Hero for Hire (22 page)

"But why? Why be so brutal?"

"They brought the harpy here...who may not be a harpy. Or at least, may not always have been a harpy. I believe someone didn't want it back."

"It came from here? I thought they came only from the Gods as condign punishment."

"I think it -- she -- was made here. By the same art we met in Leros."

He nodded, scratching his beard. "Ah, I have never learned much about black magic."

"I know more than I want to. And I'm afraid I'm about to learn more."

“I fear you are right.” He sighed. “Well, we’re not dead...not yet. What’s next?”

“We look for the harpy. That’s why we came.”

The enclosure held cages, pens, and stakes for the more docile creatures. Sleepy growls and murmurs came as we passed among them. I’d taken the guard’s lantern and inspected each animal as I passed. There were lions from Nemea, lying on their backs like kittens, bulls who shook sleepy heads at the light, bears curled in big brown balls, large, frightening creatures no doubt, but all of them unambiguously ordinary. No minotaurs, no Stymphalian birds of brass, nothing that couldn’t be hunted or trapped by usual means and usual men. Where was the ‘big surprise’ that was supposed to end the Hunt tomorrow?

After we searched, Phandros and I met up by the front gate. “Not a sign of it,” he said.

“They must be keeping her somewhere else. Maybe in the arena itself?”

“It’s possible. Other animals might be made uneasy by it...her.” He shook his head, tugging on his beard for comfort. “It’s a shame. I don’t mind the usual sacrifices; they are necessary to keep the Gods happy. But this! All these magnificent beasts to be slaughtered for no reason except the vain-glory of the king. It’s not for Hermes' sake, that’s certain.”

“There’s nothing we can do for them,” I said all the more reluctantly because I felt the same way. What purpose was served by slaughtering a mother bear and her two roly-poly cubs? “We can’t let them out. They’d attack the townspeople. And sooner or later they’d be hunted down anyway.”

“True. I only wish....”

I knew what I had to do. By the cold feeling at the pit of my stomach, I knew I was frightened. In my whole life, I'd only ever had one reaction to being afraid. Yet this time, the feeling went clear to the bone, leaving me weak and useless. I could not force the words that I must say past my dry lips.

"Er...no offense, but you'd better stay here, Phandros. It's safe. In the morning, go back to the
Doris
. As soon as you get there, tell the captain to cast off."

"What are you saying? Where are you going?"

"I pray I will succeed and hope I will survive but I may not be able to do both. If I do neither, you will have to convince your friend Skander to buy an army to come back."

"You've gone mad, my friend."

"If I don't succeed, you'll soon know about it. Whoever is doing this had a set-back at Leros, not a defeat. The evil comes from here."

"How do you know?"

My head was swimming with the unclean power in the place. "I'm sure, that's all. It's like a cloud of grease in the air or the sound of gnats. I'm also sure that if I can't stop it, somebody else will have to do it, Gods help him."

"You can't mean to just walk out of this place," he said, grasping my arm. "You can't possibly fight them all."

"Thanks for reminding me." I took off my sword-belt. "Keep that for me until I come back."

I jumped, caught the top of the stockade and pulled myself up for a peek over the wall. "Yes, plenty of them, milling around. If there's a leader, I don't see him." I dropped. "I don't mean to fight them."

"They'll tear you to pieces, the way the Maenads do."

"In that case, I'll definitely fight. But I'm betting they have had no such instructions."

"This is still about the harpy?"

"No. This is about me being afraid." I felt better saying it out loud. "'Bye, Phandros."

I caught the wall again, rising all the way up to put a knee on the top. "Look out below," I shouted and threw myself off like a diver.

* * *

It took five of them to drag me bodily, all wrapped as I was in ropes and thin chains, to the door. Lifting me up the stairs seemed out of the question. I was either crossing the palace threshold under my own power or I wasn't going.

