by Morgan Rice
“Then we all owe them a great deal,” Stephania said. Thanos saw her half close her eyes. “I owe them a great deal. Are they still in Delos?”
Thanos shook his head. “I think they sailed back to Haylon.”
“That’s a pity,” Stephania said. “I would have liked to reward them for bringing you back safely. Someone really sent the Typhoon as an assassin?”
She sounded to Thanos as though she couldn’t quite believe it even now. Maybe she didn’t want to believe it. Stephania was in that side of the court that was nearly oblivious to what was going on outside, not cruel the way some could be, but so self-absorbed that it seemed as though the harsh things out in the world weren’t really happening.
Thanos nodded. “He stabbed me in the back on the beach. I think the idea was that it would look as though I’d been killed in the assault.”
Stephania nodded. “That was what they told us here. They told us that you were the first out onto the beach, cut down by the rebels. They wanted to make us think you’d died some heroic death.”
“You didn’t think I could manage a heroic death?” Thanos asked, but the joke did nothing to lighten the mood.
“When I heard it, it felt as though the whole world was collapsing in on me.” She looked up at him, and Thanos could see the way her breathing quickened. “Can I… can I see what they did to you? It doesn’t seem real somehow without that.”
Thanos only hesitated a moment before lifting his tunic to let her see. It wasn’t the kind of request he would have expected from someone as proper as Stephania, but he could hear the concern there in her voice.
He saw her reach out carefully, even tenderly, to touch the spot where Akila’s men had stitched him back together. He winced reflexively.
“Sorry,” Stephania said. “Does it still hurt?”
“A little,” Thanos said.
She paused. “You said before that you don’t know who sent the Typhoon to assassinate you. Is that true, or were you just holding back so they wouldn’t hear you?”
It caught Thanos a little by surprise that she would realize he might do that. It was easy to forget sometimes that Stephania had grown up in the games of the court, and that even her great beauty hadn’t kept her out of them. If anything, it had probably made her a target for the jealousy of some of the others there.
“I really don’t know,” he admitted. “I plan to find out, though.”
He saw Stephania nod at that. She seemed to consider for a moment. “I want to help you.”
Thanos stared at her in surprise. “You do?”
“Of course I do,” Stephania said. “It was when I thought you were gone. Seeing how close you came to dying like this… I want to find who did this to you, and I want them to pay for it.”
Thanos could hear the determination there, fierce and hard behind Stephania’s otherwise gentle exterior. He hadn’t realized that she cared about him that much. He’d always assumed that the promise of marriage to him was purely political for her.
“I swear to you,” Stephania said. “I will help you to find the person who gave the order for you to be killed.”
Thanos reached out to touch her face. “You’ve always been so good to me,” he said. “Better than I deserve.”
Stephania shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. You were only doing what the king and queen made you do. What matters is that you’re here. You’re alive, and we’re going to find out who tried to do this to you.”
Thanos stood back to look at her then; really look at her. It felt as though he’d never truly seen Stephania before that moment. He’d always seen her as one of the silly young women of the court, too caught up in her own luxurious lifestyle to think about anyone else. He’d assumed that she was vain, selfish, and probably only interested in the latest parties. Certainly, on a night like this, he’d have thought she’d be getting ready for the Festival of the Moon rather than seeking him out.
Yet looking at her now, it was as though he could see through all that to a core of steel underneath. She stood there in the garden, and she should have fit in with the elegance of the flowers there, but it was worth remembering how many of those flowers had thorns. It felt better than he could have imagined to have an ally like that in the court.
“I was a fool,” Thanos said, shaking his head. “I should never have treated you the way I did.”
“It’s all right,” Stephania assured him. “I understand.”
“Forgive me?” Thanos asked.
“There is nothing to forgive. The only question now is how we’re going to find whoever sent the assassin after you.”
Thanos nodded. It was a relief to hear that from Stephania, and a weight off his conscience that she hadn’t been hurt by the way he’d pushed her aside for Ceres.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” he admitted.
“How we’re going to do it,” Stephania said. Her hand fit into his neatly, seeming so natural there to Thanos. “This isn’t something you should have to do by yourself. I want you to tell me everything you find out. I want to know.”
“That means a lot,” Thanos said. “But we still need somewhere to start.”
Stephania was quiet for a long time, and Thanos found himself wondering what she was thinking. There was obviously something that she wanted to say but wasn’t. Strange that he should feel close enough to her to know that.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There… might be something,” Stephania said. “I was in the stables a while ago, getting ready to go riding, and I heard one of the stable boys boasting that he was a close friend of Lucious, and that he did favors for him that no one else could.”
“It sounds like empty boasting,” Thanos said.
Stephania nodded. “That’s what the other stable hands said at the time, but the boy showed them a dagger that he could never have afforded alone, and he was talking about taking messages to someone in the army.”
“The Typhoon?” Thanos guessed.
