by Pierce Brown
If I could earn the voluntary allegiance of the slaves, the army created would look nothing like the Society. It would be better. Like if the Reds of Lykos thought they could actually win the Laurel, they would be so much more productive. Or if a Praetor on board his starcruiser could utilize not only his own genius, but that of his crew of Blues.
Mustang’s strategy is Eo’s dream.
It’s like an electric shock jolts through me.
“Why didn’t you try it with the slaves you captured?”
She pulls her hand away from mine after I don’t respond to her touch.
“I tried.”
She’s quiet the rest of the night. Near morning, she develops a cough.
Mustang takes sick over the next few days. I hear fluid in her lungs and feed her broth made from marrow and wolf and leaves boiled in a helmet I found. She looks like she will die. I don’t know what to do. We’re low on food, so I hunt. But the game is scarce and the wolves are hungry. Prey has fled these woods, so we survive on small hares. All I can do is keep her warm and pray a medBot descends from the clouds. The Proctors know where we are. They always know where we are.
I find human tracks in the woods the next week. A set of two. I follow them to an abandoned campsite, hoping they might have food I can steal. There are animal bones and embers still hot. No horses, though. Probably not scouts then. Oathbreakers, the Shamed who have broken their vows after being enslaved. There’s plenty of them now.
I follow their tracks through the woods for an hour before I grow worried. They circle back around, leading somewhere familiar, leading to our cave. It is night by the time I return. I hear laughter from the home I share with Mustang. The arrow feels thin in my fingers as I nock it on the bowstring. I should kneel to gather my breath. My wound aches. I pant. But I can’t give them more time. Not if they have Mustang.
They cannot see me as I stand at the edge of the frozen caribou skin and hardpacked snow that walls off our cave from sight and elements. The fire crackles inside. Smoke seeps out through vents Mustang and I took a day in making. Two boys sit together eating what’s left of our meat, drinking our water.
They are dirty and ragged. Hair like greased weeds. Stained complexions. Blackheads. Once beautiful, I’m sure. One boy sits on Mustang’s chest. The girl who saved my life is gagged and in her undergarments. She shivers from the cold. One of the boys bleeds from a bite wound on his neck. They are planning on making her pay for that wound. Knives heat till red in the fire. One boy obviously enjoys the sight of her nakedness. He reaches to touch her skin as though she’s a toy meant for his pleasure.
My thoughts are primal, wolflike. A terrifying emotion sweeps over me, one that I did not know I had for this girl. Not till now. It takes a moment to calm myself and stop my hands from shaking. His hand is on the inside of her thigh.
I shoot the first boy in the kneecap. The second I shoot as he reaches for a knife. I’m a bad aim. I get his shoulder instead of his eye socket. I slide into the shelter with my skinning knife, ready to finish the boys off as they howl in pain. Something in me, the human part, has turned off, and it’s only when I see Mustang’s eyes that I stop.
“Darrow,” she says softly.
Even shivering, she is beautiful—the small, quick-smiling girl who brought me back to life. The bright-eyed soul who keeps Eo’s song alive. I shudder with anger. If I had been ten minutes later in returning, this night could have broken me forever. I cannot bear another death. Especially not Mustang’s.
“Darrow, let them live,” she says again, whispering it to me as Eo would whisper she loved me. It cuts to my core. I can’t take the sound of her voice, the anger inside me.
My mouth doesn’t work. My face is numb; I can’t lose the grimace of rage that controls it. I drag the two boys out by their hair and kick them till Mustang joins us. I leave them moaning in the snow and return to help her dress. She feels so fragile as I pull her animal skins around her bony shoulders.
“Knife or snow,” she asks the boys when she’s dressed. She holds the knives heated in the fire in her trembling hands. She coughs. I know what she’s thinking. Let them go and they kill us as we sleep. Neither will die from their wounds. The medBots would come if that were the case. Or maybe they won’t for Oathbreakers.
