Iron Gold

by Pierce Brown

  “You asked me if I was a thief of order or one of chaos,” I say slowly. “I get the groove. This is your world now. Your rules. She performed a service—a debt was owed. She deserves to get paid.”

  “That. Is a good answer,” the Duke says. “But she is not a thief. And she is not your friend. She is a slave in all but name, and will run back to her masters. So, I am afraid she must die.” He waits for me to object, but I know it’s useless. The only thing I can protect now is my life and Volga’s.

  “I suggest we kill him too,” Gorgo says.

  “Oh my. Are you now the Duke of Hands, Gorgo?” the Duke asks. “No? Then shut your mouth.” Gorgo smiles coldly at him, but says nothing. “You have complicated things, Ephraim. But the Syndicate honors its contracts. You owe nothing. You are free to leave.”

  “What about her?” I ask, looking to Cyra.

  “She has shown a duplicitous nature. She cannot be trusted. If she spoke so quickly to us, who else might she speak to? But…she wronged you, not me, therefore her fate is in your hands. Acid, axe, fire, fist. Choose the one-way ticket.”

  “Ephraim…I’m sorry,” she says pathetically through swollen lips. I can’t hate her. I’m too tired to hate her. “Please…”

  “Volga?” I ask. She shakes her head. “Just let her go,” I say to the Duke.

  “Thank you,” Cyra whimpers. “Thank you. Volga, I—”

  “Don’t talk to her,” I snap.

  The Duke raises an eyebrow. “Very well. Gorgo, you heard the man. Let her go.”

  Gorgo grabs Cyra by the hair and drags her to the edge of the highrise. She kicks and screams when she sees what he’s about to do. “Ephraim! Ephraim!”

  I do nothing.

  Gorgo throws her off the edge of the highrise like a sack of trash. We don’t even hear the impact. I imagine her lying in a messy pile of meat fifty stories below. Like Trigg on that mountainside.

  I watch the Duke, my ears filled with the scream of memory.

  “Let the Obsidian girl up,” the Duke says. Released by the thorns, Volga stumbles to her feet, more angry than afraid. “Only that one was loyal in the end. I appreciate loyalty. So her life is my parting gift to you. A proven, true friend. You are lucky. Such is more than most thieves can manage.”

  I face the Duke and swallow back the bile.

  “Then I thank you for your patronage, Duke. I trust our business is concluded.”

  “For today.”

  I turn and help Volga limp away.

  “Ephraim,” the Duke calls. I pause, fearing another twist. “I wonder, where will you go now?”

  “To sleep.”

  “Alone? A pity. But after that…?”

  “Don’t know. Haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “You have money now, all for yourself. Money enough to retire. To do whatever you like. But I know you, and you’re not the sort to gather dust. You need this life. Need it to feel alive. To feel anything at all. We always want more—people like you and me. The Queen can give you what you crave. I can give that to you.”

  I spare a look at Gorgo, then ask the Duke, “Are you offering me employment?”

  The Duke smiles. “Amongst other things.” He gives a card to Gorgo, who brings it to me. A datapad number is printed in white on black. “When you grow bored. I’m always looking for a helping hand.”

  Gorgo holds on to the card with his long nails as I try to pull it from him. The card tears in half. He flicks his end at my face. I gather up the pieces and put them into my pocket and Volga and I walk away, doing everything in our power not to run as fast as we can. In the back of my mind, I wish rabbit a swifter end than Cyra’s. Rat or not, the Green was one of mine. And now a debt is damn well owed.

  MY SHOES POUND WET PAVEMENT. The sound of the scorchers echoes in my ears. The weapons chewed the ground around my feet as the Obsidians rushed me in the industrial tower. Scarier than the bloodydamn Red Hand. There were three of them in black. Their hair white as bleached bone. They moved faster than the dogs of Camp 121, pushing off walls and support beams like there was no gravity. I thought I was dead, cornered on a level with only open air behind me.

  I saw an open ventilation duct. Didn’t even look to see if it had a bottom before I dove in. The sheet metal vaporized behind me from their weapons. I fell ten levels before I managed to jam out my legs and hands to halt my fall. The friction shredded the skin from my palms and dislocated my shoulder. But I managed to slide down the rest of the way, just as my brother Aengus taught me in the vents of Lagalos.

