by Harley James
Sophia ran to her mare and mounted, her throat tight as hope crumpled like the delicate red anemones trampled beneath the horse’s hooves as they thundered off.
Bear up. Her mother’s constant edict.
It would be a disgrace to let fear overwhelm her. Only the helot slaves and the perioiki trade class were allowed emotional expressiveness. The Spartan code demanded restraint of its full-blooded citizens, and particularly its aristocracy.
Restraint in all things, except on the battlefield.
Sophia spurred her sure-footed mare toward the city. Asclepius, I implore your aid to guide our healers! How could one of Sparta’s kings die from a snake bite? Kings were supposed to die on the battlefield. Or old in their beds surrounded by their grandchildren, their legacy.
What would his legacy be if he died now?
Her older brother Niketas wasn’t ready to be one of Sparta’s kings.
Papa, no. Please don’t go. She still had so much to ask him. So much to share. No one loved her or believed in her like he did. Theirs was an uncomplicated love. Such a rare thing.
And time was running out to set her dream in motion. Damn. Damn, damn, damn! Why hadn’t she the courage to bring it up with Papa before? Without him, how would she build the support needed to free Sparta?
She blinked through a blur of tears as the horses’ hooves clattered on the flagstone streets. Herodion shouted an advance warning to the shoppers as he and Sophia cantered through the agora toward the Agiad palace.
The market was a busy, colorful place with the gem-hued peplons of the full-blooded Spartan women and blooms of the fuchsia-colored bougainvillea spilling like rebellious children over the earnest lines of the agora’s Doric columns.
Unlike the finely embroidered peplos she wore today, Sophia loved to disguise herself in simple slave clothing that Herodion supplied her and lose herself in the agora’s heartbeat. Watching the business transactions and letting the gossip ebb and flow about her, she could become another shopper. No one watching her every bumble. No expectations.
She could simply be.
Besides racing the chariot with her brother or gathering flowers and herbs on the mountainside, it was the only place she felt unfettered.
Now, the buzz of commerce and gossip died away as the vendors and shoppers turned their assessing gazes on their Agiad princess. They knew one of their kings was gravely ill. They wondered, and they watched, and most of all, they judged.
In their eyes, she wasn’t as calm, graceful, or athletic as she should be. Instead she was too tall, too clumsy, too expressive, too emotional, and spent too much of her time observing instead of being productive.
And now here she was, eyes welling with tears, once again confirming their criticism. Weak. Pathetic. Unworthy. All taunts she’d heard at various times through the years. Behind her back, in whispers and sneers.
Don’t look at them. She would utterly come apart this time.
Herodion jumped down first as they reached the royal stables, grabbed her mare’s reins, and squeezed her shoulder before she turned to hurry down the wide walkway flanked by tall, grooved columns.
Don’t trip, Sophie. And please, please, please, please save my father, Zeus.
King Tychos had returned home from a dozen war campaigns. He was strong and faithful to the gods. Surely they wouldn’t strike down such a fine warrior.
Her feet scooted across the paved stoa upon which she’d carved two sets of initials after watching Alexios—beautiful, dark warrior—silently endure his ritual beating seven years ago. Her twelve-year-old eyes had been riveted on him as he bore the flogging with not one whisper, not one grimace. But his eyes…
Fathomless. Intelligent.
Ferocious.
They haunted her still.
Bastard of Sparta’s other royal house, he was grudgingly respected for his audacity in battle. Envied and feared. Despised for being half helot, half Spartiate.
No one saw his layers. What was underneath his aloof, brutal exterior.
She did. She’d watched him for years. He was as much an outsider as she was.
He would be hers. And together they would re-map Sparta’s destiny.
The massive door to her parents’ chambers stood ajar, concerned members of the governing Assembly milling about in the courtyard. The knot in her throat expanded as she stepped inside the blessedly cool room, her father’s groans nearly undoing what was left of her composure.
Bear up, Sophie. She swiped at her eyes. She could not dishonor her father with tears if these were to be his final moments.
