by Morgan Rice
“With me!” Thanos said and charged forward. He drew a sword and struck out, making a man fall back as he clutched a bloodied stump of an arm. He parried a blow from a club, then kicked another man back. The guards were there then, fighting off the others and setting them to flight.
“Are you all right?” Thanos called down to the man and woman who had been dragged from their home.
“I—” the man began, “they were going to kill us. Thank you.”
Thanos pointed to the guards accompanying him. If he had them to command, he should at least use them in a way that protected the people of the city. “These men will stay here and make sure that they don’t come back. Stay inside. It will pass soon.”
Except that Thanos was hoping it wouldn’t. He was hoping it would turn into something more as he set off toward the Stade again. Far more.
The Stade was ahead, and so were the old towers. They were so ancient they had probably been there as long as the city, reaching up in pure white marble so high that they almost rivaled the castle’s bastions or the spires of some of the city’s temples. Normally, they were empty, but now Thanos could see the guards standing around the base, obviously unsure what to do next.
Inside, there was a spiral staircase running around the wall of the tower, leading up to a level far above. Thanos ran, ignoring the burning in his muscles as he made it to the top level. There, he found half a dozen men in the uniforms of guard captains, soldiers and royal guards, all arguing and shuffling orders.
“And I say that we need to move now, Maximus,” one said. “Without waiting for orders.”
“And risk angering the king, Pullo?” another countered.
Thanos decided to take charge. “What move were you thinking of making?”
The men there stared at him. The one called Pullo bowed low.
“Prince Thanos. We hadn’t expected that you would come.”
“I hadn’t expected to be here,” Thanos said. From the top of the tower, there was a good view out over the Stade and the rest of the city. From there, he could see the violence in the Stade, and it was chaos.
There were fights in every corner of it. Thanos could see knots of guards in the colors of the city, engaged in outright battle with rebels, with combatlords, or simply with people in the stands. The combatlords were easy to make out even from up here, standing proud in the chaos, whirling and leaping, killing almost effortlessly. There were fires in the Stade too, burning in the stands where people had set light to whatever they could.
“Look at them,” Maximus said. “Animals.”
Thanos shook his head. “Just desperate people. How bad is it?”
“There are riots in the Stade and all the surrounding streets,” Maximus explained. “We have lost—”
“Temporarily,” another of the soldiers interjected.
“We have temporarily lost control of half of the lower district next to it.”
Thanos tried to think. Could this be turned into the loss of the entire city? Could this be the moment when things changed in the Empire? Below, the violence certainly felt as though it might never cease. There were guards down there, but too few to ever fully contain the chaos. Thanos felt as though he was floating above it up here, but even so, the violence felt almost close enough to touch. In a nearby street, he could see men and women ripping up the cobblestones with their hands, flinging them in the direction of an advancing group of guards.
“What are you doing to regain control?” Thanos asked. “Can you regain control, or do I need to evacuate my wife from the castle?”
His throat tightened at that thought. He wanted the rebels to succeed, but he also knew the kind of violence that could accompany a revolution. He would not allow Stephania to be caught up in that. He needed to find ways to help the rebels, but if they were already winning, he would ride back to make sure that Stephania and any other innocents in the castle got out of the city safely. He’d already seen what the mob in the city could be like.
“There should be no need for that, your highness,” Pullo said. “We have more than a thousand good soldiers in place outside the city gates, ready to advance at your command.”
“Our thought was to advance and surround the Stade,” Maximus said. Thanos could practically hear his need for royal approval. “We can trap the rebels and the combatlords in there, then tighten the ring like a noose. We can attack them from all sides and end this. Maybe we can even capture some of the leaders of the rebellion.”
Thanos had to admit that it was a good plan. It was simple, but there was a kind of strength in that. There was nothing to go wrong, only a constant kind of pressure that would crush the rebels under the weight of numbers.
Thanos had to find a way to stop it.
“No,” he said. “We can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Maximus demanded, then seemed to realize what he was saying. “Forgive me, your highness. I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but I’m not sure you understand everything that might be at stake.”
Thanos tried to think, and one hard, harsh truth rose up in him like bile: this wasn’t going to be the moment when the rebellion overthrew the Empire, or even the city. There were too many soldiers waiting. Even if this thousand didn’t put down the revolt, there would be more to follow.
All he could do now was try to salvage some kind of victory for the rebels, even though the thought of what he would have to do was pure pain. He had to choose, right now, which lives to spare and which to take.
“It’s you who don’t understand what’s at stake,” Thanos said, trying to put as much authority into his tone as possible. “Do you think the Stade matters at this point?”
“Your highness,” Pullo said, “that’s where the rebels are.”
“There are rebels in every corner of the city,” Thanos snapped back. “You, Gil, didn’t we have to fight a group of them on the way here?”
“Well, I suppose so,” the guard who’d brought him said.
Thanos went on before anyone else could argue or contradict. He changed his tone to that of a general giving a speech before a battle.
