Golden Son (43 page)

“Ragnar,” I say, sitting. “Not much for company, are you?”

He shakes his head, the white ponytail curls on the floor. Eyes like stains of pitch stare at me, measuring. Second eyes, tattoos on the backs of his eyelids, are strange, pupils like those of a dragon or a snake, so that when he blinks, his animal soul sees into the world around.

I sit watching him, wondering how to say what I want to say. Obsidians are the most alien of the Colors.

“By offering me stains, you are bound to me. What does that mean to you?”

“It means I obey.”

“Unconditionally?” He does not answer. “If I asked you to kill your sister or your brother?”

“Are you asking me this?”

“It is a hypothetical.” He does not understand the notion when I explain it.

“Why plan?”
he asks.
“You plan. You decide. I do or I do not, there is no plan.”
He considers his next words carefully.
“Mortals who plan die a thousand times. We who obey die but once.”

“What is it that you want?” I ask. He doesn’t stir. “I’m speaking to you, Stained.”

“Want.”
He chuckles.
“What is
want?”
The derision in his voice comes from a deeper place than our godless realm. He’s alien here, because we grow his kind in worlds of ice and monsters and ancient gods. We get what we pay for.
“You name it, so you think I know it
.
Want.”

“Don’t play games with me and I won’t play them with you, Ragnar.” I wait a long moment. “Must I repeat myself?”

“Gold plans. Gold wants,”
he rumbles slowly. Time between each sentence.
“Wanting is your
heartbeat. We of the Allmother do not want. We obey.”

“On your knees?” He says nothing in reply, so I continue. “You once wore shackles, Ragnar. Now

the shackles don’t weigh you down. So … what do you want?” He doesn’t respond. Is it petulance?

“Surely you want something.”

“You struck off the shackles of others and seek to bind me with the shackles like your own.

Your
wants
.
Your
dreams
.
I do not want.”
He says it again.
“I do not dream. I am
Stained
.
Destined
by Allmother Death to deliver her promise.”
His face shows me nothing, but I feel petulance in the man.
“Did you not know?”

I examine him warily. “You make yourself look dumber than you really are.”

“Good.”
He sits up swiftly, before I even have time to move back. Bloodydamn, he’s fast. He takes out a knife and very quickly cuts his palm.
“When I offered stains, I bound myself to you. Forever.

Till nothing.”

I know this is their way. And I know what horrors he went through to gain the title of Stained. He is not a man of half oaths or half measures. To be an Obsidian is to know misery. To be a Stained is to be misery. And it is to angle themselves one way in life—to serve their Golden gods, like myself, if they are so lucky. We take their strong. We leave their weak. We send Violets with tech to make lightning shows on hillsides. We sow famine, then descend with food. We send plagues, then bless them with Yellows to heal their sick and cure their blind. We have Carvers seed monsters in their oceans and griffins and dragons in their mountains. And when we are displeased, we destroy their cities with bombardments from orbit. We make ourselves their gods. And then we bring them into our world to serve our greedy aims. We want. They obey. How could Ragnar ever be what I need him to

be?

“What if I wanted you to be free?”

He flinches back. Eyes expressing a deep fear.
“Freedom drowns.”

“Then learn to swim.” I set a hand on his massive shoulder. Muscles like rocks beneath the skin.

“One brother to the other.”

“We are not brothers, Sunborn,”
he says, his voice wavering.
“You are master. Do you not
understand? I obey. You command.”

I tell him he chose me for his master. I did not take him, as he thinks. And it was he, not I, who commanded the assault team that took Kellan au Bellona’s ship. He did that. There was no Gold to guide him. No Gold to make him a leader. But that alone is not enough. What would Eo say to him?

What would Dancer say?

“Our Color is the same,” I tell him. He doesn’t understand, so I cut my finger. Red blood comes out and I smear this on the black Sigils that mark his Color on his hands. Then I take his blood and smear it over the gold on the back of my hands.

“Brothers. All water. All flesh. All made from and bound for the dirt.”

“I do not understand,”
he says fearfully, actually scooting back and away from me till I have him cornered like a little child.
“We are not the same. You are from the sun.”

“I am not. I was born six inches from the dirt. Ragnar Volarus, I release you from my service, whether you like it or not. I will not let you be bound. I will not let you be led. You stay in this icebox till you are man enough to decide what you want. You shoot yourself in the head. You freeze yourself to death. Go ahead. But whatever you do, it will be because
you
chose to do it. Perhaps you’ll choose to follow me. Perhaps you’ll choose to kill me. Whatever it is you decide, you must decide for yourself.”

He stares at me, eyes wide with terror.

“Why?”
he rumbles.
“Why do you shame me? In all the worlds, no man would reject a Stained.

I
choose
to offer myself and you spit on me. What have I done?”

“When you offer yourself, you offer your brothers and sisters and people into slavery as well.”

“You do not know.”
Ragnar seethes.
“We live to serve. If we do not, Gold will end us. We will be
no more. I have seen fire rain from the sky.”

Centuries ago, in the Dark Revolt, the Golds killed more than nine-tenths of his Color.

Exterminated them like culling a population of predators. That is the only history they know. The one we give them. Fear.

“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 rise.

“For seven hundred years we have been enslaved, Ragnar. Your people. My people. We have languished 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 brave hearts rise and choose to break the chains, to 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 go as all who have gone before, never knowing what might have been?”

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 I 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 one another. 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. They 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.

The prisoners, some forty Peerless Augustus Loyalists, are imprisoned in small duroglass cells.

Sevro walks past each, freeing the men and women inside with a datakey as he goes.

“Thank the Reaper,” he says to each, repeating it four times to a towering old Peerless woman till she finally realizes she’s not getting out till she plays his little game. They each roll their eyes and say thank you. “What a good, abnormally tall and decrepit Peerless you are. Excellent,” Sevro says, and lets the woman out. “Lorn! I found a possible bedmate.” He pauses as he comes before the Jackal’s glass cage.

“What do I spy with my little eye?” Sevro happily crows. “Wait! I have two again!”

“Let me out,” the Jackal replies flatly. “I’m not playing your game, Goblin.”

“Thank the Reaper. And the name’s Sevro. You know that.”

The Jackal rolls his eyes. “Thank you, Reaper.”

“Bow like a good servant.”

“No.”