by Pierce Brown
Iron Gold is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Pierce Brown
Map copyright © 2018 by Joel Daniel Phillips
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Brown, Pierce, author.
Title: Iron gold / Pierce Brown.
Description: First edition. | New York : Del Rey, [2018] | Series: Red rising saga ; 4
Identifiers: LCCN 2017046612
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | FICTION / Action and Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction. | Adventure fiction. | Dystopias.
Classification: LCC PS3602.R7226 I76 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046612
Hardback ISBN 9780425285916
International edition ISBN 9781524796938
Ebook ISBN 9780425285923
randomhousebooks.com
Cover design and illustration: Faceout Studio/Jeff Miller
v5.1_r1
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Map
Dramatis Personae
The Fall of Mercury
Part I: Wind
Chapter 1: Darrow
Chapter 2: Darrow
Chapter 3: Darrow
Chapter 4: Lyria
Chapter 5: Lyria
Chapter 6: Ephraim
Chapter 7: Ephraim
Chapter 8: Lysander
Chapter 9: Lysander
Chapter 10: Darrow
Chapter 11: Darrow
Chapter 12: Lyria
Chapter 13: Lyria
Chapter 14: Ephraim
Chapter 15: Lysander
Chapter 16: Darrow
Chapter 17: Lyria
Chapter 18: Ephraim
Chapter 19: Ephraim
Chapter 20: Lysander
Chapter 21: Darrow
Part II: Shadow
Chapter 22: Lysander
Chapter 23: Lyria
Chapter 24: Ephraim
Chapter 25: Lysander
Chapter 26: Lysander
Chapter 27: Darrow
Chapter 28: Darrow
Chapter 29: Lyria
Chapter 30: Darrow
Chapter 31: Ephraim
Chapter 32: Lysander
Chapter 33: Lysander
Chapter 34: Darrow
Chapter 35: Lyria
Chapter 36: Lysander
Chapter 37: Lysander
Chapter 38: Lysander
Chapter 39: Ephraim
Part III: Dust
Chapter 40: Lysander
Chapter 41: Lysander
Chapter 42: Ephraim
Chapter 43: Lyria
Chapter 44: Lyria
Chapter 45: Darrow
Chapter 46: Darrow
Chapter 47: Lysander
Chapter 48: Lysander
Chapter 49: Lyria
Chapter 50: Lyria
Chapter 51: Ephraim
Chapter 52: Darrow
Chapter 53: Darrow
Chapter 54: Darrow
Chapter 55: Lysander
Chapter 56: Lysander
Chapter 57: Ephraim
Chapter 58: Ephraim
Chapter 59: Lyria
Chapter 60: Darrow
Chapter 61: Lysander
Chapter 62: Lysander
Chapter 63: Lysander
Chapter 64: Ephraim
Chapter 65: Darrow
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Pierce Brown
About the Author
REDS
DARROW OF LYKOS/THE REAPER ArchImperator of the Republic, husband to Virginia
RHONNA Niece of Darrow
LYRIA OF LAGALOS A Gamma Red
DANCER, SENATOR O’FARAN Senator of the Republic, Ares lieutenant
DANO Colleague of Ephraim
GOLDS
VIRGINIA AU AUGUSTUS/MUSTANG Reigning Sovereign of the Republic, wife to Darrow, mother to Pax
PAX Son of Darrow and Virginia
MAGNUS AU GRIMMUS/THE ASH LORD Former ArchImperator to Octavia
ATALANTIA AU GRIMMUS Daughter of the Ash Lord
CASSIUS AU BELLONA Former Morning Knight, guardian to Lysander
LYSANDER AU LUNE Grandson of former Sovereign Octavia, heir to House Lune
SEVRO AU BARCA/THE GOBLIN Howler, husband to Victra
VICTRA AU BARCA Wife to Sevro, née Victra au Julii
ELECTRA AU BARCA Daughter of Sevro and Victra
KAVAX AU TELEMANUS Head of House Telemanus, father to Daxo
NIOBE AU TELEMANUS Wife to Kavax
DAXO AU TELEMANUS Heir and son of Kavax
THRAXA AU TELEMANUS Daughter of Kavax and Niobe
ROMULUS AU RAA Head of House Raa, Lord of the Dust, Sovereign of the Rim Dominion
DIDO AU RAA Wife to Romulus, née Dido au Saud
SERAPHINA AU RAA Daughter of Romulus and Dido
DIOMEDES AU RAA/THE STORM KNIGHT Son of Romulus and Dido
MARIUS AU RAA Quaestor, son of Romulus and Dido
APOLLONIUS AU VALII-RATH/THE MINOTAUR Heir to House Valii-Rath
THARSUS AU VALII-RATH Brother to Apollonius
ALEXANDAR AU ARCOS Eldest grandson of Lorn, a Howler
VANDROS a Howler
CLOWN a Howler
PEBBLE a Howler
OTHER COLORS
HOLIDAY TI NAKAMURA Legionnaire, sister to Trigg, a Gray
EPHRAIM TI HORN Freelancer, former Son of Ares
SEFI Queen of the Valkyrie, sister to Ragnar, an Obsidian
WULFGAR THE WHITETOOTH ArchWarden of the Republic, an Obsidian
VOLGA FJORGAN Colleague of Ephraim, an Obsidian
QUICKSILVER/REGULUS AG SUN Richest man in the Republic, a Silver
PYTHA Blue pilot, companion to Cassius and Lysander
CYRA SI LAMENSIS Locksmith, colleague of Ephraim, a Green
PUBLIUS CU CARAVAL The Copper Tribune, leader of the Copper bloc, a Copper
MICKEY Carver, a Violet
THE FURY
SILENT, SHE WAITS FOR the sky to fall, standing upon an island of volcanic rock amidst a black sea. The long moonless night yawns before her. The only sounds, a flapping banner of war held in her lover’s hand and the warm waves that kiss her steel boots. Her heart is heavy. Her spirit wild. Peerless knights tower behind her. Salt spray beads on their family crests—emerald centaurs, screaming eagles, gold sphinxes, and the crowned skull of her father’s grim house. Her Golden eyes look to the heavens. Waiting. The water heaves in. Out. The heartbeat of her silence.
