by P. K. Lentz
Styphon let silence fall as he continued to regard her, considering the path of which Andrea spoke, as well as his own path.
“Step closer,” he commanded her at length.
To her credit, his daughter did not hesitate, even though she may have believed his intention was to bring her within arm's reach for a blow. Instead he took a matching step, bent down and drew her into an embrace. He kissed her hair, adorned with its red ribbon. “I, too, want what is best for you,” he said.
After some hesitation, Andrea brought her arms up to return the hug, stiffly at first and then melting into it. Styphon let the embrace endure for a few shared heartbeats, then broke it and stood over her.
“You may continue to see Eris.” He forced past his lips the witch's name, the borrowed name of the goddess that she was not. “With the understanding that you do so under my authority and not against it, and that you are still bound by the rules of this house. Is that understood?”
As if scarcely believing her luck, the eleven year-old who was wise beyond her years returned wide-eyed, almost incredulously, “Yes, father.” She gave him a little smile, stepped forward and sent her thin arms once more around his ribs. “Thank you, father.”
Styphon remained a statue. “Now get to bed.”
Disengaging, Andrea complied, opening the door and creeping into the unlit, silent house. Instead of following, Styphon remained outside a moment longer. Sleep was far from his mind, for he had in the preceding moments reached a decision which charted a dangerous path for himself, for his family, and for Sparta.
He would risk them all and use his own daughter to lay a trap which, if the gods willed it, would ensnare Eris and leave her dead. This time for good.
Zeus help them all if it failed.
* * *
1. Waking up in Corinth
PART III: THE BATTLE OF NAUPAKTOS
Demosthenes tried in vain to open leaden eyes. Failing, he rubbed them instead. During the night, if night it was, since he had no idea of the time, someone seemed to have replaced his head with a replica formed of wet clay.
“Good morning,” said a woman. He did not instantly recognize the voice, which bore some foreign accent.
He dragged his eyes open, shut them again under a deluge of light and blinked forcefully until he was at last able to peer out at reality through narrowed slits, putting face to unfamiliar voice.
Almost.
“Do I know you?” he asked the blurred impression of a female hovering over him. All he could tell was that she was pale of skin with ash blonde hair.
And she was in bed with him, and naked.
She laughed. “I should think so.” She shifted her position on the soft mat, forcing him to roll his dully aching head to keep her in view. “It will come back to you,” she said sympathetically. “If not, you can ask your nice Persian when she returns. She knew me a few times last night, too.”
A name drifted into reach of Demosthenes' mossy tongue. “Ammia,” he said. She had made him look human again after his brief stint as a cave-dweller.
“Mmm-hmm,” the northern prostitute confirmed.
The realization that he was in Corinth spurred more memories. Yesterday, he and Thalassia had come from Athens to learn that the ship on which they had intended to make their return to Naupaktos had sailed early, without them. The next was not due to depart for three days. They had argued mildly about whether to wait or just make the two- or three-day trek overland. He could not recall who had argued for what, but evidently waiting had won, and they had wound up back at the Nymph's Tit. That was where this room was, he felt sure. On the floor, near a window which seemed to look out from a second story, sat a wine krater painted with images of a Dionysian orgy. A clay cup floated in the dregs of purple wine that remained at the broad vessel's bottom.
Under the blanket, a hand appeared on Demosthenes' cock, calling to his attention that it was erect.
“I'll take care of that, no extra charge,” Ammia offered.
“No.” Demosthenes hand covered hers and started to remove it, but he lost the will, which made her smile.
“Your Persian's gone to get food,” Ammia said, subtly stroking him. “And anyway, she will hardly be jealous. The four of us were as one last night.”
Something in that statement struck Demosthenes as odd. “Four?”
Ammia sighed plaintively, hand still teasing him. With a smirk, she lamented, “You really cannot hold your wine, can you? So charming. You saw another client, Menandros, passing by and invited him to join.”
“I did?”
