Spartan Beast (The Hellennium Book 2) Read online

  He scoffed at himself. It was hard to stop thinking of the world in terms of shades and unseen forces, even though they had no place in his new universe of lines and layers and suns and planets, and men and women whose machines made them the equal of any god.

  Laonome was gone. She was not a shade and could not haunt him, which meant that he haunted and punished himself. Even knowing that, he could not stop. The universe around him was a cold, sterile void; if only he could swallow a portion of it to inhabit this husk that was forced to go on living.

  But then, no, no one was forcing him to live. It was his choice, and men could always change their minds.

  He shut his eyes and steeled himself to watch his love die nine or twenty times.

  Something stung him on the crown of his head. He started and flew onto one knee, sword in one hand, the other on his scalp, where he quickly realized he had been pelted with a stone. How long had Thalassia been gone? An hour? He had claimed not to require her protection, and he did not, but... her presence in a fight was comforting.

  He had risen, aiming his sword in the direction from which he presumed the rock to have come, but the moonlit space was empty. He turned left and right, and in the latter direction saw his assailant: Thalassia, who could pass for a shade when she wanted to. She crossed the final few feet separating them and sank gracefully, cross-legged into the grass. She reached over and picked up the missile she had flung at him, a marked ivory cube, which joined a duplicate already in her palm. Dice. Under her other arm was a thin, rectangular board, painted with colorful squares and Egyptian markings.

  She set the board on the grass in front of her and emptied onto it a canvas pouch of small game pieces of painted clay.

  “I don't know what the fuck this is,” she said. “Hopefully you do.”

  “It is... Senet,” Demosthenes said, sitting and laying his sword in the grass. By setting it to racing, the scare had actually done his heart some good. “It's Egyptian.”

  “I got that much. Can you teach me how to play?”

  “I could,” Demosthenes halfway agreed. “How did you get it?”

  “I asked,” she said, giving no indication that she saw the question for the accusation it was, even though she surely did. “I promised to return it when we're done.”

  He stared blankly at a bright purple hieroglyph of a bird. “I told you to enjoy yourself. This is not your idea of a good time.”

  “Fortunately for you, I rarely do what I'm told.” Thalassia smiled and extended the dice to him on her open palm.

  Demosthenes breathed a sigh. It was one of relief, even if he did his best to make it seem one of annoyance. “I would have to be the one born yesterday, not you, to be so foolish as to roll dice against you.”

  Back in Athens, he had had occasion to witness Thalassia's ability to ensure that whatever numbers she wanted would more often than not be the ones to come up. It had to do with things called angles and force and trajectories that certain types of philosopher were always on about.

  It just now occurred, in his present penniless state, that such an ability might be useful to one in want of money. With no gods to punish the wicked for such sins, what was there to lose but a little integrity?

  “I'm three days old, thank you, and you can roll for me.” She pushed the dice into his hand. “Will you teach me, or what?”

  He did, and by the time the noise of the crowd had faded into cricket song and he surrendered his bleary eyes to sleep, he was fairly certain that, in spite of her concession to fairness and profession of ignorance, Thalassia was letting him win.

  * * *

  11. The Nymph's Tit

  The next day, at Thalassia's urging, since their ship did not depart for another day, they made the strenuous hike (for mortals, at least) to the summit of Corinth's monolithic acropolis, where stood what was perhaps the greatest temple to Aphrodite in all of Hellas. Business there appeared slow today for its state-employed prostitutes. Unsurprising, perhaps. Most of Corinth's famous temple whores these days worked at other sanctuaries down below, since it was a rare man who could make this climb with desire and stamina intact in the early summer heat, like that which bore down now. The temple itself had wares on hand, of course, mostly to accommodate passers-through coming to 'see the sights.'

