. Hackers. All with perfect covers. All willing to die to break the chains. You are no longer alone."

Relief fills me. But there's something I know I can't do. "I have to go back."

"Yes. They'll be wondering where you are," Fitchner agrees.

"No." I say. "I have to go home."

"Home?" Dancer asks. "To Lykos?"

"Why?" Fitchner asks. "What's left for you there?"

"My family. It's been four years. I need to see them before this begins." I look each man in the eyes, each so scarred and so wounded in his own way. "You have to understand that. Things are about to break apart in ways we can't predict. We pretend we know what we're doing, pus.h.i.+ng these Golds to war. Planning our own. Like we can control it, but we can't. We're just mortals opening Pandora's box. And before everything turns upside down, I need to remember what I'm fighting for. I need to know it's worth it."

"You want their blessing," Dancer says. "Her blessing." He knows my heart better than Fitchner. If I'm to let Augustus adopt me, then I must go home first.

"You can't tell them what you are. They won't understand." Fitchner steps forward, suddenly cautious of my temper. "You know that."

"How much easier would this have all been if you and I had conspired the whole way through?" I say. "Lies breed lies. We have to trust." I look at Sevro. "I'm taking her to Lykos."

"Her?" Dancer asks.

"Mustang," Sevro murmurs.

"No," Fitchner almost yells. "Absolutely not. No. It's not worth the risk. You're set up now. She's in love with you! Don't lose that leverage because of a guilty conscience."

"And what if I love her too?"

"s.h.i.+t," Fitchner curses. "s.h.i.+t. s.h.i.+t. s.h.i.+t. You're serious? I thought this was part of your goryd.a.m.n game. s.h.i.+t. Boyo, you'll ruin everything. Goryd.a.m.n idiot. s.h.i.+t."

"This is everything," I say. "She loves me. I won't use her anymore. I won't leverage her. If I can't trust her, Gold can't change, and t.i.tus and Harmony were right. h.e.l.l, the Society is right. You and I know that it's not about our Color; it's about our hearts. Now let's put that to the test."

"And if you're wrong? If she rejects you for them?"

I don't have an answer.

Sevro hops down from his perch. "Then I put a bullet in her head."

47.

FREE.

The Pot is a piece of s.h.i.+t-a three-hundred-meter-deep nest of metal and concrete humid with the stink of swill and cleaning agent. Once it seemed to tower above Lykos's Common like some lofty castle. But as my s.h.i.+p descends, it's just a dull metal blister in the southern Martian taiga, far removed from the grand cities where men marshal for the great effort against Octavia au Lune.

The Grays inside aren't fit to get paid doing anything but intimidate Reds. To think I once considered the Grays like Ugly Dan crack troops. Sad to see how weak and petty the demons of my youth really were. As though I come from some hollow fantasy past.

They did not know my s.h.i.+p was coming. They don't know why I'm here, nor must I tell them. They just scatter like horseflies as I stalk down my s.h.i.+p's ramp onto the engine-blackened landing pad, Obsidian bodyguards flowing out before me. Ragnar towering behind as I stalk through the metal-grated halls. Any of these Grays will know how to get where I need to go, but I am looking for a familiar face.

"Dan," I ask one of the Brown janitors. "Where is he?"

I burst into one of their common rooms, where a dozen Grays play cards and smoke cigars. A woman notices me, turning her attention from an HC where several talking heads-a Silver, a Violet, and two Greens-debate the political ramifications of Mars's conquest over a montage of my exploits. Her cigar falls out of her mouth. The man sitting at her side slaps the cigar as it falls on his pant leg and catches the fabric.

"Carly, you dumb meat sheath." He flings himself back from the table. "G.o.dd.a.m.n. The h.e.l.l is your ..."

Ugly Dan swivels to see me for the first time in four years. I can feel the hairs on his skin rise as the spring of discipline hidden in his slothful body snaps to attention. There's no recognition in his eyes, no fear, just obedience.

This gives me no catharsis. Dan should have an impudent sneer on his lips, a nasty hyena cast to his aspect. But he's doesn't. He's tame. Obedient. Face pocked from childhood acne. The greasy hair Loran and I teased him for behind his back, now gone. A crater of baldness has replaced it, fringed with shoots of withered gray. He's as scary as a wet dog. This is the man I let kill Eo.

How could I not have stopped him? Was I ever so weak?

"The bubbleGarden," I say to Dan, voice filling the metal common room. "Take me there."

I've already turned on a heel. Ragnar pats his thigh. "Come, dog."

It's been four years since I last stood here. Stars twinkle in the gray above as night pulls on its hood. The garden is smaller than I remember. Less filled with color, with sounds. I suppose that's to be expected, being where I've been, seeing what I've seen. There's more trash. More signs of Grays using the place for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and drinking. I toe an empty beer can with my shoe. A candy bar wrapper marks the place where Eo and I last lay together.

