Carrie Vaughn - Discord's Apple

His lips thinned. His eyes were sad, though, making his whole expression grim, resigned. “I knew there was a reason you needed to come home. The Storeroom will be yours when I’m gone.”

No. She wanted to deny it, but there was a power pressing down on him. On her. The same sense, the same charge that led her to the glass slippers prevented the word no from leaving her mouth. She had her own life, she didn’t want this . . . this weight .

She didn’t want her father to ever be gone.

“I don’t understand,” she said simply.

“You will, in time.” He sounded like a mystic sage. A wizard, not her father. Another character from a story, and she couldn’t turn the page to see what happened next.

W hen Irving Walker left Saint Louis with his wife, Amelia, they took only three horses—two to ride and one to pack. What the packhorse couldn’t carry, they didn’t bring. The folk who saw them off thought it scandalous, Irving Walker putting his wife through that, not giving her the safety of a wagon train, making her ride in the open, exposed to the elements and all the dangers inherent in the crossing of the Great Plains. But they didn’t know it was Amelia’s idea. Irving asked her what she needed to bring, and she showed him one bag. “That’s all?” he said. “All the important things, yes.” They’d have a freedom they wouldn’t have with a wagon and oxen. They needed to be free, away from people and civilization. That was why they were leaving Missouri in the first place. It had gotten too crowded.

Along the Arkansas River, where the Santa Fe Trail turned south to Mexico, an enterprising businessman named George K. Hope built an adobe fort to serve as a base of operations for his trading company, made up of fur trappers, Mexican merchants, and Indian traders. Within twenty years, Hope’s Fort became a primary way station for explorers heading west, merchants serving the pipeline between the United States and Mexico, and settlers looking for their fortunes beyond the Great American Desert.

When George Hope saw Irving and Amelia Walker approaching the fort with nothing but three horses and the packs they carried, he swore that even after all his years on the plains and all he’d seen in that time, he’d never seen anything like it.

Ten miles or so up the river, where a village had started to put down roots, Irving built a farmhouse with a massive cellar, which Amelia filled with the contents of the one bag she carried with her.

That night, Troy slept, drunk with wine and celebration. Sinon climbed to the top of the wall and lit a torch, the signal for the Greek army to return. Then he went to the main square, where the horse stood. Wide streets led out from the square, giving easy access to the heart of the city and its riches. As he watched, a door on the horse’s belly swung out, and Odysseus dropped to the ground.

He spent a moment stretching arms and legs, easing the cramps from sitting motionless all day. Nevertheless, he drew his sword in a heartbeat when Sinon approached.

“Easy,” Sinon said, his arms raised. “I’m a friend, I think.”

Odysseus’s gaze widened. “Sinon, thank the gods!” They met in two strides and embraced. Odysseus stank of sweat and bodies, from being locked in close quarters with a dozen other men. But they were here, within the walls of Troy.

“You lit the torch?” Odysseus said, stepping back to grip Sinon’s shoulders.

“Yes.”

“Then we should open the gate. The army will be here soon.” The man’s eyes blazed in the dark of night. Sinon grinned, though his swollen face felt stiff.

A short hour later, Troy was on fire.

Sinon didn’t fight much. He’d done his part for the final battle, had gathered enough wounds, and found that he was too weary to do more. He’d be more of a hindrance than a help, lagging behind while the army pillaged the city. Troy was rich. There’d be plunder enough for all. Right now, all the treasure he wanted was rest.

He found a vantage at the temple of Apollo, a rotunda built on the highest hill. He hiked the steps to the portico and leaned on a column. From here, he could see most of the city. The fires started on a few roofs had swallowed entire blocks. He smelled the smoke, thick and caustic. The Trojans had been caught off guard. They ran out of burning buildings, fleeing in blind panic from bands of Greek soldiers. The Greeks, identifiable by the waving crests on their helmets, scoured the streets. Screams, shouts, the clanging of weapons and armor, drifted to him here.

The streets ran with blood. As well they should. The Trojans had been safe behind their walls for too long. Now let them suffer for their pride.

Sinon crossed his arms and mused.

Something bronze clattered on the marble floor behind him. He grabbed his sword and looked.

A woman reached for the dagger she had dropped. Her black hair was unbound, streaming in tangles down her shoulders. She wore the white tunic of a priestess, dusted with soot and blood. She limped, and her face was bruised. She was crying, the sobs coming in dry gasps.

She held the knife like she was thinking of lunging at him, and her face twisted in anguish. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

He gripped his sword, but kept it low, not to threaten but to guard, to show she couldn’t reach him before he could defend himself. “I think not.”

“Then there is only this,” she said, and lay the point of the dagger on her own chest.

He jumped at her and knocked the weapon out of her hand before she could drive it through her ribs. Screaming, she fell away from him, pawing at him, as if his presence pained her.

She’d been raped, of course. There probably wasn’t a woman in Troy who’d reach morning unscathed.

“You’re Cassandra,” he said, finally recognizing her.

Huddled against the next column, she steadied her breathing. “And you’re the liar.”

He started to argue, but he knew what he’d done. What name he’d earned for himself. Two sides to every battle. To the Greeks, he was a hero. But theirs was not the only story to tell. “Yes.”

“And you want to have your piece of me as well.” She spat the words.

“No,” he said, and meant it. She was pitiable, trembling on the ground, hugging her tunic tight around her shoulders. She’d dropped the knife because her hands were shaking.

“You’ve changed the world today, Liar. Think what you could have done if you’d told the truth. All the people who would be alive now. The city would still be alive.”

They both looked over the nightmare below them, the inferno and the battles that carried on from house to house.

“And what of the Greek dead? Paris brought this on you when he took what was not his,” Sinon said.

Cassandra shook her head. “It was the gods. The gods have played us. Do you see them? I do. Athena fights for Odysseus, there, guiding his spear. And there is Aphrodite, going to save her son, Aeneas. And Poseidon, shaking the walls of the palace. Do you see them?”

Sinon didn’t, but her words painted a picture: giants among men, the gods and goddesses of Olympus moving people like they were game pieces.

He sat down, leaning against the column next to hers. “They say you’re a seer. A prophetess, but that no one ever believes you.”

“I am cursed,” she said, forming a vacant, mad smile. “I told them the horse is hollow and filled with Greeks. They laughed. Ridiculous. And it is, of course it is! I speak, I tell, I plead, and they never listen. And they wonder that I’m mad.”

He chuckled, a soft, ironic noise.

She looked sharply at him. “What?”

“And there I was, lying with every word I spoke. And they believed me.”