Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)

by Pierce Brown

I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.

I was forged in the bowels of this hard world. Sharpened by hate. Strengthened by love. He is wrong. None of them will survive.

I just watched and thought it a shame that he died dancing but without his dancing shoes. On Mars there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.

I’ve been in the mines for three years. You start at thirteen. Old enough to screw, old enough to crew. At least that’s what Uncle Narol said. Except I didn’t get married till six months back, so I don’t know why he said it.

Hers was a graceful, proud movement. Without me, she would not eat. Without her, I would not live.

“Or what?” I ask with a raised eyebrow. She just smiles at me and cocks her head. I back away from the metal door. I dive into molten mineshafts without a blink. But there are some warnings you can buck off and others you can’t. She stands on her tiptoes and pecks me good on the nose. “Good boy; I knew you’d be easy to train,” she says. Then her nose wrinkles because she smells my burn. She doesn’t coddle me, doesn’t berate me, doesn’t even speak except to say, “I love you,” with just the hint of worry in her voice.

“Coffee!” I laugh. “What sort of Color did you think you married?” She sighs. “No benefits to a diver, none at all. Crazy, stubborn, rash …” “Dexterous?” I say with a mischievous smile as I slide my hand up the side of her skirt. “Reckon that has its advantages.” She smiles and swats my hand away like it’s a spider.

Eo is of the mind that the fungus, grendel, which we distill, isn’t native to Mars and was instead planted here to enslave us to the swill. She brings this up whenever my mother makes a new batch, and my mother usually replies by taking a swig and saying, “Rather a drink be my master than a man. These chains taste sweet.”

As the Laurel-wreathed boxes come down to Gamma, I think about how clever it really is. They won’t let us win the Laurel. They don’t care that the math doesn’t work. They don’t care that the young scream in protest and the old moan their same tired wisdoms. This is just a demonstration of their power. It is their power. They decide the winner. A game of merit won by birth. It keeps the hierarchy in place. It keeps us striving, but never conspiring.

A man’s only got so much hate, I suppose. And when he sees his children’s ribs through their shirts while his neighbors line their bellies with meat stews and sugared tarts, it’s hard for him to hate anyone but them. You think they’d share. They don’t.

“Did his death put food on your table? Did it make any of our lives any better? Dying for a cause doesn’t do a bloodydamn thing. It just robbed us of his laughter.” I feel the tears burning my eyes. “It 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.” She licks her lips and takes her time in replying. “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.

“You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn’t. You say it’s better to die on your feet. I say it’s better to live on our knees.”

“What do you live for?” I ask her suddenly. “Is it for me? Is it for family and love? Or is it for some dream?” “It’s not just some dream, Darrow. I live for the dream that my children will be born free. That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. She kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.”

“Let her sing,” he says to Podginus, not bothering to hide his fascination. “But, my lord …” “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.”

I 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. On Mars there is not much gravity, so you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.

Death is easy when you’ve already tried to find it.

“Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver.” She makes sure I don’t speak. “Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the louder their voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose.” Her purpose. It sounds so cold, so distant and sad, as though my girl of smiles and laughter was meant for nothing but death. Harmony’s words carve into me and I stare at the metal grating before turning to look into her angry eyes. “Then what is your purpose?” I ask. She holds up her hands, caked with dirt and blood. “The same as yours, little Helldiver. To make the dream come true.”

The only way the game could test my intelligence is if the cards are both scythes; that’s the singular variable that could be altered. Simple. I stare into Dancer’s handsome eyes. It is a rigged game; I’m used to these, and usually I follow the rules. Just not this time. “I’ll play.” I reach into the bowl and pull free a card, taking care that only I can see its face. It is a scythe. Dancer’s eyes never leave mine. “I win,” I say. He reaches for the card to see its face, but I shove it in my mouth before he can take hold of it. He never sees what I drew. Dancer watches me chew on the paper. I swallow and pull the remaining card from the bowl and toss it at him. A scythe. “The lamb card simply looked too good not to eat,” I say.

“Do you know why we call ourselves Sons of Ares, Darrow? To the Romans, Mars was the god of war—a god of military glory, defense of the hearth and home. Honorable and all. But Mars is a fraud. He is a romanticized version of the Greek god Ares.”

“She will not come back, but her beauty, her voice, will echo until the end of time. She believed in something beyond herself, and her death gave her voice power it didn’t have in life. She was pure, like your father. We, you and I”—he touches my chest with the back of his index finger—“are dirty. We are made for blood. Rough hands. Dirty hearts.

