Chapter Forty-Four
A heavy stone dropped into my stomach, pressing me down.
“I can’t . . . I can’t feel him,” I said to Suri, panicked. “There’s a light and it’s gone.”
“Maybe he’s too far away,” she said.
Why had it gone out? I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. To reestablish our connection.
It didn’t work.
But for reasons I couldn’t have explained, I knew he wasn’t dead. I would feel it if he were.
Or maybe I was as delusional as Doria, who was forever insisting that my brother was alive and going to return home to her in Locris.
“Look for him,” Suri said.
“I’m planning to.”
“No, I meant night walk. Find him.”
That could work. I could pull Xander into my dream. “What if he’s not asleep?”
“Were your parents?”
She was right. They had been awake and I’d still been able to see them.
“Will you take over the watch?” I asked, and she nodded.
I went over to my bedroll and lay down, closing my eyes and focusing on Xander’s face. “Dea Nyctipolus.”
He was in a tent. He had been chained to a stake in the ground. My stomach filled with a mixture of anger and concern when I saw him. He had been beaten. He was covered in cuts and bruises.
I wished that Io hadn’t severed our link. Artemisia had done this to him to hurt me. I deserved to feel every injury he had sustained.
But he didn’t look as if they’d broken him. His expression was defiant, strong.
“Xander,” I said, leaning forward to touch him. He didn’t hear me and my hand passed through him.
I began to look around the tent to see what I could work with. Where were the keys? I would need those when I found him.
The flap opened and Artemisia walked inside. She had a massive war hammer, which she threw onto a wooden table. The hammer of Arion. I wished desperately that I could stab her where she stood. I even attempted it, but the blade couldn’t make contact.
“King Alexandros, how have you been enjoying your accommodations?” she asked as she sat on a foldable stool.
“The service leaves something to be desired,” he said.
“My men have a lot of aggression they wanted to work out. It seems you were the best option for them to do so.” She crossed her ankles. “Dolion tells me that you and your wife are physically connected. I hope she’s enjoying everything we inflict on you.”
Apparently Dolion didn’t know that Io had severed the physical link. Xander smirked, and I could tell it irritated Artemisia. She had hoped to get a rise out of him. “And the poison? Has that been to your liking?”
“I could do without it.”
“What fun would that be?” she asked with a sneer.
“Poison is cowardly.” I had once said that to him. “If you plan on killing me, you should just be done with it. This is tedious.”
Panic clutched at my throat. He was going to provoke her into ending his life.
“Dolion told me about your special gifts. I need you weakened, and poison is the best way to do that. But I don’t want you to die right away. First, I’m going to enjoy you.”
Fury slithered through my gut. If she laid a hand on him, I was going to cut it off the first chance I got.
He shifted his gaze over to the table. “Is that the eye of the goddess that I see?”
Artemisia had somehow slotted the eye into the top of her war hammer. She seemed startled but quickly recovered. “And what if it is?”
“I know someone who is looking for it. And she’ll take it from you.”
“Your wife?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m not worried about her.”
“You should be. You have no idea how powerful she is or how quickly you’re going to die when she finds you.”
“I’d like to see her try.”
“You will,” he promised.
“I welcome the fight. Things will be very different the next time she and I meet.”
Yes, they would be. Because she wasn’t going to survive the encounter. I would make sure of it.
Xander smiled.
“You don’t believe me?” she demanded. “I am going to kill your wife.”
The smile slid off his face. “If you harm anyone I care about, any of my people, I promise that I will kill you.” He said it in that cold, calm voice that sent shivers down my spine.
It didn’t have the same effect on Artemisia. “King Alexandros, I am going to harm every single one of your people. And I’m going to leave you alive to watch and then kill you last.”
She leaned forward. “Carian ships are on their way. They’re going to arrive the same time that we do. We will hammer Ilion from every side and destroy it and salt the earth behind us. Then we will cross the ocean and do the same to Locris. No eyes will be left to weep for the dead.”
Artemisia was going to kill hundreds of thousands of people.
I had to stop her.
“What you don’t seem to appreciate, King Alexandros, is how determined we are to destroy you and your people.
” She tilted her head to the side, as if taking his measure.
“After the Great War, you sent your cowards to Caria. Your weakest men fled there. Your cruelest. Those who did not want pain for themselves but enjoyed inflicting it on others. The ones who would kill men and steal their families. Those wives couldn’t fight back, but they refused to speak to their new husbands.
Refused to eat with them. They taught their sons and daughters to hate the Ilionians.
To bide our time until we could enact our revenge. ”
“Aren’t you descended from those weak, cruel men?” Xander asked, taunting her.
Anger flashed in her eyes. “I suppose we both are. Which makes us what, family?”
“If we are family, then let Ilion repay the debt of those ancestors. We can try to recompense for what was done.”
“Locris has paid a thousand years for a crime committed against one woman. How long should Ilion pay for a crime committed against thousands of women?” she asked calmly.
