Naus took the rabbit and made a spit from a sturdy straight branch nearby – Crescen had collected a pile of them. As he spoke, he arranged it over the flames. He then proceeded to skin the rabbit in a single strip motion he’d seen Totelun demonstrate.
‘What brings a Duke’s son out here? You are a long way from home, Crescen of House Argentor.’ Naus hadn’t intended that last comment to sound threatening, but Crescen’s expression made it clear it did. He was relaxing, but still cagey.
‘What business is it of yours?’
‘Oh, just making conversation.’ Naus speared the rabbit on the spit and placed it low over the fire.
‘I am on a pilgrimage, if you must know.’
‘Where to?’
‘Isn’t it rude to ask so many questions of fellow travellers.’
‘You’re thinking of prisoners.’
Crescen didn’t react, but eventually answered. ‘I am on my way to the Temple of the Order of the Medousa.’
Naus couldn’t quite believe it, but it made a strange kind of sense.
‘Well that’s fortuitous,’ he said.
‘Why is that?’
‘The Temple lies along my path east. Just beyond the town of Medaquen. Am I right?’
Crescen frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said tentatively.
‘We could travel together. I am handy with a sword.’ He flashed his blade from under his robes. ‘These roads can be dangerous, especially for young nobles with no weapons walking alone through horse lord country.’ That sounded threatening too, and he’d shown his steel. He marvelled at his own uncouthness. This is why I could never serve in court for Aurelia.
There was no point in killing him if he agreed to travel together. He didn’t believe in providence – there was no one up there looking out for him – but this was a lucky find. It was the greatest opportunity he’d ever had to get into the Order’s Temple. He would join him, eventually befriend him and find a way in. Crescen was his ticket inside, he just had to play it right.
Again, Crescen just frowned. He was suspicious. But then he seemed to reason it out in his head and come to a conclusion that it was in his best interests. Or he was listening to someone.
Naus doubled down on his point. ‘I am impressed you have got so far alone. Aren’t you afraid of being attacked?’
‘Medusi don’t care about me.’ Naus knew what he meant; with a thrall of his own he would be of no interest to other wild Medusi.
‘I didn’t really mean Medusi. What about people, warriors, hunters? What about screaming riders chasing you down from the backs of their stallions?’ Naus took the rabbit out of the flames and pulled apart a juicy thigh, then handed it to Crescen, who took it eagerly. Sick of his bread and cheese probably, thought Naus.
When Crescen had finished the thigh and polished off another chunk that Naus handed him, he eventually said, with much consideration, ‘No one would dare attack a Cephean, not after Theris.’
The arrogance of the religious, thought Naus. But he supposed he was right. Or was it the arrogance of the victorious?
Chapter Seventeen
Aurelia
This time she stood aside, an audience of one, watching someone else’s drama unfold on a bleak stage.
The same dark throne room; cold stone walls and flickering flames in sconces that lined the walls, tall throne of blackest obsidian.
The same huge Medusi; pulsing with blue light that overpowered everything it lit, dominating the space with its ominous bulk.
The same cadaverous sorceress; enthroned in a simple black robe, her face a maw of spent violence, her body an emaciated ridged husk.
But this time, she wasn’t the one facing the sorceress.
Instead a figure crept forward. Robed and hooded, she could not identify who it was. They moved slowly, deliberately, they thought they had some measure of control in this dark place.
The figure drew a blade. It was to be a confrontation. The sharp tang of fear pierced her senses. It was her own.
There was a different quality to the other dreams sent to her by Cassandra; where they had been her memories of the past, of her experiences in the Order’s temple, this had the dim shifting focus of events yet to come.
Was she sharing in one of the visions Cassandra claimed she received? If so, who was the figure so bravely confronting the Medousa? Didn’t they realise the Goddess could simply squeeze her gnarled grey fist and her power would destroy them, pop their skull like a grape?
The Medousa leaned forward and looked past the figure. Aurelia couldn’t tell if she was addressing her or them. Not until the words struck her like a blade inside her mind, rasping and cutting and undeniable.
