Discord's Apple Page 7

  Henrich had heard stories of bloodthirsty natives, but he wasn’t afraid of this man.

  The native man approached him, arms stretched before him, cupping something in his hands. He spoke with a rough voice, like the scratching cry of a bird, in a language Henrich didn’t understand. But the man gestured with his hands, and the meaning was clear. Instinct made him reach and accept the gift from the stranger.

  The native put an ear of maize in his hands. Henrich met his dark-eyed gaze, and the man nodded decisively. Then he vanished into the woods at the other end of the space Henrich had cleared for his holding. A raven circled overhead.

  Henrich put the maize in the Storeroom, with the rest of the treasures passed on from his ancestors into his safekeeping.

  6

  Men could be raped. Every boy who joined an army discovered that quickly enough. Early on, Sinon had learned to fight back—and to give in, occasionally, when the situation suited him. But he could not fight a god.

  When he woke up, he was no longer in the temple at Troy. He lay on a pallet in a room that overlooked a garden. It might have been another temple in another town—Apollo had many temples. Or someplace that only the god himself knew. He was naked. His wounds had been cleaned. He was sore.

  He didn’t remember being brought here. Apollo’s attentions toward him had lasted a long time, and he had passed out. He rubbed his eyes and let out a groan. The gods were supposed to ravish feckless girls, not hardened Achaean warriors.

  “Some of us like hardened Achaean warriors.” Apollo stood at the archway to the next room. He wore a short tunic, belted loosely with a silk cord. Grinning, he crossed his arms. “As well as feckless girls.”

  Slowly, minding the tender places, Sinon sat up. He found a chain hung around his neck like a collar. Touching it, he examined its round links of bronze, and couldn’t find a clasp.

  “It will never come off,” Apollo said. “I sealed it around your neck myself. It shows that you belong to me. It ensures that you’ll be with me for a very long time.”

  Sinon winced, confused. Then he thought of nothing at all. He didn’t want to give Apollo any more of himself if he could help it. If Apollo could take his very thoughts, he would keep his mind as still as possible. He would be empty as air.

  You don’t die.

  He looked away, suddenly feeling very much like that boy who’d set sail for Troy, untried, filling himself with excitement that would bury the fear. Now, after all these years, the fear won out. He squeezed shut his eyes.

  He was Achaean. He was part of the army that broke Troy. He was friend to Odysseus. What would Odysseus do, were he here? Think of some way to trick the god. Be so awful a slave that Apollo would be grateful to let him go.

  “I know what you’re thinking, boy, and it won’t work. I plan to make you like it here. You’ll find clothing in the chest by the bed and food on the table in the corner. Refresh yourself. If you need anything, simply think of me and I’ll come.” His smile was coy and arrogant. He was master here and enjoyed the games he played.

  He slipped around the corner and was gone.

  Sinon opened the wooden chest and found a silk tunic, short and functional, and leather sandals. He did not touch the food. If this was anything like the stories, eating the food would trap him here, like Persephone in the Underworld.

  He explored. This wasn’t a temple, at least not like any kind that he knew. He went from room to room—richly furnished living quarters, sitting rooms of marble, and even libraries—looked out of a dozen porches, doors, and windows. Gardens lay in every direction—hedges, fruit trees, fountains, pools surrounded by lilies, vines, every color of flower, every scent of herb and nectar. He set out on a path that led away from the palace. When he passed the hedge that bounded the property, his steps slowed. Looking ahead, he saw more gardens and another gleaming marble palace. He looked behind, to the porch he had just left. Then he ran ahead to this new structure. He ran through the new gardens, up the steps to the porch and through the archway to a small room.

  It was the room where he’d woken up. It was the same chest by the pallet. He opened it to be sure, and found clothing arranged exactly as he’d left it. The food—fruit, cheese, wine—still sat on the table in the corner.

  He went back outside, tried a different path, which again circled back to Apollo’s palace without ever curving. He ran, finding new paths, marking the ones he’d already tried by scattering rose petals at intersections. He must have run for miles, like Theseus in the labyrinth, searching for the one path that would take him away. But all paths returned to the palace.