THE CITY
Tyche, the jewel of Mercury, hunches in fear between the mountains and the sun. Her famed glass and limestone spires are dark. The Ancestor Bridge is empty. Here, Lorn au Arcos wept as a young man when he saw the messenger planet at sunset for the first time. Now, trash rolls through her streets, pushed by salty summer wind. Gone are the calls of the fishmongers at the wharf. Gone are the patter of pedestrian feet on the cobbles and the rumble of aircars and the laughter of the lowColor children who jump from the bridges into the waves on scorching summer days when the Trasmian sea winds are still. The city is quiet, its wealthy already gone to desert mountain retreats or government bunkers, its soldiers on its rooftops w
atching the sky, its poor having left for the desert or upon cramped boats destined for the Ismere Islands.
But the city is not empty.
Huddled masses fill the public transit systems that wend beneath the waves. And in the upstairs window of a tenement complex on the ugly fringes of the city, far from the water, where the working poor are kept, a little girl with Orange eyes fogs the window with her breath. The night sky sparks. Flashing and flaring with spurts of light like the fireworks her brother sometimes buys at the corner shop. She’s been told there is a battle between big fleets high up there. She has never seen a starship. Her mother lies sick in the bedroom, unable to travel. Her father, who builds parts for engines, sits at the little plastic dinner table with his sons, knowing he cannot protect them. The holoCan washes them in pale light. Government news programs tell them to seek shelter. In her pocket the girl carries a folded piece of paper that she found in the gutter. On it is a little curved sword. She’s seen it before on the cube. Her teachers at the government school say it brings chaos. War. It has set the spheres on fire. But now she secretly draws the blade in the fog her breath has made on the window, and she feels brave.
Then the bombs begin to fall.
THE BOMBS
They come from high-orbit Thor-class bombers piloted by farmboys from Earth and miners from Mars of the Twelfth Sunshine Squadron. Curses and prayers and tribal dragons and curved scythes have been sprayed upon them in aerosol paint. They dip through the clouds and fall over the sea, outracing their own sound. Their guidance chips are made by freeColors on Phobos. Their steel is mined and smelted by entrepreneurs in the Belt. Their ion propulsion engines are stamped with the winged heel of a company that makes consumer electronics and toiletries and weapons. Down and down they go to race shadowless over the desert, then the sea, carrying the weight of the newest empire under the sun.
The first bomb destroys the Hall of Justice on Tyche’s Vespasian Island. Then it burrows a hundred meters into the earth before detonating against the bunker buried there, killing all inside. The second lands in the sea, fifteen kilometers from a fleet of refugees, where it sinks a Society warship, hiding under the chop. The third races over a spine of mountains north of Tyche when it is struck with a railgun round fired from a defense installation by a Gray teenager with acne scars and the charm of a sweetheart around his neck. It careens off its course and sputters across the sky before falling to the earth.
It detonates on the fringes of the city, far from the water, where it turns four blocks of tenement housing to dust.
THE REAPER
Silent, he lies encased in mankilling metal in the belly of a starship called the Morning Star. The fear swallows him now as it has done time and time before. The only sound is the whir of his armor’s air filtration unit and the radio chatter of distant men and women. Around him lie his friends, they too cocooned in metal. Waiting. Eyes Red and Gold and Gray and Obsidian. Wolfheads mark their pauldrons. Tattoos their necks and arms. Wild empire breakers from Mars and Luna and Earth. Beyond them fly ships with names like Spirit of Lykos, Hope of Tinos, and Echo of Ragnar. They are painted white and led by a woman with onyx-dark skin. The Lion Sovereign said the white was for spring. For a new beginning. But the ships are stained. Smeared with char and patched wounds and mismatched panels. They broke the Sword Armada and the martyr Fabii. They conquered the heart of the Gold empire. They battled back the Ash Lord to the Core and have kept the dragons of the Rim at bay.
