Hades’ Daughter. Book One of the Troy Game by Sara Douglass

That was fortunate indeed, or else far more of the sleepers would have died.

In the darkest hours of the early morning, when sleep was deepest, a faint tremor ran through the rocky foundations of the city.

Then another, a little stronger.

Then a frightful surge of energy that lifted up houses and buckled the paved streets.

Blangan had been sleeping by her husband’s side. As the room lifted about her, and their bed slid sideways, Blangan grabbed at her husband, Corineus, and cried out in terror.

He half slid, half fell out of the bed, dragging Blangan with him.

‘Outside!” he yelled, terror hoarsening his voice. “Now! Out! Out!”

Blangan needed no further encouragement. She grabbed at a sheet, winding it about her slim form and, Corineus’ arm about her waist, struggled toward the door.

They barely made it onto the wide verandah that ran about their house before the doorway’s lintel fell crashing behind them.

‘What is happening?” Blangan cried.

She cried those words because she knew it was expected of her. The gentle, wise wife of the city’s leading citizen was not supposed to know of the origin and meanings of earth surges and dark happenings, but despite her pretense, Blangan knew very well what was happening.

This was the work of her sister. She knew it.

‘Blangan,” Corineus said, taking her hand and leading her down the steps into the wide street. “Away from the building. Now. It might collapse.”

But it didn’t. There were no more tremors, and the only casualties were in buildings less well constructed than Corineus’ house, and which had collapsed in that single destructive surge.

Corineus relaxed after it became apparent that the earth was going to confine itself to that single, if albeit frightening, tremor. He organized the people of Locrinia into open spaces for the night until their tenement buildings and houses could be examined for damage in the morning light, and walked among them, Blangan at his side, murmuring reassurances.

IN THE MORNING, HIS WORDS WERE SHOWN FOR THE empty hopes that they were.

Every single building in Locrinia was cracked, so badly that it was apparent that when the heavy autumn rains arrived the mud-bricked buildings would collapse.

Come two or three months, and Locrinia would be uninhabitable.

‘It is unbelievable,” Corineus muttered, squatting at the foundations of one of the houses.

Behind him, Blangan, staring transfixed at the cracks, could believe it very well.

Genvissa wanted her home, and she wanted her badly.

Five coRnelia speaksDO NOT KNOW WHAT MY HUSBAND SAW ON THAT IS-

land, but when he came back his eyes were strange and power seeped from every pore of his body.

If ever I had needed proof of the blood of Aphrodite that I knew flowed through his veins, then those eyes and that power would have been enough.

It was as much as I could do not to step back from him, nor flinch when he put his hand to my cheek.

He told me to rest, and that he would not disturb me, but late that night, when I was deep asleep, I woke to hear his voice ordering Aethylla from my side on the sleeping pallet. He lay down beside me, his breath thick with wine, and told me to sleep, and that he would not make any demands of me.

Nevertheless, merely to have him there, to feel his body close to mine, and to sense the remnants of whatever power had infested him on the island, was enough to keep me sleepless until dawn broke the night.

I stirred, meaning to rise, but he held me back with a hand on my belly.

‘How long?” he said, and I quailed.

‘Two months, perhaps a few weeks more than that,” I said, then rolled a little so I could see his face.

“Brutus, I—”

But he had risen, and was gone.

WE SAILED SOUTH SOME NINE DAYS. THE WIND BLEW briskly at our backs and the seas rolled us gently forward. I remembered all the tales I’d heard about the black nature of this sea, how it

never stayed calm longer than a day or two before it blew itself into a ship-eating gale, and how pirates patrolled its surface and monstrous marine worms its depths.

But this sea was not that of the tales and rumors. It was unnatural—even I could feel that—as if a god had passed his or her hand over its surface and calmed it for the betterment of our passage.

Brutus must clearly be god-favored, and I shivered as I wondered whether or not I could ever win enough of his affection to ensure my life.

Brutus left me well enough alone for these nine days of sail. During the day I sat with Aethylla and one or two of the other Trojan women on the aft deck, raising our faces to the sunshine, and passing stories between us of children and childbirth.

I hated it. I loathed it—could these women talk of nothing else but babies? They even put their hands to my belly—ugh! I felt violated—and felt the shape of the baby within, and nodded their heads sagely, and said it was bound to be a fine son for Brutus.

They said nothing to me of how this “fine son” had been got on me, or of how it bloated my body most horribly, or of the pains that shot up and down my legs and through my groin when I walked, or of its odious twisting and turning at night when I wanted to sleep, nor even of the pressure the thing put on my bladder so that I dribbled urine at the most inopportune moments. They spoke only of the fine son it was for Brutus, and how that must please me.

I smiled, and nodded, and hoped they did not see through my eyes to the fear beneath. I could laugh and gossip with the best of them when it came to saving my life.

At night Brutus came to lie beside me, but he rarely spoke to me and made no demands on my body (I was not surprised, in the past two weeks my belly had swollen most hideously, and I doubted that even the most lustful of men could climb it).

He did, nonetheless, disturb me, for when he slept he dreamed of such strange things that he tossed and turned and murmured. Among the night visions that passed through his mind was a dream of a woman. I know this because as I sat wakeful and watching, I heard him murmur to her, and reach for her, and twice I noted that his member grew hard and erect.

Then I drew back in horror, not only that I feared he might wake and use me to sate his longing for another, but that he actually dreamed of someone else.

Someone to replace me once I’d fulfilled my purpose and delivered him a son? Someone he preferred to me? Someone he… liked ?

Those hours, when I sat there and watched Brutus dream of another woman, were among the blackest I’d ever known. It seemed, then, that any hope I had of gaining his regard was very slim indeed.

Sometimes I tried to remember Melanthus, but under my current trying conditions—the burdensome weight of another man’s baby within me, the strangeness of shipboard life, the constant worry that Brutus would abandon or murder me once I’d given birth (an even greater fear now I knew he dreamed of another woman)—I found Melanthus’ face ever more difficult to recall. Besides, he belonged to a life long gone.

ON THE MORNING OF THE TENTH DAY AT SEA THE FOR ward fore-looker cried out, and

pointed, and between the scores of craning necks between where I sat on the aft deck and the stem of the ship, I could see a faint line of the horizon. It was an immense land, Aethylla’s husband, Pelopan, told me, toward which we sailed. Vaster than could be imagined, and filled with creatures stranger than the wildest fantasy.

‘Is this where Brutus leads us?” I asked, hating it that I had to ask Pelopan and so reveal my own complete ignorance of my husband’s intentions. “Is this where he will build the new Troy he speaks of so often?”

‘Who can know?” he said, then turned aside to his own wife, holding her hand and smiling with obvious care at her.

I felt a sudden surge of ill will toward them. There they stood, simple untutored folk, at ