Red Rising

  Soon, the interviewers come in intervals. I learn they are called Proctors. Each one of them is a Peerless Scarred. They are chosen by the ArchGovernor to teach and represent the students of the House within the Institute.

  All said, the Proctors are impressive. There’s a huge Scarred man with hair like a lion and a lightning bolt on his collar for Jupiter, a matronly woman with gentle golden eyes, and a quick-witted man with winged feet on his collar. He can’t sit still and his baby face seems immensely fascinated by my hands. He makes me play a game with him in which he puts out both hands flat and facing up and I put mine atop facing down. He tries slapping my hands, but never quite manages. He leaves after clapping his hands together in joy.

  Another strange encounter comes when a beautiful man with coiled hair interviews me. A bow marks his collar. Apollo. He asks me how attractive I believe myself to be and is displeased when I undershoot his estimate. Still, I think he likes me, because he asks me what I would like to be one day.

  “An Imperator of a fleet,” I say.

  “You could do great things with a fleet. But a lofty notion,” he sighs, accenting every word with a feline purr. “Perhaps too lofty for your family. Maybe if you had a benefactor of better familial origin. Yes, maybe then.” He looks at his datapad. “But unlikely due to your birth. Hm. Best of luck.”

  I sit alone for an hour or more till a sullen man comes to join me. His unfortunate face is pinched like a hatchet, but he has the Scar and a razor hilt hangs on his hip. His name is Fitchner. A wad of gum fills his mouth. The uniform he wears is black with gold, and it nearly conceals the slight belly paunch that sticks outward despite the faint smell of metabolizers. Like many of the others, he wears badges about his personage. A golden wolf with two heads decorates his collar. And a strange hand marks his cuff.

  “They give me the mad dogs,” he says. “They give me the killers of our race, the ones full of piss and napalm and vinegar.” He sniffs the air. “You smell full of shit.”

  I say nothing. He leans against the door and frowns at it as though it offended him in some way. Then back to me, sniffing improperly.

  “Problem is, we of House Mars always burn out. Kids rule the Institute at first. Then they find out that napalm lasts about …” He snaps his fingers. I have no reply. He sighs and plops down in a chair. After a while of watching me, he stands and punches me in the face. “If you punch me back, you will be sent home, Pixie.”

  I kick him in the shin.

  He limps away, laughing like a drunk Uncle Narol.

  I’m not sent home. Instead, I find myself escorted with one hundred others into a large room with floatChairs and a large wall dominated by ivory gridwork. The gridwork forms a checkerboard square on the wall, ten rows high, ten rows across. I’m taken on a lift to the middle row, some fifty feet off the ground. Ninety-nine other students are ushered in till each box is filled. This is the prime crop, the best of the students. I look out from my box, peering up above me. A girl’s feet dangle out of the box above my head. Numbers and letters appear in front of my box. My statistics. Supposedly I am very rash and have upper-outlier characteristics in intuition and loyalty and, most noticeably, rage.

  There are twelve groups in the audience. Each group sits close together in floatChairs around vertical golden standards. I see an archer, a lightning bolt, an owl, a wolf with two heads, an upside-down crown, and a trident, amongst others. One of the Proctors accompanies each group. They alone do not have their faces covered. The others wear ceremonial masks, featureless and golden and slightly like the animals of their Houses. If only I had known this was going to happen, I might have brought a nuke. These are the Drafters, the men and women of highest prestige. Praetors and Imperators and Tribunes and Adjudicators and Governors sit there watching me, trying to choose the new students for their House, trying to find young men and women they can test and offer apprenticeships. With one bomb, I could have destroyed the best and the brightest of their Golden rule. Maybe that’s the rashness speaking.

  The Draft begins when a titan of a genAlt boy is chosen first to the House of the lightning bolt. House Jupiter. Then go more girls and boys of unnatural beauty and physical prowess. I can only guess they are geniuses as well. The fifth pick comes. The baby-faced interviewer with the winged feet floats up to me on golden boots. Several of the Drafters of House Mercury float along with him. They speak quietly amongst themselves before asking me questions.

