by Morgan Rice
She saw one leap over the wall of shields, stabbing downward as he passed over a guard. Another spun spiked chains, ripping spears out of the hands of their wielders. The bearded fighter struck with a trident, thrusting it through one soldier before knocking another back with the haft.
Anka found herself plunged into the middle of the fight, and it was chaos. A soldier got near her, so she stabbed at him, but the fight swept them apart again. A sword came at her head, and she found a sword interposed. Sartes nodded to her as Anka stabbed at the soldier who’d struck.
The combatlords were like whirlwinds in the middle of the fight. Each fought alone, an island of violence surrounded by opponents, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. The rebels fought like small fish following in the wake of sharks, darting in and out of the fight, filling in the gaps left by their mayhem. They were more evenly matched with the soldiers, but with the combatlords there, it seemed to be enough.
For now, at least. Anka knew there would be more coming. She pulled back from the fight, standing on the sands and staring up at the crowd.
“We are the rebellion, but so are you!” Anka called out. “If you want to be free, you must take that freedom!” She pointed at the balcony where the nobles were already starting to flee. “Look at them! The Empire has oppressed you for too long! Help to fight it now!”
Many people kept staring down as though it was all a show, but many more responded. The crowd surged as people started toward guards at the gates, or struggled to get to the nobles above. Anka saw people starting to fight; against guards, against those who wanted the Empire to stand, or simply to get away.
She threw herself back into the fight in the Stade as she saw Edrin struggling with a soldier. She kicked out, knocking the man off balance, and Edrin lashed out with his sword. Anka saw a group of guards trying to re-form their shield wall, and she didn’t have the strength to do more than point, charging again and knowing this time that the others would follow.
The battle swirled around Anka like a living thing. She did what she could, looking for openings to attack even though she knew she could never keep up with the capabilities of the combatlords. She saw people fighting and dying in every direction, men and women, combatlords and soldiers, rebels and people who had joined them from the crowd.
Above it all, Anka heard one noise she had hoped not to hear when she arrived: the sound of horns. It meant that they’d run out of time. They’d done what they’d come there to do, but now they needed to find a way out of there before it fell apart around them.
The Stade was in uproar now, with the people there in full revolt. It should have been a sight to fill Anka with hope.
Even so, the sound of the horns only brought dread with it.
More soldiers were coming, more than they could ever dream to battle.
And they had no way out.
CHAPTER TEN
Ceres left the Isle Beyond the Mist behind with a heavy heart. She didn’t want to go, however much she might need to, however much her destiny might lie on the mainland. Her mother was on the island.
But her mother had been the one to insist that Ceres go, even if there had been tears in her eyes while she did it. She’d been the one to load fresh supplies onto Ceres’s boat, and to point her on the bearing she needed to take to return to the mainland. She’d stood on the beach, not waving, but watching, while Ceres sailed off. She’d been there as a tiny figure on the beach until finally Ceres had been too far away to make her out. Possibly she had still been there even when the mist closed around her.
The journey back through the mist was less eerie than it had been coming there, but this time, Ceres could feel the power in the fog surrounding her. Eoin had said that this was somewhere for her to go alone. Could anyone else have made it through with her? How many people blundered into this barrier and didn’t come out?
When she made it through, it was daytime, but somehow the world didn’t seem quite as vibrant as it did on the other side. It was like stepping into another, slightly more leaden, reality, where the glorious homes of the Ancient Ones couldn’t be imagined except as stories.
She sailed on, keeping the tiller of her small boat lashed to the course her mother had set and focusing on catching the wind with the boat’s sail. There was a fresh breeze behind her, pushing her along, but even so, Ceres didn’t know how long it would take her to return.
She thought of everything that might be waiting for her there. The rebellion was there, and she didn’t know how well it was doing. Perhaps it had already won, or already been wiped out. That thought made her chest tighten, because her father and her brother would be with the rebellion, if they were anywhere. No, she had to believe that they were all right.
Ceres wasn’t sure what she was going to be able to do once she got there. She knew more of who she was now, but not everything. She had more control of the powers within her. Would it be enough? Ceres thought of Thanos, dead on the beaches of Haylon, and of all the people who suffered under the Empire. She would make it enough, even if she had to walk into the throne room of the Empire and turn the king to stone in front of everyone.
Ceres watched the waves around her boat for a while, and she realized that they were growing, forming into a swell that buffeted the small craft despite its construction. The boat was moving faster too, and Ceres could feel the wind ripping at the sails, shoving her craft along roughly through the peaks and troughs of the water.
She looked ahead, and her heart pounded as she saw a storm brewing.
It began as a patch of bruised sky on the horizon. It spread, seeming to fill everything ahead, and Ceres knew that there would have been no way to sail around it even if she had dared to deviate from the course her mother had set. It seemed to fill the world.
The wind soon raged in her ears, and she clutched the wood, knowing the only thing to do was hold on and hope that it wouldn’t be too bad.
It was.
