Golden Son

“Hands where I can see them.” Her voice is so cold I hardly recognize it till it echoes back to me from the tunnel walls. Slowly, I raise my hands. “Turn.”

I turn.

Her eyes glow against the lamplight like an owl’s. She’s ten meters away, higher than I, feet planted on the sloping, loose soil. In one hand, she holds a light. In the other, a scorcher. One that’s pointed at my head, finger against the trigger. Her knuckles are all white. Her face is an impassive mask, and behind it, two eyes filled with fathomless sadness.

Sevro was right.

“She’ll shoot you in the head, you bloodydamn fool,” Sevro sneered at me in the shuttle. Sometimes I think he joined my little crusade so he could have an excuse to curse like a Red. Ragnar stayed silent when I told them my plan.

“Then why’d you back me up with your father?” I asked him.

“Because that’s what we do.”

“She has to make her own choice.”

“And she’ll choose you over her race?”

“You did.”

“Oh, come off it. I’m not a bloody queen of the Golds, am I?” He held his hand high. “She’s been up here her whole life. Air is nice and sweet.” He lowered his hand. “I’ve been kickin’ shit since I was born tiny and buttfaced to my lard of a father. Your girl—there isn’t a chip on her shoulder. She may spout pretties when the world isn’t hard. But when facing the masses who would steal her palace, trample her gardens … it’ll be a different girl you see then.”

“You’re a Red,” she says now to me.

“I thought you left.”

“The tracker left.” She flexes her jaw. “Sevro was sneaky. Didn’t even notice him doing it. But you. You’d never tell me something like … this without an insurance policy. I ditched the clothes in the shuttle.”

“Why did you come back?”

“No. No.” She cuts the air with a gesture. “You answer my questions now, Darrow. Is that even your name?”

“My mother named me after her father.”

“And you’re a Red.”

“I was born in the house you stood outside. It was sixteen years before I saw I sky. So yes. I’m a Red.”

“I see.” She hesitates. “And my father killed your wife.”

“Yes. He ordered Eo’s death.”

“When you sang the song to me in the cave … all this was going through your mind? This place, the carving, the plan, was all inside you, all in your memory. This whole other world. This whole other … person.” She shakes her head, not wanting me to answer that. “Then what happened? Eo’s husband was hanged. You were hanged. How did you escape?”

“Do you know why they hanged me?”

She waits for me to explain.

“When a Red is hanged for crimes of treason, the body may not be buried. It is to decay and rot in front of all as a reminder of what comes of dissent.” I jab a thumb at my chest. “I buried my wife, so they hanged me too. Only, my uncle fed me haemanthus oil. It slows the heart to make you appear dead. He cut me down after. Gave me to the Sons.”

“And they”—She holds up the holoCube, her face pale in its glow—“did this to you.”

“I was paler than a Blue. A head shorter than Sevro. Weaker than a Gray. Knew less of the world than a Pink learning arts in the Garden. So they took what was best in me, in my people, and melded it to what was best in yours.”

“But … it’s impossible. The Board of Quality Control has tests,” she says, breaking her cool line of inquiry. “Lie detectors, DNA analysis, background checks.” She laughs in realization. “That’s why you came from the Family Andromedus—born to Gold parents who fled debt to try to strike it rich asteroid mining.”

“Their ship was lost as they returned after their mines had been bought by Quicksilver.”

“So Sons of Ares destroyed their ship, altered the records, and purchased the mines so they could write your story.”

“Perhaps.” I hadn’t put much thought to how Dancer did it. “My friends are resourceful.”

“How did you even survive the carving?” she mutters. “It’s against physiology. What the Carver did to you … no one could survive that. The Sigils are connected to the central nervous system. And the implant in your frontal lobe can’t be removed without rendering you catatonic.”

“My Carver was a unique talent. He managed to find a way to remove two implants, though another Carver did the second.”

“Two. There’s two of you. Sevro?” she guesses. “Is that why you’ve always been so close?”

“No. It was Titus.”

“Titus? The butcher? You were in league with him?”

“Never. I didn’t know who he was until after I defeated you. Ares thought we would work together.…”

“But Titus was a monster.”

“The Golds made him that way.”

“And that excuses what he did?”

“Don’t act like you know what he went through,” I snap.

“I know, Darrow. I don’t avert my eyes. I know the policies. I know the conditions your people suffer, but that doesn’t excuse the murders, the rapes, the torture he committed.”

“It’s what we suffer every day. Titus did what he did out of hate. Out of a misguided hope of revenge. In another life, I could have been him.”

Mustang searches my eyes. “And why weren’t you in this life?”

“My wife.” I look up at her. “And you.”