“Sophia, come darling.” Queen Eleni’s serene voice betrayed only a hint that something was amiss. It was enough to spur Sophia out of the shadows, outwardly poised as she was expected to be.
Don’t squint and don’t shuffle your big feet.
She knew by heart the location of every uneven tile in this entire palace so she would be fine. “I am here, mother.”
The physician stepped aside as Sophia advanced to the bedside. King Tychos’s dark hair clung to his temples, damp with the sweat of his fever and numerous seizures the snake bite had triggered. She took her father’s large hand between her own, and he opened eyes of deep Mediterranean blue, which he’d passed on to both her and Niketas.
“Sophia, my joy.” He coughed, a deep wheezing surging up from his now-sunken chest.
Her knuckles whitened as she held his fingers, as though by sheer strength she could make the venom in his blood go away. “Father, please hang on. I will make new sacrifices to Artemis, Apollo, and Asclepius. Sparta needs you.” I need you.
He, Niketas, and Herodion were the only ones for whom she didn’t have to wear a mask.
King Tychos’ gaze settled on her brother who stood beside her. “Sparta will…flourish under Niketas’s…careful leadership.” Something passed between the two men which Sophia didn’t understand or find comforting.
She dropped to her knees beside the king. “Pater, look at me.” Tychos coughed again, then brought his gaze to hers. Gone were the shadows she’d seen when he’d looked upon her brother.
She drew a deep breath, but it wasn’t enough to make her voice as steady as she’d hoped. Her stomach churned unpleasantly. “I would—” She exhaled heavily again. “I ask your blessing to marry Alexios instead of Lysandros.” It came out in a rush.
Gasps sounded from all corners of the room.
“Sophia!” her mother rasped.
Niketas grabbed her arm to hoist her to her feet, his face mottled with anger. “By sword and salt, Sophie. How can you be so selfish, asking something for yourself when father is a breath away from embracing the Elysian Fields?”
Her hands flew to her hot cheeks. “I’m sorry—”
“You’re always sorry, yet you do nothing to amend your ways.” Niketas’s disappointment ricocheted through the chamber. “It seems mother has been right all this time. Father and I have done you no favors by humoring your emotional ways.”
“Don’t let fear make you angry, Niketas. I’m not trying to hurt anyone. I’m only trying to live my truth. That’s what you’ve always told me to do. And the truth is, I believe all people should be free.” She turned back to her father to gauge his reaction.
King Tychos’s blue eyes shone bright through a veneer of pain. "There are too many powerful forces that will work against you, Sophie. I don't want your life to be so hard." His body convulsed through another coughing fit. “Bring forth a new generation of Agiad Spartans…Change your sons’ and daughters’ hearts from the time they are small, and then maybe in time things will change.”
“But father, Sparta will die out before then! We cannot send our soldiers on endless campaigns and abandon our babies on hillsides for the slightest imperfection and still expect our population to thrive. According to the city accountant, our census has been in decline for the last five years.”
“Sophia, you shame your father with your undisciplined outburst," came her mother’s slightly u
nmodulated voice.
She looked at the queen and shook her head. “How can you be so calm right now? It’s unnatural! He’s fading before our eyes.” She grabbed her father's cold hand as though she could tether him to this plane. His labored breathing and grimaces tore at her heart. How could his hands be so pale and frigid when he was burning up? “Pater, please…” Don't die and take your love and my dream with you. “If we don’t move forward with new ideas, the state will run out of money and land to settle on our military graduating classes. Then our men who devote their lives to protecting Sparta will no longer have a means to support themselves. If they can't pay their fees, they lose their citizenship. Our whole institution is going to implode. We must find new ways to keep Sparta vibrant.”
Alexios represented the new vision she had for Sparta. He was the only one who could understand—truly understand—both freedom and slavery.
Niketas made a rude noise. “You think freeing the slaves will make our land situation better? You are still a child in so many ways, Sophie!” He cursed and left the room.
