Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (22 page)

Shifting her grip seamlessly from his scalp
to his wrist, she wrenched Demosthenes' arm with such force that
his feet flew from under him.  He landed hard on his knees and
was lucky to slap one hand down on the bottom step's edge before it
collided with his skull.  Thalassia ascended the stairs two at
a time.  Each step sent Demosthenes' body rebounding off the
wood, battering his arm and knees when he was lucky, his head and
shoulders when he was not.

They reached the second floor women's
quarters, but the punishing ascent showed no sign of ending.
 The smooth plaster floor across which Thalassia next dragged
him was a welcome respite before what was inevitably to follow.
 The ladder.  Pain lanced through Demosthenes' right arm
as she used it to hoist him up it, whilst his legs flailed in vain
for purchase on the rungs.  

She yanked him bodily through the hatch and
deposited him on his back on the tiled floor of the rooftop
terrace, finally releasing her grip on his burning arm.

A cloud-strewn afternoon sky spread above
him.  At its far edge hovered Athena's high temple.  A
fitting enough last sight to carry with him into gray Hades, he
thought.  Then the view was blocked by Thalassia, who came to
stand astride him, a pigtailed colossus, with one expensive sandal
planted on either side of his ribcage.  Crouching, she grasped
a handful of his chiton and used the material to drag his head up
from the plaster and bring his face within inches of hers.
 The brush-like ends of her twin braids tickled his
cheekbones.

“Look at me!” she demanded.

Demosthenes looked up into wide, wild eyes
that were all but devoid of reason.

Thalassia hissed into his face, each word
battering its way past clenched teeth: “You have not earned the
fucking right to touch me without an invitation.  I gave you
more than one, and you
refused
 them.”

Aching body limp, Demosthenes looked up at
the stargirl's face, framed by clouds. It was the beautiful, savage
face of a predator—probably his murderer—and, of a sudden... he
felt a strange pity for her.  

He forced words from lungs short on breath:
“He... must have hurt you... so deeply.” 

Effortlessly, Thalassia hoisted him from the
sun-warmed tile, her lips let loose a blood-chilling roar of the
kind heard on a battlefield just before the clash of spears, and
like a child abusing her toy, she drew her helpless victim back
against one shoulder—and threw him.

Demosthenes' stomach pitched as he sailed
backward through space.  Fortunately, by chance or design, he
struck the balustrade full-on, and the wood held fast against the
impact, keeping him from dashing his brains on the paving stones of
the garden two stories below.  Still, the back of his head
ricocheted before bouncing back and coming to rest in the void
between two posts.

On opening the eyes he had shut against the
pain, he expected to see Thalassia advancing on him to inflict
further harm.  Instead, he found no threat, at least not an
imminent one.  Rather than stalking after him, Thalassia had
gone to the rail opposite and collapsed, head on her knees and body
folded into a ball.  Suddenly, her arm flew out and struck a
wooden post of the railing.  The force caused it to splinter
and fall loose.

Aching with even the slightest move,
Demosthenes could only sit drawing labored breaths and waiting to
learn whether or not his already battered bones would be the next
to splinter thus.  When Thalassia failed to move again for
nearly a minute, he dared to begin pondering the possibility that
his life might extend beyond the next few moments.  

As if sensing that thought, Thalassia picked
her head up and looked over with pale, indignant eyes.  She
unfolded her limbs as if to move, and Demosthenes began composing
words of apology which might stave off death, if only his pride
would yield and let them be spoken.

But what came next was no attack.  On
all fours, sea-green dress dragging behind her, Thalassia crawled
across the tile.  She advanced slowly toward him, knee to
palm, knee to palm, until her hand brushed Demosthenes'
outstretched leg.  There she settled back onto her haunches
facing him, staring silently with a tight-lipped look he failed to
decipher.

“I told you I can choose whether to feel
pain or pleasure,” she said.  Her voice had lost its hard
edge.  “That's not only true of my flesh.  It's also true
of the things we feel within.  The things that make us
human. 
Soft things.
  Some in the Caliate are
barely more than machines.  The temptation sometimes for me to
become that way is...”  