“Vengeance then,” he sighs. “You said you could give it to me.” “I said I would give you justice. Vengeance is an empty thing, Darrow.” “It will fill me. Help me kill the ArchGovernor.” “Darrow, you set your sights too low.”

Beyond the instrument, beyond the glass, lies something I don’t understand. I stumble toward the window, toward the light, and fall to my knees, pressing my hands against the barrier. I moan one long note. “Now you understand,” Dancer says. “We are deceived.” Beyond the glass sprawls a city.

“HighReds live as maintenance workers, sanitation, grain harvesters, assembly workers. LowReds are those of us born beneath the surface—the truest slaves. In the cities, the Reds who dance disappear. Those who voice their thoughts vanish. Those who bow their heads and accept the rule of the Society and their place in Society, as all Colors do, live on with relative freedom.”

“Five hundred years.” I shake my head. “This is our bloodydamn planet.” “Through sweat and toil it was made so,” he agrees. “Then what will it take to take it back?” “Blood.” Dancer smiles at me like a township alleycat. There’s a beast behind this man’s fatherly smiles. Eo was right. It comes to violence.

I look down at my hands. They are what Dancer called them—cut, scarred, burned things. When Eo kissed them, they grew gentle for love. Now that she is gone, they grow hard for hate. I clench them into fists till my knuckles are white as icecaps. “What is my mission?”

I asked Dancer why the Sons streamed my wife’s death to the mines. Why not instead show the lowReds the wealth of the surface? That would sow anger. “Because a rebellion now would be crushed in days,” Dancer explained. “We must take a different path. An empire cannot be destroyed from without till it is destroyed from within. Remember that. We’re empire-breakers, not terrorists.”

“So they’re not slaves,” I say. “Oh, they’re slaves,” Harmony says. “Enslaved by their suckling on the teats of those bastards.”

Dancer says there are places in the Bazaar where even an Obsidian should not go. “In the densest places of man, humanity most easily breaks down,”

“They say Carvers will never duplicate the beauty of the Golden Man. The Board of Quality Control taunts us. Personally, I do not want to make you a man. Men are so very frail. Men break. Men die. No, I’ve always wished to make a god.” He smiles mischievously as he does some sketches on a digital pad. He spins it around and shows me the killer I will become. “So why not carve you to be the god of war?”

“Why is it so horrible?” I ask him. “Life. All this. Why do they need to make us do this? Why do they treat us like we’re their slaves?” “Power.” “Power isn’t real. It’s just a word.”

“Doesn’t matter if they find me out.” I clap Dancer’s knee. “They’ve taken what they can from me already. That is why I am a weapon you can use.” “Wrong,” Dancer snaps. “You’re of use because you’re more than a weapon. When your wife died, she didn’t just give you a vendetta. She gave you her dream. You’re its keeper. Its maker. So don’t be spitting anger and hate. You’re not fighting against them, no matter what Harmony says. You’re fighting for Eo’s dream, for your family that is still alive, your people.” “Is that Ares’s opinion? I mean, is it yours?” “I am not Ares,” Dancer repeats. I don’t believe him. I’ve seen the way his men look at him, how even Harmony pays him deference. “Look into yourself, Darrow, and you’ll realize that you are a good man who will have to do bad things.” My hands are unscarred and feel strange when I clench them till the knuckles turn that familiar shade of white. “See. That’s what I don’t get. If I am a good man, then why do I want to do bad things?”

Then I hear a strange whistling. A tune I know. One that echoes through my dreams. The one Eo died to. I follow the sound and come upon a girl changing in the corner of the locker room. Her back is to me, muscles lean as she dons her shirt. I make a noise. She turns suddenly, and for an awkward moment, I stand there blushing. Golds are not supposed to care about nudity. But I can’t help my reaction. She’s beautiful—heart-shaped face, full lips, eyes that laugh at you. They laugh like they did as she rode away on the horse. It’s the same girl who called me a Pixie when I rode the pony. One of her eyebrows arches upward. I don’t know what to say, so, in a panic, I turn and walk fast as I can out of the locker rooms. A Gold wouldn’t have done that. But as I sit with Matteo on the shuttle as it ferries us back home, I remember the girl’s face. She blushed too.

still feel his eyes watching me as though I am something different, something strange. It’s like they suddenly don’t understand what it is they have created. I touch the haemanthus blossom in my pocket and feel the wedding band around my neck. They didn’t create me. She did.

