“I’m prime. They busted up my right leg, though,” I lie.
He stands too, pushing himself up with his left hand. That’s his dominant one. He looks tall and feeble in the light. Like bent hay. I caught more kicks and punches than him, though, loads more. My ribs might be cracked.
“What do you think this is?” he asks.
“The Passage, obviously.”
“But they lied. They said it would be tomorrow.”
The thick wooden door squeals on rusted hinges and Proctor Fitchner saunters in popping a gumbubble.
“Proctor! Sir, you lied to us,” Julian protests. He brushes his pretty hair back out of his eyes.
Fitchner’s movement is sluggish but his eyes are like a cat’s. “Lying takes too much effort,” he grunts idly.
“Well … how dare you treat us like this!” Julian snaps. “You must know who my father is. And my mother is a Legate! I can have you up on charges for assault in a moment’s notice. And you hurt Darrow’s leg!”
“It’s one A.M., dipstick. It’s tomorrow.” Fitchner pops another gumbubble. “There are also two of you. Alas, only one spot is available in your class.” He tosses a golden ring emblazoned with the wolf of Mars and a star shield of the Institute onto the dirty stone ground. “I could make it ambiguous, but you look like rustyheaded lads. Only one comes out alive.”
He leaves the way he came. The door squeals and then slams shut. Julian flinches at the sound. I do not. We both stare at the ring and I have a sick feeling in my gut that I’m the only one in the room who knows what just happened.
“What do they think they are doing?” Julian asks me. “Do they expect us to …”
“Kill each other?” I finish. “Yes. That’s what they expect.” Despite the knot in my throat. I ball my fists, Eo’s wedding band tight on my finger. “I intend to wear that ring, Julian. Will you let me have it?”
I am bigger than he. Not quite as tall. But that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t stand a chance.
“I have to have it, Darrow,” he murmurs. He looks up. “I am of the Family Bellona. I can’t go home without it. Do you know who we are? You can go home without shame. I can’t. I need it more than you!”
“We’re not going home, Julian. One person comes out alive. You heard him.”
“They wouldn’t do that.…” he tries.
“No?”
“Please. Please, Darrow. Just go home. You don’t need it like I do. You don’t. Cassius … he would be so ashamed if I didn’t make it. I wouldn’t be able to look at him. Every member of my family is Scarred. My father is an Imperator. An Imperator! If his son did not even make it through the Passage … what would his soldiers think?”
“He would still love you. Mine would.”
Julian shakes his head. He takes a breath and stands tall.
“I am Julian au Bellona of the Family Bellona, my goodman.”
I don’t want to do this. I can’t explain how badly I don’t want to hurt Julian. But when has what I wanted ever mattered? My people need this. Eo sacrificed happiness and her life. I can sacrifice my wants. I can sacrifice this slender princeling. I can even sacrifice my soul.
I make the first move toward Julian.
“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. Yet the shift isn’t instantaneous. Even when I punch Julian in the face and his blood smears my knuckles, it doesn’t seem a fight. The room is quiet. Awkward. I feel rude punching him. Like I’m acting. The stone is cold on my feet. My skin prickles. Breath echoes.
They want me to kill him because he didn’t do well on their tests. This is a mismatch. I am Darwin’s scythe. Nature scraping away the chaff. I don’t know how to kill. I’ve never killed a man. I have no blade, no thumper, no scorcher. It seems impossible that I could make this boy of meat and muscle bleed dry just with my hands. I want to laugh and Julian does. I am a naked child slapping at another naked child in a cold room. His hesitancy is obvious. His feet move like he’s trying to remember a dance. But when his elbows come to eye level, I panic. I don’t know how he is fighting. He strikes halfheartedly at me in a foreign, artistic way. He’s tentative, slow, but his timid fist gets my nose.
Rage overtakes me.
My face goes numb. My heart thunders. It’s in my throat. My veins prickle.
I break his nose with a straight. God, my hands are strong.
He wails and ducks into me, grappling my arm into an odd angle. It pops. I use my forehead. It takes him just at the bridge of his nose. I grab the back of his neck and hit him again with my forehead. He can’t break away. I do it again. Something cracks. Blood and spit lather my hair. His teeth cut my scalp. I drop back like I’m dancing, reverse off my left foot, weave forward and hit him with all my weight behind my right fist in his chest. My Helldiver knuckles shatter his reinforced sternum.
There’s a great wheezing gasp. And a crackling noise like snapping twigs.
He tips backward onto the ground. I’m dazed from striking him with my forehead. Seeing red. Seeing double. I stumble toward him. Tears stream down my cheeks. He’s twitching. When I grab his golden hair, I find him already limp. Like a wet golden feather. Blood pulses from his nose. He is quiet. He no longer moves. No longer smiles.
I mutter my wife’s name as I fall to cradle his head. His face has become like a blood blossom.
PART III
GOLD
“This is your slingBlade, son. It will scrape the earth’s veins for you. It will kill pitvipers. Keep it sharp and if you get stuck in the drills, it will save your life for the price of a limb.” So said my uncle.
