Chapter 45: A man in irons
Artem heard his mother approach as she joined him below deck. He’d come here to be alone, sitting eyes closed in a straight-backed chair that had been nailed to the floor. At first it might appear he was meditating, or even sleeping, but Artem was simply exhausted of it all, tired of the people all around him, tired of the eternal battle for something none of them could ever have.
I don’t want to talk right now, he thought, keeping his eyes closed. Please assume I’m sleeping. Don’t talk. I can’t talk with you right now.
“Artem,” Orithyia said, and Artem opened his eyes, trying his best to hide his annoyance. “I’d like to talk, if you’re willing.”
“You have a captive audience, mother,” Artem said. “Say what you will.”
Orithyia found a seat nearby, then stood up again, then leaned against the wall. It was uncomfortable to watch her nervousness, Artem thought. She sent him away young, but even as a small child he remembered her never-ending self-control, the unshakable confidence. Had she not been his mother—and therefore, like all parents, vulnerable to the flaws and judgments all children see—she would have been a powerful role model. Instead he saw her behavior as a cold perfectionism, something he both strove toward and was afraid he would achieve himself.
But here, on this ship, she seemed shockingly human, terrifyingly imperfect, and for the first time in his life, Artem saw his mother as vulnerable.
She took a deep breath, and began to speak.
“I never told you about your father,” she said.
“You did,” Artem said. “Everyone did. No one let me forget my father was a thief who stole his way onto our sacred island. The only thing harder than being the only male on that island was being the child of a character of legendary and universal scorn.”
“We don’t believe the things a parent does should carry forward onto their children,” Orithyia said. “But…”
“But it’s one thing to believe something like that. It’s another to practice it.”
“We hold ourselves separate from humanity, Artem, but the Amazons are just as human as anyone else. We are prey to all the same mistakes and imperfections and prejudices as any other people.”
“And I understand that, in theory,” Artem said. “But this was my life we’re talking about here. This is what made me.”
“And that’s why I sent you away,” Orithyia said. “I don’t know that I’ll ever make you understand that, but I saw what being so alone was doing to you. I had to send you away. I was afraid of what you’d become if I didn’t.”
Artem felt a sharp pain in his chest. Rage or sadness or loneliness, he couldn’t tell. Maybe all those emotions. More than anything, though, he remembered being alone. I know why I joined in with Echo and Barnabas and Yuri, Artem thought, watching his mother—the general of the forces of the Amazons, exactly who she was meant to be—watching him from across the cabin. I found the company of people who have no place in the world, because I never have.
“Even I’ll admit you made the right decision,” Artem said. “Sending me away. But I can’t help believing it was insufficient to rectify your original mistake of having me in the first place.”
Orithyia simply stared at him, unable to respond.
“That was petulant,” Artem said, shaking his head at himself. “It’s a difficult thing, believing your entire life was in error. No matter what you say, I know I was an anomaly that no one believed should happen. It’s not easy to digest. I’m not unhappy, mother, despite what I say, or how I act. I have loved, I have loved so much, and I have done brave things, and I have been to remarkable places, and I’ve become something I am proud of. But every story has an origin, and mine is not pleasant.”
Orithyia put a hand on his head, stroking his hair.
“You should know about your father,” Orithyia said.
“What else is there to know?”
“The things the others won’t talk about. The things I can’t tell another soul on New Scythia. But I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, and I’ve let this go too long. Every story has an origin, you say. Well, let me tell you ours. Yours and mine.”
***
Once, Orithyia began, there was a man in irons.
He was a liar and thief, an insolent and terrible creature, and he had to be dealt with.
No. No, those are the things I tell myself because of what came after. The things I say to make myself feel better about it all, to convince myself what happened had to happen, that we had no choice, that it was simply the way things needed to end.
Yes, there was once a man in irons. But he was honest, and he took only knowledge, and that knowledge was not stolen but hard-earned. He was not insolent, but polite, even charming, though the conditions I met him in left the latter somewhat lacking.
He was a man in irons, locked beneath the castle in New Scythia, because he’d been caught scaling our walls. He had seen our city, and found our port, and for that he had to die. It was the way of things. It was our law.
But he was just a man, and when I went to interrogate him, he was afraid, and tired, and resigned to what was to come. I was not the first Amazon to speak with him. I was a captain then, not a general, and head of castle security, where he was caught, so my soldiers found him. And he had been handled roughly during his capture—we’d found a thief in our house, after all, and it did not feel unjust to make him aware of just how much danger he had brought upon himself—and he’d been thrown into chains and locked beneath the castle until we were done with him.
We couldn’t execute him immediately, of course. We had to learn if anyone else knew of our island, if we should expect an invasion, or a war. He was not tortured, but he was left alone, for days and days, to think on what he’d done, to realize his mistake, to consider, to truly consider, how truthful he needed to be about the allies who may come to his rescue, or to seek to plunder our island.
But he came alone. He told me that. And I did not believe him at first. I told him as much, with words, and with my fist, when he smiled and told me no one knew where he was. But he never deviated from that line, he remained true to his claim, and no one came looking for him. No one ever came looking for him.
