Soldier, Brother, Sorcerer

It was a move that was probably going to cost Thanos his own life, given that he was only there because Stephania was trapped. If he’d taken her with him, left her safe on Haylon, none of this would have happened.

Thanos knew then that there was one thing he needed to do before they executed him. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t hope to avoid what was waiting for him, but he could still try to make this right.

He waited for another of the servants crossing the courtyard to come close. The first one he signaled to kept walking.

“Please,” he called over to the second, who glanced around before shaking his head and continuing on his way.

The third, a young woman, paused.

“We’re not supposed to talk to you,” she said. “We’ve been forbidden from bringing you food or water. The queen wants you to suffer for killing the king.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Thanos said. He reached out as she started to turn away. “I don’t expect you to believe that, and I’m not asking for water. Could you bring me charcoal and paper? The queen can’t have forbidden that.”

“Are you planning to write a message to the rebellion?” the servant asked.

Thanos shook his head. “Nothing like that. You can read what I write if you want to.”

“I… I’ll try.” She looked as though she might have said more, but Thanos saw one of the guards glance their way, and the servant hurried off.

Waiting was hard. How was he meant to watch guards constructing the gallows from which he would be hanged until nearly dead, or the great wheel on which he would be broken afterwards? It was a small cruelty that said that even if Queen Athena managed to get a grip on her son, the Empire would be far from perfect.

He was still thinking about all the cruelties that Lucious and his mother might inflict on the land when the servant arrived with something tucked under her arm. It was only a scrap of parchment and the smallest stick of charcoal, but she still passed it to him as furtively as if it were the key to his freedom.

Thanos took it just as carefully. He had no doubt that the guards would take it from him, if only for the small opportunity to hurt him more. Even if there were any who weren’t completely corrupted by the cruelty of the Empire, they believed him to be the worst of traitors, deserving all he got.

He hunched in over the scrap, whispering the words as he tried to write, trying to get it exactly as it should be. He wrote in tiny letters, knowing that there was a lot in his heart that he needed to get down there:

To my darling wife, Stephania. By the time you read this, I will have been executed. Perhaps you will feel that I deserve it, after the way I left you behind. Perhaps you will feel some of the pain that I feel knowing that you have been forced into too many things that you did not want.

Thanos tried to think of the words for everything he felt. It was hard to get it all down, or to make sense of the confusing mess of feelings swirling inside him:

I… did love you, and I came to Delos to try to save you. I am sorry that I could not, even if I am not sure we could ever have been together again. I… know how happy you were to learn about our child, and I was filled with joy as well. Even like this, my biggest regret is that we will never see the son or daughter who could have been.

Just the thought of that brought with it more pain than any of the blows the guards had inflicted. He should have come back sooner to free Stephania. He should never have left her behind.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, knowing that there wouldn’t be enough space to write everything he wanted to say. He certainly couldn’t get his feelings down in something he was going to entrust a stranger to deliver. He just hoped that this would be enough.

He could have written so much more, but that was the heart of it. His sorrow that things had gone wrong. The fact that there had been love there. He hoped it would be enough.

Thanos waited for the servant to come near again, stopping her with an outstretched arm.

“Can you take this to Lady Stephania?” he asked.

The servant shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Thanos said. He understood the risk he was asking the servant to take. “But if anyone can get it to her while she’s still locked up – ”

“It’s not that,” the servant said. “Lady Stephania isn’t here. She left.”

“Left?” Thanos echoed. “When?”

The servant spread her hands. “I don’t know. I heard one of her handmaidens talking about it. She went off into the city, and she didn’t come back.”

Had she escaped? Had she made it out of there without his help? Her handmaiden had said it was impossible, but had Stephania found a way anyway? He could hope that it was possible, couldn’t he?

Thanos was still thinking about that when he realized that activity around the gallows had stopped. Looking at it, it was easy to see why. It was finished. Guards stood waiting beside it, obviously admiring their construction. A noose hung, dark against the skyline. A winding wheel and brazier stood nearby. Towering over it all was a great wheel, chains set into it, a huge hammer resting on the floor beside it.

