Discord's Apple

“You can’t die without trying,” she said, her voice breaking, muffled as she spoke into his shoulder.

“I’ll hold on as long as I can.”

He made supper for her—macaroni and cheese. He’d never been a creative cook. Comfort food, my ass, she thought. She didn’t eat much. Her stomach clenched every time she looked at him.

They stayed up late talking. He asked her about her work, and she rambled on about the comics business, the stress of deadlines, and the frustrations of markets and distribution. When she talked, she wasn’t thinking about him. She settled into the guest room with the wood-frame twin bed that she’d slept in when she visited her grandparents, the bed that had been her father’s when he was young. She didn’t sleep right away, but lay curled up, hugging the goose-down pillow, feeling small—ten years old again.

He hadn’t asked her to come home. He’d called to tell her he was sick, and she’d just come. That was what you did. He didn’t argue or try to tell her she didn’t have to. Which, when she thought about it, was another sign that he really was sick. He hadn’t yet said, I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Nothing to worry about.

What neither of them hadn’t explicitly said, what she hadn’t understood until she was lying there in the dark, nested in the bed that made her feel like a child, in the room next to the room where her father lay dying by increments, was that she was here to help him die. She would stay until he was gone, whether it took weeks or months or—maybe?—years, and then she would be alone with the house and the dark.

She missed her mother at that moment. She missed her mother all the time, really, but the longing was the phantom ache of an amputated limb. It was part of her, and most of the time she didn’t notice. But certain moments were like reaching for something with a hand that wasn’t there. Evie wanted to run to her mother and cry, make her talk sense into Dad, make her stay with him and watch him die. But it was left to Evie to do by herself.

She wasn’t ready to lose her father, too. She’d be crippled all over again.

2

If they’re going to believe that I escaped your plan to sacrifice me, I’ll have to look like a prisoner,” Sinon said.

“I’ve thought of this.” Odysseus had stood so proudly before the war chieftains, not at all cowed by their wealth or power. He made no secret that he thought most of them vain and petty. He had wanted to let Helen rot in Troy and blame Menelaus for letting Paris carry her off.

Now he looked grim, preoccupied with the details of his plan. His gaze turned inward, and his face was furrowed with worry. Sinon thought, This is what he will look like as an old man.

Sinon had come to Troy a boy, an untried warrior wearing his first growth of beard and carrying his first spear. Under Odysseus’s command, he had grown to manhood, shed his first blood, seen his own blood shed, learned of honor. And of common sense. He would follow Odysseus to the end of time itself.

“Maybe we could get Neoptolemus to have at me.” Sinon grinned, meaning it as a joke.

Odysseus shook his head quickly. “I don’t trust that vicious whelp to know when to stop. I had planned on doing it myself.”

Of course. Odysseus planned for everything, and he hated asking other men to do the difficult work.

Sinon and Odysseus went some distance along the beach, away from camp, where they could have privacy. The camp itself was in chaos—hundreds of tents being brought down, horses being loaded onto ships, supplies packed and carried off, all by torchlight. More than that, the sound of construction—men hammering hundreds of planks of wood into place—overwhelmed even the sound of waves breaking.

This was all part of the plan.

They stopped along the river that poured from the hills above Troy to form a brackish marsh where it joined the sea. Here, the rolling waves and chatter of night insects were audible again.

An escaped prisoner would have rope burns around his wrists. Sinon stripped down to a thin tunic. Odysseus tied his hands with rope and bound his wrists to a post driven into the beach.

Pulling on leather gloves to protect his hands, Odysseus said, “I don’t want to do this, Sinon.”

“I know. But it must be done.”

“A few choice bruises. A black eye. That’s all.”

Sinon nodded and squared his shoulders, bracing.

His jaw clenched, Odysseus made a fist and backhanded Sinon. His head whipped back as he fell, his arms jerking on the bindings.

Over and over, Odysseus struck him. Sinon had been hit before, he’d been wounded in battle. He knew how to block pain. Keep breathing. No matter that his ears rang and that blood clogged his nose. It would be over soon.

Sinon flinched back when Odysseus grabbed his hair to hold his head up.

“Easy, there. I’m done. Priam himself will pity you.”

He tried to smile, but winced when his lip cracked. His left eye was swelling shut already. “You hit like a thunderbolt. I’m glad you’re on our side.”

“Gods, you’re bleeding.”