Soldier, Brother, Sorcerer

CHAPTER THREE

Stephania clung to the rail of their boat, her knuckles as white as the spray coming off the ocean. She was not enjoying the ocean journey. Only the thought of the vengeance it might lead to made it palatable at all.

She was one of the high nobles of the Empire. When she’d undertaken long journeys before, it had been in the staterooms of great galleys, or cushioned carriages in the midst of well-guarded convoys, not sharing space on a boat that seemed far too tiny against the vast expanse of the ocean.

It wasn’t just her comfort that made it difficult, though. Stephania prided herself on being tougher than people thought. She wasn’t going to complain just because this leaky tub rolled with every wave, or because of a seemingly endless diet of fish and salt meat. She wasn’t even going to complain about the stink of it. Under normal circumstances, Stephania would have plastered her face with her best fake smile and gotten on with it.

Her pregnancy made that harder. Stephania imagined that she could feel the child growing within her now. Thanos’s child. Her perfect weapon against him. Hers. It was something that almost hadn’t seemed real when she first heard it. Now, with the pregnancy exacerbating every hint of sickness and making the food taste even worse than usual, it all seemed far too real.

Stephania watched Felene working toward the front of the boat, along with Stephania’s handmaiden, Elethe. The two made such a contrast to one another. The sailor, thief, and whatever else she was in her rough breeches and tunic, hair braided down her back. The handmaiden with her silks covered by a cloak, shorter hair framing softly dark features with an elegance to them the other woman couldn’t hope for.

Felene seemed to be having a high old time of it, singing a sea shanty of such inventive vulgarity that Stephania was sure the other woman was doing it deliberately to bait her. Either that, or it was Felene’s idea of courtship. She’d seen some of the looks the thief had given her handmaiden.

And her, but at least they were better than the looks of suspicion. Those had been rare enough at the start, but they had been growing more frequent, and Stephania could guess why. The message she’d sent to lure in Thanos had said that she’d taken Lucious’s potion. At the time, it had seemed like the best way to hurt him, but now, it meant that she had to hide the signs of a pregnancy that seemed determined now to make itself known. Even if there weren’t the near constant sickness to consider, Stephania was sure that she could feel herself swelling up like a whale, her dresses growing tighter by the day.

She couldn’t hide it forever, which meant that she was probably going to have to kill Thanos’s pet sailor at some point. Perhaps she could do it now, just walk up to the other woman and shove her over the bow rail of the boat. Or she could offer a water skin. Even given the hurry she’d left in, Stephania still had enough poisons on hand to deal with a legion of potential enemies.

She could even have her handmaiden do it. Elethe was good with knives, after all, although, given that she’d been the sailor’s captive when Stephania had found them at the docks, maybe not quite good enough.

That uncertainty was enough to make Stephania pause. This wasn’t the kind of thing that she could afford to get wrong. There would be one chance to get this right. So far from other resources, failure wouldn’t mean a quiet retreat. It might mean her death.

In any case, they were still too far from land. Stephania couldn’t steer the boat, and while her handmaiden would probably be a useful guide in the lands of Felldust, she probably couldn’t get them across the ocean to it. They needed the skills of the sailor, both to find land safely again and to get them to the right piece of land. There were things Stephania needed to find, and she couldn’t do it if she couldn’t even get to the land that had been the Empire’s ally for generations now.

Stephania walked over to the others, and for a moment she considered pushing Felene anyway, simply because she seemed surprisingly loyal to Thanos. It wasn’t a trait Stephania expected in a self-confessed thief, and it meant that bribery probably wasn’t an option. Which only left more violent means.

Still, as Felene turned toward her, Stephania forced a smile.

“How much further do we have to go?” she asked.

Felene lifted her hands like a merchant balancing scales. “A day or two, maybe. It depends on the winds. Resenting my company already, princess?”

“Well,” Stephania said, “you are foul-mouthed, condescending, high-handed, and almost gleeful about the fact that you are a criminal.”

“And those are just the start of my good points,” Felene said with a laugh. “Still, I’ll get you to Felldust easy enough. Have you thought about what you’re going to do then? Friends at court, maybe, to help find this sorcerer of yours? Do you know where to find him?”

“Where the falling sun meets the skulls of the stone dead,” Stephania said, recalling the directions Old Hara the witch had given her. Stephania had paid for those directions with the life of one of her other handmaidens. They hardly seemed like enough.

