by Morgan Rice
Before, they had been engaged in a desperate battle for survival, just trying to put off the moment of the enemy’s victory for as long as possible. Now, it felt as though they had the advantage. They could do this.
“Push forward!” Ceres called to the men there. “Take your victory!”
They roared in response and attacked.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
No one recognized Athena on her walk to the castle. Once, that would have been unthinkable. It even hurt her pride a little now. Yet she wasn’t the same woman she’d been when she was queen of the Empire. She was a hardened thing now, a weapon with only one purpose.
Revenge.
Stephania had taken her Empire from her. She had taken the castle and cast Athena out, to run and hide from the invaders. She would pay for that, and she would do it with her life.
Around her, the armed forces of three Stones of Felldust fought in running battles and sudden ambushes. They killed one another and plundered whatever else they wanted. Already, half of Delos seemed to be ablaze as they wiped one another out. Athena kept walking, avoiding the violence as best she could. Let them kill one another. Her battle lay ahead.
Athena didn’t need some secret door to get into her former home. Instead, she merely approached one of the side doors, looking suitably furtive, and hammered on it until guards opened it.
“Messages,” she murmured, keeping her head lowered, “for Lady Stephania.”
This was the danger point. If one of them recognized their former queen, then there was a good chance that Athena would die.
“You’ll be lucky,” one said. “You’ll take them to her handmaidens, like everyone else.”
Athena bobbed what she hoped was an acceptable curtsey and slipped inside. Her fear now was that the guards might try to accompany her, but they were busy watching the chaos in the rest of the city. Athena didn’t blame them. Delos was falling apart below, turning into something empty of everything but scavengers and the destitute.
The castle was little better. Athena saw a few guards in the old colors of the Empire, and a few more faces she recognized as those of former nobles or handmaidens of Stephania. Athena could see how many of them still wore the chains of slaves, rather than the rich silks they’d worn under the Empire. There was a possibility in that, but there was at least one thing that Athena wanted to do first.
She crept through the castle, and now Athena used the forgotten passages as often as the more open ones. She made her way to the royal chambers first, and there was no sign of Stephania there, but there was the old crown of the Empire, set aside as if it were a worthless bauble by the invaders. Presumably Irrien, and then Ulren, had spared it from their looting so that they could keep it for themselves. Athena lifted it and settled it on her brow, looking around the chambers.
There were so many memories here. There were memories of her husband, and her child. There were memories of arguments, of political conflicts… but also of joyous moments, and those hurt just to think about them.
She went down to the throne room next, and again, the emptiness of the building seemed to echo around her. Athena lowered herself onto the throne, and she didn’t feel the satisfaction she should have. This didn’t feel like taking back what was hers. Instead, it felt like just another loss.
It was a loss that Stephania would pay for along with all the others.
Athena went down to the dungeons first. There were guards there still, but not as many as there should have been, just a pair who had found torturers’ hoods from somewhere, and who seemed to be laughing to themselves at the power they held over the prisoners there.
Athena barely bothered with subtlety. There was no time for it now, and with the crown still perched atop her head there was little chance of it succeeding. She simply walked up to them, palming a dagger and waiting for her chance.
“What is it?” the nearest of them demanded, and then froze as he saw Athena there. “Wait, you’re—”
Athena cut his throat before he could finish the thought, then turned to the other man. He was big, and strong, but his first instinct was to grab for her, and that did nothing to keep her from thrusting the knife into him. She let him fall, and then took his keys.
There weren’t as many people in the cells as there might once have been, but there were still plenty for Athena’s needs. Men and women who had obviously suffered at the hands of the thugs outside. Athena opened the doors, one by one, letting them come outside. Once they were gathered, she started to talk.
“Stephania put you in here,” she said. “Stephania had you tortured and beaten, humiliated and prepared for execution. She cast me onto the streets to die. She took my city from me. She took my life from me. But she has made a mistake. She has sent most of those with her out to fight in a pointless battle. The ones remaining… well, we can deal with them.”
One of the prisoners blinked in the light, apparently not understanding. “What do you want? What does that have to do with us? I was just ordinary. I was nobody.”
“Until she took you,” Athena said. “Now, you matter. But you can walk away. Give up your chance for revenge. Or you can come with me.”
They came; of course they did. Athena had spent enough time among the broken and the dispossessed to know how to speak to them. They rose out of the dungeon, taking weapons from the dead guards, and the first time they came to one of Stephania’s handmaidens, they seemed poised, ready to fall on her and tear her apart.
Athena stepped forward instead. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Mia, my… your majesty.”
“You know who I am then?”
The woman nodded.
“And you serve Stephania? You were one of her spies, her killers, her confidantes?”
Again, that brought a nod.
“You were a noble too,” Athena said, and this time it wasn’t a question, “or something close to it. Yet now… because of her, you ended up in chains. You ended up as the plaything of Felldust’s warriors. And you still wear those chains. Stephania will never take them from you.”
