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CHAPTER THREE

Berin felt the ache of longing as he trekked along the route home to Delos, the only thing keeping him going, thoughts of his family – of Ceres. The thought of returning to his daughter was enough to make him press on, even though he’d found the days of walking tough, the roads beneath his feet rough with ruts and stones. His bones were not getting any younger, and already he could feel his knee aching from the journey, adding to the pains that came from a life of hammering and heating metal.

It was all worth it, though, to see home again, though. To see his family. All the time he’d been away, it was all Berin had wanted. He could picture it now. Marita would be cooking in the back of the humble wooden home, the scent of it wafting out past the front door. Sartes would be playing somewhere around the back, probably with Nasos watching him, even if his older son would be pretending that he wasn’t.

And then there would be Ceres. He loved all his children, but with Ceres there had always been that extra connection. She had been the one to help out around his forge, the one who had taken after him most, and who seemed the most likely to follow in his footsteps. Leaving Marita and the boys had been a painful duty, necessary if he was to provide for his family. Leaving Ceres behind had felt as though he’d abandoned some part of himself when he left.

Now it was time to reclaim it.

Berin only wished he brought happier news. He walked along the gravel track that led back to their house, and he frowned; it wasn’t winter yet, but it would be soon enough. The plan had been for him to leave and find work. Lords always needed bladesmiths to provide weapons for their guards, their wars, their Killings. Yet it turned out that they didn’t need him. They had their own men. Younger, stronger men. Even the king who had seemed to want his work had turned out to want Berin as he had been ten years ago.

The thought hurt, yet he knew he should have guessed that they would have no need for a man with more gray in his beard than black.

It would have hurt more if it hadn’t meant that he got to go home. Home was the thing that mattered for Berin, even when it was little more than a square of rough-sawn wooden walls, topped with a turf roof. Home was about the people waiting there, and the thought of them was enough to make him quicken his steps.

As he crested a hill, though, and the first view of it came, Bering knew that something was wrong. His stomach plunged. Berin knew what home felt like. For all the barrenness of the surrounding land, home was a place filled with life. There was always noise there, whether it was joyful or argumentative. At this time of year too, there would always have been at least a few crops growing in the plot around it, vegetables and small berry bushes, hardy things that always produced at least something to feed them.

That was not what he saw before him.

Berin broke into as much of a run then as he could manage after so long a walk, the sense of something wrong gnawing away at him, feeling like one of his vises clamped around his heart.

He reached the door and threw it wide. Maybe, he thought, everything would be all right. Maybe they had spotted him and were all just ensuring that his arrival would be a surprise.

It was dim inside, the windows crusted with grime. And there, a presence.

Marita stood in the main room, stirring a pot that smelled too sour to Berin. She turned toward him as he burst in, and as she did, Berin knew he’d been right. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

“Marita?” he began.

“Husband.” Even the flat way she said that told him that nothing was as it should be. Any other time he’d been away, Marita had thrown her arms around him as he’d come in the door. She’d always seemed full of life. Now, she seemed…empty.

“What’s going on here?” Berin asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Again, there was less emotion than there should have been, as though something in his wife had broken, letting all the joy out of her.

“Why is everything around here so… so still?” Berin demanded. “Where are our children?”

“They aren’t here right now,” Marita said. She moved back to the pot as though everything was perfectly normal.

“Where are they, then?” Berin wasn’t going to let it go. He could believe that the boys might have run down to the nearest stream or had errands to run, but one of his children at least would have seen him coming home and been there to meet him. “Where is Ceres?”

“Oh yes,” Marita said, and Berin could hear the bitterness there now. “Of course you would ask after her. Not how things are with me. Not your sons. Her.”

Berin had never heard his wife sound quite like this before. Oh, he’d always known there was something hard in Marita, more concerned for herself than for the rest of the world, but now it sounded as though her heart was ashes.

Marita seemed to calm down then, and the sheer speed with which she did it made it suspicious to Berin.