“Aye.” The prostitute shrugged. Her palm ran up and down the length of his shaft which, partly thanks to her, showed no sign of flagging. “I can't just leave this here,” she said of it. “Call it pride of profession.”
With such warning given, and no argument offered by the recipient, Ammia proceeded to lubricate palm with tongue and commence a skillful massage which within a short span saw the matter tended to.
While she wiped her fingers on the blanket, Demosthenes' eyes went to a rustle in the curtained doorway. Carrying a platter piled with bread and various relishes, Thalassia took no pause to survey the scene on the bed, but only walked to its edge, where she placed the tray on the blankets.
The timing of her arrival was rather too perfect to be coincidence; more likely she had returned moments earlier and chosen to wait outside rather than interrupt.
She spared a quick, serious look for Demosthenes which, if he read it correctly, had nothing to do with Ammia.
Sitting naked on her haunches on the bed, the latter twisted to face Thalassia and smiled. “Hi,” she said, and no more. There was something of the smitten adolescent in her manner.
Withholding return of the greeting, smiling back distractedly, Thalassia said, “Ammia, sweetheart, would you excuse us? Take some breakfast if you like.”
Looking disappointed, the young Illyrian (as Demosthenes by now had uncertainly marked her) slid off the bed.
“I will see you again?” Ammia asked hopefully. She set fingers gently on Thalassia's cheek.
Thalassia took the hand and kissed it in a manner that was only subtly dismissive. “We are in Corinth another night.”
With a sigh, Ammia leaned in and kissed Thalassia's cheek before throwing a silken gown over her shoulders. “I will miss my new friends.”
She left the room, though not before blowing a kiss to Demosthenes which went unreturned—an omission she did not pause long enough to note.
“You make friends easily,” Demosthenes remarked, dragging himself upright in the bed.
Thalassia took the spot that was still warm with the prostitute's indentation. “It's a nice change for me.”
Her look became serious as she announced, “There's news. Agis left for Pylos with an army. By now, it has probably already fallen.”
Half-covered by a blanket rank with stale sweat and fresh semen, Demosthenes stared at the platter of bread and olives and various accompaniments Thalassia had brought. The thought of eating turned his stomach at the moment, and he labored to think past a fog clouding his mind. Reading what were doubtless unsubtle clues, Thalassia removed the breakfast from in front of him and set it instead by the window.
“Shit,” Demosthenes muttered under vile-tasting breath.
Just prior to his departure from Naupaktos, he had advised the Naupaktans to deliver a message to their cousins in Pylos advising that they abandon their city entirely and seek refuge in Naupaktos. It was implausible that such a mass exodus of man, woman, and child could be safely undertaken, by land or by sea, but stripped of the Athenian support which had won the city its freedom, Pylos was doomed to fall. They had decided, both before and after Demosthenes' briny rebirth, against voyaging to Pylos to help defend that city. Given its location deep in Spartan territory, it would be more difficult to defend than Naupaktos, and chances were high of their becoming trapped there if defeat came.
Equally as certain as the defeat of
Pylos was that its conquerors would show their rebellious slaves no mercy.
“An army under Agis?” Demosthenes asked, the ache in his skull rather hindering the speed of his thoughts. “Why not Brasidas?”
“Maybe he's fallen out of favor. Maybe Eden snapped his neck. Maybe he knows a king's thunder is best stolen one bolt at a time. It doesn't matter now. What does is that—.”
“The fate of Brasidas is of utmost importance to me,” Demosthenes chided. “But yes... a great many good men, and even more innocents, will suffer and die. It pains me.”
It pained him rather less than it should, he knew. Less than it would have a year ago.
“They will be avenged.”
“Of course,” Thalassia said. “But before that, it may impact our plans. The Naupaktans may be cowed and vote to capitulate.”
Demosthenes sighed, forcing himself to rise from the bed. “Then I suppose we had best set to finding my fellow Athenian, a man most gifted in delivering speeches that goad men to war.”
