Golden Son (The Red Rising Trilogy, Book 2)

by Brown, Pierce

  “You talk funny now.” She pauses so long I wonder if she’ll continue. “Narol told me you were alive. Failed to say you’d gone and dipped yourself Gold, though.” She sips her tea. “I bet you’ve got questions.”

  I laugh. “I thought you’d have more.”

  “I would. But I know my son.” She eyes my Sigils. “I’m more patient. Go on now.”

  “Narol … is he …?”

  “Dead? Aye. He’s dead.”

  The breath goes out of me.

  “How long?”

  “Two years ago.” She chuckles. “Fell down a mineshaft with Loran. Never found the bodies.”

  “Why the hell are you laughing?”

  “Your father’s brother was always the black sheep of the bunch.” She sips her tea. It’s still too hot for me. “Suppose it makes sense he’d be as hard to kill as a cockroach. So I’ll believe he’s dead when I see him in the Vale. Shifty bugger.” She speaks slowly, like most Reds. The lisp from the stroke is faint, but always there. “I think he left this place and took Loran with him.” The way she says it makes me know she understands there’s more beyond the mines. Perhaps she doesn’t know the whole truth, but she knows a part. Maybe my uncle and cousin aren’t dead. Maybe they left to be with the Sons.

  “What of Kieran? Leanna? Dio?”

  “Your sister is remarried. Lives with her husband in Gamma Township in the house of his family.”

  “Gamma?” I sneer. “You let her—” I stop as soon as I see the fresh twist in my mother’s mouth. I might wear the trappings of a Gold, but I better shut the hell up about her daughter.

  “She’s got two girls that look more like you than her or any Gamma I’ve ever seen. And Kieran’s well.” She smiles to herself. “You’d be right proud of him. Not the sniveling child you might remember squabbing up his chores and talking in his sleep. Man of the house. HeadTalk for the crew after Narol slipped down. Kora, his wife, died in childbirth, though. He took another a few months back.”

  My poor brother.

  “And what of Dio? Eo’s parents?”

  “Her father is dead. Killed himself not long after you tried the same.”

  My head sags. “So many deaths.”

  She touches my knee. “It’s the way of it.”

  “Doesn’t make it right.”

  “It was a hard time after you and Eo left us. But Dio’s well. Fact, she’s upstairs.”

  “Upstairs? What do you … Did she marry Kieran?”

  “Aye. And she’s pregnant. I’m hoping for a girl, but with my luck it’ll be a boy who wants to dodge pitvipers and steam burns his whole life. If he’s got the choice, that is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Things are tough. Changed. Mine isn’t giving the way it ought. Some of the men are whispering this corner of the world is all used up. And it makes them start fearing—what happens to the miners when there’s nothing left to mine? They’re hoping the terraforming will catch on before we run through our helium deposits.”

  “Nothing will happen to you. I promise I will protect this mine. No matter what.”

  “How?”

  “I just will.”

  “My turn.” She eyes me over her tea. “Where you been, child?”

  “I … I don’t even know where to start.”

  “With Eo’s death, I think.”

  I flinch. My mother was always blunt. Made Kieran cry his way through his childhood. But that bluntness makes calluses out of blisters. So I owe her a reply in kind. I tell her everything, starting with the moments after Eo’s death and ending with the promise I made to the ArchGovernor.

  Our tea is long gone when I finish.

  “That’s quite a tale,” she says.

  “Tale? It’s the truth.”

  “They won’t believe you, the rest of them.”

  “You do, though?”

  “I’m your mother.” She takes my hand and runs her crooked fingers over the Sigils that run from the back of my hands up my forearms, smirking when she reaches the metal wings embedded on the outside of my forearms. “I never liked Eo,” she says quietly.

  I twist my head up to look at her.

  “Not for you. She could be manipulative. She kept some things from you.…”

  “I know about the child,” I say. “I know what she told Dio on the scaffold.”

