by P. K. Lentz
Sparta was no nation of sycophants like Athens was, but wherever politics existed, there inevitably was favor to be curried from powerful men—hence the large number of Equals presently converging on Brasidas to offer their congratulations, heartfelt or half-hearted. Watching them, Styphon wondered whether he should not press in among them and offer the same, along with an apology. To do so would amount to acknowledging his betrayal and throwing himself on the new regent's mercy.
He pictured doing it, and pride forced him to walk the other way. Even if Brasidas possessed the quality of mercy, Eris (whatever she may say about Andrea's influence having softened her) did not, and it was she to whom he had given the most direct offense.
Alone, as the crowd in front of the ephorate grew in size and Helots went about its perimeter hanging street lamps to stave off darkness, Styphon began the walk home in near certainty that his remaining hours were numbered.
* * *
3. Night visitor
Styphon spent the night alone on a pallet in his megaron, his place beside Hippolyta in the bed in the recently built addition being occupied by the slave-girl with whom, the evidence did more than suggest, his wife had fallen in love.
Eurydike, whom he suspected did not reciprocate her mistress's feelings, would make a full physical recovery, the healer predicted. What happened to her mind was up to the gods. She had yet to speak, and her green eyes seemed barely to see what was laid before them.
Earlier in the night, on his return from the ephorate, Styphon had wrenched Hippolyta from the slave's side long enough to inform her of her cousin's exile. In spite of her distracted state, the import of the news did not escape her. She knew what it meant for her husband's safety, if not her own. She had kissed him and held him close and assured him with sincere but empty words that all would be well. She invited him to take a third of his bed, an offer he declined with a kiss on the salty skin of a brow burdened this day with too many woes.
Styphon sank surprisingly easily into sleep—and emerged from it just as easily with sword in hand, ready to strike at whatever had just woken him.
He saw nothing at first in the pitch darkness and heard no further sounds. Tense seconds later, when his vision had settled, he set down his weapon. It had been aimed at nothing. The nocturnal visitor, his daughter, sat in a different location entirely, staring at him with calm eyes blacker than than the night itself. Styphon was uncertain what noise had woken him, but he sensed that Andrea had made it deliberately just for that purpose.
That rather implied a wish to speak with him, but she only stared.
Styphon lowered himself back onto to his pallet, setting sword back into a place where he might easily grab it to engage in a futile fight for his life if assassins came. He shut his eyes, but sleep did not come. Still, Andrea sat and stared.
“Forgive me,” he said to her after a while, spontaneously. If he could not supplicate himself to Brasidas, he could at least to her. “I acted in error.” He might have said more, but chose to see if the fewest possible words would suffice.
“You only say so because of Agis's exile,” Andrea said placidly, coldly.
She was right. Had Agis triumphed in his political struggle with Brasidas, there would have been no apologies made. Or, for that matter, if the attempt to destroy Eris had succeeded. But those things had not transpired, and here he was in a position of weakness, making a weak gesture. It did not even escape him that his daughter might be the only thing preventing Eris from killing him. He had to acknowledge the possibility that any feelings he had toward his daughter from this moment forth were self-serving.
Sighing, he abandoned the attempt to win back something like respect from his daughter. “At least accept my gratitude,” he said. “For saving my life.”
She had not, of course. Not really, not directly. He had lived mostly because Brasidas had wished for him to live a while longer, to help achieve the exile of Agis. Styphon hoped that Eris had not yet imparted to her young disciple the gift of truth-sense.
“You are my father.” Andrea spoke the words bitterly, as if disliking their taste. “It means something. Even if I do not know exactly what.” Her hands, resting in her lap, toyed with something. A ribbon. Gray in this light, but he knew its color: red.
Rather than lecture his strange daughter on the deep and unbreakable nature of blood-ties, Styphon demurred. After some silence, morbid curiosity got the better of him and he asked, “Does Eris intend to kill me?”