They choose snow.
I’m glad. Mustang didn’t want to use the knife.
We tie them to a tree at the edge of the woods and light a signal fire so that some House will find them. Mustang insisted on coming along, coughing all the way, as if she were worried I wouldn’t do as she asked. She was right to think that.
In the night, after Mustang has gone to sleep, I get up to go back and kill the Oathbreakers. If Jupiter or Mars finds them, then they will spill where we are and we will be taken.
“Don’t, Darrow,” she says as I pull back the caribou skin. I turn. Her face peers out from our blankets.
“We will have to move if they live,” I say. “And you’re already sick. You’ll die.”
We have warmth here. Shelter.
“Then we will move in the morning,” she says. “I’m tougher than I look.”
Sometimes that is true. This time it is not.
I wake in the morning to find that she shifted in the night to curl into me for warmth. Her body is so frail. It trembles like a leaf in the wind. I smell her hair. She breathes softly. Salt tracks mark her face. I want Eo. I wish it were her hair, her warmth. But I don’t push Mustang away. There’s pain when I hold her, but it comes from the past, not from Mustang. She is something new, something hopeful. Like spring to my deep winter.
When morning comes, we move deeper into the woods and make a lean-to shelter against a rock face with fallen trees and packed snow. We never find out what happened to the Oathbreakers or our cave.
Mustang can barely sleep, she coughs so much. When she sleeps curled into me, I kiss the nape of her neck softly, softly so that she will not wake; though I secretly wish she would if just to know that I’m here. Her skin is hot. I hum the Song of Persephone.
“I can never remember the words,” she whispers to me. Her head lies in my lap tonight. “I wish I did.”
I have not sung since Lykos. My voice is raspy and raw. Slowly the song comes.
Listen, listen
Remember the wane
Of sun’s fury and waving grain
We fell and fell
And danced along
To croon a knell
Of rights and wrongs
And
My son, my son
Remember the burn
When leaves were fire and seasons turned
We fell and fell
And sang a song
To weave a cell
All autumn long
And
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing
the reaper swing
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper sing
A tale of winter long
My girl, my girl
Remember the chill
When rains froze and snows did kill
We fell and fell
And danced along
Through icy hell
To their winter song
My love, my love
Remember the cries
When winter died for spring skies
They roared and roared
But we grabbed our seed
And sowed a song
Against their greed
My son, my son
Remember the chains
When gold ruled with iron reins
We roared and roared
And twisted and screamed
For ours, a vale
of better dreams
And
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing
the reaper swing
Down in the vale
Hear the reaper sing
A tale of winter done
“What is?”
“Father told me that there would be riots because of that song. That people would die. But it is such a soft melody.” She coughs blood into a pelt. “We used to sing songs by the campfire, out in the country, where he kept us out of …” coughs again “… of the public … eye. When … my brother died … Father never sang with me again.”
She will soon die. It’s only a matter of time. Her face is pale, her smiles feeble. There’s only one thing I can do, since the medBots haven’t come. I will have to leave her to seek out medicine. One of the Houses might have found some or received injectables as a bounty. I’ll have to go soon, but I need to get her food first.
Someone follows me that day as I hunt alone in the winter woods. I wear my new white wolfcloak. They are camouflaged as well. I do not see whoever it is, but he is there. I pretend my bowstring needs fixing and steal a glance back. Nothing. Quiet. Snow. The sound of wind on brittle branches. They still follow as I move along.
I feel them behind me. It’s like the ache in my body from my wound. I pretend to see a deer and pass quickly through a thicket only to scramble up a tall pine on the other side.
I hear a pop.
They pass beneath me. I feel it on my skin, in my bones. So I shake the branches under my legs. Gathered snow tumbles down. A distorted hollow in the shape of a man forms in the snowfall. It is looking at me.
“Fitchner?” I call down.
His bubblegum pops again.
