Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

IN THE BEDLAM THAT FOLLOWS, I’m spirited away by Diomedes and a coterie of his men. They take me back to my room and push me inside.

“Diomedes,” I say before the door closes. The knight turns. “Cassius, I want to see him. I need to know if he’s alive.”

“It is not safe for you in the halls.”

“I helped you.”

“You are still a Lune. Whether he lives or dies is up to him.”

“And your surgeons.”

Realization dawns. “Do you think we would not care for him? He showed his honor. I will stand vigil myself and send word when I know his fate.”

“Thank you.”

He hesitates. “He betrayed your grandmother, yet you travel with him….”

“He saved my life from the Rising. I am bound to him.”

“I understand.” He nods, his first sign of respect to me. “But if he dies, you will be free of him. Then to what will you be bound, Lune?” He leaves me with that and shuts the door. It locks from the other side. I pace the cold stone, unable to think of anything but Cassius on the floor asking me what I’ve done. I feel the walls closing in.

I retreat inward. Forcing myself into the Willow Way, imagining my breath as the breeze that moves the branches and sways the grass and kisses the water. A second movement of breath now comes, which moves the lavender and pushes the bees and tinkles the wind chimes of summer at Lake Silene. A third movement is that of fall. The fourth breath that moves the curtains and twists the flames in the braziers and brings the snow of Hyperion in through an open window and makes Cassius’s cape dance in the wind is that of Luna’s winter.

Deep in that distant pool of memory, I see him again for the first time.

The young Bellona stands with his back to me, looking out at the Citadel grounds beyond the balcony. Sun glints off the gold tip of the Legion Pyramid headquarters in the distance. His hair is coiled and shines with scented oil. Snow melts there. His coat is dark blue with feathered silver epaulets and a silver fringed collar. He wears a silver razor on his hip and silver buckles on his boots. He looks like a storybook knight, and it makes me distrust him.

Though capable, he is a petty, spoiled creature who lured my favorite House Mars student onto the bank of a river and there betrayed him. Why? Because he could not absorb what Grandmother extols as the highest lessons of the Institute—the bearing of loss. If the loss of a single brother in the Passage broke him, what good would he be under the grind of war?

“So you are the favorite son of Tiberius,” I say in the memory. He turns around to appraise me. In a white cashmere jacket with pearl buttons, holding a book of mathematics in my hands, I stand no higher than his waist. A condescending smile spreads across his lips. “Salve, my goodman,” I say.

“Lysander, isn’t it?” Cassius asks without attention to protocol.

“It is.” He waits for me to say something more. I do not.

“Well, you’re an eerie little creature, aren’t you?” He leans closer, his lively eyes narrowing. “Jove, you look eighty and eight all at the same time.”

“My grandmother is wroth with you,” I say.

His eyebrow arcs. “Is she now? Have I done much to be wroth about?”

“You have killed eleven men in the Bleeding Place since summer. And your villa has been a constant source of debauchery and media fodder. If you were attempting to encourage the stereotype of Martians as warmakers, you succeeded most admirably.”

“Well…” He flashes a smile. “I do like causing a stir.”

“Why? Does it make you feel important? Alis aquilae. The words of your house. ‘On eagle’s wings.’ I suppose an air of self-satisfaction is natural amongst the apex predator of the sky. Who would contradict them?”

His face darkens. “Careful, little moon boy. You may wag that tongue all you like on this hill. But on Mars, that’s how men meet their end.”

I blink up at him, knowing I have nothing to fear. “Does truth disconcert you so?”

“Call me a pedant for manners.”

“Manners. Well, if it’s manners you wish to discuss, I can call Aja in and you can debate the particulars with her. They are different on Luna.”

He wags a finger at me. “Using the claws of others is not brave, nor is it the same as having claws. I would have thought you of all people would know that.”

I’m not sure what he means, me of all people, so I fight the instinct to shrug, knowing it a foul habit, and incline my head to dismiss his puzzling insult. “One day I will have claws and I will learn to use them, my goodman. Until then, I do believe the claws of others will suffice.”