Snakehead (13 page)

At least, I could watch her. She was safe, between her partner from the offering ceremony and another Yacht Club lad: two handsome young men from the Twelve Islands who called themselves Gliko and Niki. They seemed to be looking after her all right. They were making my girl laugh.

Which upset me, stupidly.

The courses came thick and fast: I counted fifteen (too many for good taste). I couldn’t fault the baked and grilled meats, but the rest was dismal. The wines were poorly kept, the honey was stale and the mixing water was not spring water, or iced either; but there you go. I hadn’t expected the cuisine to compete with Dicty’s.
Polydectes, having made sure I was given a lowly seat, had not so much as looked my way. He sat in his big-armed chair at the table on the dais, looking down on us all, and talked to his friends.

I had never seen the king before, except at a distance. I tried to judge him as if he was an opponent in a boxing match. The tyrant who’d been a shadow over my life was not much taller than his brother. But he had presence, and plenty of hard muscle. He was about ten years younger than Dicty, as I knew. His hair and his well-clipped beard were dark, untouched by gray. His eyes were hazel-brown; they caught the light.

Finally, dessert was brought in: butter, cheeses, cakes and nuts, fresh fruit and dried, and sweet wines. I saw a stir of expectation at the high table.

The show was about to begin.

Polydectes rose, and held out his cup to be filled. I saw him shake his head fussily as the steward tried to give him a liqueur. He was an abstemious man. I’d noticed that he’d eaten sparingly, and taken his wines with plenty of water.

“My lords!” he began in a strong voice: he didn’t need a herald to repeat his words. “My friends, my guests. Especially the charming ladies, whom we welcome. Although up here we follow modern fashion, and think ladies should stay at home …”

He was looking at Andromeda. She paid no attention; she went on eating a piece of cheese, looking bored. I’d
seen him glance her way often, with curiosity and calculation. Was he thinking of the reward he could get for delivering her back to Haifa? I was grateful to the innards readers, if they’d told him he mustn’t touch.

“I thank you all for joining me, to celebrate my marriage plans.” (Cheers and whoops: some of the “nobles” were completely tipsy, and the Yacht Club kids too.) “But as you know”—he bared his teeth in a grin—“a wedding isn’t all pleasure, it’s a business negotiation. A man has to haggle with a fine young lady’s parents, same as if he was buying a round of succulent cheese in the marketplace.”

His courtiers roared with laughter, and banged their cups.

“How would
he
know?” muttered Anthe. “He’s never paid a bill in his life. These cheeses are stolen, I bet. Like everything else in here.”

“Shhh.”

“Now, since the lady I desire is Hippodameia, daughter of the great king of Olympias, I’d better make my bride-gift a hefty present of horses!” More roars.
Hippodameia
was a Greek name meaning something like “horse tamer.” I bet she looks like a horse, I thought. And she’s being sold like one. “I know you’re going to help me out. I expect a horse from each of you! Imported bloodstock, if you please, no nags. What do you say? Is that too much to ask, my noble vassals?”

This has been rehearsed, I thought. Everyone knows the lines.

And so do I …

One by one the tyrant’s followers got up. Each of them said he would give a horse, and not just any horse. We got the name of the stud farm, the sire and dam, the color of the animal’s hide, its conformation, top speed, the honors it had won, the trainer’s name and reputation. A seriously expensive wedding list of mighty chests, firm hocks, short backs, round eyes, proud crests—which got harder to believe as we passed down the pecking order. I’d drunk as little as I could get away with, and I have an iron head, but I felt very strange. I was watching from the outside, I
knew
all this.

“Ah, now we come to Perseus. Did you hope we were leaving you out? Don’t be embarrassed! As the least of my vassals, I know you can’t afford a horse. Your foster father’s a taverna keeper, which I’m glad our parents didn’t live to see, but I suppose old Dicty’s found his own level. Where would he find that kind of money, eh?”

The high table yelled with laughter.

“You’re absolutely right,” I said, loud and clear. But I didn’t stand up. “I’m stone-broke. What do you suggest?”

“Give him your
mother!”
shouted one of the so-called nobles. “Let him have that secondhand princess as Hippodameia’s bathroom maid.”

