Titan, son of Thunder, and Vrega, son of Wind, both loyal legionnaires of Thieves, slinked along the trader’s pier in the neutral territory of Merci, concealed beneath the cover of fog. There was a double shadow hovering about the moon’s pedestal this night, and the legionnaires were eager to take advantage of the eerie darkness to stow away inside the large merchant vessel, containing barrels of the finest wine, harbored along the Mercian docks. Disguised as laborers, heavily muscled workhands who moved such heavy crates from the vessels into cities, they were keen to become part of the innocuous cargo as it made its way back to the main port of Lycania.

They hoped to slip into King Thaon’s castle undetected, for it was the king who had ordered this freight.

And to this end, they wore long, hooded cloaks made of wool: sleeveless, to display their bulging human biceps; hooded, to conceal their serpents’ heads from watchful eyes; and flowing to the ground, to mask their scorpion tails from other laborers. While it may seem odd to the average passerby, the Mercian sect of Purists—those who served the Mercian deity of light with hourly prayers, prolonged bouts of silence, and the complete absence of vanity, thus concealing their appearances—grew larger every day. And as the sect expanded, the more common it was to find them moving about the neutral territories, to find them strolling along the Mercian docks.

The more common it was to see them employed as temporary port laborers.

Heads bowed, eyes averted to the ground, Titan, son of Thunder, and Vrega, son of Wind, boarded the large seaworthy vessel in silence, strode confidently through the confined, narrow passageways, avoiding any and all manned compartments, and lay below, directly to the cargo hold. As expected, the dimly lit underbelly was framed in wide planks of wood from the bulkheads to the overhead; the deck was littered with dozens upon dozens of barrels of wine; and Titan secured the hatch behind him as he descended the ladder, casting the hold into darkness.

It didn’t matter.

Unlike their human counterparts, the sons of Thieves could see perfectly in the dark.

“What the hell is your problem!” A stout, middle-aged human demanded, jerking his head to the side and gawking at the suddenly sealed hatch. He reached for a low-burning lantern, hanging from a rope affixed to the overhead, and spat on the floor in Titan’s direction. “You one of those religious freaks, ain’t ya? Come to try your hand at lifting heavy barrels?” He nodded at Titan’s prominent biceps, instantly drawing the conclusion the legionnaires wanted. “Well, let me tell you something, mate. My name is Ansell Payne, and this here is Milo Rolfe.” He gestured toward a second mariner whose rank clothing smelled like sewage and dirty hair looked as if it had been used thrice to swab the decks. “We don’t like your kind, you orthodox freaks, sniffing around our ships! So, if you wanna eat tonight, if you plan on staying employed, then you better keep three things in mind: First, I’m the steward, and I oversee this cargo; second, Milo is my crewman, and he’s also my sister’s husband—so he gets some special privileges you don’t—and last, don’t you ever touch my ship without asking my permission. And that means turn your ass around and open that hatch before I have to tell you twice.”

Before Titan could answer the insult with blood, the foul-smelling crewman to Ansell’s right cleared his throat. “Um, Ansell…” He sounded extremely nervous. “There shouldn’t be any laborers boarding at Merci. If these mates intend to move barrels, shouldn’t they come aboard at Lycania?”

Titan licked his lips. So, the filthy, fetid pig is smarter than his steward. Interesting. He nodded cagily, glanced askance as Vrega, then slowly lowered his hood. As his beady red eyes glowed in the dark, and his forked tongue slithered out of his mouth to hiss at the idiot steward, his lips drew back in a snarl, displaying his venomous fangs.

“What the hell!” Ansell cried, but the objection came too late.

Titan’s long, flexible neck undulated backward for the space of a frantic heartbeat; lunged forward as it swiveled to the side; and struck the bewildered seaman in the throat. He drew back with the speed of lightning, opened his double-jointed jaw, and swallowed Ansell’s head, whole, biting down to crush his skull.

Vrega lunged at Milo, taking him down to the ground and pinning him to the deck. He slid his tail from beneath his cloak, coiled it around the sailor’s torso, and squeezed until Milo’s rib cage cracked. The stinger shook and rattled as Vrega tightened his hold like a python, and then he struck and plunged and impaled the foul-smelling human…again and again…pumping venom into his now-seizing body even as he withdrew the crewman’s innards and flung them about the deck.

