A king should have been greeted by trumpeters, heralds, and pageantry. Instead, there was only the thud of Port Leeward's dock as the sailors threw him onto it.
Lucious groaned, caught between pain and anger as he struck the wood.
"I am a king!" Lucious whimpered. "A king!"
They didn't seem to be listening, any more than they had been on the ship. Maybe that was just as well.
Lucious forced his way to his feet, ignoring the pain it sent through him.
He managed to look round at Felldust's capital, Port Leeward. It barely seemed worth the effort. He'd heard once that Felldust had started as a green, pleasant, even glorious land, lush with vegetation and rich with delicate flowers.
That had changed during the wars involving the Ancient Ones. Now, while pockets of beauty and fertile ground remained, far more of the kingdom was a place of shifting dust and burning sand, black ash and desolation. Its current kingdom had grown up amongst the wreckage, built up the way someone might have built a shelter in the wake of a shipwreck.
It had grown into one of the Empire's most important allies and trading partners. Lucious was relying on that. It was in everyone's interest for Felldust's king to help him take back what was his.
Not a king, the First Stone.
"I know that," Lucious muttered to himself. He'd thought he would be able to silence his father's endless quibbling and picking at him by killing him. His memories, or his imagination, or possibly the gods, seemed to have other ideas, though.
He could remember the endless lessons his father had made him sit through with Cosmas in the hall of learning. All those hours he'd been forced to spend learning the customs and political structures of other lands, as though anywhere but the Empire truly mattered. Now there was the irony that some of it might actually pay off.
Lucious looked up at the city and tried to remember his lessons. The First Stone, Irrien, was the nominal head of a council of ministers put in place to rule Felldust as it had grown out of the fall of the Ancient Ones. In practice, the First Stone was a king in all but name, even if the other stones of the council plotted around him and exercised their powers as they saw fit. The exact power of the First Stone came down to his ability to navigate the twists and turns of Felldust's politics through power, violence, and charisma.
From what Lucious had heard, Irrien was highly charismatic, carrying along the people of the kingdom with speeches and symbolic gestures, ruling the rest of the council easily. If Lucious could get his aid, the rest would fall into place. From what Lucious had heard, Felldust's nobles had lives filled with the rarest luxuries, fueled by diamonds dug up from the depths of the black ash, and artifacts recovered from the land's ancient ruins, sold by the merchants who ran caravans to them or the forgers who worked out of foundries in the towns.
He would get his Empire back. The spots where he'd been kicked hurt with a fire that would take strong drink to dull, but there were other hurts too. It still hurt that he'd been forced to run, watching as the rebellion somehow beat back the soldiers he'd sent to kill them in the Stade. It hurt that he'd been forced to steal some peasant's clothes, fitting them over his own so that he could sneak from the city unseen.
And if you hadn't been busy killing me, you'd have been there too.
The truth of that bit at Lucious almost more than the rest of it. He'd wanted to be there to watch the combatlords' destruction, but if his father hadn't called him away, Lucious would probably have been dead by now. His father had saved him by accident, while Lucious had been busy staving in his skull. Lucious supposed he should have been grateful, but right then, all he could think was how much he wanted back what had been taken from him.
He'd get it back though, just as soon as he found his way through this pitiful excuse for a city. Lucious tried to make sense of it, then decided that there was no sense to be made of somewhere like Port Leeward. It hunched in the lee of a cliff face as though huddled there against the dust. There were parts of it where that seemed to have worked, but far more of the city looked sand stained and blackened, eroded in patches so that the stones of the buildings seemed pitted by it. The white marble of richer buildings looked like the bones of some beached leviathan, sticking up through the rotting meat of the rest of it.
There should have been a carriage waiting for him. He shouldn't have had to find his way through all this mess. The First Stone himself should have been there waiting by the docks for Lucious to arrive.
"He would have been if he'd known," Lucious said.
Really? You know more about Irrien than that.
It seemed he hadn't been able to leave his father's voice behind on the ship. Lucious did his best to ignore it. He would march to the castle, demand to see the First Stone, and he would have all that was due to him.
Better hope not, because that includes a headsman's axe.
Lucious strode off into the city, not caring that he didn't have directions, or a guide, or anything else. The palace of the five stones was obvious enough, standing as a five-sided tower at the heart of the city. So long as he kept it in sight, it would be easy enough to find.
