by P. K. Lentz
Thalassia kept swords on the Naupaktans, who had gathered in a loose semicircle in the rib-deep water. “No,” she pledged. “Nor will I let them stop you. I only ask you to take my advice. I may have been wrong a time or two. Usually I'm not.”
Demosthenes laughed.
At Amphipolis, she had urged him to kill Brasidas when he had the chance. Partly out of spite, he had refused. Had he only listened...
On her advice, he had met Laonome.
Lifting his hands, he released Styphon, who floated gently to the surface. Without releasing either of her swords, Thalassia lifted Styphon's insensate form under one arm and forcefully addressed the Naupaktans: “I can save him! Make way!”
The request was likely unnecessary, as no Naupaktan was in a hurry to put himself in her path. Dragging Styphon behind her, she made haste for the beach. Demosthenes trudged behind as quickly as he could, keeping one eye on the Naupaktans whom he halfway suspected might make some move on him now that his defender was occupied.
They did not, and Demosthenes came ashore sopping wet behind Thalassia and her burden, which she laid out on the sand, discarding her weapons. Tired from sprinting against the tide, Demosthenes sank to his knees and watched Thalassia pry Styphon's mouth wide open and kiss him. She did so repeatedly, deeply, and for quite some time while a gathering crowd of Naupaktans looked on in silence.
Demosthenes stared, too, and was perhaps even more confused than the rest: where the Naupaktans took Thalassia for some type of enchantress, a woman whose kiss might well possess some life-giving power, he knew with near certainty that this was not the case.
While his own racing heartbeat slowed, and Styphon's chest rose and fell, Demosthenes began slowly to comprehend: she was breathing into him, breathing for him, forcing air into his frame with each touch of her lips. After a short while, the inanimate corpse of the drowned Spartiate jerked to life, sputtering and coughing, and Thalassia, in success, fell back onto haunches.
In the minutes following, Styphon returned to a groggy awareness and was half-dragged away by the Naupaktans, perhaps to deny his would-be executioner a chance to change his mind. Agathokles, before following the aggrieved Spartan herald away, leveled at Demosthenes a gaze which promised the matter was not closed and forgiveness not guaranteed.
Grievous as was his offense, Demosthenes was not detained or otherwise accosted, perhaps out of fear of Thalassia, perhaps in acknowledgment of his role in the day's victory, or even simply because no one wished to sully a momentous day with squabbling.
Instead, not much later, Demosthenes found himself sitting alone on the beach, wet and exhausted, beside his fellow vagabond.
“It was purely curative,” she said.
“Hmm?” Demosthenes replied absently. “Oh, the kiss. Yes, I know.”
“He is in my debt,” she said, clearly speaking of Styphon. “From Sphakteria. I made him pledge to do me a favor one day in return for removing Andrea from Sparta for him.”
“He owes you double now. Somehow I doubt either debt will be repaid. I would not pay them if I were him.”
“Thankfully, you aren't. He might be useful to us. And to Naupaktos. If not, we just kill him later.”
Staring across the gently lapping surf, Demosthenes changed the subject, wishing to banish Styphon from mind. “Why did you volunteer to question the captured Helots?” he asked. “I know it is more than a simple service to Naupaktos.”
Her pale eyes lit, perfect teeth showing in a flashed grin. “A weapon like your fungulus needs what we sophisticated killers of the future call a delivery system. I think we might just have found ours.”
* * *
For some amount of time, Demosthenes slept lightly in the sand, head resting on the arm of Thalassia. Not long, evidently, for the sun yet shone and Thalassia's brined hair was still damp when a pair of Naupaktans came for them. They delivered their message from Agathokles brusquely.
“The Spartan herald insists he will speak only with you two.”
They accompanied the Naupaktans silently to the civil building where the Spartan envoy was being housed in semi-captivity. Before any meeting with him, they found themselves before a displeased Agathokles.
“He would you see you both and no other,” Agathokles said ruefully. “In private. Given your indefensible act today, I considered sending him away. But that would make us appear uninterested in talking, and that we are not.”
