The Trials of Hercules (48 page)

“So, what’s your plan?” she asks.

I wipe my hands and sit back in the chair. A delighted smile spreads across my face as I imagine how much she is going to enjoy this.

“I have runners on the road. When they bring word that Herc is returning to Portaceae, we’ll begin the preparations for your event.”

“And if he fails?” She raises her eyebrows and takes a sip of wine.

If he fails, he will be dead and I will celebrate. Indeed, I would bankrupt the polis to celebrate, even if I have to call it a funeral and dress in the maroon robes of mourning. But I—ever positive—am working on the assumption he will succeed. That somehow he will pass into Hades’s realm and come out unscathed. Either way, alive or dead, the plan will go forth, only the players and the attire will change.

“My dear,” I take her hand. She gives a look of revulsion at the place where my thumb had once been. Ever since I removed the bandages to reveal a puckered scar that reminded me of a toothless mouth, she has avoided touching my right hand and eyes it with wary disgust. I cover the offending sight with my other hand. “He is after something to make you happy. He wouldn’t dare fail. Do you know why?”

She doesn’t respond.

“Because you are Lady of the Polis from this moment on. The event I have planned will all be for you.”

“What does that mean exactly?” she asks, her icy demeanor melting slightly at the hint of an honor.

“You will be the most honored woman in Portaceae. More highly honored than Hera. More revered than the Herenes. This is what I will tell the people and this is why Herc will present you with your gift in the arena.”

A satisfied smile breaks over her face.

“You can do that?”

“I’m tired of being told what I can and can’t do. I will make my own laws. Hera has little enough to do with this polis and therefore why should she or the Herenes matter any longer? It’s simply a case of changing the laws. Soon after the ceremony, my guards will drag the Herenes from their complex and it will belong to me. The Temple of Hera will become the Temple of Solonia Adneta and her statue will be replaced by one of you.”

Adneta is leaning forward now, gripping my incomplete hand in hers, a flush of excitement over her cheeks.

“If Herc fails, we will burn an effigy of him and call in a rebirth of Portaceae—a sort of out with the old, in with the new. If he succeeds, he will give you the gift, which I will declare the beginning of the new order.” I will also ensure if Herc succeeds that Deianira is there to present her husband with her love potion. “Either way, wear your new belt. It will be a nice touch. See, I’ve thought of everything.”

Adneta releases my hand and slips her fingers into my wine glass. She traces a wine-soaked finger over my lips as she licks her own. I grab her hand and suck on her first two digits as the fingers of her other hand draw circles over my chest.

I look over my shoulder to the servant who stands rigid beside the serving board. “We’re done with you,” I say. He gives a choppy bow and disappears through a concealed door.

In a flurry of desire, I shove the dishes aside and lift Adneta onto the table. The thrill of the act is marred only by the acrid smell of the risotto that spills across the table in my haste to mount the Lady of the Polis.

40

O
RPHEUS

The woman is enormous. Even sitting at her table in front of her books, she seems a living mountain. My hands shake and my legs refuse to hold still as I fidget in a rickety wooden chair in the offices of the House of Hera.

They think I’ve done something wrong. Why else would they have called me here?

Since Stavros’s death, I’ve applied myself to learning as much as I can about electronics by fiddling with the random pieces of equipment I’ve collected and littered Mother’s house with over the years. I even managed to build a small solar panel that now powers a bubbler in Mother’s bird bath. In my excitement over my achievement, I sent an appeal to the Solon to grant me a travel pass to go to Athenos to study with the people who are masters of electricity. Am I now being questioned for that? Dear gods, do they think I’m a spy for Athenos? Or am I in trouble for building the panel? Electricity is under the control of the Council. I know that, of course I know that, but surely a tiny thing to entertain birds can’t be illegal. Dear gods, why didn’t I listen to Mother and stick to music? How was I to know the dangers of engineering?
As I wait, the image of Stavros flying through the air from the control room to the arena floor plays through my head in slow motion.

The chair begins to shake under me as my nerves lose hold of themselves. My eyes flick to the mountainous Herene and freeze when they met her concerned gaze.

