Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

Erishum was the last to leave, evidently reluctant. When he had ushered the rest out, he pulled a heavy cover over the doorway.

The two of them stood at opposite ends of the room, Qirum barefoot in a wine-stained robe, Milaqa still holding her box, from which the ox-hide wrap had once more been removed.

‘So we’re alone,’ Milaqa said. ‘For the first time since-’

‘Since I became the King.’ He laughed. ‘But really we’re never alone. Even now we’ll be watched. Even if I ordered it not to be so, my men know the consequences if anything should befall me through their negligence. But we are as alone as I will ever be until the time comes for me to venture into the underworld. By the Storm God’s teeth, Milaqa. Suddenly you are beautiful.’

‘You’re blushing.’

‘So are you. Right down to your-’

‘Stop looking.’

He laughed. ‘Well, I can scarcely promise you that! Kilushepa’s doing, this, is it? That woman always did know how to twist my heart. And now she’s doing it even from afar — even though she knows that if I ever lay eyes on her again I will kill her with my bare hands.’

She felt an absurd prickle of jealousy. ‘I’m standing here flapping in the wind. Must we talk of her?’

‘No. I’m sorry.’ He took big clumsy steps towards her, reaching out. But he stopped short, and dropped his arms. ‘Milaqa, you occupy a special place in my spirit. I’ll never forget that you saved my life when Kilushepa betrayed me in Hattusa. It is a cruel fate that has separated us, a game of the gods that has put us on opposing sides in a war. And now, to see you like this — I am overwhelmed.’

‘As I will be soon,’ she said practically. ‘My robe is heavy, and this box is getting heavier. Could I sit down?’

‘Of course — I apologise. Sit with me.’ He went to the table, brushed the clay tablets and wine cups onto the floor with his arm, took the box and placed it on the table. He sat on the couch, patted it.

She sat beside him cautiously; she didn’t entirely trust her dress. ‘The box is a gift from Kilushepa, and all of Northland. As from one great king to another, the Tawananna said. In this box, she said you’d know it, is something the Greeks took from Troy. She called it the Palladium.’

His eyes widened. Then, eagerly, he took the box, turned it around, found a catch. The box’s lid slid open, pushed by some hidden spring. Within, on a bed of purple cloth, lay a small statue. To Milaqa’s eyes the stone figure of a woman with her arms upraised, worn almost to featurelessness and stained with smoke, was unimpressive. But Qirum was astonished. ‘ It is true. Milaqa, no Trojan has seen this since the Greeks sacked my city before I was born, and took away our most precious treasures, our most sacred relics. This is the mother goddess. She is the one the Greeks call Athena, in some of her aspects.’

‘I can’t make out her face.’

‘She is old, and much loved — or was. Some of us believed that she had been smashed, not just stolen. What must Kilushepa have paid some Greek warlord for this? How did she find her in the first place? Well — now I have her.’ He bowed to the goddess, reverently lifted her from her bed of cloth, and carried her to the shrine cut into the thick wall. He placed the goddess carefully at the centre of the shrine, where she stood amid similar statues, none of them tall, all garlanded with tokens. ‘For now, lady, you may dwell in the King’s own personal shrine. And tomorrow we will begin work on a temple for you, a temple in New Troy finer than any in the old.’ Again he bowed, and murmured a prayer — and jumped back. ‘Ow!’

Milaqa stared. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘Something ran over my foot. A mouse!’ He came back to Milaqa and the box, reached down, lifted a fold of the purple cloth — and small brown forms squirmed out from under the cloth, out of the box, off the table and went scampering over the floor. He stared at Milaqa. ‘Did you see that? Mice — in a gift from the great Tawananna!’ He burst out laughing.

She couldn’t resist it. Maybe it was the tension, the sheer incongruity. She laughed with him, even harder when one of the little rodents ran over her own leg, and she squealed with shock.

