by Morgan Rice
No, she’d betrayed it a long time before, when she’d lied. The fact that she was still pregnant proved that. The message she’d sent Elethe with had been a fabrication, there to trap Thanos in some web. When Felene thought of the two of them together, probably laughing at her foolishness, it was enough to make red rage boil up in her.
Felene had sworn oaths in her time, on gods and men and more things. She hadn’t always been that good at keeping them, but she knew the way it went. There was a way of doing these things, swearing them with blood and bone and strong drink. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it properly.
Blood was easy enough. Blood just meant reaching around to the spot where the knife had gone into her, coming back smeared with red that seemed too bright in the sunlight of the beach. She summoned the faces of her would-be killers to mind and closed her hand.
“Vengeance.”
Bone was harder, but the dead, reptilian shape of the crocodile was still there, and in any case, this was the kind of beach where dead things like her washed up. It didn’t take that long to find the remains of some dead bird, long since picked clean by its fellow scavengers. Felene crawled to it, fastening a hand on it.
“Vengeance.”
As for strong drink…
Felene crawled back to the cask, clawing at a spot where she could see a cork bung protruding. She used the little strength she had remaining to pull it free, cupping her hands beneath to receive the wine, or rum, or dark brandy.
“Three times I swear vengeance and… damn it! Water?”
An hour ago, she would have killed for water. Wasn’t it just the way of things? She lay back on the sand, looking up. Wasn’t it just the way her life was going these days? Still, water was like vengeance, she decided as her eyes started to close.
She would take what she could get.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lucious strode along the corridors of Felldust’s five-sided tower, almost pushing past the servant who led him in the direction of its council chambers.
They kept you waiting long enough, his father’s voice whispered in his ear.
Oh, the servants had talked about extending every courtesy to him, but they’d made a poor show of it. He’d had wine, and a room more suited to some passing merchant. Even the slaves he’d seen had been gone before he could have any fun with them.
Perhaps they heard about you.
Now, though, the servant ahead of him led him up a spiral staircase to the spot where a set of double doors closed together in a pentagon with a stone mask carved at each of the points. There were no guards at the door, which Lucious found a little surprising. A leader always had enemies.
“The First Stone will see you now,” the servant said, then turned and left without so much as opening the doors for Lucious. Did he expect a king to open his own doors now?
He did, but with bad grace. Not least because the heavy stone of the doors meant he had to set his shoulder to them in order to get them to move.
The room beyond must have taken up the whole space of that level of the tower. Its sides followed the outer walls of the tower, rising in unadorned dark stone that seemed far too grim for a space where rulers gathered. There should have been gold there. There should have been silks.
There should have been a throne, but instead, there was a five-sided stone table, with five chairs of blackened wood set around it. The table was the one place where gold shone, lines of it poured into grooves of the stone in what seemed to Lucious like abstract patterns. It took him a moment to realize that it was a map that sat there, showing Delos and Felldust along with the southern lands and the frozen wastes.
Places that you will never rule, his father’s voice said.
Only one of the chairs around the table was occupied, the man there looking at Lucious evenly as he walked into the council chamber. Even if the servant hadn’t said who was waiting for him, Lucious would have recognized Irrien, the First Stone.
He was dark-haired and bronze-skinned, broad-shouldered, younger than Lucious might have thought, with the kind of strength to him that could easily have run to fat in another man, but in him just spoke of power. He had looks that might have come from a bard’s story, and Lucious had heard plenty of how he had taken his position as much through his ability to inspire as through his strength of arms. His clothes were of dark velvet and leather, and he wore gloves despite being indoors. A scarf hung loose around his throat, but Lucious guessed that he would pull it up whenever he went outside, to keep out the endless dust. A blade in a black leather sheath sat on the table, large enough that Lucious doubted he could have wielded it. He wore no crown, just a fragment of polished stone on a chain that looked as though it would fit into a groove on the table.
It’s all he needs.
He said something in a language Lucious didn’t speak.
“First Stone Irrien?” Lucious said in the Empire’s tongue. “I am Lucious, King of the Empire, son of—”
“I know who you are,” Irrien replied in a voice that carried through the room. “I know what you are, too.”
Lucious moved to sit down at one of the other chairs around the table. He had his hand on it before he saw Irrien shaking his head.
“I wouldn’t. Sit in a stone’s chair and you’re as good as challenging him for his position. Helten commands more than enough thugs to make that unwise.”
Do it, his father’s voice urged. I’d like to see you fight one of the stones.
“You’d have me stand?” Lucious demanded. “I am a king! One to whom Felldust has sworn its friendship as an ally.”
“You’re lucky I don’t make you kneel,” Irrien said. He stood then, and Lucious found himself looking up at the other man. “There, is that better? Why don’t you beg for what you came to beg for?”
“I do not beg,” Lucious said, his fists balling almost unconsciously.