I knew you’d come.
Aurelia awoke with a sharp intake of breath. Only after her focus returned to the terraced rooms of her suite in Argentor did she release, chest heaving up and down.
She emerged from her sweat-dampened coverlets, padded across the cold stone floor and wet her face with mercifully cold water from the basin that Terietta had left, washing away the filthy cloying feel of the nightmare once again.
This was the third night in a row and each time it ended the same way. She could not make out the figure’s identity no matter how hard she looked, could not even be sure it was someone she knew. She was more certain every day that she was seeing a vision of Cassandra’s, but if so, of what? Was Cass aware she was sharing it? She resolved to talk to her shortly.
Aurelia looked at herself in the tall ornate mirror on the wall above the basin. Her bright blue eyes stared back, her long blonde hair clumped from sweat and water both. She wore a simple shift made of a satin-like material that kept her cool during the warm Argentori nights. Aurelia had never considered herself attractive, she reserved that right for her sister; her face was poetically described as elfin where she would have said angular. Cassandra’s fair skin and hair colour suited their shared features more aesthetically.
The dream faded with the morning, as dreams often do, replaced by thoughts of Marcus. What did he see when he looked at her? He described her as beautiful, but why? She didn’t see it. He had kissed her there, stealing a moment under the protection of the Luacha. Was that something any boy would have done in that moment? Did Marcus know who she was as she had suspected to begin with? Was he taking an opportunity to influence the Empress of a foreign power for some other ends?
Did he know it was her first kiss?
She cursed her inexperience and dried the water from her face. There was a decorative clock in the room and she checked it; one hour until the appointment with the Premiers arranged by Nepheli Opetreia. Aurelia began to dress to command.
*
The representative of the Premiers was not who she had expected. Instead of Dante Tavular, the acting Grand Premier in Argentor, who Aurelia assumed Nepheli could exert some influence over using his marriage to her gossip-monger friend Felicity Tavular, it was a minor functionary who styled himself the Premier’s spokesman.
Aurelia received him on her terrace, sitting with a glorious view of the city aqueducts in the distance, and quite clearly, the Citadel.
‘Harold Vingian, at your service,’ he said, taking her offered hand and kissing her knuckles. ‘Spokesman for the Council of Premiers.’
‘Charmed.’ She turned to a tired and haggard-looking Terietta who had shown him in, dismissing her with a nod. The woman scowled and left; she had been expecting to stay and chaperone the visit, gleaning valuable gossip. The woman was as bad as Felicity, whose husband should have been here.
Instead she had Harold Vingian. She observed him as they mutually waited a moment for Terietta to vacate the suite. Portly and balding, Vingian was of an indeterminate middle age, and probably had been since graduating whatever elite noble prep school was Argentor’s finest. She knew not which. He wore a waistcoat over his ample gut instead of the robes she would have expected, but then he was a representative rather than an appointed Premier.
She couldn’t help thi
nking Nepheli had failed her. This is going to be a waste of time, she thought.
Vingian looked like he was still waiting for something else even after Terietta had left. ‘And the thrall?’ he prompted.
‘Oh, Chrys?’ Aurelia glanced at her warrior bodyguard lounging at one end of the outdoor seating with her feet up, picking her nails with a dagger. She met her eyes. ‘Yeah, she’s not going anywhere.’
Upon reflection, that may have been the moment the conversation went sour.
‘I will not discuss anything in the presence of a thrall.’ Vingian breathed in, actually puffing out his chest. ‘You must be aware of our organisation’s teachings on the subject.’ Aurelia was reminded of Verismuss and his constant condemnations of Cassandra as an abomination. Are they all like this? she thought. If so I can kiss this alliance goodbye right now.
‘Intimately,’ she said. ‘You must be aware that both my sister, and my confidante here are thralled, and I am not in the habit of having my friends and advisors determined by a self-important arrogant puppet with no power of their own.’ On second thought, maybe that was the moment.
