‘Everyone does,’ Marlena said. ‘The Medousa. I’d have to have been comatose not to hear the Clerics crowing her arrival for the last three days.’
‘Keep your voice down.’ He smiled. ‘There are a hundred Cephean down there too. They have enhanced hearing, and each one is connected to each of the others. If one of them hears us, the Medousa hears us.’
‘No one could hear us over that racket. Besides, there must be a thousand people whispering her name right now, and another couple thousand saying something about it. They’d never filter out the noise.’
To Naus’ ear that sounded like experience.
‘You know what she wants, right?’ he asked.
Marlena nodded absently. Rainwater dripped from her nose. ‘She wants to thrall the world. If the Clerics are to be believed, then becoming thralled is a return to our previous selves. But that’s just bullshit if you ask me.’
‘What’s the real story?’
‘I don’t know the details,’ she said, ‘but it’s been the same the world over since the dawn of time. It’s all any war is fought over. Power, plain and simple. It’s all anyone in power wants. More power.’
The march of acolytes and other Order ranks from the East gate had almost reached them. Row upon row of Clerics, growling their dark lullaby into the night. Naus had never heard it before in all his centuries. It came from deep in the throat, guttural and aggressive. Behind the first forty or so lines of dark black Clerics, came a huge palanquin; carved of thick dark wood, it towered up to the second story of the town houses that lined the street. Carried on the backs of at least thirty muscular bearers, the palanquin was made of wood, but gilded in iron, with twisted horns and gargoyles crawling from every surface. The top was opaque but allowed some of the light to escape from within; a flood of blue bioluminescence, like a canister of Medusi power ready to explode.
All Naus could think was, she is in there. His nemesis, the Goddess of the Medusi that for hundreds of years he had not even believed existed. Noctiluca, the Clerics called her, and Aurelia and Cassandra too. They had some experience of her. Naus had never seen her, never laid eyes on her all these long centuries. And yet, she had to be defeated somehow, if he were going to succeed in destroying the Medusi threat once and for all.
‘The city is doomed,’ said Marlena almost too quietly to hear.
But the first steps had to be taken. This city needed to be freed, and he could not be the man to do it.
‘In all the best stories,’ Naus said, ‘when evil appears it is countered by good. We fight to restore balance. This city is not doomed, but it is in peril.’
‘This isn’t one of your stories, Arcturus.’ She’d been listening in the bar then.
‘No, it’s far more important.’
They lapsed into silence, watching the palanquin as is moved slowly past, followed by acolytes and hundreds of further thralled. The procession of blue lit the street like it was an alien daylight.
‘We can’t fight back,’ Marlena blurted. She gestured at the army. ‘Am I the only one seeing this?’
‘Someone must,’ said Naus simply.
‘That's all very easy for you to say, Naus, you're an assassin, and clearly good with a sword. I'm a palace maid.’
She was no longer the hard edged, anxious and angry Marlena she’d been during their flight from the Cleric patrols. She was scared. Watching a parade of ghostly thralled and a Goddess emerge from myth could do that to a person.
Palace maid, she’d said. He dared to hope.
‘What were you doing at the bar?’ he asked, circling back now that it was safe to approach.
Marlena looked at him for the first time in almost an hour, her eyes meeting his, shining with reflected blue. She frowned, just a little.
‘I was there to meet someone. But I got spooked when the Cleric made a beeline for me. It was like they were already inside my head, knew what I was there for.’
‘You stuck out like a tree on the plains.’
‘Was it that bad?’
‘Yes,’ said Naus, honestly.
She pointed at herself. ‘Maid.’
‘You were there to meet someone interested in fighting back.’ He didn’t know for sure. But he suspected. It was worth the try.
Marlena sighed. She didn’t need to say anything. ‘But I never did. You ruined that.’ She turned away, but then back almost immediately. ‘What were you doing at that bar? What are you even doing in this city? You’re the one who sticks out like a tree in a desert. If you aren't with the slavers, the Clerics or the Order, and you aren't one of Stauros' army letting it happen, then why are you here?’