  Finally, he sat at the edge of a pool, letting his feet touch the murky, opaque water. He wasn’t as clever as Odysseus, not by half. That story he’d told to the Trojans—that was Odysseus’s story, and Odysseus would rightly get credit for it. Sinon was no hero.

  Perhaps if he didn’t follow a path . . . He set off across a lawn, following no path at all. When he reached the hedge, he went through it, shoving into the mass of branches, not minding how the thorns clawed at him or the fine tunic he wore. He ripped his way to the other side, thinking he might actually find himself in a nonmagical garden this time.

  At last, the branches gave way and he fell out of the hedge and onto a lawn. He brushed himself off, wincing at the stinging cuts on his arms.

  Ahead stood a palace. The same palace he’d just left, the same garden, the same fountains. He looked behind, over the hedge to—the same palace. He was running in circles.

  “It’s no use. You can’t leave until I say so.” Phoebus Apollo stood on the nearest path, twirling a rose between his fingers. “You’ll wear yourself out if you keep this up.”

  Sinon squared his shoulders and met the sun god’s gaze. Stupid pride—he should be on his knees. That was what gods wanted, for men to fall on their knees and praise them. Maybe that was what Apollo was waiting for, and as soon as he did, Sinon could leave.

  Apollo looked like a man, not even a great man. He was rather short, his build slim, however sculpted his muscles appeared. If he were a man, Sinon could cut him to pieces. He had done nothing to inspire Sinon to fall on his knees in worship.

  Except move the sun across the sky each day and create divine music.

  Apollo said, “Speak to me, Sinon. I want to hear your voice. The Trojans say you have a lovely voice.”

  If only Sinon had remained anonymous, one of the faceless Greek soldiers. He’d be sailing home with Odysseus now. Assuming someone else had been able to play his part in the scheme.

  “I am not awed by you.”

  “I know. That’s why I decided to keep you. When you realized who I was, you didn’t cower, beg, or pray. No, you fought bitterly. Or tried to, which I admire. You kept your pride. You still do.”

  “What do you want of me?” he asked like a common prisoner of a common captor.

  “Your service. I’m in need of a valet. Perhaps even a bodyguard—at least, I have the need to pretend I need a bodyguard.” He chuckled.

  “I will not serve you.”

  “Give it time.”

  “I’ll drown myself in one of your ponds.”

  “Try it.” Apollo made a gesture, and the rose in his hand became a sword. He tossed it at Sinon.

  Sinon caught it by the grip and swept it in an arc to finish the motion of its flight. He hefted it, turning it to study its edge.

  “Do it,” Apollo said. “Kill yourself and get the impulse out of your system.”

  It was a trick. Sinon knew it was. The god wouldn’t have brought him here to torment him, only to watch him kill himself.

  He didn’t want to kill himself. He never would have thought it, even if he’d been captured by the Trojans, tortured and enslaved while all his friends perished. Courage came in persevering. Odysseus taught him that. But this place was different. Did courage mean anything here?

  He would not be a slave, not to the Trojans, not to a god.

  He turned the sword, grippe
d it with both hands, set the point in the middle of his belly, just under his ribs. His heart was racing. This isn’t right. He gave his mind over to panic and stumbled forward, driving the sword in as he did.

  Pain followed the metal through his flesh. Moaning, he fell to his knees. He stayed there, holding the wound, feeling blood pour over his hands. Now I am a slave to Hades.

  Apollo, a mocking curl to his lip, came to him, gripped the sword, and yanked it out. Sinon cried out and doubled over, holding his belly because he felt as if his guts were spilling out.

  Then the pain lessened. The blood on his hands dried. His organs didn’t burst onto the grass. He straightened and looked, smoothing his hands over the front of his tunic. The cloth was still ripped, but the wound in his belly was gone. Healed.

  “You cannot die.” Apollo used the bloody point of his sword to flick at the chain around his neck. “Another thing—in Troy they call you the Liar. I can’t have that here, for I am the god of Truth. As long as you wear that chain, you cannot lie.” He turned and went away.