He sneered. ‘Then I doubt we have much to discuss, my lady. Good day.’ Vingian turned to leave, but Chrysaora extended a long muscular leg across the doorway back to the suite, blocking his path.
Aurelia was grateful; Chrysaora didn’t have to say anything, but she understood what Aurelia did. That she was desperate and that she needed to coax something, anything, out of this man. She could not just let him leave. She could almost hear the woman admonish her for still acting like an entitled monarch and almost ruining the opportunity.
‘Shall we start again,’ said Aurelia, swallowing her pride a little. ‘It’s clear you owe a great debt to someone in the Citadel to have been the one stuck with meeting the landless Empress. You wouldn’t want to just leave without any idea what I was after, would you? You see, what I have to tell the Premiers is rather important, and I would appreciate it if you would take a message back to your superiors and arrange a proper meeting with the acting Grand Premier.’ There, half cowed, half Empress.
Vingian smiled, but it was forced. ‘Explain yourself to me. If I feel there is any merit to any of the information you have I will take it up with the wider council. I understand you wish to speak to us, but there are certain protocols.’
Aurelia moved to the balcony’s edge and leant on the stone balustrade. ‘I care little for your protocols. You are refusing the request of an Empress.’
‘From where I stand, you are nothing of the sort.’ He was patronising, talking to a child. ‘The Premiers have simply indulged the request of a delusional political prisoner not yet used to her new station.’
Aurelia had heard this enough in her few weeks in Argentor; it was beginning to slide off her without effect. ‘I will explain. Perhaps then you will see the gravity of the situation.’
Vingian raised his eyebrows and waited.
‘A great Medusi swarm is making its way to Argentor,’ she said. ‘You may have heard there was an attack a few days ago. I was there. The first in years I am told, but I know it’s also the first of many. Those were the most forward tendrils of a bloom the likes of which Arceth has never seen. Not since the very legends on which our society is built.
‘And as if that was not enough, they move with intent, commanded by an insane sorceress who styles herself a Goddess. The Medousa.’ She could see Noctiluca’s face from her dream just a few hours before. She still did not know how to fight her, but she knew she would need an army.
Vingian was smiling in a condescending manner, waiting for her to finish. She would appeal to his puffed up sense of pride. ‘The Order of the Medousa has an ancient enemy, an organisation sworn to oppose them in doctrine and in battle, for hundreds of years. Your organisation, the Premiers. If Argentor is to survive, it needs the services of your private militia, the Primes, to ride out and meet its enemies away from a defenceless city.’ She gestured at the view across the rooftops. ‘There is no wall, no moat, no standing army, only a few remaining cannon. When that bloom arrives here, this city will fall to the Medousa, its citizens will be enslaved, thralled and killed, and its culture and history wiped away.’ She paused, but then realised she had said it all.
‘Are you quite finished?’ Vingian said. He was almost laughing. ‘My Lady Aurelia. Though you profess to care so much for the citizens of Argentor, it has not yet been a month since you ordered destruction down on our army. You are a self-serving hypocrite.’ He drew himself up to his full height, which was not much taller than her. ‘There is no Medusi bloom, no swarm. You are using a recent coincidence to your advantage. I will not entertain the idea of you using the Primes, our elite pride and joy, to help you retake Theris from whatever combination of thralled horse lords and mercenaries made up King Isingr’s forces.
‘And as for the Medousa. Have you heard yourself? The Medousa is a myth; she is at best imaginative propaganda spread by an admittedly dangerous cult, but led by men, my lady, not Goddesses. You have taken our concerns and twisted them together with the recent attack in a bid to obtain help retaking your ancestral home. We were your enemy, not a month ago; do you think we will forget so fast?’
She felt like Totelun must have done, facing her in the palace throne room all those weeks ago. How frustrating to explain something you know with all your heart to be true, to be genuinely trying to help, and yet not be believed simply because your audience was too stubborn and too stupid to see the truth.
