by Morgan Rice
Guards rushed out onto the sand. Several guided Ceres’s opponent back in the direction of the iron gates. More seized her by the arms, lifting her between them so that her feet dragged on the ground. They fastened shackles to her wrists, not seeming to care about the way the iron bit into her. Ceres wanted to struggle as they dragged her away, but right then she didn’t have the strength. She heard the boos of the crowd follow her from the Stade, down so that she could still hear them as they reached the practice rooms. She half expected to be unchained there, or perhaps to be dragged back to her chambers. Instead, the guards held her in place, still in her chains, until the door to the outside opened.
Stephania and Lucious came into the room together. Lucious still looked angry to Ceres, as though he couldn’t accept that he’d been cheated of his chance to see her die. Stephania looked pleased, even triumphant.
“You should thank me for your life, Ceres,” Stephania said. “After all, I did just save it.”
“Why?” Ceres asked. She saw Stephania nod to the guards, and they shoved her roughly to her knees.
“You will speak to me with the proper deference, peasant,” Stephania said. She paused. “No, you’re not a peasant are you? You’re a slave.”
Ceres started to shake her head, but Lucious stepped forward and struck her.
“That felt good. If we had time, I’d do a lot more, slave. I couldn’t believe it when Stephania told me what you were.”
“But it’s true,” Stephania said. “And soon, everyone will hear it. Ceres here is a slave who murdered her owner.”
“I was never owned by anyone,” Ceres shot back. She could feel the anger rising in her. “Lord Blaku had no right to take me.”
Stephania reached out to touch Ceres’s cheek. “You think any of that matters? What matters is that you killed him. What matters is what people will hear.”
Stephania stepped back toward the door, a vicious smile on her face.
“Your death won’t be quick and valiant,” Stephania said. “It will be slow, and painful, and anonymous. Say goodbye to Delos,” she concluded, “and enjoy your trip to the Isle of Prisoners.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Thanos cut his way toward the command post of the Empire’s soldiers on Haylon. A soldier swung a blade at his head and Thanos ducked, striking out with his own weapon to bring the man down. Another ran at him and Thanos disarmed him, shoving him back into the melee around him. He fought and fought, never slowing.
Beside him Akila and his men fought hard, heading for the tents the Empire had erected on the edge of the city. They were easy to make out, because the Empire’s standard hung above them, along with pennants proclaiming General Draco’s presence.
With the Empire’s ships gone, the battle for Haylon hadn’t lasted long. Thanos had been right to guess that without their supplies and their siege weapons, their opponents would be at a disadvantage. The soldiers might have had the numbers, but they had no food and no safe places to sleep. They didn’t know the island, and Akila’s men were experts at springing from hidden spots to attack.
“Keep forward!” Thanos shouted, and to his surprise, the rebels responded. Since the attacks on the ships, there had been no more talk about killing him. Instead, they’d trusted him like one of their own. It had helped that Thanos had fought beside them against the soldiers who still remained, in skirmish after skirmish through a long night of fighting.
Thanos brought down another soldier, doing his best not to kill the man. Even now, it felt wrong to risk killing ordinary men who probably didn’t have a lot of choice about being there. It felt wrong to be killing men who, as their prince, he should have been responsible for. Yet he kept going, because to stand back and let them take the island would have been worse.
“Getting tired yet, Prince?” Akila called out with a grin.
“I can keep going if you can,” Thanos replied, although the truth was that he would have liked nothing better than to stop. It had been a long night of fighting, and now his sword felt as though it had been crafted from lead rather than steel. It was getting harder to swing by the moment.
He didn’t have to keep going, though. The battle ended as swiftly as a summer storm lifting. Thanos saw the few remaining Empire soldiers between the rebels and the command tents throw down their weapons and run. The rebels surrounded the command tents, and less than a minute later, they dragged two figures from them.
General Draco walked straight-backed and proud, so that to Thanos, he looked as though he was marching out for a parade. He paused as he saw Thanos, and Thanos guessed that he was surprised to see him alive. That told Thanos a lot about how much he knew of the assassination attempt. The Typhoon was bloody and bruised, still fighting, but held in place by half a dozen men.
Thanos saw Akila looking over at him.
“You understand that we can’t just let these ones live?” the rebel leader said. “After everything they’ve done to our city, we can’t let them go.”
Thanos understood what Akila was saying. He obviously thought Thanos would try to save the general and the Typhoon the way he’d tried to protect others. Thanos didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped up close to General Draco.
“Draco.”
“Thanos,” the general said. “I’m surprised to see you alive.”
“I’m harder to kill than that,” Thanos said.
The general shrugged. There was an edge of fatalism about it. “I take it that the capture of our ships was due to you? I heard reports, but I wouldn’t have thought you’d be ruthless enough to fire on your own side. You were quite squeamish before, I recall.”
Thanos’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword. “You commanded the deaths of women and children. You encouraged your soldiers to rape and pillage. I don’t like killing, but the world is better off without you.”
