“What about guards on the ships?” one of the rebels asked.
“There won’t be many,” Thanos said. “And they’ll know who I am.”
“What about all the people who will die in the city while we do this?” another called out.
“They’re dying now,” Thanos insisted. “At least this way, you have a way to fight back. Get this right, and we’ll have a way to save hundreds, if not thousands, of them.”
Silence fell, and the last question came out of it like an arrow.
“How can we trust him, Akila? He’s not just one of them, he’s a noble. A prince.”
Thanos whirled away from the direction the voice had come from, offering up his back for anyone to see. “They stabbed me in the back. They left me to die. I have as much reason to hate them as any man here.”
In that moment, he wasn’t just thinking about the Typhoon. He was thinking about everything his family had done to the people of Delos, and about everything they’d done to Ceres. If they hadn’t forced him to go to Fountain Square, he would never have been there when her brother died.
“We could sit here,” Thanos said, “or we could act. Yes, it will be dangerous. If they see through our disguise, we’re probably dead. I’m willing to risk it. Are you?” When no one answered, Thanos raised his voice. “Are you?”
That got a cheer in response. Akila stepped close to him, clapping a hand on Thanos’s shoulder.
“All right, Prince, it looks like we’re doing things your way. Pull this off, and you’ll have a friend for life.” His hand tightened until Thanos could feel pain shooting through his back. “Betray us, though, get my men killed, and I swear I’ll hunt you down.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
There were parts of Delos where Berin didn’t normally go. They were parts that stank to him of sweat and desperation, as people did whatever they needed to in order to get by. He waved away offers from the shadows, giving the denizens there hard looks to keep them back.
If they’d known about the gold he carried, Berin knew he would have found himself with his throat cut, the purse beneath his tunic divided up and spent in the local taverns and gambling houses before the day was done. It was those places he sought out now, because where else was he going to find soldiers when they were off duty? As a bladesmith, Berin knew fighting men, and he knew the places they would go.
He had gold because he’d visited a merchant, taking with him two daggers he’d forged as examples for those who might have employed him. They’d been beautiful things, worthy of any noble’s belt, worked with gold filigree and etched with hunting scenes on the blades. They were the last things of value he had left in the world. He’d stood in line with a dozen other people in front of the merchant’s desk, and hadn’t gotten half of what he knew they were worth.
To Berin, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding his children, and that took gold. Gold he could use to buy ale for the right people, gold he could press into the right palms.
He made his way through Delos’s taverns, and it was a slow process. He couldn’t just come out and ask the questions he wanted to ask. He had to be careful. It helped that he had a few friends in the city, and a few more in the Empire’s army. His blades had saved more than a few men’s lives, over the years.
He found the man he was looking for half drunk in the middle of the afternoon, sitting in a tavern and stinking so much that he had clear space all around him. Berin guessed that it was only the uniform of the Empire’s army that kept them from throwing him face first into the street. Well, that and the fact that Jacare was fat enough that it would have taken half the inn’s patrons to lift him.
Berin saw the fat man’s eyes lift up as he approached. “Berin? My old friend! Come and have a drink with me! Although you’ll have to pay. I’m currently a little…”
“Fat? Drunk?” Berin guessed. He knew the other man wouldn’t mind. The soldier seemed to make an effort to be the Imperial army’s worst example. He even seemed to take a perverse kind of pride in it.
“…financially embarrassed,” Jacare finished.
“I might be able to help with that,” Berin said. He ordered drinks, but didn’t touch his. He needed to keep a clear head if he was going to find Ceres and Sartes. Instead, he waited while Jacare downed his with a noise that sounded to Berin like a donkey at a water trough.
“So, what brings a man like you to my humble presence?” Jacare asked after a while.
“I’m looking for news,” Berin said. “The kind of news a man in your position might have heard.”
“Ah, well, news. News is a thirsty business. And possibly an expensive one.”
“I’m looking for my son and daughter,” Berin explained. With someone else, it might have gained him some sympathy, but he knew that with a man like this, it wouldn’t have much effect.
“Your son? Nesos, right?”
Berin leaned across the table, his hand closing over Jacare’s wrist as the man went to take another drink. He didn’t have much of the old strength left that he’d built wielding forge hammers, but there was still enough to make the other man wince. Good, Berin thought.
“Sartes,” Berin said. “My eldest son is dead. Sartes has been taken by the army. I know you hear things. I want to know where he is, and I want to know where my daughter, Ceres, is.”
Jacare sat back, and Berin let him do it. He wasn’t sure he could have held the other man in place much longer anyway.
“That’s the kind of thing I might have heard,” the soldier admitted, “but that kind of thing is difficult. I have expenses.”
Berin brought out the small pouch of gold. He poured it out onto the table, just far enough from the other man that Jacare couldn’t snatch it easily.
“Will this cover your ‘expenses’?” Berin asked, with a look at the other man’s drinking goblet. He saw the other man counting the gold, probably gauging whether there was any more to be had.
“Your daughter is the easy one,” Jacare said. “She’s up at the castle with the nobles. They announced that she was to marry Prince Thanos.”
Berin dared to breathe a sigh of relief at that, even though he wasn’t sure what to think. Thanos was one of the few royals with any decency to him, but marriage?
“Your son is trickier. Let me think. I heard that a few of the recruiters from the Twenty-third were doing the rounds down by your quarter, but there’s no guarantee that it’s them. If it is, they’re camped a little way to the south, trying to train up the conscripts to fight rebels.”
Bile rose in Berin’s mouth at that thought. He could guess how the army would treat Sartes, and just what that “training” would involve. He had to get his son back. But Ceres was closer, and the truth was that he had to at least see his daughter before he went after Sartes. He stood.
“Not going to finish your drink?” Jacare asked.
Berin didn’t answer. He was going to the castle.
It was easier for Berin to get into the castle than it would have been for almost anyone else. It had been a while, but he was still the one who had come there to discuss the requirements for combatlords’ weapons, or to bring special pieces for the nobles. It was simple enough to pretend that he was back in business, heading straight past the guards on the outer gates and into the space where the fighters prepared.
The next step was to get from there to wherever his daughter was. There was a barred gateway between the vaulted space where the warriors practiced and the rest