Set Fire to the Gods

by Sara Raasch

  “Take her!” he bellowed. “Take her now!”

  Movement pulsed from the door. A woman stepped out of the shadows, the moonlight caressing her small, bent frame.

  Ash blinked. Squinted.

  Cassia gave a cry of recognition. “Seneca!”

  Hope tangled with horror. What was Seneca doing here? Had Petros captured her too? If she was here, was Madoc? Where was he?

  Take her, Petros’s plea echoed in Ash’s ears, jarring loose a memory.

  She took it from me, Stavos had wept before he died at Madoc’s feet.

  Seneca smiled, stretched out her hands, and pulled.

  Cassia bucked from her head to her toes. She dropped to her knees, gaping at her palms.

  “What—” She flared her hands. Nothing budged, no stones or rocks or dust. The boulder over her head remained, only held by Petros now, who grinned wickedly.

  “It’s gone.” Cassia launched herself to her feet, teetered, and went back down in a weak topple. “My geoeia—it’s gone. Seneca, what did you do?”

  “Stop!” Ash begged. Tears rushed down her cheeks. “Stop it! Petros—let her go!”

  He ignored Ash’s cries, Tor’s snarling curses, Cassia’s look of terror and brokenness.

  “Keeping you imprisoned didn’t get through to Madoc,” Petros snarled. “Maybe this will.”

  He dropped his arms with a savage grin.

  The boulder, hovering over Cassia, crashed down on her.

  “NO!” Ash screamed. “No—Cassia! Cassia!”

  Sorrow cracked her chest. Only Cassia’s arm could be seen reaching out from beneath the boulder, motionless.

  Petros walked into Ash’s line of sight, blocking the ivory moonlight. He lifted another stone, smaller but sharp and pointed at her skull.

  “Ignitus will kill you,” she snarled through her tears. “He’ll kill you for murdering his champions, and Geoxus will have to let him.”

  Petros hesitated. But he dropped the stone, and it smacked the dirt next to Ash’s head.

  “Your god has no idea what’s coming for him,” Petros told her. To his centurions, “Bind them in my atrium and summon the Father God.”

  The soldiers moved. Petros retreated to the now-empty steps of his villa.

  Seneca was gone, as though she had never been there at all.

  Nineteen

  Madoc

  BEFORE HE CROSSED the Nien River in a carriage borrowed from Geoxus’s palace, Madoc could see the smoke rising in plumes from Petros’s villa.

  When news had come of the attack, Geoxus had gone still, placing one hand on the fitted stones of the wall. His head had tilted slightly, his eyes closing as his fingers spread and grew white at the knuckles.

  I must go, he’d said quietly. Kulans have attacked the house of Petros.

  Madoc, raw and still trying to make sense of Geoxus’s knowledge of his anathreia and Petros’s corruption, did not have time to ask what had happened, or if Cassia was all right, because before his eyes, Geoxus changed. The pale color of the stones seeped into Geoxus’s hand, over his skin, and even his robes, until his chest matched the sandstone sculptures in the courtyard. The color climbed his throat, painting his face and even his dark eyes.

  Then Geoxus, a moving, breathing statue, stepped into the wall and was gone.

  Madoc had seen Geoxus move this way during the last party, when they’d found Stavos outside, but he still couldn’t wrap his mind around it. In shock, he stumbled toward the moving room, and soon was in the carriage, cursing the slow pace of the galloping horses as they crossed the Nien River into the Olantin District where Petros lived.

  As he reached his father’s villa, Madoc fought off a punch of unwelcome nostalgia. In the thirteen years since he’d been turned away from these doors, the memories he’d earned within had become tainted, and then so marred by hate that he’d had to stuff them deep inside. Stored there, they could seem not to exist, as if he had been born a stonemason and lived with Elias his entire life. But now Madoc remembered every night he had dreamed of coming back to this place and burning it to the ground.

  His gaze lifted from the crowd that had gathered in the street. The stone walls that surrounded the estate stretched twice as high as he remembered in his youth. It was a protective measure, but though the outside seemed unharmed, that could only mean that the real trouble was locked within. Fear throbbed as his eyes lifted to the smear of gray smoke across the black sky.