“I’d like a pretty yeller-haired bathroom maid myself!” bellowed another of them. “I’ll have her after you, sire. Before we pass her around the barracks, eh?”

“Bit long in the tooth, but she’d do with the lamp blown out!”

Anthe had grabbed my knee under the table. She seemed to be trying to gouge out the bone with her fingernails, but I didn’t need extreme pain to help keep my head. I knew the insults were meant to shake me. But I took note: Tall, older bruiser with a boxer’s nose and ponytail. Fat slob with pasty double chins. Scrawny young blood with the armlets and the goatee beard. I won’t forget you three, I thought as I sat grinning uncertainly—like a pitiful oversized clown, too dumb to tell the difference between raucous fun and damned insults.

Polydectes was wrapped in a showy mantle in the Serifos
sunburst
style: a gold-and-yellow sun the size of a bonfire splattered over his chest. If I looked like an idiot, he looked like a strutting cockscomb. But I knew he wasn’t, and his friends weren’t fools either. I knew them by what they’d done to Serifos. The king was a tough, cunning, ruthless man in the prime of life, and the men around him were the same. He was no pushover. Yet he was speaking words my father had told me I would hear, and he didn’t know it. He thought he was in control of this, but he was not….

“Your mother’s safe,” he said gravely, after waiting for the laughter to die. He was pretending that the insults weren’t his design: as if his men would have dared to speak like that about Danae without orders. “The gift I
want is very different. I’m going to set you a challenge, my fine young fellow. Bring me the head of the Medusa, with the eyes that turn men to stone. Do you think you can manage that?”

(Afterward, some tale-tellers said
I
made the offer. I boasted I could get him the Medusa Head, trying to make an impression, and Polydectes called my bluff. This is not true, and no one who knows me at all believes it….)

There was a hubbub of excitement. Polydectes’ men were going
oooh!
because they’d been primed for this moment. The Yacht Club kids hadn’t known what was coming, but they’d heard of the Medusa. She’d been a famous challenge—until so many champions had failed to come back that the quest went out of style. Anthe and Andromeda were in shock for a different reason. I’d told them practically word for word what the king would say.

“The Medusa,”
whispered the girl on the other side of me, a traveler from Keros. “Great Mother, Perseus, your tyrant mustn’t get hold of that monstrous thing! A weapon that can turn armies to stone! He could rule the Middle Sea!”

“Don’t be dumb, Kia,” muttered Anthe. “He doesn’t want the Snakehead, he wants rid of Perseus. No one comes back alive from that so-called quest.”

I ignored them. I was fascinated, detached, watching it all unfold. I said what I was supposed to say, shrugging and grinning like a yokel.

“All right. I’ll give it a try, if you like.”

Polydectes smiled. I saw that he was
hungry
to be revenged on Dicty, and on my mother for refusing him. But just getting me out of the way wasn’t enough; there had to be a twist…. He’s being used, I thought coldly. He’s doomed.

“Accepted!” cried the king with a flourish. The sunburst mantle flashed.

The hall burst into wild applause. The Yacht Club kids were banging and yelling too, not to be outdone. They didn’t care that we were unarmed, outnumbered, and things could still turn nasty. They’re pretty crazy, boys and girls alike, the young braves who wander the Middle Sea looking for fun.
“Perseus!”
they shouted.
“Perseus! Perseus! Perseus! The Snakehead! Perseus!”

As if I was the star of a ball-game team, and the Medusa Head our winning goal.

There was another dessert course, salty this time, with more wines. As it was laid, I saw Polydectes speak to the chief steward. The man came over to me, smirking. “Young sir,” he murmured with fake deference and a pitying grin, “the king has asked me to tell you, feel free to take your leave now. An entertainment is about to start, and we don’t want to shock the young ladies. It’s dancing girls, you see.” There’s nothing wrong with dancing girls. But I knew
that the “entertainers” here would be kidnapped villagers, untrained, unwilling, humiliated…. And there was nothing I could do.

“The king hopes you’ll call on the High Place for weapons and supplies. We know your foster father won’t be able to equip you, and we wouldn’t want to put him out.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of meat cleavers.”

Herding drunken Yacht Club kids was like filling a sieve with water. Somehow, I don’t know how, we got them out of there. Outside the hateful walls it was still black night, though dawn couldn’t be far off. Anthe had left a bundle of torches by the road, with the offering baskets. She and Andromeda lit them and handed them around. Gliko gave one to me, and punched me in the shoulder. He was very happy.

