CHAPTER THREE

Thanos knelt over the body of his brother, and for a moment or two it felt as though the world had stopped. He didn’t know what to think or feel in that moment. He didn’t know what to do next.

He’d been expecting some sense of triumph when he finally killed Lucious, or at least some sense of relief that it was finally all over. He’d been expecting to finally feel that the people he cared about were safe.

Instead, Thanos found grief welling up inside him, tears falling for a brother who had probably never deserved them. But that didn’t matter now. What mattered was that Lucious was his half-brother, and he was gone.

He was dead, with Thanos’s dagger in his heart. Thanos could feel Lucious’s blood on his hands, and there seemed like so much of it to hold in one body. Some small part of him expected there to be something different about it all, for there to be some sign there of the madness that had gripped Lucious, or the grasping evil that had seemed to fill him. Instead, Lucious was just a silent, empty shell.

Thanos wanted to do something then for his brother; to see him buried, or hand him to a priest at least. Even as he thought of it, though, he knew that he couldn’t. His brother’s own words meant that it was impossible.

Felldust was invading the Empire, and if Thanos wanted to be able to do anything to help the people he cared about, he had to go now.

He stood, collecting his sword, ready to race for the door. He took Lucious’s as well. Of all the things his brother had held close, the tools of violence had seemed like the closest. Thanos stood there with them both in his hands, surprised to find how well they matched. He was almost as surprised to find a collection of the inn’s patrons blocking his way.

“He said you were Prince Thanos,” a bushy-bearded man said, fingering the edge of a knife. “That true?”

“The stones will pay good money for a captive like you,” another said.

A third nodded. “And if they don’t, the slavers will.”

They started forward, and Thanos didn’t wait. Instead, he charged. His shoulder slammed into the nearest, knocking him back into a table. Thanos was already lashing out, cutting at the arm of the knifeman.

Thanos heard him cry out as the blade bit into his forearm, but he was already moving, kicking the third man back into a spot where four men hadn’t stopped playing dice, even for the battle he’d just had with Lucious. One of them snarled and turned then, grabbing at the thug.

In moments, the inn managed to do what it hadn’t when Lucious had been the one fighting: it erupted into a full-scale brawl. Men who had been content to stand by while Thanos and his brother traded sword blows now threw punches and drew knives. One grabbed for a chair, swinging it at Thanos’s head. Thanos sidestepped, hacking a lump from the wood as he redirected the swing into yet another of the patrons.

He could have stayed to fight, but the thought of the danger Ceres might be in pushed him into a run. He’d been so sure that he could stop the invasion if he only got to Lucious, and then there would be enough time to find the truth about his parentage, discover the proof he needed, and make his way back to Delos. Now, there was no time for any of it.

Thanos sprinted for the door. He dropped and skidded under the grabbing hands of a man who tried to stop him, scraping a shallow cut across his thigh. He ran out into the streets there…

…straight into some of the worst dust Thanos had seen since he’d come to the city. He didn’t slow. He just jammed his twin blades into his belt, pulled up his scarf against the dust, and pushed forward as best he could.

Behind him, Thanos could hear the sounds of men trying to follow, although how they hoped to see him well enough to catch up in this weather, he didn’t know. Thanos groped his way along like a blind man, passing a merchant who was packing away his cart, then a pair of soldiers who were cursing as they huddled in a doorway against the dust.

“Look at that madman!” Thanos heard one of them call in Felldust’s tongue.

“Probably hurrying to join the invasion. I hear Fourth Stone Vexa has started to send more of a fleet, while the other three are still plotting. The First Stone has stolen a march on them.”

“Always does,” the first replied.

Thanos was away into the dust by then though, seeking his route by the vague shapes of the buildings, watching out for the signs that hung above the streets, lit by oil lamps. There were stone carvings too, obviously intended so that the locals could find their way from the street of the carved bear to that of the knotted snakes by touch if they needed.

Thanos didn’t know enough about the system to be able to use it, but even so, he pressed on through the dust.

There were others doing the same, and several times, Thanos stopped, trying to make out whether the booted feet he heard were those of pursuers or not. Once, he pressed in behind the curved iron bulk of a windbreak, his swords finding his way into his hands, certain that those following from the inn had caught up.

Instead, a team of slaves raced by, faces wrapped against the dust, carrying a palanquin from within which Thanos could hear a merchant urging them on.

“Faster, you curs! Faster, or I’ll have you impaled. We need to get to the harbor before we miss the spoils.”

