At last we came to a plateau. At the far end sat an altar of blue-veined marble, scarred with weather and age. A sheltered candle guttered there next to a pot of oil, a krater of sleet-lashed wine and a platter of grapes.
Mother halted with a choking sob.
“Myrrine, do not be so weak,” Father snapped at her.
I could sense a fire rising within her. “Weak? How can you call me that? It takes courage to confront your true feelings, Nikolaos. Weak men hide behind masks of bravery.”
“It is not the Spartan way,” Father hissed through his teeth.
“Gather before the altar,” said one of the priests, his bony cage of ribs running with melting sleet. I cared not for the sight of the ancient table… nor for the edge of the plateau and the night-black abyss lurking beyond—a well of shadow plunging down into the guts of the mountain.
“Now, the child,” said the senior ephor, his ring of hair dancing in the wind, his eyes like hot coals. He held out bony hands toward me, and now I understood, a dark mantle of realization settling upon my shoulders. “Give me the boy-child,” he repeated.
The roof of my mouth stung with dread, all moisture gone in a heartbeat. “Mother, Father?” I whimpered to each in turn.
Mother took a step toward Father, placing a beseeching hand on one of his broad shoulders. But he stood there, impassive, like a finger of rock.
“The Oracle has spoken,” the priests wailed in unison. “Sparta will fall… unless the boy falls instead.”
Horror speared through me and I clutched little Alexios tight, stepping back. My baby brother was hale and strong—there was no justice in condemning him to the cruel fate that befell weak or deformed Spartan babies. This is what the Oracle had decreed on my parents’ trip to see her? Who was she to doom him like this? Why was Father not spitting on this grim mandate, drawing his spear upon these wretched old men? And when he did act it was only to shove Mother away, casting her to the ground like a rag.
“No… no!” Mother wept as two priests dragged her back. “Nikolaos, please, do something.”
Father stared into infinity.
One of the priests came at me from behind, seizing me by the shoulders. A second tore Alexios from me and handed the little bundle to the oldest ephor, who cradled my brother like a treasure. “Mighty Apollo, the Truth-giver, Athena Poliachos, Great Protectress, gaze upon us as we bend to your will, humble, grateful for your wisdom. Now… the boy will die.”
He lifted Alexios over his head, stepping past the altar to the edge of the abyss.
Mother fell to her knees with a hoarse cry that tore my heart in two.
As the ephor’s body tensed, readying to hurl my brother to his death, lightning struck across the heavens in time with a monstrous roar of thunder. It was as if the bolt had struck me: I felt the most tremendous surge of energy and injustice. I screamed with all my being, shaking free of the priest’s pinning hands. I lurched forward like a sprinter, desperate, maddened, arms outstretched toward my brother. Time slowed. I caught baby Alexios’s eye and he mine. If I could have captured that moment in amber and lived there for all time I would have done so, both of us alive, connected. And in that trice, I still had a hope of catching him, stopping his fall. Until I lost my stride, stumbled, and felt my shoulder crash against the wretched old ephor’s flank, heard a sudden intake of many breaths, saw the ephor flailing, saw him topple out over the edge… Alexios too.
The pair plunged into the blackness and the ephor’s cry faded like a demon’s shriek.
And then… silence.
I fell to my knees at the precipice, shaking, as manic oaths of outrage rose behind me.
“Murderer! She killed the ephor!”
I stared into the abyss, aghast, the sleet lashing across my face.
ONE
Runnels of water trickled across her cheeks. Behind closed eyes, she heard and saw it all again with vivid, terrible clarity. The line of Leonidas, shamed, tarnished. Twenty years was enough for some to forget their debts, come to terms with their flaws, or make peace with the past. “Not for me,” Kassandra whispered, the broken lance in her hands reverberating. She stabbed the weapon, hard, into the sand by her side and the memories faded.
Her eyes peeled open slowly, adjusting to the bright glare of the spring morning. The cerulean waters hugging Kephallonia’s eastern shores sparkled like a tray of jewels. The surf creamed in across the sand, fading to a gentle, cool gurgle that rolled up to where she sat and crept across her bare toes. The salt spray came in soft clouds, condensing on and cooling her skin. A squabble of gulls wheeled and screeched in the cloudless sky, while a cormorant plunged into the waters in an explosion of crystalline drops. Due east, out near the hazy horizon, Athenian galleys moved in an endless train. They were like shades, gliding across the twilight-blue, deeper waters and into the Korinthian Gulf to aid the blockade of Megara. The bright sails billowed like the lungs of titans, and every so often the sea wind carried the groan of ropes and timbers and the throaty shouts of the many warriors on board. Earlier this year, Kephallonia itself had been subsumed into the Athenian sphere, as had most of the islands. And so the war grew like a canker. Some small voice inside told her she should care about the colossal struggle that raged across Hellas, stirring the great cauldron of ideologies, bringing the once-allied cities to each other’s throats. But how could she? Proud Athens, she cared little for. And on the other side… unswerving Sparta.
Sparta.
The mere presence of the word in her thoughts shattered the delicate idyll of the shore. She eyed the ancient half spear of Leonidas askance. The winged iron head, the intricate workings around the tang, and the half-length haft, worn and discolored from years of oiling. It had always seemed fitting to her that the one thing she had left from her broken past was a broken thing.
A shrill screech pierced her thoughts, and she looked up to see the cormorant emerging from the waves with a silvery mackerel in its beak… but speeding down toward it came a spotted eagle. The cormorant screeched again in terror, dropped its semimasticated prize then plunged under the waves for cover. The eagle clawed at the discarded fish corpse, only for the morsel to slip under the waves too. With a mighty shriek of dismay, the great bird wheeled around and glided in toward the shore, settling with a gentle run across the sand, coming to a halt beside Kassandra. She smiled despite herself, for the damned spear was not the only thing that remained of the past.
“We talked about this already, Ikaros.” She chuckled. “You were to bring me mackerel to roast for my afternoon meal.”
Ikaros stared at her, his buttercup-yellow beak and keen eyes giving him the look of a disapproving old man.
“I see”—she arched an eyebrow—“it was the cormorant’s fault.”
Her belly groaned, reminding her of the long hours since she had last eaten. With a sigh, she plucked the spear of Leonidas from the sand. For a moment, she caught sight of her dull reflection in the blade. Broad of face, with little humor in her hazel eyes and a thick braid of russet hair hanging across her left shoulder. She wore a dark brown exomis—a one-shouldered man’s garment—shabby and sad. Just holding the spear brought the memories alive again, and so she quickly tied the lance to her leather belt, rose and turned away from the shoreline.