Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (12 page)

Had it been a mistake not to reject
Thalassia utterly?  What she suggested was sheer madness, a
course of action which had destroyed countless men and toppled
empires.  Only the worst of fools challenged Fate.  The
gods ever struck them down with the greatest of wrath.

If Croesus goes to war, a mighty empire
will fall
, the Pythia once had prophesied.  Brimming with
pride, Croesus went to war, and an empire did fall.  His
own.

Two years, Thalassia wanted.  Two years
to win this war which had burned openly for seven already and
simmered for decades prior, flaring now and then when opportunity
arose for one side to do the other harm.  She claimed that
Fate was on Sparta's side, but even if she was right, the question
lingered: was it better to stand defiant in Fate's path and risk
annihilation... or to surrender to it and be carried on its current
to less than pleasant shores?  A hundred philosophers would
argue the latter, but then, they had never actually had the
choice.

At some point, after the blackest depths of
night had passed, Demosthenes opened his eyes and found the warm
presence beside him gone.  He experienced the briefest moment
of relief, but the weight came crashing down again when his eyes
flicked to the window and found the pretty monster of his dream, or
nightmare, filling it.  Still unclad, she sat sideways on the
window sill with her back against one side and both feet planted
against the other, bending her brine-frosted nymph's body into a
pleasing, seahorse-like curve.

She turned her head toward him and smiled,
but the smile was distracted, as though heavy thoughts weighed upon
her mind as she looked out over the black, roiling waters of Pylos
harbor.

“Good morning,” she said.  Her voice,
like the smile, was contemplative.

Demosthenes sat up on the bed, returning the
greeting with a bare nod.  Thalassia swung her legs down and
sat facing him framed by the lightening sky.

“I forgot to tell you congratulations
yesterday,” she said.  “For taking the island.  I didn't
mean to diminish it.”

“I thought I might wake to find I had
imagined you,” Demosthenes observed, shaking off sleep.  

“You mean you 
hoped
.”

As it was impossible to lie to
Thalassia, Demosthenes elected not to reply.

Allowing the lapse, she asked, “So where do
we stand, you and I?”

Demosthenes could not answer that.
 Something within him screamed to banish her from his sight.
 She was a witch, a Siren, a temptress, a creature of the
dark.  But something would not let him.  A sense of
responsibility?  This monster had to be dealt with in some
way, if not by him then by another.

He pressed palms against his face, less to
rub away sleep than to push back against the pressure of knowledge
that mortal men should never possess.

“I gave much thought last night to the
things you said,” Demosthenes told her.  “I have doubts...
questions.  I worry that your knowledge of future events will
prove of less use than it seems.  Once your actions alter one
outcome, all that follows is thrown into question, is it not?
 The very use of your foreknowledge renders it useless.
 For example, now that you have warned me of my appointed
death—for which, if nothing else comes of our acquaintance, you
have my sincere gratitude—I promise you that Fate will have a fight
on her hands ever to get me to Sicily.”

There he stopped, seeing that a crooked
smile had appeared on Thalassia's face.

“What is it?” he asked.

“That's... very impressive,” she said.
 “That you would even think of that shows...  Well, it's
just very impressive.  And not wrong.  But if I might
allay your concerns?”

“Please.”

“It's true that every change
I... 
we
 make to the outcome of an event has an
effect on what follows.  But specific knowledge of outcomes is
not the only weapon I can put at your disposal, nor even my most
powerful one.  As the Spartans' fortunes change, their plans,
too, will diverge from what is known.  They will adapt, but
understanding them, I will be able to 
predict
.
 And more than that...”  She gave him a strange, dark
look.  “Demosthenes, what is a better weapon, a sword of
bronze or one of iron?”

“Well, iron, of course.”

“Yes.  What answer would Achilles give
to that question?”

Demosthenes thought briefly.  “I
suppose he could not properly judge, having known only bronze.”

“Yet, today, you use iron.  Does some
other metal exist from which still stronger weapons might be
made?”

“No...” Demosthenes said.  Then,
beginning to grasp Thalassia's intended point, he added, “Not at
present.” 

