Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium)

by P. K. Lentz

  Demosthenes' tongue declined to move, while embarrassment warmed the flesh around it.

  "Of course," Alkibiades went on, "if you insist on parting with her, I might make you an offer. I have room in my stables."

  Demosthenes opened his mouth, but got no further than that, for all his thoughts were occupied with furious bewilderment.

  It was Thalassia, the object of his fury, who came to his rescue.

  "He would not sell Maia for any price," she said. "He knows that when a good horse throws a man, the fault lies always with the rider."

  Alkibiades nodded. "It happens to the best of us," he commiserated. "Did you break her yourself?"

  "I... did not. She came to me quite broken, I assure you. But not tamed."

  The answer won Demosthenes a questioning look from his fellow cavalryman and a sidewise smirk from Thalassia.

  "But we are not here to talk of my past injuries," Demosthenes moved swiftly on. "We are here, I gather, to add a fresh one."

  Talk of the betrayal which evidently was to be revealed this morning prompted a shared look between the two accomplices in some as-yet-unknown deed. Alkibiades' look was nervous; Thalassia's gave reassurance. With a resigned sigh, the former turned and retreated down his garden path, passing by a bust of himself on a pedestal half-enveloped by honeysuckle. He vanished around a bend and was gone for thirty silent seconds.

  When he reappeared, he was no longer alone. Marching mechanically in front of him was a little girl, not yet at the age of curves, with long, straight, dark hair contrasting starkly with the white of her plain short chiton. Wearing a blank expression, the girl was about as animated as one of the many sculptures that dotted Alkibiades' estate.

  Thalassia stepped forward and set a gentle hand at the back of the girl's neck, turning so they both faced Demosthenes. Alkibiades hung behind, chewing his lip and eyeing the stones at his feet.

  "Who is she?" Demosthenes demanded.

  Looking only fractionally less guilty than her partner, Thalassia reluctantly accepted the task of answering. "Her name is Andrea. She is nine years old, and she is the daughter of Styphon."

  Demosthenes shut his eyes in the hope that this was another of his nightmare visions, but when he opened them the girl yet stood there. Armed with her identity, Demosthenes could pick out traces of the girl's parentage in her keen, pitch-black eyes and flat nose, not to mention her aura of fearlessness. A version of her might have stood among Equals in a shield wall. Indeed, one had.

  The necessary next question was obvious. "Why is she here?"

  Neither of the two who knew its answer leaped to give one. Alkibiades declined even to look at his questioner, leaving Thalassia once more to explain.

  "I made a promise," she said, inadequately.

  Demosthenes asked through clenched teeth, "Of what sort?"

  Thalassia removed her hand from the Spartlet's neck, said to the girl, "Thank you, Andrea. Please excuse us now."

  With no change in her flat expression, the obedient daughter of an Equal departed in a measured pace along the garden path. But as if to prove she was a child, as she rounded the bust of Alkibiades, her little arm shot up and smacked its nose.

  When only adults were present, Thalassia spoke. "In Sparta, she would have lived her life reviled as the offspring of a coward. I convinced Alkibiades to arrange her transport here."

  "Transport?" Demosthenes scoffed. "You mean kidnapping." He looked at skulking Alkibiades. "I know you did not go to Sparta in person. Who did the deed?"

  The younger man's eyes roved the garden, settling anywhere but on the one whose trust he had broken. "Messenian exiles," he confessed.

  "You paid them?"

  A nod.

  "Can it be traced to either of you?"

  Now Alkibiades found confidence. "Not a chance."

  Of course he would say that.

  Demosthenes' simmering anger bubbled over. "Did either of you consider the consequences of sending raiders to a city with which we are at war and stealing her citizens? What if they did the same to us? This is treason! And one of you shares my roof, which implicates me."

  "No one will know," Alkibiades insisted.

  "Shut up! You and I could be exiled for this, and she could be executed." He caught his error. "Well, they could try. No! This... Spartlet has to go back."

  There was no quick objection to this suggestion, a strange thing considering the lengths to which the two must have gone to achieve the deed.

  Their silence, it turned out, represented something other than concession.