Her heart thumped faster as the queen rose to walk toward her. Tychos writhed on the bed, sat up, laughed wildly, then fell back down against the blankets as though dead. Sophia gasped. “What’s happening?”
The surgeon and his attendant crowded around her father on the opposite side of the bed, pulling aside his wrap to apply their dwindling supply of poultice on his red-streaked, festering thigh wound. “More seizures and hallucinations. They come and go as the infection worsens.”
Sophia willed new tears not to fall, especially when Niketas returned with three frowning Elders.
She should stand in their presence, but she remained on her knees, her hands wrapped tightly around one of her father's. Giorgios, one of the Elders she’d always respected—and grandfather of the man everyone wanted her to marry—moved toward her. “Sophia, you will regret filling your father's final moments with angst.”
He was probably right. The pain of it twisted like a living thing inside her. But who would be the voice of the oppressed? No one else seemed to care. “You are all afraid of change, of losing your positions of power. But enslaving the helots doesn't strengthen Sparta, it weakens her. Imagine how strong we would be if all men and women were free. If everyone had a stake in the health of Sparta. Think of all the trades that would flourish!”
Her ancestors had invaded southern Greece and enslaved the people of the more fertile Messenian region. Since then the proud, rebellious Messenian helots had chafed under the yoke of Spartan state-ownership.
Elder Zenon’s lip curled on a sneer. “You are a naïve fool. The helots would slit the throat of every full-blooded Spartiate given that kind of freedom. They are protected under our laws, and for a conquered race, they are treated far better than many freemen the world over, much less slaves. Their complaints are beneath our dignity to even consider.”
Sophia gasped. “How can you say that? They are terrorized yearly during the Krypteia. Alexios’s mother was murdered last fall during that savage event. People are not meant to live in fear, but to live free.”
Niketas reached for her arm once again, but one look from their mother made his arm drop to his side. He glared at Sophia, and she knew, even though he loved her, part of him would always hate her for this. For pressing their father this way. For trying to complicate a dream of his own—the only one he’d ever had.
He wanted to be king. Had wanted it since they were children.
He would swing her up onto his stallion, and they’d ride to the bluff overlooking the dusty drill fields east of the Eurotas River. There they’d eat the sweets he'd pinched from the palace kitchen and watch the older boys of the warrior school train until they were beaten and bloody. All to become Sparta's next glorious hoplites who would one day fight under her brother's command.
Sophia’s gaze fixed on Niketas. She wanted him to free the slaves. To change the power structure. To change the entire fabric of their society.
Could he still love her when her dream meant obstacles to—maybe even the destruction of—his own?
She tried to compose her voice. “Niketas, we can do this together. As king, you would be best positioned to effect change. All I ask is that you put yourself in any helot's shoes. Your voice and actions will speak louder than anyone else’s when you give up—”
“How dare you do this now?” Her brother’s voice vibrated with a tangle of emotions that pricked her raw.
Unable to hold his furious gaze any longer, she turned her attention back to her gray-faced father. His lips were moving rapidly as though in silent argument with an unknown foe.
She was being selfish. Would probably hate herself for doing this, for pressing her case while Papa lay there, fighting for his life.
“I thought I’d have more time.” Her voice was a breath of sound no one heard.
More time to change her father’s heart, to influence his actions.
Didn't people always think they had more time?
It was perhaps one of humanity's greatest follies.
Stay the course. Lydia's voice came back to her as they’d stood over the gruesome remains of an abandoned baby in the foothills of Mount Taygetos. Scavengers had gotten there before they had. Lydia, a helot, had the luxury of weeping openly over the brutalized baby. Sophia had borne down on her sadness, somehow pushing it back with the force of her Spartan upbringing. Until she slammed into her bedroom and smothered her cries with her pillow.
She’d been born into the wrong culture, to the eternal dismay of her mother. Especially because her father had always been tolerant of her passionate, crusading nature.
