The Exarch of Philgeonia was dead. Long live the Exarch.

Abderus lay peacefully in death, stripped of his armor, lying supine upon a great slab. Even the silk cloth placed over his face to cover the gruesome death-wound seemed almost the affectation of one attempting to sleep during daylight. His flesh had hardly yet paled, and his fingers still held firm upon his spear which was laid across him.

But his chest would no more rise and fall with breath. Already the flesh had gone as cool as the grave, and it would not be long at all before the ugly discoloration set in with the pooling of blood. And no matter how tightly Helen clutched onto his side, his heart refused to beat.

The news had arrived, passed from mouth to mouth along the rebellion’s supply lines, long before his corpse had been returned to the central camp by his loyal retainers. Helen had refused to believe it when first she’d heard. Then she’d seen the procession: Abderus’s corpse was held aloft upon his men’s shields. She’d rushed to them, refusing to believe until she’d seen his face. Though the very bones had been disrupted by the strength of the killing blow, it could not be mistaken that the corpse being carried back into the camp belonged to Helen’s husband. The last thing she remembered was screaming. When memory returned after that, the body was already here, in his sleeping-tent, and she was curled on the ground next to it. Helen’s tears had already run dry.

That had made the shape of the remainder of the day. Helen clutched Abderus’s side as though he were in danger of death by hypothermia, whispering apologies to the dead man and prayers to any passing god who might listen and be able to bring him back to life. But the gods did not take pity on widows, not outside of the most fanciful of stories. Helen had no choice but to live with what she had done.

And in that matter, she made no mistake. There was no uncertainty, no doubt in Helen’s mind that this was her fault. From the moment that Shirrin had given her her orders, it had been plain and clear that this was a likely outcome, just as plain as it was that Helen could have easily chosen to disobey, run away and never be bothered working with Shirrin ever again. And yet at every turn she had chosen loyalty, even when Abderus had rejected violence she had chosen to force it upon him. And now he was dead. The violence had replaced the man altogether, all the love and companionship replaced by a wound in history.

There was noise from outside the tent. Muffled sounds of men shouting, of the rattling of armor and equipment, the shuffling of barrels and the rustling of cloth. Occasionally the noise would cease to be so muffled, the tent opened up to the world, the raw nerve of Helen’s grief forced to bear the brunt of reality. Then people would come through, or sometimes only one person, and babble about inane, pointless things that were not grief Helen wished she could still cry, for then at least her dry and stinging eyes might be spared the pain of having to look up at those men and see the looks of need and desperation on their faces. As it was, the pang of guilt over failing these near-strangers was but another knife stuck in her back.

Knives. Helen’s mind turned to the knife. Abderus’s sword was still suspended at his belt, exactly where he had left it last. Helen drew the sword, took it into her own hands, and examined its every contour.

It was a stock element of tragedy. A man dies in battle or of plague or at the hands of vengeful gods, and to twist the knife which the playwright has already stuck into the hearts of the audience, his wife, the sweetest and most beloved member of the cast, slays herself over his body, unable to go on without him. And the audience sighs and moans and weeps, purging themselves of ill feeling; they leave the theater cleansed, understanding both the beauty of life and the clarity of death.

And that was when the wife was innocent of her husband’s crimes, merely a collateral casualty of whatever great machination had led to his death. A villainous wife? Suicide would be one of the better outcomes available to her. Better, then, to end things now, before the surviving leaders of the rebellion realized who had brought them there.

And perhaps that would have been Helen's fate, a tragic suicide to cap off the tragic rebellion, had not at that very moment the tent-flap opened once again to admit Second Quartermaster Hagar, now Chief Quartermaster of the rebellion. He walked in already alight with nerves, and saw before him a tableau of sadness, Helen holding her husband’s sword with both hands, gazing into the metal of its blade as though it were Narcissus’s pool.

“Helen?”

She startled out of her fugue at once. “Hagar?”

“What are you doing with that sword?”

Helen shrank with embarrassment, glancing back and forth between the blade and the new arrival. “Pondering my next course of action.”

“I see. Helen, I understand that you are in mourning, but the rebellion needs—”

“Go outside,” Helen said with a scowl, “count to two hundred, and then come back in and I will speak to you of the rebellion. Am I understood?”

“Yes, I understand.”

And just like that, Helen was alone once more. The rebellion needed her. She had brought Abderus here, true, and it had cost him his life; but how many more men were still alive outside of the walls of that tent, still relying upon her for their lives? Shirrin had said that they were done, that no more bond of duty existed between them. Which meant that Helen had the freedom to decide who she was.