She blinked, and from each of her cold,
perfect eyes a heavy tear slid free. One fell on Demosthenes'
bruised knee, but his attention remained on the face in which, for
perhaps the first time, he saw an expression which did not seem to
be at least partly an affectation.

“The truth is I'm damaged, Demosthenes,” she
said.  “I was before I ever met him.  He saw that, and
that's why he could...”  She paused and let that thought die.
 At length she whispered, “I'm not a monster.  I'm
not.”

And the starborn killer wept.

Demosthenes lifted his good arm, the left,
and touched Thalassia's wet cheek as if to prove to himself the
tears upon it were real. She shrank from the contact and lowered
her head into his lap, facing away from him. Her soft, strong body,
wrapped in pleats of sea-foam green, curled up by his side.

"Are you badly hurt?" she asked.

The slightest movement of Demosthenes' neck
sent waves of pain down his body. "I feel... as though someone
dragged me up two stories and pitched me across a roof."

Thalassia chuckled softly. "I didn't intend
to hurt you. Really. You deserve to live, Demosthenes, and to be
happy. I understand if my promises mean nothing, but I swear that I
will never lay a hand on you in anger again. You shouldn't fear for
your life from me. You don't have to."

Looking down–carefully, without moving his
neck–Demosthenes laid a hand on Thalassia's bare shoulder. "I wish
to believe you," he said. "But that you did not intend to hurt me
tonight gives me 
more
 reason to fear you, not
less. You are... impulsive. To say the least."

After a brief silence, Thalassia observed,
"You called me a child. You know, you've never asked me my age. I'm
older than I look. Much older."

Demosthenes had guessed that Thalassia could
not be the mere twenty or so years that she appeared, no more than
deathless Aphrodite was a blushing youth. But no, he had not asked
and was not certain that he wished to know the true answer. But
having raised the subject, she clearly now wished to tell him, and
he surely was not about to encourage her to keep secrets.

"How... how old?" he asked.

"Two hundred and thirty eight of your
years," Thalassia answered. "And of them all, the best six were the
ones I spent with him." She paused and drew a long, unsteady
breath. "I hate him so much."

How very human she seemed... or quite
possibly, how human she 
could
 seem, when it served
her.

She hesitated, and Demosthenes waited
patiently. He stared at her thickly braided
pigtails. 
Handles
, the errant thought slipped into his
mind. 
For what?
 It was not a hard question to
answer.

"He can't be killed by normal means," she
resumed. "And not just like I'm hard to kill. He always survives.
Always. That's why I'm here trying to unmake him instead. If it's
even possible. Succeed or fail, this will be the last thing I do.
The last world I ever see. That's why..."

She trailed off briefly, and Demosthenes
noticed he was stroking her arm. He quickly stopped.

"That's why I wear this collar, and try to
make friends, and spend your money on pretty, shiny things in the
agora." She laughed, faintly. "I'm glad I wound up in Athens. They
don't have pretty, shiny things in Sparta, do they? I wouldn't have
lasted there."

Setting palms to tile, Thalassia raised
herself, causing Demosthenes' thigh to rue the absence of her warm
cheek. She settled into an awkward seated posture, the fabric of
her long chiton stretched taut between widely parted knees. Her
head came level with his.

"Please," she said, and the cool eyes of the
crestfallen goddess, still moist with tears, begged. "Don't give up
on me. At least give me until Amphipolis is held. After that, if
it's what you want, I'll leave Greece altogether. I'll never
trouble you or your descendants again. That's a promise, and in
spite of what you may think, I do keep them."

Demosthenes met her stare, ignoring the pain
in his flesh and bone, pain of which she was the cause, and he
measured her such as he, or any mere human, was able.

"I..." he began, uncertain of what should
come next. "I believe you, I think. But I still fear you. I suspect
I always shall."

Thalassia's lips twisted in a melancholy
smile. It faded, and she said softly, " I hope not." She reached
out and touched his head, which throbbed. "Let's get you
downstairs."