“You want to know what your precious daughter did?” she said. “She ran away.”

Berin’s apprehension deepened. He shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”

Marita kept going. “She ran away. Didn’t say where she was going, just stole what she could from us when she left.”

“We have no money to steal,” Berin said. “And Ceres would never do that.”

“Of course you’ll take her side,” Marita said. “But she took… things from around here, possessions. Anything she thought she could sell in the next town, knowing that girl. She abandoned us.”

If that was what Marita thought, then Berin was sure she’d never really known her daughter. Or him, if she thought he would believe such an obvious lie. He took her shoulders in his hands, and even though he didn’t possess all the strength he’d once had, Berin was still strong enough so that his wife felt fragile by comparison.

“Tell me the truth, Marita! What’s happened here?” Berin shook her, as if somehow that might jolt the old version of her back into being, and she might suddenly return to being the Marita he’d married all those years before. All it did was make her pull away.

“Your boys are dead!” Marita yelled back. The words filled the small space of their home, coming out in a snarl. Her voice dropped. “That’s what’s happened. Our sons are dead.”

The words hit Berin like a kick from a horse that didn’t want shoeing. “No,” he said. “It’s another lie. It has to be.”

He couldn’t think of another thing Marita could have said that would have hurt as much. She had to be just saying this to hurt him.

“When did you decide that you hated me so much?” Berin asked, because that was the only reason he could think of that his wife would throw something so vile at him, using the idea of their sons’ deaths as a weapon.

Now Berin could see tears in Marita’s eyes. There hadn’t been any when she’d been talking about their daughter supposedly running away.

“When you decided to abandon us,” his wife snapped back. “When I had to watch Nasos die!”

“Just Nasos?” Berin said.

“Isn’t that enough?” Marita shouted back. “Or don’t you care about your sons?”

“A moment ago you said that Sartes was dead too,” Berin said. “Stop lying to me, Marita!”

“Sartes is dead too,” his wife insisted. “Soldiers came and took him. They dragged him off to be a part of the Empire’s army, and he’s just a boy. How long do you think he will survive as a part of that? No, both of my boys are gone, while Ceres…”

“What?” Berin demanded.

Marita just shook her head. “If you’d been here, it might not even have happened.”

“You were here,” Berin spat back, trembling all over. “That had been the point. You think I wanted to go? You were meant to look after them while I found the money for us to eat.”

Despair gripped Berin then, and he could feel himself starting to weep, as he hadn’t wept since he was a child. His oldest son was dead. For all the other lies Marita had come out with, that sounded like the truth. The loss left a hole that seemed to be impossible to fill, even with the grief and anger that were welling up inside him. He forced himself to focus on the others, because it seemed like the only way to stop it from overwhelming him.

“Soldiers took Sartes?” he asked. “Imperial soldiers?”

“You think I’m lying to you about that?” Marita asked.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Berin replied. “You didn’t even try to stop them?”

“They held a knife to my throat,” Marita said. “I had to.”

“You had to do what?” Berin asked.

Marita shook her head. “I had to call him outside. They would have killed me.”

“So you gave him to them instead?”

“What do you think I could do?” Marita demanded. “You weren’t here.”

And Berin would probably feel guilty about that for as long as he lived. Marita was right. Maybe if he had been here, this wouldn’t have happened. He’d gone off, looking to keep his family from starving, and while he’d been away, things had fallen apart. Feeling guilty didn’t replace the grief or the anger, though. It only added to it. It bubbled inside Berin, feeling like something alive and fighting to get out.

“What about Ceres?” he demanded. He shook Marita again. “Tell me! The truth this time. What did you do?”

Marita just pulled away again though, and this time she sank down on her haunches on the floor, curling up and not even looking at him. “Find out for yourself. I’ve been the one who’s had to live with this. Me, not you.”

There was a part of Berin that wanted to keep shaking her until she gave him an answer. That wanted to force the truth from her, whatever it took. Yet he wasn’t that kind of man, and knew he never could be. Even the thought of it disgusted him.

