Daughters of Bronze

1

Rhea

A cry pierces the night.

My bones absorb the jagged note.

I press myself flat to the ground as a winged army erupts from the tall grasses all around me. They take to the air above the Lisgar Swamp. Birds. A hundred feathers blocking out the moon. Only when they melt into the darkness do I see what flies high above their wings.

It burns across the night. Head of fire and a tail of flame. Glowing scales of molten color only the gods can name.

A serpent in the sky.

Half-remembered stories from my childhood rise up in the silence. Pieces of Phrygian prayers and old Hittite songs that spoke of eternal winters. Of sheets of ice that became floods of rain to drown the world. Death and rebirth that left even the mountains scattered as dust upon the wind. A shudder runs through me despite the sticky summer heat.

I rise from the grass. This time, the warning is not a sound, but a feeling.

Movement to the west. Tall reeds swaying in the opposite direction of the wind. One shadow separates from the others.

He is not wearing armor, but the outline of a spear is visible over his shoulder. A mane of long, lank hair tumbles down his back. He stands, staring at the place where the fire serpent lingers on the horizon.

I count two hundred twenty-seven breaths before the sentry melts back into the shadows of the Scamander plain.

A hundred breaths more, and I slip over the hill that overlooks the Achaeans' camp on Sigeum Ridge, where the invaders have been camped the ten long years of this war. The moon drifts back behind the clouds, drenching the swamp and hidden lattice that forms a secret path across it in darkness, but every one of the steps I take is part of a dance I can perform now with my eyes closed.

A hulking monolith takes shape out of the gloom to my right. The stones sing to me with their own beguiling magic, but I force myself to move past the ancient shrine to gods long forgotten without looking back.

My basket waits in a clump of bushes just before the latrines. Tucking it under my arm, I step out into the camp and blink against the brightness of a hundred fires.

On my way to the bathhouse, I pass Agamemnon's settlement. Then Menelaus's. One after another, I list off the names of the Achaean kings until, finally, I draw near the camp closest to the Kesik Cut.

The gates outside Odysseus's settlement are barred to outsiders, as they've been since the Ithacans' failed attempt to trap Troy's people behind burning walls last spring. The Lower City would have fallen then but for my mistress, Harsa Andromache, wife of Prince Hector and the mother to Troy's future heir. That day when Odysseus's arrows rained fire, it was Andromache and her allies who saved Troy from destruction. I know because I was there. From my hiding place upon the Trojan plain, I saw everything.

Even if nobody saw me.

A low groan rises from my right, where a swaying Achaean relieves himself against a nearby hut. A short sword glints in the war belt at his waist. I myself carry no weapons but the small blade strapped to my thigh. Despite Andromache's best efforts to teach me, I am no warrior. Nor am I a leader whom others would follow as they do her and Prince Hector. Instead, my talents lie here, in the shadows, where I gather bits of information like straw and bring them back to those who might do something with them. Only, lately there is no straw to be found.

I approach Odysseus's settlement. The walls have been built high enough to block out prying eyes. There is only the sound of cracking wood, smelting metal at all hours, and a subtle shift in the air. One that tells me that Odysseus's men are building something behind those gates.

Whatever it is, it can only mean trouble for Troy.

It is the conviction that brings me back here, night after night.

The smell of livestock grows stronger the closer I draw to Odysseus's settlement. A few men stripped down to kilts work just outside the well-constructed gates. Most of the Achaeans deride Odysseus behind his back for these extra precautions he has taken. And why wouldn't they? Since the fighting resumed on the summer moon, the gridlock on the plain remains unbroken. Men bleed and men die, but the lines that mark the spaces between them do not move. Without Achilles and his deadly Myrmidons to bolster their ranks, the Achaeans have made no ground. But neither has Prince Hector and his army.

In the common places where the men gather after long days on the plain, words have taken the place of spears. The men mock Hector for the same reason they do Odysseus. Because they do not glimpse the higher stars that guide them, each along his own path. Hector's refusal to press is born not of weakness but of duty to a king, a council, and a hundred years of tradition that bind his hands. As for Odysseus . . .