“I've asked around and have an idea where to find him.”
“You are busy while I sleep,” Demosthenes observed as he hunted down his clothing.
“You should sleep less.”
“I should drink less. You pulled me from one lake of wine. Why did you allow me to fall into another?”
Thalassia smiled warmly. “Simple. There is drinking because you want to die—and drinking because you want to live.”
* * *
2. Kleon
The northeastern quarter of Corinth was known by all to be a stronghold of the democratic faction, a place where the enforcers of the ruling oligarchy dared not venture for fear of igniting a fresh civil war sure to decimate both sides, as had occurred in the past. The information obtained by Thalassia got them to a certain street, where they simply began asking after Kleon until they found a man who answered, according to one who knew the difference, them with a lie. Under threat of violence, he admitted knowledge of Kleon's whereabouts and took them there.
The ruling faction in any city expected to be the target of plots, and ever allowed those making them to walk about with some degree of freedom, hoping that their plans would never gain momentum, or else would be defeated when the time came. Kleon, wanted not by the Corinthian oligarchs themselves but their Spartan patrons, was a special case. His capture was likely to bring the man who delivered him fortune and favor, along with minimal risk of revenge attacks, since he was a foreigner lacking blood ties in the city.
Fittingly, Kleon's hiding place was a room tucked behind a butcher's stall in the small agora built by the democratic neighborhoods to sustain them when the main market was made inaccessible by open war between the factions. The blood-spattered butcher, a thick-set, cleaver-wielding man, eyed his three visitors with suspicion and curled his lip while the unwilling guide explained that his two captors had come to see 'the Athenian.'
“Kleon!” Demosthenes called into the shop, past the hanging corpses of sheep and birds. “It's your ally from Sphakteria come to see if we cannot call ourselves the same again!”
The stall fell silent. A moment later, there was a rustling at the back, and a curtain was gently pushed aside.
The face which next appeared was scarcely recognizable. Kleon had grown a beard, full but well-trimmed, to cover his perpetually rosy cheeks. The face had less meat in it, too, as did the rest of his form, which had grown decidedly less stocky in the time since their city had fallen.
However much he had changed, two shrewd eyes forever casting about in search of advantage gave the demagogue away.
“Let them through,” he said to his Corinthian hosts.
His invitation was reluctant, as was the subsequent wave of the stall-owner's iron cleaver as he bid them pass. Less reluctant was their unwilling guide's disappearance into the street the instant Thalassia's firm hand was removed from the back of his neck. Making their way between the carcasses, they reached the curtain, which Kleon held open for them, watching them pass with a look which was far from welcoming but short of malignant.
The small room beyond was hotter by a wide margin, which served to accentuate the odors of animal blood and human sweat. A sleeping pallet took up a quarter of the room, while most of the rest was taken up by jars and amphorae and various implements of the shop-owner's trade.
A tanner in Athens, Kleon had not sprung from any wealthy household, but in his latter years he had acquired something of a reputation as a flaunter of what wealth he was able to amass. To be so reduced could not have been easy on him.
The look he wore as he let the curtain fall and faced his guests was a bitter one; he seemed to expect them to take delight in his misfortune, and for once had no sweetly acidic words instantly at the ready.
“I come in the hope of burying our past differences,” Demosthenes opened. “And to take you from this place for a while, if you can stand to part with it.”
Kleon snorted, a sound Demosthenes remembered well, and not fondly. “Bah!” he said. “Differences! You mean your fist to my face and my prosecuting you for it? I look back fondly on such things now, reminders of a time when we were free to indulge in our petty squabbles.”
The 'squabble' which had precipitated the rift between them was far from petty—the blow had been delivered to prevent Kleon from risking innocent lives in the effort to recapture escaped Spartan prisoners of war. Still, under the current circumstances, Demosthenes thought better of correcting him.
“One day, when our city is restored to us, gods willing, we will return to bickering,” Kleon went on. “But for now, in exile, we are as brothers. What is mine is yours.” He indicated the cramped space. “As you can see, that is not much.”
