by Morgan Rice
“Instead, you sent him looking for us,” Anka said.
“You killed him?” Thanos asked.
“We have him,” Anka said.
Thanos nodded. “Good. That was the idea.”
He saw the rebel leader cock her head to the side. “It’s easy to say that now.”
“Just as it’s easy to say that I’m the one who allowed you all to escape the Stade,” Thanos said. “It doesn’t make it any less true.”
He heard another murmur go around the room. He saw one of the former combatlords there thump his chest.
“Allowed us to break out, boy? We fought for the freedom we had. There were hundreds of the Empire’s men there.”
“Two hundred,” Thanos agreed. “Two hundred men holding a cordon around the Stade, when there should have been a thousand closing in on it. I sent the others to hold the city, because it was the best move I could make to give you all a chance.”
“Do you have any proof of that, either?” Anka asked.
“You’re still here,” Thanos pointed out. “You heard about the troops in the city. Ask questions, and you’ll soon find out what the captains wanted to do.”
To Thanos, Anka looked thoughtful. He could see her looking around the room as though trying to guess at the feelings of the others there.
“Why would I have come alone?” Thanos asked. “If I could find this place, then I could have brought troops with me. I could have filled this place with soldiers, but I’m here alone for a reason.”
Thanos saw an older man step out of the crowd. He was wearing a blacksmith’s apron, but he wasn’t carrying a hammer or a weapon right then. Instead, he walked over to Thanos, holding out a hand for him to take. Thanos grasped it, feeling the strength there and seeing the assessing look in the other man’s eyes.
“I’m Berin, Ceres’s father. They say my daughter loved you,” he said.
Thanos met his gaze. “More than you could ever know. If I hadn’t been sent to Haylon—”
He saw the other man nod. “If I hadn’t gone looking for work. Or if I hadn’t left her in the Stade while I tried to free my son. There are a lot of ifs in this world. You married a princess quickly enough after my daughter died, though.”
There was a challenge in that. Thanos could hear the question the older man was really asking: had he truly loved his daughter, if he’d been able to move on so soon?
“Stephania helped me through it when I was… broken,” Thanos said. “It was as though my heart had been ripped out of me, and she found a way to fill that hole. She was the woman I was always supposed to marry, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about Ceres every day.”
“We both do,” Berin said, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug.
That seemed to be enough for Anka. “All right. I believe you.” She raised her voice. “No one is to hurt Thanos. It seems that we owe him a lot. But there’s still the question of what you’re doing here, Prince Thanos.”
“I’m here to help you,” Thanos said as Berin pulled back from him. That got some looks of surprise from around the cavern, in spite of all that he’d just said. “A… friend told me that I should be doing more than I am.”
“What did you have in mind?” Anka asked.
Thanos looked around the underground forge. “I can see that you’re trying to produce weapons and armor, but what if I had a way for you to take enough to supply an army?”
“Unless you’re planning to help us raid the royal armories…” Anka began, and she obviously caught Thanos’s expression. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Not the castle,” Thanos said, “but the army has staging posts and warehouses where weapons and armor are gathered together before they’re sent out to the army.”
“They do that in secret,” Anka said. “And never in the same place twice. But that doesn’t matter, does it?”
Thanos shook his head. “I know where. The next shipment will be going out from a warehouse on the north side of the city, supposedly used for bolts of cloth. There will be guards, but not many, and disguised as private thugs because their best defense is secrecy.”
“So that’s what you’re here to bring us?” a woman toward the back asked. “A tip that might just as easily be a trap?”
“That’s enough, Hannah,” Anka said. “This could be a huge moment for the rebellion.”
“We need more than just weapons,” the woman continued. “We have the combatlords, but we need more people. We need resources.”
A young man in richer clothes than the others nodded. “We need to be able to hire tradesmen and soldiers,” he said. “My father’s money will only go so far. We need to be able to spread the rebellion to every corner of the Empire, and even with the most audacious raids, we can’t do that one move at a time.”
“Trust you to be thinking about money, Yeralt,” said a man who seemed to be armed mostly with knives.
“The world runs on money, Oreth,” the other man countered. “The Empire continues because no one has the resources to stop it.”
“It continues because we don’t work together to fight it,” Thanos said. “But you’re right, gold matters. Which is why I brought this.”
He kicked over the box that he’d brought, letting the lid fall open and the contents spill out onto the floor. Coins glinted gold in the forge light, while the gems amongst them seemed to have an inner fire of their own.
“They won’t miss this from the royal treasury,” Thanos said. “Or, if they do, they’ll assume it went to the army.”
He saw Anka smile at that. “We’re going to fight the Empire using its own gold?”
“You’re going to do more than fight,” Thanos said. “You’re going to win.”
He’d taken a risk, getting the gold like this, but it would be worth it if the rebels could make use of it to support their cause. With this much gold, they could hire mercenaries, or they could buy horses. They could acquire ships or find more smiths. They could buy food, supplies, whatever they needed.
With this much gold, the rebellion could build an army.
