Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  Strange. No matter how much force he applied, not even the tiniest trace of the bronze blade's point emerged from the other side. He adjusted his grip and tried again, but with no more success. It was as though some blacksmith and his wife had together learned the secret of spinning bronze into thread and weaving it on a loom. Conceding failure, he set both objects down on the table.

  “I admit I have never felt its like. I see the value in it, priestess, but—”

  “I am no priestess,” Thalassia interrupted in an unwomanly, unyielding tone that proved she could command a room with more than just her appearance.

  Demosthenes folded arms in front of him before recalling the advice of his boyhood tutors in rhetoric, who maintained that such a posture betrayed insecurity. Swiftly he undid the move.

  He put on a false, condescending smile. “Then what are you?”

  Of course, her answer would bear on her ransom value, and so might also be of immediate, practical interest.

  “A prophet,” she said confidently.

  Demosthenes scoffed.

  “Would you like to know your future, son of Alkisthenes?” Her pale, intense eyes gripped his.

  Demosthenes swallowed hard and fought to suppress a chill. He stood abruptly and backed away from the low table. “If you wish to spout lies,” he said in disgust, “in a few hours, you can go spout them at the Spartans.”

  “In the eighteenth year of this war that Athens is doomed to lose,” she went on regardless, “you will die. On your knees. In a ditch. In Sicily. You will be chased down like a dog and executed. You will be forgotten. The Athenians who will be remembered for their parts in this war are Kleon, Nikias, Thucydides, Alkibiades. Many more. But not you.”

  Demosthenes had been determined to leave, but her words hit the mark. He was not an overly superstitious man, filling his house with charms and such like some did, but he was respectful enough of those immortal forces which governed men's lives to know that such oracular utterances as these were not to be dismissed out of hand. She had spoken of his death, the duration and outcome of the war—momentous things, but for some reason it was the very last word of her oracle which struck him. A name.

  Her inclusion of Alkibiades, ward of dead Perikles, was strange. Being under thirty, the youth had led no armies and would remain ineligible to do so for years to come. He had distinguished himself in a few battles, but his present fame had largely been won in the back rooms and bedchambers of Athens, and did not extend far beyond the bounds of Attica.

  Demosthenes resumed his seat at the table with renewed, if fragile, confidence. “We Athenians are lovers of beauty,” he said reflectively. “I would hate to be compelled to mar yours with the lash in order to arrive at that other thing which we Athenians love, which is the truth. You will speak plainly, and truly.”

  Thalassia eyed him in silence for several beats with an unchanging look. Then she faintly shook her head.

  “The lash could be fun,” she said. “But we'll have to try it another day. I apologize in advance for what I'm about to do. You're not leaving me much choice.”

  With that she sprang across the table in a blur of pale orange linen. Before Demosthenes could get to his feet or even cry out, her fingers were clamped around his throat. His hand went instinctively to the offending wrist. Though it was thin and its flesh soft, the muscle and bone underneath might as well have been marble.

  Thalassia forced him to rise. She walked him to the room's east-facing wall and pressed his back against it. He fought for air but found none, succeeding only in emitting clicks and gurgles. His head grew hot, eyes bursting from their sockets. All the time he pulled and pulled at the hand and single arm which held him utterly helpless, an arm which clearly contained in it more power than any champion pentathlete could boast of possessing in all four limbs.

  But he refused to give this woman, this creature, the pleasure of hearing him beg for his life. If he could even get the words out. And so after some moments of frantic struggle, Demosthenes fell limp and readied himself to pass the black gates. At least he might bear with him on this coldest of journeys some comfort just as cold: that his instinct to fear Thalassia had been dead right.

  I. PYLOS 10. The Third Thing

  Only when it seemed too late did Thalassia open her hand. Demosthenes' linen-covered back slid down the rough plaster wall, and he settled on the floor, hands flying to throat, chest heaving with precious, life-giving breaths. He gazed through a pain- and terror-induced mental fog at his attacker as she squatted to come level with him.

  “Again, I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't have an endless supply of patience. You seemed to be taking the long path to acceptance.”

