Andromache: Stealing Tomorrow . Chapter 2
as promised - chapter 2. :D
Andromache: Stealing Tomorrow
Chapter 2
by Jennifer South (aka TamLin)
II.
We passed through the women's apartments and then into the darker hallways beyond. The queen's chambers. All the windows had been sealed long ago, and all the walkways walled in. No light but what she chose to bring with her was allowed into my mother's realm and I was very careful not to stumble as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Once you were in Mother's rooms, she saw everything, whether she was present or not. It would not be the first time I was punished for being clumsy when no one should have seen me being so. Grace was very important to Mother, so I had made it a point to make it very important to me too.
I hesitated in the outer chamber, but Threnody kept walking. Panic skittered on tiny sharp claws through my chest but I followed her into the room beyond. Hesitating only made things worse. I knew that much. The inner chamber was as barren as it had been on my last visit with only a single ornate, cushionless bench in the middle of its carefully scrubbed stone floor and two doorways led off from it, both covered in identical long hanging drapes. I knew what lay behind them both though and there was a terrible urge to run. I didn't have to be the least bit intelligent though to know what running would mean once I was caught. My teeth were starting to hurt and so was my jaw, I had my mouth shut so tightly. My mother was not in the inner chamber. Which meant she was waiting behind the curtain. Which meant she didn't want to talk tonight.
Threnody paused in the middle of the room, just to draw the moment out, I was sure. I knew I should hate her but there was very little room for any emotion inside me but what was already taken up by my mother at the moment. And then Threnody turned and pushed aside the curtain to my mother's bedchamber.
I hesitated again but this time it was in surprise and then I remembered and scurried forward to follow my mother's slave into the room. It was brightly lit with oil lamps and rare tapers, and I came to a stop once I was inside, blinking against the sudden excess of light against my sensitive eyes. The room was almost too warm with all the flickering fire and lack of air but my shoulders stayed hunched inside my towel. My stomach still felt cold.
"My precious," my mother rose from the stool she'd been sitting on and swept toward me. I locked my knees to keep from pulling back and she enveloped me in her cool arms, smelling like sweet flowers. I didn't have to return the gesture; she never cared either way, and I was still terrified by what new trick this was. My eyes were wide over her slim, pale shoulder but all I could see where the dancing flames.
Everyone said I took after my mother. Everyone.
"You look like a wet little cat," my mother chided but there was affection in her voice. I didn't dare relax. She might just be enjoying herself before she - before we started my lessons.
"I'm sorry," I remembered to mumble. Terror was no excuse not to answer her. She laughed and patted my head absently. I shut my eyes so I wouldn't cringe.
"It's that nurse of yours. She has no elegance in her at all. That's what your father gets for hiring country dregs. I shudder to think of how much worse you would have turned out if I'd let her nurse you as a babe."
I should have staunchly defended Nurse. I knew it and hated myself inside for not being brave enough. Instead I just stood there. I would stand there all day and night if she wanted me to. This was the one place in all the worlds I did not dare ask questions for fear of the answers.
"Take off the towel. I want to look at you," my mother instructed and, suddenly embarrassed the way I never was in front of Nurse or the other maids, I let my protective 'fleece' drop, my eyes fixed straight ahead because Mother hated it when a woman dropped her eyes to the floor. Even when she put those liquid drops that burned in my eyes and gave me night sight, I wasn't allowed to look down. I kept my hands limp at my sides as mother walked around me.
"Too bony. Not enough fat on her. No chest. And so tall. Like a little boy instead of a girl." She shook her head and placed her hands on her hips, coming to a stop in front of me. I didn't mind. It wasn't her voice I was scared of and I already knew I was built like a boy. Everyone said it and what a shame it was that I didn't live up to the promise of my mother's beauty. Because my mother was beautiful. Utterly, breathtakingly beautiful. She had pale, pure skin the color of foaming cream and dark, rich hair that gleamed and almost touched the backs of her knees. It scared me, deep inside, that when people said I was just like her they weren't talking about looks, but rather what was inside. My mother's long finger prodded my ribs suddenly and I almost jumped, stopping myself just in time so that it was only a wince. She saw it and laughed again. The sound of her laughter was the reason I knew not all laughter was well ment. Then she caught my hand in hers. Her strong fingers pressed at the same spot on my palm and dug down between the bones and tendons on the top of my hand to almost join. It was one of her warning punishments and I took the pain silently as I could not always take some of her others, panic inside me kicking up another notch because I did not understand what was going on.
"Pay attention, little boy. We're making the future tonight. And you will be exactly what I want you to be. I will be inside you and if you do anything I wouldn't approve of I will take little bites out of your heart until you can't breathe right anymore. Do you believe me?"
Blinking, I nodded. She never asked if I understood, only if I believed. And I did. With every fiber of my being, I believed whatever my mother told me. Too much of it had proven true for me to doubt. Her grip, like two bones rubbing together, eased on my hand and she rubbed absently at the spot. Almost as if she would wipe it away but whether it was the mark or her touch on my skin, I never knew.