Titan sighed. “Vrega.”

The son of Wind grew still.

“Do you intend to clean up this mess between here and the port of Lycania? Think, soldier; use your head. We still need to pull this off, and King Thaon’s castle guard will not be as easily fooled as two witless humans. We still need to find the rarest barrels of wine, the ones that were fermented in Tuvali, the ones the king explicitly ordered for his personal consumption. We still need to drain the contents into the sea and seal ourselves inside the containers before the real laborers come to retrieve them.” He stared at the bodies of the two murdered mariners. “And before we can do that, we need to dispose of these bodies. Do you really wish to add swabbing the deck and the bulkheads to our list?”

Vrega grunted in apology, and Titan got it…

He really did.

Vrega, son of Wind, was a brutal legionnaire. The male could eliminate a dozen enemies without assistance, before ever drawing a weapon, and he wasn’t known for his intellectual aptitude or his rare, sage wisdom. Vrega was a killing machine, plain and simple. But at least this once, the male needed to show some reason—some restraint. This was a highly important mission. If the two legionnaires could steal inside King Thaon’s castle and manage to abduct the king while he slept, they could remove him from Castle Lycania through a tunnel beneath the moat; take him to the River Lycania, where a small, unassuming boat would be waiting; and usher him back to Thieves under the cover of darkness. And then true land negotiations could ensue between Lycania and Thieves without the need for armies and bloody battles, without the high cost of war. Not that war wasn’t a desirous and heady delicacy for the legionnaires of Thieves, but the ultimate goal was to occupy more territory, to seize more lands, and if such could be done without widespread bloodshed, then it was simply more efficient. Legionnaires who lived to fight another day would ultimately acquire more bounty than dead men.

Vrega, son of Wind, slowly stood up, coiled his stinger, and readjusted his robe to cover the offensive member. He brushed a splattering of blood and gore off his chest and snorted before booting the body beneath him to the rear of the compartment. “Apologies, Titan,” he muttered in a surly tone. “I’ll clean the shit up myself and try to think better of it next time.”

Titan, son of Thunder, bent his head in the barest hint of a nod.

And then he began to sort through the numerous barrels of wine, keen to find his next habitation.

* * *

Leah Noel drew her knobby knees up to her chest and shivered behind the concealed wooden crate in the merchant ship’s cargo hold, terrified by what she’d just seen. At only nine summers old, Captain Adlard Noel’s daughter had boarded the vessel in Merci, stowed away on her papa’s enormous merchant ship, eager to experience an adventure.

Only this was not what she’d had in mind.

Trembling, Leah brought her fists to her chin and tried to draw her body inward, to make it even smaller than it already was. She could not be detected by these things…these creatures…these sons of Thieves, these murdering tyrants who had just disposed of two innocent Mercian seamen as if they were nothing but rotten garbage.

So, they really did have the heads of serpents, the bodies of men, and tails like that of a scorpion. She almost retched at the thought. Pulling a tightly woven, tarred canvas over her head and shoulders, she bit down on her lip and tried to remain calm.

They didn’t know she was there.

They had no reason to suspect a little girl of stowing away inside the cargo hold.

And that also meant her papa, the captain, would not come looking for her, either.

If she wanted to survive, she needed to remain hidden until the vessel docked in Lycania, and maybe then she could still have an adventure of sorts…

Lost in the fanciful musings of a terrified child who needed to turn horror into speculation, if only to maintain her sanity, Leah Noel imagined that the two terrifying sons of Thieves were pirates, instead, intent upon robbing her papa’s vessel. She imagined that she was a very important passenger, perhaps a princess or a bride-to-be, on the way to unite with her intended, and she had discovered the pirates’ plot by accident, only to foil their plans.

She would hide until the ship docked in Lycania, march valiantly up to the castle, and tell King Thaon all about the schemes of the naughty pirates. And then the townsfolk would write legends about Leah and sing clever songs in her honor.

The stowaway who saved a nation…

Yes, Leah thought, as icy tears of terror began to leak from the corners of her eyes, uncaring and indifferent to her make-believe story; she wasn’t a little girl a mere stone’s throw away from murderous monsters—she was the princess of Lycania, and she was going to save her land.

If she lived to tell the tale, it would be the most awesome adventure ever.