Now and then as he spoke, Agathokles flicked an angry glance Thalassia's way, as if for the sake of including her, but he spared most of his scorn for Demosthenes, in whose direction he raised a lecturing finger.
“I shall give him what he wants, but heed well: on entering that room you represent Naupaktos. Our interests come before all else, and our interest is in a lasting peace that preserves our independence. Not the slaughter of every Equal who comes into our sight.”
The last sounded almost a joke, but understandably was not.
Agathokles gave a final, stern glare before adding an instruction which likewise should have been made in jest.
“Leave your weapons with the guards.”
With that, he removed himself from their presence. Demosthenes was of half a mind to call out an apology, but he kept silent. Even if the words were not empty, were they to be spoken in haste, unaccompanied by actions, they could only be perceived as such. A better time for attempting to heal the rift with Agathokles would come after he had heard whatever rot it was that Styphon intended shortly to vomit forth.
To that end, Demosthenes surrendered his arms to the Naupaktans, as did Thalassia (for all the emptiness of such a gesture from her) and entered the small, windowless room in which the recently un-murdered Equal stood waiting.
* * *
14. Herald
Styphon ensured that the stony look he had worn while standing alone in the room changed not one bit on the entry of the two to whom he was due to deliver King Agis's ill-conceived request.
One of the two who entered had, a few short hours ago, tried to kill him. From what the Naupaktans said, he had succeeded. The second, the deadlier by any reckoning and one whose proximity made his flesh crawl only slightly less than did that of Eris, had reputedly saved his life—dragged his shade back from the underworld with a kiss, if the same easily duped Naupaktans were to be believed.
Styphon looked at them now as though none of this had transpired, indeed as though he had never met either. They shut the door behind them, and Styphon spoke first, forgoing niceties which would have no place regardless.
“The Eurypontid king of Sparta, his majesty Agis, desires to employ your services,” he said flatly.
Neither of the two laughed, a reaction for which even a Spartiate could have forgiven them. The witch Thalassia, damp-haired as if fresh from a bath in Acheron, her home, came closest, with mild amusement lighting her pale daimon-eyes. Demosthenes, for his part, wore on his face the white-lipped disgust one might expect given his undiplomatic actions on the beach. The man's distaste was palpable enough that Styphon put his body on alert for a fresh assault. This time he would repel it—at least until the witch stepped in to save her Athenian thrall.
It was the witch who answered, while Demosthenes remained unable or unwilling to part his grinding jaw. All she said, in a neutral tone, was, “Go on.”
Styphon was pleased to oblige: the sooner he could deliver his message, hear an answer, and leave, the better.
“Agis would see the plague of Eris's presence removed from Sparta,” he said. “Permanently. He believes that if anyone can help him achieve that aim”—he set his gaze firmly on Thalassia—“it is you.”
The look which came over Thalassia's features was one of interest, perhaps satisfaction. Demosthenes turned his head aside, staring at a corner of the plaster floor. He had come intending to keep his ears and mind tightly shut, Styphon surmised.
The witch continued to speak for both.
“You sound as if you do not agree with your king,”
she observed. “Are you still Brasidas's man?”
“I am my own man,” Styphon returned confidently. He kept in mind, and would with every answer he gave, that his present company was, like Eris, able to instantly discern truth from lies.
“Why did Brasidas not lead this attack?” Thalassia asked next, as her companion continued to silently seethe.
“That is an internal affair of the Spartan state,” Styphon evaded. “And moreover, no concern of mine.”
“He overstepped, didn't he?”
Styphon gave no reply, but Thalassia's smirk suggested that was answer enough.
“What did she do?” she pressed.
Chilled by the accuracy of the witch's insight, Styphon sealed his lips tighter still.
Abandoning that line of inquiry, Thalassia asked next, “What does Agis offer in return for our services?”
Now Styphon forced his lips apart, as much as it pained him to speak what he must.
