Iron Gold

  “No!”

  “To get her back because it was her fault. Her fault that they are dead. Her fault that you are alone. You blame her. Don’t you?”

  “Yes, I blame her!” The rage oozes out of me, dark and nasty. “That bitch brought us up from the mines and put us in a camp to rot. The Red Hand took everything. And she didn’t stop ’em. She didn’t even try, ’cause she had bigger shit to worry about. Like birthday galas and walks in the bloody gardens. They’re dead because she promised freight she couldn’t deliver.” I stab a finger on the table. “But I’m not working for anyone. And I would never hurt a child.”

  My composure cracks as the last word comes out. I’ve bottled it up inside, this anger, thought I could keep it down and forget the pain. But it wasn’t ever forgotten. Being closer to these people has made it worse. Philippe saw that something inside me is broken, and he used it. The Pink watches me with pitying eyes.

  “Use the Oracle,” she says softly.

  “The Oracle,” Niobe whispers.

  “They have Pax and Electra,” Daxo replies. “You saw Father. What do you think they’re doing to them?” His mother’s shoulders slump. “It has to be done. Holiday, hold her down.”

  The Gray hesitates. “Does the Sovereign know?”

  “We are her council,” Theodora says. “You told Darrow you would protect his family. When he returns, do you want to tell him you failed?”

  Holiday’s hands bruise my shoulders as she grabs me. Daxo reaches into the aquarium and pulls free the carved monster. Its legs claw at the air as he approaches me. The scent of its pale flesh is sweet, like candied almonds. Its scorpion tail is covered with a plastic cap and waves as it sees my exposed forearm. I shiver in fear, begging them to stop. They don’t listen. I knew this would happen. I knew the Sovereign would have her men peel me apart. But it doesn’t make the horror any easier. In Daxo’s other hand is a small knife. He draws a shallow wound on the underside of my forearm.

  “Stop!” I beg. “Please! I’m telling the truth.”

  “We will soon find out.”

  The creature lunges for the blood and begins to suck. Its cold, slippery legs hug my arm like the fingers of an old woman. I jerk in horror, but go nowhere under Holiday’s hold. “Let us begin again,” Theodora says. “Who—”

  “What are you doing?” an angry voice says from behind.

  Niobe sweeps into a bow. Daxo follows, his less deep. “Virginia. The girl is intransigent,” he says. “We need what she knows.” I crane my neck around and see the Sovereign standing at the door in a tunic of white.

  “Did I say you could torture her, Daxo?”

  He meets her gaze without flinching. “There’s no need for you to see it. This is why you have us.”

  “Because I’m such a frail flower that I need bold souls to do my torturing for me?” She sneers. “Niobe, even you?”

  “After what was done to Kavax—”

  “Yes. And what would he say about this?” She waits. Then, whipping out her razor, she storms to my side and grips the barbed tail of the creature sucking my blood. She stabs it in the back of the head. It screams like a human child, tail thrashing in her hand. She flings it to the ground, where it crawls and finally shudders to death. She turns on Theodora. “I told you to kill all those monsters. Years ago. Did you not hear me or is insolence now to be expected from my spymaster?”

  “I preserved a litter,” Theodora says. “To protect your family I would do anything.”

  “If Darrow were here…”

  “I would look him in the eye and tell him I will not stop till his child is found, without apology and without remorse.”

  “And will you tell him that his child is lost?” Theodora is taken aback. “Oh, you thought I didn’t know you helped him get into Deepgrave to release a war criminal who tried to murder my family in our sleep?”

  “Virginia…”

  “No.” The Sovereign raises a hand. “I tire of being treated like a child by my own council because I have chosen to obey the laws. You’re no different than Victra. You mistake morality for naïveté. Now get out. I don’t want to look at any of you any longer. It’s time I talk with the girl alone.”

  THE SOVEREIGN WATCHES ME from Daxo’s vacated chair.

  I feel shredded and thin from the interrogation. The horror of the Oracle has not fled. I still feel its legs around my arm.

