by Morgan Rice
He walked over and drew his finger through the blood of the man he’d killed. Peasant blood, but he’d gotten used to the feel of it.
“If a man chooses that, he becomes my enemy. I’ll hunt him down. You’ll all get coin for any betrayers you find for me. Then… well, there are torturers in the castle who can keep a man alive for weeks if they want. Long enough to see everyone he loves executed, at least.”
Lucious wiped his hand on the dead patron’s tunic.
“But it’s your choice, of course. I wouldn’t want to pressure you. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to enjoy the Blood Moon while there’s still some of the festivities left.”
He walked from the tavern, his men falling in behind him. Lucious didn’t have to wait to know what decision these peasants would make. He would go back to the castle, and soon enough, one of these men would deliver Thanos to him. Thanos would die, Stephania would be begging at his feet to be his, and the world would be as it should be.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ceres stood at the prow of the pirate ship as it bore down on a harbor village far to the north of Delos, and her heart filled with the sight of home. The village wasn’t a large one. It had a natural harbor, wooden buildings clustered around a central square, and fish dried in the sun on racks, prior to smoking.
Tears came to her eyes. After all these moons, she would be home at last. She thought of her family, of the rebels, of the destiny awaiting her—and her heart quickened.
On the shore, she could see people running around in response to the approaching ship. This close, she could hear the tolling of an alarm bell, and she could see guards in the uniforms of the Empire forming up, ready for battle. At least a few people were riding clear on horseback, and Ceres couldn’t help a moment of regret at that. She didn’t want to scare them, but the pirate ship was the best way for her to reach the mainland again.
Ceres saw a spiked chain rise from the water, lifted across the harbor by the villagers. Obviously, they’d had to deal with pirates before. She felt the stilling of the ship’s rhythm as the oarsmen struggled to bring it to a halt, caught up on the chain.
“This is as far as we can go,” one of the pirates told her, and Ceres could hear the note of fear then. He didn’t even suggest being allowed to raid the village.
“Then I’ll make my own way to shore,” Ceres replied. “You have small boats?”
“Two, my lady.”
“Then any man you’ve taken for the oars who wishes to leave is to be allowed to do so.”
“But we can’t sail the ship at full speed if—”
“It will move a lot slower if it’s stone,” Ceres replied, her tone hardening as she cut him off. Life on the boat was hard. The only way to keep respect was to show no weakness. “Now do it.”
While she waited for them to obey, she went through the ship, taking what she needed. There was no armor that would really fit her there, but she managed scraps and fragments of it, piecing them together in a way that felt vaguely reminiscent of the Stade. She still had the stone dagger Eoin had given her on the forest folk’s island, but to it, Ceres added one of the curved swords of the pirates, and a pair of etched steel bracers that ended in gauntlets of metal scales.
“When I’m gone,” Ceres said, “put back out to sea. If you’ve any sense, you’ll stop robbing people. I’ve spared you once, but if I catch you again…”
She let that hang while she watched the boat go down into the water with more than a dozen men aboard. Ceres could have gone with it, but she could see an easier way to the shore. With the lightness and balance the islanders had taught her, she walked her way along the chain the villagers had raised, hopping lightly onto the shore.
She watched the contingent of Empire soldiers as she approached. There were probably twenty of them, arranged in a square. They stood as if not knowing what to do. They’d probably been expecting to have to deal with a boat’s worth of pirates, not one woman. Ceres walked up to them as calmly as she could.
“Halt!” the leader of the soldiers called. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I don’t want trouble,” Ceres said. “I’m just passing through here.”
“And those pirates just happened to give you a ride?” the officer demanded. Ceres saw a soldier beside him touch his shoulder. “What is it, Rikard?”
“Sir, it’s her, sir!”
“Who?”
“Ceres! The rebel! I saw her at the Stade when I was south in the city, carrying messages.”
“You’re sure? I thought she was dead.”
Ceres drew her blades, holding them out to either side, feeling the weight of them. She could have lied about who she was, but the Empire needed to understand what was coming for it.
“I’m not dead,” she said. “And you should run.”
“Run?” the officer said. “There’s twenty of us! No one can beat twenty armed men. Not the greatest combatlord who ever lived. Certainly not some girl who played at it. So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to surrender or we’ll beat you senseless. Then we’ll take you in chains down to the city.”
“Not to Lord West?” the soldier who’d spoken before asked.
“Lord West?” the officer countered. “The man’s halfway to being a rebel himself. The only reason he doesn’t join the rebellion is because he’s worried about losing his lands. No, we’ll take this one where she belongs. Grab her.”
The soldiers broke ranks as they started forward, and that was when Ceres attacked. Their officer had been right. The greatest combatlord couldn’t have fought twenty men. They would have been rushed and brought down in seconds, but she was more than just a combatlord. She had the training of the forest folk. She had the power that came from the Ancient Ones’ blood. Put together, it was as though her attackers were corn waiting for the scythe. The only reason she didn’t turn them all to stone was because she suspected the effort of it would be too much for her.
