by Morgan Rice
“What will you do?” the queen countered. “Kill me? Turn me to stone? Thrust a blade through my heart? I was dead the moment you took the city. I’m the woman who rules the Empire you despise. I’m the one who condemned your beloved Thanos to die.”
It sounded almost as though the queen wanted her to do it. Maybe she just feared the kind of death she would have prepared for anyone who opposed her. Maybe she thought that a sword thrust would be cleaner.
“I saved Thanos,” Ceres said. She shook her head. “There’s nothing else you can do to hurt us, Athena, and I’m not going to kill you. We’ll imprison you. Put you away somewhere you can’t do any harm.”
Athena laughed at that. “You think I can’t do any harm?”
Ceres spread her hands. The former queen was there, in chains, with no way of doing anything else. She had no strength, no allies. Nothing but words.
“Well, let’s try this,” Athena said. “Do you know why Thanos came back to Delos?”
Ceres only hesitated for a second, but it was enough.
“It wasn’t for you,” Athena said. “It was for Stephania. He came to save her. Her and the child she carries. His child.”
Ceres went cold at the sound of those words. “You’re lying.”
Of course she was lying. Lying was all Athena did. Yet why did she feel so empty at the sound of it?
“Lying? But it’s no more than the natural thing a man would do for his wife. You know about that part, of course… or maybe you don’t. Oh, this is wonderful.”
No, Ceres hadn’t known, and now that she thought about it, she realized that Thanos hadn’t said anything about Stephania. He’d told her so much about what had happened to him, but now, Ceres could see the gaps in all that he’d said. Gaps Stephania fit into far too easily.
She pushed Queen Athena back down to her knees far too easily, feeling the anger rise up in her, and the power with it.
“Do it,” Athena said. “Show the world what you are. What we both are.”
Ceres stepped away, because she didn’t trust herself to touch Athena again. “Guards!”
The rebels came running, looking as though they expected to find a battle, their expressions not improved by whatever they saw on Ceres’s face.
“Take her away,” Ceres said. “Put her somewhere safe, and see she isn’t harmed. We are not like her.”
“Oh,” Athena said as the guards started to drag her to her feet. “You’ll be far worse than I could ever be.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Stephania rode in abject discomfort, the heat of Felldust beating down on her. Only the thought of what lay at the end of her journey kept her from ordering the slaves who carried the palanquin she rode in to stop, turn around, and take her back in the direction of the coast.
“Should I fetch you some water, my lady?” Elethe asked. “You look parched.”
Stephania took it gratefully. Since they’d landed here, her servant seemed to be going out of her way to make sure that Stephania had everything she needed. Maybe it was because Stephania was pregnant, or maybe it was because she was trying to make up for how close she’d gotten to the thief, Felene. In Stephania’s eyes, she’d already done it by helping to kill her, but there was no reason to tell her handmaiden that. Better to keep her ready to serve.
Stephania heard a roar from above, and ducked back into the cover of the palanquin as a creature buzzed low over the caravan. It looked like a leathery triangle of flesh, larger than a man, the black dust that seemed to cover everything here trailing in its wake and dripping from a long, spiked tail.
“Sand spiker!” someone called, and the mercenaries with the caravan grabbed their spears, threatening the thing as it flew until it plunged into the dust by the side of the wide track they traveled along.
It had been like this for much of the journey. Felldust was a strange land, the relentless black dust broken only by pockets of green, with half the farms there consisting of crops growing up out of the desolate, dark landscape. The beasts there seemed to be suited to the blasted nature of the place. There were blood-red lizards as big as wolves that stalked the caravan, looking for scraps of meat. There were strange plants that grew up out of the dust, translucent as glass, and in the distance Stephania saw a bird circling that she’d seen closer the day before, big enough to blot out the sun.
Getting here had been anything but easy. There had been the heat, and the dangerous beasts, and the endless, choking dust. There had even been riders in the distance, although Elethe had told her that wasn’t a problem.
“We have enough mercenaries to slaughter them and they know it. Felldust is a place where what matters is the power you have, so we prepare.”
“Is anywhere any different?” Stephania had countered. If anywhere was, she hadn’t found it. You could pretend that laws and morals were enough, but ultimately, everyone was working for their own advantage.
The caravan showed that as clearly as any of it. Elethe’s uncle had found a caravan master who clearly had no scruples about what he took across Felldust. Yes, there were spices and bolts of cloth there, but Stephania also picked out the scents of lungmist and gods’ garden, poisons in all but the smallest doses, but long used as drugs by the weak-willed. Then there was the line of slaves shuffling along in the dust behind the main caravan, chained to one another and forced to walk by whips. For all its talk of having no kings, Felldust was a land that crushed the weak underfoot even more surely than the Empire.
Another hour of uncomfortable sitting and Stephania saw a settlement loom into view ahead. It wasn’t large, but was ringed by sharp-tipped posts and a ditch obviously designed to keep out unwanted riders. Stephania saw bodies impaled here and there on the posts, presumably as examples to others.
