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 the kind of thing that she could afford to get wrong. There would be one chance to get this right. So far from other resources, failure wouldn't mean a quiet retreat. It might mean her death.
In any case, they were still too far from land. Stephania couldn't steer the boat, and while her handmaiden would probably be a useful guide in the lands of Felldust, she probably couldn't get them across the ocean to it. They needed the skills of the sailor, both to find land safely again and to get them to the right piece of land. There were things Stephania needed to find, and she couldn't do it if she couldn't even get to the land that had been the Empire's ally for generations now.
Stephania walked over to the others, and for a moment she considered pushing Felene anyway, simply because she seemed surprisingly loyal to Thanos. It wasn't a trait Stephania expected in a self-confessed thief, and it meant that bribery probably wasn't an option. Which only left more violent means.
Still, as Felene turned toward her, Stephania forced a smile.
"How much further do we have to go?" she asked.
Felene lifted her hands like a merchant balancing scales. "A day or two, maybe. It depends on the winds. Resenting my company already, princess?"
"Well," Stephania said, "you are foul-mouthed, condescending, high-handed, and almost gleeful about the fact that you are a criminal."
"And those are just the start of my good points," Felene said with a laugh. "Still, I'll get you to Felldust easy enough. Have you thought about what you're going to do then? Friends at court, maybe, to help find this sorcerer of yours? Do you know where to find him?"
"Where the falling sun meets the skulls of the stone dead," Stephania said, recalling the directions Old Hara the witch had given her. Stephania had paid for those directions with the life of one of her other handmaidens. They hardly seemed like enough.
"It's always this kind of thing," Felene said with a sigh. "Trust me, I've stolen some pretty impressive things in my time, and it's never just straightforward directions. Never a street name and someone telling you to take the third door on the left. Sorcerers, witches, they're the worst. I'm surprised a noble lady like you wants to mess with anything like that."
That was because the sailor knew nothing about Stephania, really. Not the things she'd spent her time learning so that she would be more than just one more face in the background of royal occasions. Certainly not the lengths she was prepared to go to when it came to revenge.
"I will do whatever it takes," Stephania said. "The question is if I can rely on you."
Felene flashed her a smile. "So long as you mostly ask me to do things that include drinking, fighting, and occasional stealing." Her expression turned more serious. "I owe Thanos, and I gave him my word I'd see you safe. I keep my word."
Without that part, she might have been perfect for Stephania's plans. Oh, if only she'd been as open to bribery as the rest of her sort. Or even seduction. Stephania would have given her Elethe as easily as she'd given the old witch Hara her last handmaiden.
"What about when we get to Felldust?" Felene asked. "How do we go about finding this 'place where the sun meets the stone dead'?"
"The skulls of the stone dead are a thing I have heard of," Elethe supplied. "They are in the mountains."
Stephania would have preferred to discuss this privately, but the truth was that there was no privacy on their small boat. They needed to talk about it, and that meant talking about it in front of Felene.
"That means we will need to get to the mountains," Stephania said. "Will you be able to arrange it?"
Elethe nodded. "A friend of my family runs caravans that cut through the mountains. It should be easy to organize."
"Without attracting too much attention?" Stephania asked.
"A caravan master who attracts too much attention is one who gets robbed," Elethe assured her. "And we will be able to find more information once we reach the city. Felldust is my home, my lady."
"I am sure you will be most helpful," Stephania said, in a way that turned it into an expression of gratitude. Once, that would have had her handmaiden tripping over herself with joy, but now, she merely smiled. It probably had something to do with all the attention she'd been getting from Felene.
A thin thread of anger rose in Stephania at that. Not jealousy in the conventional sense, because she didn't feel that way about the girl, or anyone, now that Thanos was gone from her life. No, this was simply because her handmaiden was hers. Once, the girl would have thrown herself to her doom at Stephania's command. Now, Stephania couldn't be sure, and that rankled. She would have to find a way to test it before this was through.
She would have to do a lot of things before she was finished in Felldust. She would have to find this sorcerer, and even if her handmaiden understood one of the clues to his location, that would still take time and effort. She would have to do it in a strange land, where the politics and the people would both be different, even if their weaknesses were generally the same the world over.
Even once she found the sorcerer, she would have to find a way to either learn what he knew or gain his aid. Perhaps it would only take money, or a little charm, but Stephania doubted it. Any sorcerer with the strength to stop one of the Ancient Ones would be able to take what he wanted from the world.
No, Stephania would have to be more creative than that, but she would find a way to make it work. Everyone wanted something, whether it was power, fame, knowledge, or simply safety. Stephania had always had a gift for finding out what people wanted; it was so often the lever that opened them up to doing what Stephania needed them to do.
"Tell me, Elethe," she said on impulse. "What is it that you want?"
"To serve you, my lady," the girl said immediately. It was the right answer, of course, but there was a note of sincerity to it that Stephania liked. She would find out the real answer in due course.
"And you, Felene?" Stephania asked.
She watched the thief shrug. "Whatever the world has to offer. Preferably with plenty of treasure, drink, companions, and enjoyment. Not necessarily in that order."
Stephania laughed softly, pretending that she didn't hear the lie there. "Of course. What else could someone want?"
"Why don't you tell me?" Felene countered. "What is it that you want, princess? Why go through all this?"
"I want to be safe," Stephania said. "And I want revenge on the ones who took Thanos from me."
"Revenge on the Empire?" Felene said. "I guess I could side with that. They threw me onto that island of theirs, after all."
If she wanted to believe that revenge on the Empire was what Stephania wanted, then let her believe it. The objects of Stephania's anger were more easily defined: Ceres, then Thanos, along with anyone who helped them.
Silently, Stephania repeated the vow she'd made back in Delos. She would raise her child to be the perfect weapon against its father. She would raise the child with love; certainly, she wasn't a monster. But it would have a purpose too. It would know what its father had done.
And that some things could never be forgiven.