Because, it turned out, he’d told the truth.
We accused him of being a thief. Why wouldn’t we? He came in the night, under cover of darkness. He scaled our walls like a burglar. Dressed in black. To a place he was not welcome, seeking an unlocked window. Of course, we thought he was a thief.
But he said he did not come to steal. He came only to prove that a myth was real.
He found a map.
We Amazons are relentless perfectionists. We had worked for centuries to scrub our existence from the world. Erasing our island from maps and records, changing navigational charts to warn of reefs and rocky outcroppings. We quietly told the world that New Scythia did not exist and worked even harder to tell sailors these waters were unwelcoming. Not that here monsters dwelled, but ruin, and emptiness.
But this man in irons had found a map. And on that map, where on all others nothing existed, he found an island. Our island.
He was a man who sought to answer questions. That was what he was, above all else. A man who went seeking answers. And he wanted to know if our island existed.
“I just wanted to be able to say I saw it,” he told me, later. After many nights demanding answers from him. After nights where I called him a liar and a thief. After nights when I’d stopped calling him those things, because I had seen beyond the dirty prisoner’s garb, beyond the irons.
There’s a strange thing, my son, that happens when you meet a good person. They make you see the flaws in yourself. Because we all, in the end, want to be good people.
I don’t know that I was the only one who looked past his transgressions. Likely I was. Perhaps a guard or two might have seen that ending his life felt ridiculously wasteful or unnecessary. But I didn’t just pity him. I was captain of castle sec
urity, and yet I found friendship in the company of a thief and a liar. I spoke with him every day, at first as enemies, and then as friends. We knew about the world outside, you must understand, but we never saw it. We never lived it. Here, on this beautiful island, among our wonderful sisters, we were perfect. But we never left this place. And he spoke about the outside world with such love. He was an explorer, this man, and he found wonder in every small corner of the world. That was what brought him to us. Not greed, but curiosity. He had found a sliver of this Earth he had never seen before, and he wanted to lay eyes on it, as he had so many other places.
Do you want me to say it? I’ll say it. It’s too late to lie now, after all, and it’s better that you know the truth, because the truth is more beautiful than any lie I can spin. We had that in common, your father and me. We were called liars to our face, when neither of us had a taste for deception.
And so I will not lie. I loved this man in irons, this thief, this fool. This witty, brave idiot, who unwittingly forfeited his life by going to a place he found on a map and asked: What is this? What wonder does it hold?
Our partings changed over time. At first, I would matter-of-factly inform him his time would grow short. We’ll have to kill you, you see. You’ve seen our island. And, at first, he would beg for his life, plead with us to understand his motivation to believe him.
And later, I would tell him his time was growing short, and that we would have to put him to death, for he had seen our island, but regret crept into my voice. Apology, even, as I knew, I knew in my heart, his intent, as stupid as it had been, was pure, was without malice. I’m sorry, I would say, near the end, but we cannot let you leave here alive, for you’ve seen our secret place.
He stopped pleading, eventually. His parting words would be only that he wished he had more time. That he wished things could be different.
I asked him once, near the end, if he regretted coming to New Scythia. If he wished he had not given in to his curiosity. If he’d left well enough alone.
But then we would never have met, he told me, and he smiled, and I knew, as I’d come to know him so well by then, that he was not lying. It wasn’t some maudlin statement from a dying man. These were matter-of-fact words from someone with nothing left to lose. Perhaps you were the one last mystery I was meant to discover, he said, and I told him he was an idiot and that he’d die here no matter what he said to me.
But that night I went to the docks, and I found a small boat, recently repaired but out of service, and I brought it to a little cove, rarely used, and left it there. The next few nights I gathered supplies, a little at a time, food that would not perish, fresh water in skins that would go un-missed. I found fishing line and hooks, and clothing.
And a few days later I helped the man in irons escape.
I was captain of the guard, of course. I knew every route, every pathway. I knew by heart the schedules and patrols of my soldiers. Moving one ghost of a man a mile in this city might seem difficult, but I traveled the veins of the castle my whole life, and I walked unquestioned in any hall.
I brought this foolish man to that cove, to the little boat, laden with supplies, and I held his boney body in my arms, and I told him to run.
Come with me, he said. Come see the world. It’s so much bigger than this place. New Scythia is a beautiful gem in the middle of the ocean, but you have so much more to see. Don’t stay here.
This is my home, I told him. This is my responsibility. This is my place.
You’ll be punished for letting me go, he said. I’ll stay. Let them behead me, or hang me, or whatever fate awaits. I won’t have you suffer for what I brought upon myself.
They’ll throw you from the cliffs, I said. I’ll throw you from the cliffs. I am captain of the guard. It will be my job to push you myself. I cannot ask one of my soldiers to do it. I will not have your death on their hands, and I will not force myself to look upon another whom I ordered to kill you for the rest of my life. It’s the only way it will happen. If you stay, I will kill you.
