“Phoibe!”
The girl stopped and stared up at Kassandra, agog. “Kass?”
“Wait there,” she called down, “wait there!”
She turned and sped from the bedchamber and downstairs, then outside and into the gardens. Staggering to a halt before Phoibe, she began to stammer: “I… I…” Her heart cried out with sweet words of love, yet the long-ago fused bars of the Spartan cage around it kept them prisoner there. Her efforts ended when Phoibe sprung forward and leapt into her arms. Both laughed and Kassandra rose, lifting and swinging the girl around.
“Chara kept me safe,” Kassandra said as they parted, bringing the wooden toy eagle from her purse.
“Perhaps you do not need her anymore… if your journey is over?” Phoibe said hopefully.
Kassandra smoothed her hair fondly. “My journey is not over”—she saw Phoibe’s face crumple—“but let us not think of the future. Let’s play!”
Phoibe’s face lit up again.
They larked around the gardens, Phoibe hiding in the mist and behind the hedgerows, Kassandra catching her with a lion’s roar, their shared laughter rolling across the bleak acropolis. When night came, they gathered in Perikles’s bedchamber and ate a meal of bread, olives and baked bream with Sokrates, Herodotos and Aspasia, who fed the bedridden Perikles a thin broth. In the candlelight, Herodotos told stories of his travels with Kassandra, Phoibe snuggled into her side, drinking in every detail. Later, Kassandra kissed Phoibe’s head as they settled down to sleep in a bed in the slave quarters.
“Tomorrow, we can play again?” Phoibe said, her voice muffled in the pillow. “We can act out the moment when you fought the army of sheep in Argolis.”
Kassandra smiled—Herodotos had added a few fanciful details to keep the girl entertained. But the smile faded and she stared into the darkness. Aspasia had arranged to speak with her friend Xenia, in the morning. With any luck, she would have her answers soon after. Tomorrow, I must leave. But there would be time for some fun before setting sail. “Aye,” she replied, hugging Phoibe tight.
“I love you, Kass,” Phoibe whispered as they lay together.
In the darkness, Kassandra’s lips moved to reply, but the words remained unspoken, chained within.
They woke the following morning to an even thicker shroud of fog. After a light breakfast of yogurt and honey, Phoibe headed out into the gardens while Kassandra sat with the others around Perikles’s bed once more. He talked of unfinished business, and his friends tried to comfort him and assure him. But there was one matter he was adamant about. “There is something I must do: take me to the unfinished temple, aye? Perhaps there I can speak with Athena, ask her for guidance.”
“You are not strong enough,” Aspasia snapped.
“Athena will give me strength.”
Herodotos and Sokrates helped Perikles to rise. He was little more than a skeleton, his nightshirt hanging from him like a sail and his soft slippers too big. They led him from the bedchamber at a shuffle, his arms around their shoulders. Aspasia threw on a cloak and met Kassandra’s eyes. “I will go to speak with Xenia. Wait on me here. If there are answers, I will find them.”
Alone, Kassandra sat and sighed. She felt the gloom of the fog and the state of Perikles tug on her heart like lead weights, dragging her spirits down with them. But then she heard the light patter of footsteps outside, just as she had yesterday. Giggling, the rustle of hedgerows and Phoibe’s cry: “You’ll never find me this time, Kass.”
The sound was enough to shear the twines holding those lead weights. Kassandra’s heart soared at the promise of another short spell of playful abandon. She rose and flitted downstairs, jogging outside into the mist-shrouded gardens. She darted into the hedgerow maze, ducking and making low lion-noises that had tickled Phoibe so much yesterday. No laughter this time? She must be well hidden, thought Kassandra. She stalked on, grabbing and shaking an overgrown branch. Usually this was enough to send Phoibe into a fit of giggles, falling from whatever nook she had hidden in. But… nothing.
She saw something ahead—the mist swirling. A shape. A tall shape.
“Phoibe?” she called, straightening up, stepping toward it. But the shape faded into the fog as she approached it. Then she halted, staring at the small body on the ground before her. So much blood. It oozed from the grievous cleft in Phoibe’s chest. The girl’s eyes stared lifelessly at her, one hand outstretched.
Kassandra fell to her knees, her soul tearing in two, the bars around her heart bending and shattering, the caged love within turning gray, souring, transformed into rampant sorrow.
“No. No. No… no… no!”
She passed her shaking hands around Phoibe’s body as if desperate to caress her but afraid that touching her would make this terrible vision real. “Who did this to you?” She wept, clasping Phoibe’s hand at last. The hotness of tears on her cheeks felt so strange: the first time she had cried since her childhood.
A few strides away, the tall shape appeared in the mist again. Kassandra’s eyes rolled up to see the Cultist standing there, grinning mask staring at her. He held an ax, still wet with Phoibe’s blood. Two more masked brutes rose from behind the hedges to flank this one.
“You have a debt to pay, Misthios,” screeched the central one. “You have murdered many of our group, and so you must pay with your service… or with your life.”
They paced toward her with the confidence of men who counted victory as a certainty. She stared at them, the tears drying. Rising, she raced toward them with a fire of fury in her heart. She threw up one hand, the small knife in her bracer shooting into the eye slot of the leftmost one’s mask. He shuddered then fell like a stone. She leapt to kick the ax from the hands of Phoibe’s murderer, then plunged the Leonidas spear into his collarbone, sinking the lance deep down. He fell to his knees in spasms, vomiting black blood. She swung to catch the mace blow of the third on her bracer, then rammed her spear up under his jaw, the point bursting from the top of his head with a spurt of brains. She ripped the lance back, kicking the corpse into the hedges, then fell to one knee by Phoibe’s corpse once more. Panting, she lifted the body and cradled it. Fumbling in her purse, she brought Chara out, pressing the wooden eagle into Phoibe’s cold palm then closing the small fingers around it. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.” She bent over to kiss the girl’s forehead, then licked her dry lips and—with great difficulty—summoned the words she had long ago been sworn never to speak of. “I… I love y—”
A cry cut across the grim fog, drowning her out. It was the wet gurgle of a man being slain somewhere else up on these heights. Kassandra’s every sense sharpened. She lowered Phoibe to the ground, covering her with her cloak, then rising.
“Perikles is in the temple!” a rapacious voice hissed. The voice of a killer. More Cultists? The thud of boots rang out. Kassandra’s heart froze. She sped low across the acropolis, seeing one of the few acropolis guard hoplites lying on his side, twitching, his guts torn open. Then another, a strangler’s rope still knotted tight around his bruised neck. She came to the unfinished Temple of Athena Nike. Through the half-built ashlar rear wall and the skeletal timber scaffolds, she saw inside: the three finished, blue-painted walls and crackling braziers keeping the fog at bay. Sokrates and Herodotos—Aspasia too—stood around the kneeling Perikles. The Athenian leader gazed up at the statue of the goddess—stripped of gold to fund the war. Two burly guard hoplites stood inside the temple’s main doorway. Kassandra breathed a sigh of relief.