“It’s always this kind of thing,” Felene said with a sigh. “Trust me, I’ve stolen some pretty impressive things in my time, and it’s never just straightforward directions. Never a street name and someone telling you to take the third door on the left. Sorcerers, witches, they’re the worst. I’m surprised a noble lady like you wants to mess with anything like that.”

That was because the sailor knew nothing about Stephania, really. Not the things she’d spent her time learning so that she would be more than just one more face in the background of royal occasions. Certainly not the lengths she was prepared to go to when it came to revenge.

“I will do whatever it takes,” Stephania said. “The question is if I can rely on you.”

Felene flashed her a smile. “So long as you mostly ask me to do things that include drinking, fighting, and occasional stealing.” Her expression turned more serious. “I owe Thanos, and I gave him my word I’d see you safe. I keep my word.”

Without that part, she might have been perfect for Stephania’s plans. Oh, if only she’d been as open to bribery as the rest of her sort. Or even seduction. Stephania would have given her Elethe as easily as she’d given the old witch Hara her last handmaiden.

“What about when we get to Felldust?” Felene asked. “How do we go about finding this ‘place where the sun meets the stone dead’?”

“The skulls of the stone dead are a thing I have heard of,” Elethe supplied. “They are in the mountains.”

Stephania would have preferred to discuss this privately, but the truth was that there was no privacy on their small boat. They needed to talk about it, and that meant talking about it in front of Felene.

“That means we will need to get to the mountains,” Stephania said. “Will you be able to arrange it?”

Elethe nodded. “A friend of my family runs caravans that cut through the mountains. It should be easy to organize.”

“Without attracting too much attention?” Stephania asked.

“A caravan master who attracts too much attention is one who gets robbed,” Elethe assured her. “And we will be able to find more information once we reach the city. Felldust is my home, my lady.”

“I am sure you will be most helpful,” Stephania said, in a way that turned it into an expression of gratitude. Once, that would have had her handmaiden tripping over herself with joy, but now, she merely smiled. It probably had something to do with all the attention she’d been getting from Felene.

A thin thread of anger rose in Stephania at that. Not jealousy in the conventional sense, because she didn’t feel that way about the girl, or anyone, now that Thanos was gone from her life. No, this was simply because her handmaiden was hers. Once, the girl would have thrown herself to her doom at Stephania’s command. Now, Stephania couldn’t be sure, and that rankled. She would have to find a way to test it before this was through.

She would have to do a lot of things before she was finished in Felldust. She would have to find this sorcerer, and even if her handmaiden understood one of the clues to his location, that would still take time and effort. She would have to do it in a strange land, where the politics and the people would both be different, even if their weaknesses were generally the same the world over.

Even once she found the sorcerer, she would have to find a way to either learn what he knew or gain his aid. Perhaps it would only take money, or a little charm, but Stephania doubted it. Any sorcerer with the strength to stop one of the Ancient Ones would be able to take what he wanted from the world.

No, Stephania would have to be more creative than that, but she would find a way to make it work. Everyone wanted something, whether it was power, fame, knowledge, or simply safety. Stephania had always had a gift for finding out what people wanted; it was so often the lever that opened them up to doing what Stephania needed them to do.

“Tell me, Elethe,” she said on impulse. “What is it that you want?”

“To serve you, my lady,” the girl said immediately. It was the right answer, of course, but there was a note of sincerity to it that Stephania liked. She would find out the real answer in due course.

“And you, Felene?” Stephania asked.

She watched the thief shrug. “Whatever the world has to offer. Preferably with plenty of treasure, drink, companions, and enjoyment. Not necessarily in that order.”

Stephania laughed softly, pretending that she didn’t hear the lie there. “Of course. What else could someone want?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Felene countered. “What is it that you want, princess? Why go through all this?”

“I want to be safe,” Stephania said. “And I want revenge on the ones who took Thanos from me.”

“Revenge on the Empire?” Felene said. “I guess I could side with that. They threw me onto that island of theirs, after all.”

If she wanted to believe that revenge on the Empire was what Stephania wanted, then let her believe it. The objects of Stephania’s anger were more easily defined: Ceres, then Thanos, along with anyone who helped them.

Silently, Stephania repeated the vow she’d made back in Delos. She would raise her child to be the perfect weapon against its father. She would raise the child with love; certainly, she wasn’t a monster. But it would have a purpose too. It would know what its father had done.

