| |
Pirithous
The crunching of gravel under foot brought Pirithous awake, though Thalia still slept beside him undisturbed. It was morning, and they had spent a late night watching a movie she called Clash of the Titans. There were no Titans present, as far as he could tell, nor did he understand their portrayal of Perseus and Io as lovers. It seemed a very strange telling of the stories he knew regarding his half-brother.
Footsteps and voices rose through the open window of Thalia’s room. The woman’s voice he recognized as Nikki, but the other—a man. Alexandros? The thought brought him upright and awake. If Alexandros found him in his sister’s bed, he would not be pleased. Neither would Thalia, he was certain, for she seemed determined to meet with her brother on her own terms. He closed the bedroom door, which had been left open, that Alexandros might not look down the hall and see straight into Thalia’s bed.
“Thalia,” he said lowly.
She cracked an eyelid. “S’too early.”
“Nikki comes, with a man. From the tone of their conversation, it must be your brother.”
“What?” She sat up, throwing the linens from her body, then stopped, listening to the voices. She swore, and if he had believed her creative the previous evening when she insulted his parents, he realized he had not given her half-enough credit. “What are they doing here! Hasn’t anyone ever heard of calling first?”
She grabbed the first clothes she saw, then thrust the short trousers at him before digging through the garments piled on a chair for her own. “Clothes, clothes, clothes. Oh, God, Alex is going to kill me. This is not how I wanted you to meet him. And he’s going to hate you! You just can’t be here. That’s all there is to it.” She spoke too swiftly, but these concerns at least were familiar in tone. “Nikki will take one look at you, still here, and coming out of my bedroom no less, and spill everything to Alex, and then he’ll call the police and you’ll be arrested and deported and—”
“I have told you before, there is nothing your brother can do to keep me from you.” He may not have understood all the words, all the threats that hung over his head, but this much he could answer. “You need not fear him.”
She sighed, her eyes liquid with unshed tears. “You only say that because you don’t know how things work. Alexandros is just enough of a bully to get you into serious trouble, Pirithous. If anyone finds out you aren’t a citizen—best case scenario, they’ll lock you up. Worst case—worst case, if you think an arrow wound is bad, just wait until you take a few dozen bullets. Even you won’t walk away from that.”
“Have a little faith, Thalia.” He smiled, scooping up one of his tunics from the floor and pressing it into her hands. Whatever she was going on about, it could not be so bad as that. They had broken no sacred laws, and as the lady of the house, Thalia was well within her rights both to offer hospitality and accept his gifts. Whether her brother agreed or not. “I was not king only because I was born a prince.”
“Thalia?” a man’s voice called.
“One minute!” Thalia called back, her voice strained. “If you just stay in here, quiet, I’ll see if I can get Nikki to take Alex with her to visit her family or something and then we can sneak you out.”
“I will not hide from your brother.” He pulled the shorts on, gritting his teeth against the burn in his shoulder. He could not put a tunic on without Thalia’s help, and now was not the time to ask for it. “We will meet with him together.”
“But—”
“Whether it is now or later, he must meet me one day. Better to have it done with, and better still to have it done honestly. Were you my sister, and I learned that a man had been skulking about in your rooms, I would turn him away at once when he came before me later. Trust me, Thalia.”
“Thalia!” Alexandros called again, much closer. He pounded on the bedroom door and Thalia made a strangled noise, her hand flying to her heart, pressing against her chest.
“Jesus, Alex!” she shouted, her eyes flashing. “I said I’ll be out in a minute!”
“Watch your mouth,” Alexandros said. “And hurry up.”
Thalia pulled on the shirt, rolling her eyes, then she scowled at Pirithous. “Are you sure about this?” she breathed.
Pirithous opened the door.
***
ALEXANDROS REMINDED him of Heracles. He did not have the demigod’s height or breadth, but there was a look of determination in his eyes that was unmistakable. Heracles had been a confident man, even more so after he had been humbled by Hera, and Alexandros carried himself the same way.
“Who the hell are you?” Alexandros demanded.
“Pirithous, this is my brother, Alexandros. Alex, this is Pirithous. He’s um. Visiting.”
“Your sister has been kind enough to make me welcome,” Pirithous said.
“My sister has a history of welcoming dipshits,” Alexandros said.
“I’ve met several these last days.” Pirithous replied, refusing to take insult. “I assure you, I am no Josh Andrews.”
“Josh Andrews had enough sense not to face me half-dressed in the doorway of my sister’s bedroom.”