He didn’t take anything from the house when he left. There wasn’t anything he wanted there. As he looked back at Marita, so totally wrapped up in her own bitterness that she’d given up her son, tried to disguise what had happened to their children, it was hard to believe that there had ever been.

Berin stepped out into the open air, blinking away what was left of his tears. It was only when the brightness of the sun hit him that he realized he had no idea what he was going to do next. What could he do? There was no helping his oldest son, not now, while the others could be anywhere.

“That doesn’t matter,” Berin told himself. He could feel the determination within him turning into something like the iron he worked. “It won’t stop me.”

Perhaps someone nearby would have seen where they had gone. Certainly, someone would know where the army was, and Berin knew as well as anyone that a man who made blades could always find a way to get closer to the army.

As for Ceres… there would be something. She must be somewhere. Because the alternative was unthinkable.

Berin looked out over the countryside surrounding his home. Ceres was out there somewhere. So was Sartes. He said the next words aloud, because doing that seemed to turn it into a promise, to himself, to the world, to his children.

“I’ll find you both,” he vowed. “Whatever it takes.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Breathing hard, Sartes ran among the army’s tents, clutching the scroll in his hand and wiping the sweat from his eyes, knowing that if he did not reach his commander’s tent soon he would be flogged. He ducked and weaved as best he could, knowing his time was running out. He had been held up far too many times already.

Sartes already had burn marks on his shins from the times he’d gotten it wrong, their sting just one more among many by now. He blinked, desperate, looking around the army camp, trying to make out the correct direction to run among the endless grid of tents. There were signs and standards there to mark the way, but he was still trying to learn their pattern.

Sartes felt something catch his foot, and then he was tumbling, the world seeming to turn upside down as he fell. For a moment he thought he’d tripped on a rope, but then he looked up to see soldiers laughing. The one at their head was an older man, with stubble-short hair turning gray and scars from too many battles.

Fear filled Sartes then, but also a kind of resignation; this was just life in the army for a conscript like him. He didn’t demand to know why the other man had done it, because saying anything was a sure way to a beating. As far as he could see, practically anything was.

Instead, he stood up, brushing away the worst of the mud from his tunic.

“What are you about, whelp?” the soldier who’d tripped him demanded.

“Running an errand for my commander, sir,” Sartes said, lifting a scrap of parchment for the other man to see. He hoped it would be enough to keep him safe. Often it wasn’t, in spite of the rules that said orders took precedence over anything else.

In the time since he’d arrived there, Sartes had learned that the Imperial army had plenty of rules. Some were official: leave the camp without permission, refuse to follow orders, betray the army, and you could be killed. March the wrong way, do anything without permission, and you could be beaten. There were other rules too, though. Less official ones that could be just as dangerous to break.

“What errand would that be?” the soldier demanded. Others were gathering around now. The army was always short of sources of entertainment, so if there was the prospect of a little fun at a conscript’s expense, people paid attention.

Sartes did his best to look apologetic. “I don’t know, sir. I just have orders to deliver this message. You can read it if you like.”

That was a calculated risk. Most of the ordinary soldiers couldn’t read. He hoped that the tone of it wouldn’t earn him a cuff around the ear for insubordination, but tried not to show any fear. Not showing fear was one of the rules that wasn’t written down. The army had at least as many of those rules as official ones. Rules about who you had to know to get better food. About who knew whom, and who you had to be careful of, regardless of rank. Knowing them seemed to be the only way to survive.

“Well, you’d better get on with it then!” the soldier roared, aiming a kick at Sartes to get him moving. The others there laughed as if it was the greatest joke they’d seen.

One of the biggest unwritten rules seemed to be that the new conscripts were fair game. Since he’d arrived, Sartes had been punched and slapped, beaten and shoved. He’d been made to run until he felt like collapsing, then run some more. He’d been laden with so much gear that he’d felt as though he could barely stand up, made to carry it, to dig holes in the ground for no apparent reason, to work. He’d heard stories of men in the ranks who liked to do worse to the new conscripts. Even if they died, what did it matter to the army? They were there to be thrown at the enemy. Everyone expected them to die.

