by P. K. Lentz
“Does this mean you accept?”
Kleon laughed. “It seems so... brother. Of course, I will not face Spartan spears for the sake of Naupaktos. They can have my tongue, but not my life.”
Demosthenes offered a hand, which his one-time prosecutor clasped in acceptance of alliance.
“We shall devote the remainder of the day to trying to look the part you have in mind,” Demosthenes said. “For which we will need funds. We have a horse we can sell, to start, and then Thalassia here can make up the difference, provided all the gaming tables in Corinth have not opted to ban her already.”
* * *
3. A walk with a witch
60 days after the fall of Athens (July 423 BCE)
On the day of Agis's return in triumph from Pylos, Styphon gave the king his decision on the proposal presented the day before his departure. Agis took the answer silently, somberly, then walked away and had no contact at all with Styphon until many days later, when Styphon went to him to tell him that a date had been set. They met only one final time before that day arrived.
That day was today, the sixth following the reduction of rebellious Pylos, a day when, if all went well, Sparta was to be freed of a malignant presence.
It began with father accompanying daughter on a walk.
“Thank you for agreeing to this, father,” Andrea said, taking Styphon's hand. “I know once you have spoken with Eris, you will understand.”
“I have little doubt.”
The idea that he meet Eris to discuss his daughter's education had actually been his own, even if he had managed to make it seem as if Andrea had pressured him into it. Were an invitation to have originated with him, the witch might have suspected foul play. The child had acted as go-between, such that Eris would not be lied to directly.
Yet. With luck, if the right questions were not asked, direct deception would not be required.
“If any man on earth can look into her gorgon's eye and withhold a secret, it is an Equal,” Agis had offered him days ago, by way of encouragement. “Just act as if you are advancing into battle, which you are in a way, and wear the mask of stone that all Greece dreads seeing over its shield-rims. Keep your heart slow and breath steady.”
The advice helped as Eris came into view, waiting for them on the dusty road leading north out of the city, to the training grounds which were Styphon's purported destination this morning. He and his child's tutor were to speak as he walked there for the day's drills.
She stood on the roadside like an immovable sentinel of Olympus or of the depths, as tall as most mortal men or taller, dressed in a hunter's cloak of deep green that descended from one shoulder to half-cover a plunging chiton which left bare the pale valley between her breasts. Her thin legs were clad from waist to sandal in the nearly skin-tight leggings of softened hide that savages of other lands were said to wear. Her silken hair, which when unbound hung down her back like combed flax, was today woven into a tight single braid which traversed her cloaked breast.
He took note of one aspect of Eris's appearance above all others: she was unarmed.
So was Styphon, but then he was not to be among her many assassins this day. His only task, when the time came, was to get his daughter to safety.
As they drew up to her, the she-daimon smiled her cold smile. Nothing was wrong with the expression itself; it just lacked humanity. Perhaps it was something in her eyes of deep azure, or maybe Styphon's own eyes just imbued everything she did with a monstrous hue. Whatever the reason, it chilled him. He took Agis's advice, imagining her as an enemy phalanx, and shoved the natural fear of things supernatural deep down where it could not be seen.
Andrea, meanwhile, quickened her step at the last second to overtake him. Dipping her head in a shallow bow, she grabbed her tutor's hand and kissed the back of it. Styphon hid his distaste at the display.
Keeping hold of Eris's hand, Andrea turned to stand facing her father.
“Styphon,” Eris said in her musical accent of the south of Haides. “I'm glad you came. I will reassure you, I hope, that you and I need not be at odds when it comes to your daughter.”
Like her smile, the she-daimon's words struck Styphon as utterly false. In choosing his reply, he understood that he must be honest with her, as far as he was able.
“Let us not waste breath on the pretense we might part this day as friends,” he said. “The sight of you all but seizes my limbs with fear. I would know what your intentions are toward her, and if need be, maybe you will hear my objections.”