The next few hours were - confusing. My mother's mood seemed generous and I trusted that less than anything. I was given another washing, but this time it was in a great brass bath with legs carved like lion feet. The water was so hot it made my skin turn pink and Threnody scrubbed me mercilessly with a rough stone. Then I was rubbed down with oils and my mother dropped something that burned onto my shoulders, deploring the freckles that had bloomed there from my time in the sun. She made Threnody do most of the work and would not touch the winding scar on my shoulder blade.
I felt like a doll, one of those silly things Nurse had given me when I was younger. I'd been disappointed to find out all it was good for was dressing and carrying around. Now all I was fit for was dressing and moving around and I did it docilely. Moving as I was told, standing or sitting as I was told without question or hesitation. I can only maintain terror so long and it had faded into distrust and unease. I was bound in a dress I had never seen before. Threnody did something painful to my hair but my mother made approving noises over it. They put kohl around my eyes with a brush that was so fine I could hardly see the hairs on it and rubbed stain into my lips. Mother refused it for my cheeks, saying that I had too much sun as it was and it would only make those horrible freckles stand out more. My shoulders still burned from what she had done to the freckles there and I was glad she obviously was getting me ready for public spectacle just so that she would not do the same to my nose and cheeks.
"Remember," my mother instructed her servant. "She needs to look young and virginal. But on just the peak of being old enough to bed a man. She's not a Hittite whore. She's valuable."
It was the first time I'd heard I was valuable but it hardly brought me pleasure. I doubted meat at the market, hanging on one of its hooks, thought itself valuable. I didn't dare show it but I was beginning to breathe again. Mother was putting a lot of effort into me today. I thought that might, if I was very good and very lucky, mean that I would be safe. Finally, Threnody was done and my mother circled me, reminding me of a panther with a goat and my throat tightened painfully again. She frowned.
"Such a waste of flesh," she declared finally, tiredly, and I didn't even dare press my lips together in response, fearful I might smudge the stain and call down her anger, instead of just her disgust. I could almost see my freedom from a night of pain and I was going to do nothing to jeopardize it. Then she stood in front of me and cupped my face with her hands, long nails slipping into place under my jaw as she tipped my head so I was looking up at her.
"Now you are going to eat with your father and his guest tonight. You will not talk, you will not ask your stupid questions, you will not laugh that obnoxious donkey laugh of yours. You will answer when you're spoken to with the answers a good daughter and a true princess would give and you will not do anything that you would not do if I were standing right behind you. Because I am going to be there, even though no one will see me, and I will know. Do you believe me?"
Terrified again, I nodded, eyes fixed on her pale ones. I would do something wrong tonight. It didn't matter how good I was or how little I did. I would still do something tonight that would displease my mother. And she would hurt me for it. I knew it as sure as I knew there would be air when I inhaled or that night would fall and there was nothing I could do to change that outcome. All I could hope to do was mute it, even just a little.
"Good." Her nails in my skin tightened slightly and then relaxed and she patted my cheek the same way she would slap it but with less force. "Now go wait in the other room until Threnody comes to lead you down to dinner. Looking at you is making me sick."
I nodded and went, careful to keep my steps calm and unhurried, careful to glide instead of walk. I made it out the door and onto the little wooden bench with its grimacing carved faces, settling down on the very edge of it and not daring to even breathe. The dress I was wearing was unfamiliar and I suppose it would have been beautiful under different circumstances. It was purest Siodonian purple shot through with electrum pins that fastened it close and gave me the illusion of having a shape. The combs in my hair were set tight against my scalp and they hurt. The sandals my feet were in were a size too small and the new leather rubbed. My shoulders still burned. And still - for the moment - I knew I had gotten off very lightly. I very pointedly did not even look at the second curtain out of that room, sure that if I did something would move behind it in the dark and come to drag me into the second room. Even though it was the first time I had been there, I hadn't even paid enough attention to the make up of my mother's room to tell what kind of bed she slept in or what her wardrobe would have looked like. I hadn't dared take my eyes off her except when it had been to stare at flickering oil flame. My curiosity failed me utterly when I was with my mother. I had learned long ago that any answers I found wouldn't be ones I wanted.
I should have been delighted, or after Nurse's words, embarrassed, that I was going to be allowed to have dinner with my guest but Hector and the memory of this morning was very far away in my mother's rooms. I couldn't even remember what he looked like and it didn't seem that important.