Sartes had expected to die the first day. By the end of it, he’d even felt as though he wanted to. He’d curled up inside the too thin tent they’d assigned him and shivered, hoping that the ground would swallow him up. Impossibly, the next day had been worse. Another new conscript, whose name Sartes hadn’t even learned, had been killed that day. He’d been caught trying to run away, and they’d all had to watch his execution, as if it were some kind of lesson. The only lesson Sartes had been able to see was how cruel the army was to anyone who let it see that they were afraid. That was when he’d started trying to bury his fear, not showing it even though it was there in the background almost every moment he was awake.

He made a detour between the tents now, switching directions briefly to swing by one of the mess tents, where a day ago, one of the cooks had needed help composing a message home. The army barely fed its conscripts, and Sartes could feel his stomach rumbling at the prospect of food, but he didn’t eat what he took with him as he ran for his commanding officer’s tent.

“Where have you been?” the officer demanded. His tone made it clear that being slowed down by other soldiers wouldn’t count as an excuse. But then, Sartes had known that. It was part of why he’d gone to the mess tent.

“Collecting this on the way, sir,” Sartes said, holding out the apple tart that he’d heard was the officer’s favorite. “I knew that there might not be an opportunity for you to get it yourself today.”

The officer’s demeanor changed instantly. “That’s very thoughtful, conscript – ”

“Sartes, sir.” Sartes didn’t dare to smile.

“Sartes. We could use some soldiers who know how to think. Although next time, remember that the orders have to come first.”

“Yes sir,” Sartes said. “Is there anything you require me to do, sir?”

The officer waved him away. “Not right now, but I’ll remember your name. Dismissed.”

Sartes left the commander’s pavilion feeling a lot better than when he’d gone in. He hadn’t been sure that the small act would be enough to save him after the delay the soldiers had caused. For now, though, he seemed to have avoided punishment, and had managed to get to the position where an officer knew who he was.

It felt like a knife edge, but the whole army felt like that to Sartes then. So far, he’d survived in the army by being clever, and keeping one step ahead of the worst of the violence there. He’d seen boys his age killed, or beaten so badly that it was obvious that they’d die soon. Even so, he wasn’t sure how long he would be able to keep that up. For a conscript like him, this was the kind of place where violence and death could only be put off so long.

Sartes swallowed as he thought of all the things that could go wrong. A soldier might take a beating too far. An officer might take offense at any tiny action and order a punishment designed to deter the others with its cruelty. He might be pushed forward into battle at any moment, and he’d heard that conscripts went at the front of the line to “weed out the weak.” Even training might prove deadly, when the army had little use for blunt weapons, and conscripts were given little real instruction.

The one fear that sat behind them all was that someone would find out he’d tried to join Rexus and the rebels. There should be no way that they could, but even the faintest possibility was enough to outweigh all the others. Sartes had seen the body of a soldier accused of having rebel sympathies. His own unit had been commanded to hack him to pieces to prove their loyalty. Sartes didn’t want to end up like that. Just the thought of it was enough to make his stomach tighten over and above the hunger.

“You there!” a voice called, and Sartes started. It was impossible to shake the feeling that maybe someone had guessed what he was thinking. He forced himself to at least pretend to be calm. Sartes looked round to see a soldier in the elaborately muscled armor of a sergeant, with pockmarks on his cheeks so deep they were almost like another landscape. “You’re the captain’s messenger?”

“I’ve just come from carrying a message to him, sir,” Sartes said. It wasn’t quite a lie.

“Then you’re good enough for me. Go find out where the carts with my timber supplies have gotten to. If anyone gives you trouble, tell them Venn sent you.”

Sartes saluted hurriedly. “At once, sir.”