I remember it a bed of soft gra.s.s. But there are weeds now. Maybe there were weeds then and I just didn't notice them. The flowers are wilted, paltry things. I touch one with my finger and feel a sadness pull at me as I peer up through the bubbleRoof to see stars shooting across the sky. I snort. Once they might have been stars. I thought them such when I was younger. But now I know they are the wars.h.i.+ps that prepare for an a.s.sault on Luna. I don't know what I expected. No magic remains here.

Should have left this place perfect in memory. I wonder if Eo is safer there, safe from my eyes. If I saw her now, if I came back, would I be so in love? Would she seem so perfect?

I walk through the garden. It really is barely larger than my suites on the Pax. I'm thicker than the trees I walk under. The gra.s.s balds near the base of them where the roots rear through the ground.

I find the place I came for. Haemanthus flowers live atop Eo's grave. Dozens. It would seem a miracle if I did not remember the flower bud I set in the grave with her. She's not there any longer. I know that. The Grays would have dug her up and strung her from the Common to rot after they hanged me.

There's a dark irony I'm only just realizing. I came here to ask for her blessing but she's not here. She's fled this cage for the Vale.

So I sit cross-legged, waiting for the sun to set, where once I waited for it to rise. When it does, the day's waning light fills the bubbleGarden with a b.l.o.o.d.y hue. And then the sun surrenders to the horizon and night draws its star-pierced shroud over Mars.

I laugh at myself.

Ragnar slips from his place at the door.

"I'm fine," I say without turning to him. "She'd laugh at me for coming here."

"Laughter is a gift."

"Sometimes."

I stand and dust my pants, giving the place one last look.

The garden isn't as perfect as it was in memory. And neither was she. She was impatient. She could be spiteful for small reasons. But she was a girl. Not even seventeen. And she gave the most she could, did the best she could with what she had. That's why I will always love her, and it is why I know whether or not she would give her blessing for what I go to do. My heart can't stay here in this cage she herself has fled. It must move on.

48.

THE MAGISTRATE.

MineMagistrate Timony au Podginus waits for me flanked with a coterie of Gray mine guards, now wearing their best and brightest uniforms. One carries a platter of cheese, dates, and Podginus's best, and perhaps only, caviar. Ugly Dan is gone.

"Lord Andromedus, is it not?" Podginus croons with that supercilious inflection uppity Coppers favor. He is fatter. His hair thinner. And he sweats like a pig in heat as he fans open his heavily ringed fingers to favor me with a queer bow popular in the HC political dramas. "I was examining the ore compression facilities"-probably a wh.o.r.ehouse in nearby Yorkton, at the edge of the taiga-"when news of your visit came to me. I hurried back as best I could, but still I beg your forgiveness. I wonder, though, may I be so bold as to ask the purpose of your visit?" So he can sell the information to men like Pliny. Coppers rarely mean all that they say. "An inspection is not due for-"

"In polite society, it is considered rude not to introduce yourself, Copper." I talk like a Peerless, not the Pixies he so eagerly emulates.

"My apologies!" he stammers in alarm, sweeping into a bow so deep I fear he might touch his nose to the floor were it not for the cus.h.i.+on of his substantial gut. "I am MineMagistrate Timony au Podginus, your humble servant. And may I say, if it is not too bold"-he's still bowing-"your aspect is grander than I had indeed expected! Not to say that I did not expect you to be broad and tall-the ArchGovernor has only the best of the best in his employ, naturally-but the HC does you the barest justice."

"You may stop bowing."

He straightens self-consciously and peers behind me into the garden, fiendishly seeking the reason someone like me came unannounced to his mine.

"As I know you've no doubt heard from others, the MineMagistrates were overjoyed to hear the planet had been liberated from Bellona control. War, those men may know, but mining? Pfah, amateurs."

"They don't know war either, apparently."

Swallowing, he glances again to my razor and then to the garden.

"A beautiful s.p.a.ce, is it not?" he asks. "It reminds me of my time on the Pyrrus River. The tulip blossoms there-oh, the color! Nothing like it, as I'm sure you know. And the trees, aren't they so very like the birches that stretch along the steppes of the Olympus Mons? I stayed there at the Chateau le Breu." He makes a strange expansive motion with his hands. "I know, I know, but sometimes one must treat oneself. In fact it is where I discovered the most unique sottocenere cheese." He smiles proudly. "They call me Marco Polo, my friends, because I relish travel. It's the culture I seek. Refined company, as you could no doubt guess, is the d.a.m.nedest thing to find around here...."

I don't know how long he would continue trying to impress me if I didn't look at his men's best uniforms, then at his best rings, and frown.

"Is something the matter?" he asks.

"You're right," I say.

His beady eyes scurry back and forth between his best Grays, searching for signs of the inequity I noticed. It disgusts me how desperate he is to please me. This man stole from my family. He had me whipped. Watched Eo be killed. Hanged my father. He's not wicked. He's just pathetic in his greed.

"I am right about what?" he asks, blinking at me.