“This is neutral ground,” the caravan master called out, in a warning that was probably intended for his men as much as her. “Anyone who offers violence to a free man here is killed by all.”
They headed into the fortified camp, and Stephania saw traders there of all kinds, but she had no doubt that the place’s main business was in slaves. Pens for them and lines of chains took up much of the space. Other areas seemed to host warriors celebrating whatever raids they’d undertaken, and tents that might have held healers or torturers, armorers or treasure hunters.
Stephania doubted that the sorcerer she sought would be found in such a place, but since the caravan had come to a halt for the caravan master to trade, it made sense to seek out further directions.
“Ask around,” she said to Elethe. “See if you can find out more about the spot where the sorcerer lives.”
“Where the falling sun meets the skulls of the stone dead,” Elethe said with a nod, echoing the words Stephania had gotten from the old witch, Hara. Stephania was impressed that she had remembered it so exactly. “I will find what is needed.”
Stephania waited in the palanquin while her handmaiden went about her business. She had no particular wish to trek about the camp watching the violence and the cruelty there. Oh, she didn’t care one way or the other about the slavers’ business, because that was just the way of the world, but that didn’t mean she needed to watch it.
Finally, Elethe returned, and the excitement on her face said that she’d found something.
“What is it?” Stephania demanded.
“One of the slavers says he has a man who has met the sorcerer,” Elethe said. “I know the stone dead, but he can tell us more.”
That was potentially useful.
“We won’t have to spend days finding the spot where the sun strikes them,” Stephania said. She stood, joining Elethe. “Show me to him.”
She walked through the camp, and she could see the heads of the warriors and slavers snapping around to follow her. She was used to men watching her, but here there was an edge to it that she had only seen before from Lucious.
It made her grateful to finally find the tent she sought, although looking at it reduced that somewhat. It was an extr
avagantly decorated marquee of silks decorated with scenes that made even Stephania want to blush, and two burly guards stood stripped to the waist in the sun, axes strapped to their backs.
“My lady Stephania is here to see Brek,” Elethe said, and the thugs stood there a moment longer before stepping back.
There were two men inside on the rug that formed the floor. One knelt wearing rags, manacles securing his wrists. The other looked the way the men at the door might have after a couple more decades of drinking and riding in the sun. He wore gold ornaments on every limb, and the axe beside him had a haft etched with it.
“You’re Brek?” Stephania asked.
“I am,” he said, gesturing for Stephania to sit. She did, with Elethe standing beside her like a guard.
Stephania had met with many people, in many different circumstances. This was a long way from polite conversations in noble salons.
“My handmaiden tells me that you might have information I require,” Stephania said.
“That is not what I said,” Brek replied. “I said that I had someone who has been where you want to go. And here he is. If you can afford him.”
Stephania should have guessed that part, with a slaver.
“I want to speak with him, not buy him,” Stephania said.
She saw the slaver shrug. “Everything costs.”
Stephania returned the shrug, because the important thing at times like this was not to appear bothered. “How much?”
“Well, perhaps you could see your way to handing over that lovely servant of yours?” the slaver suggested.
Stephania might have considered it under other circumstances, but she did value what was hers. Elethe was a resource to be spent, but not one to be wasted. She took out a small bag of jewels instead. “I don’t know much about your… business, but I’m told that these things are more usually done with gold or jewels.”
“Very well,” Brek said, taking the bag and spilling the contents onto one meaty palm.
Stephania ignored him as he counted, turning her attention to the man in rags. “You have met the sorcerer who lives near the faces of the stone dead?”
The man looked up at her in obvious fear. “I—I can’t—”
“Where do I find him?”
The slave shook his head. “He said if I ever spoke of him—”
Stephania’s already slender patience was rapidly reaching its end. She looked to the slaver. “If he’s mine, there’s nothing to stop me taking him to a torturer? Or from flaying him a little at a time myself?”
“Nothing,” Brek agreed. The slaver seemed to relish the prospect.
“No, please…” the slave said. “He lives… on a twisted mountain beyond the river. Past the meeting place at the far side of the stone dead. They used to lay the dead there. I went up to try to rob the graves, and—”
Stephania saw him grimace, then clutch his chest. He keeled over forward, and Stephania saw something crawl from his mouth. She leapt up with a start as beetles started to cover the carpet, and she heard the slaver swear in the language of one of Felldust’s tribes.
“Sorcery,” he said, spitting on the carpet. “You bring sorcery to my door?”
“And now I’m leaving,” Stephania said. She threw a coin onto the slave’s corpse. “For the trouble of cleaning up the body.”
She did it the way she might have given money to a servant. It was best to remind people of their places.
“Give my regards to your caravan master,” Brek said to Elethe, apparently ignoring Stephania completely. “He’s an old friend.”
She and Elethe hurried back to the caravan, where it seemed that it had completed its business. She looked around from a distance, watching the man Elethe’s uncle had found talking to his men. She saw him glance across to them and smile in a way that made her pause.
“Go to the men,” Stephania said. “Give them a message from me.”