He could see people gathering now. There were guards standing in a ring around the edges of the courtyard, looking both as though they were there to prevent others from interfering and as though they wanted to see Thanos’s death for themselves.

Above, looking from windows, Thanos could see servants and nobles, some looking down with what seemed like pity, others with blank faces or outright hatred. Thanos could see a few even perched on the rooftop, looking down from there since they couldn’t find another spot. They were treating this as if it were the social event of the season rather than an execution, and a thread of anger rose in Thanos at that.

“Traitor!”

“Murderer!”

The catcalls came down, insults followed by fruit from the windows, and that was the hardest part of it. Thanos had thought that these people respected him, and would know he could never do what he’d been accused of, but they jeered him as if he were the worst of criminals. Not all of them insulted him, but enough did, and Thanos found himself wondering if they really hated him that much, or if they just wanted to show the new king and his mother which side they were on.

He fought when they came for him, dragging him from his gibbet. He punched and he kicked, struck out and tried to twist free, yet whatever he did it wasn’t enough. The guards caught his arms, twisting them behind him and tying them in place. Thanos stopped fighting then, but only because he wanted to have some dignity in this moment.

They led him, step by step, to the gallows they’d built. Thanos climbed up without prompting onto the stool they’d set beneath the noose. If he was lucky, maybe the fall would snap his neck, depriving them of the rest of their cruel sport.

As they set the noose around his neck, he found himself thinking about Ceres. About everything that could have been different. He’d wanted to change things. He’d wanted things to be better, and to be with her. He wished…

There was no time for wishes though, because Thanos felt the guards kick the stool away, and the noose tightened around his neck.

CHAPTER SIX

Ceres didn’t care that the castle was meant to be the Empire’s last, impenetrable bastion. She didn’t care that it had walls like sheer cliffs or doors that could withstand siege weapons. This ended here.

“Forward!” she yelled to her followers, and they surged in her wake. Maybe another general would have led from the rear, planning this carefully and letting others take the risks. Ceres couldn’t do that. She wanted to take apart what was left of the Empire’s power herself, and she suspected that half the reason so many people were following her was because of that.

There were more now even than there had been in the Stade. The people of the city had come out into the streets, the rebellion spreading again like burning embers given fresh fuel. There were people there in the clothes of dockhands and butchers, hostlers and merchants. There were even a few guards now, their imperial colors hurriedly torn away when they saw the tide of humanity approaching.

“They’ll be ready for us,” one of the combatlords beside Ceres said as they marched on the castle.

Ceres shook her head. “They’ll see us coming. That’s not the same thing as being ready.”

No one could be ready for this. Ceres didn’t care how many men the Empire had now, or how strong their walls were. She had a whole city on her side. She and the combatlords raced through the streets, along the wide promenade that led up toward the gates of the castle. They were the head of the spear, with the people of Delos and what was left of Lord West’s men following along behind them on a tide of hope and popular anger.

Ceres heard shouting ahead as they neared the castle, and the sound of horns as soldiers tried to organize some kind of meaningful defense.

“It’s too late,” Ceres said. “They can’t stop us now.”

Yet there were things they could do even then, she knew. Arrows started to fall from the walls, not in the numbers that had formed such a deadly rain for Lord West’s troops, but still more than dangerous enough for those with no armor. Ceres saw one take a man beside her through the chest. A woman went down screaming further back.

“Those with shields or protection, to me,” Ceres called. “Everyone else, be ready to charge.”

Yet the castle’s gates were already closing. Ceres had a vision of her followers as a wave breaking on it as if it were the hull of some great ship, but she didn’t slow. Waves could swamp ships, too. Even when the great gates slammed together with a sound like thunder, she didn’t stop. She just knew there would be more effort involved in defeating the Empire’s evil.

