Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

Her mouth pinches. “How diplomatic.”

“But on Mars, ‘Romulus and Dido’ is still a fairy tale.”

“A fairy tale. If only.” She smiles at that. “When I came here for the first time, I was a foolish little sun creature raised in the court of Iram. A gahja through and through. I fell in love with a pale wisp of a knight and thought our life would be a poem. But once I arrived here, I felt the darkness, the cold my mother warned me about. I missed the sun and hated this place. Hated my husband’s austerity. He would fret over water left in a glass. A crust of bread uneaten. But then I learned one of Io’s many lessons: here, by darkness, by radiation, by hunger, by thirst, by war, we are always at siege. It is not like the world of my birth, where life grows on every rock and men eat until they vomit. On Io, scarcity makes us strong. It makes us value what we do have.”

She looks around at her family with a warm smile.

Seraphina clarifies. “Father set a decree three months ago that rations are in effect until reserves are back to appropriate levels. No Gold may eat more, as measured by weight ratio, than the agricultural Reds do.”

I’m startled. “You mean to say even you follow the ration limit?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Seraphina asks, confused. “It is law.”

“Qualis rex, talis grex,” Dido says.

“As the king, so the people. But you have power,” I say, intensely curious. “You can do what you like.” Cassius shoots me a not-so-subtle look. He wants me to shut up and eat my food, leave the games to him, but my curiosity gets the better of me. My tutors called the Moon Lords impractical isolationists. But there seems little here but practicality.”

“An errant claim. Romulus and I believe it important to teach our children to be more than just powerful.” Dido slowly picks the meat off the bones of her fish with her fingers. “Gold was meant to be an ideal, to inspire. Don’t you agree?”

Why does she bait me?

Cassius’s eyes tell me to be careful. And so do Seraphina’s. “I’m just a merchant,” I say with a humble shrug. “My family wasn’t like yours.”

“Oh, please. Don’t be ponderous, boy. Peerless aren’t the only ones with opinions. Pray tell, do you agree? Speak plainly or don’t speak at all. Were we meant to be more than just force? Weren’t we meant to inspire?”

“Yes. But then we forgot it.”

“See! An opinion.” She looks over at Cassius. “You really should let him have a mind of his own, my goodman. Sighing like that when he speaks his mind? Not good to quash the naturally inquisitive.” She turns back to me. “Now, Castor, it’s been ten years since we purged the Sons of Ares from our moons and eliminated the last of the Slave King’s terrorists. Out of curiosity, how many rebellions and terrorist attacks do you think Ilium has had in the last year?”

“Forty-three,” I say instinctively, based on the ten-year annual average of reported incidents before the Fall. Seraphina’s eyes narrow at the precise number.

“Two,” Dido replies.

“Just two?” Cassius asks in suprise.

“A shooting and a bomb. The hierarchy has not changed. Do you know what inspires this loyalty to the Compact from all Colors? Honor. Honor in work. Honor in morality. Honor in principle and family. Our rules are harsh, but we obey them from Gold to Red. Romulus eliminated the rigged quotas in mines and the latifundia, has begun to phase out the Obsidian gods, and makes each man understand he is part of the same body. He has replaced subjugation with participation. Given a reason to sacrifice for the betterment of all. And it starts with us at this table, the head of the body.”

“Each man and woman given liberty to pursue achievement, with the best of his virtue and abilities, and rise within the station for which his flesh was made—a sacrifice of the Self for the preservation of All.” I murmur the words of the Compact like scripture. “Admirable.”

“Yes,” Seraphina says, her eyes warmer to me than ever before.

“Why did you not carry on the fight? Why become traders?” Diomedes has been nursing the question, waiting for a pause in the conversation. The timing is awkward.

“You mean fight for the Ash Lord?” Cassius asks, sipping his wine. “I think not. His daughter murdered my friends at the Triumph.”

“What of you, Castor?” Dido asks. “Don’t you want revenge for your family?”

I feel Cassius’s gaze on me, the weight of expectation as I regurgitate his lessons, his maxims. “What good would it do?” I answer loyally.

“Is that your answer…” Dido nods to Cassius. “…or his?”

How many times have I lain in my bunk on the Archimedes lonely, fantasizing of strength, of revenge? Of sailing home and taking back my grandmother’s scepter, her chair, and putting Darrow and his rabid wolves in chains? I always thought it a fantasy, something that could never be. But now that I see how much strength is left in Gold, how much of the old virtues, it grows harder to see it as the vain, idle fantasy of a little boy any longer.

Gold is not dead.

“Is that why you want war?” Cassius asks. “For revenge?”

“In part, yes,” Dido replies. “To avenge the wrongs the Slave King has done us. But also to heal the chaos that he has made. His Republic has had ten years to create peace. They’ve failed. The time is right for the Society to be rebuilt. We have the will, the might. But we need the spark. That is why I sent my daughter to the Gulf. To retrieve that spark. Thanks in no small part to you, she brought it home.” She pauses a moment to smile with no kindness in her eyes. “But now, I fear it is missing.”