She whispered it to Elethe, who looked at her in surprise.
“Perhaps it will not be necessary,” Stephania assured her. Although Stephania doubted it. She knew what men were like.
She stepped back into her palanquin, waiting as the slaves carrying it brought it on its way again. She settled in with Elethe, waiting for the long journey to follow and making more preparations.
When it stopped after only a few minutes, she knew that she’d been right.
“Be ready for trouble,” she said.
Sure enough, when she stepped out from the palanquin, the caravan master was there, along with a cluster of his men, waiting by the side of the road with set expressions.
“Let me guess,” Stephania said. “We’re now nicely outside the bounds of the neutral territory.”
The man spread his hands. “And Brek has made an offer for you both. A substantial offer.”
“I have one of my own,” Stephania said, using her gloved hand to toss a coin to the man. She watched him catch it.
“You think you have anything I can’t take for… for…”
Stephania watched his eyes widen as the poison took hold.
“My offer isn’t for a dead man,” Stephania said. She turned to the men with him. “And the thing about mercenaries, I find, is that they tend to work for the highest bidder.”
She snapped her fingers, and mercenaries emerged from the wagons, descending on those who’d stood with the caravan master with swords and clubs.
Stephania smiled, watching the carnage.
Nobody could stop her now.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Thanos looked out over the ship’s rail and saw Ceres approaching the docks, his heart leapt. Had she come to see him off on his journey? Had she come to join him, journeying with him to Felldust?
He knew that couldn’t really happen, but even so, he could hope. So soon after finding her again, the last thing he wanted was to leave. Only the thought of the danger Lucious still presented was enough to convince him that he needed to make this journey.
The ship was one of the massive galleys taken from the Empire, crewed by volunteers now rather than slaves. They’d given Thanos a cabin toward the rear, and he went to it now, wanting to meet Ceres somewhere they could be together in private. If this was to be their last time together for a while, Thanos wanted enough peace for it to be special, even if it was in a cabin that was almost bare except for a bed and the trunks that held his armor, clothing, and weapons. He sat on the edge of the bed, imagining how she would look when she came there, with the love in her eyes, and happiness to match his at getting to see one another one more time.
He didn’t expect anger, or hurt, or any of the other things he saw in her expression when she threw open the door to the cabin, standing there against the light, beautiful and hard edged in equal parts.
“Ceres?” Thanos said, standing to meet her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Even as he said it, though, he knew what it had to be. There was only one thing it could be.
“What’s wrong?” Ceres said. He could hear the hurt there behind everything else. “The queen had a lot of things to say about you—and about Stephania.”
He felt his stomach fall, wondering what she could have said. He hardly knew what to say.
“She said that you and Stephania were married,” she added. “That she was pregnant with your child.”
His heart plummeted and his shoulders slumped. What a fool he had been not to tell her himself.
“It’s true,” he said, his voice barely audible.
He looked up and braced himself for the backlash of anger, but the sadness he saw on Ceres’s face was worse.
“You married her? You actually said yes to becoming a husband to that snake?”
Now there was disbelief to go with the hurt.
Thanos did his best to explain. “I thought you were dead.”
“So you moved straight on to her?” Ceres countered.
He did not know what to say; he knew it wasn’t like that, and yet he didn’t know how to f
ully verbalize all that had happened.
“Please, just let me explain,” Thanos said.
He saw Ceres standing there with her arms crossed. He could tell that whatever he said now, there would still be pain for both of them.
“How about you tell me the truth?” Ceres said.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Thanos said.
“You think this doesn’t hurt?” Ceres shot back, and Thanos thought he could see the beginnings of tears in her eyes. “You should have told me all of it, Thanos.”
His head dropped.
“You’re right,” he said. “I should have told you everything. But I was worried about spoiling things. I married Stephania, it’s true. I thought you were dead, and she was the one person who was there for me when you were gone and… I’m not saying any of this right.”
“Keep going,” Ceres said, although there was a dull note there, almost as if she were trying to shield herself from the pain. Thanos could understand that. He would have done anything to keep from hurting her like this.
Anything but tell her the truth in the first place, apparently.
“She was the one helping me to look into who had tried to kill me. I thought it was Lucious, and it felt as though Stephania was the only one I could trust. I think part of it… everyone wanted us to marry anyway, originally, so it seemed almost as if I couldn’t resist the tide…”
Thanos could hear himself getting this wrong. How could fighting his way through enemies be so easy and talking to the woman he loved be so difficult?
“We were married and… and it seemed to take away some of the grief. When I heard that I was to be a father, I was so happy. Then I found out that Stephania was the one who’d tried to kill me.”
Thanos saw the surprise there on Ceres’s face, and he pressed ahead. He needed her to understand what had happened.
“She helped to break me out of the dungeons when they accused me of being a traitor, but by then I’d seen too much of what she was. She’d murdered so many people, and betrayed anyone who got in her way. When I heard you might still be alive, when I heard that she had lied to me about you, then I left her behind for you. I left her to come looking for you. I chose you.”