Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (16 page)

"I've petted a bitch before."  She shot
her master a glance of faux apology.  "Sorry, lord, I meant
goat."

Demosthenes only sighed and surrendered
control of events, taking a seat to watch.  There was never
any stopping Alkibiades anyway, rarely any harm in letting Eurydike
vent, and as for Thalassia, well, this would if nothing else be a
trial-by-fire of her forbearance with
the inferior denizens of this lesser world in which she
had stranded herself.

And if Demosthenes was not mistaken,
although Thalassia scarcely let it show, she seemed to
be 
enjoying
 herself.

"Let us move on," Alkibiades continued.
 "Hair?"

"Where's the rest of it?"

"Short hair on a woman," Alkibiades mused.
 "It's kinky," he ruled.  "I like it.  Eyes?"

"Evil eyes," Eurydike said.  "And
whorish."

"A bit cold, to be sure," Alkibiades agreed.
 "But that only inspires a man to work harder to warm them.
 Now we work our way lower.  Demosthenes, any chance of
asking her to drop the dress?"

"Ask her yourself."  Demosthenes half
wished Alkibiades would try, just to find out which would wind up
on the floor first, the sea-green chiton or Alkibiades.  The
odds for either seemed about equal. 

"We'll make do," Alkibiades conceded,
failing for once to live up to his bold reputation.  Perhaps
he sensed the danger in those cold eyes.  "What do you think,
Red?"

"Hips too narrow," Eurydike declared after a
moment's thought.  "Tits..."  She snorted.
 "Boring."

"Be fair, Red!"  In his most daring
approach yet, Alkibiades placed a cupped hand under Thalassia's
left breast, just grazing the linen pleats which hung from it.
 "She fills a hand well enough, and then some.  And gods,
those legs, they'd wrap around me twice.  But now to aspects
of womanhood almost as vital, the tongue and the mind.
 Thalassia, was it?  Odd name.  Do you read and
write Greek, Thalassia?"

After seeking silent permission from her
nominal master, she asked the questioner, "Do you?"

Alkibiades thrust up an eloquent brow.
 "My, my, she has both looks and wit," he said.  "If all
barbarians were as you, every home would have one."

"Like bugs," Eurydike inserted.

Alkibiades ignored her.  "Music,
poetry, rhetoric?" he asked, falling into a close orbit of
Thalassia.

She deigned to answer: "Physics,
mathematics, medicine, history, engineering,
geography... 
anatomy
."

Alkibiades' chestnut mane whirled round.
 "Zeus' left nut, Demosthenes!  What have you got here?"
 He turned back to Thalassia.  "I need to let Socrates
loose on this one."

Eurydike's face wrinkled.
 "Blabeddy-blah-blah-blah."  She made a farting sound
with her mouth.

Heaving a puzzled sigh, Alkibiades returned
to the column and asked his fellow judge, "So what do you make to
be her final score, Red?"

"One?  Two?  No, definitely
zero."

"Come now," Alkibiades objected.  "Much
higher than that.  She is but a few points shy of you, in
fact."

He boxed his favorite Thratta's chin
affectionately before putting bright, hungry eyes back on
Thalassia.  The two gazed steadfastly at one another across
the megaron, each waiting for the other to be first to blink.
 Thalassia emerged victorious, but then bowed her head and
became again the good little slave she had proven herself able to
resemble when she saw fit.

Retreating to the corner to stand beside his
seated host, Alkibiades ran a hand through his mane and blinked
rapidly, as though stunned by a blow.  He looked thoughtfully
at Thalassia, who ignored him.

"Believe me, friend," Alkibiades said,
loudly enough for even normal ears to overhear.  "I know
something about women, and I can tell you this one is something
special.  A fallen goddess, even, and the path to her
sanctuary is warm and slippery.  Because I have a sense for
such things, I gather you have not yet made the pilgrimage, but I
advise you to get started.  She is your slave, of course, so I
shall give your head a start, but be warned: I am not one to sit
idly by while a ripe spoil spoils."

At that, Thalassia looked up at Perikles'
ward, and they shared one final, impenetrable look before
Alkibiades clapped his host's shoulder, acknowledged Eurydike's
feral snarl as though it were a blown kiss, and made his leave.

"He's full of shit, lord," Eurydike remarked
the moment he had gone.

