The thought of seeing Keles again, of her being in danger, flooded Cyrus with a mixture of emotions he had no hope of deciphering. Rayan was waiting for an answer, and so Cyrus used questions to stall.

  “Why not bring Stasia? Or Mari? In her Lioness form she might even be able to smell out Keles like a bloodhound.”

  Rayan hesitated. He did not want to say what he was about to say, that much was clear.

  “Thorda did not believe the resistance could afford the absence of either of his daughters.”

  “Not even for someone so dear to you as Keles,” Cyrus said, finishing the unspoken thought. “That’s Thorda, through and through. We are just tools to be used by someone like him.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  Cyrus wanted to tell him how Thorda manipulated all of them to his own ends. He wanted to confess every single aspect of it, vomit out the words until the story was told. How Thorda had built a persona for Cyrus to embody, each and every detail chosen in advance. How he had Cyrus encourage the otherworldly aspects of it, which in turn fueled the rumors Thorda spent two years spreading during Cyrus’s training. And how, as the final culmination of that effort, Thorda had engineered the capture and execution of forty souls faithful to the Vagrant.

  Forty souls, convinced the Vagrant was the dead prince returned to life. Believing in him. Faithful. Loyal. Sacrificed, like the Seeds used to turn mere human men into the mighty paragons of the Everlorn Empire. And in return, Cyrus’s strength had grown tenfold. His reflexes heightened. His gifted ring of Anyx allowing him to traverse shadow to shadow almost on a whim. Everything Thorda had promised, and nothing Cyrus had expected.

  But to tell Rayan of Thorda’s betrayal was to tell him the reason for that betrayal, and exactly what Cyrus was becoming. What the Vagrant was becoming. And he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. The words would not come to his lips.

  “Thorda knows why I left,” Cyrus said instead. “I see his cowardice has not yet abated.”

  “Cowardice is not something I associate with a man so ruthless,” Rayan said. “But whatever happened between you two, I shall not pry further, even if all of us, including Thorda, miss you dearly.”

  Rayan reached into the bag he carried. Cyrus recoiled at what emerged from within. It was the crowned skull mask. The last he’d seen it, he had returned it to Thorda, split in half from the battle against Magus of Eldrid. The mask had been repaired, with such expertise not a crack marked its painted-white front. Cyrus stared at the wide, toothy grin as his insides trembled.

  That mask. That crown. He feared it more than anything, and yet he felt such an intense desire to hold it, to wear it, to become it, that he found his hand reaching without a thought. The moment it touched his skin, the spell broke. Just a bit of carved and painted wood, that was all. The crown was plain silver. Not jagged. Not decorated. Just a round band to hold the mask to his face.

  “Thorda thought you might need this,” Rayan explained. “The road north will be heavily patrolled, and there is a chance we must defend ourselves.”

  Cyrus knew it was more than that. This was an attempt to bring him back into the fold. It was a reminder of what Thorda had created, as if Cyrus could ever forget. Perhaps it was also an apology. With Thorda, one could never tell. He was stone and ice, more familiar with a frown than a smile.

  “You truly think Keles is in danger?” he asked.

  “This entire island is full of desperate people. If Keles reveals their potential salvation for a lie, then yes, I fear the harm that may follow. The deceived are as likely to harm the truth bringer as they are to admit fault.”

  Cyrus stuffed the mask into a pocket of his trousers, glad to have it out of sight and terrified by the excitement it gave him nestled so close to his body. Mild electricity jolted through him as if from a second heart.

  “Then it seems we are going north.”

  He grinned. Rayan recoiled in his seat, and Cyrus wondered just whose grin the paladin saw.

  CHAPTER 2

  SINSHEI

  Sinshei hated these meetings at the council table. She hated the subservience she needed to display. And with the exception of her paragon, Soma, she hated every single person inside that room.

  “Every day,” her brother, the Heir-Incarnate Galvanis vin Lucavi, said with exaggerated frustration. “Every single day, I receive word of another soldier, priest, or magistrate cut down with their forehead carved open with a bloody crown.”