  For the first time in my life, I’m glad I’m small.

  When I reached the end of the air duct, I kicked my way out, found a construction ladder down, and then limped off into the streets of the reconstruction zone. Still, the Obsidians follow.

  I can’t outrun them, so I jump into a dumpster behind a tenement complex and push rotting trash over myself. Rats the size of toddlers and cockroaches the size rats should be scurry around me, biting my back, my arms. But I lay corpse-still and listen to the Obsidians howling to each other in their alien tongue. They’re searching the streets. A searing line of pain works its way down my left forearm. I must have cracked the bone in the fall. Someone’s coming. I hold my breath.

  The top layer of skin on my hands oozes blood. I wince as I clutch the shiny pistol I took from outside Philippe’s car. I was too terrified to turn around and use it on the Obsidians. I’ve never even held a weapon before. Could I shoot a man? Who were they anyway? Who did Philippe deliver the children to? The Pink one was the boss, but I didn’t hear his name. If only I’d caught Philippe’s—his real name.

  I hate the bastard.

  His crow shot Kavax. They killed Kavax.

  Are they going to kill Pax and the girl? Don’t let them die. Don’t let it be my fault. Please.

  I shift in the garbage. Flies buzz up in my face. The smell brings me back to the dumpsite outside 121. I feel Liam pressed against my chest, his little heart beating so fast. It’s too much. I fling myself out of the garbage bin, swatting the flies off me in a panic. My shoulder stabs with pain. I kneel there in the street amongst burner butts and feel the tightness in my chest fade as the rain soaks through my tuxedo jacket.

  Think, Lyria. Think.

  I have to run. But where do I go?

  The Sovereign will think I’m in on this, and they’ll kill me or put me in a cell for the rest of my life. I can’t go back to the Citadel. But Liam…

  Only shadows populate the streets. Cold rain has been falling since we left Quicksilver’s. My teeth chatter together. I think of Kavax’s kind face, how he said that Sophocles chose me. How I was a sign of magic. Bloodydamn lie.

  I’m poison. All the time I was in the Citadel, I resented them. I loathed the Sovereign. That’s why the children were taken. Because I was rotten. I was stupid enough to trust a Gray.

  I tuck Philippe’s pistol inside my jacket, pick a direction and start moving, sticking to the shadows. I jog as much as I can, but my shoulder hurts so bad I have to rest every three blocks or so. I reach into my jacket to clutch the pistol and duck into a doorway when several hoverbikes roar down the street. On the backs, men in shiny beetle-black helmets scan the shadows. I fall to the ground and start shaking like an addict and scratch under my nose like I’ve just done black dust. One of the hoverbikers pauses, ten meters away, then rips off down the street, thinking me a junkie.

  I can’t linger here. They’ll flush me like they did in the dump at 121. I gotta go up. Carefully, I leave the shadows and push on, searching for a lift. But all the tenement houses here are stunted buildings underneath the foundation lattice that supports the highrises. Those that are connected to the highrises are fortified and secured with huge doors. I pound on several, but they won’t let me in. So I follow old elevated tram tracks, looking for a station. Might be a lift near one. Up ahead, I hear a nostalgic sound through the rain—a zither. Reds. They might help me.

  Underneath the tram is an a
bandoned, derelict station skinned in graffiti. A tent city of vagrants has sprouted up around it. Electronics glow from inside the tents and men gather around a burning barrel for warmth.

  “Oy, what’ve we got here?” a man asks, spotting me. “You lost, little lass?” He’s from Mars by the sound of him, and I know right off I’ve made a mistake.

  “ ’Lo, brother. There a lift near here?” I ask. “I’d settle for stairs.”

  “What would a little thing like you need to go up for?” another Red asks, this one from Mars too. “You’d look better going down.” I step back from him.

  “Some nice silk, that,” another says.

  “Fancy silk. Gamma silk.”

  “Righto! Have we got a Gamma on our hands, lass? Teeth all clean. Hair all nice.”

  “What’s your name, lass? Where you from?”

