“What about Lord West’s cousin, Nyel?” Ceres asked.
“Lord Nyel did not accompany us in the assault,” one of Lord West’s former men said.
“No,” Ceres said, “I guess he wouldn’t have.”
Maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t there. The rebels and the people of Delos would have been wary enough of a noble like Lord West, given all that he represented, and he had been a brave and honorable man. His cousin hadn’t been half the man he had been.
She didn’t ask if the combatlords had a leader. That wasn’t the kind of men they were. Ceres had come to know each of them in the training pits for the Stade, and she knew that while any one of them was worth a dozen or more normal men, they couldn’t lead something like this.
She found herself looking to Akila. It was obvious that he was a leader, and his men clearly followed his example, yet he seemed to be looking for her to give the orders here.
Ceres felt her father’s hand on her shoulder.
“You’re wondering why they should listen to you,” he guessed, and it was far too close to the mark.
“They shouldn’t follow me just because I happen to have Ancient One blood,” Ceres replied softly. “Who am I, really? How can I hope to lead them?”
She saw her father smile at that.
“They don’t want to follow you just because of who your ancestors are. They’d follow Lucious if that were the case.”
Her father spat into the dirt as if to emphasize what he thought of that.
Sartes nodded.
“Father’s right, Ceres,” he said. “They follow you because of everything you’ve done. Because of who you are.”
She thought about that.
“You can draw them together,” her father added. “You have to do it now.”
Ceres knew they were right, but it was still hard to stand in the midst of so many people and know that they were waiting for her to make a decision. What happened if she didn’t, though? What happened if she forced one of the others to lead?
Ceres could guess the answer to that. She could feel the energy of the crowd, held in check for now, but there nonetheless, like smoldering embers ready to burst into wildfire. Without direction, it would mean looting in the city, more death, more destruction, and maybe even defeat as the factions there found themselves at odds.
No, she couldn’t allow that, even if she still wasn’t sure she could do it.
“Brothers and sisters!” she called out, and to her surprise, the crowd around her fell silent.
Now the attention on her felt total, even compared to what had gone before.
“We’ve won a great victory, all of us! All of you! You faced the Empire, and you snatched victory from the jaws of death!”
The crowd cheered, and Ceres looked around, giving that a moment to sink in.
“But it’s not enough,” she continued. “Yes, we could all go home now, and we would have achieved a lot. We might even be safe for a while. Eventually, though, the Empire and its rulers would come for us, or for our children. It would go back to what it was, or worse. We need to finish this, once and for all!”
“And how do we do that?” a voice called out from the crowd.
“We take the castle,” Ceres replied. “We take Delos. And we make it ours. We capture the royals, and we stop their cruelty. Akila, you came here by sea?”
“We did,” the rebel leader said.
“Then go to the harbor with your men and make sure we have control of it. I don’t want imperials escaping to fetch an army against us, or a fleet sneaking up on us.”
She saw Akila nod.
“We’ll do it,” he assured her.
The second part of this was harder.
“Everyone else, come with me to the castle.”
She pointed to where the fortification stood over the city.
“For too long, it has stood as a symbol of the power they have over you. Today, we take it.”
She looked around at the crowd, trying to gauge their reaction.
“If you don’t have a weapon, get one. If you’re too injured, or you don’t want to do this, there is no shame in staying, but if you come, you’ll be able to say that you were there the day Delos got its freedom!”
She paused.
“People of Delos!” she cried, her voice booming. “Are you with me!?”
The crowd’s answering roar was enough to deafen her.
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