“When the witch is dealt with,” he said, “Agis will deliver Brasidas, that he might face... justice.”
There. It was done. He had just offered up as payment to a foreigner the life of his countryman, his superior, a man he was bred to respect. It could not but be a sin, even if mitigated by the fact that his king had put him up to it.
Demosthenes glared at Styphon briefly, then fumed blankly at the wall, leaving once more his witch to do the talking.
“You have our interest,” she declared. “But we have other aims than vengeance on one man. What of Naupaktos?”
“It must fall. Not today, perhaps, but another.”
An Equal who returned home in defeat would meet with temporary scorn, Styphon knew; one who returned having let defeat strip him of his resolve for victory would bear a lifelong stain. After such a defeat as today's, Agis could not entertain offering the enemy peace in any form. The ephors would only void it and then exile its broken author.
“Should the two of you persist in confounding our efforts to take the city, Agis's offer will be rescinded.”
Thalassia breathed a little laugh. “Will it, now? If I were to destroy Eden... pardon, Eris... what exactly would prevent me from taking Brasidas next? And Agis, for that matter?”
Styphon leveled a look of defiance at the woman-thing. “You are not invincible. Men can harm you. Kill you. When we found Eris, she was imprisoned such that only our help allowed her to escape. Men did that to her. And I lately saw with my own eyes grisly wounds inflicted on her at the hands of men.”
“And in both cases, how many died in doing Eris harm?” Thalassia asked knowingly. “Never mind. Internal affairs of the Spartan state, surely.”
“Eris may yet be in a weakened state,” Styphon pressed on. “If you intend to accept, your chances of success are increased if you leave forthwith.”
“If we were to accept,” she said, “then you possess something else which must be turned over. Someone, rather, by the name of Eurydike. If she lives.”
“She does, and she is treated well,” Styphon answered, with no fear of being judged a liar. “My wife and daughter are fond of her.”
Hippolyta might protest the loss of the slave she had gone to the trouble of seducing, but she could not rightly protest a decision made in the best interests of Sparta.
Thalassia's brows rose in mild surprise. “Wife?” she echoed. “Congratulations. Consider your life my wedding gift.”
Ignoring the remark, Styphon added, “You may have Alkibiades, too, in the bargain. You would do Sparta a favor.”
“He has made himself at home in Sparta, I see.”
“Made himself the witch's plaything.” Styphon's eyes went to Demosthenes, who yet gave the conversation his shoulder, but listened attentively, to be sure.
“I must have your reply.”
“We hold sixty Equals prisoner,” Thalassia said. “If Agis cares to have them back, he could send them up against Eris. A few might survive.”
“I will carry to him a list of the prisoners' names. I am not empowered to negotiate their release. However, be assured that the presence of hostages will no more save Naupaktos than it did Athens.”
Indeed, not even the captured Equals' families would consider the lives of a few dozen citizens worth letting an upstart town of Helot-descended fishermen and treecutters humiliate Sparta more than it already had. However effete were Athenians, at least they had proved over the course of generations to be a worthy adversary. Not so this place. Freedom for Naupaktos would set an example for cities all over Greece—or worse, for Helots in very heart of the Peloponnese. Were the defeat this day to go unanswered, the preeminence Sparta had gained just a hundred days ago with Athens' defeat would be all but erased.
But such thoughts were not for the enemy's ears.
“It will be some time before you can mount another attack,” Thalassia correctly observed. “Much can happen.”
“Indeed,” Styphon agreed. After a moment's thought, he added: “Such as Eris gaining knowledge of her hated enemy's whereabouts and taking action on her own. Would it not be better for you to—”
“If I need advice from a worthless mound of shit,” Demosthenes at last interrupted, whirling to face Styphon. His wide brown eyes were harder and fiercer than Styphon remembered them in the two prior instances in as many years that they had stood this close. For some reason, his right eye was surrounded by faded black smears.
