Free Oracle by Jackie French Page A

nodded again. Suddenly he couldn’t bear to be responsible for her silence.
    ‘You can talk,’ urged Nikko. ‘Please. You can talk when we are alone. It doesn’t matter what you say if it’s just to me.’
    She looked at him consideringly, then shook her head again.
    ‘Won’t you ever speak?’ There was desperation in his voice now. He hadn’t meant to rob Thetis of her voice again, only to make her stop and think before she spoke. But their father had wanted to stop her forever.
    Thetis thought for a moment, and then she smiled once more. She lifted up her hands. It was an easy gesture to read.
    It meant I don’t know.

CHAPTER 9
    It was late when Orkestres returned. There had been singing, and people playing the lute and pipes, and a great fire in the middle of the town, with a whole roast ox turning on a spit, and townsfolk scrambling to get a slice of meat. Nikko supposed Orkestres had performed, because when he finally pushed past the curtain into their room, even the glowing coals were enough to show his face was white with pain. He lay down without bothering to wash off the paint. Nikko heard a small moan as he rolled over on the hard bed platform.
    Nikko closed his eyes again. Tomorrow they would set off again. Three more days to Mycenae. What would it be like? It felt strange to be so cut off from his past, but not to know his future either, almost like he and Thetis were hanging in midair.
    He tried to think of good things. A grand palace, like this but twice as long. A High King who looked like Orkestres but with a gold beard, who smiled at them and cheered…
    When he opened his eyes, Orkestres was washing his face in a bowl of water, and there were honey cakes on the table. One of the serving girls must have come in when he was still asleep.
    Thetis was awake already. She kneeled on the bed platform, staring out the window.
    ‘What is it?’ Nikko rubbed the sleep from his eyes and perched beside her.
    Thetis pointed.
    Down in the courtyard, men washed their faces in the tubs the cattle drank from, and women baked bread under the bread stones outside their houses, poking twigs into the flames so the bread cooked faster. The sky was streaked a pale white and grey.
    Nikko shook his head. ‘What’s so special?’
    Thetis bit her lip. She pointed again, here…there…then shook her head.
    ‘You mean, you’re showing me what’s not there?’
    Thetis nodded. Her small face looked intent, and worried.
    ‘Hurry up.’ Orkestres sounded impatient. He was wearing his good wool cloak with the gold border, and his gold chain and bracelets again. ‘We don’t want to keep the others waiting. And in the names of the three faces of the Mother, pull a comb through your hair, both of you, before anyone sees you. You look like you’ve been pulled through a hedge backward. You may still dress like peasants, but at least your heads can look respectable.’
    ‘Sir, I think there’s something wrong. Thetis can see something…’
    ‘Then why can’t the child—’ Orkestres strode to the window.
    It was that which saved them.

CHAPTER 10
    The earth groaned. When Nikko looked back on that morning he was sure the earth spoke first, a deep shriek as though the very rocks had pulled apart. It was low as a growl and high as a bird’s cry at the same time.
    A beam rattled in the ceiling. And then the whole hall shivered. The floor began to heave. A beam fell, and then another; a wall began to crumple. The world was crunching walls and dust.
    ‘Jump!’ Even as he spoke, Orkestres dived out of the window, like a kestrel swooping down after a hare.
    Nikko stared. Orkestres’s body rolled like a ball below him, tumbling over and over, then suddenly he flipped again, straightened, and landed, almost gently, feet first.
    Another wall crumbled behind them. He could hear other walls falling, deep within the hall, a noise like floods battering rocks in a spring torrent.
    They were going to die if they stayed here. They