  The two arriving now with that very purpose had no intention of offering their patronage to the temple, but truly had only come for the view. Demosthenes himself did not see a great deal immediately on arrival at the summit, for his head hung low, while fat droplets of sweat falling from his brow made dark spots on the stone underfoot. Unflagging Thalassia, meanwhile, proceeded to a western outcropping and perched on its edge with her gaze upon the blue, tranquil Gulf of Corinth which they were soon to cross, and where crying gulls circled the square sails of ships crewed by men from cities near and far, Greek and barbarian, heard-of and unknown.

  Demosthenes had not seen one himself, but the sails of the new ships which Eden had designed for Sparta, the ones used to conquer Athens, were triangular. When eventually he got up and joined Thalassia, though not as near the edge as she, he looked for any such sails on the Gulf, but found none.

  Thalassia drew back from the precipice to stand by his side.

  “It's pretty,” she said, an inane but honest observation. “Thank you for bringing me.”

  Demosthenes scoffed. He did not bother to explain why her gratitude was absurd; there were any number of reasons.

  She raised one of them. “I know, I've seen a lot,” she said. “It doesn't mean I can't appreciate this. It's all I've got now.”

  Such words as these might have been spoken with bitterness, but were not. Her voice held acceptance of the exile which, after all, was self-imposed.

  “I've told you of Spiral,” she went on, a touch wistfully.

  She had. Spiral was a floating city among the stars, Magdalen's base and headquarters of the army Thalassia had betrayed.

  “In the Veta Caliate, after the first time we die, for training purposes, Spiral is where we awaken and meet Magdalen for the first time. It was just the two of us, alone in a room. We exchanged some niceties. She was very kind and sweet. Then she took me out and let me see where I was.”

  There was a substantial pause during which the pale gaze aimed out over the Gulf seemed to envisage, temporarily, sights far different than ship's wakes and sea birds and cliffs awash with bright morning sun.

  “Spiral sits on the edge of a nebula,” Thalassia went on. “You don't know what that is. It's what's left after a sun explodes. Think of the most incredible sunset you ever saw and, well, make it fill a thousand skies and give it colors so deep and rich that even letting them share the names of other colors would be a gross insult. Set the hidden faces of all the gods into the swirling clouds, each eye big enough to fit a thousand suns, and...”

  The trance into which Thalassia had inadvertently slipped suddenly broke, her impossibly distant vision shattering. Her head sank.

  “Well, I was never a poet in any language,” she confessed. “When I stood on Spiral, my new body just ten minutes old, and I saw that sky for the first time, I laughed. It's what everyone does, apparently. Then it turns to tears, and you crumple in a heap at Magdalen's feet. That's what I did.”

  She laughed. “And then you get used to it. You stop appreciating things, or appreciate the wrong things. So...” She turned her head toward him, wisps of her plainer-than-usual hair licking her cheek. “Thank you for coming up here with me. I appreciate it.”

  Demosthenes could summon no reply. He had pictured the things she asked him to picture, or tried, but he knew in his heart that his earthbound, mortal mind's eye was utterly insufficient to begin painting the vistas which inhabited hers. He could never know Spiral, or a nebula, or any more than the one sun which felt far too close at the moment. Maybe he could never even really know one who did know those things.

  He knew one thing, though: Thalassia had changed. She was not a new person—hardl
y—but just a few months ago, it would have bordered on unthinkable that he might spend three days alone and in close contact with her without experiencing moments of discomfort or embarrassment or even fear for his physical safety by her hand or tongue. There was no evidence now of the volcanic temper of her past. The change, he recalled, had begun in the days before she had died, but perhaps death had caused it to crystallize.

  It seemed strange now, too, that he had mistrusted her. Now... there was no other hand than hers on this earth in which he would more willingly set his life.

  But then, his life was not worth as much today as it once had been.

  “Sorry for the pointless babble,” Thalassia said after receiving no reply for some time. “Stop me next time.”

  “Half the good things in the world likely began with pointless babble,” Demosthenes philosophized.