It was the horses that finally gave me a distraction from my thoughts. I could remember his horses and their huge faces and their liquid dark eyes and it made something inside me relax. Outwardly I knew better, even in a seemingly empty room than to show anything but I could remember Marsyas whistling and the nice horsy way they smelled and how it felt to hold the reins and feel them moving though the leather. It was a nice way to keep my mind occupied while I sat straight backed in my uncomfortable dress and missed mid-meal. I'd gotten very good at being unmoving in these rooms however and it was second nature to me now. In my mind I was elsewhere, dreaming about driving my own chariot and going wherever I wanted to go. I visited Egypt and challenged the great Pharaoh to a race, then rode with the Amazons in the far north. When Threnody finally appeared in front of me I stood and let her lead me wherever she wanted, her presence driving away the imagined feel of thundering hooves and the jar of rolling metal wheels over plains of tall grass. I held the small peace those thoughts had given me tightly to my heart though. It was not often I was allowed to escape into my dreams while in my mother's dark hall and I knew to cherish the moments when I was. What little inward calm I'd found though was scattered and lost entirely when I stepped through an arch and found myself blinking in the bright glare of torchlight. Somehow, in a roundabout way I'd been unaware of before, we'd come to the main hall. Threnody said nothing. She didn't need to. She simply turned and was gone and I found myself dry mouthed again at the growing awareness of my mother's hidden eyes watching me already.
I had sat at feasts with my father rarely but often enough that they were usually something I looked forward to. I was always forgotten during them and so I got to stay as long as I wanted, eat anything I wanted and listen to the stories they told when they forgot I was around. I loved the stories most of all. Especially my huge father's roaring stories full of laughter and energy. I loved the sound of my father's great voice. It was booming merrily across the hall now as servants scurried to set things in place and my brothers straggled in. Usually I would have run over to my father, homing in on that great voice like a hunting hound, and thrown myself in his arms and asked about anything, anything at all, just to have him concentrate on me while he answered. But I was dressed strangely and I smelled strangely and my hair was strange. My mother would not approve of my running or hugging or asking questions. But I, oh so badly, wanted to be in my father's arms, even for just a minute. He was far outside of my realm of women and children, belonging to the realm of men and warriors, more a shadow on the edges of my life than a solid fixture. Yet he had never raised his hand to me the way he had every right to as my father and he never sent me away when I crept in close to be by his side. Even at that age I knew I confused him, that he had no idea what to do with me. It did not matter. I adored him beyond everyone else in all the world because he was my hero. Because my mother would not touch me or even look at me when he was nearby. Even temporarily, his presence was the only thing that thwarted her when it came to me. Torn, I stood at the edge of the room and was only vaguely aware of it when the whispering started.
Enoch, the head steward caught it before I did in fact and I only noticed him because I was watching my father so intently. King Eetion's shaggy head turned and he glowered down at the smaller man as Enoch came up next to him to murmur near his ear, before my father's eyes turned to glower in my general direction. I wanted to sink into the floor then, knowing I looked like a dressed up monkey on display but my father's vague glance focused on me and the puzzlement moved across his face followed by surprise. And then he was grinning widely, wide teeth very white in his dark face. His long, long strides took him across the room and in a moment, I was in his huge arms, lifted off my aching feet and held so tightly that the breath went out of me. Tears stung my eyes and I wrapped my arms around him as far and as tightly as I could and held on desperately to that safety.
"Well, well," even set toward soft, my father's voice still boomed and I felt it rumbling from his chest to mine. "My little she-pup. I hardly recognized you. Is that perfume I smell?"
"I don't know," I answered, fighting down being as hysterically happy to be in his arms as I had the panic at being first summoned to my mother's rooms. He laughed at my answer. Lost and scared in my new Mother assigned role, I wanted him to hold me forever that way but he dropped me back down to my sandaled feet.
"You did a good job, bringing that young man here," he told me, and something in my chest rose wonderfully. "Your brothers are all jealous you got to ride in his chariot," he confided in me with a wink and then someone called his name and he turned away and I was forgotten. I went back to being lost.
"Sit by me?" a voice near my shoulder asked. I looked up to see my stranger from this morning. His dark hair was curling slightly, still damp from his bath, and he was dressed in much nicer clothes, even if they were still a simple design, unembroidered and simply hemmed. He had a cuff of hammered silver on each of his wrists. When I didn't answer right away, he added: "I'm tired of talking about dogs and horses. You found me first, it's only fair."
Egret would have known how to answer. She would have been full of questions. But I wasn't her tonight. I wasn't sure who I was, under both my mother's threatening instructions and the unfamiliar way my body had been changed. Hector dipped his head and his dark eyes under his dark hair came even with mine. For a minute he was very quiet as he searched behind the oils and powders and paints. I watched him back mutely, waiting for.. what? I didn't know. Then his thumb brushed my cheek and I jumped a little, the touch from a stranger unexpected.
"It's all right," he told me softly and his voice low and soothing. "It's just me."
It should have been a strange thing to say. I hardly knew him and so he couldn't be reassuring by being himself. Yet… he had been kind to me, answered my questions and paid attention. He had let me into his world without expecting anything in return. Looking at his dark eyes, I was reminded of the gentle way he'd treated his horses. How his laughter and his teasing had been something that felt shared with me instead of directed at me. He made me feel safe, I realized. Not safe from my mother the way my father did but safe to be whoever I wanted to be and it would be all right with him. As if whatever happened between us would be all right.
"Do you talk to your horses that way?" I blurted before I thought about it and watched his eyes widen.
"Sometimes," he admitted, sounding embarrassed but his eyes were laughing. Somehow I found I could still smile.
"I feel better then," I told him - and realized I meant it.