“You may come down now, boyo,” Fitchner barks up. He deactivates his ghostCloak and gravBoots and sinks into the snow. He’s wearing a thin black thermal. My layered fatigues and stinking animal skins don’t keep me half as warm.
It’s been weeks since I last saw him. He looks tired.
“Going to finish what Cassius started?” I ask as I hop down.
He looks me over and smirks. “You look horrible.”
“You do too. The soft bed, warm food, and wine giving you trouble?” I point up. We can just barely see Olympus between the skeletal branches of the winter trees.
He smiles. “Readout says you’ve lost twenty pounds.”
“Baby fat,” I tell him. “Cassius’s ionSword carved it off.” I pull up my bow and point it at him. I wonder if he’s wearing a pulseShield. It’ll stop anything short of pulseWeapons and razors. Only recoilPlate can gird off those weapons—and even then, not well. “I should shoot you.”
“You wouldn’t dare. I’m a Proctor, boyo.”
I shoot him in the thigh. Except the arrow loses velocity before it hits the invisible pulseShield, which flickers iridescent, and the arrow bounces to the ground. So they wear it at all times, even when they don’t wear recoilArmor.
“Well, that was petulant.” He yawns.
PulseShield, gravBoots, ghostCloak, looks like he has a pulseFist too, and those famous razors. Snow melts as it touches his skin. He saw me in the tree, so I’m guessing his eyes have injected optics. Certainly thermal scopes and night vision. He has a widget and an analyzerMod too. He knew my weight. Probably knows my white blood cell count. What about spectrum analysis?
He yawns again. “Little sleep these days on Olympus. Busy days.”
“Who gave the Jackal the holo of me killing Julian?” I ask.
“Well, you don’t dally away time.”
He did something just as I spoke, and the sound around us localizes. I can’t hear anything beyond an invisible five-meter bubble. Didn’t know they had toys like that.
“The Proctors gave it to the Jackal,” he tells me.
“Which ones?”
“Apollo. All of us. Doesn’t matter.”
I don’t understand. “I assume it’s because they favor the Jackal. Am I right?”
“As usual.” His gum pops. “Unfortunately, you’re just not allowed to win, and you were gaining momentum. Sooo …”
I ask him to explain. He says he just did. His eyes are ringed and tired despite the collagen and cosmetics he now wears to cover his fatigue. His stomach has grown. Arms are still skinny. Something worries him, and it isn’t just his appearance.
“Allowed to?” I echo. “Allowed to. No one can be allowed to win. I thought the gorydamn point was to carve our own ladder to the top. So if I’m not allowed to win, that means the Jackal is.”
“Pegged it.” He doesn’t sound very happy.
“Then that doesn’t make any lick of sense. It corrupts the entire thing,” I say hotly. “You broke the rules.”
The best of Gold is supposed to rise, yet they already have chosen a winner. Not only does this ruin the Institute, it ruins the Society. The fittest reign. That’s what they say. Now they’ve betrayed their own principles by taking sides in a schoolyard fight. This is the Laurel all over again. Hypocrisy.
“So this kid is what? A predestined Alexander? A Caesar? A Genghis? A Wiggin?” I ask. “This is slagging nonsense.”
“Adrius is the son of our dear ArchGovernor Augustus. That’s all that matters.”
“Yes, you’ve told me that, but why is he supposed to win? Simply because his father is important?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Be more specific.”
He sighs. “The ArchGovernor has secretly threatened and bribed and cajoled all twelve of us till we came to agree upon the fact that his son should win. But we have to be careful in our cheating. The Drafters, my real bosses, watch every move from their palaces, ships, et cetera. They are very important people as well. And then there’s the Board of Quality Control to worry about, and the Sovereign and Senators and all the other Governors themselves. Because, though there are many schools, any of them can watch you whenever they like.”
“What? How?”
He taps my wolf ring.