The first band of rain hit Ceres as solidly as a river. It pummeled her from above, while around her the rising wind howled. The first cracks of thunder sounded, deafening against the quiet of the sea, and lightning flickered among the clouds. It arced down too, and Ceres saw the water steam where it struck.
Her boat’s sails billowed madly, and Ceres fought to get them down before they tore to shreds. She should have done it as soon as she saw the storm, but somehow it had felt right to press on in spite of the danger. She hauled at the ropes, using all of the strength that her blood gave her, and even then, it was a fight to keep the boom of the mast from breaking free of her grip.
In the distance, she thought she could see a waterspout rising. It spun wildly, and Ceres hoped desperately that it wouldn’t come close. Her head whipped around as it stalked along like some living thing, passing close enough that Ceres could feel the massive pull of the air there.
Just that moment of distraction was enough. Ceres felt the ropes in her hand pull free fast enough to burn, and she cried out as they ripped through her palm. She heard a crack that drowned out even the thunder, and slowly, so slowly that it might have been a huge tree falling, her mast toppled into the waves.
Ceres looked at it in despair. Her boat had no oars, no way to control it without the sail, but there was nothing she could do to get it back. Tossed by the waves, without even a mast now, all she could do was hold on—as the waves grew ever higher.
A massive wave suddenly lifted her fifty, a hundred feet high. She looked over the precipice and screamed, as her entire world came crashing down.
Mother, she thought. How could you let me die like this?
***
Sharpness poked at the edge of Ceres’s consciousness, and she woke slowly, struggling out of the depths of exhaustion into which she’d fallen. How many days had it been now? How long had she drifted? Heat and a lack of fresh water had glued her tongue to the roof of her mouth, while her eyes felt so heavy it seemed like an impossible task to open them.
Something j
abbed at her again, and Ceres managed to open her eyes this time. She found herself looking up at the features of a man whose hair had been styled into elaborate spikes that were probably there to make him look more terrifying. He wore a kind of half armor of leather scraps, and the curved sword in his hand explained the sharp pain that had dragged Ceres from her sleep.
There were half a dozen more like him on her small boat, rooting through it for any scrap that might be of value. They were wild-looking men, covered in tattoos and bangles, their clothes gaudy wherever they didn’t form armor. To the starboard side of Ceres’s boat, the hull of a much larger galley rose like a wall punctuated by oar ports. Symbols promising pain and death were daubed on the side in paint the color of blood, leaving Ceres in no doubt about the kind of men who had woken her.
Pirates.
“She’s awake,” the one who’d prodded her said. “Looks like she might be worth hauling out of this boat after all.”
“Could be fun for a while,” another agreed. “Been a long time at sea.”
“It’ll be a longer time for her,” a third pirate said with a laugh that made Ceres shiver.
Ceres looked up and saw more men leering over the side of the ship. Some of them catcalled and made lewd gestures. She cringed back.
“Eventually, we’ll sell you to a slaver,” the first pirate said with a laugh. “Eventually. And in the meantime, we’re going to keep you chained in the galley for any man that wants you.”
“I’ll… kill you,” Ceres managed through cracked lips.
That just got another laugh from him. “Oh, it’s fun when they have fight in them. Hey, Nim, do you remember that barbarian woman we took? Had to tie her to the prow like a figurehead in a storm to break her. I doubt it will take that much with this one, though. Probably just a good whipping or two.”
He reached down for Ceres, and she felt his hand close over her arm, hauling her to her feet. She tensed to fight, even though there were probably too many of them to fight all at once, given how weak she felt.
“Not so tough now, are you?” the pirate asked, casually backhanding her. Ceres tasted blood.
She also felt the power in her rising up, lashing out like a whip through her. She remembered the way she’d shaped it before, with her mother in the meadow. She felt her power jump out through the contact between her and the pirate, and she saw the stone creep out over him.
It rippled across his flesh like one of the waves around her, and he barely even had enough time to look surprised before the flow of the stone passed across his face. One moment, Ceres was faced with a pirate who wanted to attack her; the next there was a statue there that seemed like a perfect replica of the man.
It felt no different from the moment when she’d done it with the flower, but it was different, because until a second ago this had been a human being. Ceres had been staring into the man’s eyes when the stone took them, and now they were orbs of blank marble, veined in red and looking as though they could have been carved by the greatest sculptor who ever lived.
A brief, pure sense of horror passed through Ceres at what she had just done, and yet, hadn’t this man deserved it? She forced herself to composure, and looked up at the rail of the pirate vessel as she disengaged her tunic from the cold, dead grip of the statue.
The men above were staring down open-mouthed, silent now where before they had called down obscene suggestions. Ceres looked around until she found the cargo netting the men had used to clamber into her smaller boat, and climbed up it a little at a time. She still felt starved and thirsty beyond endurance, but with her power flowing through her, she more than had the strength to make the climb.
She hopped onto the deck of the pirate galley, standing in the middle of an expanding circle of the thugs there. None of them seemed to want to be the first to step toward her.