  Mother scoots closer to me, her hands grasping mine and bringing my knuckles to her lips. She never gave much comfort. She’s awkward at it now. But I don’t mind. Father loved her for the same reason I do. Everything she does, she means. There’s no falseness to her. No deception. So when she tells me she loves me, I know she means it with every part of her.

  “Eo was not a cruel girl, you know that,” she says, pushing back so she can look into my eyes. “She loved you with everything she had. And I loved her for it. But I always feared she’d make you fight her battles. And I always feared how much she loved to fight.”

  That’s not quite the Eo I remember. But I don’t find fault with my mother’s words. I can’t. All eyes see their own way.

  “But in the end, Mother, Eo was right about this. About Gold.”

  “I’m your mother. I don’t care about what’s right. I care about you, child.”

  “Someone has to fix all this,” I say. “Someone has to break the chains.”

  “And that someone is you?”

  Why is she doubting me? “Yes. It is. I’m not being foolish. I can lead us out of here. Out of slavery.”

  “To where? To the surface?” She speaks of it familiarly, as if she’s known the truth of Mars for years, not minutes. Perhaps she has. “Where we will do what? All we know is the mines. All we know is how to dig, how to harvest silk. If what you say is true and there are hundreds of millions of Reds on Mars, how will there be enough homes for us up there? How will there be enough work? Most won’t leave the mines, even if they know. You’ll see. They’ll just stay miners. And their children will be miners. And their children’s children, except the nobility will be lost. Do you think about these things?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And do you have an answer?”

  “No.”

  “Men.” She rubs her right temple. “Your father was one to jump without looking.” Her expression tells me what she thinks of that. “Helldivers all think they provide for the clans. No. The women do.” She gestures around. “Everything you see, made by a woman. But you know how to shape the world, don’t you? Know how it should be.”

  “No. I don’t,” I say. “I’m not the one with the answers.” Mustang is. Eo was. Mother is. “No one man or woman has all the answers. A thousand, a million bright minds will be needed to answer what you’ve asked me. That’s the point of this. What I can do, what I am good at is tearing down the men and women who would keep those minds shackled. That’s why I’m here. It’s why I exist.”

  “You’ve changed,” she says.

  “I know.” I pick dust from the floor and rub it between my palms. The dust looks strange on these hands. “Do you think … Is it possible to love two people?”

  Before she can answer, feet pad down the stairs.

  My mother turns to look.

  “Grandma?” a small voice says sleepily. “Grandma, Dunlow isn’t in bed.”

  A small child stands on the stairs, nightshirt scraping the floor. One of Kieran’s. She’s three, maybe four. Born just after I left. Her face is heart-shaped. Red hair thick and rusty as my wife’s. Mother looks back to me, worried how she will explain my presence. But I activated my ghostCloak as soon as I heard the noise.

  “Oh, he probably snuck out to cause trouble,” my mother says.

  I squeeze her hand before sliding back from the room toward the door. My time here is at an end, yet I linger. The little girl gingerly steps down the stairs, one foot after another, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “I was praying, child.”

  “Praying for what?
”

  “For the soul of a man who loves you very much.” Mother touches her nose with a finger.

  “Papa?”

  “No. Your uncle.”

  “Uncle Darrow? But he’s dead.”

  Mother picks the girl up in her arms. “The dead can always hear us, my love. Why else do you think we sing? We want them to know that even though they are gone, we can still find joy.” Cradling my niece, she turns to look at me as she takes the first step up the stairs. “That’s all they’d want for us.”

  50

  THE DEEP

  Mustang is gone. I’d hoped she would come in. But I suspect that was too much to ask. Of course it was. Idiot. I remember thinking this would humanize me in her eyes. Thought meeting my mother would make her weep and realize we’re all the same.

  The guilt falls fast on me. I handed Mustang the holo of my carving, expecting … expecting what? For her to come inside? For her, the daughter of the ArchGovernor of Mars, to sit on my floor with my mother and me? I’m a coward for coming here. I’m a coward for letting the holo speak for me. I didn’t want to watch her process learning who I really am. I didn’t want to see the betrayal in her eyes. Four years of deception. Four years of lying to the girl who has never been able to trust anyone. Four years and I tell the truth when I’m not even in the bloodydamn room. I’m a coward.