  “Acceptance?” he coughed. “Of what?”

  The curtain at the small room's entrance fluttered, and the face of the eldest Messenian maid appeared wearing a look of concern.

  “Fuck off!” Thalassia said. The curtain fell abruptly back into place, swinging gently. Her pale eyes turned back to Demosthenes. “What should you accept? Let's say, for now, three things. First, I understand that you may be used to treating women like pets, but you will treat me as an equal. Second, nothing I say is to be taken lightly.” She half-shrugged. “Unless it's a joke, in which case laughter is appreciated, but not mandatory. I do have a wonderful sense of humor. But rest assured I am deadly serious when I tell you the third thing which you need to wrap your head around.”

  She extended a hand toward Demosthenes' face. Involuntarily, he flinched, but the hand only settled under his chin and pushed upward with just enough pressure to discourage any attempt to remove the back of his head from the wall. Thalassia waited for Demosthenes' eyes to settle into hers, and then she told him in a bare whisper, an inhuman flash lighting her pale eyes, “I am not of your world.”

  With an iron hand mere inches from the exposed neck which already burned hot with its mark, Demosthenes dared to laugh. The act hurt his throat and threatened to drown him in a fit of coughing, but he kept it up, out of spite, whilst looking down his nose and a golden skinned forearm into Thalassia's hard eyes.

  Momentarily, those eyes softened. The tight downward curl of her lips reversed—and then opened in a breathy laugh that mirrored his own.

  Thalassia did not laugh for long, and when she stopped, Demosthenes saw the wisdom in doing likewise. Her fingers fell from his chin, and she sighed a nasal, feminine sigh.

  “I know it may not seem like it right now, but I respect you, Demosthenes. That's why I asked to see you. We are going to have a civilized conversation, you and I, and if you're as smart as I suspect, it will go well. But I'm going to tell you right now how it ends, and that is with you agreeing to take me to Athens. Understood?”

  Clearly, she was no ordinary woman. Just as clearly, she could kill him if she wished. But under no circumstances could he simply yield to her threats. Still, there was no point provoking her with outright refusal.

  “If I am to treat you as an equal,” he said instead, rubbing his throat, “should we not both be on our feet?”

  Fierceness gone from her features, Thalassia offered an open hand to help him rise. When Demosthenes clasped it, she pulled him up as easily as a man might hoist a cup of wine. For a moment after he rose, he could not help staring at her. Thalassia's arms were perhaps athletic but hardly Titan-like, her shoulder curved with a sculptor's perfection. A scrolled bronze pin nestled in the shallow dip of her collarbone, from which point her pale orange chiton descended in pleats that surmounted a smallish breast before plunging to the floor. His eyes lingered on her golden neck, not because he wished to admire it, worthy as it was of such, but rather only to forestall meeting her eyes. Some men might have got lost in the hollow of that throat, but not he, not after what he had seen and heard, and at any rate, now was hardly the time. And so, collecting himself, he looked into Thalassia's face, which, owing to the fact that her height matched his almost to an inch, stood at his eye level.

  On it was, surprising
ly, a look of patience.

  “Sit down if you'd like,” she invited him after they had stared at one another for the space of a few breaths. “Take my breakfast. I ate on the island. With luck it will be a long while before I'm hungry again.”

  Full understanding of her words eluded Demosthenes, but he ignored that. “Actually,” he ventured, “I would prefer we continue our talk in public, where you might be marginally less inclined to, ahem, kill me.”

  Thalassia shook her head. “I'll stay here until it's time to sail. I won't kill you.”

  Demosthenes moved toward the curtain; Thalassia did not follow. “That is of some comfort,” he said. “But my throat still insists on witnesses.”

  “Wouldn't getting strangled by a woman only be more embarrassing with witnesses?”

  Demosthenes looked at her sharply. “Who is looking for you?”

  “No one.” Her insistence was rather too forceful.

  “You wish to stay indoors. You want passage to Athens. You are a fugitive.”

