by Morgan Rice
That was when Stephania stabbed him.
She hadn’t planned it. She’d never stabbed anyone herself. Poison was so much neater. So much cleaner. But she didn’t have time for poison, or even to think. All she had was the small knife that she kept for eating, like everyone else. It barely seemed like enough to kill someone with.
It still slid up under Fikirk’s ribs easily enough, jabbing upward toward the heart as his blood spattered. Stephania pulled back in disgust at the wet heat of that, trying to wipe herself clean while the guard staggered, trying to grab his own blade. He fell to his knees, and Stephania simply stared at him.
“You can’t… stop this,” he managed, and Stephania stepped in to stab him again, then again. She didn’t stop until she was certain he was dead on the floor in an expanding red pool.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ceres stared up at Lord West’s fortress home with a deep sense of foreboding. She had agreed to come along on the ride, willing to at least hear what this lord had to say before, if need be, fighting to the death. After all, she was back in her homeland now, and nothing, no lord, would stop her.
Lord West’s castle was craggy and gray, with a keep sitting on a hill above a larger enclosure, only the presence of flowers growing around the walls offsetting the forbidding look of it.
She rode closer on a horse one of Lord West’s men had loaned her. The creature was pale and skittish, so that Ceres spent as much time comforting the horse as looking at the castle around her. Even so, she could see the difference between this and the castle at the heart of Delos. That was a place designed to terrify the local populace into submission. This had more of a strong, protective feel to it. There were plenty of ordinary people living within the protective outer walls, in slate cottages that made the lower section seem like a village in its own right.
She had heard much of Lord West over the years and had heard, as far as nobles went, he was a fair one. But she still wasn’t taking any chances. She eyed all possible exits in case she had to fight her way out of there, to the death, and flee on foot or on horseback.
The horsemen around her dismounted, and Ceres walked with them up the slope to the central keep. At least they gave her the respect of not trying to detain her. She went through the large entrance gate, following the warriors’ leader through into a hall dominated by long tables. The warriors spread out around them, taking places that looked as though they were long established.
Another table sat at the front, and at it, Ceres saw a man in his forties working on documents with the aid of a pair of clerks.
“If the Empire’s men have burned the fields, then I’m not going to expect them to provide grain, but my men still need to be fed. For the winter, give them work helping in the weavers’ workshops while they replant. We can trade the extra for spelt from the hill farms.”
“Yes, Lord West.”
He looked up, and Ceres stared right back at him.
Ceres saw a man with shaggy, graying hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and deep brown eyes that seemed to take in everything about her at a glance. His clothes were finely made, but they were not the silks and fripperies of Delos’s court, and they looked well worn.
“Gerant,” he said, with the faint burr of a North Coast accent, “I sent you out because the riders from the Empire’s contingent said there was a threat of pirates landing in the village, yet you seem to have brought back a single young woman with you. Please explain.”
“She was what I found when I got there, uncle,” the young man who’d led the warriors said. “A few other men alighted from the pirate ship, but they were clearly freed slaves. This was the only armed person there.”
“If she’s a pirate, hang her,” Lord West said. “You know I won’t allow any harm to befall my people.”
“She isn’t a pirate,” the young man, Gerant, said.
“Then what is she?”
Ceres took a step forward. “Why don’t you ask me that yourself?”
She heard a faint intake of breath from the soldiers around her as Lord West stood up and walked down to her. He was taller than she was, with the slightly bulky frame of a once strong man who now spent too much time indoors.
“I am Lord West of the North Coast,” he said. “My family was given these lands as stewards in the days when the Ancient Ones still walked. My line is longer than that of the current king. Who exactly are you, young lady?”
“I’m Ceres,” she said, trying to match the confidence in the nobleman’s voice. “I fought in the Stade. I joined the rebellion. The Empire tried to kill me and failed.”
Ceres thought she saw Lord West blink at that.
“When I heard who she was,” Gerant said, “I thought you would want to speak with her, uncle.”
“Do we have evidence that she is who she claims to be?” Lord West asked, never taking his eyes from Ceres.
“When I found her in the village,” Gerant said. “I found her surrounded by the bodies of Empire soldiers. She’d fought twenty of them and won.”
“Twenty men?” Lord West said. “That isn’t possible.”
Ceres made herself shrug as if it were nothing. “It’s possible for me. There’s a reason I fought in the Stade, and I’ve learned a lot since then.”
She watched the older man’s face.
“If you are who you say you are,” he said at last, “then by the loyalty I have sworn to the Empire, I should put you in chains.”
There was something about the way he said it that made it into a question. A man like this would know that Ceres must have come to his home for a reason, and now he was asking why.
“You owe them no loyalty,” Ceres said. “When I came in here, you were talking about them burning your fields and killing your people. You’re obviously a man who cares about those he rules.”
“Enough to avoid getting them into wars they cannot win,” Lord West said. “Yes, I have seen the things the Empire has done, but that does not mean I must throw away my people trying to change it all.”
