Knight, Heir, Prince

She ate a piece of the sweet, succulent fruit the islanders had stocked her boat with. When she’d set off it had seemed as though there was enough to last for weeks. Now, it didn’t seem like quite so much. She found herself thinking of the leader of the forest folk, so handsome in a strange, asymmetrical way, with his curse lending him patches where his skin was mossy green or roughened like bark. Would he be back on the island, playing his strange music and thinking of her?

Around Ceres, mist started to rise up from the water, thickening and reflecting fragments of the moonlight even as it blocked out her view of the night sky above. It swirled and shifted around the boat, tendrils of fog reaching out like fingers. Thoughts of Eoin seemed to lead inexorably to thoughts of Thanos. Thanos, who’d been killed on the shores of Haylon before Ceres could tell him that she hadn’t meant any of the harsh things she’d said when he left. There in the boat alone, Ceres couldn’t get away from just how much she missed him. The love she’d felt for him felt like a thread pulling her back toward Delos, even though Thanos was no longer there.

Thinking of Thanos hurt. The memory felt like an open wound that might never close. There were so many things she needed to do, but none of them would bring him back. There were so many things she would have said if he were there, but he wasn’t. There was only the emptiness of the mist.

The mist continued to coil around the boat, and now Ceres could see shards of rock sticking up out of the water. Some were razor-edged black basalt, but others were in rainbow colors, seeming like giant precious stones set in the roiling blue of the ocean. Some had markings on them that swirled and spiraled, and Ceres wasn’t sure whether they were natural, or if some long distant hand had carved them.

Did her mother lie somewhere beyond them?

The thought brought a thrill of excitement in Ceres, rising up through her like the mist that swirled around the boat. She was going to see her mother. Her real mother, not the one who had always hated her, and who had sold her to slavers at the first opportunity. Ceres didn’t know what this woman would be like, but just the opportunity to find out filled her with excitement as she guided the small boat along past the rocks.

Strong currents pulled at her boat, threatening to pull the rudder from her hand. If she hadn’t had the strength that came from the power within her, Ceres doubted that she would have been able to hold on. She pulled the rudder to the side, and her small boat responded with an almost living grace, slipping past one of the rocks almost close enough to touch it.

She sailed on through the rocks, and with every one she passed, she found herself thinking about how much closer she was getting to her mother. What kind of woman would she be? In her visions, she’d been indistinct, but Ceres could imagine, and hope. Maybe she would be kind, and gentle, and loving; all the things she’d never had from her supposed mother back in Delos.

What would her mother think of her? That thought caught at Ceres as she guided the boat onward through the mist. She didn’t know what was ahead. Maybe her mother would look at her and see someone who hadn’t been able to succeed in the Stade, who had been nothing more than a slave in the Empire, who had lost the person she loved most. What if her mother rejected her? What if she were harsh, or cruel, or unforgiving?

Or maybe, just maybe, she would be proud.

Ceres came out of the mist so suddenly that it might have been a curtain lifting, and now the sea was flat, free of the tooth-like rocks that had jutted from it before. Instantly, she could see that there was something different. The light of the moon seemed brighter somehow, and around it, nebulae spun in stains of color on the night. Even the stars seemed changed, so that now, Ceres couldn’t pick out the familiar constellations there had been before. A comet streaked its way across the horizon, fiery red mixed with yellows and other colors that had no equivalent in the world below.

Stranger than that, Ceres felt the power within her pulse, as though responding to this place. It seemed to stretch within her, opening out and allowing her to experience this new place in a hundred ways she’d never thought of before.

Ceres saw a shape rise from the water, a long, serpentine neck rising up before plunging back beneath the waves with a splash of spray. The creature rose again briefly, and Ceres had the impression of something huge swimming past in the water before it was gone. What looked like birds flitted through the moonlight, and it was only as they got closer that Ceres saw that they were silvery moths, larger than her head.

Her eyes suddenly growing heavy with sleep, Ceres lashed the tiller in place, lay down, and let sleep overcome her.

***

Ceres woke to the shriek of birds. She blinked in the sunlight as she sat up, and saw that they weren’t birds after all. Two creatures with the bodies of great cats wheeled overhead on eagle-like wings, raptor beaks wide as they called. They showed no signs of coming closer though, merely circling the boat before flying off into the distance.

Ceres watched them, and because she was watching them, she saw the tiny speck of an island they were heading for on the horizon. As quickly as she could, Ceres raised the small sail again, trying to catch the wind that rushed past her to push herself toward the island.

The speck grew larger, and what looked like more rocks rose out of the ocean as Ceres got closer, but these weren’t the same as the ones that had been there in the mist. These were square-edged, built things, crafted in rainbow marble. Some of them looked like the spires of great buildings, long sunk beneath the waves.

Half an arch stuck out, so huge that Ceres couldn’t imagine what might have passed beneath it. She looked down over the side of the boat, and the water was so clear that she could make out the sea bed below. It wasn’t far to the bottom, and Ceres could see the wreckage of long past buildings down there. It was close enough that Ceres could have swum down to them just by holding her breath. She didn’t, though, both because of the things she’d already seen in the water and because of what lay ahead.

