Ruler, Rival, Exile (Of Crowns and Glory—Book 7) Read online

  As she thought about the situation in Felldust, Stephania laid gentle fingers on Irrien’s arm. She moved delicately, the touch barely there. She had learned the skills of seduction a long time ago, then spent time perfecting them on a string of useful lovers. She had brought around Thanos, hadn’t she? How much more difficult could Irrien be?

  She felt the moment when he tensed.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “You seem tense with all this talking,” Stephania said. “I thought I could help. Maybe I could help relax you in… other ways?”

  The key was not to push too hard. To hint and to offer, but never to demand outright. Stephania arranged her most innocent look, stared up into Irrien’s eyes… then cried out as he slapped her casually.

  Anger flared in her at that. Stephania’s pride told her that she would find a way to make Irrien pay for that blow, that she would have revenge on him.

  “Ah, there’s the real Stephania,” Irrien said. “Do you think I’m fooled by your pretense that you’re a humble slave? Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe you can be broken with one beating?”

  Fear flashed again in Stephania. She could still remember the whistle of the whip as Irrien had struck her with it. Her back still burned with the memory of the blows. There had been a time when she had enjoyed punishing those servants who deserved it. Now, the thought just brought back the pain.

  Even so, she would use the pain if she had to.

  “No, but I’m sure you plan more,” Stephania said. She didn’t even try for innocence this time. “You’re going to enjoy trying to break me as much as I’m going to enjoy playing with you while you do it. Isn’t that half the fun?”

  Irrien hit her again. Stephania let him see her defiance then. It was obviously what he wanted. She would do whatever she had to in order to bind Irrien to her. Once she’d done it, it wouldn’t matter what she’d suffered to get there.

  “You think that you are special, don’t you?” Irrien said. “You are just a slave.”

  “A slave you keep chained to your throne,” Stephania pointed out in her most sultry voice. “A slave you obviously plan to have in your bed. A slave who could be so much more. A partner. I know Delos like no one else. Why not just admit it?”

  Irrien stood then.

  “You’re right. I have made a mistake.”

  He reached down, taking her chains and unlocking them from the throne. Stephania had a moment in which to feel a sense of triumph as he lifted her. Even if he was cruel to her now, even if he just dragged her to his chambers and threw her down there to claim as his own, she was making progress.

  That wasn’t where he threw her, though. He cast Stephania down on the cold marble, and she felt the hardness of it under her knees as she skidded to a halt in front of one of the figures there.

  The shock of that hit her more than the pain. How could Irrien do that? Hadn’t she been everything he could want? Stephania looked up to see a man in dark robes looking at her with obvious contempt.

  “I made the mistake of thinking you were worth my time,” Irrien said. “You want a sacrifice, priest? Take her. Cut the babe from her and offer it up to your gods in my name. I’ll not have some mewling brat alive with a claim to this throne. When you’re done, throw what’s left of her for whatever scavengers will eat her.”

  Stephania stared up at the priest, then looked over at Irrien, barely able to form the words. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. She wouldn’t let it.

  “Please,” she said. “This is foolish. I can do so much more for you than this!”

  They didn’t seem to care though. Panic flashed through her, along with the shocked thought that this was actually happening. They were actually going to do this.

  No. No, they couldn’t!

  She screamed as the priest grabbed her arms. Another caught her legs, and they carried her, still struggling, between them. Irrien and the others followed in their wake, but right then, Stephania didn’t care about them. She only cared about one thing:

  They were going to kill her baby.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ceres still couldn’t believe that they’d escaped. She lay on the deck of the small boat she’d stolen, and it was impossible to think that she was actually there, rather than back in some fighting pit beneath the castle, waiting to die.

  Not that they were safe yet. The flight of an arrow overhead made that much clear.

  Ceres looked up over the boat’s railing, trying to work out if there was anything she could do. Archers fired from the shore, most of their shafts striking the water around the boat, a few thudding into the wood to tremble there as they spent their energy.

  “We need to move faster,” Thanos said beside her. He rushed to one of the sails. “Help me get this up.”

  “Not… yet,” a voice croaked from the other side of the deck.

  Akila lay there, and to Ceres’s eyes he looked terrible. The First Stone’s sword had been sticking through him just minutes before, and now that Ceres had pulled it out, he was obviously losing blood. Even so, he managed to raise his head, looking at her with an urgency that was hard to ignore.

  “Not yet,” he repeated. “The ships around the harbor have our wind, and a sail will just make us a target. Use the oars.”

  Ceres nodded, pulling Thanos over to where the combatlords they’d rescued were rowing. It was hard to find space to fit in beside the heavily muscled men, but she squeezed into place and lent her little remaining strength to their efforts.

  They pulled into the shadow of a moored galley and the arrows stopped.

  “We need to be clever now,” Ceres said. “They can’t kill us if they can’t find us.”

  She let go of her oar and the others did likewise for a moment or two, letting their boat drift in the wash of the bigger boat, impossible to see from the shore.

  It gave her a moment to go over to Akila. Ceres had only known him briefly, but she could still feel guilt for what had happened to him. He’d been fighting for her cause when he’d suffered the wound that even now seemed like a gaping mouth in his side.