  As Demosthenes spoke, his eyes fell on the scrap of spun bronze on the table. He moved to retrieve it. Thalassia did not stop him, and he tucked it into the pocket formed by the roll of his chiton over his belt.

  When it seemed a glare was to be her only answer, he offered, “I could escort you to the citadel, assuming that my protection is of any use to you. Conversation will have to wait until later, though. If our fleet is to depart tomorrow—with or without you aboard,” he added pointedly, “then there is yet much work to be done today.” He took a step toward the exit where, although his confidence was returning, he paused and asked with only a minimum of irony in his tone, “Am I free to leave?”

  Thalassia said nothing, and Demosthenes passed through the curtain into the dwelling's front room, where the three Messenian maids had gathered in a far corner. Who knew what ideas they had about what they had just overheard behind the curtain? Demosthenes caught at least one set of eyes lingering on his neck, which undoubtedly still glowed red.

  “All is well,” Demosthenes reassured them with a smile. “You are dismissed, with many thanks for your service.”

  Eyeing him warily, they departed. Following them to the door, Demosthenes next sent away the guard, then turned and found Thalassia hanging back in the curtained inner doorway.

  “Will you come?” he asked.

  She frowned and made a show of reluctance before joining him. He stepped outside, and she followed, throwing glances left and right as they walked side-by-side through the parched garden under a rapidly warming desert sky. Looking down, Demosthenes saw that she carried the table knife in partial concealment in her right hand, projecting upward with the flat of the six-inch bronze blade pressed to her wrist.

  As they turned together onto the dusty street, Thalassia tugged a pleat of her orange chiton. “You couldn't have picked a less conspicuous color?”

  “Believe it or not, your wardrobe was not selected by a general.”

  “You're not a general,” Thalassia returned. Her watchful gaze was everywhere but on him.

  Demosthenes halted mid-stride. “Why do you say that?”

  She spared him a brief look. “Sorry. Sensitive issue?” Then, irritably, “Can we please keep moving?”

  Obliging, Demosthenes resumed. “Since you knew those other things you said, I suppose it's no wonder you'd know that I missed the last elections to the Board of Ten.”

  She nodded. “In hiding after your defeat in Aetolia.”

  Demosthenes stopped again and whirled on her. “A defeat for which I redeemed myself and then some, against the Acarnanians!”

  Remembering himself, he calmed and began moving again. The acropolis of Pylos rose in the distance to the north, and crowning it was the ancient whitewashed citadel which was their destination. There were few souls abroad in this neighborhood of the city's fringe. Most would be out toiling at their jobs, even the women, the rest in the agora.

  “No need to defend yourself to me,” Thalassia said innocently, scanning the low rooftops on either side of the street. “You will be elected general again, even without my help.”

  “Even without...” Demosthenes echoed, and then became lost for words with which to rebut such an insult.

  Thalassia took a break from her surveillance to lay eyes on him briefly. “I don't mean to imply you're anything less than competent,” she said, resuming her watch. “The opposite. But your city does need me. If you want her to win, that is.”

  He had not forgotten—how could he?—Thalassia's baleful words inside the house, that Athens was doomed to defeat in the this war. But she had said much else, too, and nearly strangled him besides, leaving his mind cluttered and his tongue confounded.

  Demosthenes tried, aloud, to sort some things out. “First,” he began, “I accept that you are more than what you appear to be. But when you say Athens is doomed, why should I believe you? Across that harbor, three hundred Spartan Equals sit in chains. To recover them, their leaders will come begging us for a treaty. We are nearer to victory than ever we have been.”

  “Oh, there will be a treaty,” Thalassia conceded. “But tell me this: what's a treaty worth among Greeks?”

  Demosthenes gave no answer, for he knew the shameful truth. Treaties were worth very little. Few ever lasted out their set duration.

  “This war will not end in exchanges and envoys,” she said with confidence. “It will end in total victory. Sparta's. But, lucky you, you won't have to live to see it.” The road split, and Demosthenes pointed down the leftward branch they were to take. Several steps down it, Thalassia correctly observed, “This way is not the most direct.”