  Sinon collapsed, his breath coming in gasps, his mind flailing, refusing to understand.

  I killed myself and did not die. I am neither alive nor dead now.

  Time passed. Sinon lived in luxurious captivity, richly fed and clothed, lingering amid the entertainments of the Sun Palace. Apollo summoned the best musicians, dancers, and bards to perform for him. Sinon kept to the shadows, intensely jealous because the performers could leave at the end of the evening.

  He ran. He jumped hedges and raced his shadow, as if still training to be a warrior. He made himself a wooden sword out of a tree branch and practiced hitting at shrubs, scattering leaves and broken branches around him on the lawn. Sweating deadened his mind and kept him from trying to be clever like Odysseus.

  The sun never set on Apollo’s palace. Always, it was midday—always a little too warm, too bright. Tracking one day to the next was impossible.

  One day, walking in the garden, he startled a woman who was bathing in one of the pools. She gasped, covering her breasts with her arms. He quickly turned away. With his luck, the Sun God’s sister had come for a visit, and he knew the stories that told what happened to men who spied Artemis at her bath.

  He’d started to leave, when she called him back. “Wait a moment. You must be Sinon. The Greek.”

  He stopped. Her voice was bright, good-natured.

  “I’d heard you were a prisoner here. Don’t be shy—stay and talk with me. You were at Troy, weren’t you? Will you tell me stories of the war?”

  Cautiously, he approached. She modestly hid herself in the water, only her head and neck breaking the surface. She was young, with a rosy, shining face to match her voice. He couldn’t guess the color of her hair, which was dark with water and slicked back.

  Smiling, she nodded at the brick-lined edge of the pool. “Sit here, so I don’t get a crick in my neck staring up at you.”

  This had to be a trick. He had seen women at the palace—nymphs and minor goddesses come to sport with Apollo and each other, indulging in the god’s hospitality. None had ever spoken to him. Sinon knelt a little way from the pool’s edge.

  “You don’t trust me,” she said.

  “I don’t trust anything about this place.”

  “Wise man.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Celeste.”

  “Are you a nymph? Or something else?”

  “I’m . . . something,” she said. Her smile filled her expression, so at ease and lovely.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Do you always ask so many questions?”

  He looked away, blushing. But he didn’t know how to act. This was all so strange.

  She answered him. “Apollo brought me here.”

  “You’re a prisoner as well,” he said, perhaps too eagerly.

  She shook her head. He could see her shape in the water, rippling, without detail. He could see himself reaching to touch her. It had been so long since he’d spoken to a woman. Cassandra at Troy had been the last.

  Her expression turned sly, as if like a god she knew his thoughts. “Did you rape many women at Troy?”

  Angrily, he said, “I raped none.” He’d been so tired, twice beaten and too weak to hold a woman, much less have her. At least, that had been his excuse to himself.

  She stared at him until he felt as naked as she was. Then she said, “I believe you, hero of Greece.”

  Water rippling around her, she came to the edge of the pool and reached a dripping hand to touch him. The coolness of her skin sent a shock up his arm. To hold her to him would still the heat flushing along his body. Graceful, slipping like a breeze, she pulled herself out of the water so she was sitting next to him, in all her soft and pale glory. Then she kissed him.

  He threw himself into lovemaking, her eagerness feeding his, both of them clawing off his tunic. He told himself he should slow down, enjoy every moment of her beauty and vigor, but he was desperate for her touch, her mouth, her body. On top of her, at the edge of the pool, rushes and lilies as a backdrop, he moaned as he entered her, and the stresses of his captivity left him.

  The sound of applause carried across the pool. Sinon looked. Across the way, on a stone bench, sat Apollo, clapping, watching them as if this were a play. Celeste, her head tipped back, her expression contorted with ecstasy, didn’t seem to notice.

  Sinon’s cheeks burned red, anger filling him all over again. He pounded into her harder than he should have, and at the moment of his release—she melted. She turned to water, a flood that slipped out of his arms and back to the pool.

