Red Rising (52 page)

Those watching gasp at the sudden proclamation. Others curse at the impropriety, at the gall of Augustus. Does he have no sense of decency? My master kisses the top of my head and whispers their words and I do my best to cage the fury that has made me a thing sharper than Red. Harder than Gold.

“Darrow, Lancer of House Augustus. Rise, there are duties for you to fill. Rise, there are honors for you to take. Rise for glory, for power, for conquest and dominion over lesser men. Rise, my son. Rise.”

If writing is a work of the head and heart, then thank you to Aaron Phillips, Hannah Bowman, and Mike Braff, who burnish my head with their wisdom and advice.

Thank you to my parents, my sister, friends, and the Phillips Clan who guard my heart with their love and loyalty.

And to the reader, thank you. I hope you bloodydamn love these books.

P
IERCE
B
ROWN
spent his childhood building forts and setting traps for cousins in the woods of six states and the deserts of two. Graduating college in 2010, he fancied the idea of continuing his studies at Hogwarts. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a magical bone in his body. So while trying to make it as a writer, he worked as a manager of social media at a startup tech company, toiled as a peon on the Disney lot at ABC Studios, did his time as an NBC page, and gave sleep deprivation a new meaning during his stint as an aide on a U.S. Senate campaign. Now he lives in Los Angeles, where he scribbles tales of spaceships, wizards, ghouls, and most things old or bizarre.

www.pierce-brown.com
@pierce_brown

Pierce Brown is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the Random House Speakers Bureau at 212-572-2013 or
[email protected]
.

Explore the world of the Red Rising Trilogy
Visit
SonsofAres.com
and find out more!

“Fast-paced, gripping, well written—the sort of book you cannot put down. I am already on the lookout for the next one.”

—Terry Brooks,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Sword of Shannara

Can’t wait to find out what happens to Darrow after
Red Rising
? Preorder the thrilling sequel,
Golden Son
, today!

Golden Son
continues the stunning saga of Darrow, a rebel forged by tragedy, battling to lead his oppressed people to freedom from the overlords of a brutal elitist future built on lies. Now fully embedded among the Gold ruling class, Darrow continues his work to bring down Society from within. A life-or-death tale of vengeance with an unforgettable hero at its heart,
Golden Son
guarantees Pierce Brown’s continuing status as one of fiction’s most exciting new voices.

Preorder now! Coming soon in Hardcover and eBook from Del Rey Books.

READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT
*

from

GOLDEN SON

Book Two of the RED RISING TRILOGY

AVAILABLE 2015
FROM DEL REY BOOKS

RED

T
onight, I kill two thousand of humanity’s great. Yet I walk with them now, untouched by their decadence and condescension. Pliny’s arrogance raises none of my blood. Victra’s immodest dress does not disconcert me, not even when she slips her arm in mine after Tactus offers her his. She whispers in my ear how silly she is for forgetting her undergarments. I laugh like it’s a merry joke, trying to mask the coldness that’s taken over me.

This is static.

I mind myself and say little as I follow with Victra at the end of the long procession that snakes its way through labyrinthine marble halls from our villa to the Citadel Gardens some five kilometers distant. The Sovereign’s tower juts from the floor of the garden there, a grand, two-kilometer high sword piercing a groomed garden thick with rose trees and streams.

The tower yawns above us. Purple, red, and green moss climb the base of the great structure with vines of a thousand hues, wrapping the glass and stone like the fingers of greedy socialites around the wrist of a rich baron. Six great lifts bear families skyward to the top.

Beautiful Pink servants and Brown footmen service the lift. Gold triangles of the Society decorate their white livery.

The lift is flat, marble with gravthrusters. It sits in the middle of a clearing where green grass flutters in the wind. Several Coppers rush forward to talk with Pliny, who, as Politico, speaks on behalf of the ArchGovernor.

Augustus’s sharp face surveys his aides, as if making an accounting of the razors we carry. Some wear them coiled at their sides. Others wear them around their forearms like I do. Tactus and Victra each use them as sashes. His eyes settle on mine, the only white one.

“I want three lancers attending the ArchGovernor at all times,” Leto says, his voice almost a growl. We nod silently, the pack tightening. “No drinking.”

