Vicca travelled through the heartland of the empire for a few days in peace, enjoying a simpler life away from Trigon. She visited with minor patros households and secretly enjoyed being fawned over, a far cry from the court’s treatment of her. It was a far more relaxing life than she’d had over the last few months, but that came to an end when a large group of riders attacked her small procession.

Her guards quickly bolted the doors and shutters to her carriage before engaging the enemy. Vicca cradled her baby daughter in her arms as her sons hugged onto her on either side. Outside, the sounds of fighting and death grew ever closer to the carriage. What could it be, bandits? It couldn't be Cordelian, could it? No, no, even he wouldn't go so far as to openly attack her children. It must be bandits, looking for a ransom. Only fifty years ago bandits wouldn’t have dared come so close to the capital, but the roads were growing less safe every year. Leaving the capital had been a mistake.

The carriage itself violently rocked as people fought right up against it. Her sons wailed and cried in fright. She felt like joining them, but put on a brave face for their sake. Thankfully, the sounds of fighting receded and she began to hope that her troops had won. Then there was a loud knocking on the door of the carriage, and she hugged her children closer.

"Sister dear, are you alive?" Said a voice outside. She recognized Euphastolon’s smug tone.

She cautiously sidled up to the door, not opening it yet. She didn't trust him, and didn’t know why he would be here.

"What are you doing here?"

"Meronion sent me out here to bring you back to the capital. Some duty or other she wants you to perform, and she's angry you aren't there. You know how she is. Lucky for you though, looks like we got here just in time. Most of your guards are dead, and I just don’t know what would have happened to you if I hadn’t shown up."

He sounded cheerful, not hostile, which heartened her a little.

"Where's Xanlium?" The man had been the head of her guards.

"I don't know who that is. Hey," it sounded like he'd turned away from the door, "anybody know this Xanlium guy?"

Silence.

"Nobody knows Empress. He's probably dead. Why don't you come out? I mean it's either that or I leave you here I guess, and that doesn't seem like a good idea for either of us. I don't even know what Meronion would do to me if I abandoned you here."

Her misgivings were shrinking, and she reassured herself that even Euphastolon wouldn't be insane enough to attack her. Besides, she truly didn't have much of a choice; being out here alone was dangerous. She unbolted the door and poked her head out. All around the carriage was carnage. Some dead bodies she recognized, and some she didn't.

"There you are!" Euphastolon smirked. "Well, come on out. We don't have the horses to pull this carriage, and a wheel's broken anyway."

He wasn't being appropriately respectful, but he'd just saved her life so she could let it go. She'd never been happy to see him before. She came out, still holding her daughter.

"Are we going to be safe now, mama?" Her eldest child, and the future Doukar, Euphenos asked her as he stepped out of the doorway of the carriage behind her, holding his little brother's hand.

"Yes, uncle Euphastolon will keep you safe."

"That's right," Euphastolon smiled. "Uncle Phasty is here to save the day!" He laughed, pleased with himself, no doubt thinking Fornulus would give him a victor's crown for this. She'd have to humble herself and thank him in front of the whole court too. For once she didn’t care, as long as she and her children were safe.

She led the family out of the carriage. Her sons screamed in fright at the sight of the bodies, and she tried to calm them as best they could until their cries reduced to mere sniffles as they hid their faces in her robes.

She looked up to see Euphastolon just standing around watching, with some shabby looking soldiers surrounding him. She wanted to get out of this place. Euphenos was a sensitive boy; he would be having nightmares for years about this day. He was the Mekos, the future Doukar, and her most important job was to protect him.

"When do we leave?" She tried to calm her shaking voice and sound regal. "Where are our horses?"

Euphastolon just stood staring at her, with an off-putting grin on his face. She heard a stifled scream to her right, and whipped around to see a soldier stabbing a badly wounded guard on the ground. Were they trying to give him a merciful death?

"What is that man doing? He was still alive!"

"Yeah, that was the problem." Euphastolon answered. She jumped as another soldier slammed the carriage door behind her.

She started to breath more quickly, fear rising again. He wasn't making a move to get them out of here. Her heart sank as she looked around at the bodies around her. She only saw mostly her own guards, and a few rough looking people she assumed must be the bandits. But then, Euphastolon's men were wearing the same sort of clothes as the bandits. They weren't wearing uniforms.

"Where are the enemies?" She asked.

Euphastolon and his minions laughed nastily. She noticed they were all men. "What are you talking about? We're right here." He said.

Vicca swallowed hard and drew her children to her as she slowly stepped back towards the wrecked carriage.

"What is this?" She hoped her suspicions were wrong, that he was merely playing some kind of cruel prank on her.

Euphastolon stepped closer to her and she fought the urge to shrink away from his gaze. He poked a deliberate finger out towards her.