“Go ahead,” Irrien said. “If you wish to fight me, we can fight. Men have tried it before. When I slew my father, it was in a fair duel, with all the people of the dust looking on.”
Which makes it all so much better.
“I didn’t—” Lucious began, but he couldn’t find the words to finish it in the face of the other man’s gaze.
“Don’t take me for an idiot,” Irrien said. “You think I don’t have spies? You think there isn’t a collection of ravens carrying messages to this tower? You murdered your father. Now, I’m not judging. A man must be practical about these things. But I have little time for liars.”
Lucious could feel his anger rising, and the worst part of it was that he knew the other man had provoked it deliberately. He wouldn’t give the First Stone of Felldust the satisfaction of provoking him into attacking.
“There is no need for us to be at odds,” Lucious said with a forced smile. “I came here to ask for Felldust’s help, as an ally of the Empire. I want you to help me take back the Empire’s throne, and crush the traitors who have taken it away from its rightful rulers.”
“It’s true that we have been allies,” Irrien said. He walked to one of the room’s windows, gesturing for Lucious to follow.
Maybe he wants to throw you out.
Lucious considered it for a moment, then went over. He would not show fear.
“What do you see out there?” Irrien demanded.
Lucious looked. The city spread out below them, the dust tipping down onto it as the wind blew.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I see the city. I see dust.”
“That’s right,” Irrien said. “A whole land of black dust, where people fight every day for what they have. A city where there are so many factions even I can’t keep track of them. No one holds anything here by right. They hold it because they are strong, or cunning, or clever enough to hold it. Those who are too weak end up dead, or chained in some slaver’s pit.”
“I am not weak,” Lucious snapped. “People have conspired against me!”
Mostly your own stupidity.
&n
bsp; “Oh, I’m sorry,” Irrien replied. “I didn’t realize. You’ve had it so hard, after all. Poor Prince Lucious, who was born with merely all the wealth of the Empire at his command, and who managed to throw it away. Who didn’t realize that cruelty should have a point, and that even a dog will bite if kicked enough. Who killed the last strong king the Empire had, and lost the throne to a girl. A pitiful child of a king who has been blundering around my city, speaking no languages but his own and getting into trouble.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Lucious said, and stepped back.
The other man’s hand fastened on his shoulder, and the grip was hard enough to hurt.
“Let me tell you about my life, King Lucious. I was born into one of the dust tribes, scratching a living as raiders and herders in the waste. My father was a chief, but he was a man of no ambition. We caught a scholar out in the wilderness, and he wanted to sell her for some meager profit. I gave him half the horses I owned for her, and I whipped her each day for some new piece of knowledge. I learned the ways of the city. I learned languages and mathematics and history. I saw how much there was in the world.”
“And you fled to the city with her as your lover?” Lucious guessed. “Is that how this story goes? The poor, innocent young man in the city, abandoned by the slave he freed out of love?”
You really have listened to too many stories, his father’s voice echoed in his mind.
He heard Irrien laugh. “She ran out of things to teach. I strangled her so that no one else could learn all I had. Then I decided that my father was a fool. I took the tribe from him in open combat. Then I took the next tribe, and the next. I came to the city with them, and for a time I played at being a mercenary for better men. Then I decided I was the better man, and I took the seat of the First Stone.”
“It sounds as though you’re a man after my own heart,” Lucious said, because he could recognize something in that story. There was a ruthlessness there he liked.
“What would I want with your heart except to feed it to the sand lizards?” Irrien countered. “More importantly, why would I want to give you an Empire, when I have had to fight for all I have?”
“Because then you would have a friend on the Empire’s throne,” Lucious tried.
He saw Irrien shrug. “A man like you is no one’s friend, and I am not some foolish boy who lashes out at random until the rebellion strikes at him. I can make friends with them as easily as you.”
He has a point.
“And will they give you half the gold of the Empire?” Lucious asked.
He saw the other man cock his head to one side. “Half the gold of the treasury, or...”
“Half the gold, half the taxes for ten years, and preferential trade rights after that,” Lucious said. “I’m generous to those who help me.”
“And yet, here you are alone,” Irrien said. Even so, Lucious could see the man considering. Everyone gave in to their greed or their fear eventually. “You know, when you first came here, I thought you would be looking for sanctuary. We get them sometimes. There was a countess from one of the free states, who asked for all the assistance I could give after one of their endless squabbles. Demanded to live like a queen.”
“And what became of her?” Lucious asked.
“Her slave chains were golden, at least,” Irrien replied. “You understand that I have to put this to the full council? Even the First Stone cannot act alone.”
“Of course,” Lucious said. Trust barbarians to have such foolish customs. “When can they—”
Irrien clapped his hands, and the doors opened. Four figures in dark robes walked in, taking the other seats at the table. They put fragments of stone into grooves designed for them. Lucious knew then that this would go whichever way Irrien said.
“Our guest tells me that he will give us half the gold of the Empire for our help in getting it back,” Irrien said.
