Her companion stood very still, but she had heard the caught breath of consternation before the other said quietly, "You must do as you think best, Lady; but I cannot put on a man's garment nor travel as one."
"Why not?"
Zakynthia did not meet her eyes.
"It is a vow. I may say no more."
Kassandra shrugged. "Then we shall travel as women."
Kassandra looked up at the gates of Colchis and remembered the first time as a young girl in the Amazon band of Penthesilea she had seen them. She had changed and the world had changed; but the great gates were just the same.
"Colchis," she said quietly to her companion. "The Gods have brought us here at last."
She set Agathon on his feet, he was beginning to toddle at last. If the journey had not been so long, she thought, he might have been really walking already but she had been forced to carry him much of the time instead of letting him crawl or walk around. He was almost two years old now and she could see in the strong development of his little chin, in his dark eyes, the dark curly hair, that he was Agamemnon's son.
Well, at least he would not be trained into Agamemnon's version of manhood.
It had been a long road; but not, she knew now, endless as it had seemed. They had travelled overland mostly at night, hiding by day in woods and ditches. She had worn out several pairs of shoes and the clothing she wore was threadbare and she had had little opportunity to replace it.
There had been encounters on the road with soldiers—veterans of the sack of Troy—but she had seen and heard nothing of the Kentaurs; most of the people to whom she spoke of them believed they were only a legend, and either frankly accused her of telling tales or secretly smiled with contempt when she said she had seen them in her youth.
They had hidden from wandering bands of men, bribed themselves free, used their wits, and sometimes their knives to get out of danger. They had gone cold and hungry - sometimes food was not to be had even for gold—and had stopped once or twice for a whole season to find work as a spinner, or as handlers of animals.
Once they had travelled for a time with a man who was exhibiting'dancing' serpents. They joined once or twice with other lone travellers, and had lost their way for long distances.
And after so many adventures that Kassandra knew she would never dare to try and recount them, they had arrived safely in Colchis.
She picked up the child again as they walked through the gates. She knew she looked like a beggar woman. Her cloak was the same one with which Agamemnon had covered her on board his ship - it had once been crimson, but was now faded to a greyish colourlessness. Her gown was a shapeless tunic of undyed wool; her hair loosely bound with a scrap of leather thong which had once been used to tie a sandal. Zakynthia looked even worse, if possible; less like a beggar woman than some kind of ruffian. Her sandals were worn almost through and she would have had to find another pair in Colchis even if it had not been her destination.
But they had managed to keep the child well and warmly dressed. His tunic - though he was outgrowing it—was from a good piece of wool which she had bought two towns ago and was fastened with a pin made from one of her last bits of gold, and his sandals were stout and strong. Sometimes she thought he looked less like Agamemnon than like her brother Paris.
"Now we are at journey's end," she said to her companion.
She asked a passer-by the way to the palace, and asked if Queen Imandra still reigned here.
The woman said, "Yes, though she is growing old; there was a rumour from the palace that she was mortally ill, but I do not believe it." She stared at Kassandra's threadbare cloak and asked, "And what can the likes of you want with our Queen?"
Kassandra merely thanked the woman for her help and did not answer. She set off for the palace. After a time Zakynthia picked up the child and carried him. Climbing the palace stairs, she nervously smoothed her hair with her fingers. Perhaps she should have stopped in the market and provided herself with proper clothing to visit the Queen.
She spoke to the guard on duty - one of the old woman guards whom Kassandra actually recognized from her stay in Colchis.
"I would like audience with Queen Imandra."
"I'm sure you would," said the woman, sneering, "but she doesn't see every ragtag and bobtail who comes looking for her."
Kassandra called the woman by name. "Don't you know me? Your sister was one of my novices in the House of Serpent Mother."
"Lady Kassandra!" the woman exclaimed. "But we heard you were dead - that you had perished at Mykenae - that when Agamemnon died, Klytemnestra murdered you too."
Kassandra chuckled. "As you see, I am here alive and well. But I beg you to take me to the Queen."
"Certainly; she will rejoice to know you survived the fall of Troy," the woman said. "She mourned for you as for her own daughter."
The woman wished to take her to a guest chamber and make her ready for her audience; but Kassandra refused. She would have bidden Zakynthia await her, but her companion shook her head.
"I too was bidden here by the hand of the Goddess," her companion said. "And I can reveal only to Imandra why I have come."
Kassandra was eager to know her fellow traveller's story, so she agreed. A few moments later, Kassandra was in her kinswoman's arms.
"I thought you dead in Troy," Imandra said, "with Hecuba and the others—"
"I thought Hecuba went with Odysseus—" Kassandra said.
"No; one of her women made her way here and said Hecuba died - of a broken heart, she said - as the ships were loading. It is just as well; Odysseus was shipwrecked, and no one has heard of him since, and'tis now close on three years. Andromache was taken back to one of the Akhaian kings; I cannot remember his barbarian name, but I heard that she lives. And this is your child?" Imandra picked up the little boy and kissed him. "So some good came of all your sorrows?"
"Well, I have survived and made my way here," Kassandra said, and they fell to talking of other survivors of Troy. Helen and Menelaus were still reigning in Sparta, it seemed, and Helen's daughter Hermione was betrothed to the son of Odysseus. Klytemnestra had died in childbirth a year ago and her son Orestes had killed Aegisthos and taken back Agamemnon's Lion Throne.
"And have you heard anything of Aeneas?" Kassandra asked, remembering, with a sweet sadness, starlit nights in the last doomed summer of Troy.
"Yes; his adventures are widely told; he visited in Carthage and had a love affair with the Queen. They say, when the Gods called him away, she killed herself in despair, but I believe it not. If any Queen was fool enough to kill herself over a man, so much the worse for her. She cannot be much of a woman and still less of a Queen. Then the Gods called him far to the North, where, they say, he took the Palladium from the Trojan Temple of the Maiden, and founded a city."
"I am glad to hear he is safe," Kassandra said. Perhaps she should have gone with Aeneas to his new world, but no God had called her. Aeneas had his own fate; and it was not hers. "And Creusa?"
"I fear I do not know her fate," Imandra said. "Did she even escape Troy?"
Kassandra began to wonder. She remembered parting from Creusa, but it had been so long ago she wondered if she had dreamed it. All things surrounding the fall of the city were like dreams to her now.