  “None of your bloodydamn business,” I say. “But if you want to point me on my way, might be some chit in it for you.”

  “Might be we just take that chit.”

  “Why you holdin’ your arm?” one of them asks. “You fall from the sky? Aerial accident?” His teeth are black and crumbling from demondust. He’s got the black tip on his nose, the cartilage eroding between the two nostrils. “Come here, let us take a look at it.” Two of the men on the outskirts of the group have started inching toward me from the sides. I back away; my shaking hand drifts into my jacket.

  “You wanna mind yourself,” I say thinly. “My people will be looking for me.”

  “We’re your people, lass.” Memories of Red Hands in the moonlight seep into the moment. “Come on and get warm by the fire. We got some swill and some dust if you wanna see angels, sister. We’ll show you that. All the sights of the Vale.”

  “You warm each other up,” I snarl. “Touch me and I’ll burn your bloody balls off.”

  “Nah, nah, mouthy one,” the one with the teeth says. He’s been slowly walking toward me. “That’s not what a lass’s mouth is for, doncha know?” I pull the pistol out of my jacket and point it at his balls. The men recoil but the one with the black teeth just laughs at the trembling barrel. “Nice scorcher, that! Classic lines. Where’d you get your hands on a piece like that? Master give it to ya?” As he waits for an answer, his eyes flick up. It saves my life.

  I wheel around and see a man lunging toward me from behind. I fall back and pull the trigger. The gun is silent and without recoil. His leg explodes as the metal slug tears into it. The skin of his thigh peels back like the flesh of an overripe peach. His severed leg kicks back across the pavement, hissing steam and blood. He screams, looking at the stump, and falls. I wheel on the rest of them with the gun. They cower like children. I step toward them, heart raging, wanting to kill every last piece of shit. The man on the ground moans in pain, clutching his mangled stump, and I feel sick.

  I turn and run from them till my legs are numb.

  Shaking, I collapse between two crumbling tenement complexes. Dogs bark and babies scream out open windows. My stomach lurches and I sick up all over the trash. When my stomach has emptied, I fall back on my ass and shake. The man is going to die. I was going to kill the rest of them. I toss the gun away, disgusted.

  There’s a loud roar and the sound of a crash from the street.

  I crawl to peer out of the alley and see a street stained by the green sign of a tenement complex. A hoverbike idles in the center of the street. A huge man gets off the back and pulls off his helmet. White hair flows down his back. He can’t be more than twenty, though it’s hard to tell with Obsidians. The man stalks toward a person he just shot through the leg with a harpoon reel from the front of his bike. Faces watch out the windows of the complex. The Obsidian picks the person up with one hand and draws a pointed hammer from a holster on his back. I look away and almost throw up again when I hear the wet sound of the skull caving in. The faces disappear from the windows and the bike roars away, dragging the red-haired body behind on the harpoon reel.

  I pick the gun back up.

  If I stay on the streets, they’ll find me. I look up and see the rails of the old tramway. If I can climb up there, I can move without being on the streets. But someone might see me. I gotta risk it.

  My fingers are bloody by the time I climb the cracked concrete support column up to the tramline. There’s a depression between the rusted rails that I can scramble along without being seen from the ground. It’s all that saves my life. As I work my way along the tramline, more bikes search the streets. Like the whole underbelly of Lost City has woken to try and find me. Who are these people?

  Over the next hour, I pass several public gravLifts, but they’re all guarded by men in black coats with chrome nightshades. Finally, exhausted and shivering, I find an abandoned stairwell beside a derelict gravLift. It’s unguarded.

  Feral dogs snarl at me, their eyes glowing from under the covered stairwells as I make my way upward toward the lights of Hyperion ninety levels above. As I ascend level by level to brighter, more reputable zones of the city, fliers speed through the air in the avenues. Surface cars and trams rattle on crisscrossing bridges.

  I duck my head when I feel eyes on me and keep a white-knuckled hold on the pistol inside my jacket. Now that I have it, I don’t ever want to be without it again.

  I stop glancing up at the smog layer above. It seems no closer each time I do. This city wasn’t meant to be crossed on foot. But there’s no one to ask for help, and even if I did find Watchmen down here, I’d be too frightened to approach them. Not after last time. Who would believe my story? And who’s to say they aren’t on the payroll of the man Philippe works for? Remembering that Pink’s smile chills me as much as the rain.

