The gods—no, the goddesses—had shown me both favor and clemency thus far. They were similarly merciful in the swiftness of my judgment. Heliodoros did not make me wait, lingering in the bare chamber with uncertainty and anxiety clamoring all about like demons. As soon as he returned from Lycus’s burial, my father sent for me, and within minutes I stood before his chieftain’s chair in the feast hall, hanging my head, hiding my face behind the dark fall of my hair. Far too many people were assembled in the hall for my comfort. My brothers stood beside Heliodoros’s chair, neither of them willing to meet my eye. Throngs of men—some pledged to my father, others to Lycus—were scattered about the room. Their low murmurs swirled around me like the currents of a cold, treacherous river.
“Circe.” My father’s voice was cold as a sword and twice as sharp. Silence descended on the hall. “I am appalled and shamed by what you have done.”
It’s useless to defend myself, I thought, clear-headed with despair. He has already decided I am a witch, and a danger to his household. I may be guilty of causing Lycus’s death—hadn’t I prayed for Artemis to remove him?—but I never did it through witchcraft. I know nothing of the sinister arts.
Heliodoros went on. “I took you into my household—you, a whelp with no rightful claim on me and mine. I raised you as I did my own true, legitimate daughter. This is how you repay my generosity? By poisoning the husband I gave you?”
I shook my head in denial, but I did not lift my face to meet my father’s eye.
“Lycus was better than you deserved, better than a woman of your circumstances had any right to expect.”
Now I found I could not hold my tongue. I spoke, still staring at the floor. “My lord and chieftain, Lycus was a foul, disrespectful man. He hated me, and treated me poorly. He—”
“Do not speak!” Heliodoros bellowed. “He was your husband. You were his to treat as he saw fit—to do with as he pleased. You have brought immeasurable shame on my house, Circe—on my reputation, merely by having the audacity to speak against the man to whom you were married.”
My face flushed so hot that my skin burned and my eyes prickled with tears, but I did not dare contradict Heliodoros again.
“For you to poison him,” Heliodoros continued, “to work against him, to actually plan his death…!”
He fell silent. A ripple of sound passed through the hall, a shifting and sighing of men. Heliodoros must have been purple-faced with rage, to cause such a reaction in his onlookers.
After a moment, with his temper more or less controlled, he spoke again. “There is no sense in asking whether you have some defense. Two workers from Lycus’s holding already swore they saw you give your husband potions while he was weak and ailing.”
“Herbs,” I said weakly. “Only herbs. To heal him.”
Heliodoros thundered on, as if I had never spoken. “They swore, too, that Lycus called you a witch and pleaded with his men to keep you away. Lycus knew you planned to harm him.”
I shook my head again. Tears fell from my eyes; I watched them patter on the stones of the floor between my feet, dark spots among pale dust.
“These men have told me that you occupy your time gathering plants and roots to make potions, to work charms and sorceries. Do you deny it?”
“I…I gather plants, but only to heal. I know nothing of charms or sorcery! Please, Father—I have always tried to be a good daughter, a good wife…a good woman.” I looked up at my brothers. “Tell him, Ae?tes, Perses! Tell him I am good and obedient. You know I am.”
Ae?tes’ face was as long and harrowed as if he’d witnessed his own death. Perses sighed heavily, an agonized sound, and passed a hand over his eyes.
“Perses has told me enough already,” Heliodoros said. “He has sworn to me that three nights ago, just before your husband was attacked by wolves, you told him you wished Lycus dead. Perses said that you prayed often for Lycus to die. Do you deny that? Will you call my true son Perses a liar?”
“Why, Perses?” I cried. “Why would you tell him such things? Do you believe me wicked—evil?”
Perses would not answer. Affected by my pain and humiliation, shamed by the part he had played, he hung his head and turned away.
I rounded on my younger brother. “Ae?tes, tell him! Tell Father I’m not a witch. You know I’m not.”
“Sister,” Ae?tes said softly, “I’m sorry. I—”
Heliodoros rose from the chieftain’s chair with one swift, powerful movement. “Silence! No one is to speak. I have heard enough already—more than enough. With time, Sarmatia would have thrown off the usurper Mnason; Lycus would have been recalled to his throne. He would have been indebted to me for the kindness I showed him, and better still, he would have been tied to me by blood—by marriage to you, and by the children you should have borne him. You have destroyed that alliance, Circe. You have undone all my plans.”
I swallowed hard, waiting for my father to pronounce his judgment.
“I have already consulted with the priestess of Hestia. I thought Hestia would declare your life forfeit, for all the damage you have done to my carefully laid plans—and for your audacity, in murdering your husband. But it seems the goddess has other plans for you.”
I looked up at last, full into my father’s face. His small, dark eyes were narrow with disgust, with hatred.
“I dare not upset order,” Heliodoros said coldly. “You have done quite enough of that already. But neither will I keep you under my roof…not any longer. I see now that I never should have taken you in the first place. I should have left you to starve at your dead mother’s breast.”
At such cruelly casual talk of the mother I never knew, my chest tightened with a sudden, fierce pain.
“You shall not remain on this land, either. You are banished not only from my territory, but from Colchis entirely. If any other chief thinks to harbor you, I will make war on him. I will hunt him to the ends of the earth, and slaughter him and all his men like rabid dogs. I will leave their corpses to rot beneath the sun.”
The hall was eerily silent. Heliodoros’s men had heard his pledge; they would be honor-bound to carry it out, to make bloody and relentless war on any Colchian tribe that offered me the least succor. Ae?tes’ face was red; he looked as if he might weep. Perses seemed to wilt beside my father’s chair.
After a moment, I dared to speak. “Where shall I go, then?”
Heliodoros stared at me in silence. His brows lowered. Then he said, slowly, stiffly, “I would send you off to the Underworld if I could—if Hestia permitted. As it is, I cannot contrive to send you that far. But I can put plenty of distance between you and Colchis. Tell that servant girl to pack your chest. You will be at the riverbank when the sun rises. I’ve a ship that will carry you to a fitting home for one such as you.”
We were eight, all told, when we left Colchis forever—we women who came to call this small island, Aeaea, our wild and lonesome home.