"Watch what you say about citizens,"
Demosthenes chided.  "But... yes, he is."

Turning away, Thalassia began to ascend the
stairs.

"The garden looks dry," Demosthenes observed
to Eurydike.  "Would you water it?  And then you can
apologize to Thalassia by taking her on that shopping trip."

Perceptive Eurydike, who knew when she was
being got rid of, muttered something about a cow before dragging
her feet to the exit.

When she was gone, Demosthenes caught up to
Thalassia, who stopped and faced him.

"Have patience with her," Demosthenes
pleaded.  "For almost three years now, it has been only the
two of us in this house."

"She's no bother," Thalassia said.
 "She reminds me of someone I knew."

"Not someone you killed, I hope."

Her smile was faint and sad.  "A
friend," she said.  "From when I had them."

A part of him yearned to wedge a question
into that opening and use it to pry out more of Thalassia's past.
 But with Eurydike just outside and no suitable question
presenting itself in time, he gave up.  Rather, he cleared his
throat and changed the topic.  "Eurydike said you were
drawing."

Thalassia turned to finish ascending the
stair.  "Yes.  Come see."

He followed Thalassia up through his home's
unfurnished women's quarters and emerged behind her through the
hatch which led out onto the rooftop terrace. In one corner of its
floor sat many small sheets of scraped parchment, evidently cut
from a larger sheet taken from the house's storeroom. Thalassia
stooped to collect a number of them and offered them to
Demosthenes.

He examined the sheets. The topmost
contained a neatly labeled schematic drawn in a smooth and steady
hand depicting what looked like an archer's bow mounted
horizontally on the end of a fence-post. The large print above
read 
Gastraphetes
.

Belly-bow?
 A nonsense word.

"This is a weapon?" Demosthenes supposed
aloud.

Thalassia nodded. She leaned casually on the
balustrade looking out over the streets of
the 
deme
 of Tyrmeidai.

The next two sheets showed less portable and
less deadly machines. Comprised of complex arrangements of shafts,
toothed wheels, and paddle-like blades, they were
labeled 
Grain-grinder
(wind)
 and 
Grain-grinder (water)
. After them
came a page depicting a blacksmith's furnace alongside a set of
instructions which were likely only intelligible to a man practiced
in using one. That sheet was labeled 
Stomoma
Athenaion
.

Athenian Steel.

The next was covered with an intricate
arrangement of squiggles and dots. The neat letters nestled amongst
the fluid lines spelled out familiar names: Athens. Sparta. Thebes.
Argos. Elis. Pylos. Delphi.

"This looks like no map I have ever seen,"
Demosthenes observed.

"That's because it's 
accurate
."
Thalassia twirled a finger in her hair. "The world's a sphere, by
the way," she added in passing. "I'll draw that for you later.
Nautical charts, too."

Absorbed in the tiny, snaking rivers, the
oddly shaped bays and islands, the flocks of lambdas bearing the
familiar names of mountain ranges, Demosthenes set himself to the
task of hunting down and reading every last caption. Thalassia
interrupted the effort.

"I think we should consider telling
Alkibiades."

Demosthenes looked up. "About what? You?
Everything?"

"Maybe not everything, but enough to make
him an ally."

The first question to spring to Demosthenes'
mind was, 
Ally or replacement?
 But he left that
one unspoken. "You told me that history would remember Alkibiades,"
he asked instead. "What for?"

"Forward thinking," she answered. "Winning
battles." She hesitated briefly. "Arguably losing the war for
Athens and costing you your life in the process."

Demosthenes' breath caught. With the next,
he asked, "How?"

"The plan to send you to Sicily about ten
years from now will be his. But, of course, that all takes place in
a world that will never exist. Our actions will change his fate as
much as they will yours. Alkibiades can be of use to us
politically. I think we can trust him. And if I'm wrong... well, he
can always have an unfortunate fall from his horse, if you catch my
meaning."

"I... do," Demosthenes said uncertainly. "It
is disturbing, to say the least, to hear you speak of murdering
prominent Athenian citizens. Ones whom I call friend, at that. I
must think on whether I dislike Alkibiades enough to–"

"Kiss me," Thalassia said plainly.

Demosthenes' eyes flicked up to meet hers.
Just as quickly, they fell away. "Pardon?"

