Hero for Hire (6 page)

"His last night?"

"How melancholy to think of it so! I had come back from the taverna...I had been spending the nights there of late. But I wanted a change of robe. The servants were huddled in the kitchen and we could hear the king laughing. We thought perhaps he'd finally gone quite mad...well, you understand."
"Yes. Go on."

"But when he came down, he was cheerful, quite his old self. He pinched a girl's cheek, drank wine with me, and asked after the boy. I told him that Temas was standing to the duty he'd been set, warning away the ships, and the king laughed and said there would be no more need of that. I thought he'd found a way to rid ourselves of the creature but he seemed not to regard it as important."

"No?"

"He dismissed it with a wave of his hand...like that." He showed me, a careless wiggle of his fingers. "Then he drained another cup of wine and said he had some work to finish before the night was through. I asked him what it was he was doing but he only touched his finger to his lips and dashed away upstairs." He sighed. "That's the last time I saw him alive."

I walked on in silence, my mind busy with a thousand questions. What had the king been working on and had he achieved his goal? I could not think what other reason there might be his being in such merry spirits. Had he'd learned from Orpheus' mistakes and tried to retrieve his adored wife from the Underworld in another way? Such efforts are doomed. People don't return from the other side of the River Styx. We are given the water of forgetfulness and leave this world behind forever. It is one of the hardest lessons we mortals have to accept.

Had the king opened a door into the Darkness Beyond? If so, Nausicaa must have helped him but why? To bring back Amymone? That did not fit with her dying words...if her words they had been. Someone else wanted to come into this world and rule it but it hadn't sounded like a gentle and musical woman. It had sounded like a monster, a monster with many children, and if it could make the dead walk, perhaps it came from somewhere that had a lot of dead people. But was that door closed for good, now that both the king and Nausicaa were dead?

I doubted it. The tools had been disposed of but you only drop tools when you don't need them, when the work is finished.

Perhaps I had one answer. If the king and Nausicaa had been meddling in matters of life and death, the Gods would punish that trespass without mercy. They'd sent a harpy to harry similar criminals before this, often. But I couldn't reconcile that explanation with the beauty of the creature I'd seen asleep in the tree. When the Gods send a punishment, there is no mistaking it for anything else.

* * *

Without Nausicaa’s steadying hand, the Palace staff were utterly confused as to what should be done next. Not even the death of the king had been so confounding. A king may run a kingdom but a good housekeeper runs the king.

The little one who had brought me a cloak before I’d followed Nausicaa was doing her best. Her hair was coming down in wisps, dirt smudged both cheeks, but she gave orders crisply. Little Iole, who hardly came up to my elbow, organized two girls to wash our feet though the water was cold.

“I beg your pardon, lord,” Iole said, her voice clogged with tears. “The fire went out last night and the tinder did not light.”

“It’s a curse!” someone howled in the kitchen.

Iole flinched. “If you will overlook this fault, please?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Phandros said before I could give her chin another chuck. “Cold or hot is unimportant. I feel the same about food. So long as it is plentiful."

“I prefer it hot, though,” I added. “But fast is best of all.”

“Yes, my lord. This way, my lord.”

I don’t know when I was raised to the nobility in her eyes but I followed her into the kitchen. There was food on the table, left there from a dinner no one had eaten. A cat walked daintily across the tabletop, browsing at leisure among the plates. Iole swept in, scooping it up, and cuddling it close to her thin bosom.

“Heat this up,” she said to one of the other girls, handing her a plate of cold mutton. “Isn’t the porridge ready yet?”

“It’s cursed! Cuuuurrrsssed, I tell you! I’ve been watching it and watching it but it won’t boil!” screeched a crone nearest the fire. The leaping light showed her broken teeth in a cackling smile. There is always someone pleased by chaos and disaster. It confirms everything bad that they believe about the world.

“Yum," I said. "Cursed porridge. My favorite. Does it have raisins in it? If it doesn’t, then it’s just mildly unlucky porridge and that’s not nearly so tasty.”

Iole smiled, her lips trembling as if she’d sooner weep. “We are like scattered reeds this morning, my lord.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I saw that Phandros was already digging in, a plate of honey-cakes held close to his chin. I wanted something more substantial so reached for the sliced pork. After dredging it in a little savory sauce, I didn’t mind the toughness. Even the wine, well-watered, tasted better when I was really thirsty.

“How’s the prince...how’s King Temas this morning?”

Phandros had to get his beard unstuck from his mouth before he could speak so little Iole got in first. “After he came back last night, he started going through all his father’s notes and papers. He’s up there now,” she added, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. “Where it all happened.”

“You’ve worked in the Palace for a while?”

“Since I was a child, my lord.”

“And you’re such an old lady now, of course.”

The crone cackled again and dished up some glutinous mess from a pot. I am pretty sure even lentil porridge isn’t supposed to be green, at least not that color green, shiny and greasy like a wound turning bad. Nor, I am sure, is it supposed to suck at the spoon with a sound like questionable digestion.

I decided I’d had enough to eat and invited Phandros to come talk to Temas with me. He eyed the porridge as well. “Yes, I think that’s the wisest course”

“Just like a man,” the crone screeched. “Ask for something special and then turn his nose up at it!”

“Don’t be like that, Grandmother,” Iole said. “I’m sure they’re just full of other things.”

“You said it, sweetie, not me!”

* * *

The choking smell of cold ashes filled my nose as I entered the upstairs room. Seeing Temas there, squatting in nearly the same spot where his father had died seemed a dangerous omen. Phandros apparently agreed.

“Come away, my king,” he said, standing over the boy. “This is no place for you.”

Temas’ eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He rubbed them hurriedly, removing traces of tears. “I’m going over a few papers.”