He ran off on the errand, but as he went he did not focus on the mission at hand. He took a longer way, a more circuitous way. A way that would enable him to spy the camp’s outskirts, their choke points, a way that would allow him to pry for any weak points.

Because, dead or not, Sartes would find a way to escape tonight.

CHAPTER FIVE

Lucious pushed his way through the crowds of nobles in the castle’s throne room, fuming as he went. He fumed at the fact that he had to shove his way through, when everyone there should have stood aside and bowed down, making way for him. He fumed at the fact that Thanos was off getting all the glory, crushing the rebels on Haylon. Above all, though, he fumed at the way things had gone in the Stade. That wench Ceres had ruined his plans once again.

Ahead, Lucious could see the king and queen in deep conversation with Cosmas, the old fool from the library. Lucious had thought he’d seen the last of the aged scholar as a child, when they’d all been made to learn ludicrous facts about the world and its workings. But no, apparently, in the wake of the letter he had provided, showing Ceres’s true treachery, Cosmas got to have the ear of his king.

Lucious kept pushing his way forward. Around him, he could hear the nobles of the court at their petty plotting. He could see his distant cousin Stephania not far away, laughing at some joke another perfectly presented noble girl had made. She looked over, catching Lucious’s eye just long enough to smile at him. She really was, Lucious decided, quite an empty-headed thing. But a beautiful one. Perhaps in the future, he thought, there might be an opportunity to spend more time around the noble girl. He was at least as impressive as Thanos, by any estimation.

For now, though, Lucious’s anger at what had happened was too great for even those thoughts to amuse him. He stalked to the foot of the thrones, right to the edge of the raised dais there.

“She still lives!” he blurted out as he neared the throne. It didn’t matter to him that it was loud enough to carry to the whole room. Let them hear, he decided. It certainly made no difference that Cosmas was still whispering away to the king and queen. What, Lucious wondered, could a man who spent his time around scrolls possibly have that was worth saying?

“Did you hear me?” Lucious said. “The girl is – ”

“Still alive, yes,” the king said, stopping him with a hand held up for silence. “We are discussing more important matters. Thanos is missing in the battle for Haylon.”

The gesture was just one more thing to add to Lucious’s anger. He was being treated like some servant to be quieted, he thought. Even so, he waited. He couldn’t afford the king’s anger. Besides, it took a moment or two to digest what he’d just heard.

Thanos was missing? Lucious tried to work out how it affected him. Would it change his position within the court? He found himself glancing across at Stephania again, thoughtful.

“Thank you, Cosmas,” the queen said at last.

Lucious watched as the scholar descended back into the crowd of watching nobles. Only then did the king and queen give him their attention. Lucious tried to stand straight. He would not let the others there see any of the resentment that burned through him at the small insult. If anyone else had treated him this way, Lucious told himself, he would have killed them by now.

“We are aware that Ceres survived the last Killing,” King Claudius said. To Lucious, he barely even sounded annoyed by it, let alone as though he were burning with the same anger that flooded him at the thought of the peasant.

But then, Lucious thought, the king hadn’t been the one who had been defeated by the girl. Not once, but twice now, because she’d bested him through some trickery when he’d gone to her room to teach her a lesson too. Lucious felt that he had every reason, every right, to take her survival personally.

“Then you’re aware that it can’t be allowed to continue,” Lucious said. He couldn’t keep his tone as courtly and even as it should be. “You must deal with her.”

“Must?” Queen Athena said. “Careful, Lucious. We are still your rulers.”

“With respect, your majesties,” Stephania said, and Lucious watched her glide forward, her silk dress clinging to her. “Lucious is right. Ceres cannot be allowed to live.”

Lucious saw the king’s eyes narrow slightly.

“And what do you suggest we do?” King Claudius demanded. “Drag her out onto the sands and have her beheaded? You were the one who suggested that she should fight, Stephania. You can’t complain if she isn’t dying fast enough for your tastes.”