We must have stood there for an hour, in each other’s arms. I can still feel his heartbeat against my chest. The way the mustiness of the prison cell mixed with the cool ocean air. It sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Star-crossed lovers. But there is nothing worse than star-crossed lovers. It is the cruelest of punishments, fit only for stories that romanticize the horror and pain and shame of it all. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. Not my worst enemy. Not anyone.
That man, no longer in irons, stepped into the little boat and stared at me with eyes lost and alone. His breathing was shallow, as was mine. Tears fell hot down my cheeks. I knew I would go on. I knew I would return to my duties, and find some way of masking my role in his escape. Perhaps I would be punished. Demoted. Stripped of my rank. But that night I didn’t care. Send me to the kitchens to work. I wanted nothing to do with upholding our cruel laws anymore. Not if they could lead to heartbreak like this.
Perhaps, in the end, I might have chosen differently if I’d known about you, that night. It was too soon to tell. I had no idea. Not an inkling. But what choice did I have? He would have been sentenced to death even sooner if our affair had been uncovered. And then I truly would have never seen him again, never been allowed back to his cell, not even to say goodbye before the execution. No, it was for the better than neither of us knew. Especially with what happened next.
I watched him row the small boat out to sea, his eyes never leaving mine. I swear we would have locked eyes until the little craft carried him out into the fog. And that is why I saw the pain in his eyes before I heard the arrow hiss through the air, before I knew the thump I heard was the shaft piercing his heart. A perfect strike, a merciful killing blow.
The man slumped over in the boat, which the tide caught just then, pulling him slowly out to a watery grave.
I knew who made the shot before I saw her. Lampedo, then not yet queen but already one of our greatest warriors, walked quietly down from the rocky outcropping above to stand beside me, bow in hand. We said nothing for a long moment, only the waves and our breathing breaking the silence.
“I did this out of love for you, Orithyia,” she said, finally. And after months of talking with the man who could not lie, I had become so very adept at discerning the truth when someone spoke. But I knew Lampedo, and I knew this was no lie. We’d been in love once ourselves, when we were young, before responsibility overtook us, and I knew always when she tried to deceive me.
“Why?” I asked. I didn’t need an answer. I didn’t want one. But what else do you say in a moment like that? What else do you do but ask why?
“Do you remember the first thing he said to us, when we found him?” Lampedo said. She’d been there that night. She was not part of the castle guard, but already being groomed to rule, and so she’d been there for the initial questioning. “He said, ‘I just wanted to be able to say I saw it.’ If he lived, others would come. No matter how innocent his intentions, his life would have meant destruction and war.”
“Why let it go this far?” I asked. “Why here? Why not stop me at the castle?”
“You deserved your goodbye,” she said. “And by all the gods, you deserved the blessing of not having him die by your hand. Let that blood be mine to carry so you don’t have to.”
I gritted my teeth and fought back grief. I thought, mistakenly, that my punishment would be less if I remained stoic and emotionless. It didn’t matter, though.
“What happens next?” I said.
“Nothing,” Lampedo said. “You will return to your duties. I will say that this man, this remarkable thief, had been planning his escape for months. So clever he was, he evaded our relentless castle guards, but was killed during the escape. I commend Captain Orithyia and her soldiers for their fine work.”
“Why? Why do this?”
“I will be queen someday,” Lampedo said. “And I will not let a mistake of the heart prevent me from appointing the woman I trust the most to lead my army.�
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“What if I don’t want that?” I said.
“Then when I offer, you say no. Remain captain of the guard. Become a Keeper of Athena. You have free will, Orithyia. Gods know you’ve exercised it enough already. But I won’t have you throw your life away tonight. Not for this. You can throw it away later.”
Lampedo walked away, disappearing into the night. We never spoke of that conversation again. But you know the rest. She was true to her word.
I loved only one other being in all my life more than that man in irons, Artem. I gave that person away and sent him to the Island of Unwanted Things to keep him safe.
And for that, I will be sorry for all the rest of my days.
***
“One of the sitting queens of the Amazons killed my father. To keep a secret,” Artem said.
Orithyia nodded.
“Why tell me this now?”
“I don’t know,” Orithyia said. “Because his memory deserved better. Because you shouldn’t have to just be woven into a tapestry of secrets. Because I never thought I’d see you again and now you’re here in front of me and I can’t keep up the myth anymore. Because you never got to meet your father and sometimes that’s a good thing, but other times, it’s a tragedy, and I wanted you to know which.”
“What am I supposed to do with this information?” Artem said. “I can’t go avenge my father on Lampedo, right? Challenge her to a duel for my father’s honor? Call her out for her lies to her entire people?”
“You could do all of those things,” Orithyia said. “And you’ll choose the right path, because I know who you’ve become. But I told you because I’ve withheld something that was your right to know for too long, and we’re about to go to war together and I did not want either of us to die with secrets still untold.”
Artem felt as though his skin were rippling with rage and disgust. He had always known there was something more to the story, that he never knew the whole truth.
“You loved my father,” Artem said, the words difficult to form in his mouth.
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