Red Rising(33)

“Soften your r’s,” Dancer tells me. He sits attentively as I read from a datapad. “Pretend as though there is an h in front of each one.” His burner reminds me of home and I remember how ArchGovernor Augustus seemed in Lykos. I remember the man’s serenity. His patient condescension. His smirk. “Elongate the l’s.”

“Is that all the strength you have?” I say into the mirror.

“Perfect,” Dancer praises with a humorous shiver. He claps his good hand on his knee.

“Soon I’ll be dreaming like I’m a bloodydamn Goldbrow too,” I say in disgust.

“You shouldn’t say ‘bloodydamn.’ Say ‘gory’ or ‘gorydamn’ instead.”

I glare at him. “If I saw myself on the street, I would hate me. I would want to take a slingBlade and carve me from pucker to stinker and then burn the remains. Eo would puke to look at me.”

“You’re young still,” Dancer laughs. “God, I sometimes forget how young.” He takes a flask out of his boot and downs some before tossing it to me.

I laugh. “Last time I drank, Uncle Narol drugged me.” I take a drink. “Maybe you’ve forgotten what the mines are like. I’m not young.”

Dancer frowns. “I didn’t mean to insult, Darrow. It’s just you understand what you’re to do. You understand why you’re to do it. But you still lose perspective and judge yourself. Right now you probably get sick looking at your golden self. Righto?”

“Righto there.” I drink deep from the flask.

“But you’re only playing a part, Darrow.” He twitches his finger and a hooked blade slips from the ring on his finger. My reflexes are back and quick enough that I might have shoved it up into his throat if I thought he meant me harm, but I let him swipe the blade across my index finger. Blood wells out. Red blood. “Just in case you need reminding what you really are.”

“Smells like home,” I say, sucking on the finger. “Mum used to make blood soup out of the pitvipers. Not half bad to the truth of it.”

“You dip flaxbread in it and sprinkle in okrablossom?”

“How’d you know?” I ask.

“My mum did the same,” Dancer laughs. “We’d have it at Dancetide, or before the Laureltide when they’d announce the winner. Always squabbing Gamma.”

“Here’s to Gamma.” I laugh and finish another swig.

Dancer watches me. The smile eventually slips from his face and his eyes grow cold. “Matteo’s to teach you to dance tomorrow.”

“Thought you’d be the one doing that,” I say.

He thumps his bad leg. “Been a while since I’ve done that. Best dancer in Oikos. I could move like a deeptunnel draft. All our best dancers were Helldivers. I was one for several years, you know.”

“I figured.”

“Did you, now?”

I gesture to his scars. “Only a Helldiver would be bit so many times without drillBoys around to help pull the vipers off. Been bitten too. Got a bigger heart for it, at least.”

He nods and his eyes go distant. “Fell into a nest when fixing to repair a nodule on the clawDrill. They were up in one of the ducts and I didn’t see them. They were the dangerous kind.”

I see where he’s going with this. “They were babies,” I say.

He nods.

“They have less venom. Much less than their parents, so they weren’t burrowers bent on laying eggs inside of me. But when they bit, they used all the evil in them. Fortunately, we had antivenom with us. Traded some Gammas for it.” In Lykos we had no antivenom.

He leans toward me.

“We’re tossing you into a nest of baby vipers, Darrow. Mark that. Admissions testing is three months from now. I will be tutoring you in conjunction with your lessons from Matteo now. But if you do not quit judging yourself, if you continue to hate your guise, then you will fail the test or worse—you will pass it and then slip up and be found out while at the Institute. And everything will be squabbed.”

I shift in my seat. For once, there’s another fear in me—not of becoming something Eo would not recognize, but a more primal fear, a mortal fear of my enemies. What will they be like? I already see their sneers, their contempt.

“Doesn’t matter if they find me out.” I clap Dancer’s knee. “They’ve taken what they can from me already. That is why I am a weapon you can use.”

“Wrong,” Dancer snaps. “You’re of use because you’re more than a weapon. When your wife died, she didn’t just give you a vendetta. She gave you her dream. You’re its keeper. It’s maker. So don’t be spitting anger and hate. You’re not fighting against them, no matter what Harmony says. You’re fighting for Eo’s dream, for your family that is still alive, your people.”

“Is that Ares’s opinion? I mean, is it yours?”

“I am not Ares,” Dancer repeats. I don’t believe him. I’ve seen the way his men look at him, how even Harmony pays him deference. “Look into yourself, Darrow, and you’ll realize that you are a good man who will have to do bad things.”

My hands are unscarred and feel strange when I clench them till the knuckles turn that familiar shade of white.

“See. That’s what I don’t get. If I am a good man, then why do I want to do bad things?”