stench didn't bother her; it was the familiar smell of survival. The diplomat had retreated. The poetess had fallen silent. Here, in the darkness, the other one, the survivor, felt at home.
From the other side of the wall, in the "Rusty Anchor" tavern, she heard a commotion—a loud toast, the sound of a table overturning. Loxias and Alcaeus were playing their part. In the shadows at the end of the alley, another silhouette waited, motionless. Cadmus. The hunt was familiar.
Finally, she heard it: a drunken humming and shuffling footsteps. Lycus stumbled out of the tavern, cursing. As he passed her, Roxana stepped forward, emerging from her alcove of darkness.
— Captain Lycus. We have unfinished business.
He started, his eyes widening as he recognized her.
— You! How dare you…
— I dare much more — she said, her voice a hiss.
He tried to back away, but his path was blocked. Cadmus emerged from the shadows, not as a man, but as a part of the darkness itself, a predator leaving its lair. In a single fluid motion, a hand covered Lycus's mouth, muffling his yelp, while the other pressed the pommel of a dagger against his ribs. The humming ended.
They took him to an abandoned fish-salting cellar. The smell of brine and decay was suffocating. Cadmus tied Lycus to a pillar and retreated to a corner, beginning to sharpen his blade with a whetstone from his satchel. The rhythmic, grating sound—scrape, scrape, scrape—was the only music in the room, a promise of pain echoing in the damp darkness.
Roxana circled the trembling man.
— You sent two men to kill me, Lycus — she said, her voice dangerously calm. — A mistake. You should have sent more.
— I don't know anything! — he whimpered.
— You do — she corrected. — You know the ship's manifest is a lie. And you know the name Serylda was on that list. What you don't know is how little I care about what happens to you next.
The sound of Cadmus's blade sharpening stopped. The silence that followed was louder than any scream. Lycus broke.
— It wasn't me! It was Critias's orders!
The name hung in the air.
Critias, one of the wealthiest oligarchs in Eretria.
— And the prisoners? Serylda? — Roxana pressed.
— They didn't go to the mines… — Lycus whispered, his eyes rolling in terror. — They were a tribute. An offering… to Sparta's new allies in the mountains. The savage women. They demanded the prisoners… to… to strengthen their bloodline. To be… assimilated.
Assimilated.
The word echoed in Roxana's mind, stripped of any noble meaning. It was not union. It was obliteration. A horrific image bloomed in her mind: Serylda, her sweetness erased, her soul emptied, turned into a vacant-eyed copy, a memory-less warrior in service to an unknown queen.
— Critias meets with them at an old villa north of the city. Near the Temple of Artemis — Lycus sobbed. — That's all I know!
Roxana looked at Cadmus. He raised an eyebrow: And now? She turned back to Lycus. She gagged him and, with the pommel of her dagger, struck him hard on the temple. He collapsed, unconscious. The cellar door opened. Loxias and Alcaeus entered.
— Take him — Roxana ordered, her voice cold as ice. — Leave him on Critias's doorstep. I want him to be found in the morning. A dead man asks questions. A terrified man spreads fear.
They nodded and carried the inert body out. Roxana and Cadmus stepped out into the dark streets. The truth they had torn out was heavier and more monstrous than they had expected. The conspiracy was not just political; it was an unholy alliance. Roxana looked at Cadmus, the silent, lethal man who had become her weapon. He looked back, seeing the woman who wielded the truth like a blade. They were no longer a Spartan and a diplomat. They were hunters, together in the dark, and they had just found the trail of a much larger and more dangerous prey.