Iron Gold

by Pierce Brown

  I move through the hall. The gun is slippery in my sweaty palms. I clear the top level and look down the flight of stairs, listening for movement. Hearing nothing, I creep down the stairs.

  In the lounge I hear something. Voices. Volga? I burst into the lounge with my pistol out in front to find two women staring at me from the leather flight chairs. “Holiday…” The word sticks in my throat like a shattered chicken bone. She sits with her elbows on her knees, in civi clothes. Black pants, boots, and a hunter-green leather jacket that looks like it’s got some sort of concealed pulseShield generator sewn into the fabric of the left sleeve. A heavy railgun pistol is strapped into the holster on her right thigh. Woman is ready for urban warfare. And at her side, in new clothes and freshly washed hair, sits the rabbit, with blinding hate in her rusty eyes. Her arm’s in a sling. “Ah. Shit…”

  “Sit down, Ephraim,” Holiday says.

  I keep the gun on them and look down the hall for others they might have brought with them. They seem alone, but there’s likely a squad of lurcher commandos waiting just inside the terminal. It’s over. I laugh bitterly and point a finger at Lyria. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “That’d be easier for you, wouldn’t it?”

  “How did you get past the Obsidians?”

  She makes a face at me. “Magic.”

  I grunt. “How did you find me?”

  “We are the State,” Holiday says. “How long did you think you could hide?”

  “Longer than a day,” I admit. “Do you mind if I make myself a drink? Or four?” I ease toward the wet bar.

  “Shut up and sit down.”

  I frown and look at my pistol. “I’m the one with the gun.”

  “I’m the one with a Stained in the cargo hold.”

  “Talk about overkill.” I slump into the seat across from hers. I’m surprised to notice that I don’t feel defeat or fear. If anything, I feel relief. I engage the safety and put my gun on the table between us, pushing it toward Lyria.

  “You’ll probably want to use that.”

  “Already got one,” she says, pulling my Omnivore from her jacket and setting it on her knee. There’s a fingerlock around the trigger. I smile in seeing it again.

  “Escaped the Obsidians. Somehow prevented yourself from being skinned alive by Republic Intelligence. Now sitting here with a gun. Must be magic.”

  “Ephraim…” Lyria starts.

  “Call me Philippe, if that makes you more comfortable.”

  “Slag you.”

  “Original.” I lean back and cross my legs. “So, what happens now? Commandos burst in and drag me to an interrogation tank? Peel off parts of me to give to the Reaper when he gets home? Or will it be chemical torture? Experiential? Lock me in a holoimmersion for a relative century? Or do I have a one-way subaquatic ticket to Deepgrave?”

  “This is the part where you tell us where the children are,” Holiday says. “Then you tell us who you sold them to. What you know about the Pink with the cane. And how we can get them back. For your sake, I hope you know enough to spare yourself being booked for treason.”

  “Fortunately, capital punishment is no longer an option,” I say.

  “We might make an exception.”

  “How noble.”

  She leans forward. “You’re gonna have to get used to the idea that you’re going to spend the rest of your life in a cell, Ephraim. How big that cell is depends on what you tell me.”

  “Holiday, you’ve spent too much time in the military. You can’t go at a man like that. Give him no means of escape. No incentive. Remember the Eleventh Legion? You were there. The Golden Basilisks.” She remembers. “What happens if you surround an enemy force with no path of surrender or retreat? They fight to the death. And that’s not good for anyone. Trapped by that dam, weren’t they? Do you remember how we just kept firing into them? Eight hours to kill fifty thousand men because we didn’t want to break the dam with bombs. Who knew it could take so long? I never saw the Reaper’s face after that. But you must have. Did he like it?”

  “This isn’t a game, Ephraim,” she says. “If you hate life so much you want to die, then be my guest. I’ll give you the bullet to eat. But don’t take two innocent kids with you.”