"Come sit with me," he asked again and I nodded, taking the arm he offered and resting my own hand over it.
I hadn't expected to enjoy the dinner at all and, at first, I didn't. I was so aware of my mother's judgment over everything that I did, that I did as little as possible to make all my mistakes as small as possible. It was very hard to concentrate on being proper and elegant and graceful and wise and dignified and calm and serene. Hard enough for someone like me under normal circumstances. Impossible, surrounded by my rowdy brothers and father and my father's men. I had gotten quite a few surprised looks at the beginning from some of the regulars at my father's table. It was hard not to squirm under the scrutiny. I knew I looked like one of my father's boar hounds with a silken bow around its rough neck but I could not even sink low into my seat because my mother's training insisted I sit tall and straight backed and ignore it. Once the fourth and fifth bowl of wine made the rounds, most of the watchers had forgotten about me though and the mood of the feast was so infectious I began to forget my orders.
Father and my brothers were at their finest. They laughed and told their stories and joked roughly. Hector was quieter, but he held his own when it came to stories about his travels. He had a knack for inserting the punch line of a dry joke or observation into the story at the perfect moment. It seemed he had done and seen a great deal for his age and I was very proud of him, my discovery. It was hardly as if I'd created him from scratch, but I had found him first and brought him home. It felt as if I'd done something worth praise in doing so. Hector was a good bench partner too and I was grateful for that. I didn't know how I would have explained slopped gravy or spilled honey on my dress to my mother afterward. She hardly would have cared if it was my seatmate's fault.
The night wound on pleasantly, while the stories became more glorious and sentimental as father and his warriors reminisced about the men they had fought against and beside in their younger years. Everything took on heroic proportions, and it was easy for me to imagine my father, a giant with a flaming red beard, defeating far-off princes and battling ferocious storms on the deck of a rolling ship. I was very proud of him and very proud to be his daughter.
Hector didn't talk to me very much. It would have been hard to, over the voices of my siblings anyway. He nudged the choice pieces of meat onto my plate however along with sweets and bits of fruit. I don't think anyone noticed. Sometimes I didn't even notice until I looked down and realized there was something new on my plate. The silent attention warmed me as much as the sips I took of the wine or the fires from the braziers. By the end of the night, growing drowsy on a full stomach and the safety and warmth of the room, I might have ended up snuggled against Hector's side, the way I usually ended feast nights against my father or one of his older soldier's sides. The dress and the headache from the hair was a constant nagging reminder though that tonight I wasn't supposed to be a little girl.
In fact, I still wasn't sure what I was supposed to be. So far I hadn't been expected to do much more then eat and listen and I would have done that anyway, albeit a bit less self-consciously. I couldn't tell whether I was pleasing my mother or not, but I couldn't think of what else she might want me to do. As the night went on, I couldn't seem to hold back my true nature, finding it slipping out more and more. I got especially bad about it once I realized that Hector liked to listen to my aside comments that I usually only made for my own amusement. He would tilt his head down slightly toward me and chuckle and I did not feel like he was humoring me, especially when he would add his own observations in his low voice to me as well.
When the screams started, I, at first, thought they were just an extension of the night. My father's men often got overeager with the slave girls after the wine had been flowing a while. Hector's head came up though from where it had been leaned close to listen to me and he frowned toward the far arches. I tipped my head and listened as well - and realized there were mingled male voices woven in with the women's screams and that none of them were the sounds of male revelry I was used to.
"Father," I reached across Hector to grab at my father's thick wrist and my father's hand closed like a trap over mine even as he thumped his other fist hard enough onto the table to set everything jarring. It caught everyone's attention. In the sudden silence that followed, the sounds from outside wailed louder and more aggressive.
King Eetion was like a great bear as he released my hand and rose to his full height.
"Weapons!" he called and his voice was like Zeus' itself to me. The men, even Hector, were all on their feet before his bellow had even finished and there was a mad scrabble. I stayed where I was, frozen like a mouse. I knew I didn't belong in the hall of sudden warriors but I didn't know where else to go. I did know, with absolute surety, that I needed to stay out of the way. But how when I was in the middle of everything? Even as I thought it, the doors at the far end of the hall burst open and some of my father's soldiers that had drawn the short straws and had to stand guard duty tonight were forced backward into the hall. Serving women screamed and fled to the opposite end of the room, while the men, some of them still weaponless, surged forward in the opposite direction from the fleeing servants. I thought I would hide under the table and crawl to the far end of the hall away from everything but hesitated. It would surely ruin my mother's dress. And there was nothing, not death, not the brutality of strangers, that I feared more than my mother's punishment.
"Andromache!" It was Hector's voice, yelling near my ear and he hauled me off the bench and to my feet. I saw that he had a sword in his hand, blade unsheathed and the bronze caught the firelight from the torches and ran it like blood down the length of it. He shook me and my eyes flew up, snapping out of my frozen moment, caught and held by his darker ones. I had never seen a man's eyes look that way that Hector's eyes looked then. "Where do those doorways lead?" he demanded, jerk of his chin indicating the separate archways that lined the great hall. I shook my head. His face tightened but I wasn't shaking my head in denial. I was trying to think and the movement helped me past the numbness that wanted to set in and freeze me in place.