“And you will?” the woman countered.
Athena shook her head. “You’re going to take them from yourself. Join us, help us to finish this. Don’t you want revenge for all the pain she has caused you?”
Mia stood there for a moment, obviously thinking about it. Athena wasn’t surprised at all when the young woman stepped over to stand with the others. Their group went on until they found the next of Stephania’s nobles, and the next.
Stephania had done this to her once, stealing loyalty out from under Athena. That only worked when you gave people something better, though. When all Stephania had given them was slavery, was it any wonder that they came to Athena’s side, one by one?
A small number resisted. Those, her followers killed without mercy, but there were so few of them that it hardly mattered. The people Stephania had hurt joined with her, one by one, swelling her crowd of followers until it filled the lower spaces of the castle.
“To the doors,” Athena ordered, and they followed her there even if they didn’t understand. The guards on the doors threw down their weapons at the sight of so many people descending on them, and found themselves quickly pushed aside, absorbed into the milling mass of discontent.
Athena threw open the doors, and her people were waiting for her.
They’d come in spite of the violence of the city. Maybe because of it, since it left them with nowhere else to go. There were those who were loyal to the old Empire, and those who merely wanted any opportunity to cast off their shackles. Several of them were already bloody, as if they’d killed their enslavers on the way.
Athena stood there before them like the queen she’d once been, but could never truly be again. She spread her hands in welcome, inviting them into a place she would have once fought tooth and nail to keep them out of.
“My friends. You know me. You can see who I was, but you also know that I’ve suffered, as you have. You
know I have as much reason to hate the invaders, to hate the woman who married one of them, as you do. Some of you may have reasons to hate me too. Save them for tomorrow. For today, Stephania is above. I intend to finish her once and for all. Are you with me?”
They yelled their support, and Athena let herself be carried along on the tide of them as they headed up through the castle.
Stephania wouldn’t know what hit her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Telum waded ashore on Haylon and started killing straight away. It seemed like the natural thing to do. He plunged his sword through a man’s chest, stepped around a pole arm head and crushed another’s skull with a kick.
He was in the right place; the battle told him that much. So did the wash of death energy that had flowed over the water as Telum had guided his boat in to shore. He had felt the edge of it, catching some of the power and drinking it down the way he had with Daskalos’s life.
Now he cut his way through the battle, working his way along the harbor. He killed anyone who came close, irrespective of the colors they wore over their armor. There was a simplicity in that: Telum had no side, and so he took whatever deaths the world sent his way.
He danced along the lines of soldiers, his armor protecting him from the few blows fast enough to reach him. His sword felt as though it barely touched flesh, and that flesh gave way to its razor sharpness. Men fell around him, dying in droves.
There was more that Telum could do, now that he’d swallowed the life of the sorcerer. He gestured, and a dozen men stared straight ahead, seeing fantasies that only made sense in their weak minds. They lunged forward together, striking at imaginary opponents, or at one another. Telum stepped past them as they did it, killing one almost on a whim.
There was nothing whimsical about his progress, though. Now that he was close, the impulse Daskalos had given him to kill thrummed through him, drawing him on. Telum hated that feeling. It was like being led by a ring through the nose, and he was no bull off to slaughter.
For the moment, he took his anger out on the men and women nearby. He punched one man hard enough to shatter his armor, snatched up a knife and threw it into a woman’s throat with pinpoint accuracy. He paused for a moment, drinking in the thrill of the violence, then leapt over the head of a would-be foe, releasing him from his body with a sweep of his sword.
Telum almost wept with joy at the freedom he was giving those around him; the sheer gift of it something he could barely hope to aspire to. He parried as three men closed in on him, trapping him in the space between two houses. Telum ignored them, striking out at the wall instead and bringing it down in a shower of rubble that all but buried them.
Again, he envied them their freedom as they died.
A flaming jar of oil landed nearby, the explosion of its shards almost beautiful in the slow moving space Telum occupied as he fought. He curled his head down, letting his armor protect him, not even knowing if the attack had been aimed at him or just flung in the general direction of those he was fighting. It didn’t matter. When another pot came flying in, Telum caught it easily, then threw it back in the direction from which it had come, watching a catapult go up in flames in the distance.
Telum advanced like an arrow shot toward his target, not caring now if he stopped to finish those he fought, or if they even had enough time to register him coming at them before he cut them down. Even that image wasn’t one that pleased him though. An arrow was just a tool, a thing shot from a bow, not the hand aiming it.
If he could have, Telum would have stopped right there and refused to go on. He even tried it, hopping up to a rooftop and forcing himself to stay still, even though the urge to move and kill built in him like a spark turning into a flame. It was a flame that burned through his mind, and Telum screamed in defiance as he tried to contain it.
