Iron Gold

by Pierce Brown

  He walks off.

  “Wait!”

  He stops. “Yes?”

  “I owe you,” I say, reaching for my billfold. “You mind me, I mind you. That’s how it’s done.”

  “You want to pay me?” He’s offended. “Heavens no. Don’t cheapen the serendipity, love.” He pauses as people pass between us. He seems to be contemplating something. His hand rests on his sternum, touching something under his shirt. “Well, damnation,” he says with a sigh. “You do look like a lost thing. How long have you resided in our fair city?”

  “It’s my first day.”

  He coos. “You poor little rabbit.”

  “I’m not a rabbit,” I snap.

  He laughs. “True. Your teeth are much bigger. So, day one. And what have you seen?” He snatches my brochure when I hold it up. “Piteous child. You’ll stand in line all day. Well, just so happens I need to walk. It’s for the knee, you see. Old wound. How about you thank me by giving me some company and lending me an ear so I don’t have to talk to myself the entire time. It’s an even trade, I think.”

  I hesitate.

  “I promise you a splendid day of revelry and fraternity.”

  He’s got mischievous eyes. On the whole, I trust those more than I do kind eyes. Those are the ones that pity me. “I can do that.”

  “Splendid.” He turns to walk away. “We’re going now, Lyria of Lagalos.” He pats his leg. “Hop, hop.”

  I find Philippe hilarious. We walk and talk across the Promenade level, stopping at the unpopular but beautiful Pallas Gallery to see glass sculptures that look like Laureltide dancers frozen in time, and at the Cerebian Zoo, where kangaroos and zebras and other extinct creatures have been brought back to flesh and blood by carvers. He introduces me to caramel and cardamom popcorn and flavored ice. We smoke burners amongst lamplit trees in Aristotle Park and watch loose dogs chase mourning doves that gather to drink at the fountains. Philippe narrates as if I asked him to. He has a way with words, using many I don’t know, and some in ways I’m not familiar with. There’s something worldly about him, something cultured, so cultured that he mocks the uppity manners of the ladies in the furs and jewelry that I at first thought so intimidating.

  Ava, you’d love this man. Nothing like the stupid boys of the township.

  He also seems to want to know me. Not about me like everyone else, but about what I think. I ramble on, forgetting to feel self-conscious, and he watches, touching that something beneath his shirt.

  He might be older than my father, but he’s got something youthful about him that makes me smile. He hides something, a deep sadness maybe. And sometimes I catch him watching the trees or a fountain like he’s been here before with someone else a long time ago. When he does this, he always touches his chest.

  I wonder who I remind him of.

  I lose track of time, forgetting that the sun doesn’t set at the end of the day here. When I say I should get back to the Citadel, Philippe demands to escort me after we cap the day with a dinner at a little Venusian place he knows. I hesitate despite the growling in my stomach, about to make an excuse because I’ve never been to a real restaurant, and I’m self-conscious of my terrible coat, and I’m fretting I won’t be able to afford it; but he twists my arm. Damn well he did. The little Venusian place is the finest place I’ve ever seen. Napkins and plates as white as hardboiled eggs. Silver utensils. Music trickling from a Violet zitherist playing underneath an ivy gazebo that looks out at the Citadel and the mountains to the north.

  “Pains me to think you’ve lived a life without oysters,” Philippe says, slurping one down.

  “Well, you haven’t ever had fried pitviper eggs.”

  “An acquired taste, no doubt.”

  I shiver as I slurp down another oyster. I chewed the first one and almost retched, but now I know to take them down all at once, I’m beginning to like them if I sauce them with enough vinegar. Or maybe I like that I like them. I feel very important when the waiter comes and asks if we’d like anything else and I say, “That’s right, another flight please.”

  “And two more martinis,” Philippe demands. “Insidiously dirty, you charmer.”

  The waiter blushes and patters away. I watch him go, dreading what this will all cost when I could barely afford a coffee. Philippe tosses his empty shell into a pail. “These don’t hold a candle to true Venusian crustaceans, but with the war, Earth does its best.”

