Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  “A slave collar,” he said quietly.

  “Yes, a slave collar. You do recall that I am one of the three most powerful beings on this fucking planet, right?” Her calm broke for the space of the expletive, then returned. “If I had wanted to, I could have been a goddess. I could have had the kaloi kagathoi of Athens scraping at my feet, doing all they could to please me so I wouldn't end their little lives. Do you think I need you to change this world? I could slaughter the Board of Ten. I could walk into Sparta and kill Brasidas and every one of their leaders. I still could, if I changed my mind. Yet instead, I walk behind you in public and call youmaster. Why is that?” she asked. “I hope you can tell me, Demosthenes, because I'm starting to forget.” Her calm broke again, and she grated: “Why is that?”

  Her rage set back Demosthenes' own efforts to keep his own rising anger in check. “You are a curse upon my world,” he snapped. “You have the power of a god and the mind of a child. My home, my city, my world, were better off without—”

  Demosthenes did not hesitate before speaking his next word, but even as it poured out, he knew he should have held it back. Once spoken, it could not be taken back, just as once a wall of spears was charged, no matter how great the fear that gripped a man, there remained only one path—forward.

  “—the Wormwhore!”

  In the several silent seconds which followed, Thalassia showed no visible reaction. She ended them by looking down at the table, though hardly in concession. She stepped around its corner to draw closer to him, looked at him with her jewel-hard eyes and commanded, “Say. That. Again.”

  “I will not.” In front of a charging Demosthenes, the bristling wall of gleaming spear-blades neared. “You heard me.”

  Deep within, he knew that it was likely his life depended on an apology. But he could not bring himself to give it. There was but the one path, whatever lay at its end.

  “Say it.”

  “I will not.”

  She screamed, “Say it!”

  As if punctuating her command, Demosthenes' hand rose, almost of its own accord, and delivered a hard slap across Thalassia's cheek.

  A part of him knew that his life was ended anyhow at this point, and so he did as she wished and spoke again the forbidden word, filling it with venom: “Wormwhore.”

  Like a golden javelin, Thalassia's hand shot up, grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled, slamming Demosthenes' forehead into the ebony table with skull-rattling force. Without releasing her grip, she used his hair to drag him to his feet.

  “You fucking asked for this,” she said. She strode toward the timber staircase at the megaron's rear, pulling him behind her. Demosthenes grabbed hold of her iron wrist, but knowing the futility of trying to pry that hand loose, he limited his aim to creating some slack to ease the pain in his scalp as he walked in an awkward bow behind her. Seeing her foot mount the first step, he knew what would happen next but was powerless to stop it.

  Shifting her grip seamlessly from his scalp to his wrist, she wrenched Demosthenes' arm with such force that his feet flew from under him. He landed hard on his knees and was lucky to slap one hand down on the bottom step's edge before it collided with his skull. Thalassia ascended the stairs two at a time. Each step sent Demosthenes' body rebounding off the wood, battering his arm and knees when he was lucky, his head and shoulders when he was not.

  They reached the second floor women's quarters, but the punishing ascent showed no sign of ending. The smooth plaster floor across which Thalassia next dragged him was a welcome respite before what was inevitably to follow. The ladder. Pain lanced through Demosthenes' right arm as she used it to hoist him up it, whilst his legs flailed in vain for purchase on the rungs.

  She yanked him bodily through the hatch and deposited him on his back on the tiled floor of the rooftop terrace, finally releasing her grip on his burning arm.

  A cloud-strewn afternoon sky spread above him. At its far edge hovered Athena's high temple. A fitting enough last sight to carry with him into gray Hades, he thought. Then the view was blocked by Thalassia, who came to stand astride him, a pigtailed colossus, with one expensive sandal planted on either side of his ribcage. Crouching, she grasped a handful of his chiton and used the material to drag his head up from the plaster and bring his face within inches of hers. The brush-like ends of her twin braids tickled his cheekbones.

  “Look at me!” she demanded.

  Demosthenes looked up into wide, wild eyes that were all but devoid of reason.

