At long last I reached the crossroads. Codros was there, twitching nervously, naturally. Fucking Athenians.
“You came,” he said as he ran his hand through his thick curls. He’d been my contact for the last year. It took him that long to stop staring at my breasts. Apparently, Athenian girls covered theirs – unlike Cretan women. And also, he’d never seen a pair before. Aside from the fact he was a moron and had no clue as far as Cretan fashion was concerned, he was passable to work with.
“Of course I came,” I snapped. “What do you want?”
Codros looked left and right, as if he didn’t trust me not to be followed. I rolled my eyes skyward and asked the gods for strength.
“We want to pay you three thousand gold coins to kill the Minotaur.”
“Three thousand?” I asked. Surely I misheard him. That was a lot of money. More money than I would ever see in my lifetime. Was this some sort of trap?
Codros nodded. He looked right and left again, which pissed me off, before reaching behind a rock and pulling out a bag loaded with something heavy. He tossed the bag at my feet.
“Here is half,” he said quietly. “Once you prove the Minotaur is dead, you will get the rest.”
I bent down to examine the bag in the fading light of dusk. My fingers slid past the rough material and closed on a pile of cold coins. I stood, leaving the bag on the ground.
“The Minotaur is a myth,” I said. King Minos was always messing with the Athenians. No such half man, half bull existed in real life. Did they really believe that? This had to be a trap.
Codros shook his head violently. “We have been told that we are to send seven Athenian girls and seven boys to be sacrificed in the labyrinth to this beast. If the beast is dead, there will be no sacrifices.” He stuck his chin out as if to make his point.
“Okay, say the Minotaur does exist, and I kill him. Why wouldn’t Minos just demand the kids anyway and kill them outright?” I mean, that’s what I would do. You didn’t need a man with a bull’s head to kill people.
“If the Minotaur is dead—” Codros slammed his right fist into his left palm. “—Minos will not ask for tribute.”
On Crete, we had a lot of jokes about Athenians. Named ironically for the Goddess of Wisdom, Athenians were rubes who believed in stuff like flying horses and minotaurs. How many Athenians does it take to milk a goat? Five: one to hold each of the four legs with the fifth one running off to find someone from Crete. Believe me, that’s a howler in my village.
“I can’t be responsible for what Minos does. If I take your money, kill this Minotaur, and the demand for sacrifice continues, your people will come after me.”
“No. You won’t be held responsible. And we will pay you once we have proof the monster is dead. Minos won’t demand the tributes. If he does, then he’s a fool.” Codros spat on the ground.
“All right, then.” I lifted the very heavy bag from the ground. “I’ll do it. And I’ll get you your proof. And I won’t be responsible for what happens after. We meet back here in four days. I’ll have your proof, and you’ll have the rest of my money.”
He nodded and slipped away into the shadows.
It took me longer to get back home as I dragged an extremely noisy bag of coins through the streets in the darkness. Once inside my little house, I barred the door and dumped the bag on the table. I froze for a moment from the loud sound of coins clanking together, exhaling only after I didn’t hear anyone beating on my door.
Why was I worried? I lived alone, with no friends or family on the whole island. People never noticed me. I could slip in and out of anywhere without anyone knowing I was there.
Now, why did I take this job? That confused me a little. I’d been a thief and a spy for most of my sixteen years. But killing? My eyes slid to the bulging sack. Well, clearly that was more lucrative. Besides, I wasn’t really going to kill anything.
The Minotaur! Honestly! Those Athenians would fall for anything. There was no Minotaur. What idiots. They couldn’t even mess things up properly. Sometimes, those bastards would sneak in and attempt to ruin some festival or another by setting all the goats loose or pouring honey on the streets—you know, the usual Athenian bullshit.
King Minos kept sending our navy to kick their asses, but this crap still happened. He even told the Athenians if they didn’t knock it off, he’d demand seven boys and girls every nine years to feed to his weird, made-up, man/bull thing, the Minotaur. But he doesn’t have a minotaur. He just says that.
I didn’t feel bad in the least for taking their money to kill something that didn’t exist. Athens was filled with people who took the “short chariot” to work. Their city state would never last. I give them one more generation before they’re completely forgotten.
The only problem would be evidence. How would I prove I killed something that didn’t exist? I shook my head and filled a clay cup with water. Damn clay. But with this kind of money, I’d be able to afford a bronze cup or two soon enough.
My parents died when I was two years of age. They were killed in a strange oxcart accident involving a duck and a single olive. This old guy, Deuteronomy, took me in and taught me the fine art of theft. I stole for the two of us while we lived quietly in this house. He died when I was ten. After a while, thieving bored me, and I turned to spying. When I was thirteen, I sold the Athenians a lie that strangely turned out to be true. Who knew Poseidon really did have a Kraken? The Athenians believed me, and, as a result, I’ve been taking their money (and selling them lies) ever since. But this…killing for money, was new.
I wasn’t terribly fond of Crete either. People ignored me completely. Maybe after this job, I could disappear—see the world. I was good with a knife and knew my way around poisons—Deuteronomy believed in a well-rounded education. I could take care of myself and had for years.