“Eden,” Andrea corrected. “Her name is Eden. She has left Lakonia for now on an errand. But when she comes back, you will be safe. I won a promise from her. But before you thank me, hear what the promise was. If Fate does not beat me to it, I shall be the one to decide when you die.”
Hearing such words from his daughter's lips, spoken in a voice barely above a whisper out of respect for the women sleeping a room away, prompted first a chill, then righteous anger. Aided by the dark, Styphon let neither show. He said, lightly, when rage was checked, “Then my life is in your hands.”
“No. It is in your own,” the child countered. “I want my father to live. You happen to be him. You would have to do something unspeakable to make me wish you dead. Eden and I both trust that you learn well enough from your mistakes never to make another attempt on her life.”
“I will never even think it,” Styphon agreed.
It was probably true. Even if was not, it was what needed to be said.
With hardly a sound, the shadow which was Andrea reclined on her little-used pallet, and she must have slept, for she did not speak again in the long minutes which lapsed before Styphon himself again succumbed to sleep.
* * *
Dawn brought no change in Eurydike's condition; she yet declined to speak or even move significantly under her own power. A Helot was enlisted to take over the slave's chores while Andrea sat at her friend's bedside with a bearing cooler and more reserved than Hippolyta's—or of almost any full-grown woman, for that matter.
The girl kissed Eurydike's forehead, smoothed the red hair around it which was yet full of grass stems and burrs, and she made a solemn pledge: “The men who did this to you will pay. I will see to it.”
Styphon saw his wife's eyes light briefly with pleasure on that promise, so similar to her own yet far more worrisome. Were circumstances such that he was the supreme authority under his own roof, Styphon would have scolded both females for entertaining such mad ideas. But the feeling that one's life hung by a slender thread easily slashed in the night by any number of parties on account of a wrong word or deed could have a powerful staying effect on tongue and hand.
Following her swearing of vengeance, Andrea got up and left as if to get that very task underway. Perhaps that was the case, though she said nothing of her destination and Styphon elected not to ask.
Not long afterward, when Styphon had taken breakfast and convinced Hippolyta to eat the food prepared by Eurydike's Helot replacement, Alkibiades maddeningly kept his promise of the prior day by appearing at the door.
Shortly upon entering the megaron, Alkibiades saw through the half-open curtain into the bedchamber where battered Eurydike lay staring blankly. The smile which had begun to crease his fine features instantly faded, and he ran to her, leaping onto the bed, gripping her limp body close, burying his maned head in the crook of her neck. Finding her unresponsive, he called, “Little Red! What have they done to you? Who did this?”
“The who is unknown,” Hippolyta answered for her slave-love. “The what is the rape and near-killing of a woman incapable of defending herself.”
An anguished look came over Alkibiades on hearing this, and he planted tender kisses on the Thracian's face and hand. “Can she not speak?”
“She chooses not to,” Styphon answered.
“And I came with such good news,” Alkibiades said. “She would have been delighted.” He put his bright eyes on Eurydike's near-dead ones and addressed her instead: “Maybe you still will be, if you can hear.
I am to return to Athens. In fact, I am going to be its ruler.”
The pride in his voice was unmistakable. What was also unmistakable to Styphon was that this was the Athenian's reward from Brasidas for having secured Aspasia's aid, or else the price set by Aspasia for assistance she had volunteered. It hardly mattered which; the result was the same.
“Not ruler in name, perhaps,” he said, “but I am to be one of thirty magistrates, the bulk of whom I will have under my thumb in no time.” He went on, leaning close to his unresponsive audience, “I asked Brasidas if I could take you with me, and he said yes.” The Athenian turned now toward the master of the house. “If Styphon allows it.”
Suddenly Styphon found himself the target of two stares: one pleading, the other full of worry—and the threat of retaliation if a wrong answer was given.