"To the kitchen in the north corner," I yelled over the increasing noise of chaos. "The others lead to antechambers!"
"Can you get the shutters in the antechambers locked? Any of them that have windows to outside?" He was asking me to do more than huddle with the rest of the women and I nodded quickly, finding my mind again in having something to focus it on. His lips moved ever so slightly upward.
"Eetion's daughter," he called me in the noise and then: "When they are locked take the women and slaves and go out the way of the kitchens. Stay away from the stables and any treasure house your father might have. If anything happens, I want you to go where we first met. I'll find you there. Do you understand me?"
"Yes." I nodded again. We had been raided two summers ago but I had been out with Diones and the sheep and hadn't realized it until I'd come back late in the evening to see wounded men and hear wailing women.
"Go!" his voice had command in it and I reacted instantly, moving even as my mind raced to keep up with what was needed. There were three doors on this side and four on the other. Several of the antechambers had outside windows. The room was quickly filling with fighting men. I realize I should have been scared but all I could seem to focus on was the need to get the windows shut. I would never get all the shutters locked that Hector wanted shut on my own. I didn't question why the storm shutters needed to be locked or what would happen if they were not locked. I just knew it was my job to see them locked.
Reaching out I grabbed the nearest woman. Sharia, one of the cooks.
"We need to lock those windows!" I shouted it at her. She was panicked and crying and did not hear me. I found myself, or whatever it was I was supposed to be tonight, grabbing her face, just as my mother had caught mine. Her eyes blinked, wide and frightened, but focused on mine when my nails bit into her skin and I pulled her eyes level with mine.
"We must lock the windows to this room!" My voice matched my actions. An adult. Whatever I was that night, it was a creature of strength. "You will help me!" I was losing precious time explaining but I lost it anyway. "You will take Zoe and Demetria and you will lock the two windows on that side of the hall. Now!" I snapped it and somewhere in all the chaos and noise and panic of battle there was a small quiet circle that my voice rang through. I had never felt anything like it and when Sharia nodded I found myself fiercely kissing her forehead and letting her go. Spinning, she caught the two women I had named that were cowering on the floor behind her and took them with her, moving fast and close against the wall.
"Enoch!" I called my father's steward to me. The battle crowded the front of the hall but it also tangled there, a maelstrom of men and tables and benches, giving the rest of the hall a short space of sanity. Already the invasion was beginning to spread though, raiders pushing in, combat beginning to splinter into individual fights. My father's steward was herding shocked slaves and servants toward the door to the kitchens but he heard my call even over the chaos of the room. He came. I wondered later why anyone was even listening to me but in the moment it was too important that they simply did. "We have to lock those shutters," I pointed even as I dragged at his arm. He looked confused, but again, without even questioning why or why he was listening to me, someone did what I told them to. Between the two of us we darted forward and managed to pull the shutters closed and slide the heavy bolts home across them. We were lucky. Most halls would have only had curtains for their windows. We were too close to the coast though and when the storms blew in, it was important to be able to shut them outside. The last shutter jumped under my hands just as I threw the bolt and I jumped back with a stifled noise. Outside was pitch black to my light accustomed eyes and I had been too intent on pulling shutters closed to waste time looking outside. Only when I felt a body impact with the wood under my hands did it occur to me that we weren't locking people in, we were locking people out. I turned, gathered up my skirt and ran, Enoch close behind.
I had been so focused on what I was doing that I had been aware of the fighting and yet not aware that it was moving in the same world I was. Running now, staying close to the side of the room and dodging around the results of the violence, I could not seem to notice anything but the war around me. I could not tell who was winning, who was losing, or even who was dying. The hall was full of the sounds of cries and screams, the smell of blood and vomit. My sandaled feet slipped in a puddle of something and I threw myself heavily against the wall. Suddenly desperate, willing to do almost anything to keep myself from ending up in that sticky warm liquid, to see it on my hands and covering my dress. That need went so much deeper than the fact it was my mother's dress.
We reached the back of the hall but the fighting had pushed back right on our heels and I was terrified by how little space we had. Without a word I pulled open the flimsy door to the hall that led to the kitchen and then to the granaries. It all lay in the opposite direction from the sea and the direction the intruders had burst into our hall from and I whispered a general prayer to any god that was listening that the entire passage was still safe.
"Go! All the way to end!" I pushed the nearest woman through and it was all a rush after that. I watched faces as they fled past and was relieved to see Sharia, Demetria and Zoe fleeing past. Enoch ran past. And then, suddenly, there was no one left. I turned my head to see a room of heaving bodies. I recognized no one. Not even men I knew must belong to my father for I had never seen faces like that before. Even my father, so easy to spot by his very height as he stood in the middle of the room, was unrecognizable to me, blood spattered and smiling such a terrible smile. It flashed through my mind that the entire world had ended and all that was left on it were monsters. And it didn't matter how far or how long we ran, because they would always find us.