  His frown deepened, and when he crossed his arms, the chair beneath him groaned in protest. Magus had sat in that same chair during prior discussions on how to best subjugate Thanet. Comparing the two reaffirmed just how huge her brother was. The Uplifted Church preached that the Heir-Incarnate’s greater size and strength, dwarfing even that of paragons, was proof of his divine right to be the next physical embodiment of the God-Incarnate. Sinshei suspected it was more complicated than that. In her memories as a little girl, she didn’t remember Galvanis as quite so big, nor his face so rigid and white, as if he were carved out of marble.

  “We have offered bounties, but without a name or a face we have no way to verify what few claims we receive,” Sinshei said. “And with the Vagrant’s apparent distaste for open combat, he picks at us like a mosquito.”

  She was trying to downplay the Vagrant’s threat, and for one particular reason: Galvanis blamed her for the bastard’s mere existence. It didn’t matter that Imperator Magus and Regent Goldleaf deserved equal blame. It didn’t even matter that the two were dead. Had they lived, Galvanis would have blamed her all the same. Sinshei was forever expected to accomplish miracles, and forever blamed for failing.

  “Then coordinate your search efforts throughout the city,” Galvanis said. “If the Vagrant were truly a mosquito, then we could end him with hardly any effort, yet that is clearly not the case. Even Rihim has struggled to engage the bastard in a fight.”

  Rihim was the Humbled former god that Galvanis brought with him from Gadir, a god of the hunt from the conquered nation of Antiev. He was Galvanis’s trained pet, and so Rihim was given patience and understanding, two things so rarely extended Sinshei’s way.

  “Such citywide coordination proves difficult without a proper regent,” she said. Galvanis had declared himself Imperator, but unlike Magus, he had not also taken the title of regent. Currently Magus’s former Signifer, Weiss, held the role of regent-temp. It was meant as a placeholder, and even Weiss knew that. He sat quietly at the table, a little pad of yellow paper before him and a charcoal pencil in hand to scratch notes. Sinshei vastly preferred him over Gordian, and when things settled, she would try to convince Galvanis to make the position permanent.

  “And a proper regent will be appointed in due time, but having had two perish within months at the hands of the Vagrant, I find myself reluctant to name a third.” Galvanis made a disgusted expression, one almost comical on his pristine face and perfectly square jaw. “Truly, this man’s methods make even the Skull-Amid-the-Trees seem civilized. What I would give to face him in open combat so we might end this nonsense without needless deaths.”

  “‘The Empire’s greatest threats are rarely found upon the battlefield,’” Sinshei quoted from the Pames Memoirs.

  “You would speak Anointed Enfar to me?” Galvanis asked. “Then quote it correctly. ‘The Empire’s greatest threats are rarely found upon the battlefield, but instead within the hearts of man.’ Those hearts are yours to win over, Anointed One. Your church is not rising to its responsibilities.”

  Sinshei felt a momentary echo of time hearing such a complaint. Magus had grumbled the same. With him, she had argued her priests could not adequately perform their duties when the Vagrant and his fellow insurgents were murdering them in their homes. To her brother, she would offer no such defense. Excuses meant nothing to him.

  “We do the best we can,” she said, relying on the one thing her brother would accept: the inherent inferiority of the local populace. “These islanders are wicked and stubborn in their hearts. It is no wonder the message of the God-Incarnate struggles to take root. We are scattering seeds across a hard, dry land.”

  Galvanis leaned back in his chair, and he tapped his fingers together.

  “I have read everything the Deep Library of Eldrid contained of Thanet’s history. They do seem a stubborn lot. That so many were displaced followers of Endarius fleeing Mirli has no doubt seeded cowardice within them as well. I sympathize with your struggles, dear sister, I truly do, but I sympathize more with our dead. This must be stopped.”

  “I can handle him, if given proper time and tools. Skilled and dangerous as he is, the Vagrant is but one man cloaked in rumors and lies. Anyone he speaks with becomes a weakness. Every tale-teller might know a modicum of truth to be exploited. These killings he performs now are a pittance compared to the grand overtures he first attempted when building his name. I’d wager he’s weak, or in hiding. Time, my brother, all I need is time.”

