Myrrine nodded.
“Mother, Silanos is a Cultist.” She grasped Myrrine by the shoulders. “Don’t you see, this blockade was never about marble or money. It’s about you, the Cult hunt you.” She gazed out over the sea, breathing rapidly. “We have to get off of this island.”
“You’ve just seen what happened to the last people who tried,” Myrrine said. “Our only hope was Euneas, my navarchos. He had a theory that there might be a flaw in the blockade pattern.”
“Then summon him,” Kassandra said.
“He vanished at sea, months ago, before you arrived.”
“Where?”
“On a scouting voyage to test his theory about the blockade flaw. He sailed for the Sound of Paros—the narrow channel between the islands.”
“Nobody has found wreckage, or his body?”
“Nothing.”
Kassandra rose. “If he is our only hope, then we must find him.”
* * *
• • •
“Misthios, I do feel that this is a bit of a demotion,” Barnabas moaned as he rowed the tiny skiff. His face and arms ran with sweat and the back of his tunic bore a dark circle of perspiration.
“If you still have the breath to moan, then you’re not working hard enough,” she panted, working the other oar. She glanced over her shoulder to where the rowboat was headed. There it was, just as they had spotted from the mountain on the island’s southwestern corner: just off the salt marshes on the coast was a lone galley, sails hoisted. One of Myrrine’s men had confirmed it was Euneas’s boat.
The turquoise waters all around them lapped and glinted as they drew closer.
Kassandra dropped her oar and stood to face the vessel, then called out through hands cupped around her mouth. “Navarchos Euneas.”
The galley bobbed silently, no reply.
“Bring us closer,” she urged Barnabas.
“Navarchos,” she tried again.
With a shriek, Ikaros swooped down and landed on the ship’s rail. With a flurry of his wings, he seemed to be shrugging, confirming Kassandra’s suspicions: the boat was deserted. She climbed aboard to find it was so. No signs of a struggle, no blood, dropped items or scrapes on the timbers. Just a forgotten ship, drifting silently in this halo of water between the Naxian shore and the Parian blockade. There were sacks of grain, vases of vinegar and oil, stocks of arrows, tools, all neatly stacked.
She dropped down onto the rowboat again. “So why would Euneas bring his ship around here? Mother said he was a bold type.” Her eyes scanned the Naxian coast as she mused, then swung to the Parian cliffs on the far side of the sound. “Perhaps he drew too close to the enemy isle?”
“You may just be right, Misthios,” Barnabas said, leaning forward, peering at the clifftops. “See how the sun catches on something up there?”
She squinted, seeing flashes of metal. Armor? Weapons? Moving too. She cupped a hand to her ear in that direction and heard the soft sound of a man’s pleas. Desperate, ragged.
“During our time on Naxos,” Barnabas continued darkly, “I have heard chilling tales about how Parians execute their captives . . .”
* * *
• • •
Euneas coughed and spat the mouthful of dust from his lips, only for another spadeful to land on his sun-blistered face. He wriggled his several-months-undernourished limbs but found no purchase—buried now almost to his neck. “Coins, I can get you coins,” he croaked. The two Parians roared with laughter at his continuing attempts to broker a deal and win his freedom.
“The sooner you die,” one said, “the quicker Naxos falls, we get our hands on your bitch leader . . . and then there will be nothing Silanos cannot do. Why would we trade all that for some petty bribe?”
The second man patted the spade around Euneas’s neck, compacting the dust there. Next, he uncorked a pot and tilted it over Euneas’s head. Euneas jolted when viscous honey splatted on his hair and rolled down his face in thick streaks.
“Yum,” said the guard. The second guard then walked over to a knobbly pillar of earth nearby and kicked it. Euneas stared at the pillar for a moment, then fell agog at the sudden explosion of black, glistening ants that poured from the nest. They scurried and swirled, angered. The two guards hopped up on a rock, chuckling, watching as the ants swarmed around toward Euneas, the scent of honey intoxicating. He screamed, and could not bring himself to end his scream and close his mouth as they raced for him, surged over his face, into his mouth, his ears, across his bulging eyeballs, up his nose, through his hair. Each bite was like a droplet of fire. Gods, no, this is too horrible a way to perish . . .
