by Morgan Rice
It had been hard enough to get to this point. She’d slipped in through the attacking fleet. She’d found a point near the castle from which to watch. She’d even resumed her disguise as one of the Felldust troops for a while as she made her way from building to building. All the while, she’d tried to ignore the pain of her wound, and the coughing that seemed to bring more drops of blood each time.
When she’d seen the gate open, the temptation had been to pour in with the rest of them, but Felene had held back. She’d known she wouldn’t get what she wanted by going along with the others. She’d known that Stephania would be quick to run from the castle the moment it fell.
She’d gone down into the tunnels beneath the city, finding her way by feel and the dim light of a thief’s lamp. There had been guards down there, and more of the soldiers of Felldust, but Felene had learned to hide on the Isle of Prisoners, where the hunters had been far more dangerous than any soldiers.
She’d walked until she’d spotted Stephania, then she’d stalked her through the dark, waiting for her moment. Now it was here. Felene drew a long knife.
“Felene?” Elethe said, hurrying forward. “You’re alive?”
She threw her arms around Felene, and for a moment, Felene could almost believe that she meant it. That she was sorry for her part in trying to kill Felene. That she actually cared. She certainly sounded as though she was happy to see her again.
But then, she’d seemed happy on the boat, too.
Elethe moved back with her hands on Felene’s shoulders, standing there as if waiting for Felene to kiss her. As if waiting for the courage to do it herself.
Felene heard Elethe gasp as the blade she held slid home. Up under the ribs, straight into the heart. Felene saw her mouth form itself into a small O of surprise, as if she’d expected this to go differently.
“Did you think I’d fall for the same thing again?” Felene demanded, her anger welling over as she struck. “Did you think you could fool me?”
“But I wasn’t trying to—” Elethe began. She didn’t manage to finish it. Felene felt her shudder as the life went out of her, held up only because Felene still had hands on her.
She held Elethe there a moment or two longer. It was the closest the two of them had been, but not half as close as Felene had briefly hoped they could be.
Grief threatened to well up in Felene then. She pushed it down while she pulled the knife out and let her collapse. It was done. There was no going back. Dwelling on what Elethe might or might not have been about to say would cause her nothing but pain, and Felene already had more than enough of that.
Stephania didn’t seem to agree, of course.
“It seems I owe you my thanks,” she said. “I should have spotted that my handmaiden’s loyalties were still… divided.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Felene asked. “She served you. She chose you, and you feel nothing about her dying?”
She watched Stephania shrug.
“Should I get emotional about the death of a servant? Besides, you’re the one who killed her.”
That was true, and Felene suspected that she would regret it for the brief remainder of her life. Regret seemed to be something she specialized in these days.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Stephania said. “Have you considered simply dying the way you should?”
She flung something then, and Felene barely leaned back out of the way in time. Needles skittered off the wall of the tunnel.
“You’ll have to do a lot better than that,” Felene said. “And I’m pretty sure you can’t, princess. You can’t actually fight, can you? Just attack when someone isn’t looking and hope for the best.”
Sure enough, Stephania flung herself forward, a knife in her hand. Felene stepped out of the way, sent her stumbling, and kicked the blade from her fingers as she fell.
“I have a lot of regrets in my life,” Felene said, hefting her own weapon. “But you know what? Killing you isn’t going to be one of them.”
***
Athena crept through the slums of Delos, a stolen blanket wrapped around her like a cloak. The fear of a hunted animal wormed through her with every step, and every sound sent her skittering into the cover beneath walls.
She was hungry. In the time since Stephania had ejected her from the castle, she hadn’t found anything to eat. She’d been forced to drink rain water taken from a water butt, and she’d only found shelter to sleep in because so many people had abandoned the city.
Her city.
How had it come to this? Not long ago, she had been powerful beyond dreams. She had been the queen of the Empire, her husband long reigning and strong. Now Claudius was dead. Her son was gone. The Empire had fallen both to the rebellion and the invaders.
Athena pressed herself back into the space between two walls while a group of warriors in the dust-colored clothes of Felldust went past, chasing after a small group of commoners. Athena watched as they cut down almost all the men, taking the women and some of the younger boys in chains. They stood over one of the older women as if assessing her, then cut her throat as if it was nothing.
She found herself wondering what would happen if they caught her. Would they kill her out of hand? Would they take her as a slave? What would happen if she announced who she was? Would that make them more or less likely to kill her? Would it make them kill her quicker or slower?
“Better not to be caught,” Athena whispered to herself.
She needed to get out of the city, but the truth was that she didn’t know how. She’d prided herself on being the one who could deal with the intrigues of the court to get things done, but she wasn’t in the castle anymore. She didn’t have soldiers to help her, or wealth, or anything beyond the clothes she stood up in.
A part of her wanted to go out and announce herself to the soldiers then, just to get it over with. It was better than stumbling around the streets, not knowing what to do. Maybe they wouldn’t decide she was too old to enslave. Maybe they would take her if she announced that she was the former queen.
