Iron Gold

by Pierce Brown

  I don’t have to tell her twice. Cyra’s hoverbike whines as it departs through the escape tunnel. Only when I’m sure she’s gone do I go back to the junker. I haul Lyria out and move her into the backseat of our clean car, a ten-seat taxi that sits next to the other rides. I take out our bags and dump our changes of clothes onto the floor, then lean back in to speak with Lyria. Her big red eyes stare up at me.

  “You’ve been drugged with anacene-17. It will last another hour.” I consider the Telemanus. He was four times her body weight. “Maybe less. We’re going to meet some very bad people. When the drug wears off, do not speak, do not move. If you do, they will kill you. Afterwards, if you behave, I will take you wherever you want to go and give you enough money to start a new life.” On the zoladone my voice sounds like a robot’s. It’s a lie I’m telling her; she’ll be hunted forever, but I’ll still give her a running start. She deserves that at least. “Do you understand?” She can’t blink or move. Hate is all she can manage. “Good.”

  I stack a bag on her face and cover the rest of her body. Even beneath the zoladone, I know I will hate myself later. I know the look in her eyes is one I’ll never forget. Add it to the pile. I strip my gear and toss it into a metal barrel and dress in one of my black Kortaban suits.

  “Volga, strip and burn,” I say when she emerges from the clean room. She dumps corrosive acid into the barrel after she’s stripped her gear.

  “Found it,” the Yellow with a metal sniffer nose says inside the clean room. “Right shoulder blade.” The Violet, this one with multihued chimeras tattooed onto either side of his neck, finds the mark, and soon two wicked-looking drills whir to life. Metal burrows into skin. The children whimper through numb mouths as the Syndicate contractors dig out the imbed tracking devices with forceps. Tears tumble out of the children’s paralyzed ducts. The men toss the bloody little chips into a container.

  “They’re babynaked and ready to roll,” the Violet says.

  “Double-check for radiation stains,” I say, gingerly feeling my ribs. “Don’t be sloppy.” After they’ve finished, the two operators shove the children into plastic smocks and then drag them out of the clean room. The knights on the hologram jump into the garage through the hole punched by the ships. The operators leave the children with us and depart in their own vehicle, taking it through a subterranean tunnel that links with abandoned tramways. Volga takes both children and loads them into the back of the taxi, laying them parallel on the seats as gentle as a mum tucking her kids in for a nap. She lingers there looking down at them.

  “Volga.”

  She jerks her head up to glare at me and slams the taxi door hard enough to rattle the glass. “Fuck you too,” I say calmly. I leave her to go activate the timer on the explosive charges outside the clean room. Thirty seconds starts ticking down. I activate the charges in the junker car, toss another next to the barrel for good measure, and hop in the driver’s seat of the taxi as Volga tosses one of her charges into the clean room too. I follow the path of the Syndicate operators down into the tunnels.

  “If you gotta leave the field, do it in style,” I mutter without heart. Soon as the old drill instructor’s words are out of my mouth, the concussion of the charges going off shakes the tunnel. A second set of charges goes off a minute later at the tunnel’s entrance, collapsing it behind us. We drive in silence, Volga pinched in the seat next to mine.

  The high of the heist died with Dano. Neither Volga nor I expected to survive this. And now that we have, the weight of living comes crashing down on the big girl. She rolls down her window and closes her eyes, sticking her hand out into the wind like it’s a dolphin riding the waves. She sits six inches from me, but we might as well be worlds apart. Cold, fetid air from the tunnels rolls through the car. We pass ramps going down deeper into the undergrid of the city. The tension works its way out of my jaw, but the sight of Dano’s blood on the fists of the Gold oozes through my skull. Volga links her datapad with the taxi and turns on Ridoverchi.

  As his piano plays a gentle melody and we carve our way through the darkness, tears stream from her eyes, but not from mine.

  Pulvis et umbra sumus. “We are but dust and shadow.”