  “I heard trade might reopen with the Peace,” I say knowingly. Heard that bit from one of Quicksilver’s men who visited Kavax couple weeks back.

  “Ha! The Peace won’t last. It never lasts. Golds can’t handle conditional victory. They simply must have it all.”

  “Vox Populi might pass it without the Golds.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  I shrug, knowing I’ve said too much. “I hear things.”

  He examines me. “Doesn’t that bother you? Making peace with the slavers?”

  I consider it, relieved he didn’t ask where I’ve heard these “things.” “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sure you’d know if it bothers you.”

  “That senator…Dancer O’Faran. He was the one who freed my mine.”

  He whistles. “That’s something.”

  I nod. “Took me a while to remember. But if you saw how he looked at us…He just wants to make things better. Here and on Mars. Seems all the Sovereign thinks about is her personal score—finishing things with the Ash Lord. And the small people get left behind. She hasn’t even been to Mars in six years, and the place is a…quagmire.”

  He smiles at the word. “And what about the Reaper?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrug, drunk and wanting to talk about something else. “It’s like he’s one of them now.”

  “A Gold.”

  I nod, thinking of my brothers in the legions, wondering if I should tell Philippe about them. No. I don’t want the pity to ruin the night. “I just want it to end,” I say. “Just want that life we were all promised.”

  “Don’t we all. Ah, the oysters!”

  We finish the next flight, and, after the two martinis, Philippe gets the bill without me noticing. I make a show of scolding him, but inside I’m thanking the Vale and feeling stupid for worrying so much about it.

  Tottering drunk, we stumble away from the restaurant arm in arm, singing a Red ballad Philippe insisted I teach him about a boy so charming he seduced a pitviper. Though Philippe’s at least thirty kilos heavier and two hands taller, he’s drunker than I am.

  “Red constitution, damnably impressive,” he says with a sigh, sitting down midway through Hero Center despite the light drizzle that falls from the cloud layer. The dimness of the light makes it feel almost like a Martian night. “Must rest the leg. It aches so.”

  We sit together on a bench in the middle of the Hero Center’s plaza. Statues ring the expanse. My favorite, Orion xe Aquarii’s, towers seven stories high over a riot of red maples. The notoriously curmudgeonly Blue stands with her hands on her hips and a parrot on her shoulder. The largest of the statues is at the center of the plaza. At night, lights in the ground blaze up to illuminate the Iron Reaper: a Red boy ten times the size of a real man stands chained to two huge iron pillars. He is not grand. He is half starved. His back is bent. But his mouth is open in a roar. The chains seem to crack and snap. The columns are shattered and in their shards are more shapes and icons and screaming faces. Philippe strokes his necklace as he leans back looking at the statue.

  “What’s that?” I ask him after a moment. His eyebrows rise. “Under your shirt. You been stroking it like it’s a pet all night.”

  “Hm?” he sits up straighter and takes out the necklace. The size of a small egg, it is the face of a youthful man with curly hair and a crown of grapes. “A little something given to me by a special someone. It is Bacchus. Lord of frivolity and wine. My kindred spirit.”

  “Who gave it to you?” I ask. “Sorry. I got shit for manners.”
r />   “Dispense with thy manners, my darling. I’m too drunk for them.” Still, he pauses, his face losing its natural amusement, replaced by a darker, more intense emotion. “It was a man. My fiancé.”

  “Fiancé?”

  “That a problem?” he snaps in a clipped, new voice.

  “No…I just…”

  “Because I know lowReds are primitive little shits ’bout that sort of thing. Part of your mine conditioning. The nuclear family! No efficiency in homosexuality. A waste of sperm, declares the Board of Quality Control!”

  I glower. “We’re not all like that.” Da was, though.

  “No,” he says with a little, airy laugh, himself again. In that moment, I understand him. All the big words, all the dandy eccentricity, are a shield. There’s pain beneath, and for a moment, he trusted me enough to share it. “I’m sorry, love. I’m terribly tight. Easier to see only ahead when you’re terribly tight.” He sighs and watches water drip down the Reaper’s statue. Birds huddle in the armpits of the monument.

  “What was your fiancé like?” I ask softly.