“Calm yourself. You’re not in trouble,” she says and then goes back to recording something in her books.

Her words and demeanor comfort me, but only a little. Surely if I am in trouble, vigiles would be in the room, not just a woman tending to her lists. Although that woman could crush me under her foot with one step.

The door swings open. A man with coppery red hair walks with a slight limp through the door. He is dressed in full vigile uniform complete with a short sword at his hip and a dagger lashed to his calf. I jolt and nearly topple over the chair.

Oh gods, I am in trouble.

How many more of them are outside? Are there centaurs as well? I knew I’d heard the sound of hooves. I fall out of the chair and drop to my knees.

“Please, I only meant it as a gift for Mother. I’m not a spy.”

The vigile looks at me, his face stern, unyielding. My heart chugs in my chest. He reaches out to pull me up by my arms. And then he starts laughing.

“Orpheus Keros, get up, you idiot. Don’t you recognize me?”

My head swims. My mind floods with so much fear I don’t think I could recognize my own mother. Ever since the Solon tossed Stavros from the control room, I’ve had a perpetual sensation of falling. It’s gotten so bad I had to move my mattress from my bed, only an arm’s length high, to the floor and even then I dream of falling. Falling from horseback, falling from the top of stairs, falling from cliffs. Falling.

But the man’s hair and his easy manner—

In a flash I’m hit with recognition. From outside, bells are sounding, calling the people to the arena.

“Iolalus. What, what is—I don’t understand,” I stammer.

“I don’t have much time to explain,” he says as he steps over to look out the window. “Do you still have access to the control room?”

I nod. My throat has closed too tightly to speak.

Please gods, don’t ask me to go there.

From a desk drawer, he pulls a cassette. I recognize it as one of the cartridges placed inside a camera to record on.

“There’s a gathering at the arena. On my signal I need you to play this so the people can see it on the screen.”

“No.” I shake my head as my voice trembles out the word. “I can’t go up there. He’ll—”

“He’ll be powerless to do anything to you once this is shown,” he says in a manner that, while it doesn’t completely erase my fear, somehow sends a feeling of ease through me. “This shows our Solon for what he truly is.”

Oh, believe me, I know what the man truly is. He is the one in my nightmares pushing me from the horse, pushing me down the stairs, and pushing me off the cliff.

“He’ll kill me,” I manage to say through my clenched throat.

“Maxinia and I have arranged for centaurs and vigiles to block Eury once he is on the dais. And there will be more stationed at the steps to the control room.” He rests his hand on my shoulder. “He won’t even be able to reach you.”

“I don’t—”

Iolalus steps directly in front of me and places both hands on my shoulders as he looks straight into my eyes.

“Your call brought the vigiles to arrest Herc. Your mother’s word as witness made him into Eury’s pawn. I’m not sure what caused my cousin to do what he did, but the gods, Athena herself, has said it was not Herc who truly did it. You owe him this. This can free my cousin and remove a corrupt man from power. Will you do this, Orpheus?”

He holds the cassette out to me. I stare at it as the bells toll outside.

“He won’t be able to get to the control room?” I ask still staring at the object in Iolalus’s hand.

“I will put vigiles of my own choosing outside the door and at the bottom of the stairs.”

I look him in the eye.

“And this will rid us of Eury?”

Iolalus nods and a feeling of calm strength I haven’t experienced since Stavros’s death settles over me.

I give one quick nod and take the cassette.

41

H
ERC

I swat at the thing brushing against my face.

The dead.

So this is it, I think with a strange calmness. It wasn’t the water I hit, it was the stones beside the pool. And now the dead have swarmed around me to shred my flesh. I swat again trying to fend them off. My hands are tangled in fabric. Dear gods, they’ve bound my hands.

I open my eyes expecting to see skeletal faces, blank eyes, morbid skin. But I don’t. Instead I see my hands wrapped in the gauzy, black robes of the ferryman. Cerberus sprawls beside me panting hot breath onto my arm. My jostled mind can’t fathom where the boat has materialized from. Had it waited there all the while or does it appear as needed? I don’t care. I’m only glad to be out of the clutches of the dead.

