Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

“Do it,” I sneer. “Go on. Do it, you monster.”

The grip loosens and my world reorients as she sets me down. I sit there on the ground, breathing heavily. She collapses into the chair, almost breaking it, and stares at me with tears in her eyes. “I’m not a monster. I’m not.” She looks up at me, her eyes puffy and swollen. “But you are. They were just children.”

“You knew what we were trying to do,” I say, rubbing my ribs. She definitely cracked a few more. “That someone could die. Now you cry about it because you can’t handle the guilt?” I snort. “Grow up. You did the deed. Same as me. Now go buy yourself a spine and a good fuck with all that blood money. Jove knows you need both.” She stares at me as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. I don’t know what else she expected. The deed’s done. Time to move on. “Why’d you even go along with it if your panties were in such a bunch?”

“I did it for you!” she says in a pitiful voice. “I did it because you needed me. I’ve always needed you. You brought me here. You’re my family. And I’ve never been able to do anything for you. Every time I try, you get angry. ‘Go home, Volga. Fuck off, Volga.’ But here. This. It was something I could do to help. I could have your back, like you have mine. I did not know it would be so hard.”

She sits there trying to stop crying. Her huge shoulders heave up and down.

I don’t know what to do. “Just think of the new adventures we are about to begin,” I say distantly. “A tour of Africa. The seafood. The animals. The whores of the Barbary Coast!”

She looks up with puffy eyes. “Do you think they will kill them?”

“No. They won’t kill them. You heard the Duke. No rough stuff. What use is a dead hostage? They’ll want more money or something, I guess. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s not our business.”

“Not our business? We’re a part of this, Ephraim. Part of the Republic.”

“Why? ’Cause we live here? That’s the sort of shit they want you to think so you go along thinking you got skin in the game. It’s all a scam, princess. You’re never fighting for yourself. You’re always fighting for them. Lune, Augustus, Reaper, what’s the damn difference?”

“Why are you like this?”

“Like what?”

“Evil.”

I sigh. “I’m not evil.”

“Then what are you?”

“Self-aware. You can’t take care of anyone. That’s not how it works. All you can do is take care of yourself. No one else is going to.”

“I would take care of you.”

I roll my eyes. “You think those children care about you? You think they would grow up into people who would care about you? To them, you’re just a weapon.”

“And what am I to you?” Volga asks. “If I was not a weapon, you would not keep me with you.”

“Well, I sure as hell don’t keep you around for the conversation.”

By the look in her eyes, I know I’ve finally gone too far.

Something breaks. Something important. “Volga.” My hand reaches out halfheartedly like she’s falling as she takes a step back from me. But then I lower my hand, and she sees me lower it, and she turns and walks away. The door to the suite slams and she’s gone, and I know deep down under the cool tide of the zoladone that this is how our story together ends.

Alone again. And better for it.

I leave the hotel room soon after Volga has gone. I don’t go back to my spot, fearing Republic Intelligence or maybe Gorgo might pay a visit. Instead, I find myself in the street outside Cyra’s apartment, staring up at the glass building that billows up into the sky like a piece of string on the end of an airduct. I wanted to see where Cyra lived. I don’t know why. Maybe for closure. To see how she lived so I can understand why she put a dagger in my back; but I can’t go inside. There’s retinal scanners in the lobby, and the building has private guards.

So I stand on the street as the rain falls, looking up at the building, wondering which glass window Cyra looked out and will never look out again, and realizing I never understood who she was, not really. Not her. Not Dano. Because I kept them on the street looking in, and they returned the favor in kind.

I walk the streets, passing through steam coming up out of the sewers, through a forest of noodle vendors and fleshtech salesmen, all calling to passersby. They transmit a kaleidoscope of sex advertisements from holo broadcasters perched on their shoulders like metal gargoyles. I walk the old route Trigg and I used to take from the Promenade, past the Gravity Gardens, all the way south to seedy Old Town. I outstrip the path we walked together and continue into the early hours of the morning, long enough to witness the changing of the guard from the nocturnal men to those of the day. All of it bathed in the hazy pink of the long sunrise.

As the city wakes, I eat a breakfast of doughy cinnamon noodles and coffee at one of my favorite old stands on the edge of the wharf, and feed the seagulls like Trigg used to. Below, in the water of the Sea of Serenity, large scrubbing robots collect litter. Afterwards, I catch a cab to my storage unit. In one of the private rooms, another slender robot with forklift arms sets the metal box onto the table and leaves me. In the box are my ready bags. Two of them, both slick black leather. I’m surprised how much it depresses me thinking this is all I have of my life. A thief with nothing worth packing. Sounds like a bad joke. Maybe this is what I’ve been looking for. A chance to start clean. I’ve got nothing aside from stacks of hard plastic currency in the bags, IDs, several DNA sleeves, two suits, the two pistols, and a stash of backup zoladone pills. I pocket those, but I don’t take one yet. Save it for the ride.

I take a cab to the private aerial skyhook, a floating star-shaped port for the rich and famous three kilometers above the city. It’s suspended there on gravLifts, room enough for ten private yachts to dock. It’s offensively expensive chartering a private ship, but I need to be armed, so commercial is out of the question. I’m deposited on the top level of the skyhook at the reception level. The taxi takes off the concrete runway and dips back down into the flow of terrestrial traffic, leaving me in a parklike expanse above the clouds. A fashionable Pink stands behind a reception desk in a white uniform with a tilted cap on her head and a fur coat. I shiver in the thin air.

“Good afternoon, citizen. Welcome to Zephyrus Trans-Terrestrial. Will you be checking in for your flight today?”

In my pocket, I slip one of the transparent DNA sleeves over my finger. I pretend to lick the finger and I swipe it through her sampler. “Ah, Mr. Garabaldi.” She smiles obligingly as her computer registers one of my false IDs. “We’re so pleased to have you today. The Eurydice Wind will be ready to receive you in thirty minutes. Your pilots are performing preflight checks.”