“The truth is that the rebels are in the city. There are fires spreading, and riots growing in every district. A thousand men sounds like a lot, but it will barely be enough to control the whole city. I want the soldiers divided up, with city guards running each group. I want patrols on every major street. I want the fires controlled, and any looting stopped. We go out and we show the people that we control every street. Where there are rebels, we engage them, but the priority is showing that the city belongs to us.”
Maximus still looked skeptical. “What about the Stade?”
“We put in a cordon around the Stade,” Thanos said. “Two hundred men.”
“Two hundred? That—”
“You will do as I have ordered,” Thanos said. Two hundred was far too few to stop the rebels slipping out. There would be holes in the line. There would be escape routes. “I will not take the Stade while hordes of rebels march on the castle to kill my family and my wife! We will hold the city until the battle in the Stade burns out, and then we will move in to take what’s left.”
And in the meantime, soldiers would be putting down the revolt everywhere else. It would have happened anyway, but now that Thanos had given the order, everything the soldiers did would be down to him. Every death, every beating, would be because he had given this order. Here at the top of the tower, he wouldn’t see the executions, but he would know they were happening.
He just had to hope that the rebels in the Stade would make it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lucious wandered through the aftermath of the revolt in the city while the soldiers swept away rioters. No one challenged him. They knew who he was, and the men around him were hard men, tough men, whom it was better not to ask questions of.
It wasn’t the same as his raids had been, though, because the guards were being far too restrained by comparison. No gibbets, no whippings in the stree
t. Hardly even any executions. It was almost as if they didn’t want to clamp down on the city where their friends and families lived. He made a mental note to look into bringing in mercenaries from the further corners of the Empire. Men who wouldn’t hold back.
On another day, he would have ensured it happened in Delos. He and his men would have gone on a binge of violence through the city, paying back the rioters and the rebels for daring to rise up. On another day, he would have been the one there when they wanted a commander for their forces, rather than his brother, Thanos.
His brother. Just the thought of that made Lucious curl his lip in anger. He was the heir. Delos was his, whatever the books said.
“Just down this way, your highness,” Vrek said.
Lucious had brought a quartet of guards with him, replacements for the ones he’d lost to Thanos. Vrek was a former bandit, who had joined the army because it offered better pickings. Quellon and Fen were both equally massive. They looked like they might be brothers, although that was hardly a thought to calm Lucious right then. Justino was whip thin and good with knives.
“You’re sure this is where the people I want will meet?”
The former bandit shrugged. “This is Delos. These kinds of people aren’t hard to find.”
The tavern was a long way from anywhere Lucious would normally have chosen to drink, even on one of his forays into the city with the other young nobles. There were places that held the dashing hint of danger, and then there were places like this.
It was stone built, but probably only because the patrons would have burnt down anything wooden. The doors were iron bound and the windows had bars, making the place look more like a fortress than just a place to drink. Instead of a sign, a ram’s skull hung above the door. From inside, Lucious could hear the sounds of people drinking and yelling to one another, shut in while the rest of the city fought.
“I’d have thought that people in a place like this would be out looting,” Lucious said.
“Begging your pardon, your highness,” Vrek said, “but looting is a mug’s game at a time like this, and people in here will know it. Stuff you could steal any day of the week, with a whole army’s worth of soldiers out to kill you if they so much as see you outside.”
Lucious shrugged off the familiarity for now. “I don’t need a lecture on the finer points of reaving etiquette. Just get me inside.”
It took his men perhaps a dozen blows before the door’s lock broke open. Lucious stepped into a room that had long since fallen silent. Rough-looking men stood frozen, halfway to standing, obviously caught off guard by the sight of their prince entering the room. Many of them wore cloaks, their features hidden under the cowls. Lucious found himself wondering if they’d done that when his men started pounding on the door, or if they actually drank there like that. He strode over to the tavern’s bar and put down a coin, spinning it so that the gold gleamed in the sunlight.
“Wine,” Lucious said, “and this will pay for the door.”
The barkeep snatched up the coin as Lucious let go of it, coming back with a skein of wine. Lucious held it, but didn’t drink it. Behind him, he heard the sound of men settling back into their seats. He didn’t look round. These peasants wouldn’t dare to attack him.
“I’m looking for information,” Lucious said. He took out another coin and spun it. “My men told me that this might be the right place to come.”
“Maybe your men didn’t hear right,” a voice from the back called out.
Lucious turned and nodded. Vrek and Justino moved forward and dragged out one of the cloaked figures while the two brothers watched the rest. Some looked like animals tensed to spring, but they didn’t. Perhaps they could guess what would happen if they attacked the heir to the throne.
Lucious stood and pulled the cowl from the man’s head. He had probably been a strong man once, but now the years were taking their toll.
“My men hear very well,” Lucious said. He struck out, catching the man in the stomach with his fist, hard enough to knock the breath from him. “Mostly because they know when to be quiet and listen.”
