Iron Gold

by Pierce Brown

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I say. She does not respond. I glance nervously at Seraphina, knowing my presence here is unwanted in this moment of grief. The girl looks back at me with cold, inhospitable eyes. “He was the noblest of men.”

  “What do you know of my husband?” she asks harshly.

  “From what he said to me before he died, I learned enough.”

  “He was something out of time. A paragon. His life spent honoring the Conquerors. But he was greater by far than they could ever have been. Now…such a waste.” She shakes her head. “Uncurl your tongue, boy, and leave me to my grief.”

  “I wish to join your war,” I say flatly.

  She watches a lone volcano vomit ash into the chrome horizon.

  Seraphina scowls. “There’s no place for a Lune in our army.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “And what good would you do me, Lysander au Lune?” Dido asks. “Can you skim a dune like a Dustwalker or fly a warhawk in storm or operate a starShell in an Iron Rain as your friends die around you?” She snorts. “You have no scar. You know theory, games. You were raised in a palace, raised to be a king. And there is no more wretched a creature than a king without a kingdom.”

  “I am not a king.”

  “Then what are you?”

  What am I? I have been asking this of myself for a decade or more.

  Little has been certain since my grandmother fell. I looked out at the worlds in flux, in constant motion beneath my feet. Denying me a foundation. Filling me with uncertainty, fear. I did not know my own heart. But no matter the shifting of the worlds, I know the bedrock of my soul. I know the foundation upon which I stand and no longer fear my blood. Just because my grandmother was a tyrant does not mean I will be.

  I see the faces of those I left behind on the Vindabona.

  They need a protector. A shepherd.

  I know who I am, or at least, who I want to become. And with that realization, I feel the culmination of the souls who have filled my life. I feel my father’s calm, Aja’s love, my grandmother’s brilliance, Cassius’s honor, and even the faint heartbeat of my mother; and I know that Romulus spoke wisdom I somehow already knew deep in the heart of me.

  “I am no heir of empire or conqueror of men,” I say slowly. “But I have the same birthright as you. The same inheritance. We were created because Earth broke itself. Because man disintegrated into tribal strife. Chaos is the nature of man; order, the dream of Gold. We were made to shepherd. To unite, despite our differences—that is what Romulus said to me in the end. And he is right.”

  Seraphina stares at me, a rebuke frozen on her lips.

  “You called my grandmother a tyrant. She was. But I am not her. I am not Aja. I am not my godfather. I am an Iron Gold.”

  Slowly, Dido turns around.

  “As you gather your armada to sail on the Rising, send me to the Core with a cohort of your best. I will find my godfather. I will tell him that the Rim is coming, that the sins of the past must be forgotten, and that you seek an alliance against the Reaper so that Gold may be united once again. If peace must be brought with a sword, let us hold it together.”

  The silence stretches between us. She stands imperiously over me. Then her eyes narrow. And slowly on Dido’s dour, grieving face, her lips curl into a smile.

  I SLUMP OVER THE CONTROLS, guiding us over the gray cityscape at high altitude. Electra sits in the co-pilot chair with the razor pointed at me from the side. Of course the little warlords know first aid. Pax has cut open my shirt and sealed the hole in my chest with resFlesh from the ship’s medkit, but I’m in shit shape. Need a doctor and blood packs or I’ll die, and soon. I’d rather bleed out in this ship than die in a cell, but that’s not much of a choice anymore. I eye my Omni in Electra’s lap and wonder if I could throw the ship hard to port and get a jump on the little bastards.

  “How far are we?” Pax says.

  “Republic escorts are twenty out.” I eye the roofs beneath us and the flow of pedestrian traffic in the airspace below and wonder if the Syndicate can still reach us here.

  “You going to make it?” Electra asks me.

  “Do I look like a Yellow?”

  “Can you feel your hands?” she asks.

  “No.” She looks back at Pax. “Don’t look at him, hatchetface. I’d rather fly unconscious than let a kid behind the grip of a…” I grimace at the pain. “…of a Hornet.”

  “I fly gravBikes all the time,” the boy says.

  “This ain’t a gravBike, kid.”