  “Time is the one resource we grow thin on,” Galvanis said. “But enough on this. As you say, the Vagrant is one man. It is a goddess that worries me now. Do you have the totality of rumors I requested?”

  She did, compiled by one of her magistrates. She slid him the single curled scroll across the table.

  “I first thought the rumors would originate from within Vallessau,” she said as her brother’s blue eyes skimmed the writing. “But unlike the Vagrant rumors, tracking the source was surprisingly easy. They’re travelers from the northern realm of Ierida, all of them.”

  “And do you believe them?” Galvanis asked, still reading.

  “The people do, and many supposed witnesses held firm their belief despite interrogation. At the least, it is worth considering.”

  Her brother finally finished reading the list. Her stomach tightened. The look on his face, it was strikingly unpleasant.

  “The goddess Lycaena, returned,” he said. “How could you fail so utterly, dear sister?”

  Weiss’s scratching of his pencil halted momentarily, then resumed in earnest.

  Sinshei kept her face calm and passive, betraying nothing of her frustrations bubbling beneath the placid surface. Of course her brother would blame her for this. A few days after Magus’s death, the most outlandish of rumors had started spreading throughout Vallessau. They claimed that the Butterfly goddess, Lycaena, had returned from death to answer the prayers of her faithful. As to where she was, none would specify beyond vague references to Ierida.

  “This development has caught all of us off guard,” she said. “Official reports we receive from Ierida insist that matters go smoothly.”

  Galvanis folded his hands together and shook his head.

  “Only if you accept the reports at face value, Anointed. Tucked along the bottom they report their missing and their dead, and that number has steadily grown at unparalleled rates over the past month.”

  “It is not uncommon for soldiers to desert their duty, or the occasional local to attack a drunk or vulnerable man from Gadir…”

  Excuses. She was making excuses. God-Incarnate help her, she tried so hard to avoid them. Her brother’s eyes narrowed. His muscles tightened, and his chiseled jaw hardened into a perfect square.

  “This conquest was given six years to prepare Thanet. The god Endarius died on the first day of our arrival. Two years later, Lycaena was publicly executed! Five years in total, three without their gods, and yet you failed to convert their hearts and minds to the true faith. Call this land dry and hard all you wish, but sometimes the blame of an ill crop must fall upon the farmer. For the people to maintain their faith in their slain goddess so strongly that she might return? Unacceptable.”

  Her oldest brother was not Magus. He did not smash the table with his fists. He did not draw a weapon or physically act out his frustration beyond the raising of his voice. But it was enough. The stone trembled beneath Sinshei’s feet. One of the cracks in the table deepened. Sinshei cast her gaze low, refusing to meet his eye. Only silence and respect would suffice here. All else would worsen his ire.

  “Faith here in Thanet is fickle and thin,” said Galvanis, at last breaking the silence. When he spoke, the scratching of Weiss’s pencil resumed. “What prayers they offer my father are meager. We cannot risk a potential return of a goddess. We cannot risk the rumors of a potential return, not with how fragile a state I find this island in.”

  “Forgive me,” Sinshei said, and she bowed her head in respect. “I will organize a contingent of soldiers, paragons, and priests to scour northern Ierida in search of the source of these rumors.”

  “No. Such a matter is far too important, and the excessive failures on this island deny me trust in others to achieve a proper conclusion. I will lead the contingent north. If one of Thanet’s heathen gods has returned, her divinity will shine like a beacon to my eyes. She, and all her followers, will die to my blade.”

  “What of the Vagrant?” Sinshei dared ask. “You would leave Vallessau while belief here in the Vagrant festers?”

  Galvanis stood and rested his hands on the table. Already damaged from when Soma struck it with his spear, it cracked further from the Heir-Incarnate’s weight. His blue eyes pierced into Sinshei’s as he smiled a statue’s smile.

  “You reveal your true fear of this ‘one man cloaked in rumors and lies,’” he said. “But worry not, little sister. I shall leave Rihim here to continue his hunt. Where you fail, I trust the Humbled to succeed.”