  Ash and Tor couldn’t be responsible. He’d told them he wanted no part of any plan.

  Telling himself this did not ease the tension between his temples.

  “Make way!” a centurion trumpeted as the palace carriage approached the opening gate. Inside, Madoc could make out a courtyard four times the size of the Metaxas’ house, lined with potted plants and orange and fig trees, and the stone fountain of Geoxus, water pouring from his outstretched hands, that Madoc had once dipped his feet in on hot days. It was broken now, into chunks of marble strewn across the charred grass.

  Questions and shrieks of surprise sliced through the cool night air.

  “What happened here?”

  “Is Petros dead?”

  Through the shouting, Madoc heard a familiar voice.

  “Madoc! Madoc.”

  He searched the crowd, spotting Elias behind the row of centurions as the carriage entered the villa grounds.

  “Elias!” Relief flooded Madoc but froze before it reached his heart. Elias should have been at Lucius’s villa with the other attendants. Even if word had traveled quickly to the training barracks, it would have taken Elias a half hour by carriage to get here.

  “Wait!” Madoc called to the driver, but they were already inside.

  By the time Madoc stumbled out, the front gates were sealing with a screech of metal and rock. The crowd outside was muffled, and Madoc couldn’t tell if it was due to the partition between them or the sudden rise of energeia in his blood. It swirled like an angry tempest, needling the back of his skull with dread.

  Slowly, he turned, gaping. The front wall of the house was still aflame, attended to by half a dozen servants carrying buckets of water. A team of soldiers were dismounting outside the stables, where silver mosaics of twin horses rearing up on either side of the barn entrance glimmered through the smoke.

  A warning throbbed in Madoc’s temples. Too many conflicting emotions waited inside the house. He sensed them like sound, like smell. Like the bright flash of colors at the market. Fury and rage warred with despair and the sharp pitch of fear had his back straight as an arrow.

  There was something else too. Something he didn’t recognize. A void. A bleak, empty space, beckoning him closer. It felt wrong, and he wanted no part of it, but he couldn’t turn back.

  Willing his anathreia down, he charged up the house’s steps and into the smoke, leaping over the scattered stones and burned bits of rubble and sprinting past a corridor lined by dark sconces on the wall. Madoc tripped over his own feet at the sight of it. His bedroom had once been down that hall. A space all to himself, with a bed twice as large as the bunk he squeezed into in the stonemasons’ quarter, which he used to hide under to escape his father’s wrath. He found Geoxus just beyond, in the atrium where Petros worked and took his meals. There were parties here, Madoc remembered. Food and drink. Music.

  He’d forgotten about the music.

  Now the table was overturned, the chairs were in pieces, and the moon shining through the open ceiling was the only light in the room.

  Cassia, where are you?

  “He’s safe!”

  At his father’s cry of relief, Madoc stopped cold. Petros swept toward him, arms outstretched. For a moment, Madoc wasn’t sure if he meant to embrace him or crush him with geoeia.

  “Where’s Cassia?” Madoc demanded. His own hands rose in defense, bringing Petros to a halt.

  “Madoc!” A female shout sounded from the thick shadows on the far side of the room, cut short by the harsh crack of a slap agai
nst skin.

  Madoc rushed past Petros toward the sound, ready to fight, ready to pull the energeia out of every god and mortal in this villa.

  But as he approached, he didn’t find Cassia.

  Five armed guards surrounded a block of stone, their weapons drawn as if expecting someone to burst through. Madoc thought part of the wall must have collapsed in the battle, but as he peered through the dim light he caught a tremor of movement—the twist of shoulders, of a person struggling to get free—and he realized the stone was a deliberate creation of geoeia. A prison encasing not one, but two people. The man, facing sideways, was trapped from the neck down, his jaw flexing with the effort to break out. One of his heels extended out the side of the rock, frozen, as if he was in the process of kicking free.

  The woman beside him was stuck just below the shoulders, her arms and legs disappearing into the stone, her long curls stuck to her cheek, hiding half her face.

  Ash.

