Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

She looks down in amusement. “Are you negotiating with me?”

“I won’t help you if you don’t help him.”

“Very well. It’s agreed.”

I spit in my hand and stick it out to her. She looks down at it in surprise, then shakes my hand.

I’m guided by Holiday to the door. There, I turn back around. “I wonder…could I see Kavax?”

“No,” the Sovereign says. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea right now.”

I nod and follow Holiday out of the room.

At the doorway to my room, I stop. “Could you tell Liam I’m all right?” I ask her. “He must have been worried.”

“He was told you were on an errand for Kavax,” she says. “He wasn’t worried.”

“All the same. Could I see him? I won’t say a thing to him.”

“I’m sorry, it was risk enough bringing you to speak with Ephraim. We can’t have any more security risks.” She watches my face fall without sympathy. Then a sigh escapes her thin lips. “What if I take him candy or a little cake or

something and say it’s from you? Would that cheer you up?”

“You’d do that?”

She shrugs. “What’s his favorite flavor?”

“Chocolate.”

“All right.” I wait expectantly, looking up at her. “What? You want a hug? Get inside.” She shoves her fingers against the opening mechanism. The door slides into the wall.

“Oh,” I say, and step in. “Thank you for the—” The door shuts in my face. “Fucking Grays,” I mutter. The room is not grand, but it’s clean and has a full water bathroom. Exhausted, I turn on the water to the shower till steam rises. I wriggle out of my borrowed clothes, awkward with the shoulder sling, and stand under the stream of hot water thinking of how lucky I am to be alive. To not be on the run.

You’d be proud of me, Ava. Ma. I know that. And there’s more I can do. Help the Sovereign till this is through, and maybe we can bring all those bastards down. But it wasn’t the Syndicate who killed my family. Whatever happens here, those Red Hand butchers will go unpunished. How can that be fair? How can it be right?

I turn off the shower and stand near the exit vents so the hot air can evaporate the water from my stomach and breasts. When I open my eyes, I see a pair of white maid shoes on the wet white tile. My eyes track upward. The woman is a Brown in her mid-thirties with two great moles, a hooked nose, and a bird nest of hair. She holds a gun in her hand. At the end of it is a large hypodermic needle that she pulls out of my chest. I take a step toward her and lose my footing. I don’t even feel the ground come up to greet me. The world fogs and spins. And the last I see is the woman patting my face.

“Hello, traitor. House Barca sends their regards.”

APOLLONIUS, SEVRO, AND I cut our way through the fortress guards. It seems most of the manpower was sent to fight beyond the walls, likely to stop Apollonius’s force from ever making landfall. Those who remain offer thin resistance to our combined violence. After shattering a trio of Gold bodyguards near the gravLifts, we divide to search more efficiently for the Ash Lord. Sevro and I stick together, while Apollonius sets off on his own.

The search does not take long.

“This has to be it,” Sevro says outside a set of double doors gilded with gold.

“There will be Stained inside,” I say. “We should wait for Apollonius.”

“You need him to wipe your ass too?” Sevro asks. He kicks open the doors. “Time for your bill, Ass Lord.”

The room is quiet.

Despite the decadent floral moldings and whitewashed walls, the room is cavernous and sparse but for a large four-post bed that looks out an open balcony window to the sea. A pulseShield ripples faintly outside the windowsill. Around the bed squat a legion of hulking, polymelian forms. At first I think they are knights, but as a column of light from the outer suite illuminates the gray metal, I realize that they are not men at all, but medical machines. Small displays glow with life readings.

An old Pink in a nightgown and two Brown servants holding fire pokers guard the foot of the bed, shielding its inhabitant from us. The Browns charge, screaming at the top of their lungs. We take them down, trying not to kill them with our metal-covered fists. The Pink at the bed is wailing. “No,” she screams. “Stay away from him!”

I pull her from in front of the bed as Sevro approaches it warily. She slashes at me with her nails, breaking them against my armor. “Monsters!” Her spit sprays my face. “You monsters.” Sevro punches her in the back of the head. I catch her as she drops to the floor.

A deathly stench fills the room. Sevro stands at the base of the bed, his hand pulling back the silk curtains. His face is pale. “Darrow…” He jerks the silk curtains off the frame so I can see.