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Orkestres had left already when they woke late the next morning, exhausted by the journey and the strangeness. Dora was sitting in the corner of the room, quietly spinning wool onto a distaff.

‘He’s off telling tales of his journey to his friends, and if they’re lucky some will even be true. But he won’t tell anyone about you. The less anyone suspects the greater the surprise when you first perform—assuming you have as much talent as he thinks. No food,’ she added quickly, as Nikko automatically reached for some of last night’s leftovers. ‘It’ll make you feel sick if you exercise hard straight after eating. Do your morning stretches first, then food after.’ She grinned. ‘Let’s see what I can teach you.’

‘You?’ He flushed. He hadn’t meant to sound insulting.

But the fat little woman laughed. Her hair was out of its plaits today, held up with bronze clips in a tumble on top of her head. It looked even brighter in the daylight.…‘Look at your sister. She isn’t sitting there giggling at the idea that I might be an acrobat. You see something big brother doesn’t, don’t you, lambkin?’

Thetis nodded.

‘You’re a knowing one, aren’t you? Well, it’ll stand you in good stead here.’ Dora stuck her head out the door and called up to one of the sentries on the walls. ‘Boasis! Lend me your sword, there’s a darling.’

A sword? Why would a woman want a sword? And how dare a woman call out to a man like that?

But to Nikko’s surprise the soldier just laughed. His voice was affectionate as he answered. ‘Anything for you, Pandora darling.’

He threw his sword down. Dora caught it by its hilt before it hit the ground, then blew him a kiss.

She came inside again, then wedged the sword’s point and handle between logs of firewood, edge upwards, and nudged it with her foot, as though to make sure it was firm. She looked at the children.

‘Watching? Good.’ She lifted the hem of her trousers, showing legs as thick as an ox’s with blue veins below her knees. She had put a faint red colour on her heels this morning. No, thought Nikko, those soft feet had never trod the dirt, harvesting barley.

Suddenly her feet moved, back and forth in a strange bouncing dance step. Higher and higher, her feet flashing almost knee high now. And then she leaped—

Nikko caught his breath. Beside him Thetis screamed, choking off the sound, as though the shock was too great to keep silent.

Dora stood steadily, one foot in front of the other, their softness pressed onto the sharp blade of the sword.

How can she stand there so still? thought Nikko dazedly. Why aren’t her feet bleeding, cut to the bone?

Slowly—almost too slow to see—Dora lifted her arms. They were straight above her head now. All at once she slammed them down, like a bird about to take wing. At the same time she jumped again, down onto the floor.

Nikko gazed at the sword. It gleamed in the light from the doorway. Not even a trickle of blood marred its surface.

Thetis kneeled and touched the sharp sword edge. She turned to Dora, her face questioning, then pointed to her own feet and then to the sword.

Dora laughed again, her voice proud now. ‘Yes, my lamb, I can show you how.’

‘No!’ Nikko’s cry had come before he knew what he was going to say.

Thetis stared at him and lifted her chin. She doesn’t have to say, ‘I want to learn’, thought Nikko. Not aloud.

‘It’s a matter of balance,’ said Dora quietly. ‘Of learning how to spread your weight evenly, and all at once, so no bit of your feet touches the blade before the rest. You might be able to learn the trick of it, boy. But to perform before a king—well, it’s an act, as much as skill. You have to work out what will impress the audience most.

‘A boy slowly stepping onto a sword—that might get a gasp or two, before they go back to chewing their meat. But if you dance with two swords balanced on your shoulders, with your sister standing on the blades, and if you smile as though you didn’t carry death—that will have the crowd screaming, and garlanding you with jewels. Half of which you’ll give to Orkestres and me,’ she added. ‘As is right and proper, seeing as how
Orkestres discovered you and we’ll be training you. But there’ll be gold enough for all of us, and when we die what we have will come to you, as our apprentices, as we have no lambs of our own.

‘It’s a good life here,’ she added more gently. ‘Even when you’re too old to interest the High King he doesn’t send you away, not when you’ve given him some good years. When I got fat he had me taught to be a weaver—only wool, not that smelly linen stuff that tears your fingers—and I get to do it here too, not in the shed outside the walls with the slaves. Orkestres and I get all we need as long as we live—’

Thetis took a step toward her, and tugged her trousers. Dora seemed to know what she was saying even without the words.

‘Except the glory. Yes, you’re right, little lamb. Once you have heard the screams, that little gasp of breath as though they can’t believe what they are seeing…it’s hard to live without those. Harder for Orkestres than me, but that’s men for you. Now I’ll show you the stretching exercises, and a dance step or two, otherwise you’ll faint from hunger before we’ve even started.’

And so they practised, always confined in the two rooms of Orkestres and Dora’s quarters. Stretches and leaps at first, and simple dances to the rhythm of Dora’s finger drum, both on the ground and with Thetis on Nikko’s shoulders. They learned to place their feet onto the sword blade too, but not to move about on it. You needed months of practice, said Orkestres, to do that safely, and they’d only have one chance to impress the High King.

