Chapter 76:: The Sacred Band

“What are you trying to do?”

He looks up from his contemplation of his wrist, which is beginning to turn rather horrifying shades of purple—edges peeking out beneath the bandages. Harmonia is at the door, and Cadmus/Carlton, who had been at the window, staring moodily out, is at her side, her hands held in one of his.

Harmonia struggles herself free, and glares at him. Oh, smart move, alienating our jailer. “I am trying to get out of here, into the fresh air, away from you. And don’t you dare lay a hand on me again, hireling.” Could you be less of a snob, please? He’s big enough to crack either of us open, and he’s been nothing but polite to you. Be nice. You told me to be nice, try it yourself.

Cadmus freezes, jaw clenching, and one large hand fists at his side. “You have no right to go out, Harmonia, and fresh air,” he pulls her to the one window, hand painfully tight on her wrist, “is in short supply.”

Harmonia doesn’t even try, this time, to get him to let go, merely raises her other hand, and brings it down—not in a slap, but a punch straight to the underside of his jaw, where it melts into his throat, that makes him stagger back a step, and drop her hand. “Touch me again,” she snarls, “and I’ll kill you.”

But Cadmus does not hit her, and, he thinks, had merely dragged her to the window to make a point. “There is a room in there,” he says, voice quiet with tightly-reined anger, “and I shall not disturb you, there.”

He comes up behind Harmonia—slow, obvious, I’m not antagonising you, either of you, see?—and puts his injured hand on her shoulder—I’m hurt, I’m vulnerable, I’m harmless—and pulls her away. Cadmus lets her go easily, even turns away in some pretended distaste, but his eyes track Harmonia till she’s in the other room, and has shut the door without speaking another word.

Poor besotted fool, he thinks, coming back, and standing by Cadmus. “I am sorry,” he says, “for any offence my sister has given you.”

“The fault was mine,” Cadmus says, small, wry mile twisting his mouth, “I laid hands on her.” He hasn’t bruised, yet, but there is an angry red patch, where she hit him.

He reaches up to touch it. “Only to remonstrate with her,” he says, fingers gentle on the heated flesh, “any fool could see that. You meant her no harm.”

“I mean her no harm,” Cadmus says, eyes gone a little soft, then, catching and lowering his hand, “nor you.”

“Harmonia is…” a bit of a smug, spoilt bitch, “scared, my lord, and she hits out wildly, even at those who wish her well.”

“I am nobody’s lord,” Cadmus—Carlton?—says. “Least of all yours.”

He nods. “Of course. Would you… I need to get my contacts out. Do you have anything I can put them in?”

“Contacts?” Carlton—definitely Carlton—frowns.

“Yes.” He takes them out, one by one, blinking. “My eyes,” he says, looking up, “are a bit odd. Inhuman.”

“Godlike,” Cadmus breathes. “Why disguise them?”

“I shall not, then, if you so wish.” He lobs them out the open window. “I did not, before I came here.” He turns to Cadmus, trying out—cautious, oh please let this work—a smile. “Then it was just one small deception in the whole web. A harmless one, at least.”

“Sorely have the gods deceived us,” Cadmus says, “and yet, my master will bring us to victory.”

Damn it. You were doing so well, Carlton. “Enough of this despondence.” And how fucking ironic is it, that he’s trying to cheer up his jailer? “We will know of their plans and our part in them, soon. Will we not?” They’ve been here three days, and nobody has even asked after them, yet. He and Harmonia could have killed Cadmus, by now. Do they care as little about Cadmus as his gods—not his gods, never his gods—do about him?

“And so we will,” Cadmus agrees, and glances at the closed door. “I truly did not mean her harm.”

Fuck all this. “I know you did not, and she too.”

“Then why… I speak like a fool.”

“You speak like a man,” he smiles, this one quite genuine. “And what man knows women?” Teiresias did, but your boss killed him.

“Yet this woman was mine, once, and I must have known her, then, and she must have hated me less.” Who knows? She was a goddess wed to a mortal, and though some of the myths are true, not all of them can be, surely? Yet, who knows?

“She is her father’s daughter, too,” he says, “as she has proved on your skin, my friend—dare I call you that?”

“I would have you call me that. Rather that than jailer, torturer, sadist, scum.” He looks down, at his feet, then up, eyes sorrowful. “I have done you no harm, nor meant you any. I do what my master commands, and even then I temper his harshness, towards her, and you.”

You’re terribly young, aren’t you? Hardly older than me. Younger than her, perhaps. “And what would you be doing, Carlton Lint, were you not guarding recalcitrant allies?”

“Writing a paper on the Flood mythology in Classical literature,” Carlton says. He raises an eyebrow. “I’m studying Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Balliol.”

“Oh. I… I should have started at Corpus Christi with Classics,” he offers, “but with one thing and another…”

“Yeah,” Carlton nods. “Doubt that paper will ever be submitted, now.” He walks away from the window to slump into the bean-bag Harmonia had claimed as her own. Was that another of Cadmus/Carlton’s stupidly chivalric gestures? Giving up his favourite seat? “You look too young to be starting at university.”

“Seventeen,” he admits, leaning against the window-sill. “But you can’t be much older.”

“Twenty.” He laughs, suddenly—not a happy laugh, something choked. “I was supposed to call home, yesterday.”

Tread softly. He’s being friends with you. Don’t ask why, but he is. “My mum’s going to fly out here and commit manslaughter, when she finds out I’m missing,” he offers. “Starting with Daniel, I think.” Oh, gods, Daniel. What a time to realise this, and what a man to realise it with. Something had changed, clicked into place, in that breathless moment between Daniel embracing him and Hellenus interrupting. A relief, then, that it had not gone further. Nor ever would.

“Your friend?” Cadmus’ stare is level and his voice flat.

“My mother’s,” he says, which is absolutely true.

“Does she know, then, who you are?”

He nods. “Though not what I’m doing now. Which is hardly surprising, as I know it not myself.”

“It is a good thing you will do, Al’skandar, for surely you do not wish the Olympians to destroy all humankind?”

“Nor to have anyone—god or man—play me like a puppet, Carlton,” he retorts, patience finally at an end. You fool, you blind, besotted fool, why can’t you see that we are pawns, you and I and the girl sulking behind that door?

Silence while he looks out of the window at smoke and rust and something that looks suspiciously like an escapee from a chemistry lab. Then he hears Cadmus get up, and walk the few steps to him, and stands still when a large hand is laid on his shoulder and he is turned, gently but firmly, to face him. “So would you let the world die and die yourself, because you could not take a few orders?”

Cadmus is best described as average, even more so than him, because he has, at least, unearthly eyes, while Cadmus… Cadmus has broad shoulders and ruddy skin and dark hair and a heavy jaw and a full, sculpted mouth, and large, deep-set black eyes, that are filled now with a focus, a determination, that make him look anything but average, here, in this bare little room. You I would follow, he thinks, lips pressed together with the desire-determination-desperation to not blurt it out. You I would follow, Cadmus, son of Labdacus, founder of Thebes, were you to let me. Not to the end of the earth, nor to my own destruction, nor even without fighting you every inch of the way, but you I would follow, Carlton, Cadmus, however you name yourself, even as your servant and even as your counsellor and even as your shield-mate. “No,” he hears himself saying, “that I would not do.”

What a time, indeed, to realise this, and what a perfect, hopeless man, to choose for oneself.