  She’s gone.

  I check my datapad. The radiation tracker Sevro insisted on sticking her with before she came to see me in the Pot’s observation room says she is three hundred kilometers away and moving fast. Sevro’s ship pursues, awaiting my orders.

  Ragnar and Sevro both hail me. I don’t answer their calls. They’ll want me to give the order to shoot her down. I won’t. I can’t. Neither understands.

  Without Mustang, what is the point to all this?

  I wander from the township, down and down into the old mine, trying to forget the present by finding the past. There, I stand alone listening to the call of the deepmines. Wind wails its way through the earth, mournful in its song. My eyes are closed to the black, heels planted in the loose soil, head looking down the maw of darkness that stretches deep into the bowels of my world. This is how we tested our bravery as youths. Standing, waiting, in the deep hollows our ancestors dug in the times before.

  I turn my left arm to see the inside of the forearm where the datapad rests. Hesitating, I hail Mustang’s.

  It chimes directly behind me.

  I freeze. Then a scorcher battery pack whines as it activates, and warm yellow light blossoms behind me, illuminating a swath of the huge tunnel.

  “Hands where I can see them.” Her voice is so cold I hardly recognize it till it echoes back to me from the tunnel walls. Slowly, I raise my hands. “Turn.”

  I turn.

  Her eyes glow against the lamplight like an owl’s. She’s ten meters away, higher than I, feet planted on the sloping, loose soil. In one hand, she holds a light. In the other, a scorcher. One that’s pointed at my head, finger against the trigger. Her knuckles are all white. Her face is an impassive mask, and behind it, two eyes filled with fathomless sadness.

  Sevro was right.

  “She’ll shoot you in the head, you bloodydamn fool,” Sevro sneered at me in the shuttle. Sometimes I think he joined my little crusade so he could have an excuse to curse like a Red. Ragnar stayed silent when I told them my plan.

  “Then why’d you back me up with your father?” I asked him.

  “Because that’s what we do.”

  “She has to make her own choice.”

  “And she’ll choose you over her race?”

  “You did.”

  “Oh, come off it. I’m not a bloody queen of the Golds, am I?” He held his hand high. “She’s been up here her whole life. Air is nice and sweet.” He lowered his hand. “I’ve been kickin’ shit since I was born tiny and buttfaced to my lard of a father. Your girl—there isn’t a chip on her shoulder. She may spout pretties when the world isn’t hard. But when facing the masses who would steal her palace, trample her gardens … it’ll be a different girl you see then.”

  “You’re a Red,” she says now to me.

  “I thought you left.”

  “The tracker left.” She flexes her jaw. “Sevro was sneaky. Didn’t even notice him doing it. But you. You’d never tell me something like … this without an insurance policy. I ditched the clothes in the shuttle.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “No. No.” She cuts the air with a gesture. “You answer my questions now, Darrow. Is that even your name?”

  “My mother named me after her father.”

  “And you’re a Red.”

  “I was born in the house you stood outside. It was sixteen years before I saw I sky. So yes. I’m a Red.”

  “I see.” She hesitates. “And my father killed your wife.”

  “Yes. He ordered Eo’s death.”

  “When you sang the song to me in the cave … all this was going through your mind? This place, the carving, the plan, was all inside you, all in your memory. This whole other world. This whole other … person.” She shakes her head, not wanting me to answer that. “Then what happened? Eo’s husband was hanged. You were hanged. How did you escape?”

  “Do you know why they hanged me?”

  She waits for me to explain.

  “When a Red is hanged for crimes of treason, the body may not be buried. It is to decay and rot in front of all as a reminder of what comes of dissent.” I jab a thumb at my chest. “I buried my wife, so they hanged me too. Only, my uncle fed me haemanthus oil. It slows the heart to make you appear dead. He cut me down after. Gave me to the Sons.”