In Naupaktos, he had been prepared to promise Eurydike to Thalassia, but today there was only one reply. Even if it would be better for all parties present—not least Hippolyta—if Eurydike were to depart with the preener, Styphon could scarcely do that to his wife. She would not soon forgive him for taking away the object of her misguided affections. One day, she would see reason, or maybe just grow out of her foolish crush.
Today was not that day.
“No,” Styphon declared. “She stays.” When Alkibiades' mouth flew open in protest, he added firmly, with open palm uplifted: “I will entertain no arguments.”
Hippolyta smiled, a small triumph among defeats.
With a sigh, Alkibiades accepted the verdict. “At least I know she is well cared for,” he said sincerely to Hippolyta.
The compliment earned the vanquished party a glimmer of pity from the victor.
Alkibiades rose from the bed, smiled and shifted his attention to Styphon, even though it was Hippolyta whom he addressed.
“And I, in turn, shall take good care of your husband,” he said, and laughed. “Oh, yes! In my concern for Red, I forgot to mention it...”
It was abundantly clear Alkibiades had forgotten nothing, but just devised on the spot this overly dramatic means of delivering his message.
Why did all Athenians think themselves actors?
“I asked Brasidas whether my good friend Styphon might be the one to escort me and my step-mother home,” Alkibiades said, causing Styphon's stomach to bubble. “And he agreed! He said you deserved just such an honor, in fact.”
Styphon suddenly found a hairless, well-sculpted arm draped over his shoulders.
The loss of Eurydike seemed already to be behind Alkibiades as he exclaimed, “We sail for Athens as soon as arrangements can be made, my friend!”
* * *
4. Turtle
They had spent the morning walking east, to the place where the river Mornos emerged from the hills to the north and flowed across a wide, flat plain into the sea. The river was where, if all went to plan, the next battle for Naupaktos would be fought.
Brasidas (or whomever commanded) seemed most likely to land his troops on beaches well east of the river, past where it was practical to extend the city defenses, and march west. The invaders would therefore be forced to cross the Mornos, which thus seemed the logical place to attempt to repel them.
They sat for a while marking up Thalassia's exquisite maps with notes on where obstacles might be constructed, ballistae secreted and troops drawn up, and then, near noon, started back to the city.
They reached the landward side of the sheer cliffs where one day, not as long ago as it seemed, they had leaped together into the sea and one had emerged a new man. The cliff's face was not visible, rather only the long, grassy slope leading up to where the land fell away and the sea was just a gentle roar beyond. Demosthenes was looking in that direction when Thalassia's hand clamped onto his shoulder, forcing him to halt.
The move took him by surprise. His head whipped around to question her, but what he found stilled his tongue, if not his heart.
It did not show in her features, only her pale eyes, but Demosthenes knew: Thalassia, the first or second most powerful being who presently walked the earth, was afraid. Instinctively, even before he followed her gaze, he knew what could be the only cause.
Not what but who. It was the reason they almost never went unarmed these days. After the battle, their presence in Naupaktos would be known to all, including...
Eden crouched atop a boulder ahead, far enough away that Demosthenes' mortal eyes might have missed her were it not for rays of the noonday sun flashing brightly on long hair so blonde it was nearly white. The cut of Eden's compact silhouette said she was armored, and her pose was that of a siren or harpy ready to swoop upon her next unsuspecting meal.
She saw them, of course, had been waiting for them, but remained in place. So did Thalassia, fingers tight on Demosthenes' collarbone.
“Do not fight her!” he urged. The words were scarcely louder than air through his teeth, for he knew Eden's senses were no less sharp than her rival's.
“She wants to talk,” Thalassia said. She also kept her voice low, but likely intended for Eden to overhear. “If not, there would be blood already.”
As she spoke, her eyes naturally did not leave the distant figure, which straightened and leaped down from the rock, raising open palms.
“Get away,” Thalassia said calmly in Demosthenes' ear.
“No.” He pretended the same calm, if less perfectly.