Former queen. Athena had never imagined herself as that. She had assumed that she would be the queen in some form for the rest of her life, either ruling alongside her husband, or controlling the Empire through her son. Now, she had neither.
She wasn’t used to changing her ways of thinking. The world ran the way it did because of channels of power that had been carved and re-carved through the world. Status, propriety, all of it built up into something that made the world something she could work with. Now, she was having to think of ways to get out of a city she no longer had any control over, able only to hide, with no one to turn to for help.
She certainly wasn’t going to trust any of the city’s people. After all that had happened, they would probably kill her as quickly as help her. She’d thought that enough cruelty could keep them in their place. Instead, it had just poisoned them against her.
If only Claudius could ride up and take me away from this, Athena thought, creeping out of her hiding place and continuing on her route through the city.
He’d been the kind of man to do that once. He’d been the errant knight, and she the fair young maiden. It was strange how time and politics changed things. She’d never really wanted to marry Claudius. He’d just been a route to power. He’d been a duty to fulfill, along with so many others. Maybe that was a part of what had gone wrong. Maybe if she’d thought a little less about duty…
“Never look back,” she told herself. “Always look forward.”
That was hard to do, though, when there was so much more of her life behind her than ahead. Still, she needed to focus on the things that would keep her alive. She knew there would be no chance of getting past the walls with the invaders encircling them. Her only hope now was the docks.
She started to walk down in the direction of them.
Again and again, she had to duck back into the shadows, hiding from the soldiers who worked their way through the city. Athena had assumed tha
t the fall of a city would look more chaotic than this. She’d assumed that the streets would be full of marauding enemies, with no order to the violence. Instead, they seemed to be moving systematically from house to house, pulling people out into the street, killing some, chaining others. Anyone who fought back died.
Avoiding that was hard. Athena found herself squeezing between houses, ducking under overhangs and hiding in shrubbery. Only the fact that she was heading for the docks helped her. The invaders seemed to assume that those fleeing would head deeper into the city, or make for the walls.
Eventually, Athena caught sight of the docks. That was enough that she almost collapsed with it, because the invading fleet filled the harbor, taking up almost all the available space.
There was nowhere to go. There was no way to escape. Athena sat there, and for the first time since Stephania had ejected her, she sobbed. She sat there, waiting for the moment when some invader would come and lock chains about her wrists, not caring anymore.
That was when she saw the second fleet approaching from beyond the harbor. At first, it seemed like just one more addition to the Felldust fleet. One more set of sharks there to pick at the carcass of the city. Only one thing kept Athena watching.
There was an imperial galley at the heart of it.
That was enough to make her stand, continuing on her route down to the docks. Perhaps all hope wasn’t gone after all.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Ceres fought, and now it felt as though she’d been fighting forever. From the first moments she’d fallen into the Stade, from the moment she’d started serving Thanos as his weapons bearer, she’d been fighting, and this felt like the culmination of it.
Guards came at her, and warriors from Felldust. They charged, they snarled, they cut and they thrust. It didn’t make any difference. Ceres whirled out of the way, parried and cut, keeping herself in the space where she could flow in the moment. She felt a sword slice across her forearm, a spear tip puncture the skin above her hip. None of it made any difference.
In that moment, she was the battle. She was one piece of it and the whole of it, the way a droplet of water couldn’t be separated from the rest of the ocean. She followed the tide of the battle, ducking under the stroke of a wide-bladed sword, thrusting up in its wake.
The combatlords stayed with her, and in a battle this closely pressed, Ceres found herself grateful for that. It almost didn’t matter how good she was with a sword when an attack could come from anywhere. If she couldn’t see it, couldn’t anticipate it, then even the skills Eoin’s people had taught her couldn’t help. With the combatlords at her back, she could trust that they would stop the blows that would kill her otherwise.
Ceres fought, and while she did, she heard the screams of the nobles, the cries of the servants. Ceres shook her head. She couldn’t do anything to help them. Even if she could have, they’d stood by and watched her torment. Many of them had yelled their approval while she’d been beaten. While the conscripts had been murdered.
They would have to save themselves, if they could.
Even as she thought it, Ceres saw that Stephania was making her own efforts. She and one of her handmaidens leapt down into the fighting pit, and from there ran for the gate that allowed slaves into it.
Ceres started after her, but there were soldiers in the way. She wanted to scream at them then, to yell at them to get out of her way. Following Stephania was as instinctive as breathing right then, but the way the battle ran was wrong for it, and Ceres couldn’t break free from the wash of it without opening herself up to more attacks.
She pressed forward, trying to cut her way through the problem, but there were too many enemies for that. Where the guards and the invaders had allies and clear enemies, for Ceres, it seemed that everyone was a foe.
That could be an advantage, though, and Ceres threw herself into the middle of it, cutting left and right. She took the blow of a hammer on her crossed blades, hacked at the arm of its holder, and turned in time to sweep aside a fighting pick.
