Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [112]
She shrugged. ‘I wasn’t caught. Or am I braver than you, my hero?’
She said nothing more – nothing. Not a glance did she give me, nor a touch of her hand.
I went to her room wondering with every heart-pounding step if I had, in fact, created the whole thing in my head. Had she really asked me? Really?
I stopped in the hall outside her room, although there was no cover there. I took a breath and my knees were weak and I shuddered. I had done none of these things before I killed Cleisthenes. Every man is brave for some things and a coward for others. I stood there for a long time, and I’ll tell you in honesty that I could feel the shit at the base of my intestines, I was so afraid.
Aphrodite, not Ares, is the deadliest on Olympus.
Then I made myself push through her curtain.
She laughed when her skin was against mine. ‘You weren’t this cold in the bath,’ she said.
‘I thought that you were Penelope!’ I said with foolish honesty.
There are women who might be offended by that sort of revelation. Briseis bit my ear, rolled off the couch and lit a lamp from her fire jar.
‘Aphrodite!’ I said. Probably squeaked.
She got on top of me. ‘I want you to see me,’ she said. ‘So that next time you won’t mistake me for my maid.’
When we were done – and the moment we were done, she laughed and bounced to her feet – I asked, ‘Why?’ I reached out and touched her flank. ‘Why did you come to me? In the bath?’
She laughed, and her eyes flashed in the lamplight. ‘I decided that you should have what Diomedes gave away,’ she said. ‘Promise me that if you ever have the chance, you’ll kill him for me?’
I shrugged. Later, I swore.
I’m a man, not a god.
I took to spending my days in the little forge shed in the work yard. It was a tiny shop with one small bench, and Hipponax only had it so that his pots could be mended without being taken to market, but Darkar once told me that they had had a slave who had some skill with iron.
I made instruments at first – a compass for Briseis, and then a ruler marked out in daktyloi. I made a fine compass for Heraclitus, as well. It was simple work, but good. Briseis was pleased by her geometry tools, as she called them, and Heraclitus was delighted, embracing me. I think that he had no use for such things, as he once told me that he could see the logos and all its shapes in his head. But the long bronze dividers were comfortable in the hand, and excellent for showing a student, and their points were sharp and probably used to prick a generation of dullards, which gives me some satisfaction.
When I had my eye back, I bought some scrap bronze and poured myself a plate, pouring directly on to a piece of slate. Then I forged the pour into a sheet, which made me feel better. Making sheet is long work, and finicky. I did an adequate job, although my heart told me that I stopped planishing too early.
Oh, lass, you’ll never be a bronze-smith’s daughter! Planishing – endless tiny hammer strokes to smooth the forge-work. When you change something’s shape, you use the curved surface of the big hammers, pulling the metal or pushing it, this way and that. But that leaves big, lumpy marks. See this cauldron? Look at these marks. See? But a good smith, a master, never lets an item out of his shop with these divots. He uses ever-smaller hammers, working the surface a blow at a time, until it is one continuous surface – like my helmet. See?
Making sheet is about getting the surface to a single thickness and a flat shape, two things that seem like enemies when you are new to the process. More than you wanted to know, eh? But something had changed since I killed Cleisthenes, and I wanted to go back, I think – back to a world where I could do good work.
I had begun to have dreams about home. I had the first in Briseis’s bed, the first night I went to her. I dreamed that ravens came and stripped my armour from me, and took me to their nest.
I dreamed of ravens, and their green nest of willows, night after night, until I realized that the ravens were Apollo’s, and the green