  —HOUSE RAA

  CASSIUS IS LOST IN THOUGHT, staring up at a dragon carved into the stone of the antechamber. Its snout is long. Its greedy maw open and lined with uneven teeth. The bold knight that faced down the Raa family has departed, leaving behind the tormented, reflective soul I know. The wounds where the gruesli pierced his face are swollen and red, but he’s shaved his beard and looks younger than he has in years. Only his eyes are old.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask. He does not seem to hear me. The distant voices from a hundred throats whisper from behind two black doors down a set of stone stairs just beneath the dragon’s gaze. Our Gray guards give us space, allowing us to speak. “Cassius?”

  “It was a flower,” he says quietly.

  “A flower?”

  I realize he is far from here. “A white edelweiss. That was the last thing Father gave me before he died.” He pauses, eyes still fixed on the dragon. He rarely speaks of his family. “It was a proud day,” he says slowly. He spares a look at the guards. “You were too young then. Mother kept you at Eagle Rest. But the rest of us were in Agea on the Citadel steps, where Augustus used to give the Perennial Address. The Sovereign summoned us there for a council of war. Augustus’s ships were two days from Deimos. The sun was high in the sky; you could feel the energy of a storm in the air. Wind had already come. Rain was following. I remember smelling the flowering judas trees from the steps. And…for once, our silver eagle flew from the flagpoles of the Citadel, where all my life I’d only ever seen lions. It was to be the end of a corrupt Mars and the beginning of our era.

  “We had the numbers. We had the right. And once we defeated Augustus, we would have Mars—something Father never coveted, so I knew he would treat her well. But I was ashamed. After I lost the duel to Darrow, my father told me he was disappointed. Not that I had lost. He was ashamed at my selfishness.” He grimaces. “My petty pride. The carvers mended me and I put myself to one purpose: redemption in his eyes. I begged the Sovereign to let me lead the legions sent to trap Augustus at the Dockyards of Ganymede after Pliny gave us the intel. She sent Barca along to ensure I did not fail. I didn’t. I returned to Agea dragging Augustus behind us in chains. I found redemption in her eyes. But I didn’t have Father’s till we stood on those steps and he saw how I’d changed.

  “He was to meet the Augustans in orbit with our cousins and sisters. I was given the rest of our family forces to defend Agea. You’ve never known pride like it, Castor. The shining faces. The laughter. The hair and pennants kicking in the wind as two full generations of Bellona strolled out from the summit in armor under the sun.

  “He turned to me at the foot of the stairs and told me he loved me. He’d done it a thousand times before. But it was different. ‘The boy has fled,’ he said. ‘In his place, I see a man.’ It was the first time I felt I deserved his love, to be his son. I realized how lucky I was, how blessed I was to have a father like him. In a world of terrible men, he was patient, kind. Noble in the way the stories told us to be as boys.”

  I glance to see if the guards are listening. Their faces from the bridge of the nose down are covered with duroplastic breathing units. The flinty eyes that peer out from beneath the gray hoods give nothing away.

  “He took an edelweiss from a pouch in his armor and pressed it into my hands and told me to remember home. To remember the Olympus Mons. To remember why we fight. Not for family or for pride, but for life.

  “The flower had grown near his favorite bench on a ridgeline there, just beyond the outbuildings of the Rest. He’d climb to that ridgeline every day before the sun set, to find peace, from us children, from work.” He smiles. “From Mother. Sometimes, if I was very lucky and quiet, he would let me walk with him, and we’d talk or just sit and watch the eagles visit their nests in t
he crags. It was the only time I remember being truly happy. Not craving something more.

  “Julian was mother’s favorite, but Father didn’t play that game.” He smiles. “I know he was not happy with the venal creature I became in the years before the Institute, or the bitter one thereafter, but there on the steps…when he pressed the flower into my hands, I knew I’d finally become the man he always hoped I would be.”

  There are tears in his eyes.

  “What happened to the flower?” I ask gently, not wanting to break the spell.

  “I lost it in the mud.” He looks back to me in shame. “I didn’t think it would be the last time I would ever see him.” He’s quiet, wrestling with something larger than the fear of the coming duel. “All of them are dead. All those shining faces, dimmed. Their laughter…just silence. I want to see them again….” He almost says my name before catching himself. He looks to the door. “Hear them. Feel Father’s hands on my head. But I won’t. Not even when I die. The Void is all that will greet me.”

