Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (39 page)

***

Alone, Demosthenes came to the gate of his
home and walked down the palm-lined garden path, seeing three women
waiting for him in the open doorway ahead. On the right, squatting
on her haunches with ink-banded arms folded in front of her, was
Eurydike. On the left was Laonome, brow furrowed with the fear that
she would lose her new husband to prison or exile. And in the
center, behind the other two, stood Thalassia, quietly confident,
exuding certainty that whatever news may come would prove no
obstacle to her plans.

Demosthenes did not smile as he walked the
path, a cruel oversight, perhaps, and it caused two bleak
expressions to grow bleaker still. As he took the final steps,
Laonome surged forward and laid hands gently on his chest as her
wide eyes silently begged knowledge of the day's verdict.

Though unintended, Demosthenes' sharp intake
of breath preparatory to making the announcement almost certainly
sounded ominous; both Eurydike and Laonome tensed as if to receive
a blow.

"Four months," he declared evenly. "To begin
at nightfall."

On hearing the sentence, Laonome gasped.
Eurydike loosed a whimper.

Now he really was toying with them,
knowingly, although it had not been his intention–some of
Thalassia's bad habits evidently had rubbed off on him. But he had
not the heart to let the cruel trick go on more than an instant. He
slipped his arm around his bride and pulled her close.

"House arrest!" he said brightly. "You will
be sick of me soon."

When his words had sunk in, Eurydike sprang
to her feet and joined the embrace, while Thalassia looked down
from the threshold with a smirk. She begrudged a laugh, shook her
head and retreated into the megaron.

Demosthenes did not spend his last few hours
of freedom in his home, but in public carrying out a small amount
of business but mostly just receiving praise and congratulation on
the verdict. Word of it had spread quickly, and the common wisdom
was that between the fame Amphipolis had won him and his humble
acceptance of guilt, his own influence would shortly eclipse that
of Kleon.

Good news for the future of Athens, perhaps,
but a mixed blessing for the recipient of the public's esteem.
The 
demos 
was nothing if not fickle, and as likely
as not to dispose of its most notable public figures the moment
their stars stopped shining.

His sentence presented a more immediate
problem with regard to his political career. Elections to the Board
of Ten were to be held two months from now, and a candidate under
arrest was ineligible. The reason was simple and logical: no matter
how many votes he received, he would be legally unable to go abroad
on campaign.

"What now?" he asked of Thalassia later that
evening, when they had a chance to be alone. They stood against the
balustrade of the rooftop terrace, under smooth clouds white with
moonglow.

"I am glad for you," she said reflectively.
"And Laonome."

"Brasidas knows about you. And with the
hostages gone, Sparta will invade this summer for certain."

"You chose the sentence. You might have
asked for half the time spent in jail instead."

"I might have," Demosthenes agreed, and let
the matter drop. "What of Brasidas?"

Thalassia shrugged. She seemed strangely
subdued. "What can he do? The invasion will come, and we will be
ready. Much liquid stone has been prepared. It will let us build
fortifications quickly and cheaply. And you will be free by
then."

"I will not be a strategos."

"You weren't at Pylos, either. The Board
will not let you go to waste."

"Fortifications..." Demosthenes observed. "A
year ago, you spoke of killing strokes. Now we prepare again to
defend against theirs."

Thalassia smiled, but distantly. "That
almost sounds like an insult. And here on this roof, no less. Very
bold."

Demosthenes might have laughed–at this, a
reference to his own maiming a year prior–had he not become certain
by now that Thalassia was holding something back. As was always the
case when she behaved thus, he was not certain he wished to know
what the something was.

She waved a hand. "It's not me who lacks the
will for a killing stroke. Convince your democracy, and I'll be
ready. You'll have four months to write speeches."

Demosthenes set a hand over hers on the
balustrade. How long and difficult a road he had traveled to be
able to make such a simple gesture as that.

"Tell me," he said.

"Nothing..." she answered at first. Then, "I
think I should leave."

Demosthenes stomach lurched and he was glad
for the support of his arms on the rail. "Leave Athens?"

Thalassia quickly faced him and smiled
reassuringly. "No, idiot." The insult was an affectionate one.
"Your house. But I appreciate the severe reaction."