  “Husband. I hate calling him fiancé. Cheapens it. He…was a good man. The best. Nothing in common with me, except an infatuation with the lord’s wine. Our private joke. He’s gone now. But you probably guessed that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We all have our shadows.” He smiles bravely.

  “My family was killed on Mars,” I say, surprised to find myself speaking the words out loud. So many people have asked, and dug, but I sealed them off because how could they ever understand? That sadness in Philippe understands me. In his eyes, I don’t feel pitied. I feel seen. “I was in one of the assimilation camps. We were there too long, and the Red Hand came.”

  “What were their names?”

  I make a small, pained sound. “No one’s asked that.”

  “Then I’m honored to be the first to know.”

  “My brother’s name was Tiran. My father’s name was Arlow. My sister was Ava. Her children: Conn, Barlow, and Ella. The littlest one…” My voice catches. “She was a baby.” I try to smile. “But I got my nephew out, and I got brothers alive too.”

  His silence is that of a man wrestling with something inside himself. The battle plays out in the muscles of his jaw and the shifting of his hands against the bench. After a time, not knowing which side has won, I follow his eyes to the Iron Reaper.

  “Know what I see when I look at that?” he asks. “A thief.” He laughs. “Suppose that’s blasphemy to you. He’s your great hero. Your messiah.”

  “He’s not my messiah.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “It’s incredible,” he says, looking at me.

  “What is?”

  “Everyone is so loud these days. But you, you’re silent when you’ve all the right to scream. Luna isn’t made for silence. Neither am I.” I say nothing. With him I don’t feel a need to, and maybe that’s why I told him about my family. It was a secret I wanted to hold close because I didn’t want the pity. I don’t want to demean their deaths or prostitute them for attention. “What do you see?” he asks of the statue.

  “Rust.” I pause. “And shadows.”

  We walk to the train depot in silence. Steam from the heat of the friction on rails billows from the tracks. “Thank you,” I say, “for everything.”

  “The pleasure was all mine, Lyria of Lagalos.” He pauses, considering his words carefully. “I know Hyperion may seem too big to reckon. And the people here grander than you. But don’t let them make you feel small.” He pokes my chest and smiles wryly. “You are a world entire. You are grand and lovely. But you have to see it before anyone else does.” He smiles at me, a little embarrassed. “You have my pad number. Don’t be a stranger, little rabbit.” He kisses my forehead paternally and turns into the rain. “Till we meet again.” He hops twice like a rabbit before his bad knee buckles comically. He grins back at me. I can’t help but laugh.

  In my bunk back in the Citadel, with the covers tight around my neck, I curl up, too tired to pull up the holo of Mars, and think it marvelous to have finally made a friend.

  WE EXTRACT OUR PRIZES from Deepgrave without incident, taking ten other high-value prisoners from the bowels of the station with us in our submersible. Even though they’re paralyzed and bound, the press of their bodies and the stink of their unwashed flesh, stacked in the back of the cramped cabin, is nearly more than I can bear. Stealing only Apollonius would have broadcast our intentions. Now, if the warden doesn’t live up to his end of the bargain, the Ash Lord and the Republic will think it a general jailbreak. I only hope our nonlethal methods and our access into their system doesn’t give us away too quickly.

  Despite the success of the mission, I feel trapped. Imprisoned by the proximity of the scum. Apollonius lies atop the pile of fallen warlords in his kimono, like some dread corpse king. In my chest, my heart is made heavier by the dark, silent eyes of my friends hunched in the red light of the submarine—knowing they feel the same weight, that we are all party to some unspeakable deed. Thraxa, who has always held overwhelming guilt for the evil works of her own Color, stares balefully at the prisoners. Were this to go wrong, were these Golds to stand again at the head of their legions, all their evil would rip fast as a wildfire back into the world.

  “Sir…I want to apologize,” Alexandar whispers carefully to me so the others can’t overhear. “I was already seasick, from the waves on the trawler, and when I saw the eyes go…well, it was mawkish of me. Not to the level I hold myself, and I hope you don’t think lesser of me for it.”

