by Morgan Rice
When a man stepped toward him with a hungry look, Thanos half drew his sword. The figure slunk back toward the cave walls, leaving him be.
This was obviously a place for smugglers, but there were other boats there too. Thanos could see ships that were obviously out of Delos, the Southlands, and a dozen other places. He saw one loading grain, which didn’t seem to fit with a place like this, and guessed that this had become the place for all those who weren’t planning to join the invasion. Even with a fleet the size of the one heading to Delos, there had to be some ships still going to trade with other parts of the world.
That didn’t make the cave ports any safer. If anything, Thanos guessed, it made them worse, putting the temptation of easy pickings in the way of some of the harshest people in Felldust.
He still couldn’t find the ship he’d come to look for, but ahead, he could see the beginnings of a fight. A woman stood at the heart of a crowd of thugs, spinning a bladed chain to keep them at bay. Her soft, dark skin had been smeared with something like ash, lending it a grayish tint, while her head was shaved bald, revealing markings etched in cobalt blue. They matched the silk dress she wore, although that was stained with the dust of the city.
“Bone eater!” one of the thugs snarled.
“Cannibal whore!” another added. “We’re going to make you beg to be killed. You and your coward people!”
If her appearance hadn’t been enough, the insults sealed it. This was one of the Bone Folk of Felldust’s farther coast. The stories about them were the kind of thing that sounded as though children had made them up to scare one another. Yet they were undeniably raiders, killers, and worse.
Even so, Thanos didn’t like seeing half a dozen thugs threatening one woman. They seemed to be waiting for their moment. None seemed to want to be the first to move, but each seemed to understand that the moment that sharpened chain bit home, the others would be free to attack.
Thanos stepped into the ring of men, drawing both his swords.
“Time to step back, boys,” he began, but then something blurred past his shoulder, and a man screamed as the chain cut into him. Thanos saw the woman charge past him, and suddenly he was in the middle of a fight.
Thanos saw the Bone Folk woman catch a knifeman’s arm in the chain, wrenching and cutting, then kick out at another. He barely had time to register that, though, because two men were already charging at him.
Thanos ducked low, dodging the first attack, cutting with his right-hand sword to hamstring one of the attackers. He struck the other with the hilt of his other sword, catching him at the base of the skull and hearing the crunch as the man fell into unconsciousness.
He spun and saw the woman with her chain wrapped around another man’s throat, while the last of the thugs ran.
“That’s enough,” Thanos said. “There’s no need for—”
She dragged the chain tight, and the sharp edges all but decapitated her opponent.
“I decide what there is a need for,” she said. She kicked the body into the water. “Fools. It is not worth carrying their spirits. Who are you?”
“I’m Thanos,” he said. He could have given a false name, but he didn’t plan to be here much longer. “And you?”
“Jeva,” she said after a long moment. “You have my thanks. It would have been hard to kill six.”
There was a grudging note to that, as though even admitting it cost her.
“Why were they attacking you?” Thanos asked.
He saw her spread her hands. “Why do outsiders do anything? They attack what they are too stupid to understand. My people will not bend the knee to join their war, and so they think they can kill me.” She shook her head. “Now I must find a boat to take me home.” She looked hopeful for a moment. “Do you have one?”
Thanos shook his head. “I can’t find the boat I came in, and if I do, it will be going to Delos.”
She shook her head again. “Fools. The world is full of them.”
She walked away. Thanos let her, because in that moment he spotted a very familiar-looking ship.
He ran to it, as if worried that it might disappear if he didn’t get there soon. Yet it was as solid when he reached it as it had been when he’d been traveling there. They seemed to be loading it for a voyage.
On the deck, Thanos saw the captain arguing with a figure dressed more like a pirate than a merchant, apparently in disagreement over the price of bales of a weed that gave off a bitter scent. As soon as the captain saw Thanos, he waved the other man away.
“Off with you. I’ve no time to waste with men who want to charge me so much. No, I mean it. Off my ship. It will be a lesson to the next man who wants to all but rob me.”
The merchant looked shocked by that, but he still hurried off the boat. Almost as soon as he was gone, the captain rushed forward to enfold Thanos in a crushing hug. He stepped back and looked at Thanos with a serious expression.
“I see you’re wearing two swords now, not one. It’s done then?”
Thanos nodded. “It’s done.”
It seemed too brief a way to tell everything that had gone into killing Lucious, but maybe that was for the best.
“And how do you feel now?” the captain asked. “There are some things that leave their mark, and this is one, I think.”
Thanos nodded. What he felt right then was more complicated than he could have believed. Satisfaction and justice, maybe, but also grief, and a sense that he’d failed even then. The invasion had still begun, and killing Lucious had done nothing to stop it.
“It needed to be done,” he said, half hoping that he could convince himself of that.
The captain reached out to touch his arm. “It will get easier.”
Thanos wasn’t sure that he wanted it to, but he appreciated the sentiment.
“Where to now?” the captain asked.
That part, at least, was easy. “Delos.”