He saw Stephania shrug. “I don’t know. Not for sure. I don’t think even Lucious would be stupid enough to tell a stable boy what he was planning. But it was enough to make me think of it. I don’t know if it’s anything, though.”
Thanos put his hands on Stephania’s shoulders. “Thank you for this. It’s more than you think.”
It was a start, at least. And if the trail did lead back to Lucious…well… then Thanos would make sure that it was an end for the prince as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Ceres gasped for breath as water thundered down onto her. The waterfall hammered into her and she reeled with it, having to fight to keep going. She had no idea why Eoin thought that directly under one was the right place to train in the combat arts they used on the island, but right now she wished that he’d picked somewhere, anywhere, else.
Eoin, of course, stood in the shallow pool beneath it as calmly as if he were in summer rain. He barely even seemed to lift his voice to be heard above it. “This is called Clouds Weaving.”
Ceres shook with the effort as she tried to copy the movements Eoin made. She tried to concentrate in spite of the relentless battering of the water, but it was almost impossible to get every detail correct, and Eoin seemed to want perfection in every motion. It seemed to be the one area where his ready smile disappeared as he made her repeat the movements over and over.
She saw him weave through it again: a complex back and forth movement of his hands that looked more like the kind of thing a dancer in the city might have done than anything to do with fighting. She tried to copy the movement and Eoin shook his head.
“Slower.”
That was the hardest part of all this. She was used to the rough and tumble fighting of the Stade, but the islanders’ way of fighting seemed to involve what looked to Ceres like slow motion dancing. She wanted to speed up, to fight.
“When can we go faster?” Ceres asked.
“When you can do it right slowly,” Eoin said. He f
inally smiled. “You’re making progress, but you have to learn to move in harmony with the world, Ceres. Learn the lessons it has to teach you.”
“And what lesson does standing in a waterfall teach me?” Ceres asked, as the water continued to beat down on her.
She saw Eoin’s hands flow through the movement again. “I don’t know. People learn their own lessons. Maybe it will be that the softest things can become hard and relentless. Maybe it will be to let the world flow off you smoothly.” His smile widened. “Perhaps that if you’re going to get wet anyway, you might as well embrace it.”
Ceres wanted to argue with that, and with the endless training that seemed to have so little to do with fighting. Before she could do it though, one of the other forest people ran up to them. This one was further along in the disease than Eoin was, almost as much plant as human.
“Eoin, we have people landing on the slate shore. It looks like raiders heading for the village.”
Ceres heard Eoin sigh. “Will they never learn? All right, I’ll come.”
“Should I stay here with Ceres?” the newcomer asked.
“I should come,” Ceres said. “Maybe I can help.”
Eoin waved a hand in dismissal. “We can handle it. But perhaps you can learn something by watching. Follow me.”
He ran along the trails that led through the jungle toward the village, and Ceres had a hard time keeping up. She was strong and fast, but Eoin seemed to flit through the trees as naturally as if he were a part of them. By the time they reached the edge of the village, Ceres was out of breath, while Eoin looked as though he could have run for another hour.
She could see men running through the village, weapons in their hands. For a moment, Ceres thought they might be soldiers of the Empire, there to hunt her, and fear ran through her. Then she saw the roughness of their weapons and the piecemeal nature of their armor. These really were pirates and raiders, not the army.
That didn’t make their intentions any better. As she watched, one of the raiders rushed into a low hut, and there was a scream from within. On the edge of the jungle, Ceres looked over to Eoin.
“What do we do now?” Ceres asked.
Eoin pointed to a spot. “You wait here.”
“But I can fight,” she insisted. She didn’t want to stand by while other people risked their lives.
Eoin shook his head. “Not yet, but you will be able to. For now, watch. Learn.”
Ceres didn’t want to hold back like that, but as she started to take a step forward, she felt the firm hand of one of the forest people on her shoulder. She stood there because there seemed to be no other choice, and she watched as Eoin ran into the village.
The forest people joined him as he ran, seeming to come from nowhere as they stepped out of hidden spots in the trees and bushes. With their curse, they blended in perfectly. They reminded Ceres of the water from the waterfall as they plunged down among the houses they were trying to defend, washing over the landing party of raiders.
In the instant before they struck, Ceres had to admit to a moment of fear. The raiders were heavily armed, strong looking and clearly dangerous. Some of the forest folk, by contrast, seemed too delicate and frond-like to do any real damage.
The moment the fight started though, it became clear that she needn’t have worried. Despite their lack of weapons, the islanders moved with a deadly kind of grace, never quite there as their opponents attacked, striking back with blows that seemed languid, but which felled the raiders wherever they struck.
Ceres watched Eoin at the heart of it, and he moved like water. He swayed aside from the sweep of an ax, then brought his forearm around in a blow to the collarbone of his assailant that sent the man to his knees. He brought up his foot in a kick that seemed to be all grace and elegance until it snapped the raider’s head back.
Ceres saw a swordsman move in close to Eoin and she tried to call out a warning, but she was too far away for him to ever hear it.