"Why?" he demanded, ignoring the rest.

Thalassia hung her head, face vanishing in
lustrous waves of unbound hair. "Your sentence. Soon enough, these
walls will close in on you. I don't want us to fight. Our fights
are dangerous."

"We are past that," Demosthenes
countered.

"And other reasons," she continued. "The
more time we spend together, the harder it will be to keep our
secret from the others."

"We have done well thus far. What else? Now
the true reason."

Looking out over Athens, at the jagged,
serene, moonlit acropolis, Thalassia said reluctantly, "You should
have something in your life that's just for you, something that I
don't infect with..."

Madness
, Demosthenes finished
silently.

"–madness," she simultaneously spoke aloud,
as if reading his thoughts. "Being married is hard enough as it is.
Or so I'm told."

Demosthenes stared at her profile and
wondered. She was right, of course. For all those reasons, it would
be better if she moved out. But should he insist anyway that she
stay, as he would with any mortal guest?

No, no games. She was no mortal, and no
guest either. This was her home.

"I could free you, file the papers to make
you a resident alien," he said.

Thalassia flashed a half smile. He had not
used the legal term in jest, but he certainly saw the irony–or,
rather, the literal truth–in it.

"It's not much concern of mine whether I
wear a necklace or not." She flicked the thin silver choker on her
neck, rattling the small amber pendants which hung from it in the
soft shadow of her collarbone. "I'll stay with Alkibiades," she
confirmed needlessly.

Demosthenes nodded. "Only while I am
confined. Then you will return."

Thalassia looked over with her pale eyes
which could see through all men, and spoke in the blunt way she
often did. And as she often did, she replied to the meanings of
words rather than their form.

"He is still a tool," she reassured.

She left her own true meaning up to the
hearer to interpret, and Demosthenes did: 
He shall not
replace you.

Such reassurance implied a belief that
Demosthenes was jealous. And again, as usual... she was right.
There was no other way to describe what he felt, and no denying
that he felt it. Others could have Thalassia's body, but her
madness, her violent, destructive madness, had to be his alone.

He must be mad, too, to want such a
thing.

The rooftop fell into silence, and against
the backdrop of the Grove of Nymphs, where shrill insects droned,
Demosthenes studied his raven-haired witch from the stars. There
was no question but that her seasons in this world had changed her.
She was more circumspect, less volatile. In Amphipolis, he had
given her the perfect excuse to feed him his own severed cock and
instead there had been only... a picnic. Something had tamed her.
Maybe it was him. Maybe it was the loneliness of being so separated
from anyone that was capable of understanding her. Then again,
maybe it was the opposite of loneliness. She had come to see the
pawns in her scheme for revenge as more than pawns, while revenge
required a single-mindedness that left little room for
affection.

What dwelt in the mind and heart of one so
alien as she, a mortal could only guess.

Sensing sorrow brewing in her, Demosthenes
took a stab at alleviating it.

"I have reached a decision," he said. "If we
win this war, assuming I live through it, and if you will have
me... then I shall help you burn that Italian city to the ground
once or twice. I will bring an army with me, if I can."

Staring into the night, Thalassia remained
expressionless, a serene beauty. In this light, her flesh was
nearly the same pale blue as were her eyes in the day. Eventually
she directed those eyes at him, smiled with her dark, thin lips and
answered, "I would like that. But you will have children by then.
If they change your mind, I won't hold it against you."

There was a coldness in her voice as she
spoke of children. He conjured an image of Thalassia with one
infant on her angular hip and another growing in her flawless
belly, and the absurdity of it almost twisted his lips in a smile.
Never had he witnessed a glimmer of the maternal in her soul, in
spite of the fondness with which she treated her pupil, the
Spartlet Andrea.

Thalassia would not be tamed in that way,
not ever.

He 
could be, though, or so her
words implied.

"Time will tell," he conceded.

Before another silence could descend and
make things awkward, and before he could talk himself out of it, he
proceeded to do something with vastly greater potential for
awkwardness than any mere silence. Mindful of the greeting he had
failed to give her on the bank of the Strymon, he set a hand on her
shoulder, atop the thin, sharp pleats of her dress, he pulled her
into a parting embrace.

