eye. “Forgive me, my lord.”
Akila. Irrien had heard the name, and had heard more from Lucious. Akila, who had helped to free Haylon from the Empire, and held it against their fleet. Who, it was said, fought with all the cunning of a fox, striking and moving, hitting where foes least expected.
“I have always valued strong opponents,” Irrien said. “A sword needs iron to sharpen it.”
He took his sword from its black leather sheath as if to illustrate the point. The blade was blue-black with oil, the edge a razor’s. It was the kind of thing that might have been a headsman’s tool for another man, but he’d learned the balance of it, and built the strength to wield it well. He had other weapons: knives and strangling wires, a curved moon blade and a many-spiked sun dagger. But this was the one people knew. It had no name, but only because Irrien believed such things foolish.
He could see the fear on his new slave’s face at the sight of it.
“In the old days, priests would offer up the life of a slave before battle, hoping to quench the thirst of death before it could settle on a general. Then, it came so that they offered the slave to the gods of war, in the hope that they would show favor to their side. Kneel.”
Irrien saw the man do it reflexively, in spite of his terror. Perhaps because of it.
“Please,” he begged.
Irrien kicked him, hard enough that the slave fell to his belly, his head sticking out over the bow of the ship. “I told you to be silent. Remain there, and be grateful that I have no truck with priests and their foolishness. If there are gods of death their thirst cannot be slaked. If there are those of war, their favor goes to the man with the most troops.”
He turned back to the rest of his ship. He hefted his sword one-handed, and slaves who had been waiting for his instructions rushed to grab horns. As he nodded, the horns blared once. Irrien saw catapults and ballistae crank back, flames being set to their loads.
He stood, dark against the sunlight, his bronzed skin and dark clothes turning him into a patch of shadow before the city.
“I told you that we would come to Delos, and we have!” he called out. “I told you that we would take their city, and we will!”
He waited until the cheer that followed died down.
“I gave the scouts we sent back to them a message, and it is one I intend to fulfill!” This time, Irrien didn’t wait. “Every man, woman, and child of the Empire is now a slave. Any you meet without a master’s mark is there for you to catch and do with what you are strong enough to. Any who claims to have property is lying to you, and you may take it. Any who disobeys us is to be punished. Any who resists us is in rebellion, and will be treated without mercy!”
Mercy was another of those jokes that people liked to pretend was real, Irrien had found. Why would a man allow an enemy to live unless it gained him something? The dust taught simple lessons: If you were weak, you died. If you were strong, you took what you could from the world.
Now, Irrien intended to take everything.
The biggest part of this was how alive he felt right then. He’d fought his way up to become First Stone, only to realize there was nowhere left to go. He’d felt himself starting to stagnate in the politics of the city, playing out the petty squabbles of the other stones to amuse himself. This, though… this promised to be so much more.
“Ready yourselves!” he shouted to his men. “Obey my orders, and we will succeed. Fail, and you will be less than dust to me.”
He stepped back over to the spot where the former sailor still lay, his head extended beyond the edge of the ship. He probably thought that was the extent of it. Irrien had found that they hoped things would get no worse, instead of seeing the danger and acting.
“You could have died fighting,” he said, his great sword still lifted. “You could have died a man, rather than a pitiful sacrifice.”
The man turned, staring up at him. “You said… you said that you didn’t believe in that.”
Irrien shrugged. “Priests are fools, but people believe their foolishness. If it will inspire them to fight harder, who am I to object?”
He pinned the slave in place with one boot, making sure that all those there could see it. He wanted everyone to see the moment when his conquest began.
“I give you to death,” he called out. “You, and all who stand against us!”
He brought his sword down, stabbing into the pitiful scum’s chest, spearing the heart. Irrien didn’t wait. He lifted it again, and for once, his headsman’s blade performed its original duty. It cleaved through the enslaved sailor’s neck cleanly. Not mercy, but pride, because the First Stone would never keep a weapon with less than a perfect edge.
He lifted the blade with the edge still bloody.
“Begin!”
Horns sounded, the sky filled with fire as the catapults launched and archers shot arrows out toward their foes. Smaller ships snaked out toward their targets.
For a moment, Irrien found himself thinking of this “Akila,” the man who had to be standing there waiting for what was to come. He wondered if his would-be foe was afraid right then.
He should be.
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
