Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [92]
It makes me smile, though. Hah! The gods are often kind, and Aphrodite chose to send me to Tartarus with a glimpse of heaven. When we were finished, we kissed, and kissed, and kissed.
Darkar called my name from the back door. Penelope slipped out of the tub, picked up her robe and vanished – not a difficult trick in the dark. I was sore and happy and suddenly clear-headed, and I had the taste of cloves in my mouth. I got over the side of the tub and thought that on a normal night there’d be trouble from Cook for making such a mess of the bathhouse. Then I grabbed the olive oil, doused myself and strigiled as fast as I could.
I went through the kitchen as clean as a newborn. Darkar tried to slow me down, but I passed him and went into the hall.
Penelope was crying in Archi’s arms. Archi was still covered in blood and crap, and so was Penelope.
And her hair wasn’t wet.
A chill went through me like a rainy wind in winter blowing across my soul. In my nose, I discovered the scent of mint and jasmine. The hair began to stand up on the back of my neck.
Archi let go of Penelope. ‘You look worse, not better.’
Penelope looked at me. ‘You’ll both be killed,’ she said.
Oh, Aphrodite. Oh, Mistress of Animals. Who had I just been with in the bath?
‘I am afraid,’ I admitted to Archi. I just didn’t tell him why. ‘You must go and bathe.’
‘Stay where you are,’ Hipponax said from behind me.
I assume that Darkar told him. We were young and stupid. We had not thought through the consequences. And the game of revenge has no rules.
Hipponax looked at his son. Archilogos met his eyes. They were the same height, by then. ‘What have you done?’ he asked.
Archi shrugged – I’ve mentioned what I think of this as a gesture from child to parent, eh?
‘What have you done?’ he shouted.
Archi smiled. ‘What needed doing,’ he said. ‘Diomedes called my sister a whore and we made him one.’
Well, not precisely, but it made a good line.
And then Hipponax surprised me. I should have known – he was always a good man and a poet. He understood rage and lust and the human and the divine. He stood back from the doorway, so that Darkar could enter.
‘You must go away,’ he said. ‘Tonight. Now. I will have a ship manned.’
Then there was a flurry of packing and crying. Archi took his panoply and his sea bag, and I took mine. He went for a bath, and Hipponax took me aside.
‘Heraclitus tells me you swore an oath to protect my son,’ he said.
I nodded. I raised my eyes to his.
‘Here is your freedom. I expect you to keep that oath. As does Heraclitus. Until the end of the war. You stand by him. But as a free man, Diomedes will have to try you, at least. I wrote out your manumission for yesterday. A friend will witness it in the morning – as if it had been done yesterday.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have freed you for what you did with the Persian,’ he said. ‘Is all my family cursed?’
I stood silent, awed by his generosity, and conscious of what I had just done in the bath. The furies were laughing. And sharpening their nails.
But I was free.
It was worse when Archi went to say goodbye to his sister. Worse because she wept, real tears without anger. She loved her brother better than the rest of us, I think.
And worse because her hair was wet.
She looked at me several times, and her look was one of calm triumph. She was beautiful.
Thugater, I have never doubted the presence of the gods. In that moment – in that look from that damp-haired girl – the long, dark shaft and the barbed point of the arrow that comes from Aphrodite’s bow went through me, and the pain was never sweeter. Even when Hipponax announced to the whole oikia that I had been freed – even when all the slaves crowded around me, and Penelope took my hand and gave it a tentative squeeze, all I could see were her eyes, that glance. I see it still.
I’m an old fool. Forget me. Imagine what it was like for poor Penelope, honey. Her free lover was leaving her. Her chance of freedom was walking