Red Rising(39)

“Julian,” he declares properly, and takes my forearm. We have no data to offer each other through our datapads; they took them when we boarded the shuttle. So instead I offer him the seat across from me. “Darrow, a very interesting name.”

“Have you ever been to Agea?” I ask Julian.

“Course,” he says, smiling. He always smiles. “What, you mean you haven’t? It’s strange. I thought I knew so many Golds, but hardly any of them managed to get past the entrance exams. It’s a brave new world of faces, I fear. Anyway, I envy you the fact you haven’t been to Agea. It’s a strange place. Beautiful, no doubt, but life there is fast, and cheap, so they say.”

“But not for us.”

He chuckles. “I suppose not. Not unless you play at politics.”

“I don’t much like playing.” I notice his reaction, so I laugh my seriousness off with a wink. “Not unless there’s a wager, man. You hear?”

“I hear! What’s your game? Bloodchess? Gravcross?”

“Oh, bloodchess is all right. But fauxWar takes the prize,” I say with a Golden grin.

“Especially if you’re a Nortown fan!” he agrees.

“Oh … Nortown. I don’t know if we’ll get along,” I say, wincing. I jab myself with a thumb. “Yorkton.”

“Yorkton! I don’t know if we’ll ever get along!” he laughs.

And though I smile, he doesn’t know how cold I am inside; the conversation, the jibes, the smiles, are all a pattern of sociality. Matteo’s done me well, but to Julian’s credit, he doesn’t seem a monster.

He should be a monster.

“My brother must already have arrived at the Institute. He was already in Agea at our family’s estate, causing trouble no doubt!” Julian shakes his head proudly. “Best man I know. He’ll be the Primus, just you watch. Our father’s pride and joy, and that’s saying something with how many family members I have!” Not a flicker of jealousy in his voice, just love.

“Primus?” I ask.

“Oh, Institute talk; it means leader of his House.”

The Houses. I know these. There are twelve loosely based on underlying personality traits. Each is named for one of the gods of the Roman pantheon. The SchoolHouses are networking tools and social clubs outside of school. Do well, and they’ll find you a powerful family to serve. The families are the true powers in the Society. They have their own armies and fleets and contribute to the Sovereign’s forces. Loyalty begins with them. There is little love for the denizens of one’s own planet. If anything, they are the competition.

“You sobs done beating each other off yet?” an impish kid sneers from the corner of the shuttle. He’s so drab he is khaki instead of Gold. His lips are thin and his face like a cruel hawk just as it spies a mouse. A Bronzie.

“Are we bothering you?” My sarcasm has a polite nip.

“Does two dogs humping bother me? Likely, yes. If they are noisy.”

Julian stands. “Apologize, cur.”

“Go slag yourself,” the small kid says. In half a second, Julian has drawn a white glove from nowhere. “That to wipe my ass, you golden pricklick?”

“What? You little heathen!” Julian says in shock. “Who raised you?”

“Wolves, after your mother’s cootch spat me out.”

“You beast!”

Julian throws the glove at the small kid. I’m watching thinking this is the height of comedy. The kid seems pulled straight from Lykos crop, Beta maybe. He’s like an ugly, tiny, irritable Loran. Julian doesn’t know what to do, so he makes a challenge.

“A challenge, goodman.”

“A duel? You’re that offended? “ The ugly kid snorts at the princeling. “Fine. I’ll stitch your family pride together after the Passage, pricklick.” He blows his nose into the glove.

“Why not now, coward?” Julian calls. His slender chest is puffed out just as his father must have taught him. No one insults his family.

“Are you stupid? Do you see razors about? Idiot. Go away. We’ll duel after the Passage.”

“Passage …?” Julian finally asks what I’m thinking.

The scrawny kid grins wickedly. Even his teeth are khaki.

“It’s the last test, idiot. And the best secret this side of the rings around Octavia au Lune’s cootch.”

“Then how do you know about it?” I ask.

“Inside track,” the kid says. “And I don’t know about it. I know of it, you giant pisshead.”

His name is Sevro, and I like his angle.

But the talk of a Passage worries me. There is so little I know, I realize as I listen in as Julian strikes up a conversation with the last member of our shuttle. They talk about their test scores. There is a severe disparity between their low scores and mine. I notice Sevro snort as they say theirs aloud. How did applicants with such low scores get in? I’ve got an ill feeling in my gut. And what did Sevro score?

We come to the Valles Marineris in darkness. It is a great strip of light across Mars’s black surface, going as far as eyes can see. At the center of it, the capital city of my planet rises in the night like a garden of jewelswords. Nightclubs flicker on rooftops, dancefloors made made of condensed air. Scanty girls and foolish boys rise and fall as gravMixers play with physics. NoiseBubbles separate city blocks. We cut through them and hear worlds of different sounds.