Page 83 of Morning Star (Red Rising Saga 3)

“Not punishment. They voted,” he says very slowly, taking care not to rip the stitches on his neck. “Wasn’t enough morphon to go around. Low supplies. As they tell, the patients voted last week to give the hard meds to the burn victims and amputees. I’d think it noble if they didn’t moan all night from pain like lonely little puppies.” He pauses. “I always wondered if mothers can hear their children weeping for them.”

“Can yours?”

“I didn’t weep. And I don’t think my mother cares much for anything other than revenge. Whatever that means at this point.”

“You said you had information?” I ask, to business because I don’t know what else to say. I feel an ironclad kinship with this man. Sevro asked why I saved him, and I could aspire to notions of valor and honor. But the deepspine reason is I desperately want him to be a friend again. I crave his approval. Does that make me a fool? Disloyal? Is it the guilt speaking? Is it his magnetism? Or is it that vain part of me that just wants to be loved by the people I respect. And I do respect him. He has honor, a corrupted sort, but true honor nonetheless.

“Was it her or was it you?” he asks carefully.

“What do you mean?”

“Who kept the Obsidians from boiling out my eyes and taking my tongue? You or Virginia?”

“It was both of us.”

“Liar. Didn’t think she’d shoot, to tell the truth of it.” He reaches up to feel his neck, but the manacles jerk his hands to a halt, startling him back into the room. “Don’t suppose you could take these off? It’s dreadful when you’ve got an itch.”

“I think you’ll live.”

He chuckles as if saying he had to try. “So, is this where you act morally superior for saving me? For being more civilized than Gold?”

“Maybe I’m going to torture you for information,” I say.

“Well, that’s not exactly honorable.”

“Neither is letting a man put me in a box for nine months after torturing me for three. Anyway, what the hell ever made you think I give a shit about being honorable?”

“True.” He frowns, creasing his brow and looking startling, like something Michelangelo would have carved. “If you think the Sovereign will barter, you’re wrong. She won’t sacrifice a single thing to save me.”

“Then why serve her?” I ask.

“Duty.” He says the words, but I wonder how deeply he means them any longer.

In his eyes I glimpse the loneliness, the longing for a life that should have been, and the glimmer of the man he wants to be underneath the man he thinks he has to be.

“All the same,” I say, “I think we’ve done enough evil to one another. I’m not going to torture you. Do you have information or are we just going to dance around it for another ten minutes?”

“Have you wondered yet why the Sovereign was suing for peace, Darrow? Surely it must have crossed your mind. She’s not one to dilute punishment unless she must. Why would she show leniency to Virginia? To the Rim? Her fleets outnumber those of the Moon Lord rebels three to one. The Core is better supplied. Romulus can’t match Roque. You know how good he is. So why would the Sovereign send us to negotiate? Why compromise?”

“I already know she wanted to replace the Jackal,” I say. “And she can’t very well have a full-scale rebellion on the Rim while trying to cuff his ears and fight the Sons of Ares. She’s trying to limit her theaters of war so she can focus all her weight on one problem at a time. It’s not a complicated strategy.”

“But do you know why she wanted to remove him?”

“My escape, the camps, the disruptions in helium processing…I could list a hundred reasons why installing a psychopath as ArchGovernor could prove burdensome.”

?

?All those are valid,” he says, interrupting. “Convincing, even. And they are the reasons we provided Virginia.”

I step back toward him, hearing the implication in his voice. “What didn’t you tell her?” He hesitates, as if wondering even now if he should tell me. Eventually, he does.

“Earlier this year, our intelligence agents discovered discrepancies between the quarterly helium production logs reported to the Department of Energy and the Department of Mine Management and the yield reports from our agents in mining colonies themselves. We found at least one hundred and twenty-five instances where the Jackal falsely reported helium losses due to Sons of Ares disruption. Disruptions which didn’t exist. He also claimed fourteen mines destroyed by Sons of Ares attacks. Attacks which never happened.”

“So he’s skimming off the top,” I say with a shrug. “Hardly the first corrupt ArchGovernor in the worlds.”

“But he’s not reselling it on the market,” Cassius says. “He’s creating artificial shortages while he stockpiles.”

“Stockpiles? How much so far?” I ask tensely.