“Who leads here?” Ceres asked, finding the strength to make the words seem powerful.
“I do!” a man said, stepping forward with a sword in his hand. “And the others might be scared of your witchcraft, but I’m not.”
He stepped forward, hefting the sword as if to strike at Ceres. The skills the forest folk had taught her made it easy to step aside and kick his feet from under him.
“I’ll kill you,” he promised. “I’ll do it so slowly you beg for death.”
“How many people have you hurt?” Ceres asked. “How many boats have you attacked? How many have you sold into slavery?”
She stepped aside from another blow, bringing her hand up. This time, she called the power, and the stone flowed over the pirate leader, spreading out from her hand in ripples. Before, she’d been horrified by it, but every evil thing the others there had done, this man had ordered. There were some people even Ceres couldn’t feel pity for.
“Who leads here?” Ceres asked again, and the silence among the pirates was answer enough. The first of them to kneel was a relatively young one, but the others soon followed, falling down to the deck in obvious fear.
“You lead,” one of the pirates said. “We’ll do whatever you want.”
Whatever she wanted. That was a long way from what they’d been threatening only a minute or two ago. A part of Ceres wanted to punish these men for what they were, and what they did, but she pushed down that urge. She wasn’t going to do that, even if they did deserve it.
Besides, her ship was ruined.
“Take me to Delos.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thanos had decided not to attend the Stade for the Blood Moon festival. The sight of the Killings would only have brought back too many memories of Ceres, and that wouldn’t have been fair to Stephania. A man should concentrate on his wife, not on the dead.
Besides, there was too much of a chance that Lucious would be there, and after this morning, Thanos wanted to avoid his half-brother even more than usual.
That was why he was in the castle when the guards started rushing about. Thanos knew fighting men. He knew the difference between the speed that came with a hurried order from a superior and a genuine emergency. One look at the guards rushing to get their weapons in order, looking around as though not knowing what to do, told him which this was.
“What is it?” Thanos asked, stopping one of them. The man had the look of a city guard, not one of the castle contingent. His uniform was less pristine, and there wasn’t the flash of a royal insignia at his shoulder. “Calm down. Tell me what’s happening.”
“Prince Thanos.” The man sounded breathless, as though he’d run all the way from the city. “Thank the gods you’re here. We’ve been trying to find someone senior to take charge, but Prince Lucious isn’t here, and in the wake of the Blood Moon festivities…”
All the others who might have done so were probably too hung over to be useful, Thanos thought. He’d sent away the two generals who’d been there.
“You’ve found me now,” Thanos said. “What’s the emergency?”
“It’s the Stade, your highness,” the guard said. “The rebellion has attacked the Stade!”
A flicker of interest and hope flared in Thanos, but he did his best to disguise it.
“What do you mean, soldier?”
“In the middle of the Killings, your highness,” the guard said. “They attacked the Stade and freed the combatlords. Now… now the whole area around the Stade is rioting! They’re in open rebellion, and we don’t know what to do!”
Inwardly, Thanos cheered in joy at the audacity of the move. It was brilliant, in its way, striking at the heart of the Empire while acquiring truly dangerous fighters for the rebellion. The rioting around the rest… handled properly, it might turn into full rebellion in the city.
He’d just been handed the opportunity to do it.
“Right,” he said. “From this moment, I’m in command. What’s your name?”
“Gil, your highness.”
“Well, Gil, you’re with me. I hope you know how to ride.”
Thanos raced for the stables, saddling his ho
rse as quickly as he could and ordering the stable hands to fetch one for the soldier while he grabbed his weapons. Together, they rode down into the city, and it probably looked to the guard as though Thanos was hurrying to try to put down the rebellion. Instead, Thanos wanted to get there so that he could see it for himself and look for ways to fan the flames.
There were real flames as the two of them rode down into the city. People had set fires in some of the poorest areas, and Thanos could see smoke rising in curls while guards, looters, and rioters fought on the streets.
“Noble scum!” A man ran at Thanos, a knife in his hand. Thanos kicked him away and kept riding.
“You don’t want to stop and finish him, your highness?” Gil asked. “Prince Lucious would—”
“There’s no time,” Thanos said, cutting him off. It wasn’t the real reason, but it was one a guard might believe. “Where are the officers currently in charge?”
“We’re not sure who’s in charge, your highness, but a few of the officers have found a spot in one of the old towers overlooking the Stade.”
“Then that’s where we need to go,” Thanos said, spurring his horse forward. The streets were closing in now, and in the side streets, he could see groups of people gathering. Most of them looked as though they were just standing around, as though they wanted to know what was going on.
If he’d had more time, Thanos might have gone to them and urged them to revolt with the others. As it was, he rode in the direction of the Stade, and even from here, he could see the signs of violence. There were groups of guards in the streets, and even as he watched, a cluster of them set off after a running man.
“Leave him!” Thanos ordered. “I need you with me.”
