Red Rising (46 page)

The only condition they have in surrendering the castle is that they must not be enslaved. Only Pax grumbles something honorable about them needing to earn their freedom like all the rest of us, but I agree to the boy’s request. I tell Milia to watch them. If they act seditious, she’ll make trophies of their scalps. We tether our horses in the courtyard. The stone is cobbled and dirty. A tall, angular keep stretches up and into the cliff’s wall.

Darkness seeps through the clouds. A storm is coming to the mountain pass, so I bring my force into the castle and bar the gates. Mustang and her troop stay beyond the walls and will return later in the evening from scouting with Tactus. We speak over the commUnits and Tactus curses us for having a dry roof over our heads. The night’s rain is heavy.

I make sure our veterans get the first beds in Jupiter’s dormitories before we eat. My army may be disciplined, but they’ll shiv their own mothers for a warm bed. It’s the one thing most of them never got used to—sleeping on the ground. They miss their mattresses and silk sheets. I miss the small cot I used to share with Eo. She’s been dead now longer than we were married. I’m surprised how much it hurts to realize that.

I think I’m eighteen now, Earth metric. Not rightly sure.

Our bread and meats are like heaven to the starved defenders of Jupiter. Lucian and his lot, all skinny, tired-looking souls, eat so fast that Nyla is fussing about them ripping their guts. She runs around telling them each that the smoked horsemeat isn’t galloping off anywhere. Pax and his BloodBacks occasionally throw bones at the meek lot. Pax’s laugh is infectious. It booms out of him and then turns into something feminine as it continues past two seconds. No one can keep a straight face when he gets rolling. He’s talking about Helga again. I look for Mustang so we can laugh about it, but she’ll be away for hours more. I miss her even then, and I swell a little inside my chest because I know she will curl into my bed this night and together we’ll snore like Uncle Narol after Yuletide.

I call Milia to the head of the table. My army lounges around Jupiter’s warroom; they are easy in conquest. Jupiter’s map is destroyed. I cannot make out what they know.

“What do you think of our hosts?” I ask Milia.

“I say put them under the sigil.”

I cluck my tongue. “You really don’t like to keep promises, do you?”

She looks very much like a hawk, face all angles and cruelty. Her voice is of a similar breed. “Promises are just chains,” she rasps. “Both meant for breaking.”

I tell her to leave the Jupitareans alone, but then loudly command her to fetch the wine we scavenged on our trek to Jupiter. She takes some boys and brings up the barrels from Bacchus’s store.

I stand foolishly on the table. “And I order you to get drunk!” I roar to my army. They look at me like I am mad.

“Get drunk?” one says.

“Yes!” I cut him off before he can say more. “Can you manage that? Act like fools, for once?”

“We’ll try,” Milia cries. “Won’t we?” She’s answered in cheers. Some time later, as we drink Bacchus’s stores, I loudly offer some to the Jupitareans. Pax stumbles up in protest at the idea of sharing good wine. He’s a good actor.

“Are you contradicting me?” I demand.

Pax hesitates but manages to nod his giant head.

I draw my slingBlade from its back scabbard. It rasps in the humid warroom air. A hundred eyes go to us. Thunder rolls outside. Pax wobbles forward with a giant inebriated step. His own hand is on his axe’s hilt, but he does not draw it. After a moment, he shakes his head and goes to a knee—he’s still almost my own height. I sheathe my sword and pull him up. I tell him he’s to run patrols.

“Patrols? But … in the storm and rain?”

“You heard me, Pax.”

With a grumble, the BloodBacks wobble after him to go about their punishment. They’re all smart enough to have figured out their parts even if they don’t know the play. “Discipline!” I brag to Lucian. “Discipline is the best of mankind’s traits. Even in big brutes
like that. But he is right. No wine for you tonight. That, you must earn.”

In Pax’s absence, I make a show of giving ceremonial wolfcloaks to the slaves of Venus and Bacchus who earned their freedom in taking this fortress—ceremonial because we don’t have any time to find wolves. There is laughter and lightness. Merriment for once, though no one discards their weapons. Nyla is coaxed into singing a song. Her voice is like an angel’s. She sings at the Mars Opera House and was scheduled to perform in Vienna until a better opportunity came along in the form of the Institute. The opportunity of a lifetime. What a lark.