  “Innocent? Everyone keeps throwing that shit around. Their parents put them on the board. They didn’t have to attend functions of state. They didn’t have to parade them around like the paragons of progress. But they did. They made them the targets, not me. How many little kids do you think died in the Battle of Luna? I saw whole blocks disintegrated by Valii-Rath particle beams. Schools turned to dust by termite munitions with Republic stamps on them. Dead kids are the loose change of war. Don’t come whining to me because the man and woman who started this don’t want to pay out of their own pocket like the rest of us.”

  I’ve never seen her look at me with so much disgust. “What happened to you?”

  “Life. Same shit that happens to everyone else.”

  “Trigg would spit on you if he could see this.”

  “Well, he died on your watch. Not mine.”

  Holiday looks blankly at me as if I’ve slapped her across the face.

  All the days we met on Trigg’s birthday, that truth hung between us, unspoken like some weapon of mutually assured destruction. And now that I say it, I taste ashes in my mouth. To use Trigg like this, as a weapon, is the ultimate perversion of who he was, what he meant to the both of us. But he followed her everywhere. And she led him to his death for a cause that doesn’t even remember his name. Holiday can’t meet my eyes. But Lyria shakes her head.

  “That’s not fair, and you know it.”

  “Save the speeches, love. You’re just a little girl who thinks she’s a hero. You don’t know a thing about me.”

  “You’re right. I don’t,” she says. “You’ve gone hard to make that clear. But I know my ma died of cancer in the mines. Ate her lungs right up. Pa thought it was his fault. That he couldn’t get her the right meds. Saw it squeeze the life outta him. And by the time we got out of the mines, he was already dead. All he saw—the sky, the world—he hated, because she didn’t get to see it. You think she would have wanted that for the man she loved?”

  “Never been a slave. Wouldn’t know.”

  “We were promised everything when they brought us up; then I lost my family. My whole family. You can whine about your nicks and scrapes, but you got no idea what that’s like. Should I turn nasty because I saw evil done to them? Should I blame the worlds? I blamed myself. I blamed the Sovereign. And what luck did that get me?” She clears her throat, emotion welling. “You asked me if I believe in the Vale. I don’t know. I don’t know if it exists or if they watch me. But I know it doesn’t matter if they can see us. What matters is that we can feel them. Remember them. And try to live to be as good as we were in their eyes.”

  I look away from her to the window where pink clouds twirl.

  “Trigg might be gone, yeah. I know you feel robbed. But you gotta remember that he saw something to love in you, even if you can’t see it. He saw you as a good man, Ephraim. So if you ever loved him, be a good man.”

  “That man never even existed. It was just something Trigg made up to make himself feel better.”

  “Then why did you not kill me in the shuttle?”

  “I did. I pulled the trigger. The safety was on. It was just luck.”

  “You could have pulled the trigger again. But you didn’t. You let me live.”

  “And look what happened.”

  “This man you’re playing at. You sure he’s not the one you made up to make yourself feel less?”

  I feel everything now. As I stare out the window at the ships bound for orbit, I see Trigg in the waters of the Aegean Sea when we took our first vacation during his leave. I remember him playing his little guitar in the hammock behind our bungalow. He sounded terrible but I loved watching the sweat beading on his temples, the freckles on his shoulders, the childish laugh in a
man the world kept trying to make hard. He was patient with me. Slowly breaking down the walls that had stood tall since my mother looked at me and said she loved me for the thousand credits a month. He proposed on that vacation.

  All the good memories of him have been held hostage by the horror of his exit. Now the bars crack, the doors open, and they flood me. All I want is to say goodbye to him. To let him know he was mine and I was his. But sitting here, surrounded by the ruinous shit I’ve made, I still can’t feel anything but anger.

  I look at Holiday and I don’t have anything to say. I can’t apologize. The words just won’t come out; just as she will never apologize for letting him die, not even to herself. But she sees the animal pain in me.

  “He would have wanted you to fix this,” she says.

  “I don’t know where they are,” I say.

  Holiday’s more comfortable talking about the kidnapping than she is about Trigg. “Who was it?”

  “Syndicate. My contact was the Duke of Hands.”

  She already knew. “Could you identify him?”