  Only Holiday remains with us in the room. I glance at the Gray nervously out of the corner of my eye, knowing if there’s pain to come, it’ll be from her.

  The Sovereign is dressed simply, her hair held back from her head in a ponytail. Unlike most Golds you see on the street, she doesn’t wear jewelry, only a gold lion ring on her left middle finger for House Augustus, and an iron ring of a howling wolf on her right. She’s younger than I thought she was when I first saw her. But her youth doesn’t make her look vulnerable. It makes her look alive, powerful. No wonder a boy from the mines fell in love with her. I used to think it a betrayal. He should have stuck with his own. But how could he resist a woman like this?

  “I apologize for that,” she says softly. “They are…afraid.”

  I nod, barely hearing her. “Your son—”

  She interrupts. “Why did you return? Whether you were working for someone or were simply used, you knew the dangers in coming back here.”

  “What does it matter?” I ask in frustration. “We’re wasting time. Your son is out there….”

  “You think that fact is lost on me?” I shake my head. “Understand that you are a stranger to me. I have seen you twice—in Quicksilver’s meeting room and again on the landing pad…” She saw me watching her there? I was a hundred meters away. What doesn’t she miss? “…and both times you were listening and seeing more than appropriate. That and your dossier and testimony from Telemanus servants and their steward are all the information I have of you. They say you are angry, judgmental, and isolated. The picture of a terrorist. So, to your question: why do your motivations for returning matter? Because any information you give is suspect. If you want me to believe you, you must first make me believe in you. If you fail…”

  “Then you torture me again?”

  “No. I stop wasting my time. Why did you return?”

  “Because it is the right thing to do.”

  She shakes her head. “Not enough. Try again.”

  I don’t know what answer she wants. But I understand there’s no point in bluntly answering her questions like I did the others’. She’s not like them. So how do I reach her? How do I make her understand? I search her face and find no hint. But there’s something we have in common. Perhaps the only thing.

  “Your…husband was a Red…” I say haltingly.

  “He is a Red,” she corrects. “No matter what the Vox Populi say.”

  “If you saw my dossier and talked to Kavax, you know how I came to be here, on Luna. What…what happened to my family. And you know I brought my nephew with me and that he is in the Citadel school.”

  I touch the Sigils on the back of my hands self-consciously.

  “If I ran, Liam would grow up without a family, thinking I was a terrorist. And he’d feel small the rest of his life. He’d think the evil’s in his blood. That he deserves shame. And he’d believe what they say about us, about Reds—that one of us was worth more than the rest of us combined. About Gamma—that we’re greedy in the blood.” I shake my head. “I’d sooner rip my eyes out than let him feel that. I…I promised my sister I would protect him. And I will. Liam will be proud of who he is, who his family was, and the Gamma blood that runs in his veins. So throw me in Deepgrave. Kill me. My life doesn’t mean shit. Your son’s life does. The girl’s life does. And if I can help save them, then Liam can hold his head up high.” I pause. “And so can I.”

  She watches me without a smile. The moment stretches. I’ve not reached her. I’m not smart like them. I know it deep down. But then she smiles.

  “That is something I can belie
ve.”

  I breathe in relief and let my hands relax, not realizing I’d been clenching them into fists this whole time. “The key to this seems to be the man you call Philippe.” She motions to Holiday. The woman opens her datapad on the table and waits for her instructions. “Where did you meet him?”

  “On Hyperion Promenade outside the museum. I’d just come from the exhibits there and a Gold…a woman accused me of pickpocketing her. I hadn’t. Think it was another Red. I got thrown in cuffs and they were haulin’ me up when Philippe came and talked ’em out of it.”

  “This was Tuesday the seventeenth,” she confirms.

  “How did you…” Realization dawns. “My flexipass.”

  She looks at the projection from Holiday’s datapad. Various angles of me touring the museum glow in the air. “On which side of the museum did you meet him?”

  “The west entrance.”

  “That’s our blackspot, yes?” the Sovereign asks Holiday.

  The Gray nods. “The cameras there were scrambled with laser disrupters.”