20
THE HOUSE MARS
There’s stillness in my soul as I look at the broken boy. Even Cassius would not recognize Julian now. A cavity is carved into my heart. My hands tremble as the blood dribbles off them onto cold stone. Rivers along the golden Sigils upon my hands. I am a Helldiver, but the sobs come even as the tears are gone. His blood trickles from my knee down my hairless shin. It’s red. Not golden. My knees feel the stone and my forehead touches it as I sob till exhaustion fills my chest.
When I look up, he is still dead.
This wasn’t right.
I thought the Society only played games with its slaves. Wrong. Julian didn’t score like I did on the tests. He wasn’t as physically capable as I. So he was a sacrificial lamb. One hundred students per House and the bottom fifty are only here to be killed by the top fifty. This is just a bloodydamn test … for me. Even the Family Bellona, powerful as they are, could not protect their less capable son. And that is the point.
I hate myself.
I know they made me do this, yet it still feels like a choice. Like when I pulled Eo’s legs and felt the snap of her small spine. My choice. But what other choice was there with her? With Julian? They do this to make us wear the guilt.
There’s nowhere to wipe the blood, only stone and two naked bodies. This is not who I am, who I want to be. I want to be a father, a husband, a dancer. Let me dig in the earth. Let me sing the songs of my people and leap and spin and run along the walls. I would never sing the forbidden song. I would work. I would bow. Let me wash dirt from my hands instead of blood. I want only to live with my family. We were happy enough.
Freedom costs too much.
But Eo disagreed.
Damn her.
I wait, but no one comes to see the mess I’ve made. The door is unlocked. I slip the golden ring over my finger after I close Julian’s eyes, and walk naked into the cold hall. It is empty. A soft light guides me up never-ending stairs. Water drips from the subterannean tunnel’s ceiling. I use it to try to clean my body, but all I do is lather the blood into my skin, thinning it. I cannot escape it, what I’ve done, no matter how far I follow th
e tunnel. I am alone with my sin. This is why they rule. The Peerless Scarred know that dark deeds are carried through life. They cannot be outrun. They must be worn if one is to rule. This is their first lesson. Or was it that the weak do not deserve life?
I hate them, but I hear them.
Win. Bear the guilt. Reign.
They want me pitiless. They want my memory short.
But I was raised differently.
All my people sing of are memories. And so I will remember this death. It will burden me as it does not burden my fellow students—I must not let that change. I must not become like them. I’ll remember that every sin, every death, every sacrifice, is for freedom.
Yet now I’m afraid.
Can I bear the next lesson?
Can I pretend to be as cold as Augustus? I now know why he did not flinch in hanging my wife. And I am beginning to understand why Golds rule. They can do what I cannot.
Though I am alone, I know I will soon find others. They want me to soak in the guilt for now. They want me lonely, mournful, so that when I meet the others, the winners, I will be relieved. The murders will bind us, and I’ll find the company of the winners a salve to my guilt. I do not love my fellow students, but I will think I do. I will want their comfort, their reassurances that I am not evil. And they will want the same. This is meant to make us a family—one with cruel secrets.
I am right.
My tunnel leads me to the others. I see Roque, the poet, first. He bleeds from the back of his head. Blood is slick on his right elbow. I didn’t think him capable of killing. Whose blood? His eyes are red from crying. We find Antonia next. Like us, she is naked; she moves like a golden ship, drifting along, quiet and aloof. Her feet leave bloody footprints where she walks.
I dread finding Cassius. I hope he is dead, because I’m afraid of him. He reminds me of Dancer—handsome, laughing, yet a dragon just beneath the surface. But that’s not why I’m afraid. I’m afraid because he has a reason to hate me, to want to kill me. No one in my life has had just cause before. No one has ever hated me. He will if he finds out. Then I realize it. How could the House ever be knit tightly with such secrets? It can’t. Cassius will know someone here killed his brother. Others will have lost friends, and so the House will devour itself. The Society did this on purpose; they want chaos. It will be our second test. Tribal strife.
The three of us find the other survivors in a cavernous stone dining hall dominated by a long wooden table. Torches light the room. Night’s mist slithers through open windows. It is like something from the old tales. The times they call Medieval. Toward the far end of the long room is a plinth. A giant stone towers there; embedded in its center is a golden Primus hand. Golden and black tapestries flank the stone. A wolf howls upon the tapestries, as though calling out a warning. It is the Primus hand that will tear this House apart. Each one of these little princes and princesses will think themselves deserved of the honor of leading the House. Yet only one can.
I move like a ghost with the other students, drifting around the stone halls of what seems to be a giant castle. There is a room in which we are to clean ourselves.
A trough runs icy water along the cold floor. Now blood runs with the water to the right and disappears into the stone. I feel like some sort of specter in a land of fog and rock.
Black and gold fatigues are laid out for us in a relatively barren armory. Each student finds the fatigue bundle tagged with his or her name. A golden symbol of a howling wolf marks the high collars and sleeves of our clothing. I take my clothing with me and dress alone in some storage room. There, I fall into the corner and sit, silent. This place is so cold and quiet. So far from home.
