The Trials of Hercules (22 page)

“You’re winning them over,” Iole says, startling me and forcing me to jerk my hand away from the bird. The sudden motion startles the peacock. He squawks at me, then struts just out of my reach. Iole laughs at the animal. Gods, she is beautiful and her smile only heightens her beauty. A wisp of hair has snuck out from her braid and it takes every measure of my willpower not to brush it from her cheek.

Although a few days of rest in the House of Hera’s comforts appeal to my aching wounds, part of me welcomes Eury’s urgency. I can’t love Iole. As Artemis said, she is the Herene of the Herenes. Hera’s daughter. No wonder she’s so lovely. Being around Iole would be anguish and the temptation to touch her, to feel her close to me—what if I couldn’t control myself? What if I lost my mind again and hurt her? I would hope to be gentle, but I’ve already proven what manner of monstrosity rests within me. In the woods of Cedonia, I had been too focused on the task to let these thoughts plague me, but now with Iole gazing at me with her gold-flecked eyes and perfect face, the worries flood in on me.

The bird sidles up to me again and this time it allows me to pet its head. I marvel at the smooth, fragile feel of it.

And if I dare to love her, even if I don’t become the monster I fear slumbers inside of me, she will die. The punishment for a Herene who breaks her vow of celibacy is death. For defiling a Herene, I will die too of course, but I’ve already prepared for that journey once and I still haven’t fully unpacked. A dark portion of my mind doubts I will survive these trials of Eury’s, but I refuse to allow anyone else I care for to die because of my actions. Not Iolalus, and definitely not Iole.

The peacock brushes its cheeks along my hand, tempting me to pet it once more, but before I can, it scurries off scattering pebbles in its wake.

“I need to get ready. I’ll have to get an early start tomorrow.” I start to turn away, but Iole touches my arm with fingers that feel as smooth and fragile as the peacock’s head. I swear she must have some power from her mother. How else could that single, light touch stop me in my tracks?

“I should have told you about my mother when you asked.”

“It’s not important,” I say. I want to imply that it wouldn’t matter if she were a foundling—one of the babies abandoned in the agora when parents couldn’t afford to keep it—but the words come out sounding harsher, more dismissive than I mean them to.

The hurt look that crosses her face makes me want to hold her and I’m filled with an overwhelming wish that we hadn’t returned to Portaceae. Surely the daughter of Hera could seek refuge in another polis and see to it that Iolalus joins us safely. But, instead of comforting her, I stand there, frozen as she bites her lip until she finally gives a decisive nod that seems just as indifferent as my words.

“Your meal will be sent up and food prepared for your trip. Good luck.”

Her words are punctuated by a sharp turn of her heel and a rapid march away from me to the kitchens. I watch until she enters the building. With my attention distracted, the peacock, perhaps sensing an opportunity, struts back to me, gives my finger a nip, and then scuttles away with a series of squawks that sound too much like vindictive laughter.

I disappear into my room and devour the stew and fresh brown bread as soon as they arrive. Iolalus and I plan our routes with maps he’s borrowed from the Herene library, marking out what areas have been reported to be thick with bandits versus where the vigiles are to be patrolling tomorrow. Although exhausted from the past several days, I get little rest through the night. Each time I fall to sleep, haunting dreams of my children asking me “Why?” wake me. In the final dream before I give up on sleep, it’s Iole bloodied and bruised and clearly no longer alive asking me the same question as peacocks rip my hands to pieces.

Thankfully I have Iolalus to distract me from my thoughts in the morning.

“I can’t believe you put it in the carriage,” he says again as we gather the traveling food Iole has sent up. The rolls remind me of my time in Cedonia with Iole and I can’t help but smile at them even though I know they will be hard as stones by tomorrow. Once we’ve packed, Iolalus slings his quiver of arrows over his shoulder.

“Leave them. They won’t be needed for this.”

“They might.” He sticks his short sword in the scabbard at his belt and, shooting me an amused yet defiant look, picks up his bow.

“What? Do you think we’re going to poison the shit out of the stables?” I ask as I fill a water skin from the jug on my nightstand.