  “Just like we guessed. Something happened there. It’s likely the Red pickpocket was working for Philippe.” I watch her mind work, wondering what else they’ve pieced together while I’ve been running for my life. “If Philippe talked the officers down, then there would be no incident report. But the officers would have bodycams. Holiday…”

  “Already in Watchmen Central Command. Searching for officers on duty in the area.” She pauses. “Shit. There’s more than a hundred. If we had his name…”

  “Officer Stefano,” I say abruptly. “He was the older officer. From what he said, he was Warden Cohort.”

  The Sovereign looks at me in surprise. “Holiday…?”

  “Found him. Stefano ti Gregorovich, First Sergeant. He was on duty around the museum that day.” Holiday glances sideways at me.

  “Very good, Lyria,” the Sovereign says. Holiday pulls up Stefano’s bodycam and blurs through his day, starting in the precinct locker room, whizzing past interactions with vagrants and young hoods spraying graffiti of the Sovereign mating with a wolf, before coming to me. They speed through my arrest. And just when I’m loaded into the wagon, the camera distorts.

  “Feed’s dead for ten minutes,” Holiday says. “His partner’s too.”

  “So we have a ghost,” the Sovereign says. “A gravWell, a blast door, zero DNA, Citadel intinerary information…this isn’t some low-level operator. But at least it narrows the field. I don’t think it’s Red Hand, despite their mark—they don’t have the resources. Did you go anywhere else with him?” I tell her the sites we visited. As Holiday works, the Sovereign continues. “And at what point did Philippe give you the EMP drone?”

  “It wasn’t that day. It was later on.”

  “Under what pretenses did he offer it?”

  “Sorry? Pretenses?”

  “Why did he give it to you? More importantly, why did you take it?”

  “He said it was because we were friends,” I admit in embarrassment. “Should have known something was wrong. Got security clearance training. I know we aren’t supposed to take gifts, but…” I don’t say it. But I think it. I was lonely.

  “Don’t blame yourself. If he knew to target you, then he knew your position in the Telemanus house well enough to know when on the itinerary you would be with my son and in the proper position for his plan to come into effect. That would mean he had access to your personnel files. He knew about your family.” She grimaces. “He knew how to play you.”

  Play me. Like I’m not even a person. When I told him about my family, he already knew. It makes me nauseous.

  “Got the feeds from Aristotle Park and the restaurant,” Holiday says. Then she curses. “They’re slagged.” She throws them into the air from her datapad. A score of videos of me in the streets and the monuments appear. Philippe is there in his dark suit, but in place of his head and face is a flaming sphere of white fire.

  “What is that?” the Sovereign asks.

  “Blighter,” Holiday says, surprised the Sovereign doesn’t know. “New blackmarket tech. Giving the Watchmen a hell of a time. It uses a prism of high-frequency light waves to create an invisible mask around the user to slag facial recognition. Not as thorough as a jammer, but more range and more elegant with a fraction the power usage. Same breed as the ones used on Earth last month.” A knowing look passes between them.

  “Could they be connected?” Holiday asks.

  “I really don’t see how. Unless it’s meant to draw him out. If that’s the case, we can expect this to be public soon. If it’s not public, then we know the ransom will be political, and I’m the target. Or Victra.”

  Holiday absorbs the consequences of that deeper than I can. She looks back at her screens, a shade paler. “He also paid at the restaurant with a ghost debit card. Anonymous account now with a balance of a hundred credits. The card was used only on that day, once at a tech vendor for a datapad, twice at museums, at a coffee shop, at the restaurant, and at a shop on Alemaide Street.”

  “What did he buy at the shop?” the Sovereign asks.

  “Item 22342C. Cross-referencing with their online catalogue.” She pauses. “A toy lion.”

  “He’s mocking us.” The Sovereign watches out the window as a ship passes, thinking. Since the questioning began, her face has guarded her inner workings. But now I see how afraid she is. I saw the same look on my sister’s face when I told her the Red Hand had come. There’s nothing like a mother’s fear. I feel sudden pity for the woman.

  “We found a Red at the scene of the accident. Dead. Body torched. Did you see any other accomplices?”

