Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) (31 page)

"Outside the city. No place in
particular."

He agreed, in spite of the very obvious
potential danger of going into the wilderness alongside a living
weapon with of the strength of several men and an ax to grind.
Thalassia's manner gave no particular cause for alarm, but then she
was a consummate deceiver.

"Meet me by the north gate an hour past
midday," she said.

Still unable to squarely meet her eye, he
gave another nod. It was not conventional for a general of Athens
to vanish into the hills the day after a major victory when there
was yet work to be done, but then neither had it been convention to
drown himself in a vat of wine the night prior. He would manage to
slip away.

Doubtless she knew all the reasons for his
current discomfort. She chose to address one.

"I promised never to hurt you," she said,
"and I won't. We will only talk."

The reassurance did put his mind at ease,
even if that same dark part of himself which last night had acted
unforgivably urged him to press thumbs to the hollow of her throat
and demand that she just say whatever she wished to say now and be
done with it.

But once again, he only nodded silently,
impotently.

"Good," she said. Her features showed no
sign of either pleasure or gratitude.

Without further word, she departed his
presence, leaving Demosthenes to wonder, while attending to the
building of a trophy, deciding the fates of prisoners, dividing
spoils, composing a dispatch to the Board, and doing the dozen
other things that needed doing, what her intentions were.

He did not finish wondering, or completing
the tasks at hand, before the appointed time arrived. Outside
Amphipolis' northern gate he found Thalassia waiting with one horse
which they were to share. He mounted it, moving delicately on
account of the bruise under his ribs, after which Thalassia hoisted
herself into the saddle in front of him. They struck off on the
wide, well-worn trail, less than a road, deeply rutted by the
wheels of carts which seemed to be absent this day, heading
northeast toward the low, gold-bearing mountains on the
horizon.

"It would help to know the destination,"
Demosthenes suggested blandly.

"Just follow the trail. I'll tell you when
to leave it."

He did as she bid him, trying to keep his
hands on the reins from brushing the hips of body in front of him,
the warmth and undeniable allure of which penetrated her cloak. But
there was no preventing that contact which, but for a few layers of
linen and wool, was almost as close as that they had had last
night. There was plenty of friction, too, as their bodies
jostled.

The silence grew quickly awkward, and after
some minutes spent penning up the desire to say something,
anything, the pressure in his chest became too great and a question
burst forth.

"Where did you go?"

He could not see Thalassia's expression,
only waves of dark hair, the hair that he had...

By the quickness of her answer, he gathered
that she welcomed the breaking of silence.

"Macedon," she said, surprisingly. "Do you
know of Arrhidaeus?"

Demosthenes had heard the name. "Some prince
or other."

"King Perdikkas' nephew," Thalassia
clarified. "His line was removed from succession when Perdikkas
took the throne."

Her words thus far had not seemed ominous,
but the pause which followed was.

"What about him?" Demosthenes prompted
innocently.

"I lured him to his death."

"What? Why?"

"In that world where Amphipolis falls and
you die in Sicily, Arrhidaeus's grandson Philip would have
conquered Greece. And Philip's son Alexander would have conquered
everything from the Nile to India, spreading Greek culture and the
worship of your gods. And himself."

"Conquered...." Demosthenes echoed,
incredulously. "Spreading Greek culture? But Macedonians
are... 
barbarians
."

"They style themselves Greek. Or they will.
Or would have," Thalassia said dismissively. "In one day, with one
act, I have done vastly more to change this world than I have in
the last year helping you alter the outcome of your little
war."

Demosthenes pursed his lips, sealing them
against those words which belittled his city's struggle–indeed, all
men's struggles.

"Then why have you bothered with our war?"
he asked through grit teeth.

She said nothing for a short while. Then,
"Turn off the trail here."

They rode in silence for a while, the
Thracian countryside rolling past them at a leisurely canter.
Skeletons of trees stood naked in pools of their shed leaves
beneath the shadows of pines, while in the distance low hills rose
and fell like the backs of mating serpents. When at last they
crested one of these hills, the mirror-smooth surface of a lake
came into view, reflecting sunlight into the vault of winter sky
above.