There were heaped up scrolls just beyond him. “Anything interesting?” I asked, jerking open the curtains. I saw that the one I’d ripped hadn’t been repaired yet.

“Yes, quite a bit. Of course, I can’t read all of it. I think there’s some Egyptian here and maybe some Chaldean characters as well.”

The fresh air drove off the memories. Temas, blinking in the sunlight, seemed less the eldritch inheritor of a black fate and more a young man with an air of responsibility that sat oddly on his shoulders. Remembering my youthful visits from the Hangover God, I could sympathize. He stood up like an old man, all hinges and creaks.

“Have you eaten?” he asked, fulfilling his duty to a guest. Or was I his servant? Heroes for hire occupy a strange half-world when it comes to etiquette. Still, Temas was a gentleman.

“Yes. Have you?”

A slight tint of pale green washed into his complexion. “There was this cold porridge....”

“Yeah, I saw it. I think I would rather face those things from last night again than eat that.”

The boy hastened to the balcony, the same that I had found so useful for the same purpose. After a few distressing minutes, the king called me.

“Sire?” I stepped out to join him.

“I think you’d better tell me what did happen last night. There are some very strange tales flying about and I must know the truth of what I myself saw.”

“These scrolls are most interesting,” the scholar said, appearing in the doorway. “If I may study them further?”

Temas nodded his permission. “But stay and listen to what Eno has to say. The incidents of last night are so peculiar that I can hardly accept all I saw myself.”

Phandros’ cool eyes studied me. “I have no doubt, sire, that Eno the Thracian comported himself entirely in your interests. There are strange portents and powers at work in this land but they will never overcome men of valor. I will study these papers and guard the way so you may speak freely and without interruption.”

I felt as if someone had hung a golden chain around my neck. On the one hand, I was grateful for the compliments, which I felt Phandros did not hand out like sprigs of mint on a festival day. On the other hand, however, I now felt even more closely bound to the King of Leros and his problems. Even if I’d wanted to, how could I sail away without satisfying the terms of my contract?

After I filled him in on all the details of last night’s adventures, reserving only my discovery of the harpy’s nest and my guesses about his father, Temas stood swaying in the sunlight, his hands pressed to his eyes. “We are cursed, indeed. How can such things be?”

“We live in a time of mysteries,” I said, not wanting to share my surmises till I had a chance to think things through. “The Gods work their will as they see fit.”

“What God could do such horrible things? What I saw last night...the pity of their faces, faces I knew well. My father. Those guards, men I knew and fenced with. And the poor women.”

"It's over now, my lord. Whatever caused it won't happen again."

"How can you be sure? If they walk again tonight, everyone will leave the island. I might as well abandon the palace to Eurytos right now."

"Nausicaa is dead. It was working through her, whatever it was, and that doorway is shut. Permanently."

“I pray so. What will you do now?”

I rubbed my bristly chin thoughtfully and caught myself starting to scratch. “I’d like a bath and a shave. Then I should pay a visit to my friends waiting in the harbor.”

“I’ll go with you. If I and my household must flee...”

“Oh, Jori will take you, for a price.” I should have told him then, I suppose, that I’d seen the harpy, that I had a feather from it on my person, and that I knew where it nested. I knew I should and even got so far as opening my mouth when I noticed Temas looking at me with extra intensity in his young eyes.

“Do you...do you think I should grow a beard?”

In the bright morning light there gleamed the faintest hint of down on the young king’s chin. Remembering back to my own chest-bursting pride in that first public sign of manhood, I pretended to ponder the question. “That’s something each man must answer for himself.”

“You don’t choose to wear one?”

“I fight for my living, sire,” I explained. “I don’t care to give my enemies something easily grasped. It’s why I clip my hair close as a sheered sheep.” I ran my hand over the short growth, just long enough to show black. “Besides, have you noticed how men with beards scratch all the time?”

I mimed with both hands a thorough scratch of jawline and chin. “Like a dog scratching after fleas. Or a man digging for gold.”

Temas grinned and pointed discreetly past my shoulder. I turned to see Phandros in the room beyond, enjoying a vigorous scrubbing with both hands among the thicket on the lower slopes of his face. He looked up and smiled in answer to our laughter without knowing the cause.

Temas turned back to me. “I suppose it’s as my father was fond of saying, 'as bad as things are, they could always be worse. At least it isn’t raining.'” Seeing that I didn’t understand, he shrugged. “It was just something he used to say in bad times. It didn’t make much sense during droughts though.”

“One day you’ll say it to your sons.”

“Yes, I suppose. I imagine they’ll roll their eyes and make faces just as I did. Now I’d give anything to hear him say it one more time.”

I didn’t want to see him grow melancholy once again. “You know,” I said, “it won’t matter what you decide about a beard. When you marry, it’s your wife that will choose for you.”

“I don’t think so.” Temas said confidently.

“Oh, believe me. If she says it itches, you’ll shave it off quick enough. And if she says it tickles, you’ll grow it to your knees if she likes it that way.”

He chuckled, somewhat sadly. “You remind me. My father had a list of suitable king’s daughters. We discussed my marrying often before he grew so changed. I wonder where it has gotten to.” He turned and went inside. “Phandros, have you seen that list?”

I inhaled a great bushel of morning air and let it out in a long sigh. Though I'd spoken confidently to Temas, I was worried. I ran through all the rumors I’ve heard lately. Business is proving to be good for a lot of us independent heroes. I hadn’t thought much of it, except the money side of things of course, but now I wondered what was really going on.

Working outside the usual parameters of ‘I hear and obey’ had been a good move for me. But there were factors involved in going independent that you don’t understand until you are thigh-deep in new troubles. Just getting the dents beaten out of armor could eat up half my profits, or did until I bought a second-hand anvil. The vendor had thrown in half-a-dozen smithing lessons for free.