"Andromache, go!"
Hector. The shout from the room had me jerking in a breath and I turned on my heel and fled myself as if Cerberus himself was at my very heels. This was a new kind of terror to me.
No one had waited for me and the torches in the empty hall flickered fretfully. I prayed as I ran but they were strange, desperate prayers. I had no idea which god to pray to for something like this. My family honored the gods when it was called for but relied on only themselves when there was need. I did not feel big enough to rely upon myself over something this overwhelming. Artemis ended up with my prayer but only because she was the goddess of all things small and hunted - and we all knew how little their prayers were answered.
I darted out into the kitchen, half expecting some huge monster with a bloody sword to come sweeping down on me. All that was there however, were huddled servants and slaves, glassy eyed with terror.
"Princess!" My hands were caught. I looked up in surprise to see Sharia. "What do we do now?" she asked me and I realized with a great hole tearing open in my stomach that she was not the only one looking at me that way. How could they look at me that way? I was just a child.
"Has someone gone to find the guards?" I asked. I had not idea how many raiders there were or how much they had spread out but my father had a good number of fighting men. If they knew, they would come.
"Enoch went," Nikias volunteered. I nodded, glad I was at least thinking along the lines that others must have thought. I looked around at the pale, huddled faces. I was not sure we should stay here but I had no idea if it was safer making a run to somewhere else. So far there were no noises following me down the hall. We were safe - but for how long?
"Is anyone hurt?" I asked. There were a few and someone had brought one of my father's men with a bad looking gash across his head and was only semi-conscious with them when they had fled. My small group had already been taking care of the bandaging of our wounded though and so I just nodded again, wishing someone would show up and tell me what to do. I looked back down the hall I had just run through, wondering if the sound of fighting really was starting to fade or if I was just imagining it. Cautious, I untangled my hands from where Sharia was still holding them so tightly and made my way over to the outside door. Our kitchen was set low in the ground, partially because it was one of the oldest parts of this palace, here long before most of the other buildings began to go up and also because it helped keep things cool. I listened at the great wooden door and then cautiously slipped it open a crack, just enough to see out of.
It was a dark night. So dark. My eyes adjusted slowly, letting me see. I could see the far wall. See the grain barn to the side and half forgotten. I watched for movement but everything was still and dark on this side of the palace. If we ran, we would probably make it to the granary… and once we were there we could huddle there the way we were here. I pressed my lips together. If my father - if my father lost this fight, the raiders would come for us. It would not matter if we were in the granary or the kitchen, they would find us and take us away. If we left the kitchen and another party of raiders came in this way, they would go through and into the main hall and my father would be surrounded. There was no way we could stop armed men.
"We stay here," I decided and to my horror the others in the room nodded and started to settle in. Not a single one of them disagreed or questioned me. What if I'm wrong? I wanted to shout at them. Why isn't anyone afraid I'm wrong and making a stupid decision? If anyone was, they didn't say anything. My head ached terribly and I reached up and started pulling the combs out of my hair, surprised to see they were ivory and abalone. I rubbed at where my scalp felt pulled, exhaled and leaned against the side of the doorway so I could still peer out through the crack in the door.
"Here." I found a cup of water pressed into my hand and I drank it gratefully, suddenly tired. My feet ached.
"Someone should go just a little way down the hall and listen," I heard myself saying after a minute. "Just so we have some warning."
And again, no one questioned me. Instead two of our women slipped quietly down the hall just far enough so that we could still see them and crouched down on the floor. The rest of the group was silent. Waiting. We were all waiting.
The night moved on. It seemed very long to me but the feast had seemed very short. I knew my grasp of time's movement was not very good. After a while one of the slaves came down from the hallway to tell us that the sound of fighting had died down into silence. They looked at me, too. I should have done something. I knew it. But I was very tired and very scared. I was not so scared for myself any more but I was very scared that I would make a bad decision and someone would get hurt. Or worse. So I just shook my head and everyone stayed where they were. If the raiders had won we would find out soon enough and if they had not - well, we would find out soon enough too. I stayed on my feet, watching out the cracked door and the people around me settled back down into their quiet murmured conversations and waiting. This was not the first raid for some of them. Some of them had become the slaves they were now on similar raids in their own home countries. I knew it but it had never been real to me before.
A figure moved in the darkness outside and I stiffened before widening my eyes and looking slightly to the side of the form so that it was more distinct in my night vision. Its limping steps and familiar form revealed themselves to be Enoch and it was all I could to do keep from throwing the door open and crying his name. I was still worried about what else was in the darkness though and so I waited until he was to the door before I pulled it quickly open and he tumbled in.
His old face looked even older to me, streaked with dirt and blood. He had a wicked looking cut along his cheek. He smiled tiredly at me though when he saw my worried face and patted my hand as I helped him to sit down.
"It's all right, my lady. Your father has driven the Achaeans off. Your brothers are pursuing them back toward their ships. We're safe."
