13

Everyone suggests what we should do. Cassandra pokes holes in each idea. We keep coming back to Paris, the great gods, and Satchel, our name for Helen, because anyone can march off with her. Paris is doomed, and the great gods, as Eurus assures us, will act according to their whims. Helen interests us most.

After an hour of talking, I stand and juggle three walnuts, keeping them in the air for a full minute. I grin, glad to be doing something physical and to not feel like a queen for a moment.

But I am queen, and juggling reminds me of Helen’s acrobatics. “Pen said we could learn from Satchel. She’s stronger than we are in some ways.” Pen had told them about Helen’s performance. “What if we ask her to join us after Paris dies?” I think how much I’d rather have Cassandra in the band.

Lannip doles out dried meat. “We should hunt soon.” She turns to Cassandra. “If Satchel is gone, will the war end?” She remembers. “You can’t tell. But do you think it will end?”

Cassandra tilts her head from side to side, seeming to imagine what will happen one way and then another. “The Greeks and the Trojans won’t have her to fight over. I don’t know if the great gods will care. But my brothers and the other men will pursue you to get her back.”

Eurus laughs. “They won’t catch you. The wind will be against them.”

“What if she doesn’t want to come with us?” I ask, while chewing hard. Dried meat is tasty but tough.

After a minute of general disbelief that a satchel wouldn’t rather be a person, Serag says, “We’ll have to persuade her there isn’t anything to be afraid of.”

“But there is,” Zelke says. “We get hurt. Some of us die in battle or on raids.”

Cassandra sounds shocked. “You wouldn’t let her fight, would you? She could be treacherous.”

“No, we wouldn’t.” I cut to the heart of my question. “If she doesn’t want to go with us, should we just take her?” It’s up to me, I guess. But I want to hear what they think. We never accept slaves as spoils, and we don’t take prisoners in battle.

Everyone speaks at the same time. They’re divided. They all want to change Cassandra’s fate, but no one wants to take Helen’s freedom, even though she doesn’t seem to care about it and has never really had it.

Finally, I say, “We’ll try our best to convince her to join the band. If she won’t, I’ll decide what to do then.”

This satisfies no one, not even me.

I add, “She seems to want everyone to like her.”

“Love her,” Cassandra says.

People protest.

“We don’t even know her!”

“I don’t like her, and I haven’t even met her!”

“Pretend!” I say. Something we’ve never needed to do, something I’m not sure I can do. “It’s good to learn new skills.”

Zelke says, “Even if she comes with us gladly, she won’t really join the band, right?”

I have an answer for that. “If she helps us, she will, and we’ll give her a chance. If not, we’ll find a village that will take her.”

Lannip laughs. “Beware an Amazon bearing gifts.”

“How can we talk to her,” Serag asks, “if she’s always in the women’s quarters?”

Cassandra tells us that we’ll have our chance right after Paris’s funeral.

At dusk, Pammon comes to find out why we didn’t ride to battle this morning.

I’ve planned for this. “Your warriors didn’t even try to save Hector, your own hero. Only Pen went to his aid. They both might have lived if others had come.”

“We thought—”

“We went with you yesterday. We fight as a band, always looking out for each other, but each Trojan fights as if he’s an army by himself.”

The band is nodding.

“If you’d told us that, we never would have come to Troy.” I took a deep breath. “When we finish our mourning for Pen, we’ll go home.”

“What if we double your spoils?”

He’d already agreed we could take what we wanted.

“Corpses don’t need spoils.”

“How long will you stay here?”

I say my only lie: “The queen decides when official mourning is over. I haven’t decided yet.”

He kicks his horse and goes.

We wait for Paris to die. We hunt, though Eurus tells us he can bring more game than we can eat. Khasa suggests we raid the Greek camp for fun. She’s only three years older than I am, and I’m tempted—until I see Cassandra’s frightened face.

The days that pass are pleasant, except for my grief over Pen, which swells and ebbs in waves.

Cassandra is skilled at skinning and butchering the game we bring back from hunting, though she’s never done it before. She’s slow, but her work is perfect. She laughs at our surprise. I think how rarely I’ve heard her laugh.

She looks up from a haunch of deer. “I peer into the future and watch Lannip. Then I imitate her. My hands aren’t used to handling the knife, which is why I’m slow.” She laughs again. “Some aspects of prophesying are useful.”

“What if you happen to watch me one of the times when I cut myself?”

“I guess I’d cut myself too. Next time, before I start, I’ll watch you all the way through to see.”

Lannip smiles, seemingly proud to have told the seer something she didn’t know.

We suggest other things Cassandra might be able to do. She says she doubts she has the strength to shoot very far or to manage our horses as we do. But she asks Zelke if she can try her harp. First, she plays—perfectly—Zelke’s favorite ballad about a tragic raid, and then, frowning and smiling at once, she plays a melody we don’t know, with an irregular rhythm and notes in a smaller range than we’re used to, but the harmonies are surprising and beautiful.

We’re quiet for a few minutes after she finishes, thinking about what we heard and appreciating it.

Then I blurt, “Could you make one of our bows?” The skill I still wish I could master.

She stares into the distance. “Yes, though it might take me as long as five years.”

Everyone but Cassandra laughs when Zelke says, “We should kidnap you instead of Helen.”

Tears stand in her eyes. “I wish I’d been born into your band.” She turns to Eurus. “Except then I wouldn’t ever have come to your altar.”

He turns the dull red of his himation.

She touches his arm. “I wouldn’t have your friendship.”

At the word friendship, he purses his lips as if he’d eaten moldy bread.

Cassandra and I are friends, but she and Eurus are as close as the bricks in Troy’s wall.

The seer knows the future but is ignorant about herself.

I grin. My thoughts are starting to sound like the crows.

Cassandra doesn’t return to Troy. Three days later, in the afternoon, she tells me that Achilles is about to die. I hold my breath.

After a moment, she nods. “He’s gone.”

I feel dull relief but not the joy I expected. Pen is still dead.

A few day later, Cassandra sees Paris wounded in battle moments before it happens.

After another week, she foresees him die. At the time, I’m busy brushing Tall Brown and don’t see her face.

But I hear her gasp. I turn. Paris?

Eurus stands with her. His hands grip each other. I realize he wants to hug her or do something to make her feel better. He flies upward, whips himself in a tight circle above her, comes down next to her again, in a crouch with his head between his knees.

When she puts a hand on his shoulder, he looks up, his face questioning.

She sees me watching and speaks to both of us. “Paris just died. I can’t see him anymore.” She lets Eurus go. “This brother and I didn’t grow up together. I didn’t know him well. He might have been a better man if . . .” She trails off. “The great gods and goddesses, Paris, Helenus, even my parents . . . I don’t know which to blame.”

“All of them!” Eurus stands.

I nod. Village people! Not Cassandra, my friend.

The next day, we follow our plan.