Embrace of the Medusi (The Overlords Trilogy Book 2)

by Toby Andersen

  The door to his bedroom opened and Urth came in. Anthrom stared at him. He didn’t need to hide, he was getting used to servant’s again, but the child’s silence un-nerved him. Urth brought a plate of something under a cloche, set it on the table in the main part of the suite.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d seen him, but each time, Anthrom felt a twinge; the child was a shell of what he’d been. Lively and popular and vibrant before, he was now meek and quiet. He wondered again why he wasn’t, why it hadn’t affected him like that, but all he could guess was it came down to the species of Medusi, or Noctiluca’s influence. The Cephean children basked in her magic from first light to eventide.

  Urth barely acknowledged him, like the other thralls under Noctiluca’s control. He turned and let himself out again.

  Anthrom turned back to the mirror.

  Since the thralling, Harling had taken to teaching him about magic. He’d said that magic was about willpower, and that the Medousa’s power came from her will, her mind. Abrax’s anger caused the storms that fed off him. What had he been doing to make his face and skin change? What had he been thinking to make his scar disappear?

  He concentrated on the scar, ragged and puckered. Was it as simple as imagining it wasn’t there? He tried, picturing what he wanted, but nothing happened. Did he have to want it covered, or hidden? Did he have to imagine the unblemished skin itself?

  When he thought about hiding, something happened. The bunched and angry skin smoothed and paled. After a moment his chest once again looked like it did before the attack.

  The Medusi had given him something, but what was it? The ability to hide? The ability to make illusions? Did it only work on him, or would it work on others? He wished Urth would come back, so that he could test it.

  And did he have to maintain thinking about it constantly, or actively remove it again? Only time and practice would tell for certain.

  He imagined the thralling tube wasn’t there. It was difficult, it didn’t react at first, but when he framed his thoughts that he wanted to hide the thralling tentacle, and didn’t offer an alternative, it dissolved away. In the mirror, the tube was gone. He tried the same thing with the Medusi’s body and the rest of its tentacles, and sure enough it slowly faded away. Even the blue light was gone.

  A denial of what he had become.

  He experimented further, hiding his grey skin under his normal pale skin colour, bringing a healthy glow back to his face and chest. His reflection became the Anthrom from earlier, before the façade had dropped. He looked like he had before Noctiluca had arrived at the palace.

  For Anthrom, the Medusi made power from his desire to hide, taking his skill from deep inside, giving him the ability to alter reality. To hide in plain sight. But was it really reality that he altered? The Medusi was still there – he could feel it with his hands – it was just hidden.

  He could alter perception, that was it.

  There was another knock at his chamber door, jarring him. A servant would have waited a moment, and then entered, as Urth had. They were beyond embarrassment when it came to royalty, especially the ones who had been here many decades. The new thralls were just dead behind the eyes.

  But the door remained closed.

  ‘Master Anthrom,’ said a male voice he didn’t recognise.

  Anthrom checked his illusion was still in place and opened the door. A large stout Cleric in full cassock had his hand on the shoulder of a slumped waiflike young woman with dark raven hair over her face. He pushed her into the room so hard she almost tripped, then grinned at Anthrom showing teeth. Anthrom shut the door in his face, but not before he registered the quizzical look on the Cleric’s face that suddenly replaced the grin.

  Did he realise something was missing? That there was no Medusi?

  Anthrom turned to the girl who stood still and silent, head down. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to do with her. Was she just going to stand there? After half a minute of indecision, he reached out and brushed her hair up out of her face.

  It was a face he recognised. Miriell Isingr.

  The daughter of his onetime ally in dethroning Aurelia, Stauros Isingr, King of the horse lords and the Terracon steppe. If reports were to be believed he’d been killed by the tough hunter boy that his sister had entertained for less than a day before the siege had broken. Somewhere in an alley behind a brothel, his corpse had been discovered, hamstrings and throat cut. The Medusi had left him intact; they weren’t interested in dead flesh for their polyps.