Eris half-smiled—coldly, again—and lifted a thin brow in approval. “You needn't fear me,” she said. “Or my intentions. As you, I want what is best for Andrea.” She inclined her chin to the north, along the road. “Come, let's walk.”
As they did, Eris showed no sign of awareness that it was the road to her potential demise, but then she was only pale, not transparent.
“I somehow doubt many points of agreement exist between us when it comes to what constitutes the best for Andrea,” Styphon said. “More importantly, I understand why her welfare is my concern: she is my offspring. But why should it be yours?”
“A fair question. Strange you would ask it, though. Do you despise your blood so much as to think its inheritor of no note to anyone but you? I possess knowledge fit for sharing with students who are sharp of mind and spirit. I see such a student in your Andrea.” She put her hand on the head of the subject of their discussion, who walked silently between them. “She embraces the opportunity and proves me right.”
“It seems to me that the subject of your tutelage of Andrea broaches a rather larger question.” He knew he risked provoking Eris to anger, but then anger had the power to blind, something which suited a deceiver well—so long as that anger did not give way to violent rage. “Why are you here?” he asked.
“You know that I am here because of her,” Eris said, circumspectly. “The Wormwhore.”
“But why Sparta? I understand we recruited you, and you consented to help us defeat Athens because Geneva is your enemy. But Athens is defeated and Geneva... elsewhere. What purpose remains to you here?”
She clicked her serpent's tongue. “Careful, Styphon. I might think you wish me gone.”
“Of course I wish that,” Styphon dared to admit. “Would that none of your kind ever came to our world. But being stranded here, surely there are better places for the likes of you than our city.”
“Father,” Andrea pleaded through clenched teeth. “Please...”
“No, Andrea,” Eris said, smoothing the girl's hair. “I will answer. The truth is that I do lack any reason to remain in Sparta. But seeing as I equally lack reason to be elsewhere, it suits me at present to remain. The Whore's pet told me what he genuinely believes to be her purpose here. It is one which I am yet uncertain whether I wish to thwart. It is possible that she has Magdalen's blessing in her mission... or at least that Magdalen knew what the Whore would do. Magdalen knows many things, and works in ways that of necessity remain a mystery to those who do her will. However, the Whore has trapped me here, and so I must end her, in one way or another, eventually. And so, while I have reason to think that her designs keep her in Greece, I too will remain.
“I have no particular need of allies,” Eris finished with a grin lighting her monstrous eyes, “but I must amuse myself in some way in this... wasteland, lest the years be endless.”
The she-daimon's flippant tone was perhaps even more telling than any of her galling words. “It would seem,” Styphon observed, “ that our country, indeed all the world, is to you nothing more than an arena in which your bloody contest, your pankration, is to be fought. With even apparent death marking not its end.”
Over the head of silent Andrea, Eris shot an amused look. The look belied the witch's next words, which were clearly meant for her pupil's ears:
“Of course not. I admit I aided you at first to serve my own vengeful ends, but I remain here out of... admiration. Perhaps less admiration for
what Sparta is now than for what it might become.”
She reached over and touched Styphon's shoulder, a surprisingly warm touch under which he managed not to flinch.
“Take my advice, Styphon,” she said earnestly. “Remain close to Brasidas, follow him and convince others to do the same, and together we shall make Sparta masters of the world for a thousand years.” Her hand fell back to the girl's shoulder. “Your daughter can and will have a prominent place in that future. It is up to her to determine what that place is. I only aim to give her the tools, the abilities, and the knowledge to realize her full potential. You may rest assured there is nothing sinister in what I teach. Science, mathematics, philosophy, survival, and yes, how to defend herself against any adversary, even a grown male.”
Eris added, smiling affectionately down on the girl. “Andrea likewise teaches me. You may find it odd for one such as I to say this, but I feel I am a better person on account of knowing her.”