  Sartes and Leyana knelt beside him, obviously trying to staunch the bleeding. Ceres found herself surprised by just how good a job they were doing of it. She guessed that the war had forced people to learn all kinds of skills that they otherwise might not have.

  “Will he make it?” Ceres asked her brother.

  Sartes looked up at her. There was blood on his hands. Beside him, Leyana looked pale with effort.

  “I don’t know,” Sartes said. “I’ve seen enough sword wounds before, and I think this one missed the important organs, but I’m just basing that on the fact that he isn’t dead yet.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Leyana said, reaching out to touch Sartes’s hand. “But there’s only so much anyone can do on a boat, and we need a real healer.”

  Ceres was happy that she was there. From the little she’d seen of the girl so far, Leyana and her brother seemed to be a good fit for one another. They certainly seemed to be doing a good job of keeping Akila alive between them.

  “We’ll get you to a healer,” Ceres promised, although she wasn’t sure how they could keep that promise right then. “Somehow.”

  Thanos was at the bow of the boat now. Ceres went to him, hoping that he had more of an idea than she did of how to get out of there. The harbor was full of boats right then, the invasion fleet standing like some floating city alongside the real one.

  “It was worse than this in Felldust,” Thanos said. “This is the main fleet, but there are more boats still waiting to come.”

  “Waiting to pick apart the Empire,” Ceres guessed.

  She wasn’t sure what she felt about that. She’d been working to bring down the Empire, but this… this just meant more people suffering. Ordinary people and nobles alike would find themselves enslaved at the hands of the invaders, if they weren’t killed outright. By now, they would probably have found Stephania too. Ceres sho
uld probably have felt some kind of satisfaction at that, but it was hard to feel much other than the relief that she was finally out of their lives.

  “Do you regret leaving Stephania behind?” Ceres asked Thanos.

  He reached out to put an arm around her. “I regret that it came to that,” he said. “But after everything she did… no, I don’t regret it. She deserved it and more.”

  He sounded as though he meant it, but Ceres knew how complicated things could be when it came to Stephania. Still, she was gone now, probably dead. They were free. Or they would be, if they could make it out of this harbor alive.

  Across the deck, she saw her father nod, pointing.

  “There, see those ships? They look as though they’re leaving.”

  Sure enough, there were galleys and cogs leaving the harbor, clustered together in a group as though afraid that someone would take everything they had if they didn’t. Given what Felldust was like, someone probably would.

  “What are they?” Ceres asked. “Merchant ships?”

  “Some might be,” her father replied. “Filled with loot from the conquest. My guess is that several are slavers, too.”

  That was a thought that filled Ceres with disgust. That there would be ships there taking the people of her city away to live out lives in chains was something that made her feel as though she wanted to tear the ships apart with her hands. Yet she couldn’t. They were just one boat.

  Despite her anger, Ceres could see the opportunity they represented.

  “If we can get over there, no one will question the fact that we’re leaving,” she said.

  “We still have to get over there,” Thanos pointed out, but Ceres could see him trying to pick out a route.

  The packed ships were so tight together that it was more like guiding their boat down a series of canals than true sailing. They started to pick their way through the clustered boats, using their oars, trying not to attract attention to themselves. Now that they were out of sight of those firing from the shore, no one had any reason to think that they were out of place. They could lose themselves in the great mass of Felldust’s fleet, using it as cover even as some within it hunted for them.

  Ceres hefted the sword she’d pulled from Akila. It was large enough that she could barely lift it, but if the hunters came for them, they would soon find out how well she could wield it. Maybe she would even have an opportunity to give it back to its owner one day, point first through the First Stone’s heart.

  But for now, they couldn’t afford a fight. It would mark them out as strangers, and bring down every boat around them on their heads. Instead, Ceres waited, feeling the tension as they slipped past the assorted landing craft, past the hulks of burnt out ships, and past boats where worse was happening. Ceres saw boats where people were being branded like cattle, saw one where two men were fighting to the death while sailors cheered them on, saw one where—

  “Ceres, look,” Thanos said, pointing to a ship near them.

  Ceres looked, and it was just one more example of the horror around them. A strange-looking woman, her face covered in what looked like ash, had been tied to the prow of a ship like a figurehead. Two soldiers with lashes were taking it in turns to strike at her, slowly flaying her alive.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Ceres’s father said. “We can’t fight them all.”

  Ceres could understand the sentiment, but even so, she didn’t like the idea of standing by while someone was tortured.

  “But that’s Jeva,” Thanos replied. He obviously caught Ceres’s look of confusion. “She led me to the Bone Folk who attacked the fleet so I could get into the city. It’s my fault that this is happening.”

  That made Ceres’s heart tighten in her chest, because Thanos had only come back to the city for her.

  “Even so,” her father said, “try to help and we put all of us at risk.”

  Ceres heard what he was saying, but she wanted to help anyway. It seemed that Thanos was a step ahead of her.

  “We have to help,” Thanos said. “I’m sorry.”