Leaning in close, she slipped her left arm
under his right, while her other snaked around him from behind. The
move put her cheek against his. Instead of quickly hoisting him to
his feet, she paused and let the touch linger for longer than could
be accidental. She nuzzled him, just a little, and she exhaled, her
warm breath tickling his cheek. And then he was lifted, with great
ease and set on his feet such that he needed not bear his full
weight. From at least a half-dozen places, Demosthenes' body
screamed for attention or better still, the bliss of
unconsciousness. He had come through hour-long battles feeling less
bruised than he felt now.

"So... partners still?" Thalassia asked on
the way to the hatch.

"Until Amphipolis," Demosthenes agreed, with
rather less certainty than he would have liked.

Somehow Thalassia managed to lower him
gracefully through the hatch, and thence onto his bed. "Wait here,"
she instructed. "I'll bring you something for the pain."

For a short while, he lay looking up at the
ceiling, making peace in advance with any gods that would listen
for the sins which were doubtless to follow on this path he had
chosen in defiance of Fate and all good sense. Down below, the
hearth rattled with the sounds of whatever remedy Thalassia was
preparing. Momentarily she returned and sat on the edge of his bed
with a cup filled with a steaming, milky liquid.

"Drink this." She set the rim to his lip,
and Demosthenes, trusting in her as a physic, if not in all things,
emptied the contents.

Smiling, she set the cup aside. "You'll
sleep soon," she said. "In the morning, there is something I must
tell you. It's why I had to put to rest tonight these unspoken
things between us."

Warmth radiated from Demosthenes' chest,
down his limbs, pushing them down into the bedding and making
movement implausible. The sharp pains and dull aches of Thalassia's
maltreatment began to fade, and with them his clarity of mind.
Thoughts began to slip like silvery fish through his mental
grasp.

"Tell... me... what?"

"Tomorrow," Thalassia said soothingly. He
could see, but not feel, that her hand was on his arm.

Demosthenes laughed. With effort, he lifted
the hand nearest Thalassia and flicked one of her braids before
letting it fall. "You have handles..." he said sleepily.

She smiled. "Yes. Do you like them?"

"The better to ride you with." Demosthenes
laughed at his own feeble joke. "But... no, I... they could grow on
me." He laughed again. "They... grow on 
you
, actually.
On that thing... your... 
head
."

He let his heavy lids fall shut. He dragged
them open again and slurred, "What... you... want... tell..." He
got no further before sleep claimed him.

***

Demosthenes awoke with a start and with
words upon his lips: "...tell me!"

Morning light streamed in through his
window. As he tried to sit upright, he found that his right arm,
which aside from his neck was presently the source of the most pain
on his body, was tightly bound against his chest with linens.

"Thalassia!" he cried out.

"Morning," she said gently, appearing
quickly in the open doorway. She came to his bedside with a cup of
water. Realizing his mouth was parched, Demosthenes took the cup in
his good hand and emptied it in a few gulps before speaking.

"What is it you wished to tell me?" he asked
urgently, anxiously, knowing that it could scarcely be anything he
wished to hear.

The look she gave fed such a conclusion.
Since last night she had changed her sea-foam chiton for a pink
one, and her hair was different. The 'handles' (gods, had he really
said that to her?) were gone, and in their place were loose waves
still kinked from their prior confinement.

"Dress and eat breakfast first," she said.
"Then I will show you."

"Show me? No, you will tell me. Now."

He swung his legs off of the bed's edge, and
the wool blanket slid from his body, leaving him naked by the time
his bare feet touched plaster. Standing, he wobbled on unsteady
legs. Like lightning, a strong hand caught and held him.

"Alkibiades is expecting us at his home,"
Thalassia said, helpfully inserting her face into his line of sight
and saving him the painful necessity of turning his head. "I'll
explain there."

"Fine. Then we shall go now."

Thalassia brought him a fresh white chiton
with red embroidered hem, the donning of which required assistance
from the same nominal slave who had caused his injuries, aid which
he found himself resenting as she knelt and laced his sandals. When
he was dressed, they walked the streets slowly, a slave appearing
to hang on her master's arm when in fact she was helping keep him
upright.