“If I were to ask you,” she went on, “what
is better, an iron sword or one of steel, what would you
answer?”

“I could not know for certain, but I would
venture to guess... 
steel
.”

Thalassia rose from her perch in the window
and came to the bed, sat on it and put a hand on Demosthenes'
forearm.  The night spent in intimate proximity with her
evidently had disposed of the feelings of revulsion which her touch
had previously inspired.  For better or worse, he was getting
used to her.

“I think you understand,” she said.
 “There is much I could teach your countrymen, and not only
those who make weapons. Farmers, shipbuilders... healers.  Had
I come before the plague, many who died might have been spared.
 I can not only make your enemies' lives worse, but also help
make the lives of Athenians better and happier, which will in turn
make your city even harder to defeat.”

Demosthenes sat absorbing this and
concluded, “Very well.  I grant that you have much to offer,
troublesome as it may prove to convince old men to heed the
teachings of a foreign female.  But I have a further doubt
which I fear will not be so easy for you to dispel.  There are
at least two others like you abroad in our world.  What if
they were to do for other powers as you propose to do for
Athens?”

A shadow fell over Thalassia's flawless
face.  “Lyka, as you must have heard, has fucked off and
buried herself in a mountain.  It's far from here, beyond what
you call Scythia.  She'll be of no concern.  As for
Eden... I won't bother to bring up again that I might have dealt
with her if you could tell the 
fucking
 difference
between a friend and an enemy.”

Demosthenes cleared his throat.  “I
have few friends who have strangled me near to death.”

Thalassia shrugged.  “Well... you have
one now.”

“I do 
not
,” Demosthenes
corrected her sternly.  Perhaps with the first glimmer of dawn
after a night that was like the fever dream of a mad playwright, he
was remembering himself.  “You overstep and take too much for
granted.  You will not 
use
 me.  My
world, my city, will not be as tools in the pursuit of your
personal vendettas.  If I am to partner with you, it will be
because I believe such partnership can do more good than harm for
the people about whom I care most.”

Sitting up in his bed, Demosthenes leaned
forward, bringing himself closer to Thalassia, showing he would not
be cowed.

“You earlier maligned my view of women in
insisting that I treat you as an equal.  Well, I demand no
less of you.  I will play no pliant, backward barbarian to
your cultured goddess from on high.  If I am to take to you to
Athens, it is 
my
 house in which you will dwell,
and you must afford me proper respect both within its walls and
without.  Not just that, to all except us, you must appear as
my 
slave
, a spoil of war, for that is the only
reasonable excuse I can give for taking you into my home.  In
truth, I know I cannot be your master, but neither will you be
mine.  Is that much understood?”

The whole time he had spoken, Thalassia had
but stared at him with an expression that was more attentive than
usual, as though perhaps she was taking his words to heart.
 Her lips hung slightly open, but as he finished, they made no
move to reply.  Instead, Thalassia leaned swiftly and smoothly
forward, not stopping until her warm, parted lips grazed his own.
 Demosthenes leaned back, and when that did not end her
advance, he thrust up his palms such that they slid up Thalassia's
ribs, all but cupping her bare breasts.  

“Will you stop trying
to 
mate
 with me?” he demanded angrily, sliding
across the bed.  “If you heard invitation in my words, then
your knowledge of Greek is less perfect than it seems.”

A few feet away, naked Thalassia sighed and
tucked a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear.  It flopped
out, not quite long enough to stay put.  In the just-rising
light from the window, Demosthenes glimpsed unbroken flesh under
her left breast—a spot he had also just touched—confirming the
absence of any sign of yesterday's mortal wound.  There was
not even a scar that he could see.  Indeed, there were none to
be seen anywhere on her anatomy.

“I heard you,” Thalassia said soberly.
 “I accept it all.”