He turned an eye on Thalassia, and his expression became once more tainted with bitterness.
“This one I remember from Pylos,” he said. “The slave whose ransom you made up for from your share of the spoils. I confess I thought you mad, but judging by the tales told of the fight at Eleusis, you got the better end of that deal. The gastraphetes and liquid stone and the trade goods which brought you riches—these were hers, too?” Demosthenes confessed as much. “Some claim she is Pallas herself. She scarcely looks the part, but every schoolboy knows that one's fondness for disguise. So what is she?”
Still taken aback by the speed with which the notoriously vindictive Kleon had offered forgiveness, Demosthenes laughed. “I will not try to explain what she is. Let her, if she cares to. But later, for there will be plenty of time to talk on our voyage to Naupaktos, if you agree to accompany us. Your passage paid, of course.”
The demagogue without a demos continued to study Thalassia a short while longer, while she stared inscrutably back. Then he frowned behind his beard and said, “That city's one of four or six I heard were sent the terms of an alliance with Sparta.” He laughed. “Not unlike the terms we sent to more than a few of the islands in our city's heyday. Pay tribute or be crushed. So let me hazard a guess...” Kleon surmised with a smirk, “you desire my help in convincing the Naupaktans to choose being crushed.”
“I hope you might find a better way of putting the argument for their ears,” Demosthenes said. “And the possibility exists for success.” He sent his gaze pointedly to silent, regal Thalassia. “But yes, effectively, that is our aim.”
Kleon shrugged ambivalently, studying Thalassia with narrowed eyes. “Athens fell in spite of this one's assistance. What makes you think she can do better by a different city?”
Thalassia's failure to show any intention of answering left Demosthenes to provide one. “I only said success was a possibility. But generally speaking, the failure was more ours than hers. If she had had her way, Athens would have possessed ships to counter those which beat us and better defenses on the frontier as well as at Piraeus. Democracy got in our way, an impediment lacking in Sparta.”
“Naupaktos suffers under like burden,” Kleon observed.
“The very reason we stand before you. Men's minds
must be swayed in favor of war. Even your bitterest enemies admit that no one is better at that than you.”
“Especially them,” Kleon said, rightly. He looked about him as if weighing the prospect of leaving his current situation. The answer seemed obvious, but was not yet written on his face. He nodded at Thalassia.
“She intends to take the field again at Naupaktos?”
“If need be.”
A second later, the newly battle-hungry Thalassia answered for herself, “Yes.”
Kleon nodded approvingly before continuing to address his fellow Athenian. “And can she offer some proof that she is more than mortal?” He quickly appended, “Preferably of a kind even a simpleton such as myself might grasp.”
Demosthenes thought a moment and suggested, “Thalassia, show him your gash.”
Kleon's brow rose while the object of his puzzled gaze raised a hand to her shoulder and unpinned her chiton. With opposite arm holding the fabric to her breast, she turned and let the back of the garment fall away, exposing a deep, gruesome spear-cut. Even covered as it was by a film of dried, translucent mucus, it was obviously a crippling injury.
“Sustained last night as we emptied the jailhouse of Athens,” Demosthenes explained. For increased effect, he prodded hard at the edge of the wound with two fingers; Thalassia, of course, showed no outward sign of the pain she did not choose to feel.
Kleon's nose wrinkled. “Well, that's cured my cock of any stiffness she might have imparted to it.” While Thalassia restored her dress, he asked, “Does she have armor?
“We left Dekelea with as much as you see now.”
The demagogue smiled the broad, wicked grin he had worn often in the assembly of Athens. He stooped and opened a sack set against the wall. Inside was a large object covered by oiled cloth which when pulled back revealed gleaming metal. It was his breastplate, a famously ostentatious and overwrought thing of bronze inlaid with gold and ivory.
“We can scarcely agitate for war without looking the part,” he said. “She will need armor. You, as well.”