"Killing Agathio wasn't nice. You pushed Cordelian too far. He's told me to get rid of you and your horrid little brats." He said in a disturbingly happy voice. He was having the time of his life.

Vicca's stomach dropped as he confirmed the worst and she felt ice cold.

"N-no, even Cordelian wouldn't dare. I'm the Empress! To raise your hand to me is treason. You wouldn't risk it, not even you." This couldn't be happening. Maybe Cordelian was trying to scare her, to teach her to stay out of his way. That had to be it!

Euphastolon, without taking his eyes from hers, took a few steps back and spoke to his followers. "Take the children. Don't harm the little girl, we'll be taking her back with us, Cordelian's orders."

She couldn't accept this was really happening. Vicca fought the soldiers desperately but they were too strong, and her children were ripped screaming from her. The soldiers shoved her against the carriage, but she leapt up and charged towards Euphastolon, screaming at him. Euphastolon indifferently backhanded her across the face and then punched her in the stomach, dropping her to the ground, gasping for air. He shoved her over onto her back and planted a foot on her chest, pinning her down, barely leaving her able to breathe.

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"Please, wait. I'll leave, I'll take my children and leave the capital, you'll never see us again. Please." She gasped, tears starting to fall.

"Not so high and fucking mighty now, eh?" Euphastolon sneered, bending over her. "You know what I hate? Liars. Hypocrites. People like you, or that little turd Nikolonium."

"Cordelian is the biggest liar of all!"

"No, Cordelian is honest. Oh sure, he lies to people all the time, whenever it benefits him, but he's honest like that."

"You don't make any sense. You say he lies but that he's honest?" Vicca tried to steady her breathing. As long as the man was talking to her, there was still a chance she could talk him out of killing them.

"Cordelian is honest to himself,” he continued, “about what he wants, and what he's willing to do to get it. He wants power, to dominate. He doesn't kid himself. Not like you, Empress. Your lies are the worst kind of lie: lies you tell yourself."

"I don't lie. I tell the truth, Oma help me."

"Oh please, not this Oma nonsense. Tell me, why did you kill Agathio? Tell the truth for once."

"Because he was going to assassinate me." She tried to get back to her feet but Euphastolon pushed her back down with his foot.

"You don't really believe that. You killed an innocent kid on a lie. Why?"

"Cordelian was going to kill me at sea, that was why he told Fornulus to send me back home."

"You just said Cordelian wouldn't dare, so that's a lie too." Euphastolon pressed down on her chest harder and Vicca grabbed his ankle but couldn't move him. "You didn't truly believe it, not in your heart. You just told yourself that to excuse what you wanted to do. So why?"

Vicca wasn't sure if she was more frightened or angry. "Because he...he introduced that tart to my husband! He's destroying my family for his own ambition. Humiliating me."

"Yeah, see, now we're getting somewhere. Jealousy. Pride. Anger. Good honest emotions I can respect." Euphastolon thumped his chest with his fist. "There's your the real reason. Although, there's something else, isn't there? Not as important certainly, but something else. A little thing, but deep. You never liked Agathio. Why?"

Vicca just looked up at him.

"Come on, say it. I've seen the way you looked at them. Tell me the truth." Euphastolon looked at her coldly.

"Because it's disgusting. They're both men. It isn't right," she said.

Euphastolon sighed as if in relief. "There it is." He moved his foot from her and crouched down over her, holding her down still.

He continued to talk, not looking away from her eyes. "What gives you the right to decide how someone else should live? Some principle? Some made up religion? You've got no right. People should live how they want, without other people meddling. I hate people like you. And you know what the real joke is? You're not even right about the two of them. Sure, Cordelian takes plenty of lovers, but he never looked at Agathio like that, not once. That kid was like a son to him. You killed an innocent boy for the sake of jealousy and something your diseased imagination dreamt up. That's the truth about you."

"I did what I had to, to protect my family."

"Cordelian wasn't going to do anything to you or your kids. He wanted to discredit Fornulus, have the patros overthrow him and give him the crowns. Fornulus would die, sure, but he'd send you off to your backwater again, with your kids and all."

"You're lying," she said. "The patros wouldn't overthrow the Doukar, they wouldn't break the line of succession."

"They've done it before. Mekos herself did it, and she wrote the succession laws."

"Cordelian wouldn't let my children live."

"He'd make the children abdicate, and without the support of the patros, you'd be no threat to him. By the way, I notice you didn't even bat an eyelash at the thought of Fornulus being killed. Some wife you are." Euphastolon laughed again.

She struggled to get free of him again, and he picked her up and slammed her back down onto the ground.

"You did what you wanted to," he said. "That's all there is in this world. There is nothing more than what we want, and whether we have the power to get it. No meaning, no gods, no honor, no duty, no nothing. Just blind urges grasping towards nothing, signifying nothing. Then you die, and there's nothing. That's what life is."