“Climb!” she yelled to the combatlords, sheathing her twin swords so that she could leap at the wall. The rough stone had enough handholds for anyone brave enough to try it, and the combatlords were more than brave enough for that. They followed her, their muscled frames pulling them up the stonework as if it were some training exercise ordered by their blade masters.

Ceres heard those behind her calling for ladders, and knew that the ordinary people of the rebellion would follow her soon enough. For now though, she just concentrated on the gritty feel of the stone under her hands, the effort needed to drag herself from one handhold to the next.

A spear flashed by her, obviously thrown by someone above. Ceres pressed herself flat to the wall, letting it go by, then kept climbing. She was a target as long as she was on the wall, and the only solution was to keep going. Ceres found herself feeling grateful that they wouldn’t have enough time to prepare boiling oil or burning sand as a protection against climbing.

She reached the top of the wall, and instantly there was a guard there to defend. Ceres was glad she was the first one up there, because only her speed saved her, letting her reach out to grab her opponent and pull him from his perch atop the battlements. He fell with a scream, tumbling down into the seething mass of her followers.

Ceres leapt onto the wall then, drawing both her blades to cut left and right. A second man came at her, and she parried while she thrust, feeling the blade sink home. A spear came in from the side, glancing from her partial armor. Ceres cut back with brutal force. In seconds, she’d carved a clear space at the top of the wall, and combatlords poured over the edge then to fill it.

Some of the guards there tried to fight back. A man struck at Ceres with an axe. She ducked, hearing the thud as it struck stone behind her, then lanced one of her swords through his gut. She stepped around him, kicking him down toward the courtyard. She caught a slash against her blades and pushed another man back.

There weren’t enough guards to hold the wall. Some ran. The ones who came forward died. One ran at Ceres with a spear, and she felt it nick her leg as she dodged with no space. She cut low to hamstring her attacker, and then brought her blades across at throat height.

Her brief beachhead atop the wall quickly expanded into something approaching a wave front. Ceres found steps leading down to the gates, and took them four at a time, pausing only to parry a thrust from a waiting guard and strike back with a kick that sent him sprawling. While the combatlord behind her leapt at the guard, Ceres’s attention was on the gates.

A great wheel stood beside the gates, obviously there to open their bulk. There were almost a dozen guards beside it in a ring, trying to protect it and keep out the horde of people beyond. More stood with bows, ready to shoot down anyone who tried to open the gates.

Ceres charged at the wheel without pausing.

She thrust through the armor of one guard, drew out her sword, and ducked under a second’s blow. She swept her sword across his thigh, leapt up to her feet, and cut down a third. She heard an arrow clatter from the cobbles, and threw one blade, hearing a scream as it connected. She snatched up a dying guard’s sword, rejoined the battle, and in an instant, the others were with her.

It was chaos there in the next few moments, because the guards seemed to understand that this was their last chance to keep out the rebellion. One came at Ceres with two blades, and she matched him cut for cut, feeling the impact as she parried each one, probably faster than most of the others around them could follow. Then she thrust in between the strokes, catching the guard through the throat, moving on before he could even collapse so that she could parry an axe blow aimed at a combatlord.

She couldn’t save all of them. Around her, Ceres saw violence that never seemed to stop. She saw one of the combatlords who had survived the Stade looking down at a sword that pierced his chest. He pulled in his attacker as he fell, hitting him with one final swipe of his own blade. Ceres saw another man fighting against three guards. He killed one, but as he did so, his blade caught, and another was able to stab him in the side.

Ceres charged forward, cutting down both of those who were left. Around her, the battle for the door wheel raged to its inevitable conclusion. It was inevitable, because faced with the combatlords, the guards there were like ripe corn, waiting to be cut down. That didn’t make the violence any less real though, or the threat. Ceres dodged back just in time from a sword thrust and threw the wielder back into the others there. As soon as the space was clear, Ceres put her hands to the wheel and pushed with all the strength her powers gave her. She heard the creak of pulleys, and the slow groan of the doors as they started to part.

