House of Gold

PRAISE FOR THE SCARLET ODYSSEY SERIES “Wakanda meets Warhammer 40,000 . . . Readers will enjoy the setting and the magic system.” —Publishers Weekly “Rwizi’s debut is noteworthy for its African-inspired setting.” —Library Journal “Raised in Swaziland and Zimbabwe but now residing in South Africa, C. T. Rwizi is a remarkable new talent. He deftly juggles five very different protagonists; establishes a vast yet intricate new magical system unlike anything else I’ve ever seen; and unfolds stories scattered across the distant past, the chaotic present, and entirely different planes of existence.” —Tor.com “C. T. Rwizi . . . builds a rich setting by combining recognizable aspects of his home with deft and fantastical world building.” —Medium ALSO BY C. T. RWIZI THE SCARLET ODYSSEY SERIES Scarlet Odyssey Requiem Moon Primeval Fire This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Text copyright © 2023 by C. T. Rwizi All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Published by 47North, Seattle www.apub.com Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates. ISBN-13: 9781542037129 (paperback) ISBN-13: 9781542037136 (digital) Cover design by Richard Ljoenes Design LLC Cover illustration by Natasha Cunningham Cover image: © Bernd Vogel / Getty; © shunli zhao / Getty; © simonkr / Getty; © Tuul & Bruno Morandi / Getty; © antishock / Shutterstock For Takunda. Sweet dreams, little brother. CONTENTS PART 1: THE HABITAT CHAPTER 1: HONDO CHAPTER 2: NANDIPA CHAPTER 3: HONDO CHAPTER 4: NANDIPA PART 2: ZIMBATECH CHAPTER 5: HONDO CHAPTER 6: NANDIPA CHAPTER 7: HONDO CHAPTER 8: NANDIPA CHAPTER 9: HONDO CHAPTER 10: NANDIPA CHAPTER 11: HONDO CHAPTER 12: NANDIPA PART 3: ILE WURA CHAPTER 13: HONDO CHAPTER 14: NANDIPA CHAPTER 15: HONDO CHAPTER 16: NANDIPA CHAPTER 17: HONDO CHAPTER 18: NANDIPA CHAPTER 19: HONDO CHAPTER 20: NANDIPA CHAPTER 21: HONDO CHAPTER 22: NANDIPA CHAPTER 23: HONDO CHAPTER 24: NANDIPA CHAPTER 25: HONDO CHAPTER 26: NANDIPA CHAPTER 27: HONDO CHAPTER 28: NANDIPA CHAPTER 29: HONDO CHAPTER 30: NANDIPA CHAPTER 31: HONDO CHAPTER 32: NANDIPA ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR PART 1: THE HABITAT CHAPTER 1: HONDO Tick, tick, tick. My eyes drift to one of my twenty-four siblings, who are waiting with me outside the War Room, and I’m reminded yet again of why I hate that word. Sibling. She and I are not genetically related. None of us are. I certainly don’t like to think of her as a sister. But that is how we were raised: as equals, counterparts, rivals. Siblings. She notices me staring, and a slight frown visits her face. I look away. There’s a clock ticking on the cement wall behind me, a curious anachronism the Custodians say once hung in the office of some consequential leader back on the Old World. I feel the movement of its little analog gears like a musical beat inside my head. A pleasant sound, even though each tick should remind me I’m a step closer to what I know will be the end. Because a month from now, I will be recycled. Tick, tick, tock. I sneak another glance at Nandipa, my not-sibling. She has a look of deep concentration as she watches the simulation unfold on the other side of the glass windows separating us from the octagonal War Room. I catch myself wishing I could brush the cloud of hair around her face, that I could make her smile at me the way I’ve seen her smile at Benjamin, that she would laugh as she watched me strangle Benjamin until his dead eyes bulged and . . . And I should probably go see Counselor to find out exactly what’s wrong with me. Something has been wrong with me for a while now, I think. I look away again, and the clock keeps ticking. I would be afraid if the fear of endings had not been rigorously trained out of me. But people like me, people like my Prime—we were born for endings. Our existence is a temporary and carefully controlled deviation from the norm. Expies, they call us. As in experimentals. Our purpose is to stress test the durability and social cohesion of the more established genetic lines, and judging by the numbers on the all-important scoreboard inside the War Room, our usefulness is almost at an end. My Prime, Jamal, is in session in the War Room with his two dozen siblings, seated at a round conference table where the hologram of a world map hovers at their center. Every year the Primes begin a fresh war game as leaders of their own geopolitical domains on a new hypothetical planet, a patchwork of colors spread out across the map. But as the game progresses, the colors bleed into each other, uniting, conquering, forming strategic alliances. These games are what the Primes were built for. My siblings and me? We were built for the Primes. As always, today we watch their game of empires from outside the glass War Room, keeping one eye on the players and the other eye on each other. A digital scoreboard in the room tallies the victories and losses accrued throughout the year, ranking the Primes from first to last. I’m no dimwit, I don’t think, but I understand what’s going on in only the most basic sense. Sophisticated programs simulate the behavior of populations and armies, as well as individual generals, diplomats, politicians, and even assassins. Throughout the year the Primes pit their respective forces against one another in a scramble for influence. Send an assassin program to dispatch a rival general, and if you succeed, you earn influence. Get caught, and the game turns against you. It’s about getting the timing