The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Three

The ferryman will not hear of it.

“I’ll be run through, if the king’s men find out. It’s not worth the risk to me,” he shakes his head. “And it shouldn’t be to you.”

“It’s dark,” I plead with the boatman. “His men won’t see us. And if they do, you’ll say we stowed away. That you knew nothing about it.” The boat’s transom is piled with gear and nets, and a blanket. We could hide in there. And the little skiff is covered—just a piece of canvas knotted to a few posts, enough to give shelter from the sun during a hot day. But in the shadows, it cloaks the back of the boat well enough.

Behind us, the klaxon sounds again. The whole place seems to be in pandemonium now, everyone asking panicked questions, babies crying.

“It will be chaos over there, too,” I point out. “The king’s guard will be hell-bent on escorting your birthing-woman to the palace in time. That’s all they’ll be thinking of. They won’t have time to think about searching your boat.”

He’s silent for a moment.

“You’re asking me to risk my life,” he says at last, and I don’t have anything to say to that. I suppose it’s true, and wrong of me. It’s nothing to him, whether I remain sisterless, fatherless.

“What’ll you give me for it?” he says.

I look at Eros.

“We have coin,” I say, and show him, but he shakes his head.

“Not enough. For what I’m risking, not nearly enough.”

I stare at the coin in my hand, wondering what else I can offer. My mother’s knife? Eros carries it now, sheathed at his hip. But even if I could bring myself to part with it, Eros has said it himself—an item so powerful, so dangerous, cannot be left in the wrong hands.

“You can have my horse,” Eros says, and I turn and stare.

Ajax?

“Eros, you can’t-”

To part with him, to sell him...Ajax is not a horse that deserves to be bought and sold.

“My horse,” Eros repeats firmly, speaking only to the boatman.

*

He leads us quietly to where his small skiff bobs in the darkness. The water is black as squid-ink.

“Get in the back,” the boatman—his name is Herodotos—mutters. “I’ll cover you with blankets.”

He does, foul-smelling ones. I suspect they’ve been used to mop fish-guts with, and more than once.

His orders are to row after the king’s guards’ boat, and tie up under their watch. Another guard will wait with him while they take the birthing-woman to the queen’s chambers. When Ekaterini has done her job—nobody dares suggest that she might fail—then he will row her back.

I watch through a tear in the blanket as the woman is bundled unceremoniously onto Herodotus’s boat. I feel the dip as her new weight is added to ours, and the boat sinks lower in the water. I hear her breathing, quick and shuddering. The small crowd by the dock are wishing her well, exchanging looks with one another. They know—we all know—that Ekaterini’s life hangs in the balance too, should she fail—should the queen die, or worse, the child. Especially if the child is a boy: kings do not lose their sons lightly.

The guards’ gold-edged robes catch the moonlight as they board their craft, moored a little way ahead of ours.

“Make haste!” the guards call back, and push off into the night.

My heart hums in my throat as Herodotos follows suit.

The oars creak in their locks. Ekaterini is humming to herself, but the sound is more like a prayer than a song. She is afraid—of course she is. Would she betray us, if she knew we were here?

“Faster, you simpleton,” one of the guards, standing on the stern of his boat, shouts back. But Herodotos is ferrying three people’s weight, not one.

The night smells of the sea, the clean, sharp scent of salt. I can almost taste it on my lips. I try to inhale it as deep as I can, blocking out the stench of the blanket draped over us. It is quiet; the sea-birds are all sleeping. Only the plash of water against the hull, of the oars turning, of Herodotos’s grunts and the woman’s anxious humming.

I feel Eros’s body against my back, the safety of his presence. None of these guards’ arrows could wound him; with one look, he could undo their minds, scrambling all their senses like a whisked egg.

But any of those arrows could kill me .

*

The little skiff heaves to starboard; I feel us swing around. I put my eye to the peephole again—and there it is, an island small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, all lit by moonlight.

Atlantis.

As we get closer I can make out the great shape of a castle—the palace, it must be—looming up from the walls that rim the island’s edge. There is a great bay here, too, and what looks to be a shipyard. A small fleet bobs in the darkness: triremes, war-ships. On the other side of the shipyard is another great edifice, rearing up into the night. A grand flights of stone steps leads up from the landing towards it. This is a city meant to be approached from the water: made to awe, but also to welcome.

It is not welcoming now. As we draw closer, I see the small black shapes of men stationed in the castle battlements. Braziers mounted along the walls barely illuminate their shadows.