“Your goddess demanded the sacrifice of Locrian maidens? My god demands death and destruction and to tear down all that his mother has built. The only payment I will accept is the blood of your people.”
“Why take me prisoner if you aren’t interested in bargaining in good faith?” Xander subtly pulled at his chains, as if probing for a weakness. I wondered if Artemisia noticed.
“Because I am going to negotiate with your beloved city for your ‘safe return.’ And as soon as they agree and open their gates, I’m going to slaughter everyone inside.”
Part of me wished I hadn’t sent Rokh off. This was information that Troas needed to have.
Although I supposed it didn’t really matter because Artemisia wasn’t going to get the chance to enact her plan. I would retrieve my husband and return to the city before she could arrive.
Armies moved slowly.
“It sounds to me as if you’re not in a position to negotiate,” Xander said. “Who is your commanding officer? Why don’t you go and fetch him for me?”
A look of pure hatred crossed Artemisia’s face before she called to one of the guards to find the general.
It was one of the rules of combat. A prisoner of war had the right to request an audience with the leader of an army.
They sat in silence until his arrival. He strode in with full armor on. When he removed his helmet, I saw that he was a middle-aged man, with gray strands lining his hair and beard. He looked like a military commander, his expression serious and sure.
“My apologies, King Alexandros,” he said. “This is not a very civilized way to meet one another.”
“I agree with you, General . . .”
“Enyalios,” the man said. “Why have you called me here?”
“I wish to negotiate with you,” Xander said.
“You are in no position to negotiate anything,” Artemisia interjected with a snarl.
The general ignored her, as if she hadn’t spoken. “What is it you’re offering?”
“An end to your march on Ilion. Turn around and take your men home. And we can discuss what amount of gold you would need to make that happen.”
“Why are you listening to this?” Artemisia demanded, standing up. “He is the child of liars and abusers.”
Enyalios finally deigned to acknowledge her.
“Because not everyone shares in your murderous enthusiasm. It was you who tricked the king into declaring war, and many of the men here do not want it—they would prefer to return home. If there is a way to negotiate a treaty between our two nations, then—”
“A treaty?” she shrieked. “We haven’t waited a thousand years for a treaty! This is not what Arion wants.”
“Do you speak for him?” the general countered.
“I am his hammer.”
“Because you killed all your brothers. The hammer was only supposed to be wielded by the men of your family.”
“None of them are left,” she said through clenched teeth. “There is only me. And I will lead Caria to victory.”
“Your plan is flawed and will not work. You lack the experience and knowledge necessary to lead,” Enyalios told her. “The walls at Troas have stood for a thousand years for a reason. They are impenetrable.”
“I have lived in Troas. I am very well acquainted with the city and its defenses,” she said.
“You lived in the temple and only left the grounds a few times. You are all but useless. You did not learn anything of value that could help us.”
“I captured their king!” she shot back, pointing at Xander.
“Dolion made it possible for you to take him. And Dolion is the one sharing information of actual consequence. You are dismissed, Artemisia. Leave.”
Enyalios turned back to Xander. “Now, as we were saying, what are you willing to offer?”
“I will not be ignored!” Artemisia declared.
This seemed to make the general finally lose his temper. “Yes, you will! You have no authority or say here! You are a little girl playing with her toy, pretending at war—”
Artemisia picked up the hammer of Arion and flattened Enyalios’s skull with it. I gasped as he fell to the ground.
“Does that seem like a toy to you?” she taunted his dead body. “Now I am the one in charge. I will lead us to victory!”
Xander made a sound and she whirled around on him, hammer grasped tightly in her hand. “Did you want to say something, King Alexandros?”
His expression was nonchalant, as if she hadn’t just murdered a man in front of him. “How do you expect the army to follow you when you’ve killed their general? I don’t think they’ll like that.”
Her chest heaved for a few moments before she answered. “I managed to take a great deal of gold when I left Ilion. From the statue of your goddess. I will pay them for their loyalty.”
“Paid loyalty is not actual loyalty.”
“It’s close enough,” she snapped. “And they all want Ilion destroyed as much as I do.”
That wasn’t what I’d heard from the general before he died, and I could see from Xander’s face that he had come to the same conclusion.
“An army of deer led by a lion is more to be feared than an army of lions being led by a deer,” she said, kicking the general’s body.
“They will follow me. It is the women of Caria who have stoked the fires of vengeance and hatred, waiting for this day. The generations of men who came before me were too cowardly to act. They wanted to wait until we were more powerful. Until the army was bigger, until we had more weapons, more money. Now the glory will be mine, and I will not wait for a man to decide whether or not I can take it.”
Someone called the general’s name from outside the tent, looking for him.
“It seems to me that you should go out and do some damage mitigation before your men find out on their own what you’ve done,” Xander said.
A look of unease flashed briefly in Artemisia’s eyes. She lifted the tent flap, as if she intended to leave. But she turned around and said to him, “You should be thanking my god that I still need you alive.”