It sounded more than odd to Styphon. It would strike him as rather less odd to hear of an eagle bearing off a field mouse to its aerie, only for the two to exchange guest-gifts and part as friends. But his opinion mattered not. What mattered was time, and every word Eris spoke ate a little more of the diminishing quantity of it presently separating her from annihilation. The exact place and moment could not be known, but neither could be far now. They had already passed the last parcel of land assigned to an Equal and moved on to low hills and dry, uncultivated prairies where no more habitation was to be seen than the occasional shepherd watching his flock chew tall grass.
Styphon knew it was important that he keep talking, lest Eris fill the opening with some question which might, either deliberately or by chance, force him to speak falsely and risk discovery.
“The tutor's mandate is to instill not only knowledge,” Styphon said, as though it mattered, “but also obedience and loyalty to family and state. You can hardly blame me for doubting your own loyalty to our state, and as for family, Andrea has told me that she would disobey my command to stop seeing you, were I to give it. Is that just the willfulness of youth on her part, or is it something you have taught? Perhaps rebellion is to be the norm in this new Sparta which you envision?”
Too knowingly for comfort, Eris laughed. “I see your intent.” The heart in Styphon's chest momentarily stopped beating. “You wish to provoke me to anger, thus proving me unfit as a tutor for lack of confidence in my own arguments. It might have worked at one time, but as I said, I have changed for the better.”
She leveled a glare at him over Andrea's head. The eyes he met did not, to Styphon's mind, reflect any changed soul, but a cold and inhuman one. Yes, it was possible he saw in them what he wished and expected to see, and that Eris truly had changed, but it mattered not; the trap was set and soon to be sprung, and its success would serve Sparta well no matter what dwelt in the intended victim's heart.
“Maybe you have changed,” Styphon conceded, aware that Eris might detect that as a lie of sorts. Rather than giving her time to say so, he quickly observed, “Is it not possible that Geneva has changed, too, since dying by your hand?”
That seemed likely to provoke a response. It did not get an immediate one, but Andrea did look up at him suddenly with some indeterminate expression. Then she faced forward again, leaving something unsaid, it seemed, out of respect for one or both of the two authority figures flanking her.
Moments later, it was Eris who explained the look.
“Father echoes daughter,” she said. “Andrea has been arguing that I have nothing to lose by talking to Thalassia. Except my life, potentially, should I let my guard down.”
As she was doing now, Styphon silently hoped.
“There is wisdom in the advice.” Eris shrugged. “But I cannot at present imagine looking on the Wormwhore's face without seeking to separate it from her body.”
As she spoke these words, Styphon glimpsed ahead, coming around a curve from the opposite direction on the same well-worn track which he walked, the sight which he had tried hard until now not to appear to be anticipating. Marching toward them at quick-pace in a neat square, looking not at all out of place on a road used every day for drilling, were thirty-six Equals in full battle gear. Their spear blades and lambda-blazoned shields glowed orange in the sunrise, and if one could make out from this distance the expressionless faces under the rims of their bronze pilos-caps, he would recognize most as belonging to men of Agis's elite, hand-picked royal guard.
Their orders this day included no training exercises, only the assassination, at any cost, of a threat to Sparta.
* * *
4. Assault on Eden
Naturally, Eris saw the phalanx, too. Her far-seeing, sea-blue eyes lingered on it while Styphon aimed to keep his own gaze inconspicuously averted. Taking Agis's advice, he tried to adopt the state of battle-calm in which all Spartiates were trained to face the enemy. He also resolved not to let himself fall silent at this critical moment, but to persist in keeping the intended victim distracted until the final moments, when her assassins drew close enough to envelop her and begin the planned butchery.
“You failed to answer my question of loyalty,” he said to her, casually enough, he hoped. “You speak of admiration for some new Sparta yet unborn, but I would see my daughter's allegiance given to the Sparta which exists. Not to vague ideas, like a philosopher worships, and surely not to the person of her tutor.”
As he finished, Eris's eyes remained fixed on the square of hoplites whose seventy-two heels moving in unison kicked up a thin dust-cloud in the middle distance. Restraining alarm inside his shroud of outer calm, Styphon endeavored to pull her attention back to him.
