Nobody's Prize (18 page)

“Well, is
this
the one?” came the gruff demand from the darkness behind the flame.

“Yes, yes, that’s him!” a vaguely familiar voice answered from beyond the doorway.

“That’s what you said last time, fool, and it wasn’t. You can’t even
see
him from there. Gods, Telys, did he scare you that badly? He’s hardly more than a child, not even the ghost of a beard on him. Look!”

A strong hand clamped itself to my arm and hauled me upright. I didn’t have the chance to grab my sword. I yelled wild threats, swinging fists and feet. I struck the walls and our piled-up belongings more than I hit the man holding me. The oil lamp’s flame streaked crazily through the air.

“Hunh! He’s a fierce one. Hood him for me,” my captor said. Someone else dropped a cloak over my head. Though my ears were muffled, I heard Milo’s voice rise up in protest and challenge, and the sound of further struggles. Then I heard the cold, unmistakable scrape of a sword being drawn from its sheath, a blow struck, and my friend crying out in pain. Something heavy hit the floor. I shrieked Milo’s name again and again, though the thick wool cloak covered my face and choked off half my breath. I was still screaming, “Milo! Milo! Milo!” as I was slung over one man’s shoulder and carried away.

They took the cloak off my head and set me back down on my own feet when we were about halfway up the city hill. Dawn was breaking, and by the first faint light I clearly saw the three men who’d burst into the widow’s house. Two were new faces. The third was the bumbling young guard who’d challenged my presence at Hades’ shrine and lost.

No need for me to wonder what had happened.
Fool,
I thought.
You’re so hungry to punish me for humiliating you, you don’t see that you’re bringing even worse humiliation on yourself. Good. You deserve every joke and jeer your fellow guards will heap on your head from now on.

“How dare you?” I said, all ice. “You coward, how
dare
you do this? If you wanted to reclaim your honor, you should have come to me alone, like a man.”

The young guard bit his lips, his thickly blemished face going red, but his helpers roared with laughter. “Hey, Telys, you said this pup was a stranger, but it sounds like he knows
you
well enough!” one of them exclaimed.

“I
am
a stranger to Athens,” I said. “I come from Sparta. I didn’t know that Hades’ shrine was the king’s alone. I did no harm.”

“You attacked one of Lord Theseus’s guards,” one of the brawny men said. “Not a very good one, but you still have to answer for it. Move.” He spun me around facing uphill and gave me a rough shove.

I trudged along with scrawny Telys ahead and both of the big men behind. I wished it had been the other way around. My hands were free. One quick pivot, a kick or a sudden push, and that pock-faced wretch would be flat on his back and I’d be racing downhill, dust in the distance, well on my way back to Milo. I wasn’t about to try my luck escaping from the others, though. They had the look of seasoned warriors. They’d catch me and give me reason to regret my escape attempt.

Glaucus had taught me to choose my battles, and to choose them wisely. I chose not to fight this one. Not yet.
Great Apollo,
I prayed,
let your healing powers help and sustain Milo until I can be with him again.

We entered the royal stronghold, greeted by loud catcalls. Apparently all of the guards knew about what had happened to Telys. As soon as they laid eyes on me, he found himself walking through a gauntlet of hecklers.

“
That’s
who took your spear? He’s an infant!”

“How’d he beat you, Telys? Trip you with his cradle?”

“Hey, for all you know, the baby didn’t
take
the spear. Telys probably loaned it to him so he’d have something to teethe on.”

With every step we took, the young guard drew his shoulders up higher and higher, like a turtle taking refuge in its shell. As much as I despised him for what he’d done, I was relieved when we entered the palace itself and left his tormentors behind.

I was herded into a small reception room and told to wait. The two big men took up positions flanking the doorway outside, but Telys waited with me. He avoided my eyes, pretending to be fascinated by the wall paintings. They showed a powerfully built man defeating a series of opponents, some by the sword, some with his bare hands. The most spectacular picture had him locked in combat with a bull-headed man, the Cretan Minotaur.
I hope you rewarded the artist well, Theseus,
I thought.
He’s drawn you as if slaying monsters were as easy as swatting flies.