And that some things could never be forgiven.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lucious had spent most of the voyage to Felldust feeling like he wanted to stab someone. Now that he was getting closer, the feeling only intensified. He was standing there in filthy clothes, the sun baking down on him, fleeing an empire that should have been rushing to obey him.

“Watch where you’re going, boy,” one of the sailors said, pushing past Lucious so that he could fasten a line in place. Lucious hadn’t bothered to remember the man’s name, but right then he wished he had, if only so that he could complain to the captain of this tub about his crew.

“Boy? You know who I am and you dare to call me boy?” Lucious demanded. “I should go to Captain Arvan and have you whipped.”

“You do that,” the sailor said, in the bored tones of someone who knew he was perfectly safe. “See where it gets you.”

Lucious balled his fists. The worst part was the feeling of futility. Captain Arvan stood on the command deck with the boat’s wheel in his hand, the man’s bulk swaying with every wave that rocked the boat. He’d made it perfectly clear that Lucious mattered to him only as far as his money lasted.

As it had ever since he’d left, anger brought with it images of blood and stone. His father’s blood, smeared across the stone of his ancestor’s statue.

The one you killed me with.

Lucious started at that, even though the voice had been there, clear as a morning sky, deep as guilt, ever since he’d struck the first blow. Lucious didn’t believe in ghosts, but the memory of his father’s voice was still there, answering back whenever he was trying to think. Yes, it was just his own mind playing tricks, but that hardly made it better. It just meant that even his own thoughts wouldn’t do as he wished.

Nothing would, at the moment. The captain of the boat he’d found passage on had taken him on grudgingly, as though it wasn’t an honor to have Lucious aboard on his journey. His men treated Lucious with contempt, like some common criminal fleeing from justice, rather than the rightful ruler of the Empire, cruelly usurped from his throne.

From Thanos’s throne.

“Not Thanos’s throne,” Lucious snapped to the empty air. “Mine.”

“You say something?” the sailor asked, not bothering to look around.

Lucious stepped away from him, punching the wood of the mast in annoyance, but that only made pain flash through his knuckles as he took the skin off them. If he’d had his way, he’d have taken the skin off of one or two of the crew as well.

Still, Lucious kept his distance from them, keeping to the clear sections of deck where he’d been told he could go, as if he were some commoner to be instructed on to where to stand. As if he couldn’t rightfully lay claim to any and every vessel in the Empire if he wanted it.

Yet the captain of the boat had done exactly that. He’d left Lucious with clear instructions to stay away from the crew while they worked, and to cause no trouble.

“Otherwise you’ll be over the side and swimming to Felldust,” the man had said.

Perhaps you should have killed him like you did me.

“I am not mad,” Lucious said to himself. “I am not mad.”

He would not allow that, just as he would not allow men to continue to talk down to him as if he didn’t matter. He could still remember the cold state of fury he’d been in when he’d struck his father, feeling the weight of the statue in his hand, lashing out with it because it was the only way to keep hold of what was his.

“You made me do it,” Lucious muttered. “You gave me no choice.”

Just as I’m sure none of your victims gave you a choice, the inner voice said. How many have you killed now?

“What does it matter?” Lucious demanded. He strode to the rail and yelled out over the rush of the waves. “It doesn’t matter!”

“Be quiet, whelp, we’re trying to work here!” the captain of the ship called down from where he steered the thing.

You can’t even do the right thing in the middle of the ocean, the voice within him said.

“Shut up,” Lucious snapped. “Shut up!”

“You dare to talk to me like that, boy?” the captain demanded, stepping down onto the main deck to confront him. The man was larger than Lucious, and normally fear would have run through him then. There was no room for it right then, because memories pushed it out. Memories of violence. Memories of blood. “I am the captain of this vessel!”

“And I am a king!” Lucious shot back, lashing out with a punch that was intended to catch the other man on the jaw and send him reeling back. He’d never believed in fighting fair.

Instead, the captain stepped back, dodging the strike with ease. Lucious slipped on the wetness of the deck and in that moment the other man slapped him.

Slapped him! Like he was some whore who’d spoken out of turn, not a warrior worth fighting. Not a prince!

Even so, the blow was enough to drop him to the deck, and Lucious made a small sound of anger.

Better stay down, boy, his father’s voice whispered.

“Shut up!”

He reached into his tunic, searching for the knife he kept there. That was when Captain Arvan kicked him.

The first blow caught Lucious in the stomach, hard enough to roll him from his knees to his back. The second only clipped his head, but it was still enough to make him see stars. It didn’t do anything to silence his father’s voice.