She stepped forward and clasped his arm, and slowly, she grinned.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lucious stalked into the throne room with bad grace, barely looking round at the empty spaces where there would normally have been assembled ranks of nobles forming phalanxes to either side and leaving a clear path to the thrones his mother and father occupied. When he stopped before the dais, his bow was perfunctory at best.
He had better things to do than be there.
“Ah, Lucious,” King Claudius said. “I trust we didn’t drag you away from anything important?”
His tone said quite clearly that he doubted it. Probably, he thought that Lucious had been busy drinking or hunting, sleeping or running down the peasantry. Even his own father didn’t take him as seriously as he should.
“I came as quickly as I could,” Lucious replied.
In fact, he’d spent days working his way through reports and rumors, half truths and untruths. He’d listened to idiots droning on about things they’d heard, or thought they’d heard when it came to Thanos, only to find that they’d been making it up as they went in the hope of getting gold out of him. His only consolation had been the things he’d been able to do with them in the dungeons after they’d disappointed him.
“I’m sure you did,” his mother said. “We have important news.”
Lucious wondered if he should tell her what a dangerous profession that was at the moment. Curiously, he hadn’t been the only one getting rid of informants. In the last few days, it seemed that there had been almost a quiet epidemic of deaths, by poison, by stabbing, by apparent accident. It looked almost as if someone was trying to deprive Lucious of the use of his newly acquired network.
And now that it seemed there might finally be some answers from it, he found himself summoned here, in front of the court, to stand uncomfortably amidst the Great Hall and wait for his father to declare whatever it was t
his time. So long as he didn’t actually recognize Thanos, Lucious didn’t care. Although Thanos didn’t seem to be here today, which suggested something else entirely.
“What is it you require, your majesties?” Lucious asked. Well, he couldn’t just tell them to get on with it, could he? “If you want me to crush the rebellion more thoroughly, I will need more men, and permission to—”
He saw his father wave that away. “Forget that. We have bigger concerns than simply taking more from ungrateful commoners.”
There was something about his tone that made Lucious pause. “What is it?”
It was his mother who answered. “We have reports in from the north. Birds came today from one of our garrisons on the edge of Lord West’s lands. There is an army heading south, towards Delos.”
An army? Lucious couldn’t keep the shock off his face. The Empire did not get attacked by armies, not this close to home. It had to deal with small forces of rebels, or threats on its farthest borders. It didn’t have to worry about armies advancing on its greatest city.
“Lord West is leading an army?” Lucious said. He shook his head. “I don’t believe it. The old fool is loyal. He’d cut his own head off if you commanded it.”
“The army contains Lord West’s men, but he is not the one leading it,” the king said. “He and all the old lords of the North Coast have joined under a different general.”
“Who?” Lucious asked.
“Ceres.”
Lucious could feel the blood draining from his skin, although whether it was in anger or fear, he couldn’t say. Both seemed to be competing for top position within him, swirling round and round without any resolution.
“What? I thought she was dead!”
His father held up a hand before he could go on to rail at the unfairness of it all. “We all did, and for now, it will remain a secret that she has survived at all. It would disturb the people to hear it.”
“The people, or Thanos?” Lucious asked.
He saw a flash of annoyance cross his father’s face. “Do not go against me on this. Do you want to risk the commoners rising in revolt?”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t they?” Queen Athena asked. “If they heard that a girl we built into a symbol of the rebellion so we could kill her is back, that she isn’t dead… it would be a powerful blow to us, my son.”
Perhaps they would rise up after all. Lucious had to admit that he had no idea how the lower orders thought.
“We want no one to hear of her return, least of all Thanos, until we are able to say for certain that she is dead again,” King Claudius said.
“And where do I fit into this?” Lucious asked.
The king smiled. “You’re going to lead the army to deal with her.”
Now fear won out over the anger. Lucious didn’t mind dealing with unruly peasants, but Lord West commanded a powerful collection of horsemen, and Ceres… His mind went back to the times she’d beaten him far too readily.
“Me?” Lucious said. “Don’t we have generals for this sort of thing?”
“Apparently not,” King Claudius said. “Olliant is still busy on Haylon, although we haven’t heard much from him. Who knows where Haven is? I will not put the army under Thanos, for obvious reasons.”
Like the part where he would probably rush into Ceres’s arms in the middle of a battle. Even so, Lucious found himself scrambling for alternatives. The sensible thing to do in a situation like this was not for the heir to the throne to go out to meet the enemy in open battle. It was for him to sit nice and safe behind thick walls while others undertook the dangerous work.
“Surely we can recall one of the generals?” Lucious said. “Or if not them, what if—”
“You will lead this force, Lucious,” the king said, and suddenly there was steel in his voice. “You’ve been happy enough to lead when it just involved butchering rebels. Well, these are also rebels, and they must be dealt with.”
“But Father—”
“No,” King Claudius said. “No more arguments. You will do this. I keep giving you chances to show that you are a man, Lucious. You ran away in the Stade. You shy away from real work. You must show the people of the Empire, show me, what a great king you could someday be! That means crushing this army yourself, not leaving it to someone else. People respect strength, so it is time for you to show some.”