Unlike the other warriors on Sigeum Ridge-men who drink and quarrel to drown their homesickness and their fatigue-Odysseus knows that danger is much closer than they realize. Even now, it walks among them, waiting upon their tables and lying beside them at night with open eyes while they drift away to sleep.

A clump of wet earth lands in my path, drawing me up short. A man lifts himself out of the trench to my right. The young warrior nods in apology. I nod back, storing his face in the memory that uniquely qualifies me for this dangerous role I play. The same memory that assures me that while the Ithacans are here digging day and night, their trench somehow never gets any deeper. I watch them work with calculated laziness. Like the sentry on the plain, their gazes are trained not on the tools in their hands but on the Kesik Cut.

Searching. Waiting.

The moist heat of the bathhouse rolls over me. I hardly spare the naked men in the pools a glance as I move toward the back where Ven, my closest ally in this camp full of enemies and one whose scarred face I had a hand in making, supervises the washing. Her brows draw together as she watches me approach.

"What's wrong?" she demands.

"Hello to you too." I lay down my basket and bend to help her with a load of dirty tunics.

"Never mind that," Ven snaps. "You're white as moonstone. What's happened?"

"The serpent in the sky."

"So I heard," Ven says grimly. "The men are agitated. They say Agamemnon's priests are holed up in his hall trying to divine some meaning in it." She shrugs. "It is not the first warning sent by the gods and it will not be the last. If it makes the Achaeans anxious, all the better for us."

I nod, but Ven's frown only deepens. "There is something else," she says. "Out with it."

I let out a long breath. "I saw another one."

Ven puts down her load and turns to face me fully. "Where?"

"Southeast of the Lisgar Swamp."

Ven's scars are an angry red in the bathhouse steam. "How close?"

"Close."

Neither of us speaks. Since the summer began, I've seen Odysseus's men moving in the dark on my nightly trips back to Troy's walls. Ven and I have tried to track their movements, but they change with the wind. This isn't the first time Odysseus has sent scouts to the plain, but it is the first time they've strayed so close to my well-worn path.

Ven reaches for the tunic I wear when running errands for the Achaean healer Machaon and loops it over my head. "Did they see you?" she asks, tying the material with brisk, efficient movements.

"No."

"Are you sure?" The belt at my waist cinches painfully.

"Yes." I draw back. "They were too focused on the Kesik Cut and then the sky serpent."

"They are getting closer."

I say nothing. There is nothing to say. Odysseus's silent retreat into his settlement is not the type of quiet that feels like surrender. No, this silence has all the markings of a trap being laid.

Ven regards me with midnight eyes. In them, I glimpse the truth I can no longer deny. Every night I step out onto the plain might be the night the Mother goddess's favor finally runs out.

It is the risk that I take. That we are all taking.

"He knows," Ven says simply. "He knows, and he is hunting us."

I swallow and nod.

Odysseus hasn't forgotten the failed attack on Troy, or what it cost him. Nor is he oblivious to the shift in momentum that has followed. Since our network of shadows has come to these camps, every raid the Achaeans have undertaken against the coastal settlements of Anatolia has been met with resistance. Some of the cities have held. Others have fallen. None have been taken without a price.

While most Achaeans blame their woes on the gods' ill favor, Odysseus is too shrewd not to see the work of other invisible hands. And so he has drawn inward just as we have extended ourselves.

"If he suspects treachery, we must take extra care," Ven says. "It might be time to pull back on your trips through Troy's walls."

Panic rises up inside me, but I swallow it down. "We've come too far to abandon our work now." My mind conjures up the image of the ancient shrine and the broad-shouldered silhouette waiting for me there. Guilt pricks at me, but I shove the feeling away and meet Ven's gaze. "He suspects a traitor, yes, but he is looking in the wrong place. He can't imagine his informant could be anything but a man."

"Are you sure we aren't in danger of making the same mistake?"

I glance up sharply.

"To catch more information for your mistress, we've spun a wider web," Ven says carefully. "At last count, we have twenty-three women acting as eyes and ears for Troy. Ours is a delicate weave. One loose thread may send it collapsing down around us."