Lucious went and sat down again. He went back to spinning his coin.
“I’ve seen things,” he said to the room. “I want to know what they mean, and that means asking you. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.”
Given the choice, he would have burned this place down with everyone there still in it, but sometimes it was necessary to do unpleasant things like associating with this scum.
“I saw Prince Thanos this morning,” Lucious said.
“Most of us did,” another of the tavern’s patrons said. “He was the one putting down the riots.”
“Before that,” Lucious said, pushing down his anger for the moment. “I saw him riding back toward the castle early this morning. He’s been sneaking about. I want to know why.”
“Then why not ask him instead of interrupting our drinking?” another of the men there asked.
Lucious sighed and drew his sword, laying it down on the bar. He looked over to his men. “You see what happens?” he asked. “I try to be reasonable, and people just throw it back in my face.”
He sprang forward, snatching up his blade and swinging it in one motion. Blood sprang from the inn patron’s throat as Lucious cleaved through it. He died as easily as any other peasant. Strange; Lucious had expected more.
Now the other patrons reacted, and for a moment Lucious felt real fear. They sprang up from their seats, knives and clubs clearing their sheaths. His men moved into formation around him, and just for a second, Lucious thought that maybe he’d miscalculated. Then he remembered who he was.
“Harm me, and you’ll watch your families flayed before they finally impale you,” Lucious said. He drew a pouch from behind his back. “On the other hand, if you help me, it could be very profitable for you all.”
He threw it into the blood on the table, and the clink of it cut through the silence. Slowly, Lucious felt the tension in the room dissipate.
“Never did like Eskrin much anyway,” one man muttered, and that seemed to be the cue for the others to sit down again, even if they kept their weapons on the tables.
“Always did have a big mouth on him,” another agreed.
The first man shrugged. “Not a problem anymore.”
Lucious went back to his seat. Now, he did sip the wine. He needed it after how close that had been. It was vile stuff, watered and sour from being left out too long.
“Thanos,” he said, letting the words sit. “I want to know anything you’ve heard about him. I want to know why he’s sneaking about. And don’t tell me that you haven’t heard anything. There’s always something. There had better be, anyway, if you want the soldiers to give this sty a miss.”
The men there looked at one another before looking at one of their number in a corner, a small man nursing a glass in both hands. Lucious saw him swallow as the eyes turned to him, and when Lucious nodded, his men brought him out.
“Your friends seem to think you know something,” Lucious said. “Now, as you may have noticed, I don’t have a great deal of patience, so I’d advise you to say what it is.”
The man stood there, opening and closing his mouth. To Lucious, he looked like a fish.
“Justino here is quite good at getting information from people, I hear,” Lucious said. “He can do things with knives that—”
“There are rumors,” the man said.
“There are always rumors,” Lucious said.
“These are about Haylon.”
That was enough to catch Lucious’s interest. Absently, he wiped the blood from his still wet sword blade.
“What’s your name?” Lucious asked.
“Alexander, your highness.”
“Well, Alexander, what about Haylon?”
“I… I don’t know much,” the man admitted. “I just… know people who know people. People who claim to be in the rebellion. People who’ve been to Haylon. I’ve on
ly heard a few things.”
“And what are they?” Lucious asked as he put his sword away.
“Just that things weren’t as they seemed there with the first expedition,” Alexander said. “That the story Prince Thanos told about it wasn’t the real one.”
“So what is the truth?” Lucious asked.
“I don’t know,” Alexander admitted. Lucious saw him pale. “But I… I could find out. I know the right people.”
Lucious smiled slowly. Today was proving more interesting than he’d expected. “Then I think you should ask them, don’t you?”
“Y-yes, your highness.”
Lucious saw him squirm in place. “What is it?”
“It’s just… the people I’ll have to ask… it’s not the sort of information that comes cheap.”
Lucious took another pouch from his belt, flinging it down alongside the first.
“Consider that a down payment,” he said. He looked around the room. “No. Consider it a retainer, for all of you. From this moment forward, you’re my men.” He held up a hand as some of those there started to mutter. “I know, I know, you’re all busy with your own little ‘business enterprises.’ I have no interest in interfering with that. If you want to steal or kill or sell the weak, that’s your business. My business is the truth about Thanos. Help me with my business, and you’ll find it easier to go about your business.”
“You’re offering us protection?” one of the patrons asked.
Lucious gestured to the thugs he’d brought with him. “I look after my men,” he said. “Ask them if you like. Ask how good the pickings are, and how much freedom there is to do what they like. So long as you also do what I like, you’ll never have to worry about the guards again.”
“And there will be gold?” one of the others asked. “You’re still offering us gold, right?”
“I’m offering you a choice,” Lucious countered. “I’ll pay you for what you do. If you need to bribe informants, or buy secrets, I’ll pay. If you give me information, I’ll pay. If you give me enough to have Thanos’s head… I’ll give you your weight in gold. Of course, you could choose to ignore all that. You could try to walk away, or to cross me.”