For a few moments of she just stared at him after this rant. "Just let me and my children go," she said, finally.

She'd never heard him talk so much, or about anything resembling philosophy or religion. She didn't know what to say in response to hearing what passed for values in his sick, nihilistic mind. Clearly no amount of reasoning would work on him, so she was left with begging and bargaining. The man was insane.

"I'll pay you. I'll leave the capital, abandon Fornulus, and never show my face ever again. You can tell Cordelian we're dead, he’ll never know."

His expression only got darker, his previous grin slowly fading.

"I-I'll even sleep with you." She had difficulty saying those words, and the thought made her skin crawl, but anything was worth it if she could save herself and her children.

He looked at her with dead eyes, expressionless now. "I'm the only one who understands the truth. You have nothing I want. There's only one thing you can do for me."

The dead eyes vanished, and a ghastly look of fury came over his face. His hands grabbed her throat and squeezed. She gasped for air and fought him as the edges of the world grew dark around her.

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Euphastolon, panting, sat up from the now still form of the Empress – former Empress. Form of the former Empress. The former Empress's form. That strange rage always came over him when he had a life in his hands, but it was again followed by the usual feeling of emptiness. He became gloomy. He'd hoped that killing an empress would feel different somehow, but it was the same as every other time. Emptiness.

He flexed his hands, working out the stiffness after squeezing them for so long, before standing up over the body. He considered the face for a moment, but it wasn't as pretty in death as it had been in life, black and swollen. He felt a moment of regret for destroying something beautiful.

"Finally done boss?" Tol, one of his men, asked him. They knew not to disturb him in the middle of a killing.

"Yeah, looks like it." He gingerly touched scratches she'd left on his neck. He'd have to make sure to keep his collars up for a while. "She was a struggler. Take the brats and cut out their eyes, tongues, and balls, but try not to kill them. We'll sell them to Monar slavers – you know some down on the coast, don't you Tol?"

"Sure do boss. We'll get a pretty toloi for some nice eunuch boys, even blind. Although it might be tough to keep them alive given how young they are."

Euphastolon stood unmoving, looking down at the corpse.

"I don't care,” he said. “I'll tell Cordelian they lived either way. Take a couple of the boys and get our newly minted eunuchs to those slavers. If they die, they die, throw them down a ravine somewhere and forget about it. If they live, you can keep the money you get for them."

The thought of the money cheered the man up, and he rushed off to collect some of his friends to go do the deed.

After thinking for a moment, Euphastolon drew his favorite knife, a large, broad bronze blade with a bone handle. Kneeling, he roughly hacked off the Empress' head, and threw it back towards the carriage, as if executing a noumens. The insult to her body would be noticed, but there were a few people in capital who knew, or suspected, his habits, so it was dangerous to leave the body with those marks on its neck. The animals would probably get at it before anyone came by, but better not to chance it. Killing the Empress and mutilating the Mekos would bring down a fury the likes of which none of them could imagine, even for a prince like him.

He cleaned the knife on the corpse’s robes and turned around to find his remaining men. His mood was finally beginning to brighten.

"Clos, how many did we lose?"

A man with an ugly scar stepped over to talk to his prince. Clos had been with him for years.

"Nine in total."

Euphastolon snorted and spat. "Could be worse. Any of them the sort who will recognized by Trigon?"

Clos pointed to a disemboweled corpse, lying some feet away from the carriage. "Kax was a member of the Trigon guard a few years back. The rest were mostly mates from up north, nobody here would know them."

Euphastolon nodded. "Right. We'll take Kax with us then and bury him some miles from here. Remember,” he addressed all his men, “anybody who takes anything from here, any jewelry or anything else except for the baby, I'll kill them myself. You're getting paid enough to not take all our lives into your hands."

The men nodded. Scum they might be, but they knew the slightest slip up would kill them and everybody they ever cared about.

"What are we going to do with the baby?" Clos had picked up the infant daughter – now rightful Mekos – who was still screaming.

Euphastolon waved off the question. "That's Cordelian's problem. We're just taking her back. Don't worry, all babies look the same. Nobody will ever trace her back to us."

"Easier just to kill her if you ask me." Clos seemed dubious. Euphastolon couldn't blame him, left to his own devices he would have killed the girl too.

"Sure, I'll let you tell Cordelian that you knew better than him."

The man laughed nervously, and carefully bundled the baby up and stowed her upright in his pack.

Euphastolon waited until a couple more of them had wrapped up Kax's body in a thick woollen sheet and hoisted him onto a horse, before returning to his own horse and mounting.

"Let's go home before some poor fool stumbles on us out here and we have to do some more killing," he said, and kicked his horse into motion.