  With a vacant half-smile, Thalassia silently agreed. She walked away from the monolith's edge and toward Aphrodite's temple. “You should rest for the climb down,” she said. “I'll just look around. I promise to stay out of trouble.”

  * * *

  She kept her promise. On their descent to the lower city, they wandered a bit before coming upon the street opposite the harbor, where among the stalls selling food and trade goods they found boisterous crowds gathered around tables where men played games of chance overseen by spear-bearing city guards looking outward and keen-eyed watchers with arms as thick around as some men's waists looking in.

  They watched the games for a while, moving from table to table until Thalassia made the inevitable suggestion.

  “We don't need coin,” Demosthenes countered.

  “We don't not need it.”

  The discussion persisted at low intensity until Demosthenes let himself be convinced, and they selected a game. None of the gamblers they had seen so far had been women, and so to avoid undue attention, he would take part, allowing his slave and 'good luck charm' roll the dice on his behalf. It seemed the kind of eccentricity that Corinthians could understand.

  One problem remained, a mildly revolting possible solution to which Thalassia whispered in his ear. Reluctantly, he presented the proposal to one of the guardians, who approved it: instead of five obols, his opening stake would be fifteen minutes of Thalassia's services in private.

  He took his seat, and Thalassia's roll won the pot for him, and so he fortunately never learned whether she would have gone through with payment had they lost.

  Her control of the dice was not absolute, but any control at all was more than others possessed, and enough to ensure she won far more than she lost. After twenty rounds or so, she tapped Demosthenes' shoulder as a signal that the overseers were getting suspicious, or at least annoyed, and it was time to move on. They went to another game and another, doing the same; five in total, not counting the one they left immediately when Thalassia informed him that the dice were loaded. She could have compensated, but out-cheating cheaters seemed a risk hardly worth the payoff.

  By evening's end, when Demosthenes declared the time ripe to quit, they carried silver coin amounting to a month's wages for a skilled laborer in Athens. As they walked away from the waterfront, Thalassia took the lead and stopped them in front of a certain establishment they had passed numerous times. The sign in front, illustrated by a crude pictogram, was The Nymph's Tit.

  Demosthenes asked her with a silent, frustrated look what on earth made her believe he would want a whore.

  “Just wait right here,” she instructed, and she went inside, returning a smile from the armed, well-groomed man leaning by the door. Minutes later she emerged, but not alone. Beside her was a young woman dressed in an over-short chiton of pink linen, her lips painted, flowers wound into her ash blonde hair.

  “This is Ammia,” Thalassia said, coming up to him. “She has strict instructions to clean you up, cut your hair, shave you and get you looking respectable again for Naupaktos, and not to try to sell you anything else. Right, Ammia?” The girl nodded, smiling warmly. “In fact, she won't speak unless spoken to.”

  Demosthenes' eyes fell away from the prostitute's in mild embarrassment while Thalassia rounded behind him and set hands on his shoulders.

  “Come on,” she said, pushing. “If you decide you want to be filthy and hairy again, that's easily achieved.”

  He allowed Thalassia to guide him into a tastelessly decorated foyer, where Ammia took his hand in hers to lead him through a lavender curtain.

  “What about you?” Demosthenes asked Thalassia, who made no move to leave.

  She just smiled and patted her bundle from the agora, and then was out of sight.

  In a tiled bath chamber, Ammia spent the better part of an hour performing the tasks she was paid for, and performing them both clothed and wordlessly. She was good with a razor, and left his cheek smooth and devoid of stinging cuts.

  A cut would have reminded of him Eurydike. Well-meaning, life-loving, easily distracted Eurydike who was now a slave to harsher men.

  He repelled that guilt-inducing incursion on his thoughts; there was no choice.

  At one point, a fresh white chiton and blue cloak were delivered to the room, and at the conclusion of her services, Ammia made to help him dress.

  “These are not mine,” he protested.

  “Your nice Persian said they were,” Ammia explained. Her voice, unheard until now, proved her to be no Corinthian but some child of the far north, doubtless a slave for some portion of her short life.