Naus looked at her. Dimpled cheek and dark hair. She was so young, but then so was everyone to him. What was he doing fomenting rebellion when Totelun languished in a dungeon? He had to dig the spokes in and drive this home, for his friend. For the good of the world.
‘I have a friend,’ he said. ‘A young man, a bit younger than you. He’s a warrior from a land far from here. I believe he holds the key to wiping the entire Medusi threat from our world.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ said Marlena, smiling. ‘I guarantee no one else around here is saying that.’ She joked, but she was listening.
Naus continued. ‘But he has been arrested, captured by the Clerics while in the palace, buying time for me to escape with the Empress.’
‘The Empress? You mean she is still alive?’
‘She is and she has not given up on this city.’
‘And you saved her? And your friend, this boy?’
Naus nodded, water dripping from his grey hair. ‘He probably faces the same fate you did. He will likely be thralled, like you would have been.’ Naus fell silent and looked out over the trailing ends of the Order’s procession. ‘They are heading for the palace,’ he said. ‘He was arrested there. I have to believe he is still there, and still alive. I have to get in there and try to find him. There isn't much time.’
Naus pushed himself to his feet, but Marlena pulled him back down.
She fixed him with that stare again. ‘You’re a strange old man, with some insane stories. I mean crackers. But, I owe you my life, Naus. And I know a way I can start to repay you.’
‘You do?’ Naus grinned despite himself. It had worked.
‘I know a way into the palace,’ Marlena said. ‘I used to work there. If we hurry,’ she gestured over her shoulder, ‘that lot will be so distracted by the Goddess’ arrival, you might just make it.’
*
‘You really want to do this?’ said Marlena, hunched down behind a broken brick wall.
‘Yes I do,’ said Naus. He leant out, checking quickly round the other side of the wall. There were two young ex-Imperial guardsmen, now thralled slaves, he could tell by their uniforms. They weren’t quite as useless in the mind as some of the others; they were talking in quiet tones out of earshot, clearly still in control of their own faculties.
Behind them lay a kind of hidden servant’s entrance. Maybe ten minutes earlier they had observed a thralled servant checked for weapons and then granted access. Trust the Theris nobility to want even their servant’s arrival to be covered up.
I really could have done with this place when I was escaping the palace, he thought.
‘The Medousa is inside there now,’ she said, drawing him back. ‘The Goddess who brought down the city. She's the one who's done all this.’
‘That’s if she even exists.’
Marlena rolled her eyes. ‘The Cleric’s exist and I must have seen a couple thousand of them enter the palace grounds. You are going into the Medusi nest itself.’
‘I don’t scare easily.’
‘Well maybe you should? Your friend must be very important.’
‘He is.’
Naus took another quick look round the wall, gauging the distance. He was an assassin by trade, had been for most of his young life, and a good deal of his elderly life as well. The two men were lounging; they’d be lucky to even
pull their weapons clear in time. Naus was still fast despite his advanced years.
‘I have no choice, you understand. I’m not deciding to go in there against your advice; I just cannot leave him to his fate. It’s not happening.’
He flicked a glance to the ground, hand on his blade handle and moved, fast as lightning. Naus flashed round the wall, his sword leaving its sheath as he took the three steps to meet his foes. They had no idea. He opened the first man from gut to neck, spilling his steaming insides on the ground. The second moved, but only enough to jerk in surprise and fall over himself. Naus finished him with a two handed stab through the head before he could cry out.
There were a few bushes nearby and he dragged the first man into the bushes. It wasn’t much of a ruse, there was blood all over the ground, but he hoped in the rain and the dark that it wouldn’t be noticed. At least not for a while. He heaved the second man on top of the first.
Naus turned back to Marlena, who had watched the deed.
‘You really are an assassin.’
‘Did you doubt me?’
She looked sheepish, like smiled, slapping his arm. ‘It’s just, you’re so old. I didn’t think you had it in you.’