Lucian sits in the corner of the warroom with the other seven defenders watching our soldiers make a show of falling asleep atop tables, in front of the fire, along the walls. Some slink away to steal beds. The sound of snores tickles my ears.

Sevro stays close to me, as though the Proctors could rush in and kill me at any moment. I tell Sevro to get drunk and leave me be. He obeys and is soon laughing, then snoring atop the long table. I stumble over my sleeping army to Lucian, a smile across my face. I have not been drunk since before my wife died.

Despite Lucian’s meekness, I find him curious. His eyes rarely meet mine and his shoulders slump. But his hands never go to his trouser pockets, never fold to guard himself. I ask him about the war with Mars. As I thought, it’s almost won. He says something about a girl betraying Mars. Sounds like Antonia to me.

I must move quickly. I don’t know what will happen if my House’s standard and castle are taken even though I have my independent army. I could technically lose.

Lucian’s friends are tired, so I give them leave to go try to find beds. They won’t be a problem. Lucian stays to talk. I invite him over to the warroom table. As Lucian’s friends file out, I hear Mustang in the hall. She waltzes into the room. Thunder rolls outside. Her hair is damp and matted, wolfcloak soaked, boots tracking mud.

Her face is a model of confusion when she sees me with Lucian.

“Mustang, darling!” I cry. “I fear you’re too late. Went straight
through Bacchus’s stores already!” I gesture to my snoring army and wink. Maybe fifty remain, sprawled out and in various states of sleep across the large warroom. All drunk as Narol on Yuletide.

“Getting shitfaced seems a prime idea at a time like this,” she says strangely. She looks back to Lucian, then to me. She doesn’t like something. I introduce her to Lucian. He mumbles how nice it is to meet her. She snorts a laugh.

“How did he convince you not to make him a slave, Darrow?”

I don’t know if she understands what game I’m playing.

“He gave me his fortress!” I wave my clumsy hand to the half-destroyed stone map on the wall. Mustang says that she will join us. She begins to call some of her men in from the hall, but I cut her off. “No, no. Me and Lucian here were becoming prime friends. No girls. Take your men and go find Pax.”

“But …”

“Go find Pax,” I command.

I know she’s confused, but she trusts me. She murmurs goodbye to me and Lucian and closes the door. The sound of her bootheels slowly fades.

“Thought she’d never leave!” I laugh to Lucian. He leans back in his chair. He really is very slim, nothing excess to him at all. His blond hair is clipped plainly. His hands thin and useful. He reminds me of someone.

“Most people don’t want pretty girls to leave,” Lucian says, smiling sincerely. He even blushes a little when I ask if he really thinks Mustang is pretty.

We talk for nearly an hour. Gradually, he lets himself relax. He lets his confidence grow and soon he is telling me of his childhood, of a demanding father, of family expectations. But he’s not pitiful when he does this. He is realistic, a trait I admire. It’s no longer necessary for him to avoid my eyes when we talk. His shoulders don’t hunch quite so much, and he becomes pleasant, even funny. I laugh loudly half a dozen times. The night grows late, but still we talk and joke. He laughs at the boots I wear, which are swaddled in animal furs for warmth. They are hot now that the snows melt, but I need to wear the pelts.

“But what of you, Darrow? We gab and gab over me. I think it’s your turn. So tell me, what is it that’s taken you here? What pushes you? I don’t think I’ve heard of your family …”

“Not people you would care to hear about, to tell it true. But I think it comes down to a girl, that’s all. I am simple. So are my reasons.”

“The pretty one?” Lucian blushes. “Mustang? She hardly seems simple.”

I shrug.

“I told you everything!” Lucian protests. “Don’t be a vague Purple on me. Cut to it, man!” He raps the table impatiently.

“Fine. Fine. The whole story.” I sigh. “See that pack beside you? There’s a bag inside it. Reach and grab it for me, will you?”