  A cold sweat soaks my body. I wipe my face and wish that Volga were here now. I feel naked without her, just as I did the entire time I was with the Duke.

  “What’s that light?” Electra says, pointing to the communicator.

  “Incoming message,” Pax says. “Could be Mother.”

  He opens the channel and a noseless face distorted by a facial scrambler appears over the holopad between the pilot and co-pilot seats. The pixels swirl together, looking like a plague of marauding locusts forming a head with gaps for the mouth and eyes and the twirling black tips of a ghost crown.

  “Ephraim ti Horn,” the disembodied head of the Syndicate Queen rasps over the ship’s speakers. Whatever blood is left in me chills.

  The children are struck dumb, smart enough to know when to be afraid.

  “Let me guess, you’d be the queen bitch, eh?” I say thinly.

  “You will return the children.”

  “Course I will. In exchange, I’ll take a private island on Venus with a legion of Pinks to bring me cocktails in little coconut shells. Not a bad life, eh?” I laugh at the locust face. “Let me guess: you’re going to offer me three islands. Well, fuck that and fuck you. I’m not afraid of dying and certainly not afraid of you. Ephraim out.”

  I reach and shut off the communicator, but the hologram doesn’t obey. The empty eyes stare at me from the mutinous pixels.

  “I gave this ship to the Duke,” the shadowy face rasps. “I own it. I own you. Soon I will see you in the flesh—while you still have it. Till then, thief.” The ship suddenly banks hard to port, throwing Pax sideways behind me. He slams against the bulkhead. My body jerks against the pilot restraints.

  “What’s happening?” Pax asks, picking himself up. His forehead is bleeding.

  “The ship’s turning around…” I whisper.

  “Back to the Syndicate…” Pax says.

  “Well, turn it back!” Electra shouts.

  “Good idea! I’ll just do that,” I snap. The steering has gone dead. The secondary electrical controls are off. “It’s being flown remotely. Coms are dead.” My mouth’s gone dry. I look frantically for some sort of override, but the control isn’t physical. It’s coded into the ship’s computer. “The escorts won’t reach us in time…” I say. They’ll land us at some Syndicate facility and that will be the last the world ever knows of us. But it won’t end there. No, they’ll draw it out for years. And what will happen to Volga then?

  “Slag this.” I totter to my feet, almost falling down. Pax catches me. I sway there, trying to slow down the spinning. “Thanks.”

  “What are you going to do?” Electra asks.

  “Something stupid.” She reaches for her restraints. “Stay, hatchetface.” I grip Pax by his collar and shove him to the chair. “Both of you, strap in.” I leave them exchanging confused glances as they strap themselves into the pilot and co-pilot chairs. I stumble back through the ship, using the wall to support me. “Where are you?” I shove open doors and lockers, finding fridges of champagne and caviar and dining sets. Come on! Blackness is creeping into the fringes of my vision. I fall down, catching myself on the cushion of an inset dining area. I fumble with the zoladone dispenser in my pocket. I drop it on the floor and pick it up. I pop three zoladone between my molars. An electric thrill vibrates through my veins, numbing the pain in my chest. I struggle to my feet, and in the back of the ship, near the disembarcation ramp, I find what I was looking for—a waln
ut-paneled locker full of weapons. Beneath a row of pulseRifles and elegant railguns rests a stack of thermal grenades in formafoam. Someone is laughing. It’s me. I pull the grenades out, clutch them to my chest, and shimmy to the back of the ship, toward the engines. I cluster the grenades on the ground near a cooling unit and shudder out a breath.

  “Here goes something.” I set the timer on one of the grenades to thirty seconds and, with a laugh, drop it amongst the pile. I race back the way I came. Well, I try to race with rubber legs, pulling myself back toward the front of the ship, using my arms to hold myself up, counting silently to myself. I reach the front cockpit, seal the door behind me, and collapse into a passenger chair along the wall behind the pilots. Pax and Electra stare at me as I buckle tight the safety restraints. Jove on high, let there be crash webbing in this seat.

  “What did you do?” Pax asks.

  “Told ya, something stupid. Four, three, assume the position!” Their eyes widen and they cover their heads with their hands.