People poured in, flowing into the castle. Her father and brother were among the first through the gap, racing to join her. Ceres gestured with her sword.

“Spread out!” she yelled. “Take the castle. Kill only those you have to. This is a time for freedom, not butchery. The Empire falls today!”

Ceres went at the head of the wave of people, heading for the throne room. In times of crisis people would head there to try to learn what was happening, and Ceres guessed that those in charge of the castle would stay there as long as they dared, trying to maintain control.

Around her, she saw violence breaking out, impossible to contain, impossible to do more than slow down. She saw a young nobleman step out in front of them, and the crowd fell on him, beating him with whatever weapons they could grab. A servant got in their way, and Ceres saw her shoved against the wall and stabbed.

“No!” Ceres yelled as she saw some of the ordinary folk there starting to grab for tapestries or running after nobles. “We’re here to stop this, not loot!”

The truth was, though, that it was already too late. Ceres saw rebels chasing after one of the servants there, while others grabbed for the golden ornaments that filled the castle. She’d let a tidal wave into it, and now there was no hope of turning it back just with words.

A squadron of royal bodyguards stood in front of the doors to the great hall. They looked formidable in their gilt-edged armor, etched with false musculature and images designed to intimidate.

“Surrender and you will not be harmed,” Ceres promised them, hoping now that she would be able to keep that promise.

The royal bodyguards didn’t even pause. They charged forward with drawn blades, and in an instant, everything was chaos again. The royal bodyguards were among the finest warriors of the Empire, their skills honed through long hours of training. The first one to lunge at her was fast enough that even Ceres had to bring her blade up sharply to intercept the blow.

She parried again, her second blade slipping around the bodyguard’s weapon and darting into his throat. Beside her, she could hear the sounds of people fighting and dying, but she didn’t dare to look around. She was too busy pushing back another opponent, shoving him into the heaving mass of the melee.

It was nothing but crushing bodies then. Swords seemed to emerge from it as though from some great writhing pool of flesh. She saw a man crushed against the doors, the sheer weight of people behind him squashing him there, just as they carried her forward.

Ceres waited until she got closer, then kicked the door to the great hall. The castle gates had been solid, but these broke open under the power of her blow, rocking back until they slammed into the walls on either side.

Within the great hall, Ceres saw clusters of nobles, waiting as if unsure where to go. She heard several of the noblewomen there scream as if some horde of murderers had descended upon them. From where they stood, Ceres guessed it probably didn’t look too different from that at all.

She saw Queen Athena at the heart of it all, sitting on the high throne that should have been the king’s, flanked by a pair of the largest bodyguards there. They ran forward in unison, and Ceres stepped in to meet them.

She did more than step, she rolled.

She threw herself forward, diving under the sweeping blades of the attackers, tumbling and coming up in one smooth movement. She turned, striking out with both of her swords at once, catching the bodyguards with enough force to punch through their armor. They fell without a sound.

One sound did echo over the clashing blades at the door: the sound of Queen Athena clapping with deliberate slowness.

“Oh, very good,” she said as Ceres turned back to her. “Very elegant. Worthy of any jester. What will you do for your next trick?”

Ceres didn’t rise to the bait. She knew Athena had nothing but words left. Of course she was going to try to get all she could from them.

“Next, I bring the Empire to an end,” Ceres said.

She saw Queen Athena fix her with a level glare. “With yourself in its place? Here comes the new Empire, same as the old.”

That hit closer than Ceres would have liked. She’d heard the screams of the nobles as the rebels with her had spread like wildfire through the castle. She’d seen some of those they’d cut down.

“I’m nothing like you,” Ceres said.

The queen didn’t answer for a moment. Instead, she laughed, and some of the nobles joined in with her, obviously long accustomed to tittering along when their queen found something funny. Others seemed far too scared, cowering back.

She felt her father’s hand on her shoulder then. “You’re nothing like her at all.”

There was no time to think about that though, because the crowd around Ceres was getting restless.

