Free Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) by P. K. Lentz Page A

 “You are dismissed, with many thanks for your
service.”
    Eyeing him warily, they departed.
 Following them to the door, Demosthenes next sent away the
guard, then turned and found Thalassia hanging back in the
curtained inner doorway.
    “Will you come?” he asked.
    She frowned and made a show of reluctance
before joining him.  He stepped outside, and she followed,
throwing glances left and right as they walked side-by-side through
the parched garden under a rapidly warming desert sky.
 Looking down, Demosthenes saw that she carried the table
knife in partial concealment in her right hand, projecting upward
with the flat of the six-inch bronze blade pressed to her
wrist.
    As they turned together onto the dusty
street, Thalassia tugged a pleat of her orange chiton.  “You
couldn't have picked a less conspicuous color?”
    “Believe it or not, your wardrobe was not
selected by a general.”
    “You're not a general,” Thalassia returned.
 Her watchful gaze was everywhere but on him.
    Demosthenes halted mid-stride.  “Why do
you say that?”
    She spared him a brief look.  “Sorry.
 Sensitive issue?”  Then, irritably, “Can we please keep
moving?”
    Obliging, Demosthenes resumed.  “Since
you knew those other things you said, I suppose it's no wonder
you'd know that I missed the last elections to the Board of
Ten.”
    She nodded.  “In hiding after your
defeat in Aetolia.”
    Demosthenes stopped again and whirled on
her.  “A defeat for which I redeemed myself and then some,
against the Acarnanians!”
    Remembering himself, he calmed and began
moving again.  The acropolis of Pylos rose in the distance to
the north, and crowning it was the ancient whitewashed citadel
which was their destination.  There were few souls abroad in
this neighborhood of the city's fringe.  Most would be out
toiling at their jobs, even the women, the rest in the agora.
    “No need to defend yourself to me,”
Thalassia said innocently, scanning the low rooftops on either side
of the street.  “You will be elected general again, even
without my help.”
    “ Even without ...” Demosthenes echoed,
and then became lost for words with which to rebut such an
insult.
    Thalassia took a break from her surveillance
to lay eyes on him briefly.  “I don't mean to imply you're
anything less than competent,” she said, resuming her watch.
 “The opposite.  But your city does need me.  If you
want her to win, that is.”
    He had not forgotten—how could
he?—Thalassia's baleful words inside the house, that Athens was
doomed to defeat in the this war.  But she had said much else,
too, and nearly strangled him besides, leaving his mind cluttered
and his tongue confounded.
    Demosthenes tried, aloud, to sort some
things out.  “First,” he began, “I accept that you are more
than what you appear to be.  But when you say Athens is
doomed, why should I believe you?  Across that harbor, three
hundred Spartan Equals sit in chains.  To recover them, their
leaders will come begging us for a treaty.  We are nearer to
victory than ever we have been.”
    “Oh, there will be a treaty,” Thalassia
conceded.  “But tell me this: what's a treaty worth among
Greeks?”
    Demosthenes gave no answer, for he knew the
shameful truth.  Treaties were worth very little.  Few
ever lasted out their set duration.
    “This war will not end in exchanges and
envoys,” she said with confidence.  “It will end in total
victory.  Sparta's.  But, lucky you, you won't have to
live to see it.”  The road split, and Demosthenes pointed down
the leftward branch they were to take.  Several steps down it,
Thalassia correctly observed, “This way is not the most
direct.”
    “It avoids the  agora ,”
Demosthenes said.  “I am not unknown here.  I'll be
accosted.”
    “I thought you wanted witnesses.”
    He shrugged.  “And you are clearly a
fugitive.  You tell me, do I need to be seen more than you
need not to be?”
    Fingering the