The gala upon the roof of the Sovereign’s tower is modeled as a winter fairyland. Snow falls from invisible clouds. It dusts the spearlike pines of manmade forests and frosts my short hair with snowflakes that taste like cinnamon and orange. Breath billows in front of me.

Beneath the spire, the citadel sprawls, and beyond those grounds the cities glisten with a million lights. You would never guess that beneath that sea of twinkling jewels lies a second city of filth and poverty. You would never guess the terrorists hidden there could reach this height. There are worlds between.

“Try not to lose your head,” Victra whispers to me, raking a clawed hand through my hair before going to speak with friends of hers from Earth.

I walk toward our table. Great chandeliers hover overhead on small gravthrusters. Light sparkles. Dresses move like liquid around perfect human forms. The Pinks serve delicacies and spirits on plates and in goblets of ice and glass.

Hundreds of long tables spread concentrically around a frozen lake at the center of the winter land. The Pinks wear skates to serve here. Beneath the ice, shapes move. Not sexualized perversities as one would find entertaining Pixies and lowColors. But mystical creatures with long tails and scales that glitter like the stars. The tables are neither named nor numbered. Instead, we find our place as we see a great lion seated upon the center of our table, nearly motionless. Each family’s table is so claimed by their sigil. There are griffins and eagles, ice fists and huge iron swords. The lion purrs contentedly as Tactus prances up to stroke its mane.

I gaze around the gala. Hundreds mill about already. Those from Venus will be late, as is their way. We of Mars pride punctuality. Luneborns are enigmatic socially, and so may be first or last. And the families of the Gas Giants will come whenever they damn well like. How long should I wait? It is difficult to hold on to the rage that made me embrace this decision. They killed my wife, I tell myself. But no matter the anger I summon by remembering, I cannot burn away the fear that I steer the rebellion toward a cliff.

This will not be for Eo’s dream. It will be for the satisfaction of those living. To sate their lust for vengeance rather than honoring those who have already sacrificed everything. And it will be irreversible. But so is the course that has been set. Thousands of Reds wait for my signal to begin the uprising. I cannot abandon them now.

So many doubts. Am I being a coward? Does my mind play tricks to salvage my pride, using logic to pull me away from risk? I chase myself in circles.

I’m thinking too much. That makes a bad soldier. And that is what I am. A soldier for Ares. He gave me this body. I should trust him now. So I take the bomb shaped like my Pegasus pendant and slap it on the underside of Augustus’s table, just near the table’s end.

I wander away, willing more houses to fill the gala so that I may end this soon. A host of praetors, quaestors, judiciars, governors, senators, family heads, house leaders, traders, two Olympian Knights, and a thousand others come to bid my master a good evening. These older men and women talk of Outrider attacks on Uranus and Ariel, rumored Sons of Ares bases on Triton, and a new strain of plague on one of Earth’s dark continents. Light fare.

Many others take my master aside, as though a hundred eyes did not watch their every move, and with voices like syrup, tell him of whispers in the night, of shifting winds and dangerous tides. The metaphors mix. The point is the same. Augustus has fallen out of favor with the Sovereign the same way I have fallen out of favor with him.

The ships flitting above in the night sky are as distant from the conversation as I. My eyes fall upon the Sovereign herself. How strange a thing, to see the woman just there beyond the dance floor, at the raised podium speaking with other house lords and men who rule the lives of billions. So close, so human and frail.

For her part, Octavia au Lune is more handsome than beautiful, face impassive as a mountain’s. Her silence is her power. I see her speak little, but she listens; always, she listens to words as the mountain listens to the whispering and screaming of wind through its gulches, around its peaks.

I see a man standing alone near a tree. He’s near as thick around as its trunk. A hand dwarfs his small goblet, and he wears the mark of a sword with wings, a Praetor with a fleet. I approach him. He sees me coming and smiles.

“Darrow au Andromedus,” Karnus growls.

I snap my fingers at a passing Pink. Taking two of the wine goblets from his ice tray, I pass one to Karnus. “I thought that before you come to kill me, we might as well share a drink.”

“There’s a sport.” He downs his own drink and takes the one I offer him. He eyes me over the glass. “You’re not a poisoner, are you?”

“I’m not so subtle.”

“Equal company then. All these snakes about …,” he says, sly as a crocodile. His dark Gold eyes trace the men and women. The wine is gone in a moment.