THE MEGARON IS dark and quiet, the fire crackling in the hearth. Clytemnestra watches its sparks fly across the empty room like butterflies. She and Leon came back when the palace was already asleep, each hall silent and moonlit, empty but for its guards.
The door creaks, and a thin thread of light cuts the floor in two.
“The king isn’t here.” The voice is warm and pleasant, like the sun in winter.
“I wasn’t looking for the king,” Clytemnestra says. A man is walking toward her, his feet bare on the painted floor. When he comes close enough to the hearth, the fire illuminates his face. Clytemnestra freezes. She had expected a mild, pious man, not the hooded figure in front of her—skin pale and wrinkled with scars, hollow eyes, thin, bloodred lips. Clytemnestra feels her body turn cold where his eyes touch her.
“Do you know who had this hall painted?” he asks. There is a creepiness underlying the warmth of his voice, a meanness.
She forces her own to sound flat. “The king who ruled this city before Atreus took it from him, I suppose.”
His lips break into a smile, revealing old teeth. “The hall was bare when Eurystheus was here. No frescoes, no gold, no weapons. Mycenae might have been any other Greek city. Then Atreus made the palace his home and covered every wall with this.” He gestures toward the images in the shadows. “Sometimes the cruelest people are capable of the most wondrous things.”
He is staring at her in a way that reminds her of snakes.
“You are not from here,” she says carefully.
“I have come from Megara at the king’s request. He has summoned me as his new counselor.”
“My husband has plenty of counselors already.”
“None are able to speak the will of the gods.”
A seer: that is what he is. A man expert in prophecies, who divines the future from the flight of birds and animals’ entrails. Her people call him oionopolos. A bird savant. Tyndareus used to mock leaders who relied on one. “What can seers tell me that I don’t know already?” her father would say. “That the gods can be harsh? That I will die soon? That there’s going to be a war? There’s no need to look at a sheep’s liver for that.”
Clytemnestra lifts a brow. “Agamemnon never paid much attention to divination.”
“The Atreidai’s line is cursed, but the king of Mycenae reveres the gods, and the gods respect him in turn.”
She scoffs. “My husband is an ambitious man. He wants power above all else, not to impress any gods, just for the sake of it.”
“He says the same of you.”
She regards him. “What is your name, seer?”
“Calchas.” It sounds unpleasant, like an overripe fruit. She lets it rot in the air until she feels nauseous.
“Well, you must be a very convincing man to make a king who despises prophecies listen to you.” And very dangerous. “Sleep well, seer.”
*
The air is soft with the first smells of spring. Someone is singing in the streets of the citadel, and the vendors’ shouts are fading as the last sales of the day are made.
“I am hungry, Mother,” Chrysothemis says. She is pacing the bedroom, a wooden priestess in her little hand. The doll’s hair is painted black, her gown red and gold, and in her hands are two snakes, symbols of the Cretan goddesses. “Can we eat soon?”
They are in Iphigenia’s bedroom, the light pouring in from the large windows. The frescoed huntress on the wall is fading, and at her feet, the flowers and bees that Iphigenia sketched when she was little. It is almost dinnertime, and they can hear the bustling of the servants outside their door.
“Be patient,” Electra says before Clytemnestra can reply. “We must finish this first.” She is sitting on the floor with Iphigenia, using red paint to color other wooden toys for their younger sister: a horse, a chariot, and some spinning tops. Leon carved them during their journey back to Mycenae.
“We will go to the hall when your father calls for us,” Clytemnestra says. “Unless you want to spend more time with the seer?”
“No, please!” Chrysothemis shrieks. She goes to sit in a corner of the room, by the table where Iphigenia’s jewels are laid out. Aileen kneels behind her, trying to fix her hair in a plait.
Clytemnestra chuckles. Of course her daughter is scared of the seer. Who wouldn’t be?
“You don’t like the seer,” Electra says. The horse she is painting is black with a golden mane.
“It is hard to like him,” Clytemnestra replies.
“I don’t like him either. He says he speaks for the gods, but the gods haven’t been generous with him.”
“Is that going to be your new threat, Mother?” Iphigenia asks. She lifts the wooden horse to the light, making sure the paint is dry. “Don’t go unless you want to see the seer?”
Aileen bites her lip, trying not to giggle. Clytemnestra and Electra laugh. It is a pleasure to hear her voice mingle with her daughter’s.
“It is a good threat when you know it works,” she says. “Aren’t you going to paint that chariot?”
“I will do it!” Chrysothemis says, jumping out of her corner. She stumbles as she hits the table with her flank, and Iphigenia’s earrings clatter. Aileen hurries to put them back in place.
“But you will spoil it,” Iphigenia says. “The wheels are difficult to do.”
“She can do it,” Aileen says. “Just be careful with the brush around your tunic.”
Clytemnestra is about to join her daughters on the floor when Leon bursts in, panting. His hands are trembling, and his face is red.
“My queen,” he says, his voice faltering. Iphigenia looks up at him, her face bright with delight, but Leon doesn’t even see her. He is distraught.
“What is it?” Clytemnestra asks.
“Your brother.”
Clytemnestra springs up and the blankets fall from the bed.
What?
Leon takes a deep breath, and for a moment, Clytemnestra wants to tear the words from his mouth. Then he speaks, and she wishes he hadn’t spoken at all.
“Castor was murdered, my queen. Idas killed him in an ambush.”
*
It was a spear wound, Leon says. It hit him in the neck and sliced it open, like thunder tears the sky. Castor was hiding in a tree, and when Idas struck him, he fell and bled to death among the roots and bushes. It was a lucky death, quick, because Idas is known to torture his victims before giving the final blow.
Her brothers had received their cousins’ death threat on the day Clytemnestra left Sparta—two wolves’ heads in a sack, the eyes gouged out. Phoebe made Castor swear that he wouldn’t leave the palace and search for revenge. But Castor was never good at keeping promises. He left with Polydeuces to slaughter Idas and Lynceus’s herd in the night. They had heard that Lynceus loved his animals as if they were sacred and never allowed anyone to touch them. Castor climbed on a tree to keep watch while Polydeuces cut the sheep’s throats.
Idas and Lynceus were waiting for them, like foxes stalk their prey. Idas spotted Castor hiding among the tree branches and threw his spear to take him down. As he fell, Castor screamed his brother’s name. Polydeuces turned and saw Lynceus run at him with an ax. His dagger sank into the man’s neck, and Lynceus fell, heavy as a bull.