First things first. I carried the bag of money to my bedroom and yanked the bed away from the wall. After tucking the bag in a hole I had hidden there, I shoved the bed back and lay down on it.
It was hot, and the night was filled with the humid stench of animals, ripe olive groves and people. Yes, leaving after the job was done was a good idea. Wait until after I get paid the rest, and just disappear. I’d probably leave Greece altogether. What would be the point of staying? Maybe I’d even turn faux assassination into a little family business…train the kids and grandkids. Then I threw up in my mouth a little because that would require getting married. Greek boys were gross—always oiling up and wrestling in the nude. What the hell was that all about?
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew daylight flooded the room and someone was banging on my door.
“Who is it?” I asked in the gruffest voice I could manage.
“Codros sent me,” the male voice answered.
I only had two options: open the door and let him in, or keep it barred, grab the money and slip out the window. But I was curious about what kind of moron Codros would send, so I opened the door and dragged the man inside.
“Who are you?” I asked, shutting the door behind him. As I looked him over, my knees grew a little weak. This was an Athenian? He looked more like Apollo. Gold hair, gold skin and eyes as blue as the Aegean. He smiled, and my stomach flipped.
“I’m Sparta.” He gave a little bow. I wasn’t used to men treating me with respect. Basically, they didn’t look at me at all.
“Sparta? Like the city-state?”
He nodded. “Yes. My parents met there. So they named me after that place.”
“That’s kind of weird,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Yes. It is,” he agreed. “No one does that.”
We stood there, staring at each other for a moment. I motioned to the table and a stool beside it. “Please, sit.” I poured him a cup of water and stood back, studying him.
Why did that idiot send someone? And why is he so cute and nice? Is he here to spy on me?
“You said that Codros sent you…”
“You mean spy on me.” I folded my arms across my chest. Sparta didn’t seem so cute now. Codros didn’t trust me to kill a mythological monster? That bastard!
Sparta rose from the stool and stepped close to me. He was taller than me. And just as gorgeous close up.
“No. I came because I can do things.”
It was hard to hear myself over my heart beating. “Really. What exactly can you do?” My guard was up now. Not only did this guy notice me…he actually talked to me. That didn’t happen.
“What’s your plan for killing the Minotaur?” he asked casually.
“How I kill him is my business.” My face was hot, and I could feel that vein pulsing in my forehead. I didn’t need some stupid Athenian following me around. I moved to the door and opened it.
“I think you’d better go.”
Sparta sighed and made his way out the door, which I may have closed a bit too loudly. He wouldn’t last half an hour in the village. Everyone here knew everyone else, and we didn’t like strangers. The boy would have to return home or get fed to the goats.
If I had someone spying on me, I’d need to act quickly. Maybe I could just behead a bull and present that to the Athenians? Would they buy it? I could say that he was too large to bring back so I just took the head.
How was I going to behead a bull? I mean, the biggest thing I’d ever killed was a bird, and it wasn’t too hard cutting his head off. But a bull? What about the horns? I could get the horns easily enough. But how would that prove anything to people who thought I needed spying upon? Obviously, this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.
And that stupid Sparta! He probably wouldn’t go away. If he had half a brain, he’d hide in the olive groves. His blonde hair would really stand out. I’d have to shake him somehow. Or threaten him.
He’d asked what my plan was. I didn’t have one. This job seemed so easy last night. Now it just seemed like a mess…one that would bring the Athenians down on me like a sack of…um…Athenians when I failed.
I could go now. There were fifteen hundred gold coins behind my bed. That would make it easy for me to run away and live fairly comfortably somewhere. All I’d have to do would be to wait until the middle of the night and just slip away. I could bribe a fisherman at the beach to take me across the sea, in the opposite direction of Athens.
In a few days, I’d be in Italy or Africa, and no one would miss me. No one would miss me. Wow. That idea stopped me cold. The only people who knew I even existed were the Athenian morons and Sparta. My neighbors would be hard pressed to identify me as something other than “that weird orphan girl.” Even though it would be easy to fade away, I suddenly didn’t want to.
I wanted to prove I could do this. For some reason, it mattered that someone out there would remember who I was and what I could do. Slipping away in the night had merit. But it wasn’t the right answer. I’d have to go to Minos’ palace, Knossos. Then if Sparta was following me, he had to see that I was at least moving toward a plan (one that I really didn’t have).
I spent the day preparing for the trip. Deuteronomy had left behind a worn, canvas pack that I filled with dates, olives and bread. Two handfuls of the gold coins and a wine skin filled with water took up the rest of the space. In the early afternoon, I napped. I’d have to move out late at night. By late evening, I’d sharpened my four, bronze throwing knives that I’d stolen from a sailor two years past. They were good knives, and I could throw them with great accuracy. I could use them for self-defense and hunting along the way.
The sounds of the village slowed to a stop as the night grew darker. Finally, I gathered my pack, stuffed my knives in my pockets and headed out the door toward King Minos and his ridiculous, imaginary Minotaur.
SNUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON
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