  Miriell had played liaison between them as Anthrom tried repeatedly to sabotage Aurelia’s siege efforts. Miriell had brought him the first Medusi he had ever touched; a vampiric Iminguis that imprinted on two hosts, passing messages as it floated back and forth, homing in on its next meal of blood.

  She was beautiful still, she always had been. Anthrom had seen her even before he’d been introduced by Verismuss, a bewitching courtier he could never strike up the courage to approach. She was almost twenty and more than a little intimidating.

  But she was no longer her old self; her body was thin, her skin tight and her eyes – when they furtively glanced up at him – were sunken and a little wild. Even with the glance, she hardly saw him. Instinct saw past him to the platter of cheese, grapes and other assortments on the table. Quick as a wildcat she rushed over, pushed the chair aside and began tearing into the food.

  Was she being starved?

  Before, Miriell had used her beauty to beguile him, and it had worked. He remembered he had become dangerously possessive of her, to the point that when he’d spied on her in a compromised situation with a tall handsome lover, he’d been beyond angry. Let’s be honest, I cried. I was a child.

  That was the last he’d seen of her, until she’d been pushed into the room. She glanced up at him, grape juice running down her chin. Did she see the hidden Medusi or not? He noticed something in those eyes he didn’t like, but he wasn’t sure what.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he said, eventually.

  She started to speak and then had to clear her throat. Anthrom got the impression she hadn’t spoken in a long time. ‘The Cleric said I was a gift for you.’ She blinked lazily. ‘I assume he meant as a reward. To do with as you wish. You’re a Prince, surely you know how this works.’

  Noctiluca must have held her all this time somewhere in the palace, just waiting for such an occasion. She was offered as a reward, for what? For setting every scruple he ever had aside for the promise of the magic of the Overlords?

  Miriell’s tone stirred something in him, but not what he might have expected. It was resentment. Her condescension just angered him.

  ‘You always did think you were better than me,’ he said.

  She frowned.

  ‘You looked down on me, while you played with me. A sad, jealous child, easily led. But look at us now. The high and mighty Princess Miriell, brought low. A slave. You are not even a fraction of my equal.’

  He hadn’t meant to go so far, but despite her incarceration, she had not lost her regal bearing, her snobbish manner.

  Her response cut him.

  ‘We are both prisoners here,’ she said, ‘but only one of us is honest about it.’ He should have known. She always had the power to slice right to his core. ‘You are just as powerless as I and just as trapped. You are the Goddess’ creature now, bought and paid for, and I pity you. You’re more slave than I.’

  He scowled, not sure what to say. She turned back to the food, biting right into a large lump of hard cheese.

  He stood and watched her, seething. You think the tables have turned for once, he thought, but people never learn. She still thought she was above him and she probably always would, no matter how their positions and statuses altered. He was the court favourite now. Second or maybe third highest in the city again.

  For a dark moment he considered teaching her a lesson. How would he make her see, truly realise, that she was beneath him?

  He decided to let her in on a
secret.

  ‘How did you get caught?’ he asked, circling the point like a bird of prey.

  Miriell poured herself a mug of deepest red wine, drained off most of it and then topped it up again. She took the seat and reclined in it, facing him. ‘It was too late by the time we knew the siege had ended.’ She looked at him carefully, perhaps wondering if he knew what had happened. When she said we, she meant Laigus, her lover, another courtier, who had been held hostage to guarantee his father Lepitern’s good behaviour. ‘It was a few hours before we tried the door only to find it locked. We were underground in your old throne room, Laigus and I. He eventually smashed the old wood around the door and let us out. Above, we found the palace under occupation. The Order had taken over.’ She took another long swallow of wine. ‘We didn’t last long. We managed our way down a few halls, but we were found by the patrolling Clerics. We should have stayed below.’

  Anthrom remembered his own days evading capture. He’d done infinitely better than other courtiers it seemed.

