For a moment Otrere’s face went pale. Old Demonassa started forward, but the queen sat up, color rushing back into her cheeks. She waved Demonassa away.
“I can’t sacrifice the child, daughter. I have felt him like a hammer beneath my breast,” Otrere said. “He kicked with such life. I cannot believe the goddess would have me snuff out such a fighter.”
“But—” Hippolyta took a deep breath and tried to frame her response carefully. She might not get another chance. “If you don’t do this thing, there will be awful consequences. To you. To the child. To all your children.” She waved her hand around the room, taking in her sisters as well as the guards and the priestess.
For a moment Otrere glanced down at the little boy in her arms, and her brown eyes filled with tears. Then she looked up again. “I don’t know how to answer you, my dearest daughter. That is why I wanted you here as soon as possible. Before word spreads.”
“Then you shouldn’t have sent me away yesterday to teach your littlest daughter to hunt,” Hippolyta answered her bitterly. “It’s already too late to stop this news from reaching your people.”
Just then the door to the bedchamber flew open, and a dozen warriors filed in, led by the hawk-faced Valasca. They were in full armor, shields, and helmets, and the noise they made marching into the chamber was deafening.
Valasca’s bronze helmet cast deep shadows over her face, emphasizing the sharpness of her cheekbones and nose. A Gorgon’s head decorated her shield. She looked as fierce as any goddess.
The infant started crying, a thin, high-pitched wail.
Hippolyta felt something cold settle in her stomach. But when she saw her sister Orithya in the second row of the troop of warriors, as well as a smirking Molpadia standing in the back of the group, her cheeks got hot with anger.
Halting at the bed foot, the battle queen slowly removed her helmet. Her black hair was caught up in a warrior’s knot. She stared down at the naked infant. “A boy,” she said, making it sound like a sentence of death. Which it was.
Looking accusingly at Demonassa, Valasca let her right hand rest lightly on the double-headed ax that hung from her belt. It was a threat, and it worked. Old Demonassa stepped back but did not lower her eyes.
“Did the omens give no warnings?” Valasca said in a cool voice.
The old woman shrugged. “The omens were obscure.”
As usual, thought Hippolyta.
“I thought you had more magic than that,” Valasca said.
“I saved my magic to ease the birth and deliver the child safely,” the old woman answered.
“You needn’t have bothered,” Valasca said.
On the bed Otrere drew the baby closer to her breast. “What the Fates decide cannot be undone.”
“No, Otrere, you mistake it. This is quite easily undone,” Valasca answered in her cold voice. “A cloth over the child’s face. A knife across its throat. You know the laws, Otrere, and they bind our queens even more than they bind the rest of our race.”
Otrere bent her head, but whether in obeisance to her fellow queen or to look at the child again, Hippolyta couldn’t have said.
“A queen,” Valasca continued, her voice filling the room, “may bear only one live son. If the second grows up, he will bring about the destruction of our race. I know it, you know it. By the goddess, we all know it. Let this child live, and we break the pact made with Artemis by all the mothers before us. The goddess has not protected us all these years so we can be destroyed by one boy child!”
Otrere didn’t answer, but a single tear escaped her right eye. Hippolyta longed to wipe it away before it shamed them all.
“You and the priestess did not take the easier way, so now you must sacrifice this child with your own knife upon the altar of Artemis,” Valasca said. “Such is our law. The goddess has willed it.”
“I cannot.” Otrere’s voice was low but adamant.
“Then you must give up your throne, and another will perform the sacrifice,” Valasca said. “Either way, Otrere, the boy dies.”
Otrere looked up, her eyes now clear of tears. “We all must die, Valasca. But this child is innocent of any wrongdoing. Only I, who desired one last child before I could have no more, am to blame.” She sat up straighter and looked slowly around the room as if addressing every woman there. “The child can be returned to his father. Like his brother before him. If anyone is to be sacrificed, let it be me.”
“Mother, no!” Melanippe and Antiope cried out together.
Hippolyta found she couldn’t speak. It was as if a spell of silence had been placed upon her tongue.
Valasca shook her head. “You know that can’t be, Otrere. The pact says that the babe is to be sacrificed, not the mother. Killing you—much as I might enjoy it—will not save us from the goddess’s will.” She signaled two of her older warriors. “Take the boy.”
Otrere enveloped the baby in her arms and turned away.
Suddenly, without thinking, Hippolyta found herself moving forward and blocking the two warriors before they could reach the bed. She held her hunting knife chest high, ready to strike.
“Otrere is still your queen,” she told them sharply. “Not Valasca, who rules only in times of war. You will not lay hands on Otrere.”
“Step aside, Hippolyta,” warned a familiar voice.
Hippolyta looked toward the speaker and saw that Molpadia had drawn her bow and it was aimed right at her heart. At this distance Molpadia could not possibly miss.
All at once the baby started to cry again, a thin, mewling sound.
Hippolyta could see her older sister, Orithya, behind Molpadia, looking helplessly from one queen to the other, torn between the oath that bound her to Valasca and the blood that bound her to Otrere. Shaking her head, Orithya suddenly strode forward and shoved the point of Molpadia’s arrow aside.
“Do you plan to defile the royal bedchamber with blood?” she demanded, voice shaking. “How is that the will of the gods?”
“The will of the gods is that we obey our own laws.” Valasca gave the answer in her stone voice, never taking her eyes from Otrere. “And we will spill blood, even here, to obey them.”
“There’ll be no killing in this place,” Demonassa declared, stepping forward to stand by Hippolyta’s side. “That would surely anger Artemis more than anything.” At her voice, everyone but Queen Otrere looked at her. “But the child’s sacrifice can only be accomplished when the moon is half in shadow, half in light, poised between life and death. And that will not be for ten days yet. Surely you know that, Valasca, who knows the rules so well.”
Valasca’s face grew even sharper, if that were possible. She looked, Hippolyta thought, quite a bit like her own ax.
“I will take the child and keep him quiet,” Demonassa said, adding, “You will want him alive on the altar, or the sacrifice will be worth nothing.”
Otrere gave up the child readily enough to the old priestess.
Valasca said softly, “By your own wish you are queen no longer. Another will perform the sacrifice. You will remain here for the ten days with only a single attendant to care for you. After that, you shall be brought for judgment before the court of the Nines.”
Demonassa wrapped the child lightly in soft deerskin and walked out of the room, accompanied by Valasca and her guards.
Hippolyta and her sisters followed reluctantly behind, but Hippolyta was thinking: That gives us ten days, thanks to Demonassa.
But then she quickly wondered: Ten days to do what?
CHAPTER THREE
THE PRISONER
BECAUSE HER MOTHER was no longer queen, Hippolyta had to leave the palace where she’d lived all her life and move into the warriors’ communal barracks. It was more a jolt to her heart than her body. After all, none of the Amazons led pampered lives. Even the queens were trained as hunters and farmers.