Smash!
All of a sudden, the fury of biting fell away. A stench of vinegar curled up Euneas’s nostrils and the shards of a broken amphora skidded before him, the liquid inside driving the ants back like a breaker might chase timid bathers from the shallows. He watched as the lithe woman strode before him and faced the pair of guards. One rushed her and fell, jaw ripped off by her strange spear. The second fell to a wicked blow to the side of the head, stunned.
* * *
• • •
Myrrine accepted the gentle words of veneration offered by the Naxian villagers as she walked through the Phoenix Gardens. The scent of summer jasmine, thyme and lemon mixed in the sweltering air as her people chattered and enjoyed the game, fruits and wine she had provided for this feast. It was all she could do, in such dark times—to distract them from the fact that their jewel of an island was in fact a prison to Silanos . . . to the Cult.
“Kassandra is right,” Aspasia whispered, walking by her side. The Athenian beauty mirrored her own expression: a smile of polished teeth, desperately trying to distract from the troubled eyes. “The Cult are here for you. Every day you remain here, you are in danger—your people too.”
“I prayed last night,” Myrrine said. “For the first time in years. I asked the Gods to spirit me from this place, Kassandra by my side.”
“No,” Aspasia whispered. “Don’t you see? That would make things easy for the Cult, for then you and she would be combined as one target.” She linked an arm with Myrrine and pulled her a little closer—ostensibly like two old friends falling into a fond recollection of shared memories. “You must come away with me.”
Myrrine frowned. “I have spent twenty-three years alone, thinking my daughter dead. I cannot, will not, part from her again.” A clack of cups and a refrain of tuneful laughter rose from those around the babbling fountain, and the tanner and his family raised their drinks to her as she passed. “Archon!” they hailed her. Sanguine, trusting, good people. Talons of guilt scraped across her heart. “Talk of leaving is fanciful. These people, they need me. I could not bear to abandon them. They have been my family for all these years.”
A gasp sounded, a cup fell, heads swung to the low gates of the villa gardens.
Myrrine and Aspasia looked that way. The two brown-shelled guards there parted, dropping their spears and helping the hobbling trio that entered. Myrrine shook free of Aspasia and rushed to them.
“How? Where?” she wept, cupping poor Euneas’s swollen red face as Kassandra and Barnabas set him down on a marble bench by a statue of Apollo.
“I tried to . . . explore the Parian . . . cliffs . . .” he panted as helpers came and began dabbing at his angry wounds with wet rags and pastes. “They beat me, starved me, flayed me for months. I was to die today—my head was to be stripped of flesh by ants. She killed one of my torturers. And the second one . . .”
Kassandra rested her hands on her hips, glancing archly back toward the western stretches of the island and the Sound of Paros. “The ants did not go unfed.”
Myrrine held her by the shoulders, prideful and elated. But Kassandra’s eyes were troubled. “Daughter?”
Kassandra took her to one side of the crowd around Euneas and handed her a scr
oll. “I found this on one of the guards.”
Myrrine frowned, unfurling the hide document. Her eyes widened as she beheld the strange cipher. It was not at all like the Greek lexicon. Dark clouds rolled across her heart as she realized she had seen this before. “Cultic script,” she said. “You were right about Silanos.”
“That was never in question,” Kassandra said. “But when I planted the second guard in the ground, I asked him from whom Silanos took such orders. He said the scroll came from one of the kings.”
“I don’t understand. Kings? Which kings?”
Kassandra’s eyes rolled up to meet hers. “One of the two Spartan kings.”
Myrrine’s eyes grew distant. “Once, they had the ephors under their control. Now, it is a king. But . . . which king?”
Kassandra absently shook her head. “I barely remember King Archidamos. And King Pausanias rose to power after that night—he is but a name to me. The guard certainly did not know: I thought he might confess when the ants rushed for him, but he said that all Cultists retained their anonymity. The traitor king goes by a moniker: the Red-eyed Lion.”