  Another drink. Now that she had access to it, she couldn’t stop. ‘They tortured Laigus,’ she said, the alcohol freeing her words, ‘tried to break him, telling him I had been tortured. Then they tortured me in front of him. They whipped me repeatedly, often until I was unconscious. I begged him to help them. He wouldn’t work against his father, the Duke of Argentor and when they realised it, he was killed. They just slit his throat in front of me. That was just before the Goddess arrived.

  ‘I have been in the dungeon below ever since.’ She drained her mug, tried the decanter again and found it empty. She rolled her eyes and slammed the cup down.

  Anthrom wasn’t surprised at the story. Though he’d thought little of her since that time, he found no surprises in what she told. She had helped Terracon, which in turn helped the Order and been shown no mercy because of it. She was deemed worthless now that her father was dead, and they had found no leverage there.

  In light of what happened afterward, he supposed his secret wasn’t so big after all. ‘I locked you in,’ he said.

  She frowned at him, eyes half-lidded.

  He tried again. ‘The room underground. I saw you fucking Laigus through the door, and I locked you in.’ He didn’t feel guilty, just annoyed that he’d been so childish, to have acted on his jealousy like that.

  Again, her reaction was not as he’d expected. ‘I know. I hoped you’d see us, Anthrom. You spied on everyone all the time. We didn’t really know how, but we knew you did it. I wanted you to stop thinking of me as yours. I could do whatever I wanted, with whoever I wanted. You wanted me to wait for you, prim and proper, like I was your property, and I wanted to destroy that.’ Anthrom was almost in awe. Her words were like daggers. She could just stab and turn the knife at will. She had a skill with words he could only wish he had. ‘Only you could have been the one to lock us in.’

  He wished he could alter her perception so that she didn’t think of him as she did.

  Still, she had not said a word about grey flesh, Medusi or his being a thrall. Had she seen nothing or did she simply not react? She had not noticed his scar even as he stood there, still bare chested.

  Noctiluca thought he deserved this gift, did she? Tainted Miriell, venomous and devastatingly beautiful. She was his to do with as he saw fit. A reward for all his achievements. Maybe making her more aware of it was really the only way to put her in her place.

  ‘You are mine tonight. To do with as I please.’ He suddenly felt his fifteen years – he didn’t know what he was doing. ‘Stand up,’ he commanded.

  She stood, cocked her head at him. Trying to gauge what he was going to say next.

  ‘Go to the bed.’ He pointed.

  Miriell shook her head, not refusing, just resigned. She was battling with something. She turned to the bed and then turned back with a sigh.

  ‘Do you want me to bare myself to you, my Prince?’ she said. It wasn’t coy or sensual. It was hard and sarcastic. ‘Strip off my clothes and show you my flesh? I’ll do it. You can see for yourself the damage the Order has done.’

  He’d had enough. ‘Do it then!’ he snapped.

  She scowled at him. They’d backed each other into a corner.

  Anthrom suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted this.

  Turning away, showing her back to Anthrom, Miriell unlaced the bodice on the front of her dress. She let it fall until it caught on her hips, then pulled aside her hair. Anthrom couldn’t look away. The perfect skin he’d imagined was instead a latticework of raised welts in scored and broken lines, as enflamed as flesh could be. Beneath the angrier, more recent wounds were the remnant scars from an earlier torture. Some still wept blood, but most were scabbed and dark, each the centre of a larger livid purple bruise. The marks of the whip crisscrossed her back and her shoulder blades and down her ribs into the even softer skin above her hips.

  ‘Cover it,’ he said, turning away.

  ‘Have you seen enough?’

  ‘Yes, damn it. Cover yourself.’

  She did, re-lacing her bodice, though he hardly noticed. He knew what the Order was, it shouldn’t be a surprise to him. But despite her venomous tongue, Miriell was an innocent. She hadn’t deserved what had been done to her. He thought, if he knew which Cleric had administered the lashings, he’d take the lash to them. Maybe with his new power he could. He could set the world to rights, administer his own justice.

  He peeked back at her – he couldn’t help himself – but she was just standing there again, dressed and small, and sad, and hurt.