“Good...” Demosthenes said, encouraged by
the change in her manner.  “Now, as for Eden—”

An insistent thumping sounded on the chamber
door, which seconds later flew wide.  The bearded man behind
it was Agathokles, captain of a force of Messenian exiles from the
allied city of Naupaktos.  Agathokles had uttered half of
Demosthenes' name before the sight in front of him, that of a
foreign beauty naked in the Liberator's bed, stilled his
tongue.

“Ah... apologies,” the Naupaktan said,
recovering with a smile.  He showed no trace of embarrassment,
and gave as much effort to averting his gaze as Thalassia did to
covering her nakedness, which was none.  “I did not realize
you had company.”

“I... shall only be a few moments,”
Demosthenes told him.

“I know well the importance of the part she
tends to,” Agathokles snickered, “however, other parts of you are
much needed outside.”

“I'll not be long,” Demosthenes said
sharply.  “If you would, please pass word to the servants that
my guest here needs a garment.  Anything will do.”

The Naupaktan's glance fell upon the torn
and stained orange chiton heaped on the floor by the bedside, and
his smile spread wider.  “Things got rough?”

“Nothing that won't heal,” Demosthenes said.
 “Now, if you please...”

With a final, lingering look at Thalassia,
whose return smile he likely failed to notice, Agathokles left.

Even as the door shut, Thalassia picked up
where they had left off.  “If Eden has not found me within a
year,” she declared, “I will hunt the bitch down and destroy her.
 Deal?”

Demosthenes pondered.  A year?  A
being such as Eden—or Thalassia—could do a great deal of damage in
a year.  Should she not be found and slain sooner?  He
cursed himself for the fool move of intervening on Eden's behalf
yesterday.  Yet who could blame him?  What he had seen
was a very human-looking woman having her skull turned to pulp by a
second, crazed woman who had previously assaulted his own person.
 

Now he wished Eden dead, but for all he knew
Eden was in the right in her quarrel with Thalassia.  
The
traitor
.  
Wormwhore
.  

“It will do,” Demosthenes decided, for he
planned to give Thalassia far less than a year to fully open her
own past to him.

She smiled.  “So.  Are we...
partners?”

How many women down the ages had smiled at
men in just this way and asked a similar question?  Women
whose minds were like those of men, only subtler and more
dangerous.  And how many men had those women consigned to
misery and death by luring them into undertakings which, to those
looking back, hearing the tale unfold in bard's song or seeing it
acted upon a festival stage, are easily seen for abject folly?

Yet... to 
be
 there, to be
that man chosen to walk a privileged path, one set out upon by its
share of fools, yes, but walked also by true heroes long before
their names became known to all.  Not only tragedy but triumph
too was immortal.

The risk in what Thalassia proposed was
enormous, but so was the potential for reward.  Athens might
avert a generation of ruinous war followed by defeat and
subjugation.  It did not make a man guilty
of 
hubris
 to desire that... did it?  Fame and
glory might result for a man whose name Thalassia claimed was
doomed to be eclipsed by those of other men, but fame was
incidental.  It mattered not who it was who ensured the safety
of generations of Athenians yet unborn, only that the job was
done.

At least, Demosthenes told himself that, but
in truth he knew he had scant choice but to bind himself to
Thalassia, for she was determined to wreak changes upon his world
with or without him.  If he declined, she would only take the
same offer to another, or else strike off on her own path.
 Was it not better, then, for the sake not only of Athenians
but of all men and women everywhere, that he stay by her side where
he might exert the sort of stabilizing influence it was all too
clear she needed?

Still, he hesitated.  Why could not he
not bring himself to answer plainly, crying out his imminent
challenge for the gods and Fates to hear?  
Yes!

Conscious of the business awaiting him,
Demosthenes slid from the bed and stood.  He had slept in his
chiton and so already looked presentable, if barely.  He
looked down upon Thalassia, on her haunches on the bed, and
declared, if none too loudly, “We are partners.  With equal
say in all decisions, and no secrets held between us.  All
must stand revealed.”

Thalassia shut her eyes in a blissful look,
opened them and said with a grin, “Equals.  No secrets.”
 If Demosthenes did not read her wrong, she seemed almost
giddy.  “I can't wait to get started!”