“If you don’t, who will?” Ceres insisted. “It’s easy to sit back and look after your little corner of the world, but if everyone does that, when will things ever get better? The Empire is stronger than any one of us, but it is not stronger than all of us.”
“Ah, so you want us to join your rebellion,” Lord West said. “You want me to join with people who would probably gladly see me thrown off my lands, my family and friends cast out.”
“It isn’t about that,” Ceres said. “It’s about overthrowing a tyrant, not overturning the world. You must have seen the things that are done in the Empire’s name. If you put your own interests ahead of stopping it, then they’re being done in your name as well.” She had a question she wanted to ask. “Why do your men not wear the uniforms of the Empire’s army?”
“Because then they would have to take the orders of the Empire’s generals, even if that means burning villages,” Gerant said beside Ceres. “My uncle would never allow that.”
“But he can speak for himself,” Lord West said. “My nephew has made some of the same arguments to me. But there is another reason why my men wear my colors. It is to show that they are my men. That we are not the Empire. That we exist to protect the people, not to command them. But by the same token, we will not come just because someone else calls.”
“Then protect your people,” Ceres said. “I have traveled to places and seen things that I never thought I would see, but all the time, I was thinking about the way things were back in the Empire. I was thinking about everything it has taken from me: my brother, my family, the man I loved—”
Thoughts of Thanos still brought the ache of loss with them. For all the things Ceres had learned, she hadn’t found a way to shut that pain away. She shook her head.
“Again and again, the Empire has hurt me,” she said. “It put me in the Stade to die, and I didn’t. It put me on a ship to the Isle of Prisoners, and I survived. But how many more are not surviving? How many peo
ple die every day because we do nothing to stop it?”
“Many,” Lord West said. For a moment, a note of sympathy crept into his voice. “And I can understand why you have every reason to hate the Empire. I have more than a few reasons of my own.”
For a moment, Ceres thought that she had him.
“Then act on those reasons,” she said. “Lend me your men.”
“However, the fact remains that my family swore to serve the Empire, and I will not be the man to betray that. Honor matters. Loyalty matters. No, I’m sorry,” he said. “Unless you can give me a better reason, I will be forced to take you prisoner. I have no choice.”
“And hand me over to the Empire?” Ceres said.
She saw Lord West shake his head. “You will remain here. I can do that much, but no more.”
“The Empire did not give your family its lands,” Ceres pointed out. “The Ancient Ones did.”
She heard a small sound of annoyance from Lord West. “And if you can produce one of them to command me, I will obey. Until then, though, you are merely wasting both of our time. Gerant, please escort the young lady to the north tower and secure it.”
Ceres stood, summoning the power that lay within her. Before in the Stade, she’d managed to pull a weapon into Thanos’s hand. Now, she reached out for the sword at Gerant’s belt, wrapping her power around it and pulling with it. She wasn’t sure it would work, but she wouldn’t turn the men around her to stone. They weren’t pirates or soldiers of the Empire, and they’d been nothing but courteous to her. She reached out with her power…
…and a second later, she was holding the sword belonging to Lord West’s nephew.
Ceres heard men rising to their feet in a rush of armor, the scrape of blades clearing sheaths filling the hall. She knew she had to act fast, because if she didn’t take advantage of this moment, she was simply someone who’d ended up holding a weapon in front of their lord.
“I don’t need to produce one of the Ancient Ones,” Ceres said, “because I am one.”
She saw Lord West hold up a hand to halt his men. He stood there, staring at Ceres as though he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen.
“You’re truly one of them?” he asked at last, in a tone so filled with awe it hardly seemed like the same man.
She held out the sword, closed her eyes, and wrapped her fingers around the blade. She felt them turn to ice, and felt the power flowing through her.
She opened her eyes and saw the sword in her hand turned to stone.
More than that, she saw the horrified looks of the warriors all around her, looks of fear, which slowly morphed to awe.
Lord West, most of all.
She dropped the sword, and the stone shattered, skidding across the floor in pieces. One stopped at Lord West’s boot.
Lord West stood there for several more seconds. Then, using the table for support, he did the one thing Ceres hadn’t expected.
He knelt.
“We are sworn to serve the Ancient Ones,” he said. “All of us.”
One by one, the other warriors followed his lead and knelt.
Ceres surveyed the room. She took a deep breath, feeling her destiny manifest within her. She had seen this moment, in a dream or in some other dimension, she could not be sure.
“The time has come to undo some of the evil the Empire has been bringing with it. Will you lend me your soldiers, Lord West?”
“There is nothing to lend,” Lord West replied. “If you are one of the Ancient Ones, then they are yours by right. I will send messengers to all who owe me fealty, and they will send whatever soldiers they have.”
Ceres reached out a hand, helping the older man to his feet. She turned back to the room.
“You’ve already heard what I have to say,” she said. “I want to take you south, all of you. I want to join up with the rebellion, and fight against the tyrant who has oppressed all of us for far too long. Lord West says that you will go with me, but I know it is him you owe your loyalty to, not me. So I will not command you to go with me. I will simply ask it. Will you travel with me? Will you strike at the heart of the Empire, and overthrow the king who has your lands burned and your people killed? Will you fight?”