There was no hope for that, though. He had the strength to shatter bones and fight off illusions, but that was a very different thing from trying to resist Daskalos’s instructions. The sorcerer had said it again and again. He’d even put it into Telum’s name. He’d forged him to be a weapon, and he’d bound him to a single purpose.
Even Telum couldn’t fight the very essence of what he was.
He saw the man he was supposed to kill below, cradling a woman to him as she died. It seemed like a strange thing to do, unless he was trying to absorb the force of her life, and somehow, Telum suspected that he wasn’t trying to do that. Stranger still, the man seemed to be crying at the woman’s death. Why would someone feel sadness at another’s death? It made no sense.
There was no need to think about it, though, because now Telum could see the man he was meant to kill. He could end this desperate flame of need that burned through his brain. More than that, he would be in a position to find the girl whose power he could feel flaring around the battle and take that power for himself. Put like that, his next move was obvious.
He dropped from the roof.
Telum landed lightly, padding over to the spot where his enemy still knelt. He saw Thanos rise, holding onto a sword for balance. Once again, Telum found his mind consumed by all the ways in which he might kill this man, from snatching up a knife and throwing it to confusing the minds of those around him to think that his target was a monster to kill. In amongst all those considerations, though, was one other thought.
He knew this man. He knew who he was.
Telum stalked forward, moving slowly, keeping his sword drawn. There was no need now to fight his way through to this foe when he could simply walk. As if Telum’s very presence drew his gaze, Thanos looked up as he approached, and Telum saw him frown in confusion.
What did that confusion mean? Was Thanos just reacting to the sight of an armed man approaching him with obvious purpose, or was it more than that? Was there some hint of recognition there? The same kind of recognition that burned through Telum, pushing forward the sorcerers’ compulsion even as Telum fought to slow himself down.
Memories came to Telum, of things he couldn’t possibly have seen. He saw his mother, left by these docks, in almost this spot. He saw the death of a king. He saw Thanos fleeing while his mother screamed for help.
Telum had learned to see through the sorcerer’s illusions, but he knew that these were true things, things hidden deep in himself, even if it had been Daskalos who had put them there.
“Who are you?” Thanos asked. He stood, holding out a hand as if he could order Telum to stop. “Tell me who you are!”
He turned back to Thanos slowly, drawing the sword that Daskalos had given him. A flicker of energy sent confusion into the men around him, making it so that they wouldn’t interfere. Telum smiled like the face of death itself.
“Hello, Father,” he said, and sprang forward to attack.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Stephania stood at her balcony and watched the destruction of Delos without regret. She watched the flames below, the crumbling of walls, the deaths in the street without betraying so much as a flicker of emotion. Somewhere below her, one of Ulren’s men screamed as he died at the hands of his enemies.
Stephania ignored it. She even enjoyed it. Just a short while ago, this had been a city under the control of an invader. Before that, the Empire was a stilted place, where the chances of achieving real power were negligible.
Stephania had heard of plants in the Southlands that used forest fires to spread their seeds, sprouting up only as the flames wiped away everything that was in their way. Right then, Stephania felt like one of those seeds, and the fires below were merely ridding the world of all the things that would stop her growing.
The destruction below was becoming absolute. It wasn’t just the flames, or the violence as the different factions from Felldust slaughtered one another, or the deliberate tearing down of buildings by scavengers. Stephania could see people leaving, even the desperate abandoning the city now.
Good. It was better off without their kind.
Given time, she would rebuild Delos, and she would
do it her way. She would take a city that had been venal and cruel, dirty and poorly ordered, and she would turn it into something glorious. The people who earned a place in her new city would find it a utopia that was the glory of the world. She would even rename it, wiping away the traces of the past as she created something better.
Stephania snapped her fingers at the closest of her servants. “Tell the guards to make sure that the doors are secure,” she said. “Now that the violence has turned against them, I’m sure some of Ulren’s men will try to get in.”
She turned to the others there. Some were former nobles, some former handmaidens, some just servants who had proven themselves useful. Right then, it didn’t matter what they had been. They were all cogs in her greater plan now. She left them their slave chains as a reminder of that. When they fulfilled their roles, when they obeyed her out of love as much as fear, they could have their freedom.
“You,” she said, pointing. “I will require an inventory of exactly what remains within the castle. Food stores are the most important for now, but we will also need wealth for later.” She pointed again. “You, send messages to the outlying corners of the Empire, telling them that Queen Stephania has returned and freed them from the yoke of the invader.” It was heavy-handed, but this was no time for subtlety. People remembered the stories that were told loudest, rather than the ones that were true.
She went on, giving orders for the rebuilding of her spy networks, and the rationing of their stocks until the last invaders were gone from the city. They would need to hire mercenaries to protect the city against any fresh threats, but even if the First Stone’s forces came back, they would be more fragmented now without their leader.