She cut down one with a sweep of her curved blade, stepped through the line of men and stabbed out at another with her dagger. She spun and kicked, smashing away a soldier who tried to grab her and continuing to move.
A club came at Ceres’s head. She ducked underneath it and answered with a sword stroke, then parried another attack with her bracers, ripping a weapon from its wielder’s hand. She leapt, clearing the heads of two men who tried to tackle her, landing lightly.
She kept moving, because stillness was the one thing that could bring her down now. There were still enough soldiers to simply pile in and bring her down in a scrum of flailing limbs, so Ceres didn’t give them the chance. She was so much faster than they were, so much stronger, that it was easy to keep the soldiers in one another’s way. She stepped out of the way of another rush, stabbed one man with her dagger, and slammed another soldier into the frame of a door hard enough to crack it.
The strangest part about it wasn’t the speed or strength with which she moved. She’d experienced that before in the Stade, in flashes. The part that went beyond it was the way it felt like a part of her now. It felt natural. Indeed, the whole fight felt like some bloody dance in which Ceres already knew the steps. She’d been opened up to the power within her, but she’d learned more than that. She’d learned to fit in with the world around her. She opened herself up to the battle, and let it tell her exactly where she needed to move.
Ceres swayed back from a slash, parried a thrust, and countered with a blow that took an Empire soldier in the leg. She spun and she struck, her blades always moving, always intercepting or striking, shoving away or cutting through. She felt the warmth of breath behind her, and was already ducking as a soldier moved in to grab her. Ceres sent him sprawling into the dirt.
The moments blended. There were so many swords around her, so many attackers, and yet Ceres didn’t feel the fear that she should have at it. Instead, she felt almost serene. There was something beautiful about the act of moving with a blade in her hand, even if the c
onsequences of it were so terrible.
Her bracers caught the sun, shining as they deflected blades, reflecting the uniforms of men as her fists slammed into them. The soldiers got in one another’s way as Ceres kept moving, never still for long, never pausing to let them regain the formation they’d given up.
Maybe if they’d managed to circle her, and strike at her from all sides, they might have had a chance. Maybe if they’d been more than just ordinary soldiers, barely trained and used to peasants who didn’t fight back, they’d have been able to slip past the whirling circle of her blades.
As it was, man after man attacked, and then fell. They started to push to keep out of Ceres’s way, to not be the one to have to fight her next. Ceres felt as though she was pushing through trees in a forest, except that these were trees lined with blades, any one of which could still hurt her or kill her.
Suddenly, Ceres found herself in clear space, facing off against the officer who’d ordered her taken. She could tell just from the way he stood that he’d had more training with a blade than most of his men. Certainly, the sword he held was finely worked, honed to a razor’s edge.
He thrust and Ceres parried, keeping her distance. She had to keep moving, because there were still other men around her. None seemed to be attacking now, and Ceres guessed that they were hoping their officer would deal with her where they couldn’t, but she still couldn’t afford to let her guard down. She moved around the officer, continuing to parry.
“You might be able to best these scum, but I was first sword in my unit, back in Delos. They used to give me criminals still armed, when they wanted it to look as though they’d died fighting.”
Ceres didn’t reply. Instead, she continued to circle. She tried a cut, and the riposte was fast enough that she was grateful for the speed her power gave her. She leaned away, pushing aside the thrust, but it seemed to embolden the officer.
“Look at you,” he said, striking and striking again. “You’re not so dangerous. You’re nothing. Probably only got into the Stade because you were trying to seduce—”
Ceres struck while he was still mid-sentence. The officer’s sword came up to parry, and she rolled her wrist around it, her blade cleaving down through his armor from shoulder to mid-chest. She let go of the hilt and let him fall, already looking for the next threat.
There wasn’t one. Half a dozen soldiers were running by now, but that was all that was left of them. The rest lay in a broad circle around her, dead, unconscious, or simply wounded too badly to run.
The adrenaline of the fight passed in a rush, and Ceres stood shaking as the scale of what she’d done hit her. Fourteen men. She’d cut down fourteen men. Men who would have happily killed her, but that did nothing to clean away the blood from the village square around her, or from her armor. She’d cut them down easily, thanks to her training, and her powers.
It had felt as natural as breathing. Now, Ceres had to remind herself to do that, catching the iron tang of the blood in the air while she stood and waited for her heart to return to normal.
Ceres could see the people looking out from their houses, as though wondering what she was. Ceres had an answer to that at least. She was of the blood of the Ancient Ones. On the island with her mother, she’d started to get a sense of what that meant. Now, with so many people staring at her over the bodies of the dead, she felt as though she’d learned another side of it.
She heard the sound of hooves over the silence of the square. She looked up to see horses approaching; so many that it seemed like half an army. Easily a hundred men, all armored in mail, all carrying long spears for throwing or jabbing down with at full charge. Ceres doubted that even she could survive if they attacked.