  “You won’t die today, Cassius. You can beat him,” I say, knowing that even if he wins, our lives are likely forfeit. “You are the Morning Knight. You are still that good man as…our father saw. And you are not meant to be the last Bellona.”

  “My brother…” He smiles and rests a hand on my shoulder. “Sometimes I forget how young you are. I’m not afraid that I won’t beat him.” He looks up at the dragon, past her teeth and into the hungry darkness of her throat. “I’m afraid because this world is all that is. Karnus was right.” He smiles at a private joke. “But who knows, perhaps the darkness will be kinder than the light.” He looks down at the black doors and listens to the voices beyond them. “No matter what fate waits beyond those doors, do not acquiesce. If they have their evidence, they have their war. It is our duty, even if it is our last, to prevent that war. To protect the people.”

  “It’s not our Republic to protect,” I say.

  “That’s Octavia speaking, not you. Of course it is ours to protect.”

  “Why? It’s a broken place that betrayed us. The people you want to save are being ground into the dirt. Dido is right: the Reaper has failed.” I pause. “Choices were made,” I say slowly, choosing my words with care so he does not feel assaulted. “Though I may not agree, I understand why you made them. The Sovereign let the Jackal massacre…our family. She was a tyrant. I know that. The Society was corrupt. But look what’s replaced it. The people on that ship—I see them every night and I think what I could have done better. But they didn’t die because I chose to help a Gold first. They died because of Darrow.” I hesitate. “You opened Pandora’s box. Now you’ve spent these years trying to justify the choices you made.” I lower my voice. “Guarding the orphan you created. Patrolling the trade lanes you endangered. Maybe this is your chance, our chance, to put things back together. Not by hunting pirates out in the middle of nowhere, but by restoring order.”

  “You want to give them their evidence. Their war.”

  “I do.”

  He steps very close to me so only I can hear. “You open that safe, you’re dead too. You won’t have a chance to fix anything soon as they find out who you really are.”

  “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  “Stop thinking with your cock. Seraphina doesn’t give half a shit about you. She’s bait that Dido is dangling like a piece of meat.”

  I snort. “It’s not about her, Cassius.”

  “No, it’s about revenge, isn’t it? Your revenge.”

  “You took yours,” I say quietly. I watched him stand over my grandmother as she bled to death. I watched him kill Aja, the woman who was like a mother to me. “You don’t sleep. You drink. You preach and hunt pirates. We’ve never been in one place longer than a month. You think that is because you’re protecting me? You think it’s because you have a sacred duty to save merchants who chose to risk the Belt to line their own pockets? Stop lying to yourself for one gorydamn moment and admit that you made a mistake! You let the wolves through the door. Being a ‘good man’ won’t fix what you’ve done. Neither will suspending yourself in a state of constant motion. There is no atonement except killing the wolves, shutting the door, and reestablishing order. That is how we make things better than they are now. It’s how we can fix the worlds.”

  Even though I know the intransigence of my friend, I hold out some boyish hope that my words will arouse some sense inside him. Instead, inexorably, his eyes harden, our world darkens, and I know our fellowship has ended.

  “I had you for ten years. She’s had you for a breath. Is her spell is so complete?”

  I feel pity as I see him realize he has failed. Not to protect me, but to convince me that he was right. That the pain he caused me was just. If he could convince me, me of all people, then perhaps he thought he would convince himself and know beyond all doubt that what he did was good. I’ve robbed him of that hope and any chance for his heart to be at peace.

  Ten years of brotherhood evaporate in a breath.

  We stare at one another and see strangers.

  He snaps his fingers at the guards. “We’re done here.” They come forward and I step aside so they can lead him away down the stairs to his death.

  At the bottom of the steps, he stops. “This duel isn’t for me. It’s for you. If you love me at all, you will let me die.”