  “It avoids the agora,” Demosthenes said. “I am not unknown here. I'll be accosted.”

  “I thought you wanted witnesses.”

  He shrugged. “And you are clearly a fugitive. You tell me, do I need to be seen more than you need not to be?”

  Fingering the handle of her palmed knife, Thalassia proceeded up the deserted route Demosthenes had chosen for her sake.

  “Why Sicily?” he asked as they got underway, recalling the prophecy of inglorious death Thalassia had earlier thrown so casually at him across the table.

  “Does it matter? It's more than ten years away.” Her watchful, wintry eyes flashed a conspiratorial look. “A lot could happen before then... if the right alliance were made. This war could be over in, let's say, two years?”

  “Alliance?” he asked with interest. “With what city?”

  “No city,” she said. “You and me. Us. We win the war for Athens.”

  The path increased in grade, and Thalassia began to get ahead of him, her fine, high-laced sandals crunching an unflagging rhythm on the dry road. On either side of them stood a series of decrepit buildings which were among those abandoned earlier in the summer, when thousands of frightened Messenians had chosen to flee the city rather than risk suffering reprisals when the Spartans—as was inevitable in their minds—returned.

  “Ally with you?” Demosthenes said scornfully. “I do not even know what you are.”

  Thalassia looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. “I'm a good luck charm,” she said.

  When again she faced the road ahead, she halted suddenly. Twenty paces in front of them stood a woman. She wore a gray traveling chlamys, its hood thrown back to reveal long, golden hair tied in a single braid which fell over one shoulder. At her waist, their hilts peeking out from behind the cloak, hung not one but two sheathed short swords.

  An unwomanly word passed Thalassia's lips as Demosthenes drew up beside her.

  “Fuck.”

  I. PYLOS 11. Fury

  “Who is she?” Demosthenes asked. He put hand to sword, strange as such action felt when facing a female. He could not recall ever having seen a woman bear a sword; it was a sight he surely would recall.

  “Eden,” Thalassia said loudly. It was less an answer to his question than a chill greeting directed at the other.

  The woman retu
rned a short, harsh string of syllables in a foreign tongue. Her tone was less cold, but the ghost of a smile which touched her lips more than compensated. She spoke a few more fluid, non-Greek words, then glanced at Demosthenes. Her smile reappeared, and she continued in an accented Attic similar to Thalassia's, “—or perhaps we should converse in Greek for the benefit of your new friend. No doubt you have told him many lies. Perhaps he will learn something.”

  She turned her eyes upon Demosthenes. If Thalassia's eyes were the color of a winter sky, this newcomer's were that of summer: a rich indigo that seemed deeper still for being set in a pale, aristocratic face.

  “For instance, do you know, Athenian, that you presently stand beside one of the universe's most vile traitors?” Eden's gaze swept back to Thalassia, and Demosthenes was glad for it, for this woman's look had frozen the breath in his chest. “For reasons beyond me,” she continued, “and beyond all who ever knew her, Geneva was forgiven. Yet the moment she resumed her place of trust—”

  “Get out of our way, Eden,” Thalassia said evenly.

  “Why did you do it?” Eden said, and she addressed Thalassia again by the same harsh, alien word she had first spoken on their meeting. It was a word that seemed subtly to sting Thalassia, if Demosthenes judged correctly. “Explain to me why you brought us here, to this shit layer nowhere near our objective and blew up our fucking ship in the atmosphere!” By the time Eden finished, she was speaking through clenched teeth that were as white as frost. “Tell me why!”

  “Get out of our way,” Thalassia repeated.

  Eden chuckled, coldly. “Or what? You know I am superior to you. I will not let you pass. Nadir exists on this earth. Lyka has gone there. Her beacon is active—as yours was until two days ago—so you know that. You and I will follow her, await extraction and return to Sprial. I trust Magdalen will not forgive you a second time.” She lifted a snowy brow. “I may suggest a few punishments.”

  Thalassia's demeanor remained outwardly calm, but Demosthenes knew it for what it was: the sort of calm that one adopts when cornered by a salivating wolf.