  Demosthenes thanked the girl, who kissed him lightly on his freshly bared cheek and assured him Thalassia had already handled the bill.

  He came through the curtain into the parlor and stopped cold at the sight of a witch.

  He had seen this witch before, back when Attica was free, in Dekelea when she had stayed there helping to build the walls. The walls from atop which he had witnessed...

  No. It was an avenue of thought which must be blocked in waking hours. Laonome haunted him enough in slumber.

  This witch wore black, as witches would, and her ebon locks hung in damp curls that would flatten into sinuous waves when dry. Bronze hoop bracelets adorned her wrists, a multitude of copper rings her fingers, charms of bone and bead the bare expanse of honey-gold skin, which her ankle-length black gown left exposed, above her breasts.

  Then there were the eyes which she, or one of Ammia's colleagues, had rimmed with blackest kohl, driving any beholder's gaze into pale blue irises which few men were likely to prove able to meet for more than an instant. A shame that her sandals were the same well-worn pair she had been wearing since Athens' fall.

  A shame because so many men would ultimately find their gazes forced there.

  Indeed, the only other time he had seen Thalassia thus, he had averted his eyes as though from the sun and found himself fumbling for words.

  He did better this second time. After a moment's stunned silence, he said, “When I sent you shopping, I had in mind something less... conspicuous.”

  Thalassia, who surely had anticipated his reaction, smiled. “We can afford another dress,” she said. “If you insist.”

  He looked her up and down a few more times, pondering. Thalassia seemed both unbothered by the scrutiny and unworried about the verdict, presently delivered.

  “Keep it,” he declared. “If I am to travel with a barbarian, I may as well travel with a barbarian. It's not as if I will be standing for elections anytime soon.”

  He quickly regretted those last words, which potentially revealed him as not only an Athenian but a prominent one. Evidently they were shedding their physical disguises as of today, but still, there was no need to invite scrutiny.

  Thalassia noticed the slip and reassured him, with a look, that no harm was done. She seemed to be right, since beside him, Ammia's reaction was a smile and quick round of quiet, girlish applause on behalf of a fellow female who had just won the approval of her presumed master.

  They left The Nymph's Tit, rested the night near the harbo
r, and with the dawn they set sail for Naupaktos—though not before having procured for Thalassia a plain, hooded gray cloak she could keep tightly clasped during the voyage, lest the Zakynthan sailors balk at transporting a witch.

  * * *

  12. Agathokles

  Founded by Helot slaves fleeing the yoke of Spartan domination, the young city of Naupaktos had proved a natural and steadfast ally for Athens since even before the latest, just-ended war. Naupaktos's legendary shipyards had constructed thirty-three triremes for the Athenian navy, and two years ago its Messenian leaders had sent troops under Demosthenes' own command to free their enslaved Helot cousins at Pylos.

  Demosthenes had until now, as he came ashore this day, never set foot in the place. It was a small city, barely a city at all compared to the likes of Athens, but then few were. It was more a town with walls, and its seat of government was not hard to find; it was, as with most cities, near the agora. Leaving Thalassia outside, he entered the compound alone. When he saw no faces that were familiar to him, and no one seemed to recognize him (the latter he reckoned a blessing), he pulled aside a clerk and asked him the whereabouts of Agathokles, who had led the Naupaktan contingent at Pylos.

  Armed with an answer, he returned to Thalassia, who waited in her encompassing, hooded gray cloak at the bottom of a set of stone steps built into the uneven ground on which much of Naupaktos sat.

  “Agathokles is presently the most senior of the city's three strategoi,” he informed her. “Not only that, his opinion would appear to hold more weight than any other in the democracy. He is bound to show himself in this place before the day is done.”

  They sat on the stone steps and commenced waiting.

  “What will you ask of him?” Thalassia asked.

  “A roof,” Demosthenes said. “Secrecy. Whatever aid he can render to our cause.”