  Fear solidified into a ball of ice in Madoc’s chest.

  Ash had come here to get his sister out, just as they’d discussed.

  Petros came beside Madoc, a puff of dust rising from his toga as he batted it clean. “I feared for your life, son. They were so angry. So furious with you.”

  Madoc flinched. “Where is Cassia?”

  Ash’s face fell.

  Panic skirted along the edges of his focus. Why are you here? What did you do? Where is my sister? He wanted to shout, but he had no voice.

  The anathreia. He could make her tell him. He would pull it out of her.

  But it had quieted again. Receded into that hole in his chest.

  “What happened?” he managed.

  “They came for you.”

  Madoc tore his gaze away from Ash to a scowling Geoxus, barely distinguishable from the shadows just behind him. A glow began to emanate from his hand, a phosphorescent rock for light. Its growing brightness cast an eerie gleam over the damage as Geoxus pressed it into the wall.

  “Me?” Madoc’s brows furrowed.

  “No,” Ash shouted. “Madoc, that isn’t true. You have to listen—”

  “Quiet,” Tor warned as a guard raised the blunt end of his spear to strike her.

  “It was fortunate you weren’t here!” Petros motioned to the damage around them. “The Kulan gladiators climbed over my wall. We were shocked, caught completely off guard!”

  Madoc could feel Ash’s eyes on the side of his face. When his gaze flicked in her direction, tears were glistening in her eyes, gathering dust as they trailed down to her jaw.

  Ash and Tor couldn’t have come to kill him. They wanted his help—they’d said they needed him. Madoc had helped Ash. He’d held her grief in his hands, and when she’d seen the real him, she hadn’t looked away. She wouldn’t have betrayed him.

  But here she was, with Tor, and his sister was nowhere to be seen.

  “They set fire to my villa in search of you, Madoc.” Petros heaved a breath, head shaking. “They kept asking for you—Where is Madoc? Where is your beloved son? They seemed to think you would be with me, not training with Lucius Pompino.”

  “That’s not what happened!” Ash cried.

  Madoc shook his head. This was wrong. It was as wrong as Geoxus placing the weight of his war on Madoc’s shoulders.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Madoc spun to find Ignitus materializing through a haze of gray smoke. His white robes offset the pale blue glow above his skin—the igneia just waiting to be set loose on anyone in his way. “My gladiators are caught outside the palace and I am the last to hear of it? This is an outrage. Where are they?”

  Madoc slunk back without thinking. He didn’t need to be Soul Divine to sense Ignitus’s fury—guards and servants jumped out of his way as he approached his brother.

  “Encased in stone,” Geoxus growled, pointing to where Ash and Tor were trapped in the corner. “Which is more than they deserve for attacking a prized son of Deimos and trying to kill my top champion!”

  Ignitus bared his teeth in anger. “Set them loose immediately.”

  The ground beneath Madoc’s feet began to rumble.

  “Tell me you had no part in this,” Geoxus responded.

  Ignitus’s eyes pinched around the edges. “If I did, what would you do, brother?”

  Madoc’s pulse raced as the gods faced off. He remembered what had happened last time they’d argued. The quaking earth in the stable yard under Stavos’s body. The plunge into darkness.

  “Would you claim it a violation of the rules of war? Say I cheated?” Ignitus asked. “Maybe you’d use this as an excuse to double the stakes and sink your greedy claws into even more of my country.”

  Madoc braced for what remained of the walls to come toppling down. Without thinking, he glanced at Ash, whose teeth were clenched in horror.

  “As much as your happiness means to me, no,” continued Ignitus. “This was not my doing, and as such, I will see that my gladiators are punished accordingly.”

  Without looking away from Geoxus, he motioned to the guards. “Set them free.”

  Tension arced across the room, as brittle as burned sugar.

  Petros charged between Ignitus, Ash, and Tor. “Do you think the Honorable Father God will let this offense slide so easily? Your gladiators have broken the rules of war! Attacked an innocent citizen and tried to murder another champion! They should be handed over to the Father God and sanded in the city center.”

  Madoc’s muscles seized.