Myrrine rolled up the scroll, causing the two halves of the broken, red wax seal to meet again. Upon the wax disk, the image of a lion’s face was stamped. “Despite all that happened to us in Sparta, we cannot let the wretched king remain on his throne,” Myrrine said through a cage of teeth, shaking. Then she threw her hands in the air, in the direction of the coast. “Yet we cannot leave this island.”
“Archon,” said Euneas as he edged over toward them, his face now a patchwork of white creams. “Kassandra told me how things are. Well you should not despair, for just before I was captured, I confirmed my suspicions about the Parian blockade pattern. There is a way out. The chances are slim indeed, but if we time it right . . .”
The tanner, the woodsmen, the guards and the herders and all their families had gathered around now. She met the eyes of every single one of them. At last, she smiled sadly. “It matters not. I shan’t be leaving this island.”
“Myrrine?” Aspasia gasped.
“Mother?” Kassandra added. “The Hollow Land is calling. Can’t you hear it? It is time to return to Sparta.”
Myrrine straightened, her chin jutting defiantly. “I will not slip away and leave my people in the clutches of Silanos. If we were to escape, then he would find out eventually. It would be these people who would suffer for it.”
Kassandra glanced at Euneas and flicked her head toward Myrrine. “Tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
Euneas managed a semigrin. “Remember the time I shot two curlews with one arrow, Archon?”
TWELVE
Silanos gripped the edge of the ship’s rail, his eyes widening with glee. “By all the Gods, they’re coming at us,” he yelped in excitement as a speedy galley cut out toward his vessel from the Naxian shore. It was the Adrestia—that ship they had allowed to enter Naxian waters some months back—the one with the sister on board. He stared at the approaching ship’s decks, sure he could see her there once again—perched on the rail and holding one of the ropes. And was that . . . “The mother too!” he gasped. This would be the greatest feat imaginable—to capture and deliver both to the next Cult gathering.
“They’re building up to ramming speed,” one of his crew said, a twinge of fear in his voice.
“Let them draw close,” Silanos replied, seeing that the vessel was indeed speeding toward their ship’s side, the bronze beak glinting in the sunlight. “Then signal our boats fore and aft. Bring them around to smash this ship like pincers.”
“It will be done, Archon,” said the crewman.
“The sister and the mother will be kept in chains,” Silanos enthused to a nearby hand. “As for the other survivors, we will rope them to lead ingots and toss them into the water, making sure that the rope is long enough for them to kick their way almost to the surface—so they can claw at the air with their fingers but not reach it with their mouths. Ah, to watch a man drown is a fine thing. To have him drown within reach of hope makes it all the finer . . . and for the drowning man, those few heartbeats it takes to slip into death must feel like a lifetime!”
A hubbub of confusion from his marines and soldiers arose behind him. “What’s wrong?” he snapped at them, twisting around. He saw for himself before they answered. Where were the trailing and leading boats? Behind his ship, the waters were deserted. The boat following them was trailing somewhere behind the headland of cliffs. And ahead: nothing—the lead boat had already tacked past the hilly coastline there and out of sight. They were alone. His confidence crumbled like a pillar of wet sand hit by a wave as he visualized his ring of blockade boats, then saw this stretch of the Naxian coast for what it was.
“A blind spot . . .” he croaked.
He looked up just as the oncoming Naxian vessel sliced through the waves at an incredible speed, coming like an ax for his flagship’s side. He saw the malicious glares of the crew, the sun-burnished old captain, the sister perched on the rail and staring right at him, heard the frantic chant of the keleustes O-opop-O-opop-O-opop! Faster and faster and faster.
“Brace!” cried one of his crew over the roar of foaming water.