“And would a man who hid beneath your sister’s bed for fear of you truly be preferable?”
“You’re a real piece of work, Pirithous.”
“Stop it, Alex,” Thalia said. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Are you really going to stand there, dressed in a shirt that obviously belongs to him, and tell me he hasn’t been sleeping with you?” Alexandros asked her.
“It isn’t any of your business if he has!”
Alex’s jaw tightened, his gaze shifting back to Pirithous. “Well?”
“If my intentions toward your sister were less than honorable, I would not be standing before you half-dressed,” Pirithous said, meeting his eyes. “Were Thalia already promised to another man, or I married, you would be within your rights to challenge me, but we are both free. Thalia’s choices are her own, and I promise you Alexandros, I will defend her right to make them.”
His eyes narrowed. “As long as she’s choosing you, I’m sure.”
“No matter who or what she chooses,” Pirithous said. “As her brother, are you not determined to do the same?”
“As her brother, it’s my job to help her make the right choices.”
“Oh, please!” Thalia said. “Maybe when I was twelve. Get over it, Alex. If I want to date someone, that’s my business. Disapprove of Pirithous all you want, it isn’t going to change anything. Stop being a jerk for five minutes and just give him a chance!”
“Alex? Lexi says this afternoon—” It was Nikki, coming around the corner from the kitchen, a small rectangle pressed against her ear. Thalia had explained they were used to speak with people not present, though he did not understand by what magic it worked. Nikki stopped, her eyes widening. “Pirithous!”
Alexandros turned. “You know this guy?”
“Um.” Nikki cleared her throat before addressing the device in her hand. “Lexi, I’m going to have to call you back.”
“Don’t get mad at her, Alex,” Thalia said. “I asked her not to mention it, and she really didn’t know that we were—I mean, we hadn’t—she only met him briefly.”
“So you’ve been hiding this guy from me for how long, exactly?” Alex demanded.
“Just a week,” Thalia admitted. “Ish.”
“Nikki?” Alex asked.
Nikki pressed her lips together and Pirithous could feel her discomfort, caught between the loyalty and guilt she felt toward Thalia and the honesty she owed to her betrothed. An unenviable position, but despite her misgivings, she had shown him kindness.
“Thalia and Nikki met me while I traveled into the city,” Pirithous answered for her. “Thalia offered to take me where I needed to go, though Nikki did not wish to, and liked it even less when Thalia invited me to stay here. As I had no other place to go, I accepted.”
Nikki’s eyes widened even further while he spoke. “You made me talk to you in bad Greek and you knew English the whole time?”
“Not the whole time,” Thalia murmured.
“It took me some days to understand it again, spoken so quickly. It is not my first language, and even now, sometimes I do not understand everything Thalia says.”
“Pirithous is from Thessaly,” Thalia said, addressing her brother. “He’s Greek, and he just needed a place to stay until he got some things straightened out. He left before Nikki went to New York, but um. I invited him to come back. After.”
“Your sister was very generous to offer me her hospitality.”
“And Pirithous insisted on paying me for it,” Thalia said, though Pirithous did not know what she meant by it. “So he’s not just some deadbeat, either, all right? It really isn’t a big deal. We met, we got to know one another, and we bonded, okay?”
Alexandros gave him a long measuring look. “You met while you were traveling into the city,” he repeated.
“That is so,” Pirithous said.
“And Thalia gave you a ride.”
“Yes.”
Alexandros pinched the bridge of his nose. “Thalia.”
“What?”
“You picked him up off the side of the road and brought him home with you?”
“That’s what I said,” Nikki mumbled. “And you should have seen how he was dressed.”
“Clearly it wasn’t some huge mistake,” Thalia’s words were clipped in a way that Pirithous knew too well meant she was losing her temper. “Or I wouldn’t be standing here fighting with you about it, would I?”
“What is wrong with you?” her brother demanded.
Thalia flinched and Pirithous felt his own anger pulse through his veins. “Careful, Alexandros.”
“Oh that’s rich,” Alexandros said. “You take complete advantage of her, and now you’re telling me to be careful? In my own house!”
“Thalia is a capable woman, more than able—”
“Don’t.” she said tightly, touching his arm. “Acts of god, only, remember?”
“You can’t be serious about this, Thalia,” Alexandros said.
He ground his teeth, the words he could not say stuck like shards of pottery in his throat. But he had given his word, and Thalia would not forgive him if he broke it. Not now.