“Biometric nanoCam. Don’t worry, it’s showing them something else right now. I threw down a jamField, and anyway, there’s a half-day delay for editing purposes. All other times, any Drafter, any Scarred, can watch you to see if they would like to offer you an apprenticeship when this is over. Oh, do they like you.”
Thousands of Aureates have been watching me.
My insides, already cold, tighten.
Demetrius au Bellona, Imperator of the Sixth Fleet, father of Cassius and Julian, Drafter of House Mars, has watched me kill one son and deceive the other. It takes the wind out of me. What if I had told Titus that I knew he was a Red because I was a Red? Did they notice him say “bloodydamn”? Did I say he was a Red out loud or was that just in my head?
“What if I take the ring off?”
“Then you disappear, except for the cameras we have hidden in the battlefield.” He winks. “Don’t tell anyone. Now, if the Drafters discover the ArchGovernor’s scheme … there will be hell to pay. Tension between the school Houses, certainly. But more importantly, there could be a Blood War between the Augustuses and Bellonas.”
“And you’ll be in trouble if they find out about the bribery?”
“I’ll be dead.” He fails in trying a smile.
“That’s why you look like hell. You’re in the middle of a shit storm. So how do I fit into this?”
He chuckles dryly.
“Many Drafters like you. Those of House Mars get to offer you your first apprenticeships, but you can entertain offers outside the House. If you die, they will be very unhappy. Especially the Sword of House Mars. His name is Lorn au Arcos; no doubt you’ve heard of him. He is prime good with his razor.”
“How. Do. I. Fit. In?” I repeat.
“You don’t. Stay alive. Stay out of the Jackal’s path. Otherwise, Jupiter or Apollo will kill you and there will be nothing I can do to stop it.”
“So they’re his guard dogs, eh?”
“Amongst others, yes.”
“Well, if they kill me, the Drafters would know something is wrong.”
“They won’t. Apollo will use other Houses to do it or we’ll do it ourselves and edit out the footage from the nanoCams. A
pollo and Jupiter are not stupid. So don’t fiddle with them. Let the Jackal play and you’ll have a future.”
“And so will you.”
“And so will I.”
“I understand,” I say.
“Good. Good. I knew you’d see sense. You know, many of the Proctors like you. Minerva even does. She hated you at first, but since you let Mustang go, she’s been able to stay around on Olympus. Much less embarrassing that way.”
“She’s allowed to stay around on Olympus?” I ask innocently.
“Naturally. It’s the rules of the Institute. Once your House is defeated, the Proctor heads home to face the music and explain what went wrong to the Drafters.” Fitchner’s smile contorts when he sees the sudden glimmer in my eyes.
“So if their House is destroyed, they have to leave? And it was Apollo and Jupiter who want me dead, you say?”
“No …,” he begs, suddenly hearing the menace in my voice.
I tilt my head. “No?”
“You … can’t!” he sputters, confused. “I just told you, the Sword of the damn House Mars wants you as an apprentice. And there are others—Senators, Politicos, Praetors. Don’t you want a future?”
“I want to rip the Jackal’s balls off. That’s all. Then I will find my apprenticeship. I imagine it will be an impressive one if I do that.”
“Darrow! Be reasonable, man.”
“Fitchner, my friends Roque and Lea died because of the ArchGovernor’s meddling. Let’s see how he likes it when I make his son, the Jackal, my slave.”
“You’re mad as a Red!” he says with a shake of his head. “You’re screwing with the Proctors’ livelihoods. None are content with their current station. They are all looking to ascend as well. If you threaten their futures, Apollo and Jupiter will come down and they will cut off your head!”
“Not if I destroy their Houses first.” I frown. “Because don’t they have to leave if I do that? Someone reliable told me those were the rules.” I clap my hands together. “Now, I have another friend who is dying and I’d like some antibiotics. It’d be prime if you could give me some.”
He gawps at me. “After this, why would I?”
“Because you’ve been a piss-poor Proctor up until now. You owe me bounties. And you have your own future to look after.”