  “Yeah. But I doubt he’s in the census. He was a Rose. High, high end. Private stock of a loaded Gold. Start your search there. And there was an Obsidian named Gorgo, definitely military. Not fresh from the Ice.” She takes notes. “What’s your exposure, Holiday? What could they want?”

  “You tell me. There’s been no proof of life. No demands.”

  “They didn’t kill them,” I say. “The Duke said they were for the Queen.”

  “Did you meet her?” Holiday asks.

  “No. Word in the game is that she’s an Obsidian warlord from Earth. No one knows for sure.”

  “Really?” Holiday frowns. “Republic Intelligence has been operating under the assumption that she’s a Red for more than a year now.”

  “A Red?” Lyria whispers.

  “You think Obsidians would follow a Red?” I laugh.

  “There’s also a chance they’re working with the Society,” Holiday says.

  “That seems unlikely.”

  “Why?”

  “The Duke was a slave. He loathes the slavers. If he’s working for the Ash Lord, he doesn’t know it. Is this about the Peace?”

  “Maybe.” Holiday looks out the window nervously, or as nervous as a woman with a head like a cinder block can look.

  “Expecting someone?”

  “You should tell him,” Lyria says. “He’s got the right to know.”

  “Know what?” I lean forward. “Know what?”

  “We aren’t the only ones looking for the children….”

  “Slag me.” I half stand from my seat. “He’s back? The Reaper?” I look out the window, feeling the color drain from my face. “Ares?”

  “Worse,” Holiday says. “The Lady Julii is on the hunt. And she’s out for blood.”

  “She’s eight months pregnant. Forgive me if I don’t shake in my boots.”

  Holiday smiles. “She attacked an Augustan shuttle over Hyperion in full war armor because Lyria was inside.”

  I stare at her. “I didn’t know they made maternity armor.”

  “They do.”

  “Does she know it’s the Syndicate?”

  Holiday shrugs. “We don’t know what she knows. And she’s not sharing information. We caught some of her investigators breaking into the crash site.”

  I scratch my head. Fingers are getting itchy for a burner, stomach knotted for more zoladone. “Well, if that woman declares war on the Syndicate, the kids are as good as chopped. They’ll start sending body parts to the Citadel in thorn-wrapped boxes.”

  “Which is why we are here and Republic Intelligence is not,” Holiday says. “You know the Syndicate better than we do. We need you to come in and help coordinate the rescue effort.”

  “Not a chance. They have people in your government.”

  Holiday squints. “How do you know that?”

  “We were given the boy’s itinerary more than a month in advance. But they didn’t volunteer any other insiders. Prolly didn’t want to burn them. Which is why I had to recruit you….” I look at Lyria. “If they know I’m helping you…”

  “Body parts,” Lyria says.

  “If we’re compromised, then you’ll have to retrieve them,” Holiday says.

  I snort a laugh. “Fuck that.”

  “Thought you’d say that. I know you don’t care about your life, Ephraim. But something tells me you care about hers.” She sets a holocube down on the table and an image of a cell appears with a woman hunched on a bench with her head in her hands. It’s Volga.

  “We found her at the Cerebian Zoo,” Holiday says. “She was easier to find than you were. What wasn’t easy was keeping the Telemanuses from killing her on sight.”

  “If you touch a hair on her head…”

  “No. It’s your turn to listen. Your turn to obey. If you do not do everything I ask, then I will give her to the Telemanuses.” Lyria looks as surprised as I am.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I say.

  Holiday leans back. “So there is someone in there.”

  “She didn’t want to do it.”

  “I don’t care. You will bring me the children. Then you can have your friend back.” She stares back at me without remorse. “This is the game you decided to play.”

  I look back at the holo and wonder how I ever could have been cruel to Volga. She followed me like a puppy from the day we met. All she gave me was love. She never even asked for it in return. Since she was born she’s been a slave, a monster. Kicked down by everyone. Then she found me and I treated her just the same. I feel sick.

  “There’s a way,” I say. “But I want a pardon for me and Volga.”

  “A pardon? After what you’ve done?”