At first, Ceres thought she hadn’t persuaded them. She’d been expecting some great cheer. Instead, she got silence, but it was a silence that came to be filled with a dull thudding that grew piece by piece. She realized that it was the sound of the men banging their sword hilts on the table, the rhythm of it filling the hall.
And she knew that war was on its way.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Thanos crept his way along tunnels by flickering candlelight, wheeling along a box on a two-wheeled trolley more normally used for transporting sacks of grain. The squeak of the wheels was the only sound he could hear down there. The candle stub he held gave off a firefly glow of orange, illuminating walls to either side, close enough that he could have reached out and touched them both.
It hadn’t been easy to find this place. Just to keep slipping from the palace was getting harder, because Thanos had to do it in a way that Stephania wouldn’t notice, and Lucious seemed to be taking far too much of an interest in his movements too. Doing it with the box he wheeled had been even harder.
Then he’d had to bribe people in some of the poorest parts of the city, and that hadn’t been easy when his face was so well known. He’d had to come down into the slums wrapped up in an old cloak, being careful never to let anyone glimpse his features.
The entrance had been at the back of a butcher’s yard, behind sides of beef and pork hanging on hooks. Thanos had felt the eyes on him as he descended into the depths of the tunnels beneath the city, and seen the cleavers close to the hands of the men there. He had a sword and dagger under his cloak, but he’d come without armor. He wasn’t there to fight.
He kept wheeling his box down the tunnels, and now, Thanos thought he could hear sounds ahead. There was the clang of hammers, and a faint feel of greater heat, mixed in with a deep orange glow that might have come from fires somewhere nearby.
The tunnel he was in opened out a little, and there was the sense again of eyes watching him as he made his way through the tunnel system. Thanos didn’t know if he was going the right way, but he could at least follow the sounds of the hammering and hope that it led him to what he was looking for.
The rebellion.
Akila’s words had stung. Thanos had thought of the man as a friend, as something close to a brother. Yet the rebels on Haylon didn’t believe that he was doing all he could, and Thanos could understand why. So he was going to do more, and if the rebels on Haylon wouldn’t take his help, he would do it for those in Delos instead.
Thanos found an opening in the tunnel he was walking along, which gave way to a room where hammering seemed to dominate everything else. Thanos saw men and women hammering away on anvils and working metal in forges. The sound, heat, and rhythm of it were almost overwhelming.
When it stopped, the silence was worse.
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know him.”
“What’s he doing here?”
Thanos saw the smiths and workers grabbing for hammers or recently finished weapons, hefting them as they tried to decide if they should be attacking him or not. Thanos looked around and saw men coming into the cavern behind him, armed with a variety of weapons that could only have come from the Stade. He saw a woman with them, thin and tough looking, but more than that, he saw the way they looked to her as though waiting for orders.
He threw back the hood of his cloak, hoping that this wouldn’t be the last thing he ever did.
“I know him,” a man called, and Thanos recognized a combatlord when he saw one. “It’s Prince Thanos!”
“A royal? Kill him!”
Thanos saw several of them start forward, and braced himself for what was to come. He couldn’t hope to fight all of them, even if he wanted to.
To his astonishment, a young
man, still just a boy, really, stepped in front of them all. To his even greater surprise, they stopped.
“You’re right,” he said, “that’s Thanos, which means he does more for the people around Delos than any other royal. It means my sister, Ceres, loved him. We shouldn’t kill him.”
“Your sister?” Thanos said. “That means you must be Sartes.”
The boy nodded. “Come on, all of you. If you were a combatlord, you’ve trained with him. You know what he’s like.”
Thanos heard a murmur of assent go around the room.
Sartes went on. “It isn’t Lucious standing there.”
“Maybe it’s worse,” the woman from the doorway said, and Thanos could hear the authority in her voice. “Lucious is an evil thug who doesn’t know any better, but it wasn’t Lucious leading the attack on Haylon. It wasn’t Lucious who put down the riots in the street a few days ago. It wasn’t Lucious who sent General Olliant looking for us, or who got Ceres killed because she loved him!”
The last point seemed almost to make her angrier than the rest of it. Thanos guessed that she’d been close to Ceres, whoever she was. Even so, he couldn’t keep himself from snapping back.
“And I loved her!”
“We should at least hear him out,” he heard Sartes say. “Please, Anka.”
Thanos had heard that name. The mysterious head of Delos’s rebellion. The woman who had replaced Rexus. Strange, he’d been expecting someone… different. Older, stronger, more dangerous looking. Maybe she’d found herself having to grow into a role she hadn’t expected, the same way he had when he’d learned who he was.
“You think I was behind the attack on Haylon?” Thanos said. “I joined the rebels there. I helped them to fight off the attack. Since I got back, I’ve been looking for information to pass on to them. I warned them of the new attack, and I even switched the generals so that Olliant wouldn’t be descending on the island with a massive army.”