I shake Charon’s robes of my skin and jerk away from Cerby’s foul breath. The leash has bitten into my flesh leaving my hand numb and my arm ringed in red circles. I loosen the strap from my arm, and blood surges into my hand making it throb and tingle. I shift against the bottom of the boat trying to sit upright, but the movement drives spikes through my leg.

Where the creatures have clawed me, my thigh sports a gaping wound, ragged at the edges and spanning twice the width of my hand. In most places, the flesh has been torn to a depth of three fingers. The sight of the damage turns my stomach, but there is little to do for the bleeding mess until I can get fresh water, safe water, to cleanse it with.

Under the smooth rocking motion of the boat, I drift to sleep but wake with a start when I feel the slimy wet of Cerberus's tongue sliding over my leg. I scramble, checking frantically that the leash is still in my grasp.

“Get off!” I shove her center snout aside and the three heads give me a sad look with their ruby red eyes. I raise my hand to brush the slobber from the wound and see the gash has already grown shallower, the edges more even. I look back to her. With ears cocked, the three heads tilt in curiosity.

“Well, if you must.” I point to the wound and she licks at it as the ferryman punts back up river. By the time we dock, the wound has healed with only a faint hint of pink where the dead had gouged their fingers. I pat each of Cerby’s heads and, holding the leash with a tight grip, step out of the boat. With her size, Cerby isn’t built for grace. Attempting to leap from boat to dock, she totters and slips and lands in a sprawl on the boat’s bottom. I ease her upright and hoist her out, then bid farewell to the ferryman, wondering how soon it will be before I see him again. As if saying her own goodbye, Cerby gives three cheerful barks—one from each head.

The climb back up the stairs is not as fearsome as the descent and Cerby seems to know exactly where to step and what planks to avoid. I allow her to take the lead and follow after her. Any step that can support her heft will certainly support mine. Every twenty steps or so, one of the side heads looks back to me and gives a cheerful bark as if checking in on me and glad to see I’m doing well. I will hate giving this strange and fascinating creature over to the hands of Adneta. No doubt within a week she'll be bored with the beast and Cerby will be as dead as the residents of the Chasm.

Once in the train carriage, the enormous dog jumps onto the bench next to me, plops her heads into my lap, and sleeps most of the way from the Chasm to Portaceae. The days on the train drag by with painful slowness. Although I have Cerby to distract me, the few people that dare to look in my seating area quickly duck out when her heads let out a gruff bark. After seeing the fear on people’s faces at the station in Demos when I take Cerby out to stretch our legs, I decide to spend the remainder of the journey holed up in my car with her and with my own turmoil.

My thoughts repeatedly run to what I will do when I return to Portaceae. No matter how I try to steer them in another direction, they insist on coming back to ridding the polis of Eury. The tasks, Eury’s behavior, and my new knowledge of Hera’s treachery have changed my once unshakeable sense of duty to the Solon. My cousin is a pestilence to Portaceae, worse than ravenous caterpillars invading a field of lettuce, and I know I cannot leave him alive if Portaceae is ever to thrive again. It will mean my end as well, but his death will bring new life to Portaceae.

Even before the train pulls into Portaceae City station, I can hear the bells announcing a gathering at the arena. I shift my legs trying to wake Cerberus from her slobbering slumber. She gives a groan of reluctance when I move, but I push her aside so I can stand. My legs send electrical jolts as they waken from the numbness her weight has caused, but there is no sign of the wound from where the dead scoured the flesh from my thigh.

“Come, Cerby.” I tug on the leash and she follows me to the door. As the train pulls into the station the first familiar face is that of Iolalus looking proud in full vigile dress. He seems recovered, but as he walks beside the train, I notice a limp as if one leg doesn’t want to keep time with the other. It may keep him from active duty for a time, but at least he is alive.

The train squeals to a stop and I step through the carriage door onto the platform. The leash pulls taut and I look back to see Cerby sniffing at the opening and giving a frustrated whine. I step back to the door, press one of Cerby's heads back, and guide another one forward to fit her through the narrow passage. Keeping tight hold of the leash, I hug Iolalus.