“Delos? Are you mad?” The captain shook his head. “No. I will not do it. If I had known you would ask such a thing, I would have left while I could.”
Thanos frowned slightly at that. “It was always the plan,” he said. “I’d come, I’d… stop Lucious, and then we’d go home.”
“That was before home turned into a place at war,” the captain shot back. “We failed, Thanos. We were supposed to stop a war, but we couldn’t. Now, to go back is suicide.”
Thanos could understand that sentiment, but that didn’t mean he could go along with it. Everyone he cared about was in Delos. Ceres was in Delos. He would find another way back if he needed to, but right then, he wasn’t sure there was one. There was no way he could hide who he was long enough to sneak back with any other ship.
The captain could obviously see the determination in Thanos’s expression, because he cut Thanos off before he could say anything more.
“No, Thanos. I mean this. You’re trying to protect the people you care about, but I’m trying to protect my crew. It would take an army to be able to go to Delos, and I don’t see anyone around here willing to stand up to Felldust’s stones right now.”
Thanos found his gaze drifting back over the dock, thinking about the things Jeva had said. About her people not wanting to bend their knees to the stones. He thought about the way she’d fought.
“What if I could find us an army?” Thanos asked.
“And where would you find one of those?” the captain asked.
Jeva was easy to pick out of the crowd. Thanos waved to her, and she only hesitated for a moment before running in the direction of the ship. She sprinted through the crowd with ease, dodging her way around the people in her way, never slowing.
The captain looked in the direction Thanos had gestured. Thanos saw the moment when he spotted the figure running toward them, because that was the moment his expression hardened.
“You want to bring a Bone Eater onto my ship?” he demanded.
“I want to do more than that,” Thanos said. “You said it yourself, we need an arm
y, and the Bone Folk have no love for Felldust.”
That just added a note of exasperation to the captain’s expression. Thanos felt the other man’s hands clamp onto his shoulders.
“They have no love for anyone. They hunt ships and they steal. Do you know the things they do to captives? They’ll kill and eat you so fast you’ll wish you’d just picked a foreign shore for me to take you to.”
Thanos appreciated the sentiment. There was even a part of him that wanted to go along with it. He’d been told by his father that there were answers about his parentage in Felldust. He could go off in search of the truth.
That would mean abandoning Ceres, though, and Thanos couldn’t do that. Even if it meant taking the most desperate of risks.
“The Bone Folk will have their price,” Thanos said. “If I can pay it, they’ll be perfect mercenaries.”
By now, Jeva was running up the gangplank.
“I guess I can drop you in a rowboat,” the captain said. “But I’m not getting closer than that.”
It would be enough. Thanos had to believe that it would be enough.
The captain gave Jeva a harsh look.
“Just don’t blame me if you get yourself eaten.”
CHAPTER NINE
When the torturers came, Ceres tried to fight. She flung herself at them, pulling together all the strength and fury she had. It made no difference. They grabbed her between them, and all Ceres could think was what it would be this time, and whether she would be able to keep from showing them how much it hurt her.
She had no way of knowing how long she’d been in the hole in the ground. Every so often they dragged her out to beat her, or chain her in positions that were agony to hold. They starved her too, feeding her only the tiniest bowls of foul-smelling food that made Ceres want to vomit at the thought of it.
Now, she guessed, they were planning something worse.
They dragged her to a vaulted space that Ceres recognized. It had been there for the training of the combatlords. She’d watched Thanos train there. She’d trained there herself. Now, though, the weapons were gone, and the dirt floor stood almost empty.
Almost, but not quite.
Poles stood in a circle, and on each one…
“No,” Ceres said, horror flooding through her.
The skulls of the former combatlords sat atop the poles, in a bloody ring that seemed like a gruesome audience for whatever took place within it. How could anyone do this to men who had been her friends? To men who had done nothing but try to protect her?
“Do you like it?”
Ceres spun and saw Stephania entering the room with an entourage. There was a raised area above the dirt floor, from which owners might have watched their combatlords train. She took a chair there now, with servants and guards all standing around her.
“How could you do this?” Ceres demanded.
Stephania made a small gesture, and Ceres guessed what was coming, but she wasn’t fast enough. Ceres stumbled forward as one of the torturers struck her across the back of the head.
“You will speak to me with the deference a peasant owes her betters,” Stephania said. “You will remember that you are nothing, or you will be taught it. As for these men… you helped them to forget their place. I had no hatred for them until you got involved. Now, how does it feel to know you can’t protect the people close to you?”
It felt to Ceres as though her heart were being torn from her chest, but she didn’t say that. She wasn’t going to give Stephania the satisfaction of seeing her broken like that.
“Still trying to be strong?” Stephania said. “The torturers tell me that it takes a lot to get a scream from you. But I’m not interested in your screams, so long as you break.”
“You’ll be waiting a long time,” Ceres snapped back, and this time she did manage to duck the blow, half tripping the torturer who struck at her.
