Red Rising — Chapter 28: My Brother

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My Brother

I pretend the matches came from one of the Minervans when I light

our rst re inside castle Mars. June is fetched from her makeshift

prison, and soon she has prepared us a feast from the meat of goats

and sheep and herbs fetched by my tribe. My tribe pretends it’s the

rst meal they’ve had in weeks. The others of the House are hungry

enough to believe the lie. Minerva and her warband have long since

slunk on home.

“What now?” I ask Roque as the others eat in the square. The

keep is a place of squalor still, and the light of the re does nothing

but illuminate the lth. Cassius has gone to see Quinn, so I am alone

for the moment with Roque.

Titus’s tribe sits in quiet groups. The girls will not speak to the

boys because of what they’ve seen some of them do. All eat with

their heads down. There’s shame there. Antonia’s people sit with

mine and glare at Titus’s. Disgust lls their eyes. Betrayal too, even

as they ll their bellies. Several scues have already escalated from

minor words to thrown sts. I thought the victory might bring them

together. But it did not. The division is worse than ever, only now I

cannot dene it and I think there is only one way to mend it.

Roque doesn’t have the answer I want to hear.

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“The Proctors aren’t interfering, because they want to see how

and if we handle justice, Darrow. It is the deeper trait that this

situation probes. How do we manage Law?”

“Brilliant,” I say. “So what? We’re supposed to whip Titus? Kill

him? That would be Law.”

“Would it? Or would it just be vengeance?”

“You’re the poet. You gure it out.” I kick a stone o the

ramparts.

“He can’t stay tied up in the cellars. You know this. We will never

move on from this torpor if he does, and it has to be you who

decides what to do with him.”

“Not Cassius?” I ask. “I think he’s earned a say. After all, he did

claim him.” I don’t want Cassius to share leadership, but I don’t

want him to come out of the Institute without any prospects. I owe

him.

“Claim him?” Roque coughs. “And how barbaric does that

sound?”

“So Cassius should play no role?”

“I love him like a brother, but no.” Roque’s narrow face tenses as

he sets a hand on my arm. “Cassius cannot lead this House. Not

after what happened. Titus’s boys and girls might obey him, but

they won’t respect him. They won’t think him stronger than them,

even if he is. Darrow, they pissed on him. We are Golds. We do not

forget.”

He’s right.

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I pull my hair in frustration and glare at Roque as though he were

being dicult.

“You don’t understand how much this means to Cassius. After

Julian’s death … He has to succeed. He cannot be remembered

solely for what happened. He can’t.”

Why do I care so much?

“Doesn’t matter a ying piss how much it means to him,” Roque

echoes my words with a smile. His ngers are thin like hay on my

bicep. “They’ll never fear him.”

Fear is necessary here. And Cassius knows it. Why else is he

absent in victory? Antonia has not left my side. Pollux, the gate

opener, hasn’t either. They linger several meters away to associate

with my power. Sevro and Thistle watch them with sly grins.

“Is that why you’re here too, you scheming weasel?” I ask Roque.

“Sharing the glory?”

He shrugs and gnaws on the leg of mutton Lea brings him.

“Slag that. I’m here for the food.”

I nd Titus in the cellar. The Minervans tied him and beat him

bloody after they saw the slave girls in his tower. That’s their

justice. He smiles as I stand over him.

“How many of House Ceres did you kill in your raids?” I ask.

“Suck my balls.” He spits bloody phlegm. I dodge.

I resist kicking him there, barely. Already got Pax for the day.

Titus has the gall to ask what has happened.

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“I rule House Mars now.”

“Outsourced your dirty work to the Minervans, eh? Didn’t want to

face me? Typical Golden coward.”

I am afraid of him. I don’t know why. Yet I bend on a knee and

stare him in the eye.

“You are a pissing fool, Titus. You never evolved. Never got past

the rst test. You thought this whole thing is about violence and

killing. Idiot. It’s about civilization, not war. To have an army, you

must rst have a civilization—you went straight to violence like

they wanted us to. Why do you think they gave us of Mars nothing

and the other Houses have so many resources? We’re meant to ght

like mad, but we’re meant to burn out like you did. But I beat that

test. Now I’m the hero. Not the usurper. And you’re just the ogre in

the dungeon.”

“Oh, huzzah. Huzzah!” He tries clapping his bound hands. “I don’t

give a piss.”

“How many did you kill?” I ask.

“Not enough.” He tilts his large head. His hair is greasy and dark

with dirt, almost as though he’s tried to black out the gold. He

seems to like the dirt. It’s under his ngernails, coats his burnished

skin. “I tried to bash their heads in. Kill them before the medBots

came. But they were always so fast.”

“Why did you want to kill them? I don’t understand what the

point is. They are your own people.”

He smirks at this. “You could have changed things, you bastard.”

His large eyes are calmer, sadder than I remember. He does not like

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himself, I realize. Something about him is too mournful. The pride I

thought he had is not pride; it is just scorn. “You say I’m cruel, but

you had matches and iodine. Don’t think I didn’t know even before I

smelled you. We starved, and you used what you found to become

leader. So do not lecture me on morality, you backstabbing piss-

sucker.”

“Then why didn’t you do something about it?”

“Pollux and Vixus were frightened of you. So the rest were too.

And they thought Goblin would kill them in their sleep. What could

I do if I was the only one who wasn’t scared?”

“Why aren’t you?”

He laughs hard. “You’re just a boy with a slingBlade. First I

thought you were hard. Thought we saw things similarly.” He licks

a bloody lip. “Thought you were like me, only worse because of that

coldness in your eyes. But you’re not cold. You care about these

pisspricks.”

My eyebrows pinch together. “How’s that?”

“Simple. You made friends. Roque. Cassius. Lea. Quinn.”

“So did you. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus.”

Titus’s face contorts horribly. “Friends?” he spits. “Friends with

them? Those Goldbrows? They are monsters, soulless bastards.

Nothing but a bunch of cannibals, all of them. They did the same as

I did, but … pfah.”

“I still don’t understand why you did what you did to the slaves,”

I say. “Rape, Titus. Rape.”

His face is quiet and cruel. “They did it rst.”

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“Who?”

But he’s not listening. Suddenly he’s telling me about how they

took “her” and raped “her” in front of him. Then the slaggers came

back a week later to do it some more. So he killed them; bashed

their heads in. “I killed the bloodydamn monsters. Now their

daughters bloodywell get what she got.”

It’s like I’ve been punched in the face.

Oh hell.

A chill spreads through me.

Bloodydamn.

I stumble back.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Titus asks. If I were a

Gold, I might have not noticed, might’ve just been befuddled by the

odd word. I’m no Gold. “Darrow?”

I pull my way into the hall. I move in a haze. It all makes sense.

The hate. The disgust. The vengeance. Cannibals eat their own. He

called them cannibals. Pollux, Cassandra, Vixus—who are their

own? Their own. Golden. Bloodydamn. Not gory. Titus said

bloodydamn. No Gold says that. Ever. And he called it a slingBlade,

not a reaper’s scythe.

Oh hell.

Titus is a Red.

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