Lucian pulls the bag out and tosses it to me. It clinks on the table.

“Let me see your hand.”

“My hand?” he asks with a laugh.

“Right, just put it out, please.” I pat the table. He doesn’t react. “Come on, man. There’s this theory I’ve been working on.” I pat the table impatiently. He puts his hand out.

“How does this tell your story or theory?” His smile is still on.

“It’s a complicated one. Better to show you.”

“Fair enough.”

I open the bag and dump out its contents. A score of golden sigil rings roll across the table. Lucian watches them roll.

“These all come from the dead kids. The kids the medBots couldn’t save. Let’s see.” I shuffle through the pile of rings. “We have Jupiter, Venus, Neptune, Bacchus, Juno, Mercury, Diana, Ceres … and we have a Minerva right here.” I frown and rummage around. “Hmm. Odd. I can’t find a Pluto.”

I look up at him. His eyes are different. Dead. Quiet.

“Oh, there’s one.”

He jerks back his hand. He is fast.

I am faster.

I bury my dagger through his hand, pinning it to the table.

His mouth gasps open at the pain. Some weird sort of feral exhalation hisses from his mouth as he jerks at the dagger. But I am bigger than him and I drove the dagger four inches into the table. I hammer it down with a flagon. He can’t pull it out. I lean back and watch him try. There’s something primal to his initial frenzied panic. Then something decidedly human in his recovery, which seems more brutally cold than my act of violence. He calms himself faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. It takes a breath, maybe three, and he leans back in his chair as though we were at drinks.

“Well, shit,” he says tightly.

“I thought we should become better acquainted,” I say. I point to myself. “Jackal, I am Reaper.”

“You’ve the better name,” he replies. He takes a breath. Another. “How long have you known?”

“That you were the Jackal? A hopeful guess. That you were up to no good? Before I entered the castle. No one surrenders without a fight. One of your rings didn’t fit. And hide your hands next time.
Insecure sobs always hide or fiddle with their hands. But really you had no chance. The Proctors knew I was coming here. They thought to make it a trap to ruin me by telling you I was coming. So you would sneak in here, try to catch me with my pants down. Their mistake. Your mistake.”

He watches me, wincing as he turns to look at my sober-as-day soldiers rising from the ground. Nearly fifty of them. I wanted them to see the ruse.

“Ah.” The Jackal sighs as he realizes how futile his trap has become. “My soldiers?”

“Which ones? The ones that were with you or the ones you hid in the castle? Maybe in the cellars? Maybe beneath the floor in a tunnel? I don’t wager they’re smiles and giggles right now, man. Pax is a beast and Mustang will be helping him just in case.”

“So that’s why you sent her away.”

And so she wouldn’t accidentally ask why we were pretending to be drunk on grape juice.

Pax will have found their hiding place. Thunder still rolls. I hope the Jackal sank a large size of his force into this ambush. If he didn’t, it’ll be a hassle, because if he has Jupiter’s castle, he probably has Jupiter’s army, which has Juno and much of Vulcan, and soon Mars’s. But I have him here.

The Jackal is pinned, bleeding, and surrounded by my army. His ambush undone. He has lost, but he is not helpless. He is no longer Lucian. It’s almost like his hand isn’t impaled. His voice doesn’t waver. He is not angry, just pissinyourboots scary. He reminds me of me before I go into a rage. Quiet. Unhurried. I wanted my soldiers to see him squirm. He doesn’t, so I tell them to leave. Only the ten Howlers, old and new, stay.

“If we’re to have a conversation, please take this dagger out of my hand,” the Jackal says to me. “Believe it or not, it hurts.” He is not as playful as his words suggest. Despite his resolve, his face is pale and his body has begun to tremble from shock.

I smile. “Where is the rest of your army? Where is that girl, Lilath? She owes my friend an eye.”

“Let me go and I will give you her head on a platter, if you want.
If you lend me an apple, I’ll even put that in her mouth so she looks like a pig at feast. Your choice.”

“There! Now, that’s how you got your name, isn’t it?” I say with mocking applause.