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“Don’t play games with me and I won’t play them with you, Ragnar.” I wait a long moment. “Must I repeat myself?”
“Gold plans. Gold wants,” he rumbles slowly. Time between each sentence. “Wanting is your heartbeat. We of the Allmother do not want. We obey.”
“On your knees?” He says nothing in reply, so I continue. “You once wore shackles, Ragnar. Now the shackles don’t weigh you down. So … what do you want?” He doesn’t respond. Is it petulance? “Surely you want something.”
“You struck off the shackles of others and seek to bind me with the shackles like your own. Your wants. Your dreams. I do not want.” He says it again. “I do not dream. I am Stained. Destined by Allmother Death to deliver her promise.” His face shows me nothing, but I feel petulance in the man. “Did you not know?”
I examine him warily. “You make yourself look dumber than you really are.”
“Good.” He sits up swiftly, before I even have time to move back. Bloodydamn, he’s fast. He takes out a knife and very quickly cuts his palm. “When I offered stains, I bound myself to you. Forever. Till nothing.”
I know this is their way. And I know what horrors he went through to gain the title of Stained. He is not a man of half oaths or half measures. To be an Obsidian is to know misery. To be a Stained is to be misery. And it is to angle themselves one way in life—to serve their Golden gods, like myself, if they are so lucky. We take their strong. We leave their weak. We send Violets with tech to make lightning shows on hillsides. We sow famine, then descend with food. We send plagues, then bless them with Yellows to heal their sick and cure their blind. We have Carvers seed monsters in their oceans and griffins and dragons in their mountains. And when we are displeased, we destroy their cities with bombardments from orbit. We make ourselves their gods. And then we bring them into our world to serve our greedy aims. We want. They obey. How could Ragnar ever be what I need him to be?
“What if I wanted to you be free?”
He flinches back. Eyes expressing a deep fear. “Freedom drowns.”
“Then learn to swim.” I set a hand on his massive shoulder. Muscles like rocks beneath the skin. “One brother to the other.”
“We are not brothers, Sunborn,” he says, his voice wavering. “You are master. Do you not understand? I obey. You command.”
I tell him he chose me for his master. I did not take him, as he thinks. And it was he, not I, who commanded the assault team that took Kellan au Bellona’s ship. He did that. There was no Gold to guide him. No Gold to make him a leader. But that alone is not enough. What would Eo say to him? What would Dancer say?
“Our Color is the same,” I tell him. He doesn’t understand, so I cut my finger. Red blood comes out and I smear this on the black Sigils that mark his Color on his hands. Then I take his blood and smear it over the gold on the back of my hands.
“Brothers. All water. All flesh. All made from and bound for the dirt.”
“I do not understand,” he says fearfully, actually scooting back and away from me till I have him cornered like a little child. “We are not the same. You are from the sun.”
“I am not. I was born six inches from the dirt. Ragnar Volarus, I release you from my service, whether your like it or not. I will not let you be bound. I will not let you be led. You stay in this icebox till you are man enough to decide what you want. You shoot yourself in the head. You freeze yourself to death. Go ahead. But whatever you do, it will be because you chose to do it. Perhaps you’ll choose to follow me. Perhaps you’ll choose to kill me. Whatever it is you decide, you must decide for yourself.”
He stares at me, eyes wide with terror.
“Why?” he rumbles. “Why do you shame me? In all the worlds, no man would reject a Stained. I choose to offer myself and you spit on me. What have I done?”
“When you offer yourself, you offer your brothers and sisters and people into slavery as well.”
“You do not know.” Ragnar seethes. “We live to serve. If we do not, Gold will end us. We will be no more. I have seen fire rain from the sky.”
Centuries ago, in the Dark Revolt, the Golds killed more than nine-tenths of his Color. Exterminated them like culling a population of predators. That is the only history they know. The one we give them. Fear.
“The history of men is kept from you, Ragnar. The Golds teach you that you have always been slaves. That Obsidians exist to serve, to kill. But there was a time before Gold where man was free.”
“Every man?” he asks.
“Every man. Every woman. You were not born to serve Gold.”
“No,” he rumbles. “You tempt me. You bait me. I have seen this before. I have seen false words meant to trick. The true words are known to me, to us. Our mothers teach them. ‘Fear and serve the men of Gold. Or they will come with iron from the sky. Gold will treat you with fire of the Sunborn. For they are not bound by love. Not bound by fear. Not bound to earth, but to sky and sun. Fear and serve the men of Gold.’”
“I do not serve them.”
“Because you are one of them.”
“What if I told you I was not?”
He stares at me. No answer. No movement. Nothing. Just confusion. And so I tell him. I tell him in that freezer what Dancer told me in the penthouse. We have been deceived. “I had a wife,” I tell him. “They took her from me. They hanged her. They made me pull her feet so that her neck would break and she would not suffer. I killed myself after that, burying her, letting them win. Letting them hang me. I drowned in grief.” I tell him how the Sons came for me. “And Ares gave me a second chance, the same chance you now have to do something.
“For seven hundred years we have been enslaved, Ragnar. Your people. My people. We have been kept in darkness. But there will come a day when we walk in the light. It will not come from their mercy. It will not come by fate. It will come when good men and good women rise up and choose to break the chains and live for more. You must choose for yourself. Will you choose the hard path? Will you choose to be my friend? Will you rise with me? Or will you choose the trodden path and let your mother, your father, your sisters and brothers die never knowing there was a chance for something else?”