In between practice sessions they helped Dora, combing wool to get out the grass seeds and bits of dung, twisting the wool into big loops as she spun it on her distaff, or stirring the pot when she brewed up the barks and lichens for dyes. The sound of her loom was a constant background to their practising, as she kept one eye on them and another on her work. Dora’s weaving produced a cloth so thin you could draw it through a needle, with patterns of fish and waves and birds, far finer than anything seen back in their village, where cloth dyed even one colour was a luxury.

Nikko longed to explore the palace grounds, and Thetis sat peering out the door for hours. But Orkestres was firm.

‘No one must notice you. I want the Chamberlain, the guards, anyone who has ever seen you to forget that you’re here.’

Nikko hugged his knees and looked up at him. ‘Why?’ Orkestres liked being asked questions, instead of responding to them with a cuff on the ear.

‘If the High King hears about you he may get curious, and want to see you perform. And if you dance for him before you are properly trained, before you can bring gasps to the audience, a smile to the High King’s face, you may never be called again. Do you really want to go back to herding goats, this time for the King? And as for your sister…’

Nikko nodded. There was no need to say more. Dora had gossiped about the High King’s women. Not just his wife, the queen and mother of his sons, who was rarely seen beyond the women’s courtyards, and his sister Xurtis, the High Priestess, who made the sacrifices to the Mother, and took the omens from the house snake, but the other women who shared the King’s bed, and bore him children.

It was an honour to share the bed of the High King, said Dora. But it wasn’t what Nikko wanted for his sister, nor a life as a servant or a weaver in the sheds beyond the walls.

In between practice sessions they peered out of the gap in the window shutters. Even those small glimpses of the life beyond their rooms were fascinating. Many others, it seemed, lived in rooms about their courtyard: retired soldiers with scars up their arms and on the legs below their leather kilts; dancing girls trudging back tired
from a night at the palace, shadows under their eyes and filmy tunics that left their breasts bare, and everything else besides almost as plain to see.

Other performers lived in this courtyard too. Sometimes they might even practise outside where the children could watch them: Herakles the strong man, who could break a bronze chain tied around his chest just by flexing his muscles; Simonedes the juggler, who could keep ten daggers in the air at once. Wrinkled men, too old to perform any more, gathered on the stone benches under the trees, and watched the acts or gossiped as they drank their watered wine.

The city wall above one side of them was even more entrancing than the courtyard. These walls were flat on top, and wide enough up there for two to pass abreast. They were used as a road, it seemed, by the palace lords and ladies. These women were carried in litters of polished wood inlaid with turquoise or silver: big chairs set up on poles for four slaves to carry.

The wealthy women wore long skirts of thin wool, with patterns around the edges, or many flounces below their tightly belted waists. Most had bare breasts, which peeped out of the folds of their shawls, and made Nikko blush till he got used to it. Their hair was curled and plaited, twisted with jewels and ribbons. Their necks were covered with bands of gold or silver, right up to their chins. Some were as young as Thetis, others older than any woman Nikko had ever seen, with grey hair in silver circlets and tame bright birds sitting on their shoulders. The young women kept their gaze down modestly, but the older ones
looked the men in the eye, or even stared appraisingly at the younger ones.

The lords also wore skirts: not tunics like the villagers but kilts that resembled what the soldiers wore, knee high and folded at the front to make it easier to run or ride, with tight belts to make their waists seem smaller. Their bare chests were shaved and shiny with oil, and their beards were curled and oiled like their hair. None carried swords inside the palace walls—that was the duty of the guards—or even spears, unless they were headed out for a day’s hunt. But all wore jewels: gold at their wrists and ankles; gold chains set with stones of blue or red or green. One man carried a small creature like a shrunken human on his shoulder, covered in fur and with a wizened face.

And there were dogs—tame ones that did their owners’ bidding, not wolves from the forest.

One month passed, and then another, the moon spinners winding up the silver then letting it fall into the night again.

Sometimes Nikko dreamed of the mountain village. Other times, nightmares woke him sweating: hunting through the forest trying to find his mother or the village, knowing that no matter how hard he looked he’d never be able to get back. Once he dreamed that his father had lashed him to a tree, and he had to pull and strain at the rope until he was old enough and strong enough to make the tree fall.

But every time he woke there were the comforting coals of the fire, and Thetis’s soft breathing, and the snores coming from the next room where Dora and
Orkestres slept. He would feel the softness of the woollen blankets, the comfort of a good meal inside his belly. The pain and the hatred would seep away. He’d sleep again, reassured.

Winter turned the air thin and cold. The women in the litters cuddled under furs and blankets now, their servants scurrying to bring freshly warmed rocks to poke under their feet. The men wore cloaks as gorgeous as their kilts: woollen ones in intricate patterns of yellow, red and green, or made of sheep- or bearskin.