  “Who are your parents? What are their family’s accomplishments?”

  I tell them about my modest false family. One of them seems to think highly of a relative of mine who has long since passed away. But despite the Proctor’s objections, they pass me over for another student from a family with the ownership of ninety mines and a stake on one of Mars’s southern continents.

  The Mercury Proctor curses and shoots me a quick smile.

  “Hope you’re available next round,” he says.

  Next goes a delicate girl with a mocking smile. I can barely pay attention, and, at times, it is difficult to see who else is being selected. We’re arrayed in an odd way. With the tenth pick, the Proctor who struck me in the interviews floats my way. There is disagreement amongst the Drafters. I have two ardent advocates: one is as tall as Augustus, but her hair flows down to her spine in three golden braids. And the second is broader, not very tall. He’s old. Can tell by the scars and wrinkles on his thick hands. Hands that bear the signet ring of an Olympic Knight. I know him immediately even without seeing his face. Lorn au Arcos. The Rage Knight, the third-greatest man on Mars, who chose to serve the Society by safeguarding the Society’s Compact, instead of reaching for crowns in politics. When he points to me, Fitchner grins.

  I am chosen tenth. Tenth out of one thousand.

  18

  CLASSMATES

  I feel a sinking in my stomach as I walk with the chattering mass into the dining hall. It is overgrand—white marble floors, columns, a holosky displaying birds in flight at sunset. The Institute is not what I expected. According to Augustus, the classes are to be hard on these little godlings. I snort down a laugh. Let the lot of them spend a year in a mine.

  There are twelve tables, each with one hundred place settings. Our names float above the chairs in golden letters. Mine floats to the right of a table’s head. It is a place of distinction. The firstDraft. A single bar floats to the right of my name. A -1 is to the left. The first to get five bars becomes Primus of his House. Each bar is bounty for an act of merit. Apparently my high score on the test was the first bit of merit.

  “Wonderful, a cutter in the lead for Primus,” a familiar voice says. The girl from the exam. I read her name. Antonia au Severus. She has cruel good looks—high cheekbones, a smirking smile, scorn in her eyes. Her hair is long, full, and golden as Midas’s touch. She was born to be hated and to hate. A -5 floats beside her name. It is the second-closest score to mine at the table. Cassius, the boy I met at testing, sits diagonally across from me. A -6 shimmers by his broad smile. He runs a hand back through his curls.

  Another boy sits directly across from me; -1 and a golden bar float by his name. While Cassius lounges, this other boy, Priam, sits as straight as a blade. His face is celestial. His eyes alert. His hair coiffed. He’s tall as me, but broad in the shoulders. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more perfect human being. A bloodydamn statue. He wasn’t in the Draft, I discover. He is what they call a Premier; they cannot be drafted. His parents choose his House. Then I discover why. His scandalous mother, a bannerwoman of the House Bellona, owns our planet’s two moons.

  “Fate brings us together again,” Cassius chuckles to me. “And Antonia. My love! It seems our fathers conspired to place us side by side.”

  Antonia replies with a sneer, “Remind me to beam him a thank-you.”

  “Toni! No need for nastiness.” He wags a finger. “Now toss me a smile like a good doll.”

  She flips him the crux with her fingers. “Rather toss you out a window, Cassi.
”

  “Rawr.” Cassius blows her a kiss. She ignores it. “So, Priam, I suppose you and I will have to play gently with these fools, eh?”

  “Oh, they look like swell sorts to me,” Priam replies primly. “I fancy we’ll do very well as a group.”

  They talk in highLingo.

  “If the dregs of the Draft don’t weigh us down, my good man!” He gestures to the end of the table and starts naming them: “Screwface, for obvious reasons. Clown because of that ridiculous puffy hair. Weed because, well, he’s thin. Oy! You, you’re Thistle because your nose looks hooked as one. And … that itty-bitty one right there next to the Bronzie-looking fellow, that’s little Pebble.”

  “I think they will rather surprise you,” Priam says in defense of the far end of the table. “They may not be as tall or as athletic or even as intelligent as you or me, if intelligence really can be measured by that test, but I do not think it charity to say that they will be the spine of our group. Salt of the earth, if you will. Good sorts.”