Lucious looked to his mother, his jaw already growing tight with the need to say something, but there was no help to be found there.
“You will make us proud, Lucious,” she said.
Lucious mostly felt like running away, but he couldn’t say that. Instead, he gave a stiff bow.
“As you command, your majesties.”
“The closest legions of the army have been gathered outside the city,” the king said. “They will expect you there with them by sundown. Do not disappoint me, Lucious.”
There was something about the way he looked at Lucious that said Lucious already had. That said he would much rather Thanos were the one standing there. Maybe that was the point of this. Maybe his father secretly hoped that Lucious fell in battle, so that the king could say that actually, there was another heir. Or that he ran, so that he could be disinherited. Lucious wouldn’t put it past him.
Well, Lucious would do it. He would go, and he would crush the army, and he would bring Ceres back impaled on a spear for all to see. Before that, though, he had business to attend to. Business that would hopefully ensure Thanos was never a threat again.
***
The upper rooms of the Ram’s Skull tavern were, if anything, worse than the one beneath. Lucious looked around with disgust at the splintered floorboards, the soiled bedclothes, and the mold growing from the walls. There was a door on the far side, connecting to another room that would no doubt be even worse. If he could have risked meeting somewhere better, he would have, but there had been no time. As it was, he and his bodyguards had been forced to race across the city to get here.
The man they were there to meet was hardly much better than the room. To Lucious, he looked like the kind of beggar who might have occupied any street corner in Delos: straggle-bearded and wild-eyed, filthy and rag covered.
“You said you had information?” Lucious said. “I find it hard to believe a man like you has information about anything but bedbugs.”
“Mad Fal sees a lot of things,” the beggar said. “He finds things.”
“I bet you see things,” Lucious said. “Probably after drinking too much.”
“Mostly because people think I’m stupid,” the beggar said, his voice changing and suddenly sounding as though he could have been from any of the richer sections of the city. “But I’ve found what you’re looking for.”
“And that is?” Lucious asked.
The beggar pushed open the door to the adjoining room. In it, a man sat who had burns down one side of his body, his beard giving way to the scar tissue where the two crossed. He wore the clothes of a sailor or a porter, but on the stand beside the bed, Lucious saw the flash of the Empire’s insignia.
“This is Todol. He was on Haylon.”
“You were one of the soldiers in the attack?” Lucious asked.
The man looked up as though only just realizing that Lucious was there. His look was so blank that Lucious might have thought he was some kind of empty shell, but he nodded.
“Todol doesn’t say much,” the beggar said. “Not after the fire on his ship. But Mad Fal, he knows how to get him talking, he does.”
The beggar gave the bearded man a drink. Lucious could probably also think of a few other ways, depending on how well this went.
“And what does he have to say?” Lucious asked. He turned to the man. “What did you see?”
The man’s mouth cracked open. “Thanos. Prince Thanos betrayed us.”
They were the words Lucious had been hoping to hear. “Go on.”
“He went over to the rebels. He led them onto our ships. He shot burni
ng oil at the shore, then he fired our ships so we couldn’t get around the rebels. I was on one. I only survived because I threw myself overboard. Others did too, but the sharks—”
“Yes, yes,” Lucious said, with a hint of impatience. “I’m sure it was terrible. But you survived.”
“Barely. The rebels hunted us down one by one. I thought it was just because they hated us, but no. It was so we couldn’t tell stories of the spy they’d sent back. So we couldn’t say what Prince Thanos really was. I got back by hiding on a boat and then killing the crew.”
“But you didn’t come forward before this?” Lucious demanded. “I might almost think that you’re only saying this because I’m offering the reward.”
He saw the man gesture to his scars. “Do you think I did this for the reward? I tried to say nothing. I tried to hide and stay safe. Now, it seems like they’re killing anyone who knows. I told a man I used to be in the army with. He went to the palace and didn’t come back. I need a way to stay safe.”
“I can provide that,” Lucious promised. He would have promised anything right then for the information he needed. “Just tell me all of it. And quickly.”
He sat, and he listened. He didn’t even have to feign interest. When the former sailor was done, Lucious smiled to himself.
“If you repeat this when I tell you to, you’ll be a rich man.”
“And me?” Fal the beggar asked.
“You’ll be paid, don’t worry.”
The beggar nodded at that. “Then I have some other information you might like too.”
Lucious raised an eyebrow. “All of this, and there’s more?”
“As I said, Mad Fal sees things. You know Lady Stephania pays the informers?”
“I know that,” Lucious said.
“Well, would you like to know everything she’s done?”
Lucious thought, but only for a moment. He put an arm around the beggar, even managing not to wince while he did it.
“Why yes, Fal. I think I would.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ceres sat high in the saddle of her horse as they rode south toward Delos, grateful that the horse was a fine one. Otherwise, she would never have managed to keep up with the riders of the North Coast around her. They rode in a horde of shining mail shirts and gleaming spear tips, banners rising over their horse backs to proclaim the subdivisions of their houses. Lord West and his nephew rode beneath their weathervane banner, but Ceres knew that it was her they were following. She just hoped that she could live up to their expectations.