Ten minutes later, he had to admit that it hadn't been the best of strategies.
You always were inclined to rush in without thinking.
"It's not me!" Lucious snapped. "It's this gods-forsaken city!"
He'd thought Delos was tangled and complex. Compared to Felldust's capital, though, it was practically a tiny hamlet. Port Leeward was a maze, filled with babbling people who seemed determined to conduct their grubby lives out on the streets. As for the name…what sort of city named itself purely after its capacity to keep out the wind and dust?
One with a lot of dust.
"I'll find a way to banish you from my head," Lucious promised. "I killed you. I'll not drag you round with me like some specter."
For now though, the voice lingering at the back of his mind seemed to have a point. Dust blew in on the wind, making Lucious cough as he made his way through the streets, looking for a way to the tower.
The residents of the city didn't seem to mind it, or at least it didn't slow them down. They just wore scarves against the dust while they were outside, shouting and singing and haggling just as loudly as they might have done in clear sunlight. Lucious saw slaves sweeping away dust from doorways, broad hats keeping the fresh dust-fall from their clothing.
Ahead, he saw two men arguing in the street over some dice, and Lucious stepped around them just as a blade flashed. People barely looked round as the two men fought. There were more arguments in other parts of the street, since business in the city seemed to take place at two volumes: either furtive silence or full-throated shouting.
At first, Lucious thought he was walking through a particularly rough area of the city, but a second glance told him that Port Leeward was more complex than that. The street he was in seemed to feature gambling houses and brothels set beside merchants and homes as if it was the most normal thing in the world. In line with the city's determination to conduct all its business on the streets, Lucious could see prostitutes there trying to entice in business, and tavern workers were selling what seemed like rich spirits, carrying them through the crowd and smoothly dodging attempts to grab them.
Here and there, Lucious spotted signs of richer figures. Palanquins carried by glistening slaves hurried through the streets, curtains on the sides occasionally twitching so the wealthy could look out. They might have been nobles, although in Felldust, it was always more complicated than that. If you had money enough to bribe the right people and host the right parties, it didn't matter what blood you had. Lucious wasn't sure he liked that.
There was plenty to like about the rest of the city though, he decided, as he watched masked actors performing a bawdy drama in the street. It was only when Lucious felt a hand working at his purse that he realized there would be downsides to it as well.
"Come back here!" he yelled, setting off after the fleeing figure of a young woman. He'd caught the pickpocket early enough that he still had his purse, but that didn't mean he was going to let anyone get away with trying to steal from him. No, he would teach the girl a lesson, and announce to the world that he was here!
This is a bad move.
"Shut up!" Lucious snapped as he ran.
He rounded a corner, jumping into a cobbled alley, to find himself staring at three large men. In that moment, Lucious found himself cursing Felldust, and remembering all he'd heard about its criminal gangs, its guilds of assassins and slavers. In Delos, the power of the kings had meant that such things were disorganized, even if they were there. In Felldust, the system of a ruling council meant that such things were just one more tool for the factions to employ.
One of the men snapped something at him in a language he didn't understand. He repeated it, pointing angrily.
"Say it in a civilized tongue, you fool," Lucious said, "or get out of my way."
Another of the men answered. "He said to give us your money, Imperial, or die for it."
Do not be foolish, his father's voice warned.
That was enough to spur Lucious to action. He stepped forward, his blade clearing its sheath and stabbing out in one movement. It didn't take the largest of them cleanly, but it was more than enough to make the man howl in pain.
Then he ran, sprinting back through the pressing crowds, shoving people out of the way. He sprinted for his life, hearing the sound of sandaled feet behind him. He leapt past a covered well, darted down a side street, and shoved a palanquin carrier so that the whole thing went tumbling in front of those following. He picked a direction at random, ducked into a shop selling statuary, and hid behind a sculpture of reclining nymphs until he was sure the pursuit was past.
What a city. Was there nothing that wouldn't go on here? Lucious quickly had an answer as he kept going through the city. He saw shops where the scent of incense drifted out into the street, people staggering from them with eyes that didn't seem to be able to fix on this world. He saw street vendors trying to keep the dust off meat that wasn't from any animal he knew.