He didn’t need the warning though. He turned instead, and his eyes seemed to fix on Ceres for an instant. Then his hands moved in a pattern that was far too familiar, because Ceres had been practicing it all morning. Eoin waved his way through the delicate movements of Weaving Clouds, and somewhere in it he twisted the sword out of his attacker’s hands. The blow that he answered with only seemed to touch the raider, but the man dropped like a stone.
It took the islanders a matter of minutes to kill their attackers, and they did kill them. There was something unstoppably ruthless about the way they moved through the raiders, leaving none alive, letting none run back to their boats. When they were done, they carried the bodies into the jungle as gently as if they were carrying respected friends.
All Ceres could do was stand there in something close to amazement. Unarmed, sick as they were, they’d defeated a whole landing party of armed men.
Maybe there was plenty to learn here after all.
***
That night, Ceres sat at one of the fires in the village, eating the fruits of the forest while above the stars seemed to swirl as clouds passed. Eike was there beside her, while Eoin and several of the other villagers sat there too.
Eoin played a many-stringed instrument that seemed to respond to the least touch, music floating through the night air as he tapped the notes. It was so peaceful that Ceres might almost have been able to dismiss the attack earlier as a bad dream if she hadn’t seen it herself.
“Do people often attack your island?” Ceres asked. She couldn’t just ignore what had happened today.
“Sometimes,” Eoin said. “They think that because we are cursed, we are weak. It is less common than it was. They used to raid regularly before we learned to fight back.”
“How did you all get so good at fighting?” Ceres asked.
“We watched the world,” Eoin said. “We learned the lessons of the forest. But we should talk of happier things. The moment for fighting has passed. You could tell us about your lives.”
Ceres shook her head. “There isn’t much that’s happy to tell there. My father left. My mother sold me as a slave. The people I care about most are dead.”
“The past can be hard,” Eoin agreed. “My family cast me out when they realized I was one of the forest folk. Most of those here have a similar story.”
There were nods from around the fire.
“But the future can be different,” Eoin said. “Tell us about your hopes and your dreams.”
Ceres tried to think. “Once, I dreamed that I would be a famous combatlord, fighting in the Stade. I guess I’ve already achieved that dream. Then I dreamed that maybe there could be something else for me with the man who…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. He died.”
She heard the notes from Eoin’s instrument still as he reached out to touch her hand. “I’m sorry. What now though?”
Ceres thought for a moment.
“Now,” Ceres said, “there are a lot of things I want. I have a brother, and I want him to be safe. I want to get back to my father, and make sure he’s found Sartes.” She tightened her hands in anger. “I want revenge on the people who tried to kill me. But after that… I guess I want to change things if I can. I want to make a better world.”
Eoin laughed gently. “A better world would be nice. What about you, little one? What do you dream?”
Eike looked a little surprised to be included, to Ceres’s eyes.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, hugging her knees. “I guess I just want somewhere I’ll be safe, and fit in.”
“I think that might be easy enough,” Eoin said, with a sweep of his arm that took in the camp. People were dancing and singing around their fires now, and Ceres could feel the pulse of it running through her. Even so, she didn’t join in.
“What about you?” Ceres asked. “What do you want for the future?”
“The future is tricky for us,” Eoin said, gesturing around at the island. “We know that eventually, the forest will claim us. We know that
the world does not want us. We have learned to live now, and see what we can leave behind.” He gestured to some of the others. “Jan here has his pottery. K’sala is trying to weave the perfect tapestry. Many of us try to understand the world as much as we can, or seek happiness with one another.”
“And you?” Ceres asked, not willing to let it go.
“I have my music,” Eoin said. “And I have the safety of the people here to think about. I want to make sure this remains a community where any of us can feel safe and happy. Those are probably dreams that are big enough for one life, don’t you think?”
Ceres found herself hoping that he might say more than that. “What about building a life with someone?” she asked. “What about love?”
She saw Eoin look away.
“Love would just mean someone left behind when the forest finally took me,” he said.
“But it might also mean being happy until then,” Ceres pointed out. She looked into the fire, watching it dance. “Maybe that’s worth it.”
“Maybe,” Eoin agreed. “For now though, we should all get some sleep. If you want to achieve your dreams, Ceres, you still have a lot of training to do.”
That was true, and in that moment determination filled Ceres. She had seen what the islanders could do. She was going to learn what they had to teach. She was going to return to Delos, and she was going to change things.
Whatever it took.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Sartes had a plan. He reminded himself of that over and over as he started to make his way across the 23rd’s camp, slipping through the early evening activity of the place like a stranger. He had a plan for his escape. Now, he had to hope that it would work.
Repeating it should have made him feel better, but instead, it just reminded him of how big the stakes were. The punishment for a conscript trying to escape was death, without exception. The best-case scenario would be a quick sword thrust as he tried to get clear of the camp. The worst… they might make his fellow conscripts do it, beating Sartes to death to prove their loyalty. He had no doubt that they would do it. They would be too frightened to do anything else.