  Her father reached out to grab him, but Thanos was too quick. He dove into the water, swimming for the ship, apparently ignoring the threat of whatever predators were in the water. Ceres had a moment to consider the danger of it… and then she threw herself in after him.

  It was hard to swim clutching the great sword that she’d stolen, but right then she needed any weapon she could get. She plunged through the cold of the waves, hoping that the sharks were already sated from the battle, and that she wouldn’t die from whatever filth so many ships threw overboard. Her hands closed on the ropes of the moored galley, and Ceres started to climb.

  It was hard. The side of the ship was slick, and the ropes would have been difficult to scramble up even if Ceres hadn’t been exhausted by days of torment at Stephania’s hands. Somehow, she managed to pull herself up onto the deck, throwing the great sword ahead of her the way a diver might have thrown a net of clams.

  She came up in time to see a sailor rushing at her.

  Ceres snatched up her stolen sword two-handed, thrusting and then pulling it clear. She swept it around in an arc, taking the sailor’s head from his shoulders, then looked for the next threat. Thanos was already grappling with one of the sailors who had been attacking the Bone Folk woman, so Ceres ran to his aid. She cut across the sailor’s back, and Thanos threw the dying man at the next sailor to come at them.

  “You cut her free,” Ceres said. “I’ll hold them.”

  She swung her blade in arcs, holding the sailors at bay while Thanos worked to free Jeva. Up close, she was even stranger looking than she had been at a distance. Her soft, dark skin had blue swirls and patterns worked into it, creeping over her shaven skull like tendrils of smoke. Fragments of bone decorated her otherwise silken clothing, while her eyes blazed with defiance at her predicament.

  Ceres had no time to watch as Thanos cut her free, because she had to concentrate on keeping back the sailors. One hacked at her with an axe, swinging it overhand. Ceres stepped into the space created by his swing, cutting as she moved past him and then swinging the sword in a circle to force the others back. She thrust it through the leg of one man, then kicked high, catching him under the jaw.

  “I have her,” Thanos said, and as Ceres glanced back, he had indeed freed the Bone Folk woman… who skipped past Ceres to snatch a knife from a fallen man.

  She moved into the crowd of sailors like a whirlwind, cutting and killing. Ceres glanced across to Thanos, then went with her, trying to keep up with the progress of the woman they were supposed to be saving. She saw Thanos parry a sword stroke and then strike back, but Ceres had a blow of her own to deflect in that moment.

  The three of them fought together, shifting places like participants in some formal dance where there never seemed to be a shortage of partners. The difference was that these partners were armed, and one misstep would mean death.

  They fought hard, and Ceres shouted her defiance as they attacked her. She cut and moved and cut again, seeing Thanos fight with the square-edged strength of a nobleman, the Bone Folk woman beside him lashing out in a blur of vicious aggression.

  Then the combatlords were there, and Ceres knew it was time to go.

  “Over the side!” she yelled, running for the rail.

  She dove, and felt the cold of the water again as she hit it. She swam, making for the boat, then hauled herself up over the side. Her father pulled her aboard, and then she helped the others one by one.

  “What were you thinking?” her father asked as they reached the deck.

  “I was thinking I couldn’t stand by,” Thanos replied.

  Ceres wanted to argue with that, but she knew it was part of what made Thanos who he was. It was part of what she loved about him.

  “Foolish,” the Bone Folk woman was saying with a smile. “Wonderfully foolish. Thank you.”

  Ceres looked around at the boats nearest to them. All of them were up in arms now, many of the
sailors aboard rushing for weapons. An arrow hit the water near them, then another.

  “Row!” she yelled to the combatlords, but where could they row to? Already, she could see the other ships moving to intercept them. Soon, there would be no way out. It was the kind of situation where she might have used her powers before, but now she didn’t have them.

  Please, Mother, she begged in the quiet of her mind, you helped me before. Help me now.

  She felt her mother’s presence somewhere on the edge of her being, ephemeral and calming. She could feel her mother’s attention, looking through her, trying to work out what had happened to her.

  “What have they done to you?” her mother’s voice whispered. “This is the sorcerer’s work.”

  “Please,” Ceres said. “I don’t need my powers back forever, but I need help now.”

  In the pause that followed, an arrow struck the deck between Ceres’s feet. It was too close by far.

  “I cannot undo what has been done,” her mother said. “But I can lend you another gift, this one time. It will only be once, though. I do not think your body could stand more.”

  Ceres didn’t care, so long as they escaped. Already, boats were closing in. They needed this.

  “Touch the water, Ceres, and forgive me, because this will hurt.”

  Ceres didn’t question it. Instead, she placed her hand on the waves, feeling the wetness flow around her skin. She braced herself…

  …and she still had to fight to keep from screaming as something poured through her, shimmering out across the water, then up through the air. It seemed as though someone had drawn a gauze veil across the world.

  Through it, Ceres could see archers and warriors staring in shock. She could hear them shouting in surprise, but the sounds seemed muted.

  “They complain that they cannot see us,” Jeva said. “They say that it is dark magic.” She looked at Ceres with something like awe. “It seems that you are everything Thanos said you would be.”