‘I hoped we could put that kind of concern behind us for the greater good,’ she said. She had no proof to offer of the Medousa, except for her own dreams, she realised. ‘What about the Order? Even if you don’t believe the Medousa exists, the Order was behind the downfall of Theris. They are behind the bloom, the attack that is coming here. They must still be defeated.’
‘There is no bloom.’
He was frustratingly dismissive. ‘What have you been fighting, if you don’t believe in the Medousa?’ she tried.
Vingian ignored the question. ‘You want my advice?’ he said.
Not really, she thought.
‘Give up on your course. Marry a nice courtier, settle down in a sumptuous Argentori mansion, have some babies, and let the grownups deal with the politics. You are clearly unsuited.’
Aurelia felt her own chest rising, filling ready to burst with a tirade of abuse. How dare he? This spokesman did not know his place. Before she could blast him, she noticed Nepheli letting herself into the suite and appearing at the door to the terrace.
She beamed at Aurelia. ‘My darling, how are we?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, instead turning to see who Aurelia was addressing. Her face dropped. ‘Harold?’ she said. Nepheli looked back to Aurelia, saw the consternation on her face, and gleaned the entire situation at once.
‘Miss Opetreia.’ Vingian was suddenly uncomfortable.
‘What are you doing here? I heard you had been dismissed.’
Vingian’s neck snapped back, incredulous. ‘A heinous slur,’ he said, affronted.
‘No, I’m sure of it. Some scandal involving the only daughter of the House of Prisingr, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Vingian began to leave, and this time Chrysaora wasn’t quite enough to block his exit.
Nepheli was still going, her words getting louder as Vingian vacated the terrace. ‘I was reliably informed that she recently gave birth to a child that looks remarkably like you, Harold, and that her husband approached the Premiers asking for your immediate dismissal. The ladies at court know all about-’ She stopped as the door to Aurelia’s suite was slammed shut with Vingian on the other side. Nepheli turned to Aurelia.
‘Is that true? Aurelia asked.
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s true that it’s a rumour. You must believe me, he was not who I asked for. I can get you a proper invitation to the council of Premiers, an audience with Dante Tavular. That’s what I promised you. If I’m q
uick I can still catch who I need to.’
Aurelia raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re not staying?’
‘I was only popping in to see if all had gone well. Clearly not. I still want to help you, Aurelia. I believe in your cause.’ She winked. ‘I’ll call in again when I have some better news.’ She embraced Aurelia. ‘Again, I’m so sorry you had to deal with Harold. Ugh.’
Once Nepheli was gone, Chrysaora also vacated the terrace and wandered indoors. Aurelia was left to contemplate a terrible first meeting with the Premiers on her own. She sat in the shade of a lush broad-leafed tree that grew entwined with the side of the civic building. Once she realised that even the talk with Vingian hadn’t penetrated the fog that the dream had left over her, she decided to try Cassandra.
Cass, are you there? she sent into the ether.
Her sister answered immediately. Yes, always. I’m so glad to hear your voice. Hearing of course was a misnomer, but it was the closest analogy they had. It was like hearing your own voice in your head when you are thinking, only belonging to someone else. For the first time Aurelia realised it was a lot like the way Noctiluca spoke inside her head. I was worried about you.
Why?
I still see things, visions of your future. I need you to be careful, Relia. Try not to make any enemies.
That is impossible. I have made enemies just by being here. I just made one in the last few minutes. Aurelia thought about what her sister had said, intrigued. What do you actually see?
Cassandra didn’t hesitate. A faceless figure standing over your corpse in an empty city. Sometimes they are vaguely female, sometimes male, sometimes there is more than one. You have so many potential enemies all of a sudden, the outcome is too fluid to coalesce. It could be anyone, someone just needs a push or a motive. She stopped and then added. I’m sorry. I don’t want to worry you. But I want you to be vigilant always. Totelun suggested I get to know who you know, maybe that would help solidify the visions?
Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2) Page 25