  Slick, pretty, but rotten underneath. Just like the rest of this forsaken city.

  I’d do anything to be home. Not in the Citadel. Not in the camp. But in the mine. My family around me before the world started chewing us one by one.

  Ava, why did we ever leave?

  I speak to her as if she had the answers. But it only raises more doubt. In the Citadel there’s a pair of other mothers desperate to find their children. Children I lost.

  My legs burn. Each step harder than the last. It seems a life ago when I thought this gravity easy. Back when Philippe and I walked the whole Promenade. Was all of it a lie? Even the pain I saw in him?

  I make it to the next level. Then the next one after that. It’s anger keeps my ass moving. Anger at Philippe for using me, at the men who thought I was their prey, at myself for trusting anyone on this bloodydamn moon.

  I’m almost there. The stairwell grows cleaner. The graffiti is covered up by gray paint. There’s more lights. More cars. More sounds of a healthy city—sirens and advertisements. The stray dogs are on their lonesome now and wag their tails at me as I pass. I’m just beneath the smog. I can see the neon stain of holo advertisements through the gray clouds and a checkpoint up guarding the entrance to the Promenade levels above the smog. If I keep going up, I’ll have to pass through it. I could stay a level below—there’s shops, lights, people milling through the streets.

  I look out at the city in the rain. My breath clouds in front of me.

  I could disappear.

  I could find a way to run.

  But if I do, then what of it? I’m like Philippe: just another canker. I’d never see Liam again. As the rain seeps through my saturated tuxedo, I keep coming back to my sister’s face the moment we parted in 121—the fear in her eyes, the trust when she begged me to protect her son. It shatters all that’s left of me to know I did that to someone else. Helped a man steal their children. Watched the man who brought me out of hell die on the floor. I lean against the concrete barrier to catch my breath.

  The sounds of the city warble all around me. But I feel so very far away. I hear the laughter of my nieces and nephews, I remember the smile on my father’s face when he’d find me wearing his boots. I ache for my mother, who deserved so much more than to wither and die from the inside. I miss my brothers
who went off to war, and I see again my sister perched up on that rusty antenna looking out over the camp and dreaming of stars she would never reach. And I feel anger—a consuming, furious anger—building in my chest at the people who would destroy families, hunt their fellow humans.

  The Sovereign didn’t protect my family, but I’m not her.

  I force my legs to climb the last stairs to the first Promenade level and walk toward the fenced checkpoint. I swallow my fear of the Grays behind the duroglass. My hands rest atop my head as best they can with my injured shoulder. A weapon-warning siren warbles as a scanner flickers blue light over my body.

  “Weapon detected. Weapon detected. Weapon detected.”

  Two Watchmen atop the guard posts aim their rifles at me. “Stop, citizen!” a voice says over a speaker. “On your knees or we will shoot!”

  I SIT IN A WINDOWLESS GRAY ROOM with an untouched cup of coffee on the table in front of me. The shiny black lens of a camera watches me from the wall. The checkpoint Wardens who confiscated Philippe’s pistol were incredulous when they heard my story. Rightfully so. They say it ain’t on the news. They haven’t gotten a dispatch from central. All they got is the words that tumble out my gob in a chattering mess.

  I’ve not seen anyone since they left.

  I’m half asleep when the door slams open and a soldier fills the frame. She’s a stocky Gray with exhausted, narrow eyes, wearing black combat armor etched with a pegasus in flight over the Roman numeral VII. A drenched animal pelt hangs from her left shoulder. I stare at it in fear as I remember colliding with her chest in the hallway at the Telemanus estate. She smells like oil and wet dog. Two soldiers with roaring gold lions on their chest armor come in after her, one an Obsidian, the other a Gold, but she’s clearly in charge. “Lyria of Lagalos.” The words are a demand, not a question.

  I nod, frightened by the hard-looking group. Their faces look carved of cracked city concrete. The stocky Gray is a Howler. One of the Reaper’s own. And the other men have sworn their lives to the Sovereign. To them, I’m a terrorist.