Page 10 of Minas (Dying Gods #4)

Sira

I start at the sound of the temple doors flying open, at the thud of wood on stone. For a brief moment, I’m filled with the exhilarating rush of anticipation.

Britomartis is here, I think to myself. Britomartis is here.

“Sira?” Malia’s voice rings out, followed by the heavy drag of footsteps. “Sira, are you in there?”

My shoulders slump, my hands dropping from my loom so abruptly I knock the wooden shuttle, making the stone weights at the bottom clank together.

It is not Britomartis.

I give the fabric in front of me a critical look. It had started off even, almost flawless, but the last several rows are too tight, too closely woven. They will have to come out. Perhaps I have stayed in here too long. The sun has passed its highest point, leaving the room I usually sit in to weave in afternoon shadow. It is not good light for weaving.

“Sira?”

I rise to my feet, brushing my palms against my skirt. They are damp, my fingertips cold. Perhaps I have sat too long.

“I am here,” I say evenly, but my voice feels tight, just like the threads pulled too sharply through my loom.

I should not have sat down at the loom today. Not when my mind is full of what Britomartis told me. Of how Asterion was sent to take Adrienne to the Oracle. Of how Kitanetos overheard my sister speaking to some Achean, ordering them to send twenty men to deal with Adrienne and my brother. Of how they sent Jadikira to save them all.

One man, against twenty.

Britomartis had known of this the day we met, and yet she only told me yesterday. I am not sure whether to be angry, or grateful. Perhaps it is a blessing to have been ignorant, since I couldn’t have done anything to protect my brother from danger.

Still, I can’t help but feeling that I have been ignorant my whole life.

And now I’m here.

Malia appears in the doorway, her face flushed red from exertion, chest heaving as she struggles to catch her breath. She doesn’t look distressed though. She looks excited. Almost giddy.

I take an instinctive step back, my heart thundering.

“What is it?” I ask warily.

“You will not believe it,” she gasps, wringing her hands and widening her eyes in a caricature of solemnity. “The Minas Crete is completely scandalized. Oh, it’s just too much.”

“Oh?” I say, biting back a smile, because I can’t imagine my sister being scandalized about anything. Angry and vengeful? Absolutely. But never scandalized.

“Oh, yes!” Malia presses one hand to her chest and bobs her head emphatically. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so distraught. Your brother…” she pauses to heave few dramatic breathes, though whether it is because she really cannot breathe, or whether it’s to draw out the suspense, only the gods know.

“Your brother has insulted her beyond imagining. In front of the entire court. In front of all the lawagetas. And with his doulos lover too. You know the one, the one your sister hates. The one they call the Death Bringer. Well, now he’s claiming that some foreign woman is a goddess—Astarte born again or something—as if that makes his disrespect forgivable. But it was only he that heard the Oracle’s prophesy. Well, he and that pretender, of course, but no one is counting her. Not with her pale skin and those strange eyes. And if she were a goddess, why would she accept a pledge from a doulos? From that Jadikira? It’s unthinkable, don’t you think?”

I stare at Malia, my loom forgotten, my mind racing. She must be speaking of Adrienne, the friend that Britomartis told me of yesterday. We think she is of Astarte , she had whispered. We have long thought so.

And now she is claiming to be a goddess, apparently. And somehow, involving my brother in her schemes.

“I’m sorry,” I say slowly, my heart thundering with fear for my brother. “What does Asterion have to do with all this?”

I have to be careful how I frame my questions, I remember, pressing my hand to my lips to stop any more inquiries from spilling out. Because I am supposed to be ignorant. I am not supposed to know that Asterion was sent with Adrienne to the Oracle. I am absolutely not supposed to know of my sister’s plans to kill him, or Jadikira’s role in saving them.

“He took the pretender to the Oracle.” Malia huffs in exasperation, as if I am a fool for being unable to follow her ramblings. “I presume he was meant to push her off the highest cliff on the way there, too, going by the Minas Crete’s surprise at seeing her return. But of course, Asterion never was good at following instructions.”

A curl of pride rises in my chest at Malia’s words. I had wondered these past few months whether my brother was under Xenodice’s command. Whether he’d complacently accepted her leadership. I’d assumed he had, since he never sought me out. Who else would have forbade him from visiting me when he returned from the sea, if not our sister?

Perhaps he is not on her side after all. Perhaps he is more like me than I thought—quietly disobedient, even if he lacks the power to do much about it.

“That would have been fine, I suppose,” Malia drawls. “A man cannot be expected to do everything, and no doubt he would have had some scruples about harming a woman. Even if that woman is a scheming pretender.”

“No doubt,” I say drily. Because whoever Asterion’s sire is, he is also my mother’s son. He would as soon harm a woman as break his oath to Poteiden. My sister should have known this. She must have known this.

“But then to come before the Minas Crete, and claim that woman, that foreigner, is a goddess? And not only that, to pledge himself to her? Without his sister’s blessing? Without her consent? Unthinkable.”

The breath punches out of me at Malia’s words, and I press my hand to my stomach. “Pledged?” I say weakly. “Asterion… he pledged himself?”

Unthinkable. It is unthinkable. Unheard of. That is not disobedience. That is outright rebellion.

“See.” Malia nods her head in pleased approval of my shock. “I knew you would agree with me on this. You always have been sensible. I told the Minas Crete so just the other moon cycle, you know…”

I clutch the double headed axe pendant dangling from my neck, as if that cold, fragile symbol can steady me, until I can feel the hard edges pressing into my palm. She is going to kill him. My quiet, strong brother. The brother who rarely smiled, but had smiled for me.

All this time, I thought I was so brave, so clever, sitting here safe in Potina’s temple and refusing to call my sister the Minas Crete. Sneaking silphium seeds to old women. Carrying out rites for the dead when there was no one else to do it.

But he—a son, a man—he openly defied her. Took the threads of his own fate and wove his own destiny. True, it is likely to be a very short destiny, now that he has returned to Knossos.

But it is his all the same.

I stare unseeingly at Malia, at the doorway behind her, darkened with the afternoon sun and the flickering of lamplight dancing along stone walls. She is talking still, speaking of a trial and cliffs and the rightful vengeance of gods, but I hardly hear her.

All I can think is that Asterion is facing his death. Jadikira too, most likely. All for Adrienne, for a woman who came to Knossos less than half a moon cycle ago.

All for a foreigner pretending to be a goddess.

A hundred feelings and thoughts twist and pull, like the poorly-woven threads in my loom. Pride and sorrow. Rage and fear. Shame and jealousy. That familiar, hollow, hopeless emptiness that I’ve felt ever since my mother’s bones were laid to rest beneath Knossos, since I let myself be locked in Potina’s temple.

And mixed with it all, like a golden thread: hope. Dangerous, terrifying hope. Because what if Britomartis was right about Adrienne? What if she is a goddess, after all? What if she is the storm that old Aletheia spoke of, come to set us all free?