  A deafening roar comes from the back of the ship.

  The door to the cockpit buckles inward. The ship pitches sideways and begins to spiral down as the gravity thrusters fail in stuttering gasps. Then they give out and we’re plummeting down, the city and sky whipping past outside the cockpit windows. As we careen down into the wasted, skeleton city landscape of one of the Jackal’s craters, I can’t help but laugh bitterly.

  I knew this was gonna be a one-way ticket….

  WALKING OUT OF THE ASH LORD’S fortress, I am an empty shell.

  The Howlers wait on the landing pad at the top of the tower. The Nessus hovers to the left of the Ash Lord’s shuttle and is readying her to depart. Colloway’s battle-scarred ripWing is docked on her topside. Far below, the tattered remnants of Apollonius’s forces and those of the Ash Lord fight a desperate running battle on the south end of the island. Our injured and dead have been loaded up. I don’t yet know the tally. The jubilation my friends expected to feel with the Ash Lord’s death never comes. Not when they see our faces. And when they hear of Pax and Electra, and Atalantia’s fleet, they turn as pale as Sevro. Rhonna is stunned.

  “No,” she whispers. “It’s bullshit. Virginia would have protected him. I know it. He fed you a line.”

  “Society fleet ripWings are eight minutes out,” Pebble says. “We’ll have to burn like hell to escape. At current orbit, we can be back on Luna in four weeks.”

  I barely hear her. My mind is apart from them, from this place. If only I could go back in time and never come to this hope-forsaken planet. I just want to hold my boy again in my arms. I would protect him from the worlds. I would never leave him. Is he even alive? Would I feel it? The horror grips me again. The world swims and I feel the tears of anger itch behind my eyes. Sevro is locked in his own rage. He storms up the ramp, shouting for the Howlers to load up.

  But my feet do not follow. They cannot.

  “Darrow?” Pebble murmurs. “What are you doing?”

  Sevro turns at the top of the ramp to look down at me.

  “I’m not coming,” I say, and as I say it, I feel the last of my soul empty itself from the vessel of my body. Sevro watches me with contempt. “I’m not going back to Luna.”

  “Boss,” Colloway says. “What are you talking about? They have your kid. We have to go back.”

  Pebble comes back to touch my shoulder. Her hands are coated with dried blood, likely her husband’s. “You’re in shock. You need to get on the ship.”

  “Whatever happened, it’s over,” I say. “If he was taken, Mustang will get him back as well as I can. If he is dead…there is nothing to be done.” Even to myself, my voice is like that of a condemned man. Pax. I see his eyes as he watches me rise from Wulfgar’s body. The key is so heavy on its chain against my sternum it’s all I can do to remain standing.

  “Don’t say that, Darrow,” Pebble says.

  “Mustang needs you,” Thraxa says; her own love for my son runs deep, just as it does in her whole family. Where were they? Why didn’t they protect him? “Your family needs you.”

  I think of my wife. She won’t survive this with the Senate. They’ll say she’s unfit to rule. Compromised. She might already be deposed. The life I left behind is shattered, and my fist put the first cracks in it. Whoever took my child did it to wound me and my wife. Our sins passed down to that perfect, innocent boy.

  Death begets death begets death.

  How many sons did Lorn bury? Four?

  I have made my choice and it kills me to know I chose not to be a father. Not to be a husband. I failed at both when I chose the Rising over my family. And now it teeters on the razor’s edge. Orion might already be lost. Our fleet, cobbled together, the product of ten years, might already be debris.

  The Red boy inside me would run home to his family.

  But I cannot.

  The Ash Lord was right. Nothing of the Red remains. I am trapped in my duty. Like Lorn. Like Magnus himself. Like Octavia. Sevro and I did not understand them when we were boys. But now that we are men, we become them.

  “My army needs me,” I say. “Atalantia might already have destroyed the fleet. That means our men on Mercury are trapped. Fathers, wives. Nine million of them marooned under the city shields. They’ll be exterminated like the Sons in the Rim. Like the Reds in the mines. I took them there. I will not abandon them.”

  “So you abandon your child instead?” Sevro asks, finally coming back down the ramp to face me. The Howlers back out of the way. “And steal me from mine?”