  “And they”—She holds up the holoCube, her face pale in its glow—“did this to you.”

  “I was paler than a Blue. A head shorter than Sevro. Weaker than a Gray. Knew less of the world than a Pink learning arts in the Garden. So they took what was best in me, in my people, and melded it to what was best in yours.”

  “But … it’s impossible. The Board of Quality Control has tests,” she says, breaking her cool line of inquiry. “Lie detectors, DNA analysis, background checks.” She laughs in realization. “That’s why you came from the Family Andromedus—born to Gold parents who fled debt to try to strike it rich asteroid mining.”

  “Their ship was lost as they returned after their mines had been bought by Quicksilver.”

  “So Sons of Ares destroyed their ship, altered the records, and purchased the mines so they could write your story.”

  “Perhaps.” I hadn’t put much thought to how Dancer did it. “My friends are resourceful.”

  “How did you even survive the carving?” she mutters. “It’s against physiology. What the Carver did to you … no one could survive that. The Sigils are connected to the central nervous system. And the implant in your frontal lobe can’t be removed without rendering you catatonic.”

  “My Carver was a unique talent. He managed to find a way to remove two implants, though another Carver did the second.”

  “Two. There’s two of you. Sevro?” she guesses. “Is that why you’ve always been so close?”

  “No. It was Titus.”

  “Titus? The butcher? You were in league with him?”

  “Never. I didn’t know who he was until after I defeated you. Ares thought we would work together.…”

  “But Titus was a monster.”

  “The Golds made him that way.”

  “And that excuses what he did?”

  “Don’t act like you know what he went through,” I snap.

  “I know, Darrow. I don’t avert my eyes. I know the policies. I know the conditions your people suffer, but that doesn’t excuse the murders, the rapes, the torture he committed.”

  “It’s what we suffer every day. Titus did what he did out of hate. Out of a misguided hope of revenge. In another life, I could have been him.”

  Mustang searches my eyes. “And why weren’t you in this life?”

&
nbsp; “My wife.” I look up at her. “And you.”

  “Don’t say that.” Voice thick with regret. She takes a step back, shaking her head. “You don’t have the right to say that.”

  “Why not? You always wondered what ran beneath the surface of me. Know the deep current.”

  “Darrow …”

  “Titus had pain. But that’s all he had. I had something more. Eo’s dream of a world where our children could be free. But I would have lost it if I never met you.” I take a step forward. “You kept me from becoming a monster. Can’t you see?” I gesture, trying to encompass my desperation. “I was surrounded by the people who had enslaved mine for hundreds of years. I thought all Golds cruel, selfish murderers. I would have caved to revenge. But then you came … and you showed me there was kindness in them. Roque, Sevro, Quinn, Pax, and the Howlers proved it too.”

  “Proved what exactly?” she asks.

  “That this isn’t about my people against yours. You aren’t Gold. We aren’t Red. We’re people, Mustang. Each of us can change. Each of us can be what we like. For hundreds of years they’ve tried to tell us otherwise. They’ve tried to break us. But they can’t. You are that proof. You are not your father’s daughter. I see the love in you. I see the joy, the kindness, the impatience, the flaws. They’re in me. They were in my wife. They’re in all of us because we are human. Your father would have us forget that. Society would have us live by its rules.”

  I take another step toward her.

  “You told me I gave you hope that we could live for more after we won the Institute our way. Then you said I turned my back on that idea when I accepted your father’s patronage and went to the Academy. But I never turned my back. Not for one moment.” Another step.

  “You’ll destroy my family, Darrow.”

  “It is possible.”

  “They are my family!” she shouts, face collapsing into grief. “My father hanged your wife. He hanged her. How can you even look at me?” She shudders out a breath. “What do you want, Darrow? Tell me. Do you want me to help you kill them? Do you want me to help you destroy my people?”

  “I don’t want that.”

  “You don’t know what you want.”