  Thalassia hissed into his face, each word battering its way past clenched teeth: “You have not earned the fucking right to touch me without an invitation. I gave you more than one, and yourefused them.”

  Aching body limp, Demosthenes looked up at the stargirl's face, framed by clouds. It was the beautiful, savage face of a predator—probably his murderer—and, of a sudden... he felt a strange pity for her.

  He forced words from lungs short on breath: “He... must have hurt you... so deeply.”

  Effortlessly, Thalassia hoisted him from the sun-warmed tile, her lips let loose a blood-chilling roar of the kind heard on a battlefield just before the clash of spears, and like a child abusing her toy, she drew her helpless victim back against one shoulder—and threw him.

  Demosthenes' stomach pitched as he sailed backward through space. Fortunately, by chance or design, he struck the balustrade full-on, and the wood held fast against the impact, keeping him from dashing his brains on the paving stones of the garden two stories below. Still, the back of his head ricocheted before bouncing back and coming to rest in the void between two posts.

  On opening the eyes he had shut against the pain, he expected to see Thalassia advancing on him to inflict further harm. Instead, he found no threat, at least not an imminent one. Rather than stalking after him, Thalassia had gone to the rail opposite and collapsed, head on her knees and body folded into a ball. Suddenly, her arm flew out and struck a wooden post of the railing. The force caused it to splinter and fall loose.

  Aching with even the slightest move, Demosthenes could only sit drawing labored breaths and waiting to learn whether or not his already battered bones would be the next to splinter thus. When Thalassia failed to move again for nearly a minute, he dared to begin pondering the possibility that his life might extend beyond the next few moments.

  As if sensing that thought, Thalassia picked her head up and looked over with pale, indignant eyes. She unfolded her limbs as if to move, and Demosthenes began composing words of apology which might stave off death, if only his pride would yield and let them be spoken.

  But what came next was no attack. On all fours, sea-green dress dragging behind her, Thalassia crawled across the tile. She advanced slowly toward him, knee to palm, knee to palm, until her hand brushed Demosthenes' outstretched leg. There she settled back onto her haunches facing him, staring silently with a tight-lipped look he failed to decipher.

  “I told you I can choose whether to feel pain or pleasure,” she said. Her voice had lost its hard edge. “That's not only true of my flesh. It's also true of the things we feel within. The things that make us human. Soft things. Some in the Caliate are barely more than machines. The temptation sometimes for me to become that way is...”

  She blinked, and from each of her cold, perfect eyes a heavy tear slid free. One fell on Demosthenes' bruised knee, but his attention remained on the face in which, for perhaps the first time, he saw an expression which did not seem to be at least partly an affectation.

  “The truth is I'm damaged, Demosthenes,” she said. “I was before I ever met him. He saw that, and that's why he could...” She paused and let that thought die. At length she whispered, “I'm not a monster. I'm not.”

  And the starborn killer wept.

  II. ATHENS 12. Spartlet

  Demosthenes lifted his good arm, the left, and touched Thalassia's wet cheek as if to prove to himself the tears upon it were real. She shrank from the contact and lowered her head into his lap, facing
away from him. Her soft, strong body, wrapped in pleats of sea-foam green, curled up by his side.

  "Are you badly hurt?" she asked.

  The slightest movement of Demosthenes' neck sent waves of pain down his body. "I feel... as though someone dragged me up two stories and pitched me across a roof."

  Thalassia chuckled softly. "I didn't intend to hurt you. Really. You deserve to live, Demosthenes, and to be happy. I understand if my promises mean nothing, but I swear that I will never lay a hand on you in anger again. You shouldn't fear for your life from me. You don't have to."

  Looking down–carefully, without moving his neck–Demosthenes laid a hand on Thalassia's bare shoulder. "I wish to believe you," he said. "But that you did not intend to hurt me tonight gives me more reason to fear you, not less. You are... impulsive. To say the least."

  After a brief silence, Thalassia observed, "You called me a child. You know, you've never asked me my age. I'm older than I look. Much older."