The general looked as though he might say something else, but Thanos didn’t give him an opportunity. He did it quickly, before he could stop himself. He thrust up, into the general’s throat and out again, stepping back while Draco stared at him in obvious shock. The general collapsed to his knees, then tumbled forward into the dirt. Thanos moved over to the Typhoon.
“Who ordered you to kill me?” he asked.
The Typhoon stared at him. “You’ll let me live if I tell you?”
“No,” Thanos said. “You’re going to die for all the evil you’ve done here. You’re going to die for trying to kill me. But at least you can die with some honor.”
“What would you know about honor, traitor?” the Typhoon demanded.
Thanos struck out again, this time in a lateral sweep that ended with the huge soldier’s head rolling to the floor. Thanos let his sword fall to land point first in the earth. He should have felt satisfaction at this, or elation at the victory, but as it was it just felt as though a grim chore was complete.
“It seems I didn’t have to worry about you after all,” Akila said, coming forward to clap Thanos on the shoulder. “Well done. Without you, Haylon would have fallen to the Empire by now.”
That was a good thing to be reminded of as Thanos looked out over the death and destruction he’d been a part of. It meant that he could look toward Haylon, where there were fires still burning, and think that it was all worth it.
“I did what I needed to do,” Thanos said.
“You did more than that,” Akila assured him. “You acted the way a true friend would, and we will always think of you that way. No, as more than that. As a brother.”
He embraced Thanos, and Thanos didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t been trying to do anything special. He’d just been trying to do the right thing for the people of Haylon. For free people.
“What now?” Thanos asked. “More ambushes?”
Akila shook his head. “If the Empire soldiers want to run, let them. As for what happens next… well, I was going to ask you that, Prince. Me and my boys owe you a lot, so what do you want to do now?”
Thanos stood t
here, looking over at the tents while he tried to make up his mind. The sea breeze washed away some of the smell of death that surrounded him, but not all of it. Not by a long way.
What did he want? For the past couple of days, it felt as though he’d been running on instinct. Now, though, there was a moment to think, to pause, and to feel. The last part of it was easy, at least. For what seemed like the first time in his life, he knew exactly what he felt.
He stepped forward and grabbed a handful of the Empire’s standard, yanking it down.
“I want revenge,” he said. “I’ve tried so hard to be the kind of prince the Empire needed, and they tried to kill me for it. I want to find out who ordered that.”
“Is that all you want?” Akila asked him.
Thanos shook his head. It wasn’t the only thing. Not by a long way. “I want to find a way to make it stop. They’ve spent their lives hurting the people they’re meant to be ruling on behalf of, building palaces and taking from them. I want to march in there and tear it down around them. I want to change the way the regime treats the people. I want to make sure that people like you are free forever…And I want to see Ceres.”
That burned brighter in him than all the rest of it put together. When he’d thought he was dying, she was what he’d thought of, and now he wanted nothing more than to be able to pull her into his arms. He didn’t care what it took, he needed to get back to her.
“I want to lead your men into the middle of Delos, take the city, and not stop until we’ve wiped away every cruelty in the Empire,” Thanos said.
“You sound determined,” Akila replied.
Thanos was. In that moment, he could have torn down the entire ruling family and led the assault on Delos himself. He saw the rebel leader shake his head though.
“Even if I could persuade my lads to march on Delos now,” Akila said, “it isn’t the right time for it. The Empire is still strong, and the nobles’ grip on it is too firm. This will take more than an army marching in to solve it.”
“What will it take then?” Thanos demanded. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing, Akila.”
“You won’t have to,” Akila promised. “But perhaps you can do more good inside Delos’s court than you can marching on it.”
It took Thanos a moment to understand. “You want me to be a spy for you?”
Akila nodded. “You’re the one man who might have a chance to work for our interests on the inside. You can tell them that you survived the fighting. It might give you a chance to find out everything you want to, and you can warn us if King Claudius wants to send more men to Haylon.”
It made sense, but even so, it was hard. Thanos didn’t like playing the games of court at the best of times. Being there as a spy would only make it worse. He wanted to march in and take his vengeance directly. But the truth was that he didn’t even know who had ordered his death. This might give him a chance to find out, to pave the way for the rebellion…
…and to see Ceres.
That thought was the one that decided it for Thanos. If he could see Ceres again, then the rest of it would be worth it. He could put up with any amount of subterfuge and politics if she was there, and the thought of her waiting was enough to make him want to rush home.
“How will I even get back?” Thanos asked.
“Leave that to us,” Akila said.
It took time, and in that time, the rebels celebrated him. They set fires where the Empire’s tents had been, and those quickly became the center points of a feast. The rebels danced and drank, ate and congratulated one another. Thanos found himself at the heart of it all, unable to go more than a minute or two without one of the rebels clapping him on the back or offering him wine.
They found him a small boat, in the end, with a couple of fishermen from Haylon to crew it. The boat he’d come in on was gone, lost in the fires the rebels had set, but at least this one looked as though it could make the journey. Akila’s men packed it with food and supplies, lining up on the beach to cheer as Thanos boarded.
