Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

He knows what I’ve done.

“I’ve known for over a year that Julian was meant to die.” The snow falls silently as we move together through the mud. The hot horse moves between my legs. Step by step through the mud. “He made a mess of his test. He was never the brightest, not in the way they wanted. Oh, he was kind and bright with emotions—he could sense sadness or anger a klick away. But empathy is a lowColor thing.”

But he had the name Bellona. A name which our enemy loathes. And so our enemy used bureaucracy, used his title, his duly appointed powers, to murder a kind boy.

“We can beat him, together, Cassius. We needn’t be divided—”

“I let you kill him, Cassius, so the House wouldn’t remember that a dozen boys took a good long piss on your face. So don’t treat me as though I’m some monster.”

My blood goes out. With it go Dancer’s hopes, my father’s sacrifice, Eo’s dream. I can hardly think of them. The mud is dark and cold. This hurts so much. Eo. I miss her. I miss home. What was her second gift? I never found out. Her sister never told me. Now I know pain. Nothing is worth this. Nothing. Let me be a slave again, let me see Eo, let me die. Just not this.

Cassius. I was your friend. I might have killed your brother, but I had no choice. You did. You arrogant slag. I hate him. I hate Augustus. I see them hanging Eo together. They mock me. They laugh at me. I hate Antonia. I hate Fitchner. I hate Titus. I hate. I hate. I am burning and mad and sweating. I hate the Jackal. The Proctors. I hate. I hate myself for all I’ve done. All I’ve done. For what? To win a game. To win a game for someone who will never know about anything I do. Eo is dead. It isn’t as if she will ever be coming back to see all I have done for her.

Why can’t I will her back to life? I want Eo. I don’t want this girl beside me. It aches worse than the wound. I can never fix what happened to Eo. I couldn’t even run my army. I couldn’t win. I couldn’t beat Cassius, not to mention the Jackal. I was the best Helldiver; I’m nothing here. The world is too big and cold. I am too small. The world has forgotten Eo. It has already forgotten her sacrifice. There’s nothing left.

lie there with my eyes closed, listening to her hum. It’s a song I know. It is a song I hear in dreams. The echo of my love’s death. The song sung by the one they call Persephone. Hummed by an Aureate, an echo of Eo’s dream.

“Slaves are stupid,” she says. “And you’re already a gimp. Why make you stupid too?”

Now I know why the Jackal will win. They are getting rid of his competition.

“You get a merit bar every time you recapture your standard. So I arranged for it to be lost to House Diana by someone else several times. Then rode out to capture it. Got to Primus in a week.”

“Because I didn’t rule like you,” she says. “You have to remember, people don’t like being told what to do. You can treat your friends like servants and they’ll love you, but you tell them they’re servants and they’ll kill you. Anyway, you put too much stock in hierarchy and fear.”

All you cared about was your mission, whatever it is. You’re like a driven arrow with a very depressing shadow. First time I met you, I knew

you’d cut my throat to get whatever it is you want.” She waits for a moment. “What is it that you want, by the way?”

I did it right. I made every boy and every girl love me. Made them earn their keep. I taught them how to kill a goat as if I knew how. I gave them fire as if I had created the matches. I shared a secret with them—that we had food and Titus didn’t. They saw me as their father. I remember it in their eyes. When Titus was alive, I was a symbol of goodness and hope. Then when he died … I became him.

“Like how we must live for more?” Her words strike my heart. They echo through time from another’s lips. Live for more. More than power. More than vengeance. More than what we’re given.

I must learn better than them, not simply beat them. That is how I will help Reds. I am a boy. I am foolish. But if I learn to become a leader, I can be more than an agent of the Sons of Ares. I can give my people a future. That is what Eo wanted.

“A hand is like the Society,” I say. It is the structure of the armies at the Institute. The hierarchy is good for simple tasks. Some fingers are more important than others. Some are better at certain things. All fingers are controlled by the highest order, the brain. The brain’s control is effective. It makes your thumb and fingers work together. But the single brain’s control is limited. Imagine each one of the fingers had a brain of its own that interacted with the main brain. The fingers obey, but they function independently. What could the hand do then? What could an army do? I twirl the stick along my fingers in intricate patterns. Exactly.