Shirrin had, time and time again, called her the true Exarch of Philgeonia, the power behind the throne. Hagar had come to her instead of to her husband when this had all begun, and he had come to her now when all hope seemed lost. Even when Shirrin had pleaded for her to leave, Helen had refused to abandon those who followed her, had held fast to the rebel army. Abderus was dead, and that was a tragedy; but she had done the deed, through strength of will, she who had been born a slave and was destined for nothing but slavery!

Helen’s heart throbbed in her chest, and her very skin felt ripe to split open. She gripped the blade tight in her hand. Then her lips were forced open into a terrified smile, and an awful nervous giggle began to emerge from her mouth, a screechy and choking sound, stifled by the back of Helen’s hand. How long she stayed, bent double and laughing, she hardly knew. But a single tear spilled down her aching cheek as she did.

Red-eyed, messy-haired, dirt-coated, Helena emerged from the tent where lay her husband’s body. Hagar was there as well, standing to the side and facing pointedly away.

“One hundred seventy-three, one hundred seventy-four, one hundred seventy-five—”

“Chief Quartermaster Hagar.”

He turned around at once. “Yes, Helen?”

Helen frowned. “Please, refer to me by my title. With no heirs and no Emperor to rule us, I do believe that the Exarchate falls to me.”

Hagar’s expression lit up with a subtle fire of excitement. “Yes, my Exarch! What are your orders?”

“We retreat. Prepare to march for Eunon, and send out messengers to all forces still within the city to fall back to this camp. We’re going home.”

“R-retreat? Are you certain?”

Helen paused. Was she certain? In truth, she felt that she had little other option. She knew dreadfully little of battle; it would be a challenge enough just to keep the army running over the course of the journey. But Hagar and the rest of the rebellion would need a more convincing explanation than that.

“We have dealt a great deal of damage to Chrysopolis and to the Empire, while Eunon remains untouched by war. To continue forward would mean expending more lives, and could lead to disaster. If we return to Eunon, replenish our numbers, and prepare for a counter-siege, I give strong odds that we may see a free Philgeonia come next year.”

Hagar nodded slowly, shedding hesitancy with each passing moment. “Very well,” he said. “We’re going home.”

“Home,” Helen repeated, more to herself than to him. “Yes…we are all going home.”

…

The Emperor ruled the Empire, with the great bureaucracy at his side, and all of his Exarchs underneath him. But within the Empire was Macaria itself. The Senate ruled Macaria, with all of the many aristocratic families underneath them. Within Macaria was the city of Chrysopolis, the shimmering golden ring of Macaria and the Sea of Dolphins. Chrysopolis was, in turn, ruled not only by the Emperor, not only by the Senate, but by its own city council. “Rule” here was meant rather generally; it fell to the Emperor—and the bureaucracy—to set the laws, to determine goals. But Chrysopolis was a vast organism, and carrying out the will of the executor required a great deal of organization and decision-making in and of itself. By tradition far older than the Empire, that power fell to the city council.

The members of the city council were elected to two-year terms, and served under quite specific circumstances: for one thing, all members of the city council were required to make their homes within the apartments of the city council building itself, and go without any great displays of wealth during their time in office. This did not stop the city council from being a hotbed of graft, but it meant that at the very least that business never failed to take place.

Even the hall of the city council painted a picture of an outdated and overshadowed organization, left behind by the growth of the Empire. As Athalan gazed up at it, she could almost imagine that it might have been quite the impressive sight when first it was constructed, the smooth edges of the brown-red stone casting a great aura of authority and prowess on the part of both the builders and those who worked within. That aura was much reduced when the hall was not even on the list of the fifty largest structures in Chrysopolis, with its peaked roof barely rising above those of the housing structures and minor temples around it. But Athalan was not here to judge architecture.

She looked around, making sure that her entourage had all caught up. Two armed men followed her, no longer men of the imperial army but now personally sworn defenders of Athalan herself. Behind them was a score of slaves, soon to be former slaves, each one hauling along an immensely heavy wooden chest.

Once she was sure that everyone was present and ready, Athalan picked up the chest at her own feet and ordered her bodyguards to push through the doors of the council hall. Sure enough, it was locked, but the locks were easily defeated with a few chops of the sword. This was not a time for hiding in cowardice. This was a time for action, and Athalan had to take the lead.

So it was that as soon as Athalan was through the front double doors, before she’d even had a chance to set down the massive load in her arms, she was shouting to high heavens.