Sparta’s ideology was flawed in many ways. A small voice in her head told her to turn a blind eye. To enjoy the benefits of her position as a Spartan princess. To take the path of least resistance and retain the love and devotion of her brother. He'd always been so good to her. As had her father.
She put her face next to the king's ear, her throat achy and tight. “I can't imagine a world without you in it.”
“I...am loath to...leave you all. But what would you...have me do at this...august hour, paidi mou?” he whispered back, his eyes suddenly clear, but wells of pain and unhappiness.
Just as Elder Giorgios had predicted, regret squeezed her heart.
“I would do anything to take your pain, pater. But I humbly ask for your blessing to marry Alexios.”
Gasps and curses behind her raised the tiny hairs on her arms. She risked a glance at the incensed faces of the Elders and her family, catching the brief look of surprised joy that flashed across the face of the surgeon's helot attendant.
And the disappointment on Giorgios’s. His grandson, Lysandros, was a fine athlete and Olympic charioteer.
But he wasn't a warrior.
He wasn’t Alexios.
The king’s bastard embodied everything she needed in a partner for change. Even if he didn’t know it yet.
“By the gods, have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Niketas, cool your ardor. Swearing is not only pointless, but undignified.” Tension drew the skin tight across Queen Eleni’s cheekbones.
“Are you really this deranged, girl?” Elder Zenon spat. “You said yourself that Alexios’s mother got herself killed last year during the Kryptia for doing who knows what after curfew. Why would you shame your family by flaunting our laws and aligning with one such as Alexios?”
Sophia launched to her feet, her hands clenching into fists, her entire body quivering. Never, never, never had she wanted to hit someone so badly. “Alexios’s mother was on her way home after assisting a woman with a difficult birth in a neighboring village. She was a midwife, you clueless jackal!”
“Sophia, have a care!” her mother warned.
Niketas pinned Sophia with an intense look that widened the gulf between them. “What has gotten into you?” He shook his head, his eyes wide. “It’s bad enough that you want to unravel the underpinnings of our entire c
ulture, but now you want to whore yourself out to the one whom the helots look to as their savior?”
Sophia lurched toward her brother, her palm and fingers connecting with a sharp crack against the stubbled skin of his cheek. She stared at the red mark she’d left, her heart free-falling down a giant chasm.
It was quiet as a crypt in her father’s chamber as she lifted her gaze to search her brother’s eyes. Gone was the warmth that she’d always depended on—turned to—when any of her wild escapades had gone awry. She felt shipwrecked on an island of her own destruction.
He grabbed her upper arms and shook her so hard her teeth rattled. Once. Twice. Then he shoved her back against the bed where she collapsed in a pathetic heap next to her now seemingly unconscious father.
The Elders whispered amongst themselves, casting alarmed looks at her. Queen Eleni’s chest rose and fell rapidly, but still—still—she sat there with her hands in her lap, her gaze fixed on the wall. Sophia knew more about her mother’s composure than she did about the women’s hopes or dreams.
She’d never let that be true for any children of her own.
“Niketas, please understand—” She rolled to sit up, reaching out her hand.
“Gods damn you and your ridiculous ideas, Sophie!” He roared. “Why should the Spartiates give the helots their freedom when there’s absolutely nothing in it for them?”
She scooted to the end of the bed and rubbed her eyes, trying to suppress the need to sob openly. “A world where all people are free is a better world with less fear.”
Niketas laughed coldly. “Any Spartan worth his salt feels no fear.”
There was a commotion as the surgeon approached her father’s side with more poultice. She hung her head. Everything happening in this room was hopeless. She’d helped Lydia care for a helot man with the same condition. It hadn’t gone well. In fact, it had been horrible.
Father was going to die.
Giorgios raised both hands. “Hush your quarreling, the king tries to speak!”
Sophia lurched to her feet and grabbed her brother’s hand, pulling him toward the man who’d always seemed larger than life. She’d imagined King Tychos dying with honor on the battlefield. Looking at him now, so gray and unanimated, she wanted to weep loudly and to hell with Spartan reserve.