One of the others, a woman with hair of steel gray, looked over at Lucious. “It sounds like a good deal. Can he be trusted?”
Of course you can’t.
“Not even remotely,” Irrien said with a flash of teeth. “Which is why I have a better proposal. The Empire is weak, and we do have the army to take it. So why not take it all?”
“What?” Lucious demanded. “You can’t! That is my—”
“Seconded,” a fat man with a trident beard said, raising a hand. “In favor?”
One by one, the others raised theirs.
“You can’t do this!” Lucious stormed. “I am the king! I am!”
You wouldn’t know how to be king if someone spent a lifetime teaching you.
“What do we do with him?” a thin-faced man with rings in his ears asked.
Lucious suddenly realized how vulnerable he was there. He couldn’t hope to fight his way clear of this tower.
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll tell us all the Empire’s weaknesses in exchange for his life,” Irrien said. “Won’t you, King Lucious?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Thanos stood looking back toward Delos over the stern of the ship, as if by doing so he might pull Ceres to his side. He wished he could.
Of course, if he somehow managed it, that wouldn’t solve anything between them. It wouldn’t change the fact that he’d gone to Delos to save Stephania. That he’d married her before that. That he’d loved her.
The reality of that weighed in Thanos’s heart like a stone. Every pull of the oars seemed to jerk at him, both because it took him further away from Ceres and because it seemed like a reminder of how broken things were with her.
“You’ve been moping there like that almost since we set off,” a voice said. “Which is fine, but mopping’s more use if you feel like it.”
Thanos turned and found himself facing the ship’s captain, who stood in his shirt sleeves. To Thanos’s surprise, he leaned on a mop as though he truly intended to swab the deck like one of his crew. Or as if he meant Thanos to do it.
Thanos ignored him. He would normally have been more courteous, but right then he felt stretched thin, rubbed right to the edge of his patience. Silence was the only thing he had left.
The man shrugged and went back to his mopping.
“What is it then?” he asked. “Woman trouble?”
Thanos’s hands tightened on the rail, holding him up.
“We all saw the way Ceres left,” the sailor said. “Looks as though you argued pretty bad.”
Thanos couldn’t hold himself back then. He grabbed the other man, spinning him to face him, and somehow they both ended up holding the mop between them, struggling over it the way Thanos might have fought for a weapon.
“You don’t know anything,” Thanos said, not caring if the other sailors heard him. “You don’t know her, you don’t know me.”
He wanted to strike out then. To hit and hit until there was nothing left around him. Except… that would have made him just like Lucious. This wasn’t him. This wasn’t the kind of thing he did.
“You realize that we look as though we’re about to start dancing?” the captain asked with a flash of gold-toothed smile.
Thanos felt the strength fade out of him and he let the mop go. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Probably you weren’t thinking,” the captain said. “A man doesn’t, when it all boils up inside him.”
Thanos shook his head. That was no kind of answer. “It’s not what I do. It’s not who I am.”
He’d always been in control. He’d always avoided violence wherever he could. This really wasn’t him.
He saw the captain shrug. “From what I hear, you’ve had plenty of things to push you. I saw it sometimes on the oars. A man would seem peaceful, calm as you like, then something would crack in him. He’d lash out even though he knew they’d cut him down or nail him to the mast.”
Thanos paused, trying to make sense of it. Did the rebellion use captains who lashed on oar slaves? Had this man stood over the sweating, agoniz
ed rows, ordering more pain?
“You see, that’s how I know you’re a good man,” the captain said. “Your face right now. Another man might not have cared who I was, or what I’d done. But you do, don’t you?”
Thanos tried to say it as carefully as he could. After all, he was aboard this man’s ship. But that just meant he needed to know more about who he was.
“Yes,” he admitted. “I care.”
He saw the captain nod. “You think I got to look this way by ordering others at their oars?”
Thanos paused as the implications of that started to sink in.
“You were an oar slave?” he asked.
The captain nodded and headed up to the rail. “Eventually, when I got too old and my first master grew tired of me. He bought me as a young man, after I was taken as a thief. He gave me a fresh tattoo every time he thought of a new punishment for me.”
He pulled off his shirt then, and Thanos saw the endless flow of the tattoos there, mixed in with scars and burn marks. Each showed some torture in detail that made him wince to look at it.
“It looks as though I have no right to complain,” Thanos managed, after staring at the other man for several seconds. “I’m so sorry.”
“No!” the captain said. “That is not what I am saying. It is not about getting your pity, or saying that you shouldn’t be hurt. I have no more right to judge your pain than you have to judge anyone else’s.”
It looked to Thanos as though he knew more about pain than most people.
“Then what?” Thanos asked. “What are you trying to say?”
The captain spat over the side.
“I’m saying that if you harm a man enough, he will not act the way he thinks he ought to. From what I hear, you’ve been through a lot, but you think you’re still exactly the same as you were?”