  "Andrea lived with her widowed aunt," Thalassia announced bleakly. "The Messenians took it on themselves to kill her the night they took Andrea."

  Taking a moment to absorb this tiny detail which greatly enhanced the severity of the crime, Demosthenes concluded, "Still, she must return."

  "No." Thalassia spoke softly, but an iron look said she would brook no argument.

  Alkibiades came forward with open palms out in a gesture for calm. "Demosthenes," he started reasonably, "as it stands, a Spartan child that no one much cares about has disappeared. But if we send her back, she can tell the Elders what happened and name us all."

  "Shit." It was the only reply Demosthenes could conjure, and it properly summed up the situation. Alkibiades was right: this deed could not be safely undone. "I will not have her in my house," Demosthenes declared, already resigning himself. "I do not even want to know what your plans are for her."

  Heedless of the prohibition, Alkibiades said excitedly, "That's the beautiful thing. We are going to educate her, Thalassia, Socrates, and I. We'll give her the best of all worlds–body and mind, Athens and Sparta, male and female. She'll be like nothing that has ever come before!"

  "I said I did not want to know!" Demosthenes tried to interrupt.

  But Alkibiades persisted: "If Andrea is a success, I shall found a school–in secret of course–and fill it with orphan girls. I don't have a name for it yet..."

  "That's enough!"

  Demosthenes turned his back and would have walked away but for the golden hand that appeared on his shoulder.

  "Would you give us a moment alone?" its owner asked of Alkibiades.

  "Of course." Before excusing himself, Alkibiades added in somber tones, "I am sorry, Demosthenes. But I think you know that I am not my reputation. I do not just follow my cock. I would never have agreed to this if I thought it put you at risk, or if it were not worth doing."

  Demosthenes let the other leave without giving him the favor of a reply, even if his words did ring true and go some way toward easing his ire–toward he who had spoken them, at any rate.

  As for the other irresponsible party, when they had privacy, she said in placating tones, "You have a right to be upset. I knew you would be. But–"

  "But nothing," Demosthenes cut her off. "I will hear no more. Since entering my life, you have caused me to feel nothing but fear, anger, and physical pain. I have an interest in what you can accomplish for Athens, and for that reason I will uphold our pact for the defense of Amphipolis. However..." He turned away from her and looked instead upon the flowering garden. "I would prefer it if in the meantime you made your primary residence here. Alkibiades' home has a great deal more space than mine, and I know he will be glad of your company."

  Thalassia clicked her honeyed tongue, nudged him gently. "Come on," she said softly. "It's not that bad. I made a promise. I kept it. Doesn't that count for something?"

  "You are not well, Thalassia. Or... Dzhenna, or whatever your true name is. You are a madwoman. I can work with you for the good of my city, but that is all. We are not friends, nor do I suspect we ever can be. So, please–"

  She chuckled. "Jenna," she intoned. "Eurydike told you. That's the name I was born with. Jenna Ismail Cordeiro. Geneva is my Caliate name. I'm from a nothing little colony planet... sort of an Amphipolis of the the stars. What I did there... well, I suppose it wouldn't help you to trust me. I was a smuggler. I got things,
dangerous things, to people who shouldn't have them." She laughed again, and the laughter seemed anxious, much like her chatter. "I told you I was damaged even before..."

  She sighed sharply, stepped closer and set a hand on Demosthenes' bandaged arm.

  "Please don't throw me out. I promise, no more–"

  "Enough promises!" Demosthenes shook off her touch. "Tell me one thing, truthfully and in great detail, and I will consider changing my mind."

  "Name it," Thalassia said too quickly.

  "How do I kill you?"

  She fell to silence, her expression dismal. Her gaze sank to the paving stones, and Demosthenes left her thus to return alone to the home from which Thalassia was banished.

  II. ATHENS 13. One Year

  Months passed by. Summer turned to frosty winter, doing so, according to Thalassia, on account of the spherical Earth's journey around the sun. The Assembly met, and Demosthenes and Alkibiades did their duty as citizens, casting their votes and saying little, lest they accidentally nudge Fate off her intended track too soon, spoiling their planned ambush of Her at Amphipolis.