A delicate foot in a dainty slipper emerged, making no sound on the broad step. I rolled my eyes upward but all I could see was a black column with her head fuzzily atop it. She seemed to float gracefully, but then I'd been hit on the head once or twice before everyone understood quite clearly that I had surrendered.

Her creatures stepped back when she came toward me. I thought that it seemed less in homage than in fright. She looked down on me, gleeful as a small girl with her first kitten. Over her high-piled hair, she wore a black veil and a golden crown. She threw the veil back and I saw her face, serene, smooth and plump as a beauty in her first youth. I recognized her at once from my nightmares.

Despite her lack of wrinkles, she exuded age. A weight of years lay in her flat, empty eyes and coiled in the curiously lusterless weight of her improbably black hair.

Queen Zosime put one embroidered slipper on my chest. "How lowly do the great fall. Here is a hero but I can shrink you, change you into anything I wish. A minotaur, perhaps, to delight my dear husband's heart as he kills you in the arena tomorrow." The way she said 'husband' would have made a thousand pantingly-eager bride-grooms cry off.

"Greetings, Queen of Troezan," I said, my throat working against the cold chain around my neck. They'd tied me up very effectively, considering what paws and claws they'd had to work with.

She cast a cold gaze over the bonds they'd tightened until my flesh swelled around them. "This is absurd," she declared. "Loose him."

A bodyguard, big and muscled enough to give me a little trouble, stepped forward, drawing his knife. He knelt, began to saw, and then paused. "Lady...."

"My will holds him there. His limbs are senseless until I free them."

Maybe her will held me, not the bonds. My muscles did seem more cramped than could be explained by mere bruises. At any rate, it was impressive. Her minions obviously thought so, for they made the same chittering sound that chipmunks do. I wondered if that is how they'd started life, as mice or other small rodent, changed, added to, and cruelly twisted out of all recognition. If Eurytos could do it with ants, this queen, a more powerful servant of his dark task-mistress, could probably do it with anything.

When the bonds were severed, and the chains unwound, my limbs fell limply to the earth as though I had no influence over them. I couldn't even feel my feet. The bodyguard jumped up, his sword at the ready in case I was feigning immobility. I only wished I were.

"Rise, creature," she said, her husky voice like the sound of a snake passing down a tiled floor.

I wanted to obey her, rather badly, but the perfect communication between my mind and my body had apparently been severed for a while. I forced up a hand in a universal gesture imploring a moment's patience. Zosime stepped back, tapping one dainty foot.

"Well?"

"They were a little rough," I said.

"Are you a hero, or a spoiled girl?"

"I've had a hard couple of days," I admitted. "Shipwrecked...storm-tossed...."

"Betrayed...." she added. "Are you angry about that?"

"Betrayed?" I said as innocently as I knew how. "By whom, lady?"

She laughed softly, a charming sound. "I knew you'd come to Troezan. You are that kind of a man, Eno of Thrace. So be it. I have tamed stronger creatures than you."

I met her eyes and received a shock. She had no fear that I'd come for any kind of vengeance. I doubt she'd ever given my reasons for coming to Troezan any thought at all. Nothing in the world mattered to her except her own will, her own desires. I doubted a warm feeling for any other person had ever touched that adamantine heart, for she needed no one except as a tool, to be used, broken, and thrown aside.

Zosime stood there, measuring me as if I were a piece of sculpture in the marketplace, plainly wondering if I would fit the space she had in mind for me. That's sounds morally questionable but for all her beauty, I would have as soon shared a mattress with a thousand scorpions. And throw in a few lethal cat-sized spiders as well. My chances of survival would be improved.

"Help him up," she ordered the bodyguard. "Bring him to my private chambers."

By the time we reached the second floor, I was practically riding him piggy-back, my arms draped over his neck. I may not have felt completely recovered, though my hands and feet were tingling, but I still would rather ride than walk. Exhausting your enemies is good; making them exhaust themselves is better.

