Chapter 1 #4
Still, Attalus wasn’t stupid enough to ignore a summons from the new anax. At least Araxos hadn’t eviscerated anyone in front of the whole court yet.
Attalus followed the dragonesses further into the great hall. Behind him, he heard the silver doors click shut.
Strange. He didn’t even know they had working hinges.
Most of the court seemed to be there, Savrakae of any note already gathering in a loose circle around the royal dais.
Dragons came in most colors, and it was an easy way to denote the factions within the court.
Diometrios and his line were famed for their molten gold scales.
His four sons with Xanthe took after him in coloring and visage.
The eldest was Aristander, wise and somewhat grizzled, with his metal arm; he was gone from court almost as much as Attalus.
Then came Araxos, the new anax, brutal, reserved, utterly ruthless.
He’d made his next brother Erastus archon, overseer of Highhome, and the youngest brother Tychon served as agodoros, head of the armies.
Araxos trusted no one but his brothers, Aristander most of all, and had given no roles or titles to his half-siblings.
Attalus knew it was a point of pain for Clymestra that her four daughters had taken her bronze coloring.
Pyrrha, Chrysanthe, and the twins, with their lithe tails and long necks, resembled the elegant bronze statues they were fond of making in the human kingdom of Pyrros.
Beautiful as roses and just as thorny, the remaining sisters and their mother kept a formidable faction behind them, populated with those of Clymestra’s kin and courtiers who’d survived Diometrios’s death throes.
Four sons and four daughters by two queens.
It should’ve been more than enough for Diometrios.
There was no need to take Damaris and beget another two sons.
From a smaller clan that mostly kept to the edges of the archipelago, Damaris and her sons stood out from the court with their ruby-red scales.
Then there were the bastards. A motley lot, they often stood together for safety if not solidarity.
The twins Damianos and Demetrios shared a mother and were lucky to inherit the gold scales—although, as Attalus had pointed out before, they were more yellow than gold.
Myrastra and Nikodemos hadn’t been so lucky, instead keeping their mother’s perfectly ordinary blue.
And lastly was Phiobos, the youngest of the fifteen if not the diadochos, a ruddy sort of dark orange not unlike a sunset.
Attalus could think whatever unflattering thing he liked about the bastards, but he was well aware his only advantage over them was his legitimacy, ill-gotten as it was.
They might stick together out of necessity, but unfortunate as they were in their birth, they could command their own faction.
They had their mothers still, their kin, friends even.
As the groups found each other, it left Attalus just as he was. Totally alone.
Folding his hands behind his back, he stepped forward to stand on his own, facing down the only other sibling standing alone.
Up upon the dais was the anax himself, Araxos, festooned with the royal wreath, a crown made of gilt scales. Besides this, though, there were few trappings of royalty. Araxos had always dressed himself more like a warlord than a prince, preferring leathers and iron to gold and silk.
He watched Attalus with an assessing gaze that gave nothing away.
The thing most terrifying about Araxos was how much he looked like their father. The likeness conjured painful memories—and fears that it wasn’t just the face he’d inherited.
Finally, with the court all gathered, the anax spoke.
Or, actually, he motioned for something to the side of the dais.
They watched in astonishment as several attendants rolled great barrels into the center of the empty space before the dais. As the barrels were propped up, they were turned to show the brand burned into the wood, denoting a winery just north of Bargarad.
The very one Attalus had recently bought a stake in.
As was his way, Araxos began without preamble. “Last night, my wine was poisoned.”
The dragons assembled didn’t gasp or cry out. No, they all knew, from centuries of terror, to hold perfectly still.
“A shipment from the mainland was intercepted and these barrels seized. All contained wine contaminated with wolfsbane.”
That did garner a few murmurs, but Attalus didn’t hear them. Couldn’t, over the sound of his own pounding heart.
“These islands will never know peace so long as traitors plot against me. Seize them.”
Elite guards, the infamous gorgoroi in their black armor, swooped down from their concealed posts onto the crowd below.
The court erupted into a frenzy of buffeting wings and outraged shrieks, their terror of the silent warriors loyal only to the anax bone-deep, but Attalus wasn’t surprised to feel the clamp of hands around his arms and wings.
How could he, when all he saw in Araxos’s cold eyes was condemnation?