Golden Son (Red Rising Trilogy, #2)(100)

“The history of men is kept from you, Ragnar. The Golds teach you that you have always been slaves. That Obsidians exist to serve, to kill. But there was a time before Gold where man was free.”

“Every man?” he asks.

“Every man. Every woman. You were not born to serve Gold.”

“No,” he rumbles. “You tempt me. You bait me. I have seen this before. I have seen false words meant to trick. The true words are known to me, to us. Our mothers teach them. ‘Fear and serve the men of Gold. Or they will come with iron from the sky. Gold will treat you with fire of the Sunborn. For they are not bound by love. Not bound by fear. Not bound to earth, but to sky and sun. Fear and serve the men of Gold.’”

“I do not serve them.”

“Because you are one of them.”

“What if I told you I was not?”

He stares at me. No answer. No movement. Nothing. Just confusion. And so I tell him. I tell him in that freezer what Dancer told me in the penthouse. We have been deceived. “I had a wife,” I tell him. “They took her from me. They hanged her. They made me pull her feet so that her neck would break and she would not suffer. I killed myself after that, burying her, letting them win. Letting them hang me. I drowned in grief.” I tell him how the Sons came for me. “And Ares gave me a second chance, the same chance you now have to do something.

“For seven hundred years we have been enslaved, Ragnar. Your people. My people. We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light. It will not come from their mercy. It will not come by fate. It will come when good men and good women rise up and choose to break the chains and live for more. You must choose for yourself. Will you choose the hard path? Will you choose to be my friend? Will you rise with me? Or will you choose the trodden path and let your mother, your father, your sisters and brothers die never knowing there was a chance for something else?”

I leave after that. I do not swear him to silence. I do not demand an answer. Dancer demanded none from me. I had to make the choice. If I had not, if I had been forced into service, then I would have given up a thousand times. Slaves do not have the bravery of free men. That is why Golds lie to lowReds and make them think they are brave. That is why they lie to Obsidians and make them think it is an honor to serve gods. Easier than the truth. Yet it takes only one truth to bring a kingdom of lies crashing down.

Ragnar must join me, because Red alone will not be enough.





35

Teatime

Our disguise in the camel ship holds as we approach the fleet around Hildas Station, aiming for what was once Augustus’s flagship, now Pliny’s. Invictus. RipWings fly silently past us, requesting clearance codes. Our pilot sends the codes and we are escorted to join a procession of supply ships that funnel into the Invictus’s hangar, like caravan traders lining up outside the grand gates of some desert citadel. Guns track us as we taxi.

We land with a thud. The pilot pops open the aft bay doors and me and mine hop from the ship down to the hangar’s floor. Instead of greeting Brown haulers like she might have expected, the Orange Docker looks up from her datapad to see a war party in full armored panoply. Armed to the teeth. Without hesitation, she sits down, wanting no part of this.

Sevro laughs and pats her on the head. “Wiser than Gold.”

A circus of ships fills the bay. Lights glow down from the high ceiling. Oranges and Reds scuttle about. Welding torches sizzle against hulls. Men and women shout at each other. My fellows follow me, walking through the hangar toward the lifts where we can access the rest of the ship.

And as we walk, silence spreads like wildfire. Welding torches cease to sizzle. Men no longer call out. Then simply stare. I stalk forward in the front with Lorn. Mustang and Kavax au Telemanus flank us. Roque follows with Sevro and Daxo. Victra comes next with the Howlers. And then behind them all, like some sort of pale, giant shepherd, comes Ragnar.

He chose to join us from the freezer. We exchange a look, and in one nod, I know I have a new general for the rebellion. I swell with confidence.

Not a soul protests our movement, though by our attire they know we do not come for peaceful talks. My armor is black. Carved with roaring lions. A thin pulseShield flickers over it. On my left arm, my aegis activates, its opaque blue surface drinking in the light. My white razor slithers on my arm. Our boots make the sound of hail on the metal decks. I dispatch Pebble to have her Green squads crash the ship’s communications system.

A Copper sees us and makes a deal of playing with his datapad. Ragnar slips up to him, touches his shoulder hard enough to push the man to his knees. “No.”

We enter the lift and the guts of the ship without a shot being fired. We take the lift to the deck one above the command level. The lift doors open, bringing us face-to-face with a squad of Gray marines.

“Captain, you’re to accompany Virginia au Augustus to the engineering bay,” I say to the Gray. His eyes appreciate the gravity of the situation; after barely a hesitation, he salutes. His confused men fall in behind Mustang and the Telemanuses as they head off at a trot.

The ship alarm begins to wail.

The Howlers go to the engines and life support systems as my own force continues three decks up, heading not for the command deck, where Pliny will be hosting his new allies, but for the brig. Roque, Victra, Lorn, Sevro, and Ragnar slip in through the doors, subduing the guards before I even enter.