"Each one of those girls was specifically chosen," I say. "I trust your judgment, Ven."

"Don't you know by now?" She presses the basket into my hand. "Trust no one."

She turns before she can see the way her words leach the color from my face. The reality is that every unlikely soldier enlisted to our ranks comes with a hundred secrets that might open doors to a thousand invisible dangers.

Nobody knows this better than me.

I tighten my grip on the basket and leave to make my rounds. The night is crystalline. Bright stars salt the black sky, adding flavor and texture to the rough outline of Cape Sigeum with its high ridges gently dropping down to white beaches lined with rows of black-hulled ships. I spare the Ithacans outside their gates a final glance.

Chopping. Sawing. Hammering in the dark.

What is Odysseus doing behind those walls? And if he knows there are Trojan spies on Sigeum Ridge, why hasn't he sounded the alarm?

I quicken my pace.

"What is it, girl?" asks the guard outside King Idomeneus's settlement. Just as he has asked me dozens of times before.

"Delivery from Machaon."

The sour-faced Cretan scrutinizes my basket. He jerks his head, and I make my way into King Idomeneus's compound. In my months spent in the camps, I have learned to distinguish the factions by their looks and manners as easily as by their separate settlements. The men of Crete take particular care with their appearance, unlike the hard-nosed warriors of Mycenae and Sparta. Or the rangy, clever soldiers of Pylos. Or even the perfectly sculpted giants of Salamis and Phthia. So many divisions in the ranks of these men.

Every last one of them at the end of their ropes.

"Poultices from the infirmary," I tell the pretty girl who greets me at the door to King Idomeneus's house.

The hall behind Zeyra is crowded with Cretan soldiers, drinking and laughing too loudly. It is the laughter of men who are worn thin and trying hard not to show it. The fighting on the plain was fierce today. Or so I gathered from the number of newly filled pallets in the infirmary.

Zeyra glances over her shoulder before stepping all the way outside.

A soldier brushes past us. We wait for him to walk away. Instead, he loiters.

Zeyra stiffens. I shake my head subtly and shift the basket onto my hip while I mark the man for Ven. Tall. Middling build. With three twisted fingers on his left hand. I don't recognize him. Which means he could take his orders from anyone: Odysseus, or Agamemnon, or even old Nestor.

Either way, we are being watched.

"Thank you." Zeyra's voice is steady. "The women here have no need of cleansing herbs at the moment. Perhaps check on us again in a few days?"

No new information from the camp of King Idomeneus.

The Cretan spits and leans against the wall. Talk of female cleansing often sends battle-hardened soldiers running. Apparently, not this one.

"I'll let Isola know." I force my gaze to remain fixed on the young woman in front of me. "She'll make up a fresh basket, and I'll return in a few days."

"Rhea, wait." Zeyra chews her lip and glances at the idling soldier. "I've heard that women in King Diomedes's settlement may require some sage and wormwood."

Sage. News from Lissia.

Wormwood. Death or injury.

"Thank you." I offer the girl a smile to let her know she's done well. "Tell the other women to take care. The marsh sickness is rampant."

It takes all of my willpower not to run as I make my way across the crowded camp. None of Ven's recruits have been more helpful than Lissia and the girls in King Diomedes's settlement. The young Argive king likes his women almost as much as he likes to boast about his exploits. What Diomedes doesn't realize is that those women bear long memories and even longer grudges.

Heat slicks up my back. The moon is drifting across the swirling blue of the Aegean as I finish the last of my rounds. Soldiers brush past me, but there are many women too.

Zamna. Dawiya. Adomeni. Kallwi.

Some of them call out greetings. Others wave. More ignore me as I pass.

Lissia. Zeyra. Manatta. Balan.

Who were they before the Achaeans sacked their homes and turned them into slaves? I suppose it doesn't really matter. I'm trusting every one of these women with my life, just as they're trusting me with theirs. We were born in different cities, but over these many moons, we've become sisters of the Troad bound together by Ven's careful organization and Andromache's plans, dedicated to a single purpose. To that end we have been tirelessly working.