Near its edge, Thalassia slid from the
saddle, landing in the grass as though her weight were barely
enough to bend a blade. Demosthenes followed with somewhat less
grace and stood with reins in hand, ready to walk the horse to the
lakeside where he would hobble her forelegs and let her drink.
Before embarking on that task, he paused to let Thalassia remove a
linen-wrapped bundle from the saddlebags. It clanked slightly as it
moved. Her instruments of torture, perhaps?

No, this torturer needed no instruments but
her mind and tongue.

Thalassia took the bundle to a spot on the
grass, where Demosthenes joined her after leaving the horse to
drink. She spread out a blanket and laid out on it the bundle's
contents: bread and relish, meat pies, a clay jug of water and two
cups. Throwing off the cloak she had no need for against the chill,
she seated herself on the grass beside the square of white linen
with legs crossed under the skirts of her sea-foam chiton.
Demosthenes lowered himself to the grass beside her, facing, as did
she, the tranquil lake.

Thalassia continued the surreal, oddly
domestic display by pouring water for them both. She handed him his
cup, and he drank. Thalassia drank, too, something which she did
far more frequently than she consumed the Athenian food she neither
required nor particularly liked; she ate only often enough to keep
Eurydike convinced that she needed to. Over her cup's rim she
stared out at the lake's still, reflective surface. Though he
tried, Demosthenes could not read what thoughts might inhabit those
pale eyes. At one time he had thought himself able, but no
longer.

She drained her cup and set it down while he
sipped at his, neither speaking until at last Demosthenes could
bear the silence no longer. He thought perhaps he should ask her if
she had made the food herself, thank her or compliment her if need
be, but he could not bear the thought of engaging in small talk
while words relating to other, more important matters clawed at his
throat, begging for release.

There was one matter, however, on which he
did not wish to speak. And so he did not.

"You plan to leave," he said. Through the
haze of last night's drunkenness, Demosthenes recalled her having
begun to bid him farewell. Before he had interrupted her and...

She looked over at him, and their eyes met,
perhaps not for the first time that day, but it was the first time
the contact lasted more than an instant. While it endured,
Demosthenes' heart began to fill with regrets, as though someone
had poured them from above, searing hot, into the open cavity of
his chest. Last night Thalassia had been a malign force in the
darkness, a body deprived of the face and name she had spent more
than a year earning alongside him and Alkibiades and Eurydike in
Athens. The face he had known had been too easily erased by hardly
a month of separation, and written over the blank space where it
had been were his own fear and hatred. The face of a monster.

What he looked upon now was no monster.

"I am sorry," he said in a whisper, even
before she had answered his prior question.

Thalassia turned her head and gazed out over
the little lake and the forests of Thrace on its far edge. "I
know," she said. Then, "You should eat."

He did not, could not. But he did swallow
his emotions, a meal of guilt and pity, lest he be driven by such
hot forces where cold reason must rule. He asked, "Where will you
go?'

She sighed and spoke idly. "There is a city
in Italy called Roma. Right now it is probably no greater in
significance than Athens, but in a few generations it will carve an
empire to make Alexander's look small."

Ignoring the insult to city and people, to
which he had by now become almost accustomed, Demosthenes asked,
"What will you do there?"

"Destroy it," she said. "Kill them all. A
few generations from now, this world will be unrecognizable
compared to what it would have been."

"And your task will be complete,"
Demosthenes ventured. "The Worm will never exist."

"I suppose," she said indifferently. "It
doesn't matter much. I have spent a year here. I will spend a few
there. And then maybe somewhere else. Maybe he will blink out of
existence, or maybe he won't. Maybe the Caliate will cease to exist
without a Worm to oppose it." She spoke the name smoothly, without
falter or hesitation. "Maybe this whole layer, and others, will
crumble to dust. Maybe the whole universe will collapse into a
single point." She scoffed. "I don't know. Maybe Magdalen knows.
Maybe she knew that I would come here, and it's all part of her
plan. I don't care anymore."