“Pirithous isn’t going to run off with his tail between his legs, afraid to even be seen with me in public because he’s worried you might hear about it. He isn’t afraid of you, and neither am I. Let’s go, Pirithous.” She threaded her fingers through his, though they trembled beneath the coolness of her voice. “It’s obvious he’s made up his mind.”
***
THEY LEFT THE HOUSE not long after, Thalia mumbling something about breakfast in town. Pirithous did not argue. It was for the best that they leave, for he was not certain how long he could stand by while Alex offered her insult. Perhaps it would have been easier if he had not felt her pain increase with each exchange. Her brother’s disapproval cut her, and though she might have hid it from Nikki and Alexandros, she could not keep it from him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes on the road as she drove away from the house. “Alex is kind of a jerk sometimes. He’s always so sure he knows best. I think we would have been okay if Nikki hadn’t come around the corner just then.”
“It does not matter,” he told her. “In time, he will see the truth.”
“What truth is that?” she asked, glancing at him sidelong.
“We desire the same things for you. It is only the means by which we would see you reach them that differs, and that much only because you have forbidden me from acting on your behalf.”
“Oh.” Her gaze returned to the road, her hands tightening on the wheel before her. “Of course.”
He smiled. It did not take his father’s blood to know her disappointment. “He will see I love you, as well, Thalia, but I do not think he will find it a convincing argument. Any fool can fall in love with a beautiful woman.”
“Oh,” she said again, her tone altogether different. “Well, I guess you have a point.”
“I was a very wise king.”
“If you were that wise you wouldn’t have gone to Hades.”
“I did not say I was a wise man.”
She smiled and some of his own tension eased at the sight. “No, I guess you didn’t.”
“All will be well, Thalia. I will see it made so before you must leave, if you will but grant me that much freedom.”
She sighed, pulling the car to a stop before a small rounded building, made of reflective metal. A few dozen men and women sat inside at small tables with red benches. She had never taken him to a place such as this before.
“You always want more, don’t you?”
“For you, yes,” he agreed. “I would give you every happiness if I could, every joy. But this trouble with your brother is my doing in part. Have I not the right to see it finished?”
“God, you’re just as bad as he is.”
He grinned at her exasperation. “I fear I am a great deal worse, or I would be, were you my sister and living in my own world. Many kings locked their daughters and sisters away to keep them from imprudent behavior.”
“To keep them from men like you, you mean,” she said, her voice dry. “It seems to me that’s the kind of thing you’d see as an invitation.”
“I was nothing to Heracles. No matter what your moving paintings suggested, he never had any trouble coaxing lovers to his bed.”
She pushed open her door, giving him a strange look as she did so. “With or without demigod powers of persuasion?”
“I never needed to ask.” He followed her out of the car, opening the door to the building for her. A woman waited inside, greeting them kindly.
“Just two?”
“Yes,” Thalia said, “And could we possibly get a booth?”
The woman smiled. “Sure. Follow me.”
Pirithous did, and the woman led them through a maze of intimate tables, all with red cushioned seats. Some were empty and clean, others held the remainder of some meal or another. She set down two sheets of shining paper on a table in a corner, framed between two short benches, and turned to Thalia. “Is this all right?”
“Thank you,” Thalia said, then smiled at him. “Slide in.”
The fabric of the bench was strange, sticking against his skin. Thalia sat down beside him, caging him against the wall. He grunted, taking in the room with a glance. She had not let him bring his sword, and cornered this way, there would be little he could do if they were troubled by the others already seated. Thalia was clearly unconcerned, however, and he forced himself to calm.
“I hope you like Greek-American cuisine,” she said, studying one of the sheets, which opened like a book. Writing and images of food filled the inside. He picked up his own and said nothing. The pictures were clear enough, though he could not read what was written below them.
After a moment, she closed the odd book and looked at him. “How did you do it?”
“Do what?” He closed the book as well, sure he was meant to do something with it, but unwilling to ask. “This is a feasting hall of some kind?”
“A diner—don’t think you’re changing the subject, either. You said you never asked Heracles whether he used persuasion or not, and I want to know if you did.”
“Mm,” he glanced at her sidelong and opened the book again. “These are the foods that might be eaten?”
“There’s got to be something you like,” she said. “But ‘mm’ isn’t an answer.”
He scowled at the book and said nothing.
“Can I get you something to drink?” a girl asked, appearing at the table.
“Orange juice and water for me,” Thalia said. “Pirithous?”
“Water,” he agreed.
“I’ll be back in a minute!” the girl said, smiling brightly.
He watched her walk away. “Is she a slave of some kind?”
