Discord's Apple

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 ha

nds 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.”

She covered her mouth. He thought she was going to start crying again, that the gesture was to hold back tears. But the skin around her eyes crinkled, and she laughed.

“We’re an awful pair,” she said. She looked away, but the smile lingered.

They sat together until dawn. When the sky began to pale with the rose-colored fingers of dawn, he found the courage to say, “I could take you home with me. They—” He nodded to the smoldering city, its streets now paved with bloodied bodies, an occasional scream still tainting the air. “—they will be making slaves of all the women. I could ask for you. I know it is not—it is not what you would wish. But I would be kind. I promise, I could protect you—”

She was already shaking her head, as he expected.

“I’m bound for another. Fate has measured out my thread to a frayed end. But—thank you. It is an . . . unexpected kindness that you offer. As kindness goes in these times.”

He wanted to say more. He felt like he ought to say more, to defend himself and the sacking of the city. She seemed to be mocking him.

A small group of Greeks climbed the path up the hill, flushing out the last of the stragglers. Below, on the street leading outside the city, the warriors were herding the surviving women and children. They were a weeping mass of bodies, clinging together, shuddering. Crying like sheep. No men were left alive.

Cassandra saw this scene as well. She hugged the marble column, pressing her cheek to the ridged stone. “I don’t want to go.”

He stood, straightening his sword belt, smoothing his tunic. “I’ll go with you, if you like.”

“It won’t help. Nothing will help, don’t you understand? I’m already dead.”