“Kleon has the power in Athens now. He will not be letting go. And he would not be so foolish as to underestimate my part in bringing him that prize.” He grabbed the bars like Kassandra, his nose touching hers. “The Cult will never control me,” he seethed. “I’m winning this war for them.”
Kassandra stared into his eyes. “At what cost… Alexios?”
Deimos trembled. “Whatever it takes,” he whispered. “Is that not your very mantra, Misthios?”
Both beheld each other for an age.
The groan of the exterior door snapped both from the moment.
Kleon strode in and looked Kassandra up and down as if she were a scrap of dog meat. Deimos backed away from the bars as if caught in some criminal act.
“We’ve been searching for you, Deimos,” Kleon snapped. “Interesting that I should find you… here.”
“I came to… It’s nothing.” He shook his head, not meeting Kleon’s sharp look.
“You came to kill her?” he guessed, arching an eyebrow. “That was not your action to take, boy. Leave. Now!” He snapped his fingers, pointing at the door.
“I am not your puppet,” Deimos rumbled, looking Kleon in the eye, “and you are not my master.”
Kleon held Deimos’s gaze. An oily smile rose on his face. “Of course, Champion,” he said, his tone softening. “I merely worry for your well-being.”
Deimos shrugged. “Do whatever you want with her,” he hissed, turning to leave. As he did so, he met Kassandra’s eye one last time before swinging away, leaving the jail.
Kleon beheld her now, hands clasped over his belt like a fat man who has just enjoyed a double helping of food. She noticed the cloying scent of sweet wax wafting from his carefully groomed red locks and pointed beard, and that he wore one of Perikles’s robes.
“No better fit than a dead man’s clothes,” she said flatly.
Kleon chuckled. “Perikles’s strategy brought Athens to the brink of disaster.”
“So you had him murdered.”
“You can’t find the perfect yolk without breaking some of the quail’s eggs. He wasn’t right for us. Killing Perikles then taking Sphakteria was only the beginning. Since, I have heaped victory upon victory onto my glowing reputation. The neutral island of Melos rebuffed our offer to bring them under the Athenian wing. So we smashed their city and took their island for ourselves. The Aeginetans dared to side with the Spartans, and we routed them, utterly. The Spartan isle of Kythera fell to us soon after. My legend grows. I can do anything.”
“Like raise the tax levy to crippling levels? Or lead young Athenian soldiers to their deaths? I heard the gossip of passersby, about a crushing defeat at Delium. How many fell there?” she sneered. “I have sensed the change in tone during my time in here. The cheers and songs of the early days have turned sour and hoarse. People now grumble about your blind pursuit of conquest and instead champion talk of truces and armistices. You are no longer the hero you were once mistaken for, and—”
“And my next move will be the finest yet,” he interrupted. “There are rebels on the isle of Lesbos, in the city of Mytilene. It is rumored that they have opened talks with the Spartans with a view to defecting to the Peloponnesian League.”
“What have you done?” she said, spotting the evil in his eyes.
“Me? I’ve done nothing.” He laughed. “The vote has been cast, and the fleet has set sail. The soldiers and citizens of Mytilene will have a hard time revolting once they’re all dead!”
“Another atrocity? When they mocked you, called you the screaming ape—I thought it was because you were loud and repugnant. Well you are, but now I know that that is exactly what you are inside as well. You scratch every itch, paint over every crack, snap every rope to cling to power at any cost. That is tyranny defined. Perikles sought not to appease the animal whims of the masses, but to guide them to better ways of thinking, to understand democracy and reason.”
“Democracy?” He smiled. “Well only one man sits at that much-vaunted table now. And that man… is me.
“Now I must be going. Trouble stirs in the north, near Amphipolis. The Spartans simply do not know when they are beaten. Right now they try to secure the north as their own—to steal the gold, silver and good timbers of those lands. I smell a further triumph in the offing. Once I have crushed them, the gates to the north and to Thrakia will be mine to control. You know what lies up there, don’t you?”
Kassandra felt a chill pass over her.
“King Sitalkes once promised his vast Thrakian army to the Cultic cause: one hundred thousand spears and fifty thousand horse—fierce, brutish warriors. Sitalkes has since died, but his barbarian army is still very much at large. They will answer my call and they will descend upon and shackle all Hellas. An age of order and control awaits.”
Kassandra stared at him, her heart plunging.
He clicked his fingers. “The Cult wins, Kassandra. You lose. You lost the moment you rejected the chance to join us. And now… it ends for you.”
He left, and two guards entered, armed with axes, faces set hard. They clicked the cell gate closed behind them, locking it. One twirled his ax and grinned. “He told us to make it hurt.” He flashed a look at the other. “Hack off her feet.”
The other swung his ax at her ankles. Kassandra felt instinct take hold. She sprung up, catching the ceiling grate. The ax sped through the space her legs had been. She kicked down hard on the top of the first man’s skull. A crack of vertebrae echoed through the cell and he slumped to the ground. She landed and grabbed the dead man’s ax, slicing it up to catch the strike of the other, before driving him back against the wall, pirouetting on her heel and slamming the ax blade into his grinning face, chopping his head off from the top lip upward. The top half of his head rested on the wall-embedded ax and the rest of his body slid to the ground with a trail of wet, black blood.
Shaking, she turned to the first fallen one, fishing the keys from his belt. She unlocked the cell door, tasting sweet freedom, almost there. Until she heard the thunder of more approaching feet. That frantic fight had taken almost every trace of energy from her malnourished body. No more… no more.
“Charge!” a familiar voice roared. Two figures burst into the jail and staggered to a halt, back-to-back. One was armed with a shovel and the other with a broom. Both looked a little bemused then crestfallen when they saw her standing by the open cell door.
Her heart surged with joy. “Barnabas, Sokrates?”
“Misthios!” Barnabas wailed, dropping his “war-shovel” and seizing her in a tight embrace.
Sokrates eyed the two butchered guards. “You asked me to stay alive.” He raised his arms aloft like an Olympic champion. “And here I am.”
“We heard rumors that you were here,” Barnabas panted. “We weren’t sure. We sent Ikaros so you would know to—”
“—to be ready,” Kassandra finished for him. Her ears pricked up when she heard yet more scuffling feet. “And we must remain alert. These two guards will soon be missed. But where can we hide? This city is Kleon’s.”
“All is in hand,” Sokrates assured her. “Come, we will take the alleys and the hidden tunnel back to Perikles’s old home. It has been abandoned since his death. There, we will plan our next move. Hope is not lost, but it fades… fast.”