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“May I ask why not, sir?” Eavus said instead. He was curious, but he also needed a second to think.

He couldn’t get Revni out of his head. Maybe he’d swing past the market to check on her. She’d likely end up fine—a strong girl like her. Pretty, too, obviously, though he’d never tell her that. His cheeks flushed. She would immediately assume the worst if he ever told her she was attractive. Accuse him of trying to…well, the things most soldiers did. His jaw flexed. It wasn’t right. The way his brothers treated people. Better that she didn’t have to deal with any of them anymore. She’d end up a maid in a nice house most likely, warm and cared for, if a little overworked. No worse off than anyone else.

“The emperor is dead.”

This tore Eavus’ attention back.

“Sir?”

“We have a new god on Earth, Ricaea Marceas.” His formal name sounded foreign in his ears. He’d gotten used to the name of Eavus. “His eminence Augria Quirinus Questa.” The prefect couldn’t keep the slight eye roll out of his tone. “Though I hear he dedicated a temple to the god of wine, so take the eminence part as you will.” The prefect returned to his desk, gesturing to the tent decor as he went. “Everything will have to be replaced. New colors, new coins. It’s a mess. But in the meantime, I need someone to deliver the message to the commander at Norbucum, before the locals get wind of it.”

New coin. Eavus swallowed. The pouch at his waist was heavy with the spoils of selling Revni’s things, and he had an account with the paymaster. Five-and-a-half years of saving every octavi he made—He’d trusted the payguards to keep it, unwilling to travel with it where it could be stolen, spent in a drunken town. But with a new emperor would come new leaders, new generals, new policies and payrates and provisos.

“Will— will any changes be made, sir? To the legions?” To my status? he wanted to shout. He was so close—so close to freedom.

“Not immediately,” the prefect reassured. “Though there’s always shakeups when something like this occurs. When the last emperor came to power—Viduus safely take him—” The prefect marked the god’s gesture, a bladed hand down the center of the sternum. “He changed everything. Expanded the army, allowed slaves to serve, and to buy their freedom, paid wages. You wouldn’t remember what it was like before—this was before you were born—but what it did for morale? The new Princeptor would be a f— It would not be in his best interests to change it." He had been about to say “fool,” but you don’t call the emperor a fool. Certainly not in front of a subordinate who could rat you out for a few of those dead-faced coins. “I wouldn’t worry.”

But Eavus was worried. More deeply than he wanted to dwell on at the moment. A new emperor could do anything he wanted. Eavus didn’t care about being sent to another gods-forsaken island in the middle of nowhere, a new campaign, a new commander. Viduus take him, the new emperor could decide to issue vats of wine to every citizen to drown themselves in, and Eavus would be happy to just ask, “Red or white?” So long as the contract stood. Six years of service with enough cara propita, plus the cost in gold. That was the deal. Eavus had only a few months left, centurions that would vouch for him, and most of the money saved.

If the paymaster didn’t suddenly decide that only new-faced coins were valid. If the emperor didn’t suddenly alter the terms.

“There will, however, be some changes in policy. Hence the importance of my message.”

Eavus paled. An ancient instinct told him to run, but a lifetime of servitude kept his feet planted.

“Changes, sir?”

“The last emperor, despite his family name, believed in peace. Working with the locals, letting them live their lives for the most part, as long as tribute was paid. The new one—” The prefect cocked his head, and Eavus couldn’t tell whether the small smile was wry or pleased. “Believes in war.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Bees. It was the only explanation for the buzzing in Revni’s head, so loud she couldn’t hear anything else. There must be a hive of bees nearby.

Bees’ mind.

She tried to squeeze the thought away.

The problem was, she’d known too many warriors—too many hard men and women, too many people that terrorized their enemies and raided and murdered and burned villages to the ground. Because afterwards, they were farmers. Neighbors and friends. People who liked a good laugh, who pulled you in for a snuggle on cold winter evenings. There was what they did, and there was who they were, and those were different people. Eavus’ stoic face burned in her brain. Those merciless blue eyes. It didn’t make sense. After all their time together—after all his own stories⁠—

She was only meat.

Not even. He smiled at the thought of meat.