  “We meant Madoc no harm, Ignitus!” Ash called. “We must speak to you. Please.”

  “Shut up!” snapped a guard.

  “The girl was so reckless in her rage, she destroyed my favorite servant.” Petros’s voice was lower now.

  “Liar!” Ash screamed. “You did it! You and—” Her words were stopped by a fit of coughing. Dust sputtered from her mouth, sent there by a flick of Petros’s geoeia.

  Madoc’s blood slowed, along with his heart.

  Petros’s favorite servant.

  Destroyed.

  He swallowed a hard breath, pulling at the ceremonial breastplate still clinging to his chest. It seemed to grow tighter by the moment.

  They couldn’t be talking about Cassia. He was jumping to conclusions. Petros had many servants.

  Ash would have come here to protect Cassia, not destroy her.

  Again, Madoc became aware of the void in this house, the empty space that filled him with a sense of wrongness.

  Geoxus was talking. Madoc couldn’t make sense of his words. Something about deceit and punishment. About war.

  Ignitus had raised his hands and was shouting back.

  Madoc’s eyes found Ash’s.

  Where is Cassia? He didn’t have to say the words. She knew what he wanted to know.

  She shook her head, still unable to speak for the mouthful of dust. It didn’t matter. Tears were streaming from her eyes. The tremble of her shoulders punctuated each shallow breath. Her grief was a physical thing, and it stretched toward him, painting him with poison.

  Madoc couldn’t breathe.

  He didn’t want her tears. He wanted Cassia.

  “Be sensible, brother,” Ignitus was saying. “No harm was done to your champion. We cannot forfeit this war based on one baseless accusation of attempted murder!”

  “Accusation?” shouted Geoxus. “This man’s house is nearly razed to the ground!”

  “And at least some of that is his own doing,” Ignitus shot back, pointing at the stones and rubble. “Any wrong done here was not by my will, I assure you. Let us end this war. Tomorrow. We’ll forgo the final round of audition fights and be done with this, your best against mine.”

  Madoc turned away from them. The void was getting wider, a black pit in his gut, dragging him away. The voices became muffled in his head.

  “Tradition says there are still four days until the final war battle. You offend me, then try to change the rules?”

  “See reason. Chaos has haunted this
war. Let us finish it.”

  “Fine—but you’ll fight the girl. Not that big brute. He’ll sit out.”

  Ash, finally able to speak, called Madoc’s name again and again. He didn’t listen.

  He followed the sense of emptiness, his hands numb, his mind blank. He turned toward the side door that led to the guards’ barracks, picking his way through debris. The fire at the front wall was now out; a servant girl sat on the ground, heaving, her hands wrapped around a bucket. The smoke had mostly dissipated, but the scent was still strong in the air.

  The emptiness widened, filling his lungs.

  There had always been a boulder near this exit. He remembered climbing it when he was young to watch the guards and the servants mingle over the wall. Someone had moved it closer to the main gate.

  This was the center of the void. The absence that had felt so wrong since he’d first come. He’d thought his anathreia had silenced, but it had been calling him to this place the entire time, beckoning him like a nightmare he was trying to forget.

  As he approached, terror gripped his limbs. He could see a figure lying on the ground beside the boulder—a girl. Her tunic was torn and dusty, her dark hair matted with soil and blood. She was still, and well before he reached her, Madoc knew that she was dead.

  Even as the void drew him forward, part of him fought to pull away. Still, he kept going. She was lying in a hollowed-out area. The indentation created by the boulder now beside her.

  He fell to his knees. Crawled closer.

  “Cassia.”

  The emptiness. The utter lack of energeia. He could feel no soul inside her. It was gone, and he had been too late.

  He took her hand in his, her cold fingers fragile and lifeless. He bowed his head to the back of her wrist. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  He rocked, elbows digging into the earth. Every muscle in him seized. Every part of him hurt.

  Let’s go home, she whispered in his mind. She was introducing him to Elias. To Ilena. This is my new brother, she’d said.

  Behind him, he heard movement. People running, shouting to each other.

  Ash’s voice. “Madoc!”

  The girl was so reckless in her rage, she destroyed my favorite servant.