  Demosthenes had guessed that Thalassia could not be the mere twenty or so years that she appeared, no more than deathless Aphrodite was a blushing youth. But no, he had not asked and was not certain that he wished to know the true answer. But having raised the subject, she clearly now wished to tell him, and he surely was not about to encourage her to keep secrets.

  "How... how old?" he asked.

  "Two hundred and thirty eight of your years," Thalassia answered. "And of them all, the best six were the ones I spent with him." She paused and drew a long, unsteady breath. "I hate him so much."

  How very human she seemed... or quite possibly, how human she could seem, when it served her.

  She hesitated, and Demosthenes waited patiently. He stared at her thickly braided pigtails. Handles, the errant thought slipped into his mind. For what? It was not a hard question to answer.

  "He can't be killed by normal means," she resumed. "And not just like I'm hard to kill. He always survives. Always. That's why I'm here trying to unmake him instead. If it's even possible. Succeed or fail, this will be the last thing I do. The last world I ever see. That's why..."

  She trailed off briefly, and Demosthenes noticed he was stroking her arm. He quickly stopped.

  "That's why I wear this collar, and try to make friends, and spend your money on pretty, shiny things in the agora." She laughed, faintly. "I'm glad I wound up in Athens. They don't have pretty, shiny things in Sparta, do they? I wouldn't have lasted there."

  Setting palms to tile, Thalassia raised herself, causing Demosthenes' thigh to rue the absence of her warm cheek. She settled into an awkward seated posture, the fabric of her long chiton stretched taut between widely parted knees. Her head came level with his.

  "Please," she said, and the cool eyes of the crestfallen goddess, still moist with tears, begged. "Don't give up on me. At least give me until Amphipolis is held. After that, if it's what you want, I'll leave Greece altogether. I'll never trouble you or your descendants again. That's a promise, and in spite of what you may think, I do keep them."

  Demosthenes met her stare, ignoring the pain in his flesh and bone, pain of which she was the cause, and he measured her such as he, or any mere human, was able.

  "I..." he began, uncertain of what should come next. "I believe you, I think. But I still fear you. I suspect I always shall."

  Thalassia's lips twisted in a melancholy smile. It faded, and she said softly, " I hope not." She reached out and touched his head, which throbbed. "Let's get you downstairs."

  Leaning in close, she slipped her left arm under his right, while her other snaked around him from behind. The move put her cheek against his. Instead of quickly hoisting him to his feet, she paused and let the touch linger for longer than could be accidental. She nuzzled him, just a little, and she exhaled, her warm breath tickling his cheek. And then he was lifted, with great ease and set on his feet such that he needed not bear his full weight. From at least a half-dozen places, Demosthenes' body screamed for attention or better still, the bliss of unconsciousness. He had come through hour-long battles feeling less bruised than he felt now.

  "So... partners still?" Thalassia asked on the way to the hatch.

  "Until Amphipolis," Demosthenes agreed, with rather less certainty than he would have liked.

  Somehow Thalassia managed to lower him gracefully through the hatch, and thence onto his bed. "Wait here," she instructed. "I'll bring you something for the pain."

  For a short while, he lay looking up at the ceiling, making peace in advance with any gods that would listen for the sins which were doubtless to follow on this path he had chosen in defiance of Fate and all good sense. Down below, the hearth rattled with the sounds of whatever remedy Thalassia was preparing. Momentarily she returned and sat on the edge of his bed with a cup filled with a steaming, milky liquid.

  "Drink this." She set the rim to his lip, and Demosthenes, trusting in her as a physic, if not in all things, emptied the contents.

  Smiling, she set the cup aside. "You'll sleep soon," she said. "In the morning, there is something I must tell you. It's why I had to put to rest tonight these unspoken things between us."

  Warmth radiated from Demosthenes' chest, down his limbs, pushing them down into the bedding and making movement implausible. The sharp pains and dull aches of Thalassia's maltreatment began to fade, and with them his clarity of mind. Thoughts began to slip like silvery fish through his mental grasp.

  "Tell... me... what?"

  "Tomorrow," Thalassia said soothingly. He could see, but not feel, that her hand was on his arm.

