"Well I was...Until some new, green king decided to steal one of my swords."

Stephanos’s eyebrows rose as the stoic features of Vangelis rearranged themselves into something that looked suspiciously like a smile. A thing he’d been working to see for literally three days. He tilted his head, his mouth half open as though he wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words. And then he laughed.

“A joke?” It wouldn’t have been funny coming from anyone else. He shouldn’t be laughing. Nothing in his life lent itself to humor or the easy smile he was used to wearing, hadn’t worn for hours. Yet here it was, back again and he could not stop it. “You’re the worst,” he said, grinding the heel of one hand against his eye, wiping away a tear of what he assumed was laughter.

Like a statue, Vangelis’s expression returned to its usual seriousness. Stephanos stiffened against the slap on the back but he needed it. His smile dropped.

After Vangelis spoke, advising him to channel his anger again, Stephanos snapped his fingers at another guard, instructing him to bring the Colchin prince his sword. They waited only long enough for Pia to leave the room, the sword to be brought, and Alypius to return. With the knowledge that his father was safe at last, and that the violence was escalating, Stephanos moved to the wall and hefted himself up so that he could look over it at the city.

From this courtyard, if one was on top of the wall like he was, the city sprawled out below. Its pearl white structures glowed in brilliant fiery hues of gold, orange, and red. Acrid black smoke obscured the sea beyond, marring the sky. Bodies seethed through the streets. Some were bunched up, working together to put out fires but most were in a blind panic.

The inferno of the circus only drove them into a bigger frenzy. Horses screamed as their stalls burned around them. Some ran loose, freed by some well meaning person who hadn’t the sense to understand that in this instance, it was not a kindness but a hindrance to save the animals. With a sigh he turned and dropped back down.

“I have a plan,” he said, once he had the attention of the others. “We’ll be dogs chasing birds if we go after the Creed with just the four of us. By now I can’t imagine they haven’t disappeared again. I don’t know which of the guards betrayed my father but if we can get to the Order House, it won’t matter. They’re not bound by allegiance to the king. They’re a little like you,” he said, tapping the flat of his blade against Vangelis’s leg. “They have no vested interest in my fight except that I am a member. I can’t trust anyone else.”

It was strange to realize he was a member of that order but now also king. After today, he would have to renounce his vows; his responsibility now lay in the crown as well as the country. It was against logic to be part of both. One thing at a time.

Between mostly him and Vangelis, with input from the others, they worked out a plan of how to get to the Order House. He knew the city. It was this familiarity to which they deferred, though with newer information about which roads were impassable and which were clear from the others. When he was on his way here, he hadn’t been looking around. He’d had tunnel vision, intent solely on getting to the palace.

When their plans were formed, he nodded to the guards standing there to open the doors. The march through the palace was surreal. He stared into every face he passed. Was it you? He wondered at each guard and stared at them as though they alone had been responsible for his father’s death and his brother’s disappearance.

Zacharias’s absence bothered him most. His father’s fate was sealed. There could be no changing it. His brother, however, was a different matter altogether. Why only his cloak? Had he escaped somehow? If so, why wasn’t he here? Why hadn’t he come yet? Or had he been so violently injured that he was lying dead, exposed to carrion birds, alone.

Stephanos wiped his hand across his mouth as though that would clear away the thought that his brother might be dead and stuck on the riverbank, unable to cross over. To him, Zacharias was most certainly dead. There could be no other reason that he had allowed himself to be captured and prevented from avenging their father. Or of letting the throne pass to someone who was so unsuited to kingship.

They passed through the gates and back into the streets but the going was slow. People gripped him when he tried to pass, clinging to his arms or his body. Their words and their faces cried the same message: Fix It. He shouldered through, eventually having to use the flat of his blade on his own people and not the Creed, forcing them away with blunt, nonlethal pain.

Looking around, he growled in frustration. He’d been right. There were very few, if any cloaked figures around them. They’d turned back into ghosts, melting in with the populace; not allowing any more of their members to be cut down. Anyone could be an enemy and he stared around, his eyes wild, seeing a murder in every man and woman.

Embers wafted through the air. Smoke choked him, and his eyes watered and burned. Lifting his arm, he breathed through the fabric of his sleeve but it was little better. At last, they reached the Order House. Stephanos let his sword sag to the ground as he stared at the fire rampaging through the building’s interior, leaping out of the windows, consuming anyone and everything inside.

“Fuck,” he breathed and turned to Vangelis. He shrugged, and smiled but there was no humor in it. “Fuck!” He said again. “I’m fucked. Royally. Completely. Totally. Fucked.”

He wan’t raw. He wasn’t sad or angry. Even the helplessness was fading and all he could do was stand there, and laugh as the Order House burned, while people slung buckets of water to quench the flames. The laughter was quiet at first. Then louder until it grew into a roar that doubled him over.

He couldn’t stop. Tears streamed down his face and he didn’t bother to wipe them away. At last he lifted a little, hands on his knees, panting for breath, the laughing finally dying away. His eyes stared unseeingly at the flagstones of the street.

If his uncle came right then, he’d simply stand up, hold out his arms, and let the man run him through. It would be easier.