“What are we going to do with them?” one of the combatlords demanded.

A rebel provided a quick answer. “Kill them!”

“Kill them! Kill them!” It became a chant, and Ceres could see the hatred rising there in the crowd. It felt far too much like the baying that had come in the Stade, waiting for blood. Demanding it.

A man stepped forward, heading for one of the noblewomen with a knife in his hand. Ceres reacted on instinct, and this time she was fast enough. She smashed into the would-be killer, knocking him sprawling so that he stared up at Ceres in shock.

“That’s enough!” Ceres yelled, and the room was silent in that moment.

She looked around at them, shaming them into stepping back, meeting their gazes regardless of who they were.

“No more killing,” she said. “No more.”

“What do we do with them, then?” a rebel demanded, gesturing at the nobles. He was obviously braver than the rest, or just hated the nobles more.

“We arrest them,” Ceres said. “Father, Sartes, can you see to that? Make sure that no one kills them, or harms anyone else here?”

She could guess at all the ways it might go wrong. There was so much anger among the people of the city, and among all those the Empire had wronged. It would be easy for this to turn into the kind of massacre worthy of Lucious, with horrors that Ceres would never want to be involved in.

“And what will you be doing?” Sartes asked her.

Ceres could understand the fear she heard in that. Her brother had probably thought that she would be there to organize all this, but the truth was that there was no one Ceres trusted more than him to do this.

“I need to finish taking the castle,” Ceres said. “My way.”

“Yes,” Queen Athena said, cutting in. “Coat your hands with more blood. How many people have died so far for your so-called ideals?”

Ceres could have ignored that. She could have just walked away, but there was something about the queen that was impossible to just leave be, like a wound that wasn’t quite healed over.

“How many have died so you could take what you wanted from them?” Ceres countered. “You’ve put so much into tearing down the rebellion, when you could have just listened and learned something. You’ve hurt so many people. You’ll pay for that.”

She saw Queen Athena’s tight smile. “No doubt with my head.”

Ceres ignored her, starting to walk away.

“Still,” Queen Athena said, “I won’t be alone. It’s too late for Thanos, dear.”

“Thanos?” Ceres said, and the word was enough to stop her. She turned back to where the queen still sat on the throne. “What have you done? Where is he?”

She saw Queen Athena’s smile widen. “You really don’t know, do you?”

Ceres could feel her anger and impatience building. Not at the way the queen was taunting her, but at what it might mean if Thanos were truly in danger.

The queen laughed again. This time, no one joined in. “You came all the way here, and you don’t even know that your favorite prince is about to die for the murder of his king.”

“Thanos wouldn’t murder anyone!” Ceres insisted.

She wasn’t sure why she even had to say it. Surely no one truly believed that Thanos could ever do anything like that!

“He’s still going to die for it,” Queen Athena replied, with a note of calmness that made Ceres rush over to grab her, putting a blade to her throat.

In that moment, all thoughts of stopping the violence fell forgotten from her mind.

“Where is he?” she demanded. “Where is he?”

She saw the queen pale, and there was a part of Ceres that was happy about that. Queen Athena deserved to be frightened.

“The south courtyard, waiting for his execution. You see, you’re no different from us.”

Ceres threw her from the throne to the floor. “Someone take her before I do something I’ll regret.”

Ceres ran from the hall, pushing her way past the last dregs of the fight around her. Behind her, she heard Queen Athena laughing.

“You’re too late! You’ll never get there in time to save him.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Stephania sat watching the horizon, doing her best to ignore the bouncing of the ship and trying to judge the moment when she would have to murder the boat’s captain.

That she would have to do it was without doubt. Felene had been like a gift from the gods when Stephania and her handmaiden had met the captain in Delos. Felene had been a way out of the city, and a way to get to Felldust. All sent by Thanos’s own hand.

But because she was Thanos’s, she had to die. The very fact that she was loyal enough to convey them this far meant that she was too loyal to trust with everything Stephania intended to do next. The only question now was the timing.