“We don’t allow slavery anymore.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re just trying to avoid answering me, aren’t you?”
“I assure you my confusion is honest.” He frowned again at the book, making much of puzzling over it. He would rather admit he could not read than return to the topic of his sexual conquests. In his experience, no woman truly wanted to know how other women had been seduced, even if he had been certain she would not take offense if he admitted the occasional use of encouragement. In truth, he had not cared for the way she had looked at him, before, when she had thought him a rapist, and he did not wish to lose her good opinion a second time. “There must be a great need for tutors in your country.”
“Everyone goes to school, if that’s what you mean.”
The girl returned with water and juice, setting them down on the table. “Are you ready to order?”
“Do you know what you want?” Thalia asked him.
“What I want?” he repeated, deliberately obtuse.
“Sorry,” Thalia said to the girl. “I think we need a few more minutes.”
“No problem.” She smiled again before disappearing. Pirithous saw her pause to speak to another couple seated three tables away. The man was well fed, to be sure. Now that he thought of it, he had not seen anyone in the city who looked hungry—another way in which Thalia’s people appeared prosperous, though he had yet to see any crops or livestock.
“Are you honestly going to tell me that nothing on that menu sounds good to you? How are you this picky?”
He set down the book and met her eyes. “Hermes only gifted me with your speech, Thalia, not your writing.”
“Oh.” She flushed. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think—what would you like to eat?”
It was enough to distract her for a time, but when their food arrived, Thalia only waited for the serving girl to leave them before she returned to the subject, her determination making him grimace.
“If you fear I tricked you into taking me to your bed, Thalia, you need not,” he said at last, when he had no other way of forestalling an answer. “There was but the one moment when I lost control of my own desire and reached for yours.”
She pressed her lips together. “When?”
“When we kissed in the bathing room that first morning,” he admitted.
“Oh,” she touched her fingers to her lips. “That—explains things.”
“I had not meant for it to happen,” he murmured, watching her fingertip play along her bottom lip. “But when you looked at me that way, I was... overcome.”
“And that was the only time?”
“The only time.”
“And the other women? Before me?”
The other women. He took another bite of the food she had ordered for him. Eggs with cheese and sausage and vegetables folded inside. He was beginning to grow accustomed to the odd flavor that colored the food in this time, leaving a bronze tang on the back of his tongue, but he was grateful all the same that it was not so strong in this meal.
“Why are you concerned with the women, alone?” he asked quietly, and not only because he had no desire to answer. “Is it because you do not wish for children of your own that they concern you so?”
“What do you—” She stopped herself, staring at him. “But you said that you and Theseus...”
“I said that Theseus and I did not share that bond. But I spent weeks at sea, sometimes months, with only my men. When we beached, it was not always safe to go in search of a woman, or there was no settlement nearby, so we saw to one another’s needs and were the stronger for it. As many men did, upon campaign, or simply for pleasure. I thought you realized.”
“How could I?” she asked. “You seemed—I mean, when we—” Her face flushed red. “Well, you certainly never complained about what I was offering.”
He grinned at her discomfort. “Should I have?”
“If you like other... things...”
“You know what I like, Thalia,” he said, his voice low. “And you are quite skilled at providing it.”
“But in the future?” She cleared her throat. “Will you want... Something else?”
“In the future, I will still love you more than I have ever loved any other, but for one.” He tipped her face up and brushed his lips over hers. She sighed softly, almost unwillingly, and he smiled. “I did not understand Theseus at first, when he told me of his Amazon Queen. But I learned quickly. To have a wife who is a partner, an equal, is a great wonder and an even greater joy, and I knew from the first that you were such a woman, Thalia. I only wish I might have made you my queen in Thessaly.”
“What would you have done then, if my brother had refused?”
He shook his head, pleased that she’d distracted herself. “Men do not refuse kings.”
“What if he’d been a king?” she asked.
“Kings do not refuse demigods,” he said. “An alliance with the Lapiths would be worth any price, especially when it came with the friendship of Athens and its king.”
“It always comes back to Theseus, doesn’t it? Did you do anything without him?”
He pushed his plate away, the meal suddenly heavy in his stomach. “No.”
“Pirithous.” Her face had paled, regret in her eyes. She touched his hand, her fingers closing around his. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean...”
He pressed a kiss to her knuckles for her sake, that she might know he did not hold her careless words against her. “I know.”
Thalia did not ask again about the women, but with the cloud of grief hanging over his head, spoiling his meal, he was not certain it was an improvement.