“Thank you, Matteo,” I say, tears in my eyes. I pick him up and hug him despite his protests. “If I live more than a week, I’ll have you to thank, my goodman.” He blushes when I set him down. “Manage your temper,” he reminds me, his small voice darkening. “Manners, manners, then burn their bloodydamn house to the ground.”

“Darrow …,” he murmurs. Darrow was kind in Lykos. I am not. I hate myself for it. I think I’m crying, because my vision is unclear.

The rules and manners and morals of society are pulled away. All it takes is a stone room and two people needing the same scarce thing.

The lower Colors have their children by use of catalysts. Fast births, sometimes only five months of gestation before labor is induced. Except for the Obsidians, only we wait nine months to be born. Our mothers receive no catalysts, no sedatives, no nucleics. Have you asked yourself why?” “So the product can be pure.” “And so that nature is given a chance to kill us. The Board of Quality Control is firmly convinced that 13.6213 percent of all Gold children should die before one year of age. Sometimes they make reality fit this number.” He splays out his thin hands. “Why? Because they believe civilization weakens natural selection. They do nature’s work so that we do not become a soft race. The Passage, it seems, is a continuation of that policy. Only we were the tools they used.

He disagrees with the rules, but he follows them. It is possible. I can do the same until I have power enough to change them.

The school’s role is to find the leaders of men, not the killers of men. So the point, you silly little children, is not to kill, but to conquer. And how do you conquer in a game where there are eleven enemy tribes?” “Take them out one at a time,” Titus answers knowingly. “No, ogre.” “Dumbass,” Sevro snickers to himself. Titus’s pack quietly watches the smallest boy in the Institute. No threats are snarled. No faces twitch. Just a silent promise. It’s hard to remember that they are all geniuses. They look too pretty. Too athletic. Too cruel to be geniuses. “Anyone besides Ogre have a guess?” Fitchner asks. No one answers. “You make one tribe out of twelve,” I finally say. “By taking slaves.” Just like the Society. Build on the backs of others. It isn’t cruel. It is practical.

“They’ve seen what happened in that … place. Everything—” “Was done by Titus,” Antonia drawls tiredly. “And no one else?” Mustang looks at me. “The girls won’t stop crying.” “No one died,” Antonia says in annoyance. “Weak as they are, they will repair themselves. Despite what happened, there’s been no depletion of Golden stock.” “The Golden stock …,” Mustang murmurs. “How can you be so cold?” “Little girl,” Antonia sighs, “Gold is a cold metal.”

“You were picked because you were the smallest boy. The weakest-looking. Terrible scores and so small. They drafted you like they drafted all the other lowDrafts, because you’d be easy to kill in the Passage. A sacrificial lamb for someone they had plans for, big plans. You killed Priam, Sevro. That’s why they won’t let you be Primus. Am I on target?” “You’re on target. I killed him like I’d kill a pretty dog. Quick. Easy.” He spits the bone onto the ground. “And you killed Julian. Am I on target?” We never speak of the Passage again.

It is days before I’m able to walk. I wonder where those nifty medBots are now. Tending someone the Proctors like, no doubt. I won Primus and they never gave it to me. Now I know why the Jackal will win. They are getting rid of his competition.

“Start over!” I shout. “A little rapist cur can’t swing hard enough to hurt me.” But Pax bloodywell can. My army cries in protest. They don’t understand. Golds don’t do this. Golds don’t sacrifice for one another. Leaders take; they do not give. My army cries out again. I ask them, how is this worse than the rape they were all so comfortable with? Is not Nyla now one of us? Is she not part of the body?

“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.”

“You haven’t been sleeping well,” she says. “When do I ever?” “When you slept next to me. You cried out the first week in the woods. After that, you slept like a little baby.” “Is this you inviting me back?” I ask. “I never told you to leave.” She waits. “So why did you?” “You distract me,” I say. She laughs lightly before drifting back to walk beside Pax. I’m left confused both by my response and by her words. I never thought she’d care one way or the other if I left. A stupid smile spreads on my face.

“Why, if it isn’t my belly buddy!” Tactus drawls. “Why the limp, my friend?” “Your mother rode me ragged,” Sevro grunts. “Bah, you’d have to stand on your tiptoes to even kiss her chin.” “Wasn’t her chin I was trying to kiss.”

“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.”

Words are a weapon stronger than he knows. And songs are even greater. The words wake the mind. The melody wakes the heart.