Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

“You are mad!” He howls. “Mad as crows to travel the stairs on the eve of winter!” His staff thumps each individual step in his descent. Voice squeezing the lines for all they’re worth. “Bone and frozen blood is all that should remain. Have you come to request a trial of the Stains?”

“No,” I rumble in my best Nagal. To take the trial of the Stains now would do nothing for us. We would only see the gods when we received the facial tattoos. And surviving a test of the Stained is something even Ragnar thought I was not prepared for. There’s only one other way to bring the gods to me. Bait.

“No?” the Violet says, confused.

“We come to seek an audience with the gods.”

At any moment, one of the Valkyrie could give us up. All it would take is a word. The tension works its way through my shoulders. Only thing that keeps me sane is knowing Mustang’s on board enough with the plan to be bent on a knee beside me at the top of this damn mountain. That has to mean I’m not totally insane. At least I hope.

“So you are mad!” the Violet says, growing bored of us. “The gods come and go. To the abyss, to the sea down below. But they give no audience to mortal men. For what is time to creatures such as them. Only the Stained are worth their love. Only the Stained can bear the fever of their sight. Only the children of ice and darkest night.”

Well this is bloodydamn annoying.

“A ship of iron and star has fallen from the Abyss,” I say. “It came with a tail of fire. And struck among the peaks near the Valkyrie Spires. Burning across the sky like blood.”

“A ship?” the Violet asks, now utterly interested, as we supposed he would be.

“One of iron and star,” I say.

“How do you know it was no vision?” the Violet asks cleverly.

“We touched the iron with our own hands.”

The Violet is silent, mind sprinting to and fro behind those manic eyes. I’m wagering he knows that their communications systems are down. That his masters will be eager to hear of a fallen ship. The last sight he might have seen was my speech before Quicksilver shut everything down. Now this lowly Violet, this eager actor banished to the wastes to perform a mummer’s farce for barbaric simpletons has news his masters don’t. He has a prize, and his eyes, when he realizes this, narrow greedily. Now is his time to seize initiative and gain favor in the eyes of the masters.

How sad, the dependability of greed to make men fools.

“Have you evidence?” he asks eagerly. “Any man may say he has seen a ship of the gods fall.” Hesitating, fearful of the deception I work but disdainful of priests, Sefi produces my razor from her bag. It is wrapped in seal skin. She lays it on the ground in whip form. The Violet smiles, so very pleased. He tries to snatch it from the ground with a rag from his pocket, but Sefi pulls it back with the seal cloth.

“This is for the gods,” I growl. “Not their whelps.”

The priest ushers us through the temple’s mouth, where we wait, kneeling on a black stone antechamber inside the mountain. The stone mouth grinds closed behind us. Flames dance in the center of the room, leaping up in a pillar of fire to the onyx ceiling.

Acolytes wander through the cavernous temple, chanting softly, draped with black sackcloth hoods.

“Children of the Ice,” a divine voice finally whispers from the darkness. A synthesizer, like the ones in our demonHelms, layers the voice so it seems a dozen sewn together. The invisible Gold woman doesn’t even bother to use an accent. Fluent as I in their language, but disdainful of the fact and of the people to which she speaks. “You come with news.”

“I do, Sunborn.”

“Tell us of the ship you saw,” another voice says, this one a man. Less lofty, more playful. “You may look upon my face, little child.” Remaining on our knees, we glance up furtively from the ground to see two armored Golds deactivating their ghostCloaks. They stand close to us in the dark room. The temple flames dance over their metallic god faces. The man wears a cloak. The woman likely didn’t have time to don hers, so eager were they to attend us.

The woman plays Freya while the man is dressed as Loki. His metal visage like that of a wolf. Animals can smell fear. Men can’t. But those who kill enough can feel the vibrations in that particular silence. I feel them now from Sefi. The gods are true, she’s thinking. Ragnar was wrong. We were wrong. But she says nothing.

“It bled fire across the sky,” I murmur, head down. “Making great roars and crashed upon the mountainside.”

“You don’t say,” Loki murmurs. “And is it in one piece, or lots of little itty-bitty pieces, child?”

It is risky saying we saw a ship fall. But I knew no other ruse that would draw the Golds away from their holo screens in the middle of a rebellion, past their security systems and Gray garrison to meet me here. They’re Peerless Scarred, trapped here on the frontier as their world shifts beyond these walls. Once, this post would have been considered glamorous, but now it’s a form of banishment. I wonder about what crimes or failings brought these Peerless Scarred here to babysit the wastes.

“The bones of the ships litter the mountain, Sunborn,” I explain, looking back at the ground so they do not insist I take away the riding mask that covers my face. The more groveling I do, the less curious I am. “Broken like a fishing boat laid upon mid-stern by a Breaker. Splinters of iron, splinters of men upon the snow.”

I think that’s a metaphor the Obsidians would use. It passes muster.

“Splinters of men?” Loki asks.

“Yes. Men. But with soft faces. Like seal skin in firelight.” Too many metaphors. “But eyes like hot coals.” I can’t stop. How else did Ragnar speak? “Hair like the gold of your face.” The Golds’ metal masks remain impassive, communicating to one another over the coms in their helmets.

“Our priest claims you have a weapon of the gods,” Freya says leadingly. Sefi produces the seal cloth once more, body tense, wondering when I will dispel the magic of the gods as I promised. Her hands tremble. Both Golds move closer, the slight ripple of pulseShields evident. I touch them and I fry. They have no fear. Not here on their mountain. Closer. Closer, you dumb bastards.