‘Better to be underestimated. You should know that.’
She nodded. Naus stopped to listen, but didn’t hear anything that gave him pause. The night was quiet now, the parade long died down and the city asleep. He paused for just a little longer, experience making him wary. A third guard could be coming back from a break.
As it was nothing happened. With luck it would be some hours before the bodies were discovered, possibly even morning. Marlena had told him that the guards were changed at dawn, and the Clerics didn’t seem to have changed that practice.
‘Listen, Marlena,’ he said. ‘You should follow your instincts. Resist this occupation of your city. You are smart, capable and resourceful, and I know there is a rebel in you somewhere. Everyone who can must resist the Order, must fight against the invasion of the Medusi.’
‘Maids have to be resourceful,’ she said.
‘Seek out others who think like you, but be careful. Rebellion against tyranny is the most pure goal of all.’ Naus remembered when he had finally stood up to Eleutheria, what it had cost him, but also the incredibly rightness of it.
‘Will I see you again?’ she asked abruptly.
‘This isn’t a marriage, Marlena. I saved you, you repaid a debt. That’s it.’
‘But what if I need you? We should have a signal.’
Naus looked at her. ‘You don’t need me. You were in that bar to meet a rebel, all on your own, weren’t you?’
Marlena nodded.
‘So you already have what you need. Find them again, volunteer and resist!’
He didn’t wait for a reply.
Chapter Seven
Aurelia
As they wound through the dense tree-covered troughs and valleys that shaped Argentor lands, the army became stalled. Some kind of large mudslide was all Aurelia could glean from the snatches of conversation she heard. A mudslide so large and extensive that they couldn’t just go around it. The supply carts, wagons and single remaining catapult could never traverse the forested hills to either side, and unless Lepitern’s officers wanted to abandon them, they were forced to camp here until the blockage could be forded. Aurelia wondered if this was the area that had been deliberately flooded by the nearby town in an effort to wash away their Medusi infestation; she remembered one of Periphy’s reports covering the increased Medusi numbers in the area had mentioned it.
Periphy.
She had shed enough tears over her abandoned city, but somehow her childhood friend’s death in the midst of their escape was the hardest to take. If only he’d survived. If only he were here now to give me his counsel, she thought. He had served her faithfully for just shy of ten years, introduced into the family when she was only seven. Held hostage at court to his parent’s good behaviour; his father a noble who’d thrown his lot in with Gerodin of House Argentor when he splintered the court. By the time his father did rebel and join the front lines, Periphy had become a part of the family, and Tiber hadn’t the heart to rip his daughter’s friend and confidante from her, in a demonstration that would not have proven effective on the boy’s father.
She’d lost him now. Then she’d been abandoned by Naus and Cassandra.
All she had left was Chrysaora. And they didn’t even like each other.
It had been more than a day since she and Chrysaora had been dragged from their tent by the Argentori general Ferdinand Opetreia, shackled to a horse and made an object lesson for the rest of the army. She was guarded, but it made little difference. There was a prisoner in the ranks.
Aurelia’s identity was no longer a secret. That lasted all of five minutes, she thought. She only had herself to blame. Once word travelled round the army that the disgraced Empress of Theris, the woman who led the city they had set out to invade, had been travelling incognito with them back towards Argentor, she became an object of hatred and ridicule. She was shouted at, jeered and ridiculed, spat at. Someone felt the need to waste valuable supplies throwing an over ripened tomato at her. Her guards were doubled, but it didn’t matter, she’d been outed.
This was not how this was supposed to go. She despaired of ever achieving any meaningful goal with respect to her city. She would be a political prisoner, and even then only for as long as it took them to trade her to the Order for some kind of amnesty.
Ferdinand Opetreia trotted over to her on his grey mare. He was a handsome gentleman with a trim beard turning to grey. Tall and lean after the long months at war, he had the same hounded look of the other officers, like an old dog seeking a cosy fire to curl up in front of but instead finding himself sleeping in the yard every night.