“Can you assure me your plans include making Andrea a proper citizen, not just some slave dedicated to achieving your vision?”
At last Eris spared him a sidelong look. The look itself, and what Styphon saw in it, encouraged him. She seemed unaware. He needed only hold out less than a minute now before setting to his next task, that of saving Andrea from being cut down alongside her teacher.
“I can assure you that by any standard,” Eris said, “under my guidance, Andrea will achieve more than will any child, male or female, yet born in Sparta. And her contribution, unlike that of most of your females, shall not be measured solely by the yield of her womb.”
For a moment, the pressure of Styphon's task faded in the face of offense at her remark. More than any city, Sparta valued its women: it wished them to be strong of body, mind, and spirit that they might push their sons and brothers to be better men—and yes, so they might produce offspring who shared those qualities. Dying in childbirth was the only way a Spartan woman could earn the honor of a grave inscribed with her name, as a man would if he fell in battle. For after all, what would Sparta become without a steady supply of sons to defend it? A dead city, perhaps, or worse, a city of slaves to some invader.
If Styphon had worried for a moment (and he had not) that he had chosen wrongly to cast his lot with Agis and the defenders of tradition, Eris had succeeded in destroying his doubt, sealing with her own words the very fate he had helped orchestrate for her, one which was scant seconds away. The formation's front rank of six was hardly five spear-lengths distant and rapidly closing, on a course to trample them.
Was there, in Eris's watchful look, recognition of some of the faces of Agis's loyal men?
“We had best give way,” Styphon said, just as he would have were he a bystander and not an accomplice. He set one hand on his daughter's back, between the shoulders, clutching a handful of linen there. “Come, Andrea.”
As he spoke those words, Eris's head flicked toward him. Her delicate brows were lowered over sea-blue eyes in a which a ship-tearing storm suddenly raged.
She knew.
Abandoning pretense, Styphon hoisted Andrea bodily into into his arms and ran for both of their lives across the field of grass which flanked the straight road. He kept his head down, not knowing whether Eris was at his heels.
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Just seconds into his flight, war cries arose at his back: the phalanx breaking ranks to charge and attempt encirclement of its she-daimon quarry. At least, that was the plan; Styphon did not look over his shoulder to be sure. Were it possible to both see to Andrea's safety and take part in the attack himself, he certainly would, but that was not possible, and so he ran with plodding steps, clutching fifty pounds of stunned child diagonally across his chest. Behind him, the cries of the charge tapered off into the deadly silence of combat, a silence soon broken by a scream.
It was not a scream of fear or pain, nor was it a war cry. It did not even come from the battle now thirty-odd paces behind. Rather it sounded directly in Styphon's ear, and its source was Andrea. He flinched and instinctively squeezed his daughter tighter, even as the scream dragged on and on.
He guessed her intention, strange as it was: to use her voice as weapon, a sharp, shrill one aimed at him. He craned his neck away and continued to run, ignoring her, but he suspected what was to come.
He was right. Pain lanced through his right earlobe as Andrea gnashed it between her teeth. Legs still pumping through the grass, he jerked her body down and away, perhaps along with a chunk of his ear. But he kept his grip on her and barked, “Be still! You cannot help her now! It will mean your death!”
“Put me down!” she screamed in answer. Her lean body began to writhe in earnest to escape her father's iron grip. A small, clawed hand soon covered his face, its first two fingers over his eyes, pressing into them, forcing the lids shut and threatening true damage if her demand was not met.
Having not a free hand with which to swat hers away, Styphon shook his head side-to-side, and he shook Andrea, but failed to thwart her.
Strange that in all the times he had run through this day in his mind, not once had it occurred to him that Andrea might fight him so fiercely. Scream in anger and the rage of betrayal, certainly, and even hate her father afterward, for a time, but she could not have become so separated from her common sense as to think she had any place on the battlefield behind them—other than to be instantly slaughtered.