  “I want it in digital with a third-party negotiator.”

  “No pardon for the rest of your crew?” Lyria asks.

  “They’re dead. Why do you think I’m even talking to you?” So much for my code.

  “What do you think, my liege?” Holiday says as she looks at me. She tilts her head. “She wants to speak with you.” Holiday touches her datapad and the face of the Sovereign appears in front of me. Her eyes are a pure liquid gold that have seen fleets burning off the shoulder of moons and war criminals walk free on her warrant. I hate her without measure.

  “Ephraim ti Horn.”

  “Lionheart.” The informality irritates Holiday. “I want Volga released immediately.”

  “No.”

  “Then we have a problem.”

  “She will be released when I have the children back. I will have a binding agreement drawn up via the Ophion Guild.”

  “Amani,” I say.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ophion is in the pocket of the Syndicate. You go there with a contract for me, we have a problem. Use Amani.” It’s a very strange thing telling the most powerful woman in the worlds something she doesn’t know. “And I want Volga to be pardoned on the event of my death.”

  “No.”

  “We both know how much you like handing out pardons. I know I’m not a Gold rapist or mass murderer, but in the spirit of the Amnesty, surely you can find it in your heart to forgive.”

  “Do you want to die, Mr. Horn?”

  “Irrelevant. Volga deserves life.”

  She’s not pleased by my intransigence. Tough shit. “The man she shot was like a father to me. He’s still fighting for his life.”

  “Then I certainly hope you don’t lose a father and a child on the same day.”

  She doesn’t react. Her Gold calm is so perfectly preserved and haughty that I want to reach through the holo and throttle her. “Very well,” she says. “Holiday will fit you with a transponder. When you locate the Syndicate base, you will signal with this transponder, and a strike team will arrive at your coordinates.”

  “The Syndicate will check for a transponder.”

  “It will be hidden.”

  “And they’ll find it. Subdermal, isotope, they�
��ll find it. These aren’t street thugs. You might have noticed.”

  “Then what do you propose?”

  “Give me a pad number, and I’ll call it. Then your killsquad can track its GPS and fly in and murder everyone in whatever way gets you off.”

  She doesn’t like it, but neither of us has much of a choice. “Very well, Mr. Horn. You have a deal. But I would like you to know one thing. If you attempt to escape, or if you defect to the Syndicate, know this as a certain fact: your friend will die. And be it on Mars, Luna, Earth, the Rim, or Venus itself, one night you will wake in the middle of the dark and find a shadow standing over you. If you are lucky, it will be me. If you are unlucky, it will be Sevro or my husband, and you will die shitting yourself in a foreign bed.”

  IT WAS NOT LONG AGO that a Gray could boast of his allegiance to the Minotaur in a bar and expect his drinks to be paid for wherever the pyramid flag flew. But that was at the fevered height of Apollonius’s warlord ascendance, before his betrayal and decline.

  Now, a mere 911 men remain of a host that once numbered 250,000. The rest have found employ with House Carthii or House Grimmus. These men stay because they could not serve the betrayers of their master or because they have nowhere to go. Orphaned by duty. Severed from all ties of family by their service to their house. Devoid of any underlying patriotism, they float along through life, like the stubborn jetsam of a once-great ship that refuses to sink under the waves.

  Once it might have seemed a dream to live out their pension days in peace on a Venusian island. But these men were not made for peace. The novelty of bedding local sun-browned Pinks from the coastal cities and swimming amongst the coral shoals of the Guinevere Sea is gone and they hunger for something more. I thought there would be several thousand, at least to assist us once we gained our audience with the Ash Lord. But there will be no audience, and this paltry remnant is all that we have.

  Sevro, Thraxa, and I watch via holo from Tharsus’s library as Apollonius addresses them. He looks out to his soldiers. They stand assembled on the ill-kept tarmac on the south side of his island. Tiny azure-shelled crabs skitter between the weeds in the cracked concrete. The uniforms of the soldiers are untidy. Their necks wreathed in hued shells, hair long in local braids. Apollonius spits on the ground.