Several people awaited the queen in her chamber, a large, all but empty room at the top of the palace. What surprised me was their very ordinariness. An evil queen should be attended by twisted slaves, skin pale and slick from never seeing the sun, hunched and cringing, with long damp hands, bald heads, and shifty eyes.

In Troezan, Zosime was served by a trim maid, accompanied by two small female children. They whisked away the queen's outdoor mantle, placing gently over her head a sheer scarf, spangled with many jewels. It must have been heavy and scratchy even if dazzling to behold.

The maid met my gaze not one whit less proudly than did her mistress. The little girls didn't seem perturbed at all when the guard dropped me onto a bench dragged out in the middle of the floor. I slumped there, still boneless. I noticed, however, that neither of the children dared lift their eyes higher than anyone's knees. They scurried out like mice at a hiss from their superior.

The queen pinched lightly at her earrings. "Fetch a drink for our honored guest, Damalis."

"I have it here, lady." With the unearthly grace of a woman of Lesbos, the waiting-woman knelt beside me, laying aside a tray she'd taken up. She lifted a cup of chased gold and pressed it to my lips. I drank perforce, without any hint from her impassive face whether she poured nectar or poison down my throat.

I began to understand why a man would desire such a woman. What lengths might one go to in order to wrest a natural reaction from her, to force her to acknowledge your existence as a fellow being and as a man.

I drank thirstily, for there seemed nothing in the cup but pure water. And if I were wrong, if poison lurked in the depths, so be it.

"Can I have some too," asked a boyish voice from a dark corner.

Damalis bowed her head with regal humility and poured a cup from another, more elaborate beaker on the tray. She carried to him and I heard him drink thirstily.

"I didn't see you there, my lord," the queen purred.

This thin, frail man was then king of Troezan, far less impressive than his wife's meanest servant. He moved like an elderly man, aching in every joint. I'd heard he was young and I could see that his hair was still dark and thick, his face dreamy-eyed and unwrinkled. For all that, he seemed as old as Tithonius, so loved by Eos of the Dawn that she obtained immortality for him but forgot to include ever-lasting youth. He wound up a cicada. I doubted the king of Troezan would have that much good luck.

He turned the cup round and round in his trembling, emaciated hand, the fingers stained faintly orange. His eyes were young, young and wounded. "I had that dream again, my dear. Seemed very real." He yawned, blinking like a sleepy baby. "She seems such a nice girl...I wish she were real."

"Drink, lord. Drink and forget," Queen Zosime said with a soft but firm note of command. "Damalis, my lord needs his treats."

He shrugged bony shoulders and lifted the cup to his lips. "A brother, a niece and happiness. I don't mind dreaming about these things. No offense, my dear."

"You do have a niece," I murmured.

"What did you say?" he asked, taking a handful of strange orange puffs from the bowl his wife's servant held out. "You shouldn't sit on the floor. We have couches...." He looked around vaguely as if this weren't his home, tossed a few into his mouth and crunched. A faint flavor of salt and cheese reached me. He licked the powder from his lips and ate a little more.

"Come, my lord, you must rest." Zosime coaxed. "You must be ready to perform the sacrifice tonight."

"Sacrifice? Oh, yes. It is tonight?"

"Yes, tonight. Take him to his chamber," the queen said in an aside to the guard. But the king slipped his arm free of the big man's grasp like water through a bracelet. I wondered if they ever fed him or did he so crave those 'treats' that all other food meant nothing to him. He weaved back and forth as he stood looking down at me, like a man beyond exhaustion.

"I dream of a dead brother and a golden-haired child who made me crowns of flowers. Do you dream them too?"

"No. I know she lives."

"She lives?" Slowly, he raised his head to look steadily at his queen. Under his straggling beard, his jaw tightened. "This man says I have a niece."

"He is a prisoner," Zosime said scornfully. "He'll say anything."

"That's true," he admitted, his chin sinking onto his chest. His eyes closed and he swayed like a man asleep on his feet. But even so, he took a few more mouthfuls before he left the room.