  He was left kneeling, breathing hard, soaking wet. Apollo grinned. He’d planned the whole thing. Damn him.

  Scowling, Sinon stood, grabbed his tunic, and marched away.

  Another time, invisible hands tied him to his pallet, face up. Then Apollo arrived and toyed with him, bringing him to the edge, evoking pleasure even as Sinon resisted. Sinon even laughed once at a ticklish jab. It was an unexpected noise. Apollo untied him and left him exhausted, humiliated, confused.

  He had no way to track the time.

  7

  Under the open collar of Alex’s shirt, the bronze chain glinted. He’d told Evie it was a curse, keeping him alive and ageless, when all he’d ever wanted was to die. He’d offered to slit his wrists then and there to prove it to her. She insisted she believed him. One way or another, he’d bleed all over her car and she didn’t need that.

  It just looked like a necklace.

  Evie had to turn around and go back. She’d raced from the hotel and made the quicker right-hand turn. While she could travel side streets to avoid driving past the hotel again, she still had to go through town to get back home. Through town and the police checkpoint. Evie stopped.

  Three patrol cars—Hopes Fort’s entire law enforcement fleet—were parked across Main Street, blocking it. At least half a dozen people were crouched behind open car doors, aiming their handguns at her as she slowed to a stop. Hopes Fort had only a handful of officers, but a number of part-time deputies served as well, in addition to the Citizens’ Watch volunteers.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. Her voice felt stiff. Silent, Alex stared hard out the windshield.

  Johnny Brewster stood behind the barrier of his open car door, gripping his gun in both hands. “Get out of the car! Hands up, out of the car!”

  She shouldn’t have hesitated. She didn’t expect herself to hesitate, but she did. Maybe because Alex didn’t move either. This felt odd, an out-of-place sensation—like that stranger’s hand around hers. Like a door was closing to trap her in a dark room. I’m getting paranoid.

  “What do you want to do?” Alex said.

  She wanted to go home. “I think we should get out. Slowly. This is just a misunderstanding, I’ll explain it to Johnny. It’ll be okay.” She hoped that saying it would make it true.

  “Get out of the car!” Johnny was snarling, his face turning
red, furious.

  Evie opened her car door. Alex opened his. She climbed out and straightened, holding her hands up by her face. On the other side of the car, Alex was doing the same.

  “Put your hands on the roof of the car! Stay there, don’t move!”

  This was like some overwrought scene out of her comic book. Tracker, undercover, meeting with a double agent, getting in trouble at some volatile border . . . she’d have to file that away for a plot twist.

  She and Alex put their hands on the roof of the car. He glanced at her. His expression was stony.

  This was about him. The police wanted him. What had he done? Besides stalk her family.

  Four of the cops ran out to them. Three of them went to Alex, patted him down, pulled him away from the car, and wrenched his arms back.

  Johnny Brewster came to her and gripped her arm. “Evie! Are you okay?”

  She straightened. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “We got a call that some guy matching his description jumped in your car and held a gun on you.”

  She stared. “No, there must be a mistake. He—he’s a friend. Nobody pulled a gun.”

  One of the other cops called, “Johnny, he doesn’t have a gun.”

  “Check the car.” The guy climbed in and looked under the seat, opened the glove box. Johnny looked back at her. “Carlos Alvarez called from the Schooner. He said that you were just there, and that one of his guests saw you get carjacked.”

  Several points of confusion collided in her mind in a moment of understanding. The question was, how much would she have to tell Johnny to explain the situation? Alex wasn’t the one trying to kidnap her. That other guy, he must have fed Carlos the story. But how did she explain that? And how did she explain Alex? On the other hand, if she wanted Johnny to haul him away, now was her chance.

  “Johnny, this has been a misunderstanding. He’s a friend—I’m giving him a ride.” If it wasn’t the truth, it wasn’t exactly a lie, either. She didn’t know what he was. “How likely does a carjacking sound? Does that sort of thing happen in Hopes Fort? Has anything like that ever happened in Hopes Fort?”