“Look at her,” Stephania said, and this time, it didn’t even sound as though she was talking to Ceres. Ceres guessed that she wasn’t supposed to be important enough to speak to directly. “She puts so much of her pride in her ability to fight. Fighting is a useful tool, but it gets you nowhere alone. How much will it take out of her to be shown the truth, do you think?”
Ceres heard Stephania clap her hands, and saw three men in the colors of the Empire’s guards step forward. They had no weapons, but that didn’t make it better. It just told Ceres what might be coming. One by one, the guards dropped down into the training pit.
“Do you recognize any of these men?” Stephania asked. “Each of them hates you enough to volunteer for this. They fought you before, and you knocked them aside. You beat them like they were nothing. Apparently, it’s the most humiliating thing that could happen. I plan to see if that’s true.”
“You’ll need more than three,” Ceres said, as the torturers stepped back from her.
“I doubt that,” Stephania shot back. “As I told the men, you’re not quite what you were, are you? You three, beat her but do not kill her.”
She nodded and Ceres knew the moment for talking was done. Ceres slid into a fighting stance, trying to ignore the pain that came with every movement. She focused on the lessons she’d learned on the island of the Forest People. It didn’t matter how difficult things had been there; the lessons had kept coming.
And Ceres had learned them. She leapt forward, striking at one man, then kicking out at the next. The blows slammed home, making them stumble. Ceres still understood the flow of combat.
The blows didn’t knock them flying, though, and no flash of power came back to answer when the third man caught her with a stinging slap. It was so much of a surprise that for a moment, Ceres almost froze. She forced herself to keep moving, though. She spun away as one of the men tried to grab her, pushing him off balance, then turned to the next.
Another open-handed blow clipped her, and Ceres fought back, covering up and driving forward. At the last minute, she swerved around him and brought her knee up to catch him in the stomach.
Ceres spun away, stepping into a gap between the two others. She struck one underneath the ear, made a sound of pain as his foot found her thigh, and missed with an elbow that would have struck him in the temple otherwise.
The three men spread out, more cautious now. That was good. She was persuading them that she was still dangerous. She feinted toward one and then turned to another and grabbed his arm, twisting for a lock. She gave it up as the third came for her, catching him with the punch she’d really been aiming for.
Ceres smiled in satisfaction as she backed away again.
She was tiring, though, and even her best strikes weren’t truly hurting these men. She needed to attack. She needed to be decisive, because she wasn’t going to let herself lose simply because her powers weren’t there to help her. She circled, trying to keep moving, determined not to stay in one spot long enough for them to grab.
One of the men stumbled and Ceres saw her opening. She knew she had to make it count. She lunged forward to kick the man in the throat, looking to end this, missed high and caught him on the jaw instead. He rocked back, but his hands went out automatically to wrap around her leg.
Another of the guards came in from the right to punch her in the stomach, hard enough to double her up. A slap caught Ceres from the side, making her reel. She tried to turn to fight back, but that just let the third man shove her off balance again.
Ceres lashed out blindly, feeling her foot hit home, but someone’s foot slammed into the back of her knee and she went down. She tried to scramble back to her feet, but there were hands there holding her down, hitting and grabbing as they beat her.
As fast as that, what had been a fight turned into a beating. Ceres tried to break free from their grips, but there were three of them and they knew how to fight. She simply didn’t have the strength left to break away.
They laughed as they did it.
“She’s not so strong now, is she?” one laughed, slapping Ceres across
the face.
“Weak little thing, really,” another agreed, pinning Ceres’s arms. “We could do anything we wanted with her.”
Real terror rose in Ceres then as one of them tore at her tunic. Another started to tie her hands, stringing them out to tie them to one of the poles that held the combatlords’ heads.
“No,” she cried out. “Please, no.”
She kicked out blindly, tried to scratch and bite and roll, but they held her, and they continued to beat her. When she managed to bite into one of the guards’ ears as they came close to her, he stood, aiming a kick that would have doubled her up if they hadn’t held her. They wrapped more of the ropes around her legs, tying them to more of the posts so that she could barely struggle at all.
Please, she begged her powers silently. Please, if you’re there, help.
No answering flash of strength came, but to Ceres’s surprise, salvation came from an unexpected direction.
“That’s enough for now,” Stephania called. Ceres had to crane her neck back just to be able to see her. “Leave her as she is.”
Stephania was there then, above Ceres, with the serene expression of someone who knew they were perfectly safe. Ceres wondered how she must look to the other girl, who stood so pristine while Ceres was covered in the dirt of the training space, her clothes torn almost to nothing, blood smeared at the corner of her mouth. Ceres could even feel tears, although she fought to blink them away.
Stephania crouched beside her, brushing away some of those tears with her thumb in a gesture as humiliating as it was gentle.
“When you torment someone,” she said softly, in what must have seemed like a comforting tone to those beyond, “going too far can be as bad as not going far enough. Push them too far, too soon, and there’s no way to make it worse. I want you to think on that, Ceres. It will get worse.”