How could they ever stay clean?
Alone in his armor, waiting to fall from the sky, he remembers the girl who began it all. He remembers how her Red hair fell over her eyes. How her mouth danced with laughter. How she breathed as she lay atop him, so warm and fragile in a world far too cold. She has been dead longer than she was ever alive. And now that her dream has spread, he wonders if she would recognize it. And he wonders too if he were to die today, would he recognize the echo of his own life? What sort of man would his son become in this world he has made? He thinks of his son’s face and how soon he will become a man. And he thinks of his Golden wife. How she stood on the landing pad, looking up at him, wondering if he’d ever return home again.
More than anything, he wants this to end.
Then the machine takes hold.
He feels the tug on his body. The pounding of his heart. The mad cackling of the Goblin and the howls of his friends as they try to forget their children, their loves, and be brave. Nausea in his gut rises as the magnetic rails charge behind him. With a shudder of metal, they fire him forward through the launch tube out into silent space at six times the speed of sound.
Men call him father, liberator, warlord, Slave King, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the war-torn planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy.
It is the tenth year of war and the thirty-third of his life.
There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,
Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,
Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,
Till the vast Temple of our liberties
A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.
—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
WEARY, I WALK UPON FLOWERS at the head of an army. Petals carpet the last of the stone road before me. Thrown by children from windows, they twirl lazily down from the steel towers that grow to either side of the Luna boulevard. In the sky, the sun dies its slow, weeklong death, staining the tattered clouds and gathered crowd in bloody hues. Waves of humanity lap against security barricades, pressing inward on our parade as Hyperion City Watchmen in gray uniforms and cyan berets guard the route, shoving drunken revelers back into the crowd. Behind them, antiterrorism units prowl up and down the pavement, their fly-eyed goggles scanning irises, hands resting on energy weapons.
My own eyes rove the crowd.
After ten years of war, I no longer believe in moments of peace.
It’s a sea of Colors that line the twelve-kilometer Via Triumphia. Built by my people, the Red slaves of the Golds, hundreds of years ago, the Triumphia is the avenue by which the Conquerors who tamed Earth held their own processions as they claimed continent after continent. Iron-spined murderers with eyes of gold and haughty menace once consecrated these same stones. Now, nearly a millennium later, we sully the Triumphia’s sacred white marble by honoring Liberators with eyes of jet and ash and rust and soil.
Once, this would have filled me with pride. Jubilant crowds celebrating the Free Legions returned from vanquishing yet another threat to our fledgling Republic. But today I see holosigns of my head with a bloody crown atop it, hear the jeers from the Vox Populi as they wave banners emblazoned with their upside-down pyramid, and feel nothing but the weight of an endless war and a desperate longing to be once again in the embrace of my family. It has been a year since I’ve seen my wife and son. After the long voyage back from Mercury, all I want is to be with them, to fall into a bed, and to sleep for a dreamless month.
The last of my journey home lies before me. As the Triumphia widens and abuts the stairs that lead up to the New Forum, I face one final summit.
Faces drunk on jubilation and new commercial spirits gape up at me as I reach the stairs. Hands sticky with sweets wave in the air. And tongues, loose from those same commercial spirits and delights, cry out, shouting my name, or cursing it. Not the name my mother gave me, but the name my deeds have built. The name the fallen Peerless Scarred now whisper as a curse.
“Reaper, Reaper, Reaper,” they cry, not in unison, but in frenzy. The clamor suffocates, squeezing with a billion-fingered hand: all the hopes, all the dreams, all the pain constricting around me. But so close to the end, I can put one foot after the other. I begin to climb the stairs.
Clunk.
My metal boots grind on stone with the weight of loss: Eo, Ragnar, Fitchner, and all the others who’ve fought and fallen at my side while somehow I have remained alive.
I am tall and broad. Thicker at my age of thirty-three than I was in my youth. Stronger and more brutal in my build and movement. Born Red, made Gold, I have kept what Mickey the Carver gave me. These Gold eyes and hair feel more my own than those of that boy who lived in the mines of Lykos. That boy grew, loved, and dug the earth, but he lost so much it often feels like it happened to another soul.
Clunk. Another step.
Sometimes I fear that this war is killing that boy inside. I ache to remember him, his raw, pure heart. To forget this city moon, this Solar War, and return to the bosom of the planet that gave birth to me before the boy inside is dead forever. Before my son loses the chance to ever know him. But the worlds, it seems, have plans of their own.
Clunk.
I feel the weight of the chaos I’ve unleashed: famines and genocide on Mars, Obsidian piracy in the Belt, terrorism, radiation sickness and disease spreading through the lower reaches of Luna, and the two hundred million lives lost in my war.
I force a smile. Today is our fourth Liberation Day. After two years of siege, Mercury has joined the free worlds of Luna, Earth, and Mars. Bars stand open. War-weary citizens rove the streets, looking for reason to celebrate. Fireworks crackle and blaze across the sky, shot from the roofs of skyscraper and tenement complex alike.