Roque finds me. He’s striking in his uniform—lean like a strand of golden summer wheat, with high cheekbones and warm eyes, but his face is pale. He sits on his haunches across from me for several minutes before he reaches over to clasp my hands. I draw back, but he holds on till I look at him.
“If you are thrown into the deep and do not swim, you will drown,” he says, and raises his thin eyebrows. “So keep swimming, right?”
I force a chuckle.
“A poet’s logic.”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t count for much. So I’ll give you facts, brotherman. This is the system. 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. My … victim … was, bless his soul, a fool. He was from a family of no worth, and he had no wits, no intelligence, no ambition,” he frowns at the words before sighing, “he had nothing the Board values. There is a reason he was to die.”
Was there a reason Julian was to die?
Roque knows what he does because his mother is on the Board. He loathes his mother, and only then do I realize I should like him. Not only that, I take refuge in his words. 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.
“We should join the others.” I say, standing.
In the dining hall, our names float above the chairs in golden letters. Our test scores are gone. Our names have also appeared beneath the Primus hand in the black stone. They float, golden, upward toward the golden hand. I’m closest, though there’s still much distance to cover.
Some of the students cry together in small groups by the long wooden table. Others sit against the wall, heads in their hands. A limping girl looks for her friend. Antonia glares over at the table where small Sevro sits eating. Of course he’s the only one with an appetite. Frankly, I’m surprised he survived. He is tiny and was our ninety-ninth and last draft pick. By Roque’s proposed rules, he should be dead.
Titus, the giant, is alive and bruised. Those knuckles of his look like a dirty butcher’s block. He stands arrogantly apart from the rest, grinning like this is all splendid fun. Roque speaks quietly with the limping girl, Lea. She falls down crying and throws her ring. She looks like a deer, eyes wide and glistening. He sits with her and holds her hand. There’s a peacefulness to him that is unique in the room. Wonder how peaceful he seemed when strangling some other kid to death. I roll my ring on and off my finger.
Someone smacks my head lightly from behind.
“Oy, brotherman.”
“Cassius.” I nod.
“Cheers to your victory. I was worried you were all brains,” Cassius laughs. His golden curls are not even tousled. He throws an arm around me and surveys the room with a wrinkled nose. He feigns this nonchalance; I can tell he’s worried.
“Ah. Is there anything more ugly than self-pity? All this crying.” He smirks and points at a girl with a busted nose. “And she just became aggressively unpleasant. Not that she was ever much to sniff at. Eh? Eh?”
I forget to speak.
“Shell-shocked, man? They get your windpipe?”
“Just not much for joking about right now,” I say. “Took some knocks to the head. Shoulder is a bit slagged too. This isn’t my usual scene.”
“Shoulder can be fixed straight off. Let’s get it back in the socket.” He casually grips my dislocated shoulder and jerks it into its socket before I can protest. I gasp in pain. He chuckles. “Prime. Prime.” He slaps me on the same shoulder. “Help me out, won’t you?”
He extends his left hand. His dislocated fingers look like lightning bolts. I pull them straight. He laughs with the p
ain, not knowing his brother’s blood is under my fingernails. I’m trying not to hyperventilate.
“Spotted Julian yet, man?” he finally asks. He speaks in midLingo now that Priam is nowhere to be seen.
“Not a sight.”
“Meh, the kid is probably trying to be gentle with his fight. Father taught us the Silent Art, Kravat. Julian is a prodigy at it. He thinks I’m better.” Cassius frowns. “Thinks I’m better at everything—which is understandable. Just got to get him going. Speaking of it, who’d you slag?”
My insides knot.
I make up a lie, and it is a good one. Vague and boring. He only wants to talk about himself now anyway. After all, this is what Cassius was bred for. There are roughly fifteen kids who have that same quiet gleam in their eye. Not evil. Just excited. And those are the ones to watch, because they’re the born killers.
Looking around, it’s easy to see that Roque was right. There weren’t many tough fights. This was forced natural selection. Bottom of the heap getting slaughtered by the top. Hardly anyone is severely injured except a couple of small lowDrafts. Natural selection sometimes has its surprises.
Cassius’s fight was easy, he says. He did it right and fair and quick. Crushed the windpipe with a bladejab ten seconds into squaring up. Caught his fingers oddly, though. Prime. I’ve made a corpse of the best killer’s brother. Dread creeps into me to make a home.
Cassius grows quieter when Fitchner saunters in and orders us to the table. One by one, the fifty seats fill. And bit by bit, his face darkens as each chance for Julian to join the table disappears. When the last seat fills, he does not move. It is a cold anger that radiates. Not hot as I thought it would be. Antonia sits across from us, opposite me, and watches him. Her mouth works but she says nothing. You don’t comfort his sort. And I didn’t think her the kind to try.
Julian isn’t the only one missing. Arria, all curls and dimples, is lying limp on a cold floor somewhere. And Priam is gone. Perfect Priam the Premier, heir of Mars’s moons. I heard he was the First Sword in the Solar System for his birthyear. A duelist without peer. I guess he wasn’t too lethal with his fists. I look around the tired faces. Who the hell killed him? The Board messed that one up, and I wager his mother will cause hell, because he certainly wasn’t meant to die.