  Demosthenes laughed. With effort, he lifted the hand nearest Thalassia and flicked one of her braids before letting it fall. "You have handles..." he said sleepily.

  She smiled. "Yes. Do you like them?"

  "The better to ride you with." Demosthenes laughed at his own feeble joke. "But... no, I... they could grow on me." He laughed again. "They... grow on you, actually. On that thing... your... head."

  He let his heavy lids fall shut. He dragged them open again and slurred, "What... you... want... tell..." He got no further before sleep claimed him.

  ***

  Demosthenes awoke with a start and with words upon his lips: "...tell me!"

  Morning light streamed in through his window. As he tried to sit upright, he found that his right arm, which aside from his neck was presently the source of the most pain on his body, was tightly bound against his chest with linens.

  "Thalassia!" he cried out.

  "Morning," she said gently, appearing quickly in the open doorway. She came to his bedside with a cup of water. Realizing his mouth was parched, Demosthenes took the cup in his good hand and emptied it in a few gulps before speaking.

  "What is it you wished to tell me?" he asked urgently, anxiously, knowing that it could scarcely be anything he wished to hear.

  The look she gave fed such a conclusion. Since last night she had changed her sea-foam chiton for a pink one, and her hair was different. The 'handles' (gods, had he really said that to her?) were gone, and in their place were loose waves still kinked from their prior confinement.

  "Dress and eat breakfast first," she said. "Then I will show you."

  "Show me? No, you will tell me. Now."

  He swung his legs off of the bed's edge, and the wool blanket slid from his body, leaving him naked by the time his bare feet touched plaster. Standing, he wobbled on unsteady legs. Like lightning, a strong hand caught and held him.

  "Alkibiades is expecting us at his home," Thalassia said, helpfully inserting her face into his line of sight and saving him the painful necessity of turning his head. "I'll explain there."

  "Fine. Then we shall go now."

  Thalassia brought him a fresh white chiton with red embroidered hem, the donning of which required assistance from the same nominal slave who had caused his injuries, aid which he found himself resenting as she knelt and laced his sandals. When he was dressed, they walked the streets slowly, a slave appearing to hang on her master's arm
when in fact she was helping keep him upright.

  "Tell me," Demosthenes insisted many times along the way. Each time he failed to get an answer, his trepidation grew.

  "I told you that I keep promises," she conceded at last. "I made one at Pylos, and with help from Alkibiades, I have kept it. I want you to know that I went to him not because I trust him more, or like him more. Neither is true."

  Demosthenes knew well why she might go to him for help in some secret venture: being vastly more susceptible to her charms, Alkibiades was easier for her to manipulate.

  "What did you do?" he demanded, readying himself for some terrible blow the shape of which he could not yet imagine.

  "It's better to show you."

  Seething silently, Demosthenes allowed the answer to stand. Better anyhow that he show his anger in the privacy of Alkibiades' home than out here in the streets, in front of all.

  In silence, in what seemed to Demosthenes an age, they reached their destination. Alkibiades greeted them in his private garden with a grin that was too wide by half. His bright, guilty eyes flicked to Thalassia briefly, but mostly his nervous attention stayed on Demosthenes.

  "Did you know that people describe you as the most cool-tempered and circumspect man in Athens?" Alkibiades asked, eying his visitor as though expecting attack. "Did you know that?"

  "No."

  "Well, they do!"

  There was subtle hesitation in Alkibiades' steps as he crossed the few stone pavers separating them and opened his arms for an embrace. A chlamys of blue wool concealed Demosthenes' bound right arm, but now, as the youth's arms encircled him, there was no hiding the sling. After a half-hearted half-embrace, Alkibiades stepped back and used a set of well-manicured fingers to draw the cloak aside and reveal the injured limb.

  Oddly, there was no surprise in his look, only sympathy. Demosthenes felt a fresh surge of anger, and with it humiliation. Had Thalassia told him what she had done?

  "Such a shame," Alkibiades lamented. "Please don't tell me you'll get rid of her just because she threw you one time."