Red Rising(70)

“He’ll be brought to justice,” Roque says to Mustang to reassure her.

I turn to him, eyes blazing. “Shut up.”

He looks down, knowing he should not have spoken. It doesn’t matter. Mustang’s eyes don’t look to Antonia or Roque. They don’t look down the slope where Lea and Cipio have her warband on their knees in the glen, and Thistle sits on Pax’s back with Weed, taking their turn tickling him. Her eyes don’t look at the blade. They are only for me. I lean in.

“If Titus raped a little girl who happened to be a Red, how would you feel?”

She doesn’t know how to answer. The Law does. Nothing would happen. It isn’t rape unless she wears the sigil of an elder House like Augustus. Even then, the crime is against her master.

“Now look around,” I say quietly. “There are no Golds here. I’m a Red. You’re a Red. We are all Reds till one of us gets enough power. Then we get rights. Then we make our own law.” I lean back and raise my voice. “That is the point of all this. To make you terrified of a world where you do not rule. Security and justice aren’t given. They are made by the strong.”

“You should hope that is not true,” Mustang says quietly to me.

“Why?”

“Because there is a boy here like you.” Her face takes on a gloomy aspect, as though she regrets what she must say. “My Proctor calls him the Jackal. He is smarter and crueler and stronger than you, and he will win this game and make us his slaves if the rest of us go about acting like animals.” Her eyes implore me. “So please, hurry up and evolve.”





28


My Brother



I pretend the matches came from one of the Minervans when I light our first fire inside castle Mars. June is fetched from her makeshift prison, and soon she has prepared us a feast from the meat of goats and sheep and herbs fetched by my tribe. My tribe pretends it’s the first meal they’ve had in weeks. The others of the House are hungry enough to believe the lie. Minerva and her warband have long since slunk on home.

“What now?” I ask Roque as the others eat in the square. The keep is a place of squalor still, and the light of the fire does nothing but illuminate the filth. Cassius has gone to see Quinn, so I am alone for the moment with Roque.

Titus’s tribe sits in quiet groups. The girls will not speak to the boys because of what they’ve seen some of them do. All eat with their heads down. There’s shame there. Antonia’s people sit with mine and glare at Titus’s. Disgust fills their eyes. Betrayal too, even as they fill their bellies. Several scuffles have already escalated from minor words to thrown fists. I thought the victory might bring them together. But it did not. The division is worse than ever, only now I cannot define it and I think there is only one way to mend it.

Roque doesn’t have the answer I want to hear.

“The Proctors aren’t interfering, because they want to see how and if we handle justice, Darrow. It is the deeper trait that this situation probes. How do we manage Law?”

“Brilliant,” I say. “So what? We’re supposed to whip Titus? Kill him? That would be Law.”

“Would it? Or would it just be vengeance?”

“You’re the poet. You figure it out.” I kick a stone off the ramparts.

“He can’t stay tied up in the cellars. You know this. We will never move on from this torpor if he does, and it has to be you who decides what to do with him.”

“Not Cassius?” I ask. “I think he’s earned a say. After all, he did claim him.” I don’t want Cassius to share leadership, but I don’t want him to come out of the Institute without any prospects. I owe him.

“Claim him?” Roque coughs. “And how barbaric does that sound?”

“So Cassius should play no role?”

“I love him like a brother, but no.” Roque’s narrow face tenses as he sets a hand on my arm. “Cassius cannot lead this House. Not after what happened. Titus’s boys and girls might obey him, but they won’t respect him. They won’t think him stronger than them, even if he is. Darrow, they pissed on him. We are Golds. We do not forget.”

He’s right.

I pull my hair in frustration and glare at Roque as though he were being difficult.

“You don’t understand how much this means to Cassius. After Julian’s death … He has to succeed. He cannot be remembered solely for what happened. He can’t.”

Why do I care so much?

“Doesn’t matter a flying piss how much it means to him,” Roque echoes my words with a smile. His fingers are thin like hay on my bicep. “They’ll never fear him.”

Fear is necessary here. And Cassius knows it. Why else is he absent in victory? Antonia has not left my side. Pollux, the gate opener, hasn’t either. They linger several meters away to associate with my power. Sevro and Thistle watch them with sly grins.

“Is that why you’re here too, you scheming weasel?” I ask Roque. “Sharing the glory?”

He shrugs and gnaws on the leg of mutton Lea brings him.

“Slag that. I’m here for the food.”


I find Titus in the cellar. The Minervans tied him and beat him bloody after they saw the slave girls in his tower. That’s their justice. He smiles as I stand over him.