I felt suddenly very weak and small and I almost would have climbed up into his lap to press close if I was not so used to him being aloof and giving me disapproving looks. I wanted my father very, very badly. I wanted someone else to come and take over very, very badly and Enoch was sipping the drink someone had pressed into his hands and doing nothing. It was not until much later that I realized he had called me 'my lady' for the first time that night.
Both of the girls that had hidden down the hall now came rushing back to say someone was coming and I think we all forgot to breathe. I stood very, very still as we all began to hear the sounds of several men coming down the flickering pathway, eyes feeling huge in my face. Enoch said we had won. What if the raiders from the hall did not know that yet?
And then I heard my father's voice, calling my name with its great booming demand and I forgot that my feet hurt and that I was supposed to be pretending to be an adult and that anyone else was in the room. I launched myself in the direction of that one perfect, safe, protecting sound like an arrow from a bow and he had barely finished ducking to clear the doorway into the kitchen before I had thrown both of my arms around him and was holding on desperately.
"My girl. My little girl." He picked me up and held me bone-crushingly against him. I could not breathe but it did not matter. He was damp with sweat and dirt and blood and he smelled like it too. None of that mattered. "I heard you locked the raiders out. What a good girl."
I should have corrected him. I should have told him it was Hector's idea but I was too busy pressing as close against him as I could. It was not often he held me but when he did I always felt beyond fear. He made the rest of the world go away.
My father started barking orders and Enoch sprang back to life. Soon the steward was organizing places for the wounded and parties to go out and check the damage as well as they could by moonlight. Groups of father's men went out to make sure there were no Achaeans left hiding anywhere around. My father carried me, forgotten, in his arms until he finally came to a stop and remembered to set me on the ground but he kept a huge hand on one of my shoulders and I did not even care that because of what mother had done earlier, it hurt. I wished I could stay there forever.
Despite his touch, I thought he'd forgotten me as he spoke to soldiers and runners brought him news. Suddenly though, just as one of his men turned to leave, he looked down at me with his great shaggy head. He smiled and it was wide and white.
"I like that boy you brought home with you," he told me, and I blinked, having forgotten Hector in the face of my father's presence. "He fights like a man. And he's got a good head for strategy. He'll make a fine king one day."
"Hector's a king?" I asked, peering around the side of my father to look automatically for him. My father chuckled, a great round, rolling thing.
"There's only one Hector of Troy even if he didn't come out and say it. Priam's oldest son. He'll be king of Ilium one day. If he lives long enough."
"My Hector?" I asked in surprise, eager to forget the fading fear of the night in favor of this new puzzle. My father looked down at me, clinging to his side and his face changed. I saw it go soft and a little sad and for the first time his eyes really focused on me and only me. One of his big hands stroked gently down my hair.
"You look more like your mother every day," he told me and I frowned at him. Wondering why he thought so when my mother was beautiful and controlled and I was obviously neither.
"No, I don't," I disagreed with him. He laughed and the look left his face.
"Not when you scowl like that," he told me, already starting to look around the main courtyard that we'd ended up in, beckoning one of my waiting brothers over to discuss sending runners to outlying settlements on our banks. "You look sweeter when you scowl."
Which made no sense to me either but now that he'd brought him back to my attention I looked around for my dinner companion.
"Where is Hector?" I asked when my brother paused in his run down of homes in that area. My father shrugged.
"Over in the stables checking on his horses last I heard," he answered and I looked up at him again and then toward the stables. They weren't so very far from where we were, easily within eyesight and the courtyard was full of light and our soldiers. I pressed my lips together for a minute.
"I think I will go see him," I said and my father looked down at me in surprise at the interruption, then nodded. I wasn't usually bold enough to interrupt but tonight - tonight nothing about me seem usual to me. And something in me wanted to see Hector's face.
"Don't go beyond the stables. We haven't finished sweeping for strays yet," he instructed and I nodded seriously. I wasn't about to get into trouble by carelessness on my part. Tonight the outside world had come to Thebes with an ugly face and I thought it would be a long time before I wanted to face it again. Instead, I turned and caught up my skirt to run to the stables. Hector was the good face of the outside world and I wanted to remember that tonight in my sleep.
I paused only when I got to the stables. They smelled like the great hall. Like blood and death and its interior seemed very dark with only the shielded lanterns we used for its interior. I should have at least pretended to be brave but I was all out of bravery by then and instead I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly realizing how cold I was and called softly into the interior.
"Hector?"
It was quiet for a moment and I glanced back to see my father's form across the torch lit courtyard talking with one of his men. I did not have it in me to go into the dark stable alone, not when I could imagine too easily what was waiting in there. Then a form moved in the darkness of the stable's interior as I looked back into that gloom and I heard Hector's voice asking:
"Andromache?"
"Yes," I managed something like a smile but still couldn't bring my feet to move forward into that darkness. Hector came out to me instead. His hair was plastered in erratic curls against his head and the side of his face. There were dark smudges of drying blood on his arms where they was bare and there was a cut through his tunic's chest and right at the tip of one of his dark eyebrows. He was wearing his sword now, sheathed and in a baldric that hung from his shoulder and across his chest. He looked older. His eyes were very dark.