Demosthenes listened with mouth
agape. 
Her enemy is humanity!
 the Nightmare Sibyl
had screamed.  He swallowed hard, opted not to address those
matters of layers and universes, which he could scarcely
comprehend.

"Is your aim to get me to beg you to stay?"
he asked.

Thalassia looked over at him blankly,
resignedly. "I wish you wouldn't say things like that." She shifted
to draw her legs up in front of her, a finger absently picking the
braided leather cord at the top of one well-wrought but well-worn
sandal. "You think I am always trying to manipulate you." Anger
rose in her voice. "Of course, I fucking want you to ask me to
stay, idiot." As quickly as it had come, the fury faded, but
bitterness remained. "Decide for yourself. I'm done trying to
ingratiate myself all over again every time you change your mind
about me." She shrugged. "I've enjoyed Athens. I love Eurydike.
I... care for you all. In my own way. You amuse me." She frowned,
corrected herself, "No, not amuse. More than that. Much more. I
told you a year ago what were the best years of my life... but
maybe..." She shook her head thoughtfully and bit her lower lip,
declining to finish.

So human...

She laid her head atop the folded arms that
bridged her knees and looked sidewise at Demosthenes. Her pale eyes
seemed as though they might at any moment begin to well with more
of the tears he had witnessed once before. But her gaze eventually
drifted groundward, and she waited, presumably for some reply.

She deserved a clear answer, but what? Wish
her well in destroying Roma, or ask her to remain? With Amphipolis
in Athenian hands, Fate had already been beaten once. The plans set
in motion a year prior in Alkibiades' garden had been achieved. And
perhaps it was enough. Perhaps the long war would end more quickly
now, with Athens the victor and Sparta finally yielding, while
Thalassia went far away, to where whatever destruction she wrought
would have scant effect on distant Athens during a mortal's
lifetime.

There was much to recommend letting her go.
Had he not wished time and again to be rid of her? She was a
powerful weapon, yes, but also a curse to the wielder, on whose
back she laid the responsibility of battling Fate to avert tragedy
and ensure a bright future for all those he loved.

What was the alternative? Bring her back to
Athens, continue to exploit her as a weapon on the city's behalf,
holding her to her promises of an Athenian victory, while trying
his best behind closed doors to coexist with her? Why was that so
impossible? Thalassia possessed flaws, but did not everyone in his
life, not least those closest to him? Alkibiades, Eurydike, his
father Alkisthenes... One might fairly say of each of them that
their negative qualities outweighed the positive. Deny it as some
might–as Alkibiades did–every man and woman who walked this earth
was deeply flawed. Just because she had fallen into it from the
heavens, was Thalassia to be held to some higher standard of
perfection?

Last night, his drunken self had insisted
she was no goddess, and that was true. She had never claimed to be.
Yet some part of him insisted that she be just that, or at least
more than mortal, for she had upturned all he previously held as
ironclad fact and unquestioned law, stripped him of his ability to
believe in words spoken by anyone but her. Yet she was as flawed as
anyone. More. His faith, his gods were gone, and in their place was
a treacherous, manipulative, vain, vindictive, volatile, broken
being of neither this realm nor the next. An in-betweener, an
exile, a paradox, an enemy of democracy, a slayer of men, a
friendless nomad of space and time upon whose altar, his dreams yet
screamed at him now and then in terror, the bleating lamb of his
own Fate was bound by chains every bit as thick and oppressive as
those freshly broken on the plain of Amphipolis.

This being seated beside him on the
lakeshore was lonely, unique, so strong yet so fragile, repugnant
yet beautiful. She was Madness. She was the Wormwhore. She was
Geneva. Jenna. Thalassia. Star-girl.

"Do not go," he pleaded, before even he knew
he was saying it, before tongue could gain mind's approval for what
foolish heart had chosen.