When they’d dragged her into the slave market, the onslaught of it all had smacked her in the chest. The noise rattled her, the sobbing and shouting and whips, horses’ feet clanging against stone, the heaving hot sighs of a blacksmith’s forge, more clanking and shirring; men, so many men, holding her and pulling her before one and then another, her head still pounding from Eavus’ skinny friend’s hitting her, her vision blurred. All that Aleterian, those musical notes. She was in a play, a myth. The Destruction of the World. They were in the realm of the Goddess of the Dead. This was the Shore of Corpses.

She had managed words at the very beginning. “I’m Isfolj!” she had called. “Take me to the Isfolj!”

And then one of those men had jerked on her braids and laughed and people had called to each other and then back, like sending messages across a field, until someone—Eavus’ friend—had gaggled in her ear: “No Isfolj here in thirty years.”

And then the blanket was whipped off her shoulders, her body whirled, someone else taking her belt—and her body had seized, refusing to defend her. Everything went blank. Noblewomen bathed like this, didn’t they? Stripped and spun and dipped, and then the world was right again. Warm waters and a quiet room.

She should have shouted that Eavus was a thief. She should have demanded to see the prefect, the commander, whoever was in charge. Dinaeii. A treaty. She should have fought—driving the crown of her head into someone’s nose, taking off their ear with her teeth. Only she didn’t. Thoughts became cobwebs, as easily swept away. Prefect, monastery, heir. Cold. Colder. Stripped. Thief. Shoes taken. Sharp gravel. The smell of pigs. Her throat was raw as if she had been screaming but she hadn’t made a sound. The soldier didn’t have a face. He pulled her to someone else—wealthy, well-fed. Smelled clean. The fat man made little bows instead of interrupting. For a moment, Revni’s dry mouth almost had a word—Hyldyttr, or perhaps help—but then new hands were on her, and everything again went empty.

Fire and ice with every pudgy-fingered probe, numbness speeding and spreading in its wake. It was the rippling of pebbles in an icy pond. Waist, shoulders, spine. Plink, plink, plink, until the cold had cloaked her, begun to hold her under. Fight, Revni. But she’d forgotten how. Calluses scraped, like sand: breasts, ribs, ass; neck snapped back as someone yanked her hair and tied it. Bad breath. The leather string tickled the top of her spine. Everything had narrowed to that horrid hum, the thumping of her own pulse. Her jaw hurt, below her bruise, from her tongue pressed so tight. She couldn’t move. Not when the fat man forced her mouth open to examine her teeth, not when he pinched one of her nipples, grunting appreciatively as it contracted, not even when he put his fingers between her legs. That wasn’t her. His fat fingers were in someone else’s cunt, someone far away she barely knew. They came away bloody. He looked pleased, wiped his hand on her thigh for everyone to see, and barked orders at the men holding her. She had a brief moment of surprise—she’d thought her body was done, but it was like that sometimes, one last surprise a few days later to keep you on your toes—but then the men holding her shoved her forward, away from the other enslaved—all those bodies, limbs on limbs on limbs, a grotesque monster. And she was from another myth, a person turned to stone. The cage was solid trunks of young trees, held together with thick rawhide lashings. The men picked her up and shoved her inside. Rough wood on bare legs.

You are Hyldyttr, she tried to remind herself, but it was vague and frozen and distant. Run. A foggy memory. Shields. This was no bjerluk, only the dead of ice. No weapon to die with. The structure rattled when they tied the door shut, put a lock on it that clicked. Her nipple stung from where he’d pinched it. Her shins and arms and spine prickled with goosebumps. She was soti. She was supposed to know what to do, think of a way out, and a shield in her hand or boots on her feet, maybe she could have. But now…What god to pray to? She couldn’t even think of a name.

The smallest movement felt foreign, like her muscles were no longer hers. She managed to draw her knees to her chin, trying to keep out the cold, but she was too numb for anything else. The market settled. The tradesmen took away their tools and carts. The fires died. A few flickering torches cast dark shadows. The snuffling and murmuring of others in their pens. She wished she had let someone kill her—anyone, Eavus, the Blue Men, Caerdeneii. That Aleterian cohort that murdered her people. That sword going into her father’s belly. It should have gone through her instead.