“We have heard your king's offer,” Demosthenes seethed. “It is rejected. Our offer in return is that Agis soon can die along with all of his subjects, including you and your new broodmare. I neither need nor wish to have Brasidas handed to me. When I am ready, I will take him!” The Athenian bared his teeth in a sneer. “We are finished here. If I stay another moment, I am liable to try and finish what I started in the sea today.”
He turned and started for the door.
“Spartiates do not beg, preener, but now that we stand on dry ground, I would very much like you to try.”
Demosthenes paused in the door and said after a brief silence: “You will beg, Spartiate. You all will.”
Thalassia watched her servant depart before drawing a step closer to Styphon.
“Tell your king that although Demosthenes rejects the offer, I find it... worthy of further consideration. In the meantime, do not forget what you owe me.”
“I leave no debt unpaid,” Styphon asserted. “Only know that there are limits, witch. I will not betray other oaths to keep my pledge to you.”
“I would not ask it.”
“What is it you desire?”
“Nothing yet.” She gave a gentle toss of her head. “But the day will come.”
With a parting smile, she opened the door and slipped out between the shoulders of two Naupaktan officials who eyed her with suspicion as she passed.
Credit was due them, then: it was not only Spartans who felt ambivalent about surrendering the reins of their state into the silken palm of a witch.
* * *
15. Elegant
Swiftly upon storming out of the interview with Styphon, before his angry steps had taken him far, Demosthenes felt the staying grip of Agathokles on his arm. He let it stop him and turned to face the Naupaktan leader.
“What did he say?”
“Not much of use,” Demosthenes reported.
“I prefer to judge that for myself.”
Rage already begun to cool, Demosthenes met squarely the Naupaktan's frustrated glare and said earnestly, “Accept my apology. Your generosity deserves better than my rash behavior today.”
The words were at least partly born of genuine regret, but a certain awareness was present that as a rootless fugitive, he could scarcely afford to lose the good will of his prime benefactor.
“No harm was done in the end,” Agathokles said hurriedly. Absent was the smile he regularly had worn in the past when addressing his friend. “You have my forgiveness, freely given. But if you would care to earn it anyway, inform me of what was said in that room.”
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As Thalassia silently joined them, Demosthenes did so, leaving nothing out.
“So their witch is causing them civil strife,” Agathokles observed. Reserving his smile for Thalassia, he said to her by way of apology, “To use a term which the ignorant might wrongly use to describe your kind. The longer the leaders of Sparta fight among themselves, the better for our city, I would think. I am pleased you declined to help them put swift end to it. It could not have been an easy choice, given the reward on offer.”
It had not been hard at all, but it scarcely hurt to let the other think what he wished.
“I wonder if Agis might not be more willing to negotiate than he lets on. If not, perhaps he will become so when he learns from Styphon that one of the hostages is his own brother.” The Naupaktan's eyes flashed proudly. “Agesilaus commanded their fleet. A fishing boat netted him clinging to the wreck of his ship.”
“I know the name,” Thalassia announced, drawing both men's attention. “In the future now averted, in which this war would have ended a generation from now, Agesilaus would be king after his brother, to reign for forty years.”
The declaration raised four brows. Demosthenes had no doubt in the truth of it, but Agathokles might well have been more skeptical.
“King, hmm?” he intoned. “A good one?”
“Not the worst. By most accounts, it was not entirely his fault that Sparta was irrelevant by the end of his reign.”
“Perhaps he ought to be removed from the succession,” Demosthenes suggested, half idly. “Any bargain you strike using the hostages will grant you peace for but a short time. Thus would it have been for Athens, barring... witches. You may as well chain the prisoners to a trireme in the channel and set it alight.”
The commander-in-chief of the army of Naupaktos bowed his head pensively. “I have never been the kind of man to condemn prisoners-of-war to death,” he said. “I hope not to become him.” He frowned at Demosthenes. “Would that you had escaped that fate. No, none of the prisoners will be harmed, least of all the one most valuable. It weighs heavily enough on me turning a share of them over to you, knowing...”
