Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga 4)

“How poisonous? Enough to make me sick up? Or will I get a rash?”

“A rash? Ha! Death, this one courts.” Now I flinch. “Don’t you trust old Liago?”

“No farther than I could throw you.”

“What what?”

“You first, Doc.”

With a lone finger, he touches the stem very carefully. Its pale, fleshy skin ripples indigo and a deep purple. The plant arcs into his hand, like a cat being scratched. Sophocles watches from the floor, cocking his head. “It invites gentleness,” Liago says. “But if you rush your hand upon it…” He takes a length of unsliced cucumber from the remains of his breakfast and hits the plant. Small spines erupt from the feet of the dancer buds and the cucumber begins to shrivel and blacken, filling the room with a rotting stench. Sophocles backs away.

“Cellular death!” he announces.

I laugh in genuine delight. “Wicked. What do you call it?”

“Nyxacallis.”

I

sigh. “Is that Latin?”

“It means Night Lily.” He’s lost in thought. I’d ask him who the woman was if I didn’t recognize the pain on his face. Maybe that’s why I’m so fond of the old bat. He’s the only one in the Telemanus estate who wears his pain in his eyes. Rest are all playing games.

“So you brought me another sample?” he asks after a moment. “Let’s see.” He opens the plastic container and takes a deep, satisfied whiff of the scat before slipping out of the greenhouse to a small silver machine in his lab. I follow behind. After a sample has been inserted, numbers and symbols flow from a small holoprojector in the machine into the air.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Those?” He’s confused. “Of course, curious cat. How would you know? Those are chemical notations. That is skatole, hydrogen sulfide, mercaptan, and that…that is carbon. That is in every living thing that is, was, and will be. It’s in me. It’s in you. It’s in the Night Lily.” He watches me grasp the idea. “You know what I like about you, Lyria?”

I glower, knowing it’s with pity that he looks at me. The same pity that fills the eyes of the other servants, and has driven me to isolation. They pity my manners, my poor haircut, and pity that my family was butchered. Here, surrounded by so many people, I’ve never felt more alone. More alien.

“Not really,” I mutter.

“What do you mean ‘not really’?” he says, aghast. “What kind of way is that to think about yourself?”

“I mean, no one’s talked to me like you have, except Lord Kavax, and some of the dockers. Everyone else talks slag behind my back, but they’re too scared to lay it out plain eye to eye, because they’ve never been in a tumble.”

Liago clucks his tongue, thinking he’s not like them, but in a way he is. I’ve seen how he watches me when I leave, when I enter. Like I’m going to explode into tears at any moment.

“Those little uppity pups.” He wags a finger at me over his tea. “You’re proper Martian. I’ve been too long here on this moon. Ten years, only a little back and forth. Everyone’s uppity. Putting on airs. I bet that’s what Lord Kavax sees in you. A breath of home. It’s what I like about you as well. So don’t you worry if the others don’t like you right away. It’s their own insecurity at the wretched creatures they’ve become….”

He puts a hand on my shoulder, like I need fatherly advice. “With all you’ve been through, the last thing you need to worry about is being popular.” I recoil. He can shove his advice right up his drill exhaust. But before I can tell him that, Sophocles darts out from under the table, snarling horribly. I almost piss myself. He pounces up onto one of Liago’s tables, knocking over beakers and test tubes, sending them shattering to the floor as he springs up toward an open window where a small pachelbel sits. The bird titters and flies back out the window. Sophocles hits the wall and slides down. “Out!” Liago shouts, looking in horror at his broken supplies. “Get him out of here! And don’t bring him back till I find out what mangles his wits!”

—

Later that afternoon, I leave Sophocles with Kavax and collect more treats and shampoo from the huge warehouse that supplies most of the Citadel with food. I spare a few minutes to smoke burners with the Reds who work the forklifts and stocking rooms. All are Martian, since Houses Telemanus and Augustus hire exclusively from home. Security reasons. Most of the older men and women were with them before the Rising.

“Any chance they found out what’s what with Sophocles?” one of the Reds asks. “Heard he’s gone mental.”

“You would too if they cloned you twenty-odd times,” says an old woman named Garla, exhaling burner smoke.

“Cloned?” I ask.

“Aye,” Garla says. “No one told you? Only ever been one fox in House Telemanus. Sophocles is seven hundred years old. This just happens to be his twenty-first life. He’s like me. Fourteen generations in service to the fox.” Her bandy legs dangle off the edge of a box of coffee stamped with Mars import markings. She pulls a chain from around her neck. “Kangax, the father of our liege, gave this to my own da.” She tilts it to me. The other Reds roll their eyes. It’s a monster cast in gold. “One of those wild carved beasties, a griffin. Kangax put a price on the head of a wild griff that was terrorizing their Zephyrian lands, and me father, just a docker like me, went into the mountains and shot it dead with a longbarrel scorcher.” I reach to touch the griffin, but Garla pulls it back and stuffs it in her shirt.

“So he got the bounty?” I ask. I’m at ease with these people, with their bluntness and the dirt under their nails. Some of their accents are even spot on for Lagalos.

“Aye. Bought out his contract and lost it all in a year.”