Lucious passed a marketplace, where the merchants seemed happy to sell wickedly sharp blades next to vegetables, slaves alongside silks. Lucious saw what looked like a nobleman touring the stalls, a woman who was clearly not his wife hanging off his arm while a couple of burly slaves followed behind.
"You there!" Lucious called out, moving close, because at last this was someone who might be able to assist him.
The merchant, or whatever he was, kept chattering to his courtesan, laughing as she tried on a selection of jewels. Paste and glass, to Lucious's eye.
"I'm talking to you," Lucious said, stepping forward to put a hand on the other man's shoulder. It didn't get there. One of the men with him closed a hand around his wrist, hard enough than Lucious winced in pain.
"Yes," the merchant said, turning to him and answering in accented Imperial. "You are. Why would I want to listen to something that looks like you, though?" He nodded to his men and said something in the language of the city. Lucious didn't understand it, but he could guess.
He's going to have you beaten and thrown in the gutter. Where you belong.
"Don't you dare," Lucious said, with a flare of anger. "My name is Prince Lucious of the Empire. King Lucious. Lay a hand on me and it's an act of war! I came to you to ask an escort to the castle. If you don't have the courtesy to help me-"
"Oh, a madman, is it?" the merchant said. "Well, we have far more entertaining madmen than you in Felldust. We have holy fools and spinning men, men who'll try to sell you the moons and men who'll howl at them."
He gestured to the men again, but the courtesan with him said something with a laugh. That got a smile from the merchant that didn't reach his eyes.
"It seems my companion has a soft heart. You want directions?" He gestured with a sweep of his arm. "There is the tower of the five stones. I suggest you hurry to it."
Are you going to stab him? Show the world exactly what you are?
Lucious bit back his anger, if only because he wouldn't survive making any kind of move. More than that, somewhere behind him, he thought he saw a commotion that involved a face he'd seen before. It seemed that the men from the alley were still looking for him.
So he set off again, hoping that he would find his way. This city wasn't everything he'd been hoping it would be when he'd first arrived. Maybe it would improve once Irrien had given him all that should be his.
Lucious made his way through the streets, trying to focus in on the tower again, although his eyes kept being drawn down to ground level. The merchant had been right about madmen. He could see them on the street corners, and hear them too, bellowing religious declarations, or political ones, or fragments of philosophy in languages they'd probably made up on the spot.
As he got closer, Lucious had to press himself to the side of the street in order to avoid a man who was simply standing and whirling in the middle of the road, a long blade in his hands. No one seemed to care.
"Mad, this place is mad," Lucious said.
Well, you're hardly in a position to comment.
It took the better part of another hour to reach the tower. The actual distance Lucious covered would have been tiny as the raven flew, but instead of straight lines, Lucious found the streets leading him in circles and zigzags, nothing ever seeming to go where he meant to. And wasn't that just a metaphor for his entire blasted existence?
Finally, he found himself standing at the foot of the tower. It stretched up into the sunlight sky in a five-sided pillar of dark stone. Windows and balconies dotted it, but they all had shutters against the dust, making it seem even more forbidding and sealed off than it was. Lucious couldn't guess how many levels there were in there. Certainly enough that he had to crane his neck to see the top of the thing.
Guards stood beside the great gates at the foot of the thing, wearing dark armor the color of the dust, offset by strange patches that seemed more like crystal than metal, probably dug straight from the cliffs. Their masks made them seem inhuman somehow, bestial features replacing their own.
One demanded something in the local language. Lucious stood there, trying to look as impressive as he could in travel-stained clothes.
"My name is King Lucious of the Empire!" he declared, loud enough that they could probably hear him inside. "I have come here to seek the aid of our allies, the people of Felldust. I demand an audience with the First Stone."
He stood there, and so did the guards, leaning on great axes as if they never planned to move again. They certainly didn't move to open the door.
"Didn't you hear me?" Lucious demanded. "Don't you know who I am?"
Lucious contemplated attacking them with his short knife, but even he wasn't suicidal enough for that. He stood there glaring at them instead. And somehow, impossibly, it worked.
The great stone door in front of him cracked open, and a figure in a dust-covered robe stepped out.
"Prince Lucious," the figure pronounced slowly. "The First Stone will see you now."