She turned, looking for her next opponent, and in that moment she saw her father and her brother joining the battle. They were up above, where the conscripts were still tied to their posts. She saw Sartes cut through the ropes of one boy, while her father and a girl Ceres didn’t know tried to protect against those pressing in.
They kept going, even though it was too late for many of the conscripts. Ceres saw one of Felldust’s warriors thrust a blade into one of the tied boys, while a noble cut the throat of another. Ceres wished then that she could leap up there to help, but all she could do was plunge back into the fight in the pit and hope it would be enough.
She started to cut a path to her brother and father. Beside her, the combatlords pushed men back, smashed them from their feet, cut them down. There seemed to be fewer soldiers attacking them now, as if realizing that their efforts needed to be on the foes who had come into the castle.
“Down here!” she called up, and saw her brother look down. She watched him nod, then lower the girl with him into the fighting pit. She had a sword, and she looked determined to Ceres.
“This is Leyana,” Sartes said. “Look after her.”
One look at Sartes’s expression when he passed her down told Ceres everything she needed to know about the two of them.
The conscript followed, then her father. Sartes was last, hopping down lightly onto the sand. One of the Felldust warriors ran at him as he rolled to his feet, but Ceres ran in to cut the man’s spear in half. She opened his throat with the backswing, turning to her brother and pointing.
“That way!” she yelled over the noise of the battle. “Through the slave entrance, to the tunnels.”
There were enough of them now to push their way through the battle as a wedge. Ceres formed its tip, cutting down anyone who was foolish enough to try to slow them. Two of the three combatlords flanked her, providing strength and pushing power to break through the walls of men in front of them. Sartes, Leyana, her father, and the conscript came next. The final combatlord brought up the rear, so that no one could ambush them from behind.
They pushed forward, heading for the spot where the pit gave way to the tunnels. Chasing after Stephania, because Ceres wasn’t going to let her get away after everything she’d done.
They pushed through the last few, and then plunged down into the tunnels. Sartes had a light, and so he had to go first, but Ceres followed as close as she could. She thought she could see the flicker of another light far ahead, and followed behind it.
Twists and turns followed, down beneath the earth, and Ceres let Sartes guide her, although she kept her eye on the flicker of light as well.
Perhaps that was why the warriors who smashed into them took her by surprise. One barreled into her, taking Ceres from her feet. The other smashed past her, and she heard her father grunt as a blade grazed him.
She rolled with the man who’d slammed into her, coming up on top and grabbing for his wrist in the near dark. She forced it away from her even as he grabbed her wrist in return. That was bad, because it turned this into a contest of strength, and although she was on top, she could feel that the man beneath her was stronger.
She snapped her head forward, smashing her forehead into her attacker’s nose once and then again. It gave her the opening she needed to wrench her sword arm free, thrusting down and feeling her blade slide into his throat. The man she was grappling with made a small, swift sound of pain, and then it was done.
Ceres spun, ready to help with the second man, but the others had already rushed in to fight him, and he was down. Her father was rubbing his shoulder, but Ceres felt a surge of relief that he was all right. She’d been so worried that she might turn around to find him gone.
“They’re in the tunnels,” Sartes said.
Ceres could hear the fear there. “We’ll find a way through. They won’t catch us.”
But they would catch Stephania. Ceres was going to find her, and she was going to kill
her. She was going to end this.
If she could find her.
“Which way?” Ceres asked. “Which way would Stephania have gone?”
She watched while her brother thought for a moment.
“She’d have keys to some of the tunnels she closed off,” Sartes said, “so the quickest way for her to get out would be… that way.”
Ceres didn’t hesitate. She set off through the dimness of the tunnels, moving as fast as she dared. Her feet caught rocks as she ran, but she managed to recover her footing each time, forcing herself to keep going. She had to believe that Stephania couldn’t move this fast, even if she had a head start.
At each crossroads, she paused, looking around for signs, waiting for Sartes to catch up with the others. Sartes had spent more time than she had in the tunnels under the city, working there with Anka and learning the routes. Ceres had no idea where they were by now, but Sartes seemed certain each time.
“We’re somewhere under the cattle market,” he said. “Can’t you smell it?”
Ceres could, but she hadn’t thought to use it as a directional marker. More importantly, she had other things to focus on right then.
“Which way?” she asked.
Sartes pointed. “She’ll be trying to get to the docks. That way.”
Ceres ran on. She could hear other sounds down in the tunnels now. She could hear booted feet and calls in a language she didn’t understand. She guessed that it was only a matter of time before the tunnels filled with Felldust soldiers, hunting for the last people hiding from them.
Ceres didn’t want to have to fight a whole army. She doubted that she could come close to it now, with only human strength and no powers to turn her enemies to stone. Ceres found herself missing that for a moment. If there was one person who deserved to be turned into a statue, it was Stephania. She could stand there, beautiful but harmless, for the rest of time.
That wasn’t an option, though, so she was going to have to do things the other way.