“You taught me it’s best to be prepared. The southern roads aren’t safe and without being able to ride our way out of trouble I want all the protection I can get.”

“What do you mean? Why can’t we ride?”

“No horses and no rail passes. We’re on foot for this one.”

“Hera’s ass!” I crush the water skin as I curse, sending water shooting up and onto the floor. “Why can’t we use the horses? There’s ten of them in the stable. The Herenes can’t miss a couple of them for a day or two.”

“It’s not the Herenes,” Iolalus says tossing me a towel to dry the floor with and then taking the skin to refill it. “It’s our cousin. He needs extra horses to pull carts full of flowers for his celebratory parade. He knows the Herene horses are some of the best in Portaceae and won’t take anything less. I don’t doubt they all end up in his stables by the end of this week with some excuse that he’s owed a birthday present from the Herenes.”

“Gods, I’d rather have to shovel shit than to watch his display of his arrogance. But that settles it—no arrows. They’ll just be one more thing to carry.”

I hang the wet towel over the window railing, then grab my travel bag and hitch it onto my shoulders leaving my quiver and bow by my bed stand. As I’m about to shut the door, Iolalus darts back in, snatches up the weapons, and with a smile that dares me to challenge him, throws them over his shoulder alongside his.

Dawn is trying to break through a thin but stubborn layer of clouds as we depart from the House of Hera. Inside the Peacock Gate, all is quiet, but outside the complex, Portaceae City is already busy preparing for Eury’s festivities. Bright purple banners crisscross the streets, women pluck at late summer roses and toss the petals in bags for strewing during the parade, and vendors are jostling their carts for prime positions on the parade route.

We leave the confines of the city walls and hike along the Osterian Road—the main road that extends from Vancuse in the north, crosses the Great Col River that flows through Portaceae, follows the line of the Illamos Valley south, and then cuts east to Bendria before continuing south again. Few Osterians have travelled the length of the Osterian Road, which is reported to go into the Califf Lands far to the south. It’s simply too dangerous. Beyond Bendria is wild land that is said to be populated with all manner of beasts from satyrs to chimeras. These creatures roam throughout Osteria, but generally stay clear of the cities and the populated districts of the poli. Outside of these areas however, we are in their territory. Territory they defend to the death.

It feels strange not to be under the camera’s eye. We sent word to Altair yesterday evening telling him of the ban on the feed. A message came back in shaky handwriting that the illness his wife had been suffering from had worsened. At the end, after his signature and almost as an afterthought, or a wish that writing it might make it so, he added that he hoped he got his children to his mother’s house in time for them not to catch his wife’s sickness. Iolalus had suggested going to him this morning, but the hour was too early and, since we need to travel in the light of day, we couldn’t linger waiting for the time to be right for paying a social call. Instead, we left word with the Herene medics to check in on Altair as early as they could.

Even without the camera, Iolalus and I both have a sense of being watched. We check behind us at every rustle of dry leaves in the breeze, every scurry of a squirrel dashing away with some nutty treasure, and every caw of an angry crow. As vigiles, we know the hills are filled with thieves, and have little doubt they are watching our progress now. More than once, the hairs on my neck prick up for no reason I can perceive.

“The centaurs are supposed to be patrolling through here today,” Iolalus remarks.

“Let’s hope so.” The thin, high clouds spread a gauzy blanket over the sky making it difficult to judge the exact position of the sun and impossible to tell how long we’ve been traveling. The only indication of time is the increased brightness of the high clouds signaling it might be close to midday.

Dust from the road covers our feet and legs and I almost wish the clouds would thicken and spill over with rain to settle the dirt that puffs up with each step. “Gods I wish I knew how long we’ve been walking,” I complain. “What’s happened to the mile markers?”

Every mile on the Osterian Road is supposed to be marked with a wooden or stone post indicating the distance from the Road’s starting point in Vancuse. I’ve yet to see one since we’d lost sight of Portaceae City.

“The centaurs that last patrolled said they’d seen some wooden markers in the remains of a campfire. Other patrols have seen the stone ones used to shore up walls.”