  “He had a crow with him,” I say.

  “He had an Obsidian?” Holiday asks tensely. “What did he look like?”

  “It was a she.”

  She parses the word. “A she?”

  “Saw her from behind. Big, white hair…She…shot Kavax.”

  “Do you have any idea why he took you with him from the shuttle?” the Sovereign asks. “That’s the one piece of this that doesn’t measure up.”

  “No. He was gonna kill me. Had his gun to my face and all that. But then he didn’t. He dragged me out and said he was going to set me free, give me some money to start a new life.”

  The Sovereign frowns. “The men that Philippe delivered the children to. Do you remember anything about them aside from what you already told us?”

  “I couldn’t see most of their faces. It was dark and they wore black. But there was one…a Pink. The boss.”

  “Is there anything else you remember about him? A name? A scar? A ring? Anything…”

  “No…wait.” I search my memory. “He had a cane.”

  “Were there any embellishments on it?”

  I squint, trying to remember. “It was white, the length of it. The top was black. Shaped like a monster.”

  “A monster,” the Sovereign repeats. “What sort?”

  “I couldn’t tell, but it looked like it had arms…loads of ’em.”

  The Sovereign pulls out her own datapad and throws an image of a fleshy, multi-limbed creature into the air in front of me. “Is this the monster?”

  “I think so. Yeah.”

  The Sovereign stares at me. “You’re certain this was on his cane?”

  “Sure. I mean yes. Why? What does it mean?”

  She doesn’t answer. Holiday shifts in worry. “Ma’am…”

  The Sovereign rises from her chair and walks to the window, where she stands for almost a full minute before speaking. “It’s not a monster, Lyria. It’s a cephalopod. An octopus. It is the symbol of the Syndicate.” She turns back to face us. “The Syndicate has my son.”

  Dark fear seeps from her eyes into the room. And for the first time, she does not seem in control, not of this room, not of this world, not of the fate of her own son.

  “The Syndicate…” I repeat. Even on Mars we’ve heard of the Syndicate. Reds will pay three years’ wages for them to smug
gle their families to Agea or Attica or even Luna. Many never make it.

  “It’s a criminal organization, a highly evolved one that ruled the underworld of Luna for years,” the Sovereign explains. “When the Society fell, there was a civil war among them until a new leader bound the survivors together and then purged the rest of the gangs. She’s known as the Queen. The man you saw was likely one of her dukes. In all likelihood, it is the Duke of Hands, her prince of thieves. As far as I know, you’re the only person outside the Syndicate ever to have met him and lived. Your Philippe was likely a thorn.”

  “It can’t be them,” Holiday whispers. “They’re just criminals. They wouldn’t dare cross the Sovereign….”

  “They wouldn’t have dared against Octavia, no. But they’re not afraid of me. Just like the Vox Populi.” She’s quiet and looks at the door her council went through. “Maybe Victra was right. I invited this. I gave away all my teeth.”

  “Damn Victra. The Republic should never be the Society,” Holiday says firmly. “Isn’t that the point of all this?”

  “What was it that Lorn once said? ‘Mercy emboldens evil men.’ ”

  “Why do they want your son?” I ask.

  “Leverage…” She has an epiphany but doesn’t share it. “Holiday, we need Theodora to contact Darrow. Call an emergency meeting of the Sovereign Council. Then find me Dancer. I want him in my office in an hour.”

  “What about the girl?”

  The Sovereign looks down at me. “I will need you to testify. And there will be more questions. For now, my steward will see that you have food and a room.”

  Holiday motions me to the door. I’m dismissed. I want to wish the Sovereign well, tell her I’ll be praying for her son. But I doubt the words will be well received. “I hope the gun helps,” I say. “I didn’t think about fingerprints till after. Mind was mud. But maybe some of his are still on there.”

  “Gun?” the Sovereign asks, turning around. “What gun?”

  Holiday looks as clueless as her master.

  “The gun I had when I came to the checkpoint,” I say. “I stole it from Philippe’s car. It’s his.”