She slid off the balustrade to stand in
front of him. The thin stack of parchment hung by his side,
imprisoned in an involuntary fist of sweating stone. "The Caliate's
headquarters is a place called Spiral. When we are there, we do
whatever we wish. Anything that makes us happy. Whatever urges we
have, we indulge without shame or regret."

"It's like Corinth, then," Demosthenes
muttered.

Thalassia smiled. "I want us to do more than
kiss, Demosthenes. Eurydike, too, if you approve. I would like
that, the three of us." Her tone gave no indication that she was
anything but serious. "But for now, a kiss. And by kiss, what I
mean is, you're sixteen and alone in the olive groves with your hot
cousin. Not even the gods are watching. No one will ever
know. 
That
 kind of kiss." She took a step closer,
coming almost toe-to-toe with him. "Now stop thinking and just do
it."

For the space of several dozen loud beats of
his quickening heart, Demosthenes said nothing while his mind spun
circles in desperate search for a reply. He was hardly one to shy
away from a challenge. If he were, he would have neither Thalassia
nor Eurydike in his home, nor would he possess any victories to his
name as a general, least of all the most recent. No, he would have
a pale young citizen girl for a wife and a few properly servile
slaves for her to lord it over at home whilst he sought more
stimulating companionship elsewhere, as all of Athens deemed
proper.

Certainly he could kiss Thalassia, but well
enough to satisfy her? It would be a performance, a falsehood, for
how could he ever permit himself to lust after such a...
a 
monster
, however pleasing its appearance?

Yet she was not asking for lust or even
sex–yet. Only a kiss. Perhaps there was no harm in granting her
that.

At the end of too long a silence,
Demosthenes lifted his hung head, drew a bracing breath and looked
Thalassia squarely in pale, opaque eyes which stood almost level
with his own. Her face showed no trace of eagerness or
anticipation, but as he drew so close that his uneven breath
rebounded off the tip of her nose, she gently sucked her lips,
moistening them before they parted to receive the imminent
contact.

He shut his eyes and paused, breath held,
while behind his closed lids he endured the vision of a
blood-drenched battle-Fury mutilating the flesh of her foe. He felt
the ghost of Thalassia's iron claw constricting his throat, heard
Eden shriek at her, 
Wormwhore!

He backed away and opened his eyes to find
Thalassia's waiting lips drawn tight in a frown. That melted away,
she nodded, and of a sudden it was though nothing had occurred. She
touched his shoulder in a friendly gesture and walked around him to
cross the tile floor to the hatch that led down into the house.

Distractedly, Demosthenes pretended to study
the parchments in front of the precisely no one who was present to
witness him. Then he waited until the women of the house had left
for the agora on their shopping excursion before descending and
returning to the city to resume the day's business.

Demosthenes returned home at dusk to find
that Eurydike had filled the recessed bath in the private chamber
behind the megaron and warmed it with boiled water from the hearth.
 The night prior, exhaustion had led him to perform only a
cursory de-brining, and so with Thalassia up on the roof
reinventing agriculture or some such, Eurydike bathed her master
properly, oiling and scraping his skin, washing his hair, and
lastly engaging him in some less practical aquatic activities.
 Afterward, she sat naked and glistening astride Demosthenes'
lap in the bath.  Her long wet locks of deep red adhered to
her cheeks and neck, streaming trails of water over her spotted
shoulders.  

“Lord,” she said in a hushed voice, the
sharp tip of her upturned nose grazing his.  “Would you have a
report on my mission?”

“Tell me,” Demosthenes said eagerly.

“Well, first of all, while we were out today
I asked Thalassia about her stupid name, and she said it wasn't her
real name.”  Of course, Demosthenes knew this, but he took it
as though it were news.  “I asked her real name, and she told
me it was...”  Eurydike's face crinkled.  “Dzhenna?
 I'm not sure exactly.  A stupid name that I forget.
 Then I asked where she was from that they had such weird
names and didn't know that 
thalassia
 was a chunk
of wood.

“She pointed to the sky and said she was
from the stars.  'Stop fucking with me,' I told her, and she
said, 'Actually, a little ball of rock near just one star.' 'You
don't really believe that,' I said, but she shrugged and I just
said, 'Whatever, 
star-girl
.'  I didn't want it to
seem like I was prying.  I did an excellent job of that, I
promise.  I think you're right: she's just not right in the
head.”