Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

scald

“You won the Laurel, we all know,” she says to me.

“This place exists, but they don’t let us come here, Darrow. The Grays must use it for themselves. They don’t share.”

Everything else is the Society’s. We didn’t spend the money to send the pioneers here. Without them, we’d be on the dying Earth like the rest of humanity.

we are in chains, Darrow. We are not colonists.

But it’s more on the spot to call us slaves. We beg for food. Beg for Laurels like dogs begging for scraps from the master’s table.” “You may be a slave,” I snap. “But I am not. I don’t beg. I earn. I am a Helldiver. I was born to sacrifice, to make Mars ready for man. There’s a nobility to obedience.…”

“Eo, my father died before he was even twenty-five because he had the right of it.”

means he had too much restraint. It

means your father had the right dream but died because he would not fight to make it real,” she says sharply.

The others say you are like a machine, because they think you know no fear. They’re blind. They don’t see how fear binds you.”

“Because you thought you could win the Laurel. Kieran told me how you burned yourself today.”

“So you love me because you believe that I think there are things worth the risk?” I puzzle out. “Or because I’m ambitious?” “Because you’ve a brain,” she teases.

I want you to use your gifts for your father’s dream. You see how people watch you, take their cues from you. I want you to think owning this land, our land, is worth the risk.”

“Your life. My life.”

“Speak and they will listen,” she urges. “It is that bloody simple. All ears yearn for a voice to lead them through darkness.”

Dying for a cause doesn’t do a bloodydamn thing. It just robbed us of his laughter.” I feel

just stole away a father and a husband. So what if life isn’t fair? If we have family, that is all that should matter.”

“Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death.

chills me. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low.”

But it will be just the lash because I did not pick up the thumper, because I did not listen to Eo.

They should only whip her, yet her words are final, her eyes sad but not afraid. I see her making a goodbye. A nightmare is coming to my heart. I can

“Break the chains, my love.”

“Even the youngest, even the best, are subject to Law. To Order! Without these we would be animals!

Besides Octavia au Lune, this is the most famous face on Mars—that of Nero au Augustus.

retinue.

They let the Tinpot, Ugly Dan, act sympathetic, as though he pities me.

He whispers encouragement in my ear loud enough for the cameras. And when the last lash slashes my back, he steps in as if to stop another from coming down.

this for a little adventure. All this for a night under the stars with the man she loves. Yet she is calm. If there is fear, it is in me, because I feel a strangeness in the air. Her skin prickles as they lay her across the cold box. She flinches. I wish my blood had warmed it better for her.

The ArchGovernor looks down at me, but his face is golden, poreless, and without care. I am nothing but the

bloodiest of ants. My sacrifice will impress him. He’ll feel compassion if I abase myself, if I throw myself into the fire for love. He’ll feel pity. This is how the stories go.

“Gag that wretched thing! He prickles the ArchGovernor’s ears,” Podginus orders. Bridge forces a knot of stone into my mouth. I gag and cry.

her song. It is a quiet sound, a mournful sound, like the song the deep mines whisper as wind moves in the

abandoned shafts. It is the song of death and lament, the song that is forbidden. The song I have only heard once before.

Few men truly like seeing beauty burn.

“No animal but man throws themselves willingly into the flames, Copper. Relish the sight. You’ll not see it again.” To his camera crew: “Continue recording. We will edit out the parts we find intolerable.”

In the face of cold power, she is fire. This is the girl who danced through the smoky tav with a mane of red. This is the girl who wove me a wedding band of her own hair. This is the girl who chooses to die for a song of death.

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 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 done My son, my son Remember the chains When gold ruled with iron reins We roared and r...

As her voice finally swells and the song runs out of words, I know I have lost her. She becom...

and she was right, I do not ...

For Eo, I do not react. I am anger. I am hatred.

“Live for more,” she mouths to me. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the haemanthus I gave her. It is smashed and flat. Then loudly she screams to all those gathered, “Break the chains!”

watch my wife die and my haemanthus fall from her hand. The camera records it all. I rush forward to kiss her ankle. I cradle her legs. I will not let her suffer.

will pass her on the way to the mines. Soon she will stink and soon she will rot. My beautiful wife shone too bright to live long. I still feel her neck cracking against my hands; they tremble now in the night.

which makes my wife die to a soundtrack. They intended to show the futility of disobedience. And they succeed in that, but there is something else in the video. They show my flogging, and Eo’s, and they play her song throughout. And as she dies, they play it again, which seems to give the video the wrong effect. Even if she were not my wife, I see a martyr, a young girl’s pretty song silenced by the rope of cruel men.

“You are your father’s son, little bastard. Stupid and vain.”

“I tried to talk your father out of his little protest, you know. Told him words and dance mean as much as dust. Tried squaring up with him. I squabbed that one up. He laid me down cold.” He throws a slow right. “Comes a time in life when you know a man has his mind set and it’s an insult to gainsay.”

“She left me,” I whisper. “Just left me.”

vale,”

“Break the chains. Hear?”