Free Oracle by Jackie French

watercress—no meat, today. Too much meat, Orkestres said, made a dancer slow.
    Thetis had promised Nikko she wouldn’t speak in front of a King’s man—and Orkestres was above all a man belonging to the High King. She had promised their father too that she would never speak at all.
    But their father was far away. Nor were there any secrets that needed to be hidden from Orkestres. There was no need for silence now. Should he urge her again to speak?
    But Thetis’s words caused trouble. I have enough to worry about, Nikko thought as he finished his pomegranate juice, without tensing every time she opensher mouth. But he still felt guilty as Thetis smiled, or gestured, but never made a sound. Even her feet and hands were quiet as she flipped and somersaulted across the floor.
    Orkestres glanced out the window. ‘That’s Kersites and his men come back, with a fine mob of goats, and barley too, by the look of it. Those ponies can hardly walk. We’ll be on our way tomorrow then. No more riding for us now. We walk the rest of the way, and my knees will pay for it.’ He stood up. ‘Stay here,’ he added. ‘If I’m not back till late get what sleep you can. I must pay for our suppers again tonight.’
    They watched as he painted his face, marking around his eyes and brows with charcoal, using a tiny piece of polished bronze to examine his refection, then rubbing a red salve on his lips and cheeks, followed by oil on his arms, legs and chest. The red fingers of firelight highlighted his shining muscles, making them leap even while he stood still. He carefully slid loops of gold into tiny holes in his earlobes, then put gold chains about his wrists and ankles and even twisted them in his newly oiled and plaited hair.
    Orkestres smiled at Nikko. ‘Too much finery would make the men of your village think the High King had no need of their tributes. But here, Lord Pittaneous wants the honour of a performer who wears gold.’ He added a necklace of red stones, fixed on his public smile, and went out through the curtain.
    Thetis flung herself over to the window and peered out. She looked back at Nikko and gestured for him to join her. He kneeled on the bed platform beside her.
    He still couldn’t get over how big this place was, andhow much was happening all the time. The open space was dotted with big old trees, the nearest some distance from their own window. Over there a woman was draping washing on bushes by the river. Down in the pens the big cattle beasts with their pointed horns bellowed and shoved at each other. In the goat pen, the mothers called for their kids, lost among the crush of legs. And everywhere there were the High King’s men with their shiny tunics, the dark polished leather of their shields, their bracelets and their braided hair.
    It was all as unlike home as it was possible to be. And that felt good.
    He had expected to miss home. He didn’t. When the stories were told around the fire on the feast days, they had always been of heroes dreaming of the land of their birth, longing to see their mothers or tend their fathers’ graves.
    But he felt nothing. No, that wasn’t right. Despite the uncertainty ahead he felt free—free of all the stares, the whispering, the memories of everyone who knew what he had done. Somewhere deep inside anger also burned like coals after the wood had flamed away. He hoped the village did go hungry this winter. He hoped Aertes stumbled like a skeleton and his father’s stomach caved in with hunger, while down in Mycenae he and Thetis ate honey cakes and figs and sipped at pomegranate juice.
    If the High King liked them.
    If Orkestres was telling them the truth.
    ‘Thetis?’
    She turned to look at him again, her face bright as a bird’s.
    ‘Do you think we can trust Orkestres?’
    Thetis frowned a second, then nodded.
    ‘Do you think the High King will like us?’
    She smiled. Nikko had never seen her smile quite like that, like a bird about to leap into the sky. She