Thanos watched them, tracking along behind the palanquin on the basis that those carrying it probably knew the way better than he did. He couldn’t track it too closely, because in a city like Port Leeward, everyone kept a watch for would-be robbers or killers, but even so, he managed to follow it along the length of several streets before it disappeared into the dust.

Thanos stood there for a second or two, catching his breath, and as quickly as it had come, the dust storm lifted, giving him a view out over the harbor.

What he saw there made Thanos stand and stare.

He’d thought that there were plenty of ships in the harbor before. Now, it seemed that the water was full to brimming with them, until it appeared that Thanos could have walked to the horizon on their decks.

Many of them were warships, but many more now were merchant craft or smaller vessels. With the main fleet already gone from Felldust, the harbor should have been empty, yet it seemed to Thanos that there wouldn’t be enough room for another boat there. It seemed that everyone in Felldust had come there, ready to take their piece of what was to be gained in the Empire.

Thanos started to see the scale of it then, and what it meant. This wasn’t just an army invading, but a whole country. They’d seen an opportunity to take lands they’d long been denied, and they were going to acquire them by force now.

Regardless of what it meant for those already there.

“Who are you?” a soldier asked, coming up to him. “What fleet, what captain?”

Thanos thought quickly. The truth would mean another fight, and now there wasn’t the welcoming veil of the dust in which to hide. He had no doubt that he was as coated with it as any of the natives, but if anyone should guess who he was, or even just that he was from the Empire, this would not end well.

He briefly wondered what they did to spies in Felldust. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Whose fleet are you with?” the man demanded again, this time in a harsh voice.

“Fourth Stone Vexa’s,” Thanos shot back, making his voice equally harsh. He tried to inject the sense that he had no time for such interruptions. It wasn’t hard to do right then, when he had so little time to get back to help Ceres. “Please tell me it’s not true about her fleet leaving already.”

The other man laughed in his face. “Looks like you’re out of luck there. What, you thought you could sit around, saying farewell to your crew’s favorite whore? You waste time, you waste your chance.”

“Damn it!” Thanos said, trying to play his part. “They can’t all be gone. What about other ships?”

That got another laugh. “You can ask if you want, but if you think there’s not a crew that’s full right now, you haven’t been paying attention. Pickings like this, everyone wants a place. Half of them can barely fight. Tell you what, though, maybe I could find a place for you on one of Old Forkbeard’s crews. The Third Stone is taking his time. I’d only ask half of any share you get.”

“Maybe if I can’t find the lads I’m supposed to be with,” Thanos said. Every second he was there was a second in which he wasn’t sailing back toward Delos with the one crew there who wouldn’t try to kill him the moment they found out who he was.

He saw the other man shrug. “You’ll not get a better offer this late.”

“We’ll see,” Thanos said, and set off amongst the boats.

From the outside, it must have looked as though he was looking for one of the rare boats from the fleet he’d claimed, although Thanos hoped that he didn’t find one. The last thing he wanted was to find himself pressed into service in Felldust’s navy.

He’d do it, though, if he had to. If it meant getting back to Ceres, if it meant being able to help her, he’d risk it. He’d play the part of some Felldust warrior, eager to catch up. If it had been main fleet sitting there, he might even have made it his first choice, trying to get as close to the First Stone as possible in order to kill him.

Now, though, if he drifted along with this second fleet, he wouldn’t get there until it was far too late. He certainly wouldn’t be able to help. So he walked the planks between the many ships, watching warriors carry on barrels of fresh water and crates of food. Thanos cut cracks in at least three casks, but no amount of petty sabotage would stop a fleet like this.

He kept looking, instead. He saw men and women honing weapons and chaining oar slaves into place. He saw dust-covered priests intoning prayers for good luck, sacrificing animals in ways that made the dust into blood-colored mud. He saw two groups of soldiers under different banners arguing over which of them got to go along a wharf first.

Thanos saw plenty that made him angry, and more that made him scared for Delos. There was only one thing he couldn’t find among the chaos of the docks, and it was the one thing that he’d come there to find. There were hundreds of boats there, of every shape, size, and design. There were boats filled to the brim with tough-looking warriors, and boats that looked like little more than glorified pleasure barges, there to take people to see the invasion as much as participate in it.

What he couldn’t see was the boat that had brought him there. He needed to get back to Ceres, and right then, Thanos didn’t know how he was going to do it.