Free Hades Daughter by Sara Douglass Page B

another pair of gates, almost as solidly built as the outer pair.
    Once at the outer gates, Brutus was stopped by a guard who seemed more than half asleep with boredom: Brutus smiled to himself—if his ships had been noticed and reported, the guard would have been far more alert. The guard spoke to him, asking his business, and Brutus, hanging his head so that his features remained largely hidden in the shadow of the wall, replied in his best rustic Greek, saying that he had some dried figs and wild onions to trade for some town-made pots for his wife.
    The guard, uncaring of either figs or pots or any other doings of peasants, nodded Brutus through, observing as he passed that at this late hour he’d need to find himself a bed for the night until the gates reopened in the morning.
    Brutus acknowledged him with a wave as he trudged through the initial defensive alley, then glanced to either side as he passed through the inner gates.
    As he’d theorised, the narrow spaces between the wall and the lower blocks of Dorian houses and tenement buildings were packed with poorly built and thinly thatched hovels. And even in that brief glance, Brutus could see several women and children moving in the shadows between wall and tenement buildings…women and children with the distinctive features of Troy.
    His people.
    Damping down his excitement—time enough for that once he’d managed to secure their freedom—Brutus walked further into the city, moving higher through the streets to where he supposed Assaracus’ house stood.
    The city was clearly wealthy, and this pleased Brutus; the pickings would be good. The streets were paved and guttered in stone—a rare luxury. The city’s Dorian citizens, now engaged in their final few tasks for the day before the evening set in, were well-garbed in clothes that made use of fine materials; Brutus even saw two women wearing robes made of rare wild silks. The houses were indeed well built and maintained, and the glimpses that Brutus gained through several open doors showed fine interiors, decorated with vivid paints and tiles and even, in one instance, gilding.
    “A rich city indeed,” Brutus murmured to himself, pausing at a street corner to stare about with what he hoped would be taken for the wide-eyed wonder of a countryman.
    All well for his purpose.
    He turned left at the street corner, walking up the centre of an emptying street that led towards the northern quarter of the city. As he climbed, the houses became larger and grander, clearly the abodes of wealthy and important citizens. Many of them were gated and walled, mini-fortresses within the larger city fortress.
    Palaces, almost, rather than houses.
    Brutus’ curiosity about Assaracus grew even stronger. Who was this man, clearly wealthy and influential, and even more clearly Greek, to be so allied with the Trojan slaves?

C HAPTER E IGHT
    Mesopotama, western Greece
    B rutus climbed the street for a few more minutes, the way becoming ever steeper and the houses on either side more palatial, until he came to what was clearly the northernmost point of the walls. Here the street ended in a wide, semi-circular court. High walls surrounded the court, behind which rose grand houses.
    All gates but one were tightly bolted against the coming night.
    To this gate Brutus turned, noting without surprise that it belonged to the house at the highest point. He approached, wondering what awaited him behind the darkened angle of the partly-open solid wood gate.
    As he stepped up to the gate, there was movement inside, and a servant emerged, his head bowed. “Have you figs for the master?” he asked, his voice low. He spoke in Dorian Greek, a rough but easily understandable dialect of the sweeter southern language of the Peloponnese.
    “Aye,” replied Brutus, using the code that had been passed to him, “but they are of unusual taste, having come from far away.”
    The servant bowed, accepting his answer, then opened the door