Call yourself a warrior. I know you learned better than that.

Easy to say when he wasn’t the one being beaten to death on a ship’s deck.

“Think you can knife me, boy?” Captain Arvan demanded. “I’d sell your carcass if I thought anyone would pay for it. As it is, we’ll drop you in the water and see if even the sharks turn up their noses at you!” There was a pause, punctuated by another kick. “You two, grab him. We’ll see how well royalty floats.”

“I am a king!” Lucious complained as strong hands started to pick him up. “A king!”

And soon you’ll be an ex-king, his father’s voice supplied.

Lucious felt himself weightless as the men lifted him, high enough that he could see the endless water around them, into which he would soon be thrown to drown. Except that it wasn’t endless, was it? Could he see —

“Land ahoy!” their lookout yelled.

For a moment, the tension held, and Lucious was sure that he was going to be pitched into the water anyway.

Then Captain Arvan’s voice boomed out above all of it.

“Leave that royal waste of breath! We’ve all duties to get to, and we’ll be rid of him soon enough.”

The sailors didn’t question it. Instead, they threw Lucious down to the deck, leaving him while they set about hauling on ropes with the rest of the crew.

You should be grateful, his father’s voice whispered.

Lucious was anything but grateful, though. Instead, he mentally added this ship and its crew to the list of those who would pay once he had his throne back. He’d see them burn.

He’d see them all burn.

CHAPTER FIVE

Thanos sat in his cage and waited for death. He twisted and turned in the sun of Delos, slowly baking while across the courtyard, guards worked to build the gallows on which he would be killed. Thanos had never felt so helpless.

Or so thirsty. They’d ignored him there, giving him nothing to eat or drink, directing their attention Thanos’s way only so that they could rattle their swords across the bars of his gibbet, taunting him.

Servants hurried back and forth across the courtyard, a sense of urgency to their errands that suggested something was happening in the castle Thanos didn’t know about. Or perhaps this was simply the way things happened in the wake of a king’s death. Perhaps all this activity was simply Queen Athena getting Delos to run the way she wanted.

Thanos could imagine the queen doing that. While someone else might have been caught up in their grief, barely able to function, Thanos could imagine her seeing her husband’s death as an opportunity.

Thanos’s hands tightened on the bars of the gibbet. There was every chance that he was the only one truly mourning his father’s death right then. The servants and the people of Delos had every reason to hate their king. Athena was probably too caught up in her schemes to care. As for Lucious…

“I will find you,” Thanos promised. “There will be justice for this. For everything.”

“Oh, there will be justice, right enough,” one of the guards said. “Just as soon as we gut you for what you did.”

He lashed out at the bars, catching Thanos’s fingers in a way that made him hiss with pain. Thanos made a grab for him, but the guard just laughed, dancing back out of range and going to help the others with the construction of the stage upon which Thanos would eventually be killed.

It was a stage. This whole thing was a show. In one instant of violence, Athena would take control of the Empire, both removing the main danger to her power and showing that she remained in charge, in spite of her son ascending to the crown.

Maybe she even really believed that would be the case. If so, Thanos wished her luck. Athena was evil and grasping, but her son was a madman without limits. He had already killed his father, and if his mother thought she could control him, then she would need all the help she could get.

So would everyone in Delos, from the least peasant all the way to Stephania, trapped and at the mercy of royalty that didn’t have any.

The thought of his wife made Thanos wince. He’d come here to save her, and instead it had come to this. If he hadn’t been there, perhaps things would have turned out better. Perhaps the guards would have realized that Lucious was the one who had killed the king. Perhaps they would have acted, rather than trying to sweep it all away.

“Or perhaps they would have blamed it on the rebellion,” Thanos said, “and given Lucious another excuse.”

He could imagine that. No matter how bad it all got, Lucious would always find a way to blame it on others. And if he hadn’t been there at the end, he wouldn’t have been able to hear his father acknowledge who he was. He wouldn’t have learned that there was proof of it to be found in Felldust.

He wouldn’t have had a chance to say goodbye, or hold his father as he died. His regrets now were all about the fact that he wouldn’t get to see Stephania before they executed him, or get to make sure that she was all right. Even given all that she’d done, he shouldn’t have abandoned her on that dock. It had been a selfish move, thinking only of his own anger and disgust. It had been a move that had cost him his wife, and the life of his child.

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.