“Thanos! Thanos!”
Thanos stood there watching them, and he would never have thought that this would feel as if he were leaving a family. He was supposedly going home, but right then, this was the place that felt like home. He watched Akila waving on the sand and Thanos saluted him with his sword, one warrior to another.
He felt the boat lurch as it started to move away. Thanos watched until Akila’s men were out of sight, but quickly turned his thoughts to Delos, and everything he would have to do once he got there. It would be dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than anything else he’d done. All of it would be worth it, though, for one simple reason:
He was going to see Ceres again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ceres stumbled in blackness as they marched her toward the prison ship. Around her, she could hear the jibes and insults of the people she passed. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear their sudden hate and contempt, pouring over her like water in a storm.
Ceres flinched as something struck her, bouncing off her breastplate. It might have been a piece of fruit or a stone, she didn’t know which. Unable to see it and held in place as she was, there was no chance for her to dodge it. Her breastplate and kilt offered some protection, but really just meant that she was easier for the crowd to identify.
“Murderer!”
“Slave!”
The hardest part was hearing the anger in voices that had been calling her name in the Stade just a little while before. Ceres knew that the royals must have started their rumors and their announcements even before her fight in the Stade was finished, because that was the only way it could have spread so quickly.
She felt the pull of metal against her wrists as the guards dragged her along by the shackles that held her. Ceres didn’t fight the movement, but she felt their sudden yanks and jerks against the chains anyway. She heard people laugh as she stumbled, and Ceres knew that was the point. They wanted her humiliated.
Finally they came to a halt, and the guards dragged the hood from her head, leaving her blinking back tears in sunlight that seemed blindingly bright after the darkness before.
A huge shape stood before her, and it took a moment for Ceres to make out the detail of the ship that sat there. It was an ugly hulk of a thing, bulky and round, tattered and with rusting fittings. The prison ship seemed to be designed to hint at the horrors to come on the Isle of Prisoners, even its gangplank seeming like the spine of some long dead creature.
They dragged Ceres up it, and she walked with shuffling steps. She had enough time to look back and see the crowds there, looking out over the sea of angry faces, all there to show their hatred of her. Was it because of the things the royals had said about her, or because she’d lost, or both? She didn’t know.
The gangplank seemed to stretch out forever. Ceres thought about diving from it into the water below, but chained as she was, she would sink instantly, even if she could break away from the guards’ grip.
Her footsteps seemed to shake it, and for a moment Ceres thought that she might tip in anyway. She felt the guards tighten their grips on her and throw her forward, so that she landed on the rough wood of the deck. Above her, black-stained sails lay furled on their masts, while she saw sailors lounging on the deck, watching her the way the crowds had below.
Ceres pulled herself to her feet, but the guards took a grip on her again. They dragged her toward an iron-barred hatch, open to the sky, then threw her through it, so that she stumbled down the steps below. She tried to curl and roll to keep from being hurt, but even so, the impact jarred her.
The first thing to hit her was the smell of too many people pressed together too close, the stink of it sharp and acrid with sweat. There were people huddled down there in shackles and chains. Ceres could see men, women, and children thrown together, with no apparent order or care. Some were attached together in long coffles, while others were bolted to the walls. Ceres found herself wondering where they had all come from
, and what they had done.
Ceres looked up toward the hatch, just in time for one of the guards to spit down after her in contempt.
“Better get comfortable. The Isle of Prisoners will be a whole lot worse.”
***
Ceres didn’t dare sleep as the prison ship rolled and bucked its way across the sea. Instead, she sat watching the other prisoners there, trying to project a sense of strength that would keep the more dangerous ones at bay.
It was a cruel place. Some of those there were probably perfectly normal people: members of the rebellion the Empire didn’t want to kill too quickly, people who had stolen to feed their families, or who had found themselves on the wrong side of the court’s political games. There were others, though, who were far more dangerous. Since she’d been there, Ceres had heard one man boasting about the number of people he’d killed, while there had been another screaming and raging for no apparent reason. Already, Ceres had seen fights, murders, and more down there.
As far as she could tell, the guards had no interest in stopping any of it. When they brought food, they threw it out at random for the people there to fight over. Ceres managed to grab a hunk of bread that landed near her, but there were others who were not so lucky. She saw one man in the faded clothes of a noble being beaten for a crust, the gold brocade on his tunic being ripped away simply because it might have some value. This place seemed to have no rules beyond the strongest taking what they wanted. The violence of the place was enough to make Ceres feel sick that people could treat one another that way.
So Ceres forced her eyes to stay open, trying to keep her back to the bulkhead of the ship, where she could see all the others around her. She was still watching when she saw the girl.
She was young, probably around ten years old or so, and painfully thin. Her dress was torn, and her face smeared with dirt. Her sandy blonde hair was so tangled and dust streaked that it looked brown in places. She was currently crawling along, trying to snatch food from the edges of the melee without being seen.