“Come out, come out in the name of your Empress! Cease your hiding and hunkering, the city has more need of you now than it ever has!”

As she yelled and yelled, the bodyguards used the flats of their swords for signaling, clattering them against the stone and metal of the building. One by one, the members of the city council emerged from their apartments up above and trickled out into the belly of the building, the large chamber where they met four times per week. They were, to a man, haggard and drained from poor eating and even poorer availability of such things as soap. And yet, these men were still possessed of power and authority; for as they came out to see what was all the fuss, servants and slaves came out with them, cooks and cleaners and, yes, armed guards.

Recognizing their Empress and the authority she held, the council consolidated within its chambers, planting themselves amidst the dust that had settled upon their benches of office. Athalan kept a careful count of them; the council had seventy-two ministers, and so far as she was aware none of them had been killed, so seventy-two ministers there would have to be. It gave her retinue time to gather, setting down their burdens, the twenty-two chests forming a rough oval around Athalan’s feet.

“You may go,” Athalan said. “I know not your prices, but I imagine that what I have given you already is more than enough to pay. So leave.”

Athalan held in her heart a romantic notion that the now-freed staff would not leave, that they would promise themselves to her out of the charitable urge to follow through on the grand design. They did not. As one, they rushed away, crying out in joy and skipping along as they exulted in their freedom.

And then it was time. Seventy-two members of the city council wearing seventy-two ultramarine sashes. All of them stared down at Athalan, expectant and confused about why, after so long, she had decided to make her presence known. Though fear threatened to rise up and overwhelm her, Athalan did not intend to disappoint.

“Chrysopolis burns,” Athalan said. “The city is at its breaking—”

“Speak up!” said an old man in one of the high benches. “We damned well can’t hear you!”

Athalan winced, her nails digging into her palms. Yes, speak up; she would have to speak up. “Shirrin, the Witch-Queen, has informed me that Chrysopolis is doomed!” Her voice was on the verge of breaking into a scream, but the Empress shouted until her voice echoed from the walls. “Any who remain within the city are certain to die. We need to evacuate whoever we can, and with the Emperor nowhere to be found, it falls to us to carry out this final duty.”

There were gasps. There were chuckles at her womanly folly. There were muttered conversations about the impossibility of this action. But only one man, a dark-skinned Kyreniai, stood and spoke to the Empress directly. Athalan knew him, and knew his face: he was Balthazar, and in his old age he had been hopping between a variety of roles within the city administration for about a decade.

“What you ask cannot be done. The city council has few resources in the best of times; and this is not the best of times.”

“If it is merely resources that you need, then it will be of little concern. Open the chests.”

At her command, Athalan’s last two followers set to work at the ring of chests around her feet, starting with the two in front of her. As soon as the first two latches were un-done and the first two lids flung open, the room fell so silent that the moans of the dying could be heard through the walls. Each chest was stuffed with gold and jewels, emeralds and rubies and amethysts. One box alone contained as much wealth as the coffers of a senator; twenty-two in all was a quantity of wealth that could very well buy an army.

This was Shirrin’s part of the plan. All the wealth which she had accumulated through a year’s worth of dealings, bribes and blackmail from almost every man of import in Chrysopolis, plus the sale price of many of her reagents and potions, all accumulated in a single basement. It had been a fallback, waiting for a purpose other than being brought to Trabakond when all was said and done. Now it had one. 

“Think of the value of even one of these coins, even a single jewel. Hand these out, and how many will be convinced to organize and to assist in the name of the evacuation?”

The same awe which could be seen upon every member of the city council was written across Balthazar’s features. And yet, his mind did not cease calculating.

“Very well. We can use this gold to empty the city streets. What then? Even with the siege and the plague, there are still hundreds of thousands who dwell here, where will they go? How will we feed them?”

Athalan sighed. She had been thinking much the same thing. “I don’t know,” she said. “They shall have to scatter to the ends of the earth in search of sustenance; and I have little doubt that their arrivals will be met poorly. But there is no alternative. The threat of death will be omnipresent out there, this is true; but inside Chrysopolis? This is no threat of death. It is an inevitability. So shall you abandon Chrysopolis, or shall you die with it? It’s not going down with the ship if you’ve done nothing to help the passengers flee onto the rafts.”

Balthazar nodded slowly, then turned around to face his fellow members of the city council. “Very well then. We shall have a vote. To follow this evacuation plan, or to… not.”

“Do it for your Empress,” said Athalan. “As one final gift, if nothing else. For soon I shall be Empress of nothing at all.”