  —

  Beyond the black doors, down a narrow chasm of gray rock, lies the Bleeding Place. It is a circular amphitheater carved into the stone of the mountain. Amongst sculpted lotus flowers, stone dragons, slick and pearly with condensation, hang down from the dark ceiling as if to drink the blood centuries of Raa have spilled here to satisfy quarrels. Servants finish scraping yellow and green moss from a section of tiered benches carved into the rock. The benches encircle a white marble floor. At the center of the floor, the Sigil of Gold has been emblazoned onto the pale stone. Hundreds of Golds stand to watch from the stone as the brilliant son of Mars goes to meet their pale champion. Many are Ionian, but I see a Codovan crest, a Norvo, a Felix, and scores more. A dozen moons are represented, and not just Jupiter’s. I’m guided to a bench in the third row where the Raa family sit more than thirty strong, despite the gaps in their ranks from those imprisoned along with Romulus in the Dust Cells.

  The Rim obeys the old customs.

  I look anywhere but at Cassius as a Chance, a young girl of the White caste carrying a white bag, leads a Justice, an old blind woman with milky eyes and translucent hair, onto the fighting floor. One day the little girl will grow old, and, if she reaches a state of transcendence, she will summon the courage to chemically blind herself and become a Justice herself. It is the ultimate honor of this hierophant race. Raised in monastic sanctuaries, they endeavor to divorce themselves from their humanity and embody the spirit of justice. Though many Whites in my grandmother’s Society aspired to more worldly and profitable heights.

  The duelists bend to their knees as the frail hierophant whispers blessings to them and touches her sacerdotal iron rod and laurel branch on each of their shoulders. Cassius stares at the floor, maybe still in that day on Mars with his father. When the Justice has finished her benediction, she is led to her bone chair at the edge of the marble by White adjuncts.

  Chance pulls the string from the bag and litters white sand onto the floor until a large, unbroken circle is formed around the two men. I remember seeing the blood fill the white sand when I would go to the Bleeding Place as a boy to watch young Peerless fillet one another over perceived slights. Seems just yesterday I saw Cassius, bold and young, cutting his way up through the duelists of Luna. I always thought the practice stupid. A vain exercise of pride.

  I’m numb to it now, replaying my conversation with Cassius over in my head, torn between honoring him and honoring my own conscience.

  Someone slides into the empty place on the stone next to me. I turn to see Seraphina. Her eyes surprise me with their sympathy. Is Cassius right? Would that sympathy v
anish if the safe opened and she knew who I was? Would she let me die? Of course. Our ancestors have loathed one another for centuries.

  “I’m sorry you must watch this,” she says.

  “If you were, you would have stopped it,” I reply. “It wasn’t just me who saved your life. But of course, I assume you think gratitude a coward’s conceit.”

  “I said I was sorry you must watch. Not that he must die.”

  “He didn’t kill your sister or your grandfather, no matter how absurdly you wish to twist it. He arrived after the massacre. And he was following orders from his Sovereign.”

  “He partook. Blood is on his hands.”

  “And so his will be on yours.” I tire of looking at her. The slight imperfections, the heavy eyes, the sullen mouth, which I found so alluring, are now ugly and small.

  She stares on at me. “The Reaper took your family when you were a boy, Bellona. Can you forget? Can you forgive?”

  I remain silent because I don’t know the answer.

  Dido watches Cassius on the floor from amongst her family. Farther down, ancient Gaia sits smoking her pipe, still playing the fool. And past her, separate from the family, Diomedes sits with a clutch of Olympic Knights. They wear all black. Peerless steal glances at him, each with their own judgment of his honor for not being the one to challenge Cassius. He’s the only Raa here who retains any of my respect. The knights alone have not taken a side in the coup, as ordered by Helios au Lux, ArchKnight of their order.

  The Olympics sit in the gulf between a divided room. I discovered from eavesdropping that half of the powerful Golds in here were called to Sungrave from their own mountain cities or moons before the coup began, under the false auspices of an emergency summons sent out by Dido under Romulus’s warrant. They have been disarmed and held prisoner by Dido’s men since they arrived. No armed Obsidians or Grays: lowColors are not allowed in this place.

  Duels are sacrosanct. Propriety and manners imperative in the audience.