This idea of hers isn’t part of the Proctors’ lesson.

is about control. About the systematic accumulation of power, the structure of that power, and then its preservation. It is a model to show that the Rule of Hierarchies is the best. The Society is the final evolution, the only answer. She just slagged that rule, or at least showed its limitations.

If I could earn the voluntary allegiance of the slaves, the army created would look nothing like the Society. It would be better. Like if the Reds of Lykos thought they could actually win the Laurel, they would be so much more productive. Or if a Praetor on board his starcrui...

Mustang’s strategy is E...

Even shivering, she is beautiful—the small, quick-smiling girl who brought me back to life. The bright-eyed soul who keeps Eo’s song alive. I shudder with anger. If I had been ten minutes later in returning, this night could have broken me forever. I cannot bear another death. Especially not Mustang’s.

When morning comes, we move deeper into the woods and make a lean-to shelter against a rock face with fallen trees and packed snow. We never find out what happened to the Oathbreakers or our cave.

Her skin is hot. I hum the Song of Persephone. “I can never remember the words,” she whispers to me. Her head lies in my lap tonight. “I wish I did.”

Listen, listen Remember the wane Of sun’s fury and waving grain We fell and fell And danced along To croon a knell Of rights and wrongs And

My son, my son Remember the burn When leaves were fire and seasons turned We fell and fell And sang a song To weave a cell All autumn long And

Down in the vale Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing the reaper swing Down in the vale Hear the reaper sing A tale of winter long My girl, my girl Remember the chill When rains froze and snows did kill We fell and fell And danced along Through icy hell To their winter song My love, my love Remember the cries When winter died for spring skies They roared and roared But we grabbed our seed And sowed a song Against their greed My son, my son

Remember the chains When gold ruled with iron reins We roared and roared And twisted and screamed For ours, a vale of better dreams And Down in the vale Hear the reaper swing, the reaper swing the reaper swing Do...

“Father told me that there would be riots because of that song. That people would die. But it is such a soft melody.” She coughs blood into a pelt. “We used to sing songs by the campfire, out in the country, where he kept us out of …” coughs again “… of the public … eye. When … my brother died … Father never sang with me again.”

petulant.”

I don’t understand. “I assume it’s because they favor the Jackal. Am I right?” “As usual.” His gum pops. “Unfortunately, you’re just not allowed to win, and you were gaining momentum. Sooo …”

“Allowed to?” I echo. “Allowed to. No one can be allowed to win. I thought the gorydamn point was to carve our own ladder to the top. So if I’m not allowed to win, that means the Jackal is.”

“Then that doesn’t make any lick of sense. It corrupts the entire thing,” I say hotly. “You broke the rules.”

A predestined Alexander? A Caesar? A Genghis? A Wiggin?”

“The ArchGovernor has secretly threatened and bribed and cajoled all twelve of us till we came to agree upon the fact that his son should win. But we have to be careful in our cheating. The Drafters, my real bosses, watch every move from their palaces, ships, et cetera. They are very important people as well. And then there’s the Board of Quality Control to worry about, and the Sovereign and Senators and all the other Governors themselves. Because, though there are many schools, any of them can watch you whenever they like.”

Demetrius au Bellona, Imperator of the Sixth Fleet, father of Cassius and Julian, Drafter of House Mars, has watched me kill one son and deceive the other. It takes the wind out of me. What if I had told Titus that I knew he was a Red because I was a Red? Did they notice him say “bloodydamn”? Did I say he was a Red out loud or was that just in my head?

“Then you disappear, except for the cameras we have hidden in the battlefield.” He winks. “Don’t tell anyone. Now, if the Drafters discover the ArchGovernor’s scheme … there will be hell to pay. Tension between the school Houses, certainly. But more importantly, there could be a Blood War between the Augustuses and Bellonas.”