Thalassia forewent him the insult of arguing. Instead she clutched a handful of chiton at Demosthenes' chest, leading him to think, briefly, she might pick him up and throw him, as she had done at least once in the past. But she only leaned close and whispered a forceful instruction: “The instant anything happens, leave by the way we did the first time I brought you here.”
Demosthenes nodded acceptance, and they separated for the walk up the grassy slope by the sea toward their enemy, Thalassia's killer, toward malice made pale flesh.
When they had gone about halfway, Eden addressed them in her voice that was like frozen silk and still accented with an alien lilt.
She had not 'gone native' quite so fully as Thalassia.
“You would keep your weapons when I have none?” she asked as if offended.
Thalassia stopped. So did Demosthenes, and when she removed her two swords from their scabbards and tossed them into the high grass, he reluctantly followed suit.
Disarmed, they resumed their approach. As he walked, Demosthenes felt a strange calm descend, setting right his erratic breath and racing heart. It was no lack of fear, certainly, for he did not trust Eden's intentions and knew well that death might be imminent. And no longer did he despise life so much as not to care whether it ended or not.
What, then? It was an opportunity sensed, perhaps. Here in front of him was the foremost obstacle to the attainment of his vengeance. However great the chance was that Eden might destroy both him and Thalassia before this encounter ended, there was a smaller one that Eden might be the one who wound up dead.
Or so he wished to, and let himself, believe.
Thalassia stopped a good two spear-lengths from Eden, a distance Demosthenes guessed must mark the inner limit of either's ability to react to the other's sudden assault. He halted in the same spot.
Eden did not quite smile, but there was some dark satisfaction apparent in her eyes of deep blue. Possibly it was the satisfaction of watching a trap begin to close on unsuspecting prey, a thought which made Demosthenes aware of every foot separating his hand from his discarded blade.
If it had been a mistake to disarm, it was an uncorrectable one. There was naught to do now but hear what the white witch had to say.
Eden yet stood watching them with a curious look when Thalassia claimed the first words of the meeting.
“Kicked out of Sparta?” she asked.
The dormant smile emerged on Eden's almost bloodless lips. No other lines appeared in her delicate, frost-graven features. “They are mildly annoyed with me,” she said. “But I have not come here for their sake
. Only to have a word with the coward and traitor Geneva.”
Geneva, not Wormwhore. Had Eden softened?
“I know you didn't come to vaguely insult me over things that happened long ago,” Thalassia said.
“True,” the other conceded. “I come on account of an otherwise bright girl who suffers a soft spot for you.”
“An errand for an eleven-year old,” Thalassia observed. “Interesting.”
“One must entertain oneself in this wasteland.” Her features ticked to indicate Demosthenes, whose blood briefly chilled accordingly. “Something I needn't tell you.”
When her gaze returned to Thalassia, Eden spoke some flowing syllables in a tongue unknown.
“In Greek,” Thalassia demanded.
Eden's smirked at the only earth-born present, becoming once more comprehensible as she resumed. “Andrea desires for me to make peace with you. Foolish child. Dreamer. But I was, too, at her age.”
Thalassia returned, “Dreamers are right sometimes.”
“Indeed. And so here I stand, willing to offer a second chance—or would it be third, or fourth? I have lost track. So let us try and make peace.”
For a moment, just a moment, a Demosthenes emerged from darkness who yet believed that goodness and honesty could exist in the world, willing to believe that her offer was genuine. But the other quickly choked the life from that poor soul, leaving in command the scarred one who trusted only himself and one other.
“Peace is yours for the asking,” Thalassia said. “It's a big planet. We need never cross each other's paths.”
“Tsk, it's not quite so easy as that,” Eden chided. “First, I must understand why you came here. Why you trapped us here.” The accusation dripped with acid. “A while ago, your plaything told me you meant to unmake the Worm. He did not lie, but that only means it is what he believes. Is it true?”
The truth-sense possessed by both women was of no use in this exchange; the star-born could lie to one another with the same ease with which humans did among themselves.