"I shall miss you," he said softly,
genuinely.

Slowly, woodenly, Thalassia's arms came up.
Halfheartedly, as though from obligation, she reciprocated. His
cheek near to hers but not touching it, Demosthenes waited for her
to melt against him, as Eurydike and Laonome always did.

He waited in vain. Just as he gave up and
lowered his arms in defeat, the hard body in his arms softened.
Thalassia bowed her head and let their temples touch. Demosthenes
restored his arms to the small of Thalassia's back and left them
there for all of the heartbeat that its recipient allowed the
embrace to endure. Long hair scented with 
iasme
,
jasmine, brushed his neck, warm, linen-covered breasts withdrew
from his chest, and they were separate again. Her face angled
downward, Thalassia looked up at him past her perfect brows.

"Idiot..." she said. She made it sound
almost as a term of endearment. "You won't have time to miss me.
We'll still see too fucking much of each other."

The remainder of the winter put the lie to
Thalassia's prediction. Within half a month, she had moved with
Alkibiades to a village of Attica in the mountains north of the
city. Like Amphipolis, Dekelea was an undefended place with a size
and appearance that were all out of proportion to its vital role in
Athens' might-have-been history. A collection of wooden structures
with more passers-through than residents, Dekelea sat in the
mountain pass through which poured vast quantities of the imported
grain on which Athens depended. And just like Amphipolis, it was a
town which Fate would have seen, and may yet see, captured by the
enemy. Once seized, Thalassia said, Dekelea would be fortified by
the Spartans and used a base from which to strike all over Attica,
not to mention helping to starve the city by interrupting its grain
supplies.

But Fate would be foiled in that design, or
so it seemed. Demosthenes, by means of intermediaries, had managed
to convince the Board of Ten to fortify the place in recognition of
its importance. In that other world which, thanks to Thalassia,
could never be, the Spartans would have taken the idea of seizing
Dekelea from a certain Athenian turncoat by the name of Alkibiades.
Now that very man, blissfully unaware of his own capacity for
treason, instead oversaw the fortification of Dekelea for his own
people.

Perhaps more than the Board was interested
in protecting a remote village, it aimed to test Thalassia's
'liquid stone,' which they believed to have been brought from India
or beyond by traders who had sold it on to the crew of Demosthenes'
ship. It was a powder, comprised mostly of limestone, which when
mixed with water became a viscous, mud-like substance. Poured into
wooden molds and left to dry, it grew as hard as stone, or nearly
so. Athenian state engineers and architects were only just
discovering its many uses, and since the best way to learn was by
doing, the construction of an encircling wall at Dekelea served all
well as a test.

From Sparta, there was silence. They sent no
more heralds with proposals for a truce, since their main goal in
seeking peace, the return of the hostages, had already been
achieved by Brasidas. Snows and the elections came, and the name
Demosthenes was not listed among the ten winners of a generalship.
Kleon's was, and so were those of Nikias and eight others who were
mostly holdovers who had failed to disgrace themselves enough in
the prior year to warrant being deprived of another opportunity to
fail.

Demosthenes took the news well, less because
it was expected than because he was happy. He awoke every morning
beside his chosen bride, or the bride well-chosen for him, and
every morning his love for her burned as brightly as it had the
night before. The walls did not close in on him, his prison felt
like no prison, and he saw no sign of marriage becoming the ordeal
it was taken for by Thalassia and so many others.

He was fortunate, and knew it.

Eurydike felt the absence of the friend and
sister she had found in Thalassia, and missed Alkibiades, too, who
had not given up his Little Red as a playmate on account of taking
on Thalassia (how intimately connected were the two female legs of
that tripod, Demosthenes did not quite know, and let it be their
concern), but she mitigated the loss with regular visits to the
pair at Dekelea. While at home, Eurydike got along well with her
new mistress, partly owing to their acquaintance prior to the
union, but even more because Laonome, having been on the bottom in
her former oikos, was not one to lord it over a slave. She was
regularly on the bottom in her new oikos, too, but in a more
enjoyable way, by all accounts, in sessions which often enough
found Eurydike joining them.