The vote was, in the end, decisive. Fifty-three for, nineteen against. All at once, the city council burst into action as it had not done for many years; the gold was divided, and each council member was sent to organize his own district, using his portion of the gold however was necessary to enlist the people he served to best bring about the evacuation. It was a vast network of connections, favors called upon and rivalries smoothed over via the application of wealth, and Athalan was only able to see the smallest portion of it. She realized quite quickly that she could do little besides get in the way. These men knew their neighborhoods better than she ever could. It was in their hands now.

Once Athalan had every assurance that the evacuation was underway, it was time for her to evacuate herself. That meant, first and foremost, fleeing back to the palace. She never made it. Instead, along the road from the city council hall, she ran across a cart pulled by a pair of mules. A man drove the cart, and two women walked abreast of it; sitting in the cart itself, atop a pile of supplies, was a seven-year-old girl.

“Mother! Mother, do you see me? I’m so high up!”

Athalan stopped in her tracks, stunned by the sudden intrusion of her daughter’s voice. For a moment she thought it a stress-wrought hallucination, until one of her bodyguards tapped her on the shoulder and convinced her to look at the girl sitting atop the cart. It was Aissa, unrecognizable in her outfit of plain, undecorated linen.

Athalan rushed forward, catching Aissa in her arms as she leapt down from the top of the cart. She turned at once to the two women walking alongside the cart, who she now recognized as the two maids who had agreed to continue in Athalan’s service.

“What are you doing here? I told you to wait for me at the palace.”

The two women looked at one another with fear, though there was little that Athalan could do in such chaos to reprimand them. One then looked at her with fear in her eyes and said, “Peleus has returned.”

Athalan’s flesh felt cold.

The maid continued, “He had been wounded, apparently, and was recovering in some field hospital somewhere in the city. But he came back, and is demanding that every man who can still stand take up arms to drive off the rebellion. We knew he would not appreciate our escape, so we fled.”

Athalan’s heart continued to throb within her chest. Peleus was back, and by the way the maid spoke of him, he was indeed taking charge. Perhaps that was good; perhaps Athalan should have returned to him, called off this whole evacuation, and allowed the Emperor to decide the fate of Chrysopolis, as was the natural position. This was all some foolish woman’s fancy, to think that she had the wherewithal, or even the right, to seize the reins of fate.

She looked down at her daughter next to her, saw the fear in her eyes. “Everything is going to turn out fine, Aissa,” she said.

Aissa cringed away. “Father sounded angry. He called you bad names. The maids got very mad at me when I said them so I’m not going to say them again.”

Athalan looked up; across the street was a family, backs bent under the weight of all of the possessions that they could possibly carry with them. This was the first good thing she had done in a very long time. She had chosen not to abandon her people, not allow them to be thrown into the fires that were soon to come.

“That’s why we’re leaving,” Athalan said. “Father decided that he likes war more than he likes me. So we’re going somewhere else, somewhere things are more peaceful. Somewhere you can be safe.”

Aissa nodded sadly. In truth, she barely even knew Peleus, and his refusal to be at her side during her sickness had impacted the child greatly. But what was done was done. Athalan ordered her entourage—four men and women, how far she had fallen—to make for the gates of the city.

The gates of Chrysopolis had been flung open; but it scarcely mattered, for the rebel army was gone. The few camps which remained, those who had failed to hear or chosen to ignore the order to retreat, were easily overwhelmed by the poor and starving masses which issued forth from the remnant of the city. It was, at first, an ordered and steady evacuation, the citizens bowed by their suffering but steadfast in their movements. Then, just after the Empress of the Macarians passed through the main gate, all chaos was set loose.

Behind them, from the heart of the city, came a thunderous explosion like a hundred rockslides down the flanks of a hundred mountains. In the air above the refugees blossomed a great plume of flame that reached up to kiss the twilit sky and blot out the stars with choking ash and smoke. Shirrin’s final vengeance had begun.

SaffronDragon

If you remember previous discussions about the mythology of the setting, you might have already guessed what Shirrin's final vengeance looks like. Either way, Helen and Athalan have now followed in Frasalu's footsteps by getting themselves the hell out of dodge. All that's left is the dying.

Four chapters of Bladethorn now remain, available for your immediate perusal should you merely click the link below and subscribe to my Patreon at any tier. We're so close to the end, now, and it's been an incredible journey. For those who like to savor the finale of Bladethorn, I'll see you in one week from today for the next chapter.