  His own back was now disfigured, a ridge of cartilage would form around the tube that connected him to his Medusi. His neck was a map of scar tissue. But he could disguise his disfigurement, where Miriell could not. He could use power to conceal his, where she had gained power by revealing hers.

  The magic itself was a reward, just the same as Miriell was, both gifted to him by another. Aurelia’s lesson came back to him.

  Gifts of power are like a poisoned apple; on the outside they seem sweet and enticing, but look deeper to find the decay and rot within. Aurelia had been right for once. She meant the gift of power Miriell’s father had promised, but the magic he’d received from Noctiluca was a tainted gift all the same. Miriell was a tainted gift. It all was. He supposed everything he’d ever received might be.

  He tried to bring his mind back to the present; her injuries had thrown him. His illusions seemed to be intact. She had seen nothing of his grey skin, his Medusi or the blue light all around them. His magic was clearly the ability to alter perception in others as well as himself.

  The only allusions Miriell had made were about his being Noctiluca’s creature now. But he was no pawn in another’s game. He refused to be. He didn’t want any more gifts from her. Let Harling be moved around the Teca board, ordered where to go and what to do. He would emulate his ancestor Eleutheria and make his own destiny.

  He still had the power to make a choice. He could still refuse.

  Anthrom picked up a blanket from over the back of a nearby chair and draped it over Miriell’s shoulders.

  ‘Go back to your cell,’ he said. ‘I will call for the guard. We are done here.’ He could still exercise power. He could refuse the gift. He would not be completely beholden to Noctiluca. Let me hold this tiny grain of myself back, he thought.

  For one final time, Miriell didn’t do what he expected. ‘No, you can’t,’ she said, her voice pleading. ‘If you send me out there, I have failed. I’ll be punished again. I will have to answer to…her.’

  Anthrom’s shoulders slumped. He didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Just take me, come on, you can do it. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said.’ She pushed a fist against her head. ‘Look, I’ll help.’ She began unlacing the bodice again.

  ‘Stop,’ Anthrom said, but she didn’t heed him. ‘I said, stop.’ He took her hand.

  ‘But we have to.’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘We are prisoners
here, Anthrom!’ She shook off his hand, but at least she’d stopped. ‘That part was true. They’ll hurt us if we don’t. They’ll hurt me. I’m sorry for how I treated you, please.’

  ‘Listen, stop babbling. You aren’t sorry. You meant everything you said. And it was all true.’ He paced for a moment, while she looked on frantically. ‘I am not a prisoner,’ he said, eventually. ‘I don’t…we don’t have to do anything. I just can’t send you back until morning. That’s all.’

  Miriell thought it through, eyes jumping. She nodded. ‘Yes, that could work. You would do that?’

  Anthrom led her to his seating area, to the nice large sofa, helped her arrange some cushions and laid the blanket over her. She was warm from the wine, and he could tell she would sleep easily. He was already thinking about how he could actually spend the night.

  ‘Sleep here,’ he said. ‘I will leave you alone and you can leave in the morning.’

  ‘You won’t leave without me?’

  ‘I’ll be in my bedchamber.’

  Miriell looked at him, searching his eyes, frowning slightly.

  ‘Did I misjudge you, Anthrom?’

  He shook his head just a little, blinked.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, almost inaudible.

  Anthrom left her and closed the door when he was inside his bedchamber. He caught his reflection, in the large mirror once again. He stared at himself for a long moment. He felt, what, relief? Somehow glad, proud of himself for the first time in as long as he could remember, and yet melancholy all at once.

  He had done the right thing, at the end at least.

  The night was his again, and he didn’t have to feel guilty that he’d sent her out to be whipped. Let her sleep.

  Even better, he’d disobeyed Noctiluca.

  It wasn’t about Miriell, it was about him.

  And her visit had served more than one purpose. She had not seen through his deception.

  Anthrom set about experimenting with his new powers long into the night.

  *

  Anthrom was woken by a summons to Noctiluca’s throne room.