One had a pennant attached to his lance, marked with a stylized weather vane, being blown by the west wind. He rode forward from the mass of them, stopping short of her and raising the visor of a helm in the shape of a boar’s head. The face beneath was surprisingly young.
“What happened here?” he demanded. Ceres could hear the note of fear there.
“They attacked me,” she said, as if it explained all of it. In a way it did.
“And you killed that many men?” He sounded as though he couldn’t believe it. Ceres didn’t blame him. She could barely believe it herself. Even now, the violent beauty of it seemed like some kind of dream. Some kind of nightmare, but she couldn’t let them see that. She had to be more than just a girl standing in a square then. She had to be a symbol.
She stood as openly as she could, trying to wear the blood that covered her more like a badge than it felt.
“I fought in the Stade. I was cast out by the Empire. I survived their prison ships. And yes, I killed that many men, but only because I will not let the Empire control my life any longer.”
“I must bring you to Lord West, ruler of these lands, and allow him to decide your fate.”
He squinted into the light.
“What is your name?” he asked, as if beginning to recognize her.
“I am Ceres,” she said proudly.
A gasp erupted from the crowd.
“That is not possible,” he said. “Ceres is dead.”
For the first time, she allowed herself to grin.
“Not anymore.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Thanos stood in the king’s council chambers while around him, the senior nobles of the Empire stood and applauded. He clutched a scrap of paper deep in his fist, clinging to it while the noise rang around him. At the head of the great oval table, his father sat impassively next to Queen Athena, but Thanos searched his face. Even now, even hating all that this man represented, he wanted to find some hint of pride there.
At the back of the room, he could see Lucious watching. Lucious wasn’t applauding with the others. Instead, his expression was intense, following every movement Thanos made.
“Well done, Prince Thanos,” the master of the king’s forests said. “Without you, we would be having our throats cut by rebels even now!”
“I think the royal guards would have handled it,” the captain of the royal bodyguard replied.
The master of coin shrugged. “I’m grateful that we don’t have to find out.”
King Claudius stood. “Enough of this. I want to know what happened today. How did things get so out of hand? Naymir, you’re meant to have control of the Stade.”
Thanos saw a sweating nobleman take a small step back.
“Who would have thought that rebels would attack there, your majesty?” the man said.
“No one here, apparently,” Queen Athena said with obvious disdain. “And as a result, how many were harmed in the Stade?”
“We don’t have full numbers yet,” Thanos said. “We don’t know how many people were killed on the on the Stade floor, and as for the streets around it—”
“How many nobles?” Queen Athena said, cutting in. “Who cares about a few dead peasants?”
“Perhaps if we’d cared more,” Thanos pointed out, “it wouldn’t have come to this.”
“Oh, poor Thanos,” Lucious said. “Still with a heart bleeding for the peasantry.”
Thanos might have argued, but the captain of the royal guard chose that moment to speak.
“There were perhaps a dozen minor nobles at the Killings, your majesty,” he said. “Four were killed, two suffered injuries serious enough to require the healers, and the others escaped with cuts and bruises.”
“Were they anybody important?” King Claudius demanded. “No? Then we have more important things to consider. Like how this happened. I thought we were crushing the rebellion, piece by piece.”
If he thought that, Thanos thought, then he really didn’t understand how these things worked. He created more rebels with every act of cruelty. The Empire was like a drowning man who needed to swim but instead only thrashed.
“I have been attacking rebels wherever we can find them,” Lucious said. “Applying pressure to force them into submission. Eventually, we will
crush them.”
Thanos saw King Claudius shake his head.
“I don’t care about ‘eventually.’ I care about what happened at the Stade. Thanos, you’re here to report, so report.”
Thanos gripped the paper in his hand tighter at the casual way his father treated him. As though he were just some officer to be commanded.
“The commanders down by the Stade sent a runner as I was returning from a morning ride,” Thanos said.
“You’re fond of those,” Lucious muttered in the background. Thanos ignored him.
“He reported that there was violence around the Stade, and that no one was available to take control of the situation.” Now he did allow himself a pointed look in Lucious’s direction. “He’d been trying to find Lucious, but he wasn’t there.”
“Enough squabbling,” the king said. “Why was the runner not able to find one of my generals? General Olliant might have left for Haylon, but Haven should have been around.”
Thanos looked around, hoping that no one caught his look while he tried to see if anyone was suspicious.
“The old fool has probably wandered off,” Queen Athena said. “He’s well past his usefulness. Honestly, husband, can you imagine the mess he would have made of this?”
“Possibly,” King Claudius said, but he looked thoughtful. “Go on, Thanos. What about when you got to the Stade?”
“The captains there reported on the situation,” Thanos said. “And I saw that the biggest risk was of the situation spreading beyond the Stade. I deployed troops to the streets to ensure that didn’t happen.”
King Claudius steepled his fingers. “I have spoken to the captains, Thanos. They said that they urged you to surround the Stade and move in to take it. Is that true?”