Just as I’m about to curse, a breeze kicks up more dirt, and brings with it a foul stench that makes me grimace.

“Mile markers or not, at least now we know we’re close,” Iolalus says as he claps a hand over his mouth and nose.

Despite being prime farm land, all the area of the Augean District appears abandoned. Creaking houses look as if one gust might topple them over and large ghosts of faded red barns haunt overgrown plots of land. Weeds invade fields that still hold the gnarled trunks of grape vines that have gone wild. The tall framework structures for hop plants have lost their supporting twine and now resemble the legs of emaciated giants.

With no money coming in from rents or crops, Augeus—the governor who oversees this district of Portaceae and collects its taxes—must be struggling. The people that lived here, where have they gone? Into Portaceae City to find work? They would have quickly learned there is none. Or have they become the thieves that the centaurs now track on their patrols?

The sight of the land sends a surge of disgrace and pity through me. On my twelfth birthday, the last birthday he was alive to celebrate with me, my grandfather gave me a taste of Portacean wine. Wine from the very vineyards that now stand withered and weedy. Even as a boy, I could taste the quality of the drink and the memory of the flavor still teases my tongue. He said Portacean wine was second only to that produced in Illamos Valley. But no longer.

“Cheery place,” Iolalus says through the cloth he’s tied over the lower half of his face. His eyes, like mine, water from the fumes that grow stronger with every step.

“Every one of these farms used to teem with people and workers,” I say. “Granddad said Portaceae was nearly self-sufficient with the food coming off these lands. And what we didn’t grow, we could trade for. It’s part of what made Portaceae one of the richest poli of Osteria. When I served my first patrol through here, I remember him telling me about it and thought it was just another one of his stories.”

“Certainly seems like a tale from the look of this place. Who would want to live here? Who
could
live here?”

“If we can get this stench out of here maybe people will return.”

“That’s a big if. We can’t even see these stables and I’m ready to turn back. I don’t see how we can do this. Not in a single day.”

“We don’t have much choice,” I say suddenly worried for Iolalus. He is normally upbeat about any undertaking, whether it’s helping ducklings out of a sewer grate or taking on a water serpent. If he thinks we can’t do this—

I stop my line of thinking. I will send Iolalus away before I let him be sent under. If he can get to the Califf Lands or the Middens, he will be out of the Osterian gods’ view and will be free of Osterian law. I won’t let him suffer punishment for my failure.

Coming around a bend, we spot a sprawling series of houses on a high hill. At the foot of the hill stands a vast stable nearly the size of Eury’s villa. All around it, looking like extensions of the hill itself, are piles of brown muck. With the clouds cooling the air, the piles steam in wispy puffs that catch the wind and arc in our direction.

“How can anyone live here?” Iolalus asks through gasping coughs.

“Perhaps they’re blessed by the gods with no sense of smell.”

The closer we get, the worse it smells until finally it seems like there’s never been fresh air in the world. The ground squishes under our boots and I try to put out of my mind that we’re walking in the dung that has spilled out of the stables over the years. At the foot of the hill, the piles of manure stand taller than Iolalus and I put together. From within the stables come the sounds of disgruntled horses snorting and banging against their stalls.

“I pray to Hera this isn’t the last thing I see or smell,” Iolalus complains.

As we mount the grassy hill, I realize I was wrong in my assessment. The structures at the top of the hill aren’t houses but a collection of water tanks. The only house on the hill sits below and to the side of the tanks that, like the water tower at the House of Hera, collect rain during Portaceae’s wet season. The stored water can then be gravity fed to any home situated below the tanks to provide the residents the luxury of running water. With their immense size, even now, well into the dry summer of Portaceae, the tanks should be filled to near capacity. Governor Augeus, who I assume owns this spread, has enough water for hundreds of homes and could be selling it if anyone lived in the area. He would have what we called water wealth on top of the rents from the homes and farms in his district. By all means, Augeus should be as rich as the Solon himself.

We haven’t yet stepped up to the house’s porch when a stocky man with a round, jowly face whips the door open. A bulldog appears at his side and lets out a gravelly bark.

“Get off my land,” the man orders. “You’ve no business here.”