By the time I was summoned from the waiting room, I’d had enough time to memorize every curl of hair between the Minotaur’s painted horns. A well-dressed servant came to announce that Lord Theseus would see me. I walked with my head down, not because I was ashamed, but in hopes that Lord Theseus would
not
see me. I pretended to scratch my head so that I could pull a tangle of hair down over my face. If he shared his soldiers’ contempt for Telys, perhaps he’d dismiss the whole matter without giving me so much as a glance.
The gods grant it!

I also gave thanks to the gods that the previous night had been cool enough for me to wear a loose, shabby tunic for additional warmth under my blanket.
The looser, the better,
I thought. My body had changed in more ways than one since the
Argo
sailed from Colchis, changed outwardly as well as within. I hunched my shoulders forward, trying to conceal the telltale curves.

The Athenian king’s throne room was very much like the others I’d seen in my life, including my own father’s. I tried hiding in the shadow of one of the big guardsmen. It proved to be a useless tactic. Theseus sat on a high-back stone seat. A regal, gray-haired woman occupied the smaller throne at his right hand. They were sharing a joke when we entered, but the smile on his face was nothing compared to the ear-to-ear grin he wore the moment he caught sight of me.

“I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “What wonderful, generous, beloved god has brought me
this
prize? I swear I’ll build him a temple, the likes of which Athens has never seen, as a thanks offering!”

Foolish Telys stepped forward. “I brought him here,” he said, eager to claim credit for whatever had so overjoyed his king. “I caught him making a sacrifice to Lord Hades at your shrine, my lord Theseus, and when I tried to stop him—”

Theseus’s laughter crushed Telys’s weak attempt at boasting. “We all
know
what happened when you tried to stop him, you clown,” he said, wiping his eyes. “The whole palace is talking about how you were bested by a mere boy. Well, the truth is even better.”

He was off the throne and across the floor in an instant, scattering everyone who stood between him and me. He bounded behind me, grabbed the waist of my tunic with both hands, and yanked it back, hard. I’d relied on the looseness of my clothing to hide my breasts, small as they were, but now the thin cloth pulled taut against every line of my body. I might as well have been wearing nothing at all. I heard the onlookers gasp.

“Why aren’t you smiling, Telys?” Theseus leered as he confronted the horror-struck young guard. “You ought to be glad. You weren’t beaten by a boy after all.” He scowled at his subjects, which scared up a few halfhearted titters, but most of the people present were too jolted by their king’s crude behavior to react at all, except with silence.

Maybe Athens is civilized after all,
I thought. When I twitched my tunic out of his grasp, looking at him as if he were a mouse-dropping in a bowl of milk, he appealed for sympathy from the woman on the queen’s throne.

“Mother, what’s the matter with this girl? Don’t Spartans have a sense of humor?” he asked, completely ignoring the fact that his own people hadn’t found anything funny in what he’d done. “Or perhaps it’s just their royalty who can’t take a joke.”

“‘Royalty,’ my dear?” Theseus’s mother raised her eyebrows and looked at me doubtfully. I couldn’t blame her.

“This is the princess of Sparta, Helen, daughter of Lord Tyndareus and his queen,” Theseus proclaimed. He caressed me with a slow, sidelong look. “Lady Helen of Sparta, my lovely bride.”

For a moment, shock snatched the breath from my lips. When I could speak again, I said, “If that’s another of your ‘jokes,’ Theseus, it’s not funny.”

He laughed at me. “It’s not supposed to be. Mother, look after my sweet queen-to-be. She seems weary.”

The older woman came toward me and rested one soft, slim hand on my arm. “I am Lady Aithra of Troezen, my dear. Please come with me.” Her voice was warm and kind. “You’ll stay in my quarters.”