There are no guarantees that Herodotos will stick to his promise, it occurs to me. He already has the horse; he could hand us over to the king’s men and pocket some reward as well.

I think once more of Ajax, with a pang. I reason we could not have taken him with us, not across these waters. But we will go back for him, I tell myself. Once we have what we need. Once I have what I need.

The thrashing water slows against the hull; the oars pull a different, slower rhythm, as Herodotos turns the skiff towards shore.

“Do not worry,” I hear him mumble to Ekaterini. “You have the gift. You will succeed.”

“May it please the gods,” the woman answers. I hear the anxiety in her voice.

Herodotos gets up, makes to escort her from the skiff.

“Get back in your boat,” the guards shout at him, already tying up their own. “Only the woman sets foot on this island.”

Herodotos acts as though he doesn’t hear them, knotting his boat tight to the mooring-post and stretching a long leg out to make the leap ashore.

“Did you hear me, simpleton?” The guards call out to one of their own: “Perikles! Come down here and keep watch over this fool. He’s to wait in his boat until we bring the birthing-woman back. Come on, you.” And he marches Ekaterini up the landing as another robed guard walks down.

This, we had not anticipated. The one called Perikles boards the boat, seats himself where Ekaterini sat—the comfortable, padded side—and takes his dagger out, motioning to the boatman to sit back down. The other guards march Ekaterini up some stone steps, and they all disappear through a gateway.

“Now—any more nonsense,” Perikles says, still handling the dagger, “and you’ll feel the wrong end of this.” He stretches, takes off his helmet, and sets it down beside him. The bit of uniform is for show; Atlantis faces no invasion tonight.

Except our very small one.

Eros moves as silently as the night. The blankets are cast off; he brings down the heavy hilt of my mother’s blade on the soldier’s bare head, and with a soft moan, the man keels over.

“He’s out.”

Quickly, Eros strips the guard of his gold-edged chiton and dons it, then takes the helmet from the bench and tilts it low over his face. It will disguise him, and more than that, it will protect whomever we might meet. Who knows who else we will pass on our way into the citadel, or on the other side.

Now Perikles, the guard, lies unconscious in the bottom of the boat, dressed in Eros’s shabby cloak.

“You can’t leave him here!” Herodotos hisses. “Take him with you, damn you!”

It is a good thing he speaks low. Although men are stationed above us, looking out from the battlements, we’re right at the base of the rock. There’s no way for them to see us, unless they were to lean out over the battlements and crane their heads down. But loud voices may travel on a night like this, even over the thrashing of the waves.

Eros rips off a piece of the old cloak and gags the soldier’s mouth. He tugs the cloak low over the man’s face. I take a breath, not daring to think too hard about what we’re doing, what we’ve already done, and follow Eros in his soldier’s garb up the steps in the rock. I pull my robe over my hair too: the more nondescript I look, the better, for I am to play the part of a guard’s prisoner, and soldiers often like to share a pretty woman.

But I need not have worried. The guard waiting at the top of the stairs is sleepy, unconcerned. But his eyebrows raise all the same at the sight of this guard and a couple of peasants, one of them thrown over Eros’s broad shoulder.

“I found these two on my patrol,” Eros says. “A drunk and his whore.”

“Degenerates,” the guard sniffs. “Well, go ahead then.”

I steal a glance back as we walk out the other side, but the guard has leaned back against the wall. When I turn around again, my pace slows involuntarily as I take everything in. This place—the castle behind us, the crashing sea to our right, a great open square before us, with that towering building I saw from the water. And beyond, to the left, the island rolls away from us—dark fields, dark forests, all under moonlight. In the distance, a single mountain peak cuts into the sky, a steep black cone against the night. My mother’s homeland. The thought runs through me, a shiver in my mind.

“Quickly, Psyche,” murmurs Eros. He’s right; this is no time for dreaming.

I can see roads fanning out from the far end of the great square, sloping down away from the citadel into whatever towns and villages lie below. Which one to choose? Either way, we will have to rid ourselves of this comatose soldier, but he will spread the word when he wakes—whichever route we take, we will have to move fast.

We have made it only fifty feet or so when his bundled form begins to move. His foot twitches; he aims a kick, and misses. Through the gag, his muted, angry cries pierce the night.

I glance at Eros, who keeps walking—faster, now. I do the same, until a voice calls out from behind us.

“Halt! Stamatíste !”

***End of sample***

Thank you for test-driving The Bride of Atlantis ! . I’m really excited about the sequels to The Ruin of Eros —I loved continuing this story, and I’m crossing my fingers that you’ll want to keep being part of the journey!