  Not that they introduced no changes to Athens. The trading vessels which they financed returned to port with writings from far-flung lands which were distilled, through the tip of a new, self-inking stylus, into treatises on surgery and disease, hygiene, metallurgy, engineering, and a half-dozen other subjects. The knowledge thus revealed was made to fall beneath the proper eyes while garnering just enough fame, but not too much, for those responsible for 'importing' it.

  Coin began to roll into the oikos of Demosthenes, a little faster than he would have liked, partly from the conventional goods brought by the trading ships and partly from the sale of two of Thalassia's inventions: a sweetly scented, olive-oil-based alternative to the traditional soap recipe of goat fat and ashes; and a cheaper alternative to papyrus made from the pressed pulp of mulberry wood. The family estate in Thria was equipped, and its laborers trained, for the production of both goods. Alkisthenes, resistant as ever to innovation, met the changes with reluctant approval, until the profit came and helped cure his reluctance.

  In early winter, four skilled Athenian blacksmiths, having sworn oaths of secrecy in the Hephaestion, were paid from public funds to set aside their regular work in favor of perfecting a new process said to have originated in India. The metal thus produced in their four modified ovens was hard enough to hold a killing edge in the face of gross mistreatment, yet resilient enough to bend rather than break. Swords and spear blades could not be forged of the so-called 'Athenian steel' quickly enough to keep pace with demand among those wealthy enough to afford it.

  Not long after, Thalassia presented schematics for new seagoing vessels with two masts instead of one, triangular sails, and other strange features.

  "Where are the oars?" Demosthenes asked.

  "They have none," she replied.

  "For the future, perhaps," Demosthenes humored her. "You could sooner teach an eagle top build nests of bricks instead of twigs than convince an Athenian shipwright that the best fleet in the world requires improvement." He handed the sheets of pulped mulberry back to her. "Anyway, Nikias is admiral, and he would never agree. There are few in Athens more adherent to tradition than he."

  Thalassia met the verdict with indifference, and her ship designs went otherwise unseen.

  The winter solstice came and went, and so did Athens' plethora of festivals large and small. At one of them, the Lenaea, the poet Aristophanes entered into competition a comedy which skewered Kleon while portraying in a rather flattering light a character by the name of Demosthenes. The poet himself played the demagogue, the powerful and popular object of his ridicule, and thus well earned, if for that brave act alone, the first prize which the jury awarded him.

  In the month of Elaphabolion the sun was eclipsed, and soon after an earthquake struck the coast, causing the sea to rise and swallow the land bridge connecting Euboea to the mainland, making of it an island. Thalassia had forewarned her two partners of both events, rather needlessly, since neither entertained any doubts when it came to her knowledge of future events. Apart from such occasional oracles as these, and the semi-regular meetings of the three conspirators in Alkibiades' garden, Thalassia might well have been no more than the domestic slave she seemed to outsiders, and even seemed to Eurydike, who was kept in the dark about her friend's true nature.

  Given the deception, it seemed only logical that Thalassia avoid bringing public attention upon herself. Demosthenes, at least, saw the logic in this, and so was less than pleased on learning that Alkibiades, having scoured Athens for an artist willing to sculpt an unclad female form in life-size, had commissioned a man by the name of Kallimachus to produce a statue for his garden of Thalassia as a nude Pandora, with box in hand. Upon its completion and proud display in front of Alkibiades home, the city was divided on the work, with many thinking it distasteful, just as many more a masterpiece. In either case, fame came quickly to Kallimachus, who found himself deluged with commissions, and to Pandora herself, whose body became sought after by scores of young men who lined up at Alkibiades' gate, clutching their chisels.

  Some were actually sculptors.

  "Should Eden come to Athens, or if she is already here, you are making it rather easy for her to find you," Demosthenes warned, and his words went ignored.