I drew away stiffly. “I’m not staying with you,
or
your son,
or
in this city,” I declared. “This is ridiculous, a disgrace! I demand to be set free at once.”

“And then what, my sweetest one?” Theseus drawled, amused. “Where will you go? I doubt that your royal parents know you’re here alone, so far from home.”

“I’m not alone,” I countered. “I’m traveling with—with an escort.”

“Yet here you are. Not very good at their work, are they?” Theseus said.

One of Telys’s hulking comrades spoke up. “
He,
not
they.
She was sharing lodgings with a youth when we found her.” Theseus grimaced in displeasure. The guard went on hastily, as if trying to distance himself from his king’s wrath. “They weren’t sharing a blanket. He was probably just her servant, nothing more. When he drew a sword against us, it was easy to kill him.”

To kill him…
The words hit me like stones. A howl of sorrow stripped my throat raw as I sank to my knees. I’d feared Milo had been hurt, but this?
This?
I wailed until my voice shattered and all I could do was rasp air.

I let the lady Aithra help me to my feet and lead me away. I didn’t care where I was going or what would become of me. I was walking through a black tunnel, and the only light I could see in the distance burned red as blood.

I lay on a flower-scented bed for four days, not rising except when I had to. I slept without dreams, ate nothing, and only took a sip of water now and then because Lady Aithra wouldn’t leave me alone until I did. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to live either. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, unless it was to escape from the unmoving thought
Milo is dead.

When Hylas died, I’d mourned. I’d felt pain and loss, but this—this was different. It was a headlong plunge into darkness.
Did I love Milo so dearly?
The question wandered through my mind like a wisp of smoke, and the answer followed:
Yes. I loved him, but not with the flare of love I felt for Hylas, or the steady-burning love my parents know, or Medea’s devastating blaze. O Aphrodite, will I ever understand all the forms your gift can take? My brothers were afraid Milo and I would share a bed. How to tell them that we shared a different bond of love? And now…he’s gone.

On the fifth day, my stomach creased with hunger so painfully that I ate the meal a slave brought for me. This was the first time I did more than stare dully all day at the filled cup and platter. The first nibble soon turned to a frenzy of gobbling, until my belly revolted and I threw up every mouthful. I fell back groaning onto the bed and the frightened slave ran to fetch Lady Aithra.

The king’s mother quickly saw to it that I was given some vegetable broth to drink, which soon settled my stomach. She watched with genuine concern while I made a second try at eating. It was the first time I’d received such care since I’d left Sparta, my mother, and my nurse, Ione. Warm memories of home mingled with the pain of losing Milo and turned into tears. I sobbed myself to sleep with Lady Aithra cradling me as if I were her own child.

The next time I woke up, I felt more like myself. I sat up and saw that Theseus’s mother was seated beside my bed, working on a piece of embroidery. She smiled when she saw me. “Better now?”

I got out of bed and knelt before her, embracing her knees. I didn’t know the custom in Athens, but when a Spartan petitioner was desperate to have his plea granted, this was how he approached the king.

“Child, what’s the matter?” the old queen cried, dropping her cloth.

“Lady Aithra, I beg of you, tell me that your son was only jesting about my being his bride. It can’t happen. Surely he realizes that? Please, speak with him. Tell him that he’s had his fun, but now it’s time to let me leave Athens. The gods will reward him for his kindness.”

“But, my dear, it’s all true,” Lady Aithra said, stroking my hair. “He loves you, you know. Even before you came to us, he spoke to me of how you’d met in Calydon and again at Delphi. ‘It’s a sign that she and I are fated to be together,’ he told me. You’re a very fortunate girl to have a man like my son in love with you.”

“If he loves me that much, am I free to go?”

The question bewildered her. “But—but if you go, how can you marry him?”

“I won’t,” I replied hotly, pushing myself away from her and standing tall. “Your son isn’t in love with me. He loves the Spartan throne. He thinks he’ll win it if he forces me to marry him, but all he’ll get is war. My father won’t allow—”