  “Ragnar would puke in null gravity,” I say. “Nothing to apologize for.”

  He nods, not hearing me. It must be a heavy burden, being the eldest grandchild of Lorn au Arcos. An impossible standard to follow.

  Sevro wonders why I like the youth. For all the entitlement, all the arrogance, a deep vein of insecurity runs through Alexandar, and I feel a powerful protective instinct toward him. He wants to be good. If only he didn’t want to be famous as well.

  He reminds me only too much of Cassius.

  “Sir, I know it is base to ask. But I wonder if we could keep it between us?”

  “You worried about Rhonna mocking you?” I ask. “Trust me, Alex. It’s not her you have to worry about.” I look over to Sevro, who is eavesdropping on the conversation with a nasty little smile for Alexandar. From the back of the submersible there comes a bark. I wheel around to see the skinny Obsidian smiling down at his lap. A small snout pokes through his fingers.

  “Don’t tell me you brought the warden’s dog,” Sevro mutters. The Obsidian grins wickedly and opens his bony hands to show us the terrier hidden between his legs. “Dognapping? Careful, mutts, Tongueless here is a bad, bad man.”

  When we surface back at the trawler, I struggle to hide my agitation and wait for my men to exit first and help load out the prisoners one by one before exiting at the last to gulp down fresh air. Yet even the brine of the sea and the cool wind of the Atlantic cannot wash away the feeling that I’ve made some irrevocable mistake.

  I can’t let the Howlers see my doubt, so I emerge out of the submersible with a grand smile, and laugh to Rhonna at our catch of the day as they lay the prisoners lengthwise on the deck and shackle their hands and feet together under a clear and endless sky. “…and he puked over my boots,” Sevro says, finishing his story of Alexandar’s embarrassment to Rhonna and the support crew’s delight. Alexandar tries to laugh it off, but his cheeks are bright red. “And then we kidnapped a dog! Did you meet Tongueless? He’s a riot. Tongueless, come say hello!”

  After loading up the Golds onto Colloway’s pelican, we cut open the door previously sealing the crew in, and leave the crab hauler via the pelican, flying north to our departure base in the frozen wilderness of Baffin Island. There, the Nessus, a stolen Society Xiphos-class frigate of war, lies cold and quiet under camouflage tarps in the shadow of granite escarpments. As we made our preparati
ons for Deepgrave in Greenland, my brother Kieran hid here with the rest of the Howlers, getting ready for our departure.

  They wait for us out in the snow in thermal cloaks to help load up the prisoners, watching the parade of blindfolded Golds with the solemnity of funeral mourners. I share their disgust. This dirties all of us. Compounded with the death of Wulfgar, it has darkened the mood perceptibly. I don’t imagine it will brighten as we near Venus.

  On the snow, Sevro and I look up at the Nessus. Painted snow white the entire length of her hundred-meter hull and crested on her starboard and port with the winged heel of Quicksilver, she’s got some of the prettiest lines ever to dart between spheres.

  “This beauty puts a rocket in my pocket,” Sevro says. “What’d Quick want for her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Man doesn’t get that rich asking for nothing.” His eyes follow the last of the prisoners up the ramp. “We should keep the youngbloods away from them. Half those rich shits could talk their way out of a black hole. Especially Rath.”

  “They were sentenced to solitary. Solitary is what they’ll get.”

  Sevro nods to Tongueless, who is standing near the ship’s portside battery, wriggling his bare feet in the snow, arms spread wide. His spirit eyes stare off into the wilderness as a storm gathers its breath.

  “What you want to do about that box of fun?”

  “We’ll send him to New Sparta with the rest.” He grimaces. “What, you want to bring him with? We don’t know anything about him.”

  “I like his fiber. I mean, he knocked a Peerless out with a water pipe.”

  “He has to be over fifty! Jove knows how long he’s been in that cell and why he was there in the first place. It’s a risk.”

  “He saved your ass. And we’d still be wandering around down there with guards up our peckers if he didn’t play guide.” He chews his lip. “To be honest, it’d be good for the pack to have an Obsidian around the table. They’re feelin’ a little light in the breeches.”