  Sinshei bowed her head to hide her shiver.

  “I trust your wisdom above all else. Safe travels, dear brother.”

  Sinshei remained seated until Galvanis exited the room, for doing otherwise would appear disrespectful. Signifer Weiss scribbled a few more lines during the wait.

  “What could you possibly still be writing?” she asked him. Frustration and hurt harshened her tongue.

  The scarred man glanced up, and after a moment’s hesitation, he shrugged.

  “See for yourself.”

  He slid the pad to her. The paper was rough and yellow, and it crinkled at her touch.

  No potatoes here. Possible replacements? They have radishes. Cauliflower, perhaps? With so much cheese, don’t need exact. Must check spices—I think they grow a chili similar to our yellow peppers.

  She lowered the pad and stared at the man as if seeing him for the very first time.

  “Is this… are you writing out a recipe?”

  Signifer Weiss faintly grinned.

  “I find myself on an island I do not know, in a position I did not strive for, under the direct order of the Heir-Incarnate. The last thing I desire is to be noticed. Over my years I have learned a quiet man taking notes is left to his own devices by important men, especially if those important men assume the notes are about themselves.”

  Sinshei arched an eyebrow.

  “Did you employ this strategy in our meetings with Magus, too?”

  “Not as often. Magus would listen to my advice. I do not anticipate the same from you or Galvanis.”

  That might be changing soon, Sinshei decided. Weiss was a quiet man, but clever, and he’d risen to his rank for good reason. She slid the notes back to him.

  “Try speaking more often,” she said. “You may find yourself surprised.”

  He rose from his chair and bowed low.

  “I will consider it, Anointed One.”

  She let him leave first, and now alone, she pondered her plans in silence. With Galvanis departing, and Signifer Weiss only regent-temp, she would effectively have the run of the capital for the first time since landing on Thanet. The question was, what should she do with that opportunity?

  Sowing doubt in Galvanis among her magistrates would be a first step. She’d have to be careful. While she’d done similar with Magus, it was one thing to speak ill of a lumbering paragon of Everlorn’s Legion. It was another to whisper dark rumors of the man who would soon become God-Incarnate. She tapped her lips. Perhaps she could force all the city’s soldiers into confession booths over the next few weeks. A list of sins could be useful in capturing loyalty from those in the right positions.

  Mind still whirling, she exited the room. Her loyal paragon, Soma Ordiae, waited for her in the hallway, a bemused expression on his face. She idly wondered if he’d exchanged words with either Galvanis or Weiss. His blue platemail was polished to a shine, and his spear was safely clipped to his back.

  “Another productive meeting?” he asked.

  “For once, yes,” she said. “My brother plans an excursion into Ierida to find the source of the rumors of Lycaena’s return. I would know what transpires. Volunteer to go on his merry hunt. See if there is anything useful to learn, things that he would not tell me upon his return. And if Lycaena truly has resurrected, and a fight between them occurs, well…”

  “Fear not, I will take what openings are available to me,” Soma said. His platemail rattled as he tilted his head to one side. “Though are you certain it is wise for me to leave your side? The Vagrant and his band of miscreants still lurk about, and they will be emboldened with the Heir-Incarnate’s departure. I would hate to leave Vallessau only to return to find a crown carved into your forehead.”

  Sinshei winced at the thought. The Vagrant had been useful in bringing down Imperator Magus, but he had also humiliated Sinshei by killing Gordian Goldleaf mere moments after his paragon ritual. Whoever he was, his potential upside was dwindling as his lingering presence continued to be unfairly blamed on her.

  “I can protect myself,” she said, and she shimmered a single golden blade of light above her hand. A snap of her fingers, and she dismissed it just as quickly.

  “Our magistrates possess similar magics,” Soma argued. “And they have died all the same. I hold much greater trust in my spear.”

  “Your concern for me is touching,” she said, neither believing his concern nor feeling particularly touched. “But fear not, Soma. I will not be alone here in Vallessau.”

  Distaste flashed across Soma’s face, fast enough she might have imagined it.