Lucious understood that part, at least. There was no pretext for her death, and the people seemed to demand that for those they loved. Even more astonishingly, they did seem to love her. Why? Because she could fight a little? As far as Lucious could see, any fool could do that. Many fools did. If the people had any sense, they would give their love where it was deserved: to their rightful rulers.

“I understand that she cannot simply be executed, your majesty,” Stephania said, with one of those innocent smiles that Lucious had noticed she did so well.

“I’m glad you understand it,” the king said, with obvious annoyance. “Do you also understand what would happen if she were harmed now? Now that she has fought? Now that she has won?”

Of course Lucious understood. He wasn’t some child for whom politics was an alien landscape.

Stephania summed it up. “It would fuel the revolution, your majesty. The people of the city might revolt.”

“There is no ‘might’ about it,” King Claudius said. “We have the Stade for a reason. The people have a thirst for blood, and we give them what they are looking for. That need for violence can turn against us just as easily.”

Lucious laughed at that. It was hard to believe that the king really thought Delos’s populace would ever be able to sweep them away. He had seen them, and they were not some blood-drenched tide. They were a rabble. Teach them a lesson, he thought. Kill enough of them, show them the consequences of their actions harshly enough, and they would soon fall into line.

“Is something funny, Lucious?” the queen asked him, and Lucious could hear the sharp edge there. The king and queen did not like being laughed at. Thankfully, though, he had an answer.

“It is just that the answer to all of this seems obvious,” Lucious said. “I am not asking for Ceres to be executed. I am saying that we underestimated her abilities as a fighter. Next time, we must not.”

“And give her an excuse to become more popular if she wins?” Stephania asked. “She has become beloved by the people because of her victory.”

Lucious smiled at that. “Have you seen the way the commoners react in the Stade?” he asked. He understood this part, even if the others did not.

He saw Stephania sniff. “I try not to watch them, cousin.”

“But you will have heard them. They call the names of their favorites. They bay for blood. And when their favorites fall, what then?” He looked around, half expecting someone to have an answer for him. To his disappointment, no one did. Perhaps Stephania wasn’t bright enough to see it. Lucious didn’t mind that.

“They call the names of the new winners,” Lucious explained. “They love them just as much as they loved the last ones. Oh, they call for this girl now, but when she lies bleeding on the sand, they will bay for her death as quickly as for anyone else. We just have to stack the odds a little more against her.”

The king looked thoughtful at that. “What did you have in mind?”

“If we get this wrong,” the queen said, “they will just love her more.”

Finally, Lucious could feel some of his anger being replaced by something else: satisfaction. He looked over to the doors to the throne room, where one of his attendants was standing waiting. A snap of his fingers was all it took to send the man running, but then, all Lucious’s servants quickly learned that angering him was anything but wise.

“I have a remedy for that,” Lucious said, gesturing toward the door.

The shackled man who walked in was easily more than seven feet tall, with ebony black skin and muscles that bulged above the short kilt he wore. Tattoos covered his flesh; the slaver who had sold the combatlord had told Lucious that each one represented a foe he had slain in single combat, both within the Empire and in the lands far to the south where he had been found.

Even so, for Lucious, the most intimidating part of it all wasn’t the size of the man or his strength. It was the look in his eyes. There was something there that simply didn’t seem to understand things like compassion or mercy, pain or fear. That could happily have torn them all limb from limb without feeling a thing. There were scars on the warrior’s torso where blades had struck him. Lucious couldn’t imagine that expression changing even then.

Lucious enjoyed watching the reactions of the others there as they saw the fighter, chained like some wild beast and stalking through them. Some of the women made small sounds of fear, while the men stepped back hurriedly out of his path, seeming to sense instinctively just how dangerous this man was. Fear seemed to push emptiness ahead of him, and Lucious basked in the effect his combatlord had. He watched Stephania take a scurrying step back out of the way, and Lucious smiled.

“They call him the Last Breath,” Lucious said. “He has never lost a bout, and never let a foe live. Say hello,” he grinned, “to Ceres’s next – and final – opponent.”