Nikko could smell the sharp tin scent of nearby snows. But a thousand fires seemed to warm the world of Mycenae, the wood carted from the mountains, as most of the plains around the city had already been cleared for grassland for the animals, or for timber for the High King’s ships. It was never truly cold within the bounds of Mycenae. Even the stone walls seemed to radiate heat from the fires inside the rooms and courtyards. The smoke clung like a dirty tunic to Nikko’s skin; his sweat seemed stained with it. But there were baths each day to wash it off.

Down in Orkestres’s rooms Dora stoked the fires with big logs each night so there were still glowing coals in the morning. Every day Nikko marvelled at the warmth of the floor. Orkestres helped Dora carry the wood now, for the logs were too heavy for her to bear alone, and these days they had no servants to tend to them. But Orkestres only carried wood after dark, when none of his friends might see him do the work of a servant or a woman.

And the lessons continued. Nikko could do a back somersault three times in a row, and stand on his head,
steadying himself with his arms. He could dance a hundred different steps, moving his feet while keeping his shoulders steady so Thetis could balance. Every day he could feel himself become more limber, able to stretch further, leap more gracefully backward or forward. For the first time he felt true pride in his body. No boy back in the village could match what he did now.

Yet Thetis was far nimbler, as comfortable on her hands as her feet, doing handstands on his shoulders, then somersaulting from chair to stool to table. Even when they were not officially practising she’d tumble about the room, almost as though her bones could turn to oil and her muscles spring like a hare’s.

Dora seemed happy with their progress. But Orkestres shook his head. ‘They are good—agile, hard working. But up on the mountain above their village,’ Orkestres shut his eyes as though remembering, ‘I felt magic in their dance: the girl flying as though she drank the wind, the boy’s song almost like the wind’s song too. Technically they were beginners, but there was something that made me shiver.’

‘They have only started training,’ said Dora comfortingly. ‘Time enough to work up a performance that will take everyone’s breath away. They are so young. Another year…or even two.’

Orkestres nodded, but there was worry in his eyes.

It was midwinter and the shadows were deep under the stone walls when Dora returned one afternoon not with a bag of food, but a bolt of what looked like cloth. Dora jerked it away when Nikko (and then Thetis) tried to touch it, but not before he felt how smooth it was.

‘Keep your grubby paws off it, my lambs—you’ve been eating dates, haven’t you? This material will stain. It’s deer skin…the pelt of an unborn doe, split in half to make it even finer. I had to give my silver bracelet for this, the one that the King of Tyre gave me, and the turquoise from the King of Athens. Yes, my lambs, I’ve performed before every king you’ve ever heard of, and more besides, and every one has given me a guest gift, fine as they’d give another king.’ She smoothed her white fox-fur cloak. It must have hung down to the floor when she was slimmer, thought Nikko, though now it only covered her ample shoulders. Bits of it drifted down onto the floor when she moved. ‘Ah, those were the days. Now, strip.’

Nikko stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve seen lads naked often enough. You need performer’s breeches,’ said Dora impatiently. ‘Close-fitting ones, not just to show those boyish muscles but so there’s no loose cloth to get tangled up in. And your sister needs breeches too.’ Dora stroked Thetis’s hair. It was combed every day now with a brush made of ivory and pig’s bristles, and oiled after every washing; it was so very different from the tangled hair of the mountain child she used to be.

‘What sort of breeches?’ asked Nikko suspiciously.

Dora stared at him till he dropped his gaze. ‘That’s better. Sit. Both of you. You need to understand—rules of modesty are different when you’re a tumbler. Yes, a girl of good family would never show her body to the gaze of men.’ She grinned, and touched her hair. ‘Or dye her hair gold either. But your sister will dance in front of a hall of
men, looking like she wears no more than she wore when she was born, and no one will think the worse of her. And yes, her costume will cover her breasts, if that’s what you are worried about—but not because of modesty, but because as your sister grows her breasts can catch against things or bounce and unbalance her. But as to the rest…’

She held up the cloth. ‘Costumes as thin as this will make you look naked, both of you. And you will wear them and you will smile and you will do your best.’

‘So you and Orkestres can have pearls and gold again?’

‘No. So you will live in comfort and your sister will not be given away like a pet puppy to one of the High King’s guests. Do you understand that?’ She stroked Thetis’s, hair again. The girl smiled, took her hand, and held it against her cheek.

‘You see?’ said Dora. ‘Your sister understands. Orkestres brought you here for our sake, it is true. But…’ and suddenly Nikko saw her eyes were wet. ‘We’ve never had a baby ourselves. An acrobat can’t perform if she’s with child…and later…well, it was too late for that too.’ She met Nikko’s eyes. ‘We’ll do our best for you, little lambs. And if it does well for us too—well, we’ll be glad of it. But you can trust us; never think you can’t.’

Nikko glanced at Thetis. She smiled, and nodded.

What am I doing? thought Nikko. Relying on my little sister’s opinion. A child…a girl!

And suddenly he realised—he’d stake his life on Thetis’s judgement.