This was it. The island where she would get the answers she needed. Where she would learn about her power.

Where she would, finally, meet her mother.

CHAPTER FOUR

Lucious swung his blade overhand, exulting in the way it glinted in the dawn light, in the instant before he cut down the old man who had dared to get in his way. Around him, more commoners fell at the hands of his men: the ones who dared to resist, and any stupid enough to simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He smiled as the screams echoed around him. He liked it when the peasants tried to fight, because it just gave his men an excuse to show them how weak they really were compared to their betters. How many had he killed now in raids like this? He hadn’t bothered to keep count. Why should he save the least speck of attention for their kind?

Lucious looked around as peasants started to run, and gestured to a few of his men. They set off after them. Running was almost better than fighting, because there was a challenge to hunting them like the prey they were.

“Your horse, your highness?” one of the men asked, leading Lucious’s stallion.

Lucious shook his head. “My bow, I think.”

The man nodded and passed Lucious an elegant recurve bow of white ash, mixed with horn and set with silver. He nocked an arrow, drew back the string, and let it fly. Away in the distance, one of the running peasants went down.

There were no more to fight, but that didn’t mean they were done here. Not by a long way. Hiding peasants, he’d found, could be as amusing as running or fighting ones in their way. There were so many different ways to torture the ones who looked as though they had gold, and so many ways to execute the ones who might have rebel sympathies. The burning wheel, the gibbet, the noose… what would it be today?

Lucious gestured to a couple of his men to start kicking open doors. Occasionally, he liked to burn out those who hid, but houses were more valuable than peasants. A woman came running out, and Lucious caught her, throwing her casually in the direction of one of the slavers who had taken to following him around like gulls after a fishing vessel.

He stalked into the village’s temple. The priest was already on the ground, holding a broken nose, while Lucious’s men gathered gold and silver ornaments into a sack. A woman in the robes of a priestess stood to confront him. Lucious noted a flicker of blonde hair straying from under her cowl, a certain fine-featured resemblance that made him pause.

“You can’t do this,” the woman insisted. “We are a temple!”

Lucious grabbed her, pulling away the hood of her robes to look at her. She wasn’t the double of Stephania – no lower-born woman could manage that – but she was close enough to be worth keeping for a while. At least until he got bored.

“I have been sent by your king,” Lucious said. “Do not try to tell me what I cannot do!”

Too many people had tried that in his life. They’d tried to put limits on him, when he was the one person in the Empire on whom there should be no limits. His parents tried, but he would be king one day. He would be king, whatever he’d found in the library when old Cosmas thought he was too stupid to understand it. Thanos would learn his place.

Lucious’s hand tightened in the hair of the priestess. Stephania would learn her place as well. How dare she marry Thanos like that, as if he were the prince to be desired? No, Lucious would find a way to make that right. He would split Thanos and Stephania as easily as he split open the heads of those who came at him. He would claim Stephania in marriage, both because she was Thanos’s and because she would make the perfect ornament for someone of his rank. He would enjoy that, and until then, the priestess he’d grabbed would make a suitable substitute.

He tossed her to one of his men to watch, and set out to see what other amusements he could find in the village. As he got outside, he saw two of his men tying one of the villagers who’d run to a tree, arms spread wide.

“Why have you let this one live?” Lucious demanded.

One of them smiled. “Tor here was telling me about something the northerners do. They call it the Blood Eagle.”

Lucious liked the sound of that. He was about to ask what it involved when he heard the shout of one of the lookouts, there to watch for rebels. Lucious looked around, but instead of an approaching horde of common scum, he saw a single figure riding on a mount easily the size of his own. Lucious recognized the armor instantly.

“Thanos,” he said. He snapped his fingers. “Well, it looks as though today is about to get more interesting than I thought. Bring me my bow again.”

***

Thanos spurred his horse forward as he saw Lucious and what his half-brother was doing. Any lingering doubts he’d had about leaving Stephania behind burned away in the heat of his anger as he saw the dead peasants, the slavers, the man tied to the tree.

He saw Lucious step out and raise a bow. For a moment, Thanos couldn’t believe that he would do it, but why not? Lucious had tried to kill him before.

He saw the arrow fly out from the bow and raised his shield just in time. The head struck the metal facing of his shield before clattering off. A second arrow followed, and this time it punched through, stopping only inches from Thanos’s face.

Thanos forced his horse to a charge as a third arrow whizzed past him. He saw Lucious and his men diving out of the way as he careened through the spot where they’d been standing. He wheeled and drew his sword, just as Lucious regained his feet.

“Thanos, so fast. Anyone would think you were eager to see me.”

Thanos leveled his sword at Lucious’s heart. “This stops now, Lucious. I won’t let you kill any more of our people.”

“Our people?” Lucious countered. “They are my people, Thanos. Mine to do what I wish with. Allow me to demonstrate.”

Thanos saw him draw his sword and start toward the man tied to the tree. Thanos realized what his half-brother was going to do and set his horse in motion once more.