“Go, Perseus!” he crowed. “The Medusa Head! That’ll make your name!” He peered into my face. “Hey, you look a bit glum. You can do it, can’t you?”

I shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Tha’s the spirit. Your tyrant’s
an idiot
. Glad I was there to see you take him on.”

He winked at Andromeda and launched himself after the pack. The away team went dancing, stumbling and singing down the hill. Anthe had gone with them.

I looked at Andromeda, she looked at me.

“They’ll be sober in the morning,” she said.

“I’m sober now.”

“I know you are.”

We let the bobbing lights vanish and then followed slowly, heads down and silent as a pair of tired mules. Neither of us said a word until we reached the cemetery. We sat on the low wall, and she took my hand. The eastern sky was gray; the fading night was cold.

“What’s it like where you live?” I asked.

I could hardly see her face, but I felt her smile.

“Our city’s on the coast. To the east and north and south, you look out and the land goes on and on, forever. It’s an ocean of land; the caravans sail across it. But I had never left Haifa before I ran away. Except once, by sea, to visit Eygpt.”

“I meant where you
live
. The palace?”

“Oh … It’s not at all like here. Nothing’s square, except the gates. Nothing’s stone, except the doorways to the public rooms, the throne room, and my father’s house, and the halls of judgment. There are gardens on terraces high above the ground, and there’s the bathing place, which is underground and spring fed. There are far too many towers, some of them very tall and spindly, with windows like little black eyes. From the outside it looks exactly like a gathering of giant termites’ nests, painted white….”

She could talk now, because she didn’t have to lie.
She’d been our silent mystery girl when she was still fighting for her life. “I don’t know what a termite is.”

“It’s a kind of ant. They make huge nests like blobby towers of earth in our fields: as tall as you. They look half-melted. But they don’t have windows.” She looked at the toes of her sandals. “Termites eat anything.”

I noticed that being by the graves didn’t bother her. She was no more afraid of the dead than I was. “I didn’t like the way that brute kept staring at you.”

“You mean the king? He won’t kidnap me. Men like that don’t meddle in priests’ business. All those horses … Why are horses so important, Perseus?”

“Status symbols. Signs of power. They’re important to the Greeks, not to us. But Polydectes wants to
be
a Greek, an Achaean. That’s why he’s obsessed with my mother.”

“I dream of horses. I don’t know why. I’ve never ridden one.”

The east was growing brighter by the minute. I let go of her hand and rolled my torch on the ground to put it out. Andromeda’s had already guttered. She used the charred end to draw lines and curls on the rocks at our feet.

S’bw’r …
I whispered it. “I wish
I
had a secret name. I would tell it only to you.”

“But you do. I think you’ve spent your life hiding your secret name from everyone, except maybe your mother. Pretending it doesn’t exist, and you’re not
him.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Son of Zeus.”

“Oh, that …” I shrugged it off. There was something I must say, and the half-light gave me courage. “Andromeda, you
can’t
go back. What about the new kind of writing? What’ll happen to that incredible, wonderful idea? Don’t you care that it will be lost? What if no one can ever write down ‘Dark Water’ again, and bring it back to life from little flying marks? What if people never learn how to do that again?”

She shook her head listlessly, without looking up. “I thought like that. Now I know it doesn’t matter how talented I am, how clever, how ‘special.’ … Anybody’s child is special. I didn’t tell you, did I? Before I ran away, my mother tried to get the priests to take
her
, in my place. Of course they said no. A sacrifice has to be young, and virgin. But she’d have died for me. She truly loves me, in her way.”

“Then she’ll protect you.”

“No she won’t. She thinks she brought this punishment down on us, but she’s still a queen, who has to plan for the future. If she refuses to give me up, then even if there’s no earthquake, I’m
useless
. I’m god-touched now. I can’t rule our country. I can’t make a match that will give us a great alliance. There’s nothing she can do with me.” Andromeda shivered. “It was very unpleasant at home. It was p-p-partly to get away from her guilt and remorse…. No. That’s a lie. I ran because I didn’t want to die. I still don’t want to die. But I’ve accepted it.”