  None who viewed the marble Pandora suspected that the woman who was its model possessed also a mind and abilities far exceeding her beauty. With Alkibiades as her tutor on horsemanship, Thalassia became as skillful a rider as any member of the citizen cavalry. Or perhaps she only humored her playmate by pretending to let him teach her. Hardly a month after learning to ride, she became the instructor, training her two partners in the use of improved riding tack which, once one grew accustomed to it, offered all the advantages she promised. Here was a being of more wiles and travels than Odysseus, Demosthenes thought, a woman whom he had no doubt could, if she so desired, single-handedly bring cities to their knees, just as she claimed. Instead, she designed ships and saddles, shopped and laughed with Eurydike, posed for statues, and tutored a kidnapped Spartan girl. Demosthenes did not understand her, not because she was not human... but the opposite.

  The plan to track down and eliminate Eden dissipated like smoke, leaving no trace of its passing. Alkibiades had no inkling of her existence, of course, and for his part, Demosthenes almost wished that Eden would appear and that the two enemies would destroy each other. Thalassia never raised the subject herself. Demosthenes suspected she was afraid, for Eden was after all one of two beings in the world capable of killing her–or worse, bringing her back to face Magdalen, the leader who had already given her wayward servant one second chance too many.

  They did not speak of Magdalen, either, but Demosthenes conceived of her as some dark goddess of serpents from the world below, like those deities whose altars ran black with the dried blood of captives in tribal lands like Thessaly. He shuddered to imagine what power Magdalen must have to set her above one such as Thalassia, who walked this world of mortals as a demigoddess.

  With the snows came elections to the office of strategoi, the only office of Athens not chosen by random lot in order that those who led the city's armies be those deemed to be most proficient at it. It was likewise the only annual office to be filled before the summer solstice ushered in the new year, since the city had learned in the early years of her democracy the folly of replacing generals in the middle of the campaigning season simply because that was when other offices changed hands.

  Among the newly elected Board of Ten were many of the usual faces: Nikias and his staunch old ally Laches; the glowering plague survivor Thucydides, whose destiny was shortly to be rewritten in his favor (no longer would he face exile for failing to save Amphipolis); the pauper Lamachos. But it also included, by a wide margin, both of the Heroes of Pylos: Demosthenes and Kleon.

  The frosty ground thawed, fields were ploughed and sown again, and when the summer so
lstice came, the annual eponymous archonship of Athens passed from Stratokles to a sailmaker called Isarchos, whom Thalassia had named well in advance of his randomly drawing the winning lot.

  "Stop showing off," Demosthenes told her, only half-joking. "We believe you."

  ***

  Though Pylos yet seemed like yesterday, suddenly Demosthenes looked back and found that a year had passed.

  It was a year lacking in the customary invasion of Attica by a Peloponnesian army. Instead, the Spartans sent an army of envoys looking to reach some accord by which the hostages taken on Sphakteria might be returned to them. The effort smelt of desperation, and the odor was pleasing to Kleon, whose public following swelled and swelled as his increasingly warlike rhetoric in the Assembly ensured that the Spartan heralds were always sent packing back to Sparta empty-handed.

  Thanks in part to Kleon's empty words, the fickle democracy grew certain that victory was at hand. But their hopes slammed hard into reality, for Fate yet had setbacks in store for Athens. Her ordained instrument was the Spartan general Brasidas, already a bright star rising among his people. The prior summer, Brasidas had been a trierarch in the naval assault on the beaches of Pylos, the first to run his ship aground in the failed attempt to establish a foothold. Brasidas had been thrown back, bleeding, long black hair and lambda-blazoned shield left bobbing in the surf. In the thick of that battle, Demosthenes had not known the man's identity, of course, but armed with it thereafter by an all-knowing star-born oracle, he recalled the scene.

  Every year of the war thus far, Athens had invaded the territory of its western neighbor and perpetual enemy, the Spartan ally Megara, and this year was to be no exception. But this year, as Fate would have it, Brasidas happened to be passing by Megara on his way north with a small army, and lent assistance to the city. Demosthenes was fated to participate in the battle, and he did so in ignorance, since Thalassia steadfastly refused to tell him the outcome. And she was right to do so, it seemed in the end, for had he gone to war with foreknowledge of failure, he surely could not have made as good a showing for himself as he did, being among the first to infiltrate the city and then later smashing a band of Theban cavalry against its walls and killing its leader.