The cry did Silanos little good. The Adrestia’s ram plunged into the flagship’s timbers, smashing through the rail. Silanos wailed as the deck disintegrated below his feet. He flailed wildly as he plummeted onto the Adrestia’s bronze beak, his belly hitting the sharp edge and his body folding over it. He felt a dull snapping sensation, and a sudden weightlessness. A moment later, he plunged into the cold, roaring waters. In the gloom and through the storm of bubbles, he kicked his legs to make for the surface. Oddly, it did no good. Then he noticed ribbons of red rising from below. He looked down to see the ragged mess of skin and intestines—trailing like the arms of an octopus—and the complete absence of the lower half of his body. Bemused, he then spotted the missing half, a short distance away: legs twitching, drifting slowly toward the seabed. Up above, the great shadows of the two boats parted, the Adrestia cutting on to the open sea, leaving behind the smashed remains of his flagship.
He felt a sharp yank at the rags of skin and guts and looked down again to see a school of fish chewing and pulling on the bloody treat. The numbness of it all suddenly faded, and he felt the first waves of white-hot fiery pain surge through his halved body. And he realized he was right: the last few heartbeats for a drowning man to slip into death did indeed feel like a lifetime.
* * *
• • •
The masked ones stood in silence for a time, their eyes silently counting the many gaps in their circle.
The door to the dark chamber boomed open and another masked Cultist stormed in. His slapping footsteps and heaving shoulders suggested all was not well. “She’s escaped. The fucking whore has escaped again. The mother too.”
“But Silanos?”
“Silanos’s body lies at the bottom of the sea!”
They rumbled in dismay, before one snapped: “Where does she head now?”
“Into the snakepit,” said the messenger. “Sparta.”
The dismay rose into a buzz of enthusiasm. “Then we should inform the Red-eyed Lion . . .”
* * *
• • •
The Adrestia cut through the waves, spume puffing on the chill autumnal breeze. Reza dangled on a waist-harness rope from the prow, plucking the remnant splinters of Silanos’s galley from the timbers and chiseling at the baked-dry remnants of the enemy crew who had fallen in front of the ram.
Kassandra stood with Myrrine at the boat’s rear, under the shade of the scorpion tail. She felt her mother’s tension. “Silanos is dead; the Parian blockade will crumble. More, Aspasia is wise and strong. She will tend to the Naxians faithfully.”
Myrrine nodded slowly in a way that suggested she didn’t really want to be reminded about
the matter. Aspasia—a refugee fleeing Kleon’s Athens—had volunteered to take her place as Archon, overseer of Naxos. “I will always fret over the Naxians, Kassandra, but it’s not them I think of now: it’s what lies ahead.” She scoured the growing, dark outline of land: the first of the three rocky fingers that jutted from the Lakonian coastline. “The maps say that we look upon Lakonia. But my heart sees a land of ghosts.”
Kassandra felt a stark shiver rise from her toes to her scalp. It brought her thoughts to the one matter she and Mother had not yet broached: Nikolaos’s revelation.
“Before we land, there is something I must know,” she said.
Myrrine stiffened.
“Who am I? The man I thought was my father was but a guardian.”
Myrrine’s bottom lip quivered. She tried to speak, then broke down in sobs.
Kassandra caught her, held her tight and kissed her head. “The question has been asked, but you need not answer me now. You can tell me when the time is right.”
Myrrine nodded, locked in Kassandra’s embrace.
Footsteps interrupted the moment.
“The coastline is well watched,” said Barnabas, stalking around the ship’s edge for the best vantage point. “See the turrets and beacon fires on the hills? We dare not try to put in near any of them: if they do not rain fire missiles upon us, then the red cloaks will soon descend upon us just like they did to those Athenians at the Megarid.”
“You are telling me we cannot land?” Kassandra asked.
Barnabas winked. “There is nothing the Adrestia cannot do.”
Later that day, they rounded the second of the three jagged capes. A gale picked up, whistling and choppy, conjuring the sea into a restless, roiling cauldron. Herodotos spent the afternoon at the rail, retching, uttering oaths for mercy in between each purge. They came to a stretch of black cliffs, shining wet and sheer, the sky above bruised and swollen. The coastal tides crashed in upon the rocks with a terrible din, sending foaming jets of spray high into the air. There were no Spartan watchtowers here. Understandable, given that no boat could hope to land in these parts. Yet here, Barnabas gave the order to turn in for the “shore.”
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