  “We don’t even know if they are alive.”

  “Shut up.” His sorrow finds a home in his fist. It trembles at his side. “Slag you. How many times have I followed you? How many times have I trusted you? You were wrong! You didn’t listen. But I followed. Like a good little dog. And now my daughter…” His voice falters. “My baby…”

  “I’m sorry, Sevro. I am.”

  “You’re a father!”

  “I’m not asking you to come with me.”

  “Oh, trust me, I won’t be.”

  “Take the Nessus. Reach Victra and Mustang and bring our children back to us.”

  “How will you get off-planet?” Pebble asks.

  I turn to look at the Ash Lord’s shuttle. “If I can’t turn the tide on Venus and Mercury, they’ll be coming for Luna or Mars next. You have to prepare the defenses.” Done with me, Sevro turns to walk up the ramp into the Nessus. “Sevro…” He doesn’t turn around. “Sevro…” He disappears inside and his name lingers in the air.

  Too little, too late.

  —

  I stand alone in the Ash Lord’s shuttle. The grim walls press in on me. I sit in the pilot’s chair and begin the preflight procedures. There’s a sound behind me. I turn to see Alexandar coming up the open ramp, leading the Gold prisoners we took from Deepgrave. Colloway, Tongueless, Thraxa, and Rhonna follow him, their starShells left dented and smoldering on the landing pad. They toss down several bags of gear, lock the prisoners in the cargo hold, and settle into the passenger compartment. “Sevro says you’d need them,” Thraxa says.

  Colloway saunters up, a burner hanging between his lips. “You’re in my seat.”

  I get up and find my way back toward the passenger compartment. A lone figure stands at the bottom of the ramp in bloodied armor. “Apollonius,” I say.

  “The clock’s still ticking,” he says, tapping his head.

  Sevro and I in our despair forgot about the man entirely. I look down at my dented datapad and pull up the program. Ten minutes left before the munitions in his head go off. “Are you a man of your word?” he asks.

  I look down at the man and see nothing I value. Just a murderer who saved my life. But all the evils that have befallen us today, all the mistakes I’ve made, have come from my pride and the duplicity I’ve sown.

  “Today I am.” I deactivate the bomb. “Venus is yours, if you can take her.”

  “And the hostages?” he asks. “The Carthii and S
aud family members you promised me?”

  “We need them more,” I say, and hammer my hand on the door control. The ramp rolls up, and the last I see is Apollonius staring at me in rage.

  My men say nothing as I rejoin them in the passenger hold. I settle into my chair as Colloway lifts off and we trail in the Nessus’s wake. Thunder rolls outside as the frigate fires at the Society ripWings that pursue us. Colloway says something about capital ships cutting off our escape as we breach orbit. Over the com, I hear Sevro snarling at the Society Praetors, showing them pictures of the Gold family hostages we had in the Nessus’s brig. Just as planned. Even as I mourn for my own son, we use the sons and daughters of the Golds of Venus to escape. The dark irony is not lost on me. All that holds the guns of Venus from destroying us is the love of parents for their children. They do not fire, and I wonder if I had my enemy in my grasp, would I have done the same?

  I say no farewell over the com to Sevro and Pebble and Clown, friends who have been with me for half my life. People think I believe my own myth, that I’m a singular whirlwind of nature. I know I am not. I was the concentrated force of the people around me, balanced, hardened, inspired by Ragnar, Fitchner, Lorn, Eo. Sevro.

  Now I sit a world apart, in silence as my friends lie dead and the rest return to my son while I race away from him toward the war. Accompanied only by the tattered remains of the Howlers, an old prisoner, and a girl of barely twenty years.

  I feel lost. But in the void, drifting away from my friends, I feel something else. Something I have not felt for some time. The Ash Lord claimed he did not take my son. But I know his designs. It was not a friend who took them. He and Atalantia played me for a fool. She thought I would abandon my army, my fleet, and rush home to save my son. But she does not know what she has awoken.

  I pull the key Pax gave me from my neck and put it in my bag, setting aside the father, welcoming the Reaper, and letting the old rage take hold.

  For the Howlers