‘Come with me,’ he said, resigned.
‘Why have we stopped?’ She was still an Empress, and no matter how many times Chrysaora told her to act according to her new station, she just couldn’t. She had been bred to rule.
Opetreia took the reins of her horse from one of the soldiers and began to lead her. For a moment, Aurelia was impressed that he remained silent, but it was short-lived. ‘You seem to be under the delusion that I answer to you,’ he said, over his shoulder. He clearly couldn’t help himself. Good to know she could get under his skin that easily. ‘You are no longer an Empress.’
‘Of course I am,’ she replied, tartly. ‘How absurd. It is my political capital that has stayed your hand and others, General, and kept me alive thus far. If I weren’t an Empress, someone would have put an arrow through me already.’
‘You are nothing anymore,’ he said, moving through the idle soldiers and stopping at a tent so large it was almost a marquee. ‘Simply the scum left over from the fallen House of Nectris, a toppled enemy brought low. I will leave it to my Duke to determine your fate.’
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘We will discuss the future of our nations whilst you play in the mud.’
She’d caught him. Opetreia’s face flushed red and he turned away before he said anything he couldn’t take back within earshot of his liege. It was petty, but she needed to feel in control of something, even if it was just scoring points off a puffed-up officer. Aurelia leaned forward and hopped off the back of the horse before she could be helped. Help might hurt.
Aurelia paused before the tent and looked back at General Opetreia as he dismounted. She hadn’t expected to find the Duke Lepitern of House Argentor in a tent at all. He should have been out astride a horse, forging the way home for his defeated army. Instead it was left to blowhards like Opetreia.
But far more concerning was that if she stepped inside she would come face to face with Crescen, Lepitern’s second son; a thralled Cephean of the Order of the Medousa, linked by a Medusi hive-mind to all the other Cephean on the continent. And by extension, Noctiluca. If he saw her, she wouldn’t just be outed to the Argentori army, but to the insane sorceress who had masterminded the
destruction of her city. Her plans would be foiled before they had even begun.
The General brushed back the door of the tent and pushed her inside, none too gently. The interior smelled like rot and pus that someone had tried and failed to masque with iodine. And flowers. And perfume. The someone was a young nursemaid who stood abruptly as Opetreia and Aurelia entered, looking guilty, but Aurelia couldn’t see why.
There was no sign of Crescen anywhere, no tell-tale blue glow of a Medusi, feeding her secrets to her enemies. Aurelia felt herself relax.
Until she saw the Duke; he lay outstretched on a kind of upholstered divan chair, his torso bare of clothing but wrapped in gauze and bandages, dark and angry at the shoulder and around his stomach and hip. When he saw he had visitors he tried to stand, prompting the nurse to push him back down with a gentle hand. He fought her silently, desperately, trying to put on a brave face, and succeeded only in demonstrating exactly how weak he really was. They eventually came to a compromise where she propped him up on a few cushions.
Aurelia and Opetreia tried not to watch the embarrassing display.
‘My Lord Duke,’ said Opetreia, gruffly, ‘the prisoner, Aurelia of the disgraced House Nectris.’ Aurelia suppressed a smirk at his deliberate omission of any title.
‘Thank you,’ said Lepitern. ‘Why have we stopped, General?’
Opetreia to his credit, managed to swallow his own smirk as he glanced at Aurelia. ‘We have run into a landslide, my lord. My men are clearing it now.’
‘Clearing it?’
‘Well, building a kind of bridge, my lord.’
‘Make sure to oversee it.’
‘My lord?’
No one moved or said anything for a moment.
‘What?’ said Lepitern, frowning at Opetreia.
‘Well, the prisoner.’
‘What about her?’
‘In your condition, I wouldn’t want to leave you alone with her.’
The Duke tried to sit up again. ‘Are you suggesting I’m in danger from a sixteen year old girl! What’s she going to do?’
Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2) Page 10