Qirum cupped her face gently. ‘You are even more lovely when you laugh, dear Milaqa.’ He straightened up and strutted around the room. She saw something like the old energy, the confidence she remembered about him. ‘But even the mice are probably a good omen. Well, no doubt I can find a priest who will tell me so. One aspect of the deity the Greeks call Apollo is god of plagues and mice. Maybe the gods are trying to tell us to put an end to this plague of war that blights us. Maybe they are agreeing with Kilushepa, for once! For it’s obvious what she intends, you know. By sending you here like this. Looking like this. She knows exactly what message she is sending me.’

‘I think they are hoping for an alliance.’ She took a breath, and plunged on. ‘Of the kind you forge between your eastern countries. Where princesses are exchanged to bind nations by marriage.’

He gestured. ‘I don’t have much of a country. Not yet.’

‘And I’m no princess.’

‘Ah, you always will be to me, dear Milaqa.’ He studied her. ‘Look — we don’t have to do what they say, you and I. There can be peace whether we marry or not. Or war, come to that. The rules don’t apply to us. Do they, Milaqa? They never did, and never will. Whether we marry or not is up to us — nobody else. But that’s not to say we can’t have some fun, preferably at somebody else’s expense.’ He clapped his hands, a sharp, shocking noise. ‘Woman! Bring wine!’

The senior serving woman came bustling in immediately, bearing a tray of wine and fresh cups. Milaqa was impressed; evidently the servants had learned to anticipate their capricious ruler’s moods.

‘And send for my head of household. And Erishum. There may or may not be a wedding, but there’s certainly going to be a wedding feast. The way the Greeks do it, a pack of curs they may be but they do know how to have fun.’ As the woman hurried out, he called after her, ‘And musicians! Come, Milaqa.’ He held out his hand. ‘Will you dance with this humble suitor? For I am going to have to impress you to win your hand.’

She stood, but held back. ‘In this dress?’

‘Oh, nobody’s watching. Well — only an entire kingdom. And I — ow!’ He hopped, and slapped at his leg. ‘Something bit me…’

Kilushepa had begun packing as soon as Milaqa had been taken away by Erishum, snapping at her serving women as they packed and repacked bits of jewellery and cosmetics in her boxes.

Teel sat with Raka. They were both drinking Trojan wine, imported by Qirum. Teel was getting drunk, but he suspected Raka wasn’t. He watched Kilushepa sourly. ‘Do you have any regrets about what we’ve done, woman? Any at all? If you weren’t so busy fussing over things at such a time-’

‘I certainly regret loading her up with so much jewellery. I suppose it’s possible it could be retrieved, once this is all over.’

Teel grunted. ‘You will pluck it off my niece’s cold corpse, will you?’

‘Enough,’ Raka said tiredly. ‘We all agreed to this, Teel. In fact, as I remember, it was you who persuaded me to accept Kilushepa’s scheme in the first place. We are all complicit. We are each of us guilty, or none of us is.’

‘But two of us are staying, to share the fate we have ordained for poor Milaqa, and the Trojans of course, but I care not a jot for them. And she-’ he gestured at Kilushepa, ‘-is running away to save her scrawny hide.’

Kilushepa stood so her maid could hang her cloak on her back, and fixed it with a gold clasp at her neck. ‘I would take offence at that, Northlander, were you not effectively a dead man already, by your own choosing. Our work is done here. What good does it do to stay? Guilt, you say, Annid? What guilt? Guilt at the fate of Milaqa? You understand that girl as well as I do — I know you do, Teel. You see the flaw in her, the emptiness. Let her be useful for once in her life. Or is it guilt at this “dishonourable” ploy? Look — fools like Qirum speak of waging war with honour. But it is all lies. Qirum destroyed your little communities with overwhelming force, there is no honour in that. And when the fire comes, or the storm, or the flood or the drought, no amount of these heroes’ precious courage or honour will help them survive.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘All that will save you is up here. Intelligence. Cunning. And the determination to use it. Which is what enabled your fabled Ana to beat off the Great Sea of legend, from what I’ve heard of your tradition.’