  I see the small kid from the shuttle, Sevro, at the very foot of the table. The salt of the earth is not making friends. And neither am I. Cassius glances at my -1. I see him concede that Priam might have scored better than he, but Cassius makes a point in saying he’s never heard of my parents.

  “So, dear Darrow, how did you cheat?” he asks. Antonia glances over from her conversation with Arria, a small girl made of curling hair and dimples.

  “Oh, come now, man.” I laugh. “They sent Quality Control after me. How could I have cheated? Impossible. Did you cheat? Your score is high.”

  I speak the midLingo. It’s more comfortable than that highLingo fartdust Priam jabbers on in.

  “Me? Cheat! No. Just didn’t try enough, apparently,” Cassius replies. “If I had my wits, I’d have spent less time with the girls and more on studying, like you.”

  He’s trying to tell me if he tried he could have done just as well. But he’s too busy to put in as much effort. If I wanted him as a friend, I’d let him get away with it.

  “You studied?” I ask. I feel a sudden urge to embarrass him. “I didn’t study at all.”

  A chill goes through the air.

  I shouldn’t have said it. My stomach plummets. Manners.

  Cassius’s face sours and Antonia smirks. I’ve insulted him. Priam frowns. If I want a career in the fleet, then I will likely need Cassius au Bellona’s father’s patronage. Son of an Imperator. Matteo drilled this into me. How easy it is to forget. The fleet is where the power is. Fleet or government or army. And I don’t like government, not to mention that this sort of insult is how duels begin. Fear trickles down my spine as I realize how thin a line there is to tread. Cassius knows how to duel. I, for all my new skills, do not. He would rip me to pieces, and he looks like he wants to do just that.

  “I joke.” I tilt my head to Cassius. “Come on, man. How could I score so high and not have studied till my eyes were bleeding? Wish I’d spent more time fooling off like you—we’re in the same spot now, after all. Fat lot that studying did for me.”

  Priam nods his approval at the peace offering.

  “I bet it was a slog!” Cassius crows, tipping his head to acknowledge my peculiar breed of apology. I expected the play to go over his head. Thought his pride would blind him to my sudden apology; the Gold may be proud, but he isn’t stupid. None of them are. Have to remember that.

  After that, I do Matteo proud. I flirt with a girl named Quinn, befriend and joke with Cassius and Priam—who has probably never sworn in his life—throw my hand out to a tall brute named Titus whose neck is as thick as my thigh. He squeezes too hard on purpose. He’s surprised when I nearly break his hand, but damn is his grip strong. The boy is even taller than Cassius and I, and he’s got a voice like a titan, but he grins when he realizes that my grip, if nothing else, is stronger than his. Something strange about his voice, though. Something decidedly disdainful. There’s also a feather of a boy named Roque who looks and speaks like a poet. His smiles are slow, few, but genuine. Rare.

  “Cassius!” Julian calls. Cassius stands and throws an arm around his thinner, prettier twin. I didn’t piece it together before, but they are brothers. Twins. Not identical. Julian did say his brother was already in Agea.

  “Darrow here is not what he seems,” Julian tells the table with a very grave face. He has a knack for theatrics.

  “You don’t mean …” Cassius puts a hand to his mouth.

  My finger grazes my steak knife.

  “Yes.” Julian nods solemnly.

  “No.” Cassius shakes his head. “He’s not a Yorkton supporter? Julian, tell me it isn’t so! Darrow! Darrow, how could you be? They never win a game! Priam, are you hearing this?”

  I throw my hands up in apology. “A curse of birth, I suppose. I am a product of my upbringing. I cheer for the underdog.” I manage not to sneer the words.

  “He confessed it to me on the shuttle.”

  Julian is proud to know me. Proud his brother knows he knows me. He looks for Cassius’s approval. Cassius isn’t oblivious to this either; he gently doles out a compliment and Julian leaves the highDrafts and returns to his midDraft seat halfway down the table with a content smile and squared shoulders. I didn’t think Cassius would be the kind sort.