He frowned and his eyes swept over me. I realized what a mess I was between the loose hair and the smudged paint on my face and whatever stains had soaked from my father's clothes into mine. I looked away, suddenly embarrassed.
"You're all right?" he touched my chin and I looked up at him. Grateful.
"Yes," I answered and he smiled. It was tired and I was reminded with a bolt of insight how he had, just this afternoon, told me how a woman could make a man forget the blood on his hands.
"Good. You might have just saved us all, sealing the windows when you did. It was very brave. I'm grateful."
"It was so no one could sneak in behind you, wasn't it?" I asked and he looked both surprised and then pleased.
"It was exactly that. You have to think of everything that can go wrong and then prepare for it. If I was the enemy I'd come at the hall from different sides. Just a few men would have been enough to change things if they'd gotten behind us."
I nodded, having thought of that if not in that detail or complete understanding.
"Father's very proud of me," I confessed. "But it was your idea."
"And you carried it through. We made a good team tonight. I fought and you kept everyone that couldn't fight safe. You'll take good care of your house once you're married."
I shrugged under the praise. Tonight I had pretended to be an adult and Hector was telling me that I'd acted like one. It was embarrassing but in a different way than I was used to.
"Are Marsyas and Epimenides all right?" I asked, both to change the subject and because I suddenly remembered them and the worry came immediately on its heels. Hector's smile was there again, quiet and sad.
"They're fine. Epimenides has a gash on his foreleg but it's not deep. I think he'll be all right. They're warhorses, Andromache. They're trained to defend themselves when people they don't know try to take them."
"Oh." The reason I smelled blood in the stable suddenly became much clearer and I felt silly and a little weak in my legs too. I don't know what Hector saw but he stepped forward and scooped me up in his arms. I wasn't used to being carried this way but it felt safe and I was suddenly very shaky inside.
"Come along, little one," Hector's voice was the same soothing one he'd used at the beginning of dinner. "You've had a very long night. Let's find your nurse. It's time for a warm bath and bed."
I wasn't looking forward to my usual dousing at Nurse's hands but the thought of my soft warm bed suddenly sounded like Elysium. Content, I snuggled close against Hector, wishing, wistfully, that he was my big brother instead of Cassandra's.
Hector carried me into the palace and down the hallway, following my murmured instructions to find my room. I expected Nurse to be there, but the room was empty and dark and the night breeze blew in through the open shutters. Hector hesitated in the middle of my room.
"This is yours?" he asked and I nodded against him.
"I have it all to myself," I answered, softly proud.
"There isn't an anteroom or anything else?" he asked and I shook my head. Extra room for me would have been a waste. I already filled my own room with too much clutter. Nurse was forever telling me so. Still holding me, Hector continued to hesitate.
"Is the bath near here?"
"Close," I answered. "Just down the hall, farther along. It's got fish tiled into its floor." Hector nodded.
"All right," he set me gently on my feet and kept an arm around me while I steadied. I was suddenly so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. "I'll get someone to fetch your nurse."
I nodded against him. Frowning, he looked around my room.
"I don't like leaving you alone."
"I'm usually alone," I reassured him. His frown deepened but he nodded and walked over to pull my shutters closed and bolt them against the night. Then he turned and looked at me where he'd left me standing in the middle of the room and his face softened. Coming back over he knelt down in front of me, which actually made me just a little taller than him. He took my hands in his larger ones and I remembered the way it felt to drive his chariot.
"I'm going to be gone in the morning," he told me and I nodded but it felt as if my heart had fallen into my stomach. I liked his company. He gave me one of those soft, sad smiles. "I need to go home and tell my father about this."
"King Priam," I supplied.
"King Priam," he agreed. "It's important. Will you remember what I said about what a woman can do to a man?"
Puzzled, I nodded in turn, feeling very serious even if I wasn't sure why or what that had to do with anything that had happened tonight.
"Good." His smile was still soft but not so sad now. "One day, you'll have your own house. I would like to see you there, if you'll let me in."
"Only if you bring your whistling horse," I instructed him and saw the softness in his smile as he gave it to me.
"I'll be sure to remember," he promised and then he stood up. "I'm glad I met you Andromache, Egret of Thebe. You're a very smart, very brave girl."
It made me glow inside and I felt ten feet taller in that moment as I looked up at him. I felt like I really was as brave and smart as he thought I was.
"I'm glad I met you too, Hector of Ilium," I told him in return. "You're nice."
"That's a description I can treasure all my life," he told me. His hands gave mine that familiar pleasant squeeze and then he was walking toward the door. He paused at it and looked back at me. "Bolt the door when I leave. I'll send someone to look for your nurse."
With that, he let himself out but I didn't lock the door immediately. For what seemed a very long time I simply stood where he'd set me and watched the shut door. Finally, I roused myself enough to bolt the door and then I struggled out of my dress and crawled into bed. Nurse would wake me up with her pounding but first I wanted to fall asleep while the feeling in my chest still felt safe and warm. Sleep took me before I could even worry about my mother's opinion on my performance that night.