  Of those I meet, only Antonia openly dislikes me. She doesn’t watch me like the others at the table. From her, I feel only a distant breed of contempt. One moment she is laughing, flirting with Roque, and then she feels my gaze and becomes ice. The feeling is mutual.

  My dormitory is from a dream. Gold trim lines a window that looks out into the valley. A bed is laden with silks and quilts and satins. I lie in it when a Pink masseur comes in and stays for an hour kneading my muscles. Later, three lithe Pinks file through to tend to my needs. I send them to Cassius’s room instead. To calm the temptation, I take a cold shower and immerse myself in a holoexperience of a digger in the mining colony Corinth. The Helldiver in the holoexperience is less talented than I was, but the rattling, the simulated heat, the darkness and the vipers, they comfort me so much that I wrap my old scarlet rag around my head.

  More food comes. Augustus was all talk. Gob full of exaggerations. This is their version of hardship. I feel guilty as I fall asleep with a full stomach, clutching the locket with Eo’s flower inside. My family will go to bed hungry tonight. I whisper her name. I take the wedding band from my pocket and kiss it. Feel the ache. They stole her. But she let them. She left me. She left me tears and pain and longing. She left me to give me anger, and I cannot help but hate her for a moment even though beyond that moment there is only love.

  “Eo,” I whisper, and the locket closes.

  19

  THE PASSAGE

  I vomit as I wake. A second fist strikes my full stomach. Then a third. I’m empty and gasping for air. Drowning in my sick. Coughing. Hacking. I try to scramble away. A man’s hand grabs me by the hair and throws me into the wall. God, he’s bloody strong. And he’s got extra fingers. I reach for my knifeRing, but they’ve already dragged me into the hall. I’ve never been so manhandled; even my new body can’t recover from their strikes. There’s four of them in black—Crows, the killers. They’ve discovered me. They know what I am. It’s over. All over. Their faces are expressionless skulls. Masks. I pull the knife I took from dinner from my waist and am about to stab one of them in the groin. Then I see the flash of gold on their wrists and they hit me till I drop the knife. It’s a test. Their strikes against a higher Color are sanctioned by the issuer of the bracelets. They haven’t found me out at all. A test. That is what this is. It is a test.

  They could have used stunners. There’s a purpose to the beating. It’s something most Golds have never experienced. So I wait. I curl up and let them beat me. When I don’t resist, they think they’ve done their job. They sort of do; I’m raggedshit by the time they’re satisfied.

  I’m dragged through the hallway by men nearly three meters tall. A bag is shoved over my head.
They’re staying away from technology to scare me. I wonder how many of these kids have felt physical force like this? How many have been so dehumanized? The bag smells like death and piss as they drag me along. I start laughing. It’s like my bloodydamn frysuit. Then a fist hits my chest and I crumple, gasping.

  The hood also has a sound device installed. I’m not breathing hard, but my breaths come back louder than they should. There are over a thousand students. Dozens at a time must suffer this same fate, yet I hear nothing. They don’t want me to hear the others. I’m supposed to think I’m alone, that my Color means nothing. Surprisingly, I find myself offended that they dare strike me. Don’t they know I’m a bloodydamn Gold? Then I snort back a laugh. Effective tricks.

  I’m lifted up and thrown hard onto a floor. I feel a vibration, the smell of exhaust. Soon we’re in the air. Something in the bag covering my head disorients me. I can’t tell which direction we’re flying, how high we’ve risen. The sound of my own raspy breath has become terrible. I think the bag also filters out the oxygen, because I’m hyperventilating. Still, it’s not worse than a frysuit.

  Later. An hour? Two? We land. They drag me by my heels. Head bumps on stone, jarring me. It’s not till much later that they take the bag off of my head in a barren stone room lit by a single light. Another person is already here. The Crows strip away my clothing, rip away the precious Pegasus pendant. They leave.

  “Cold in here, Julian?” I chuckle as I stand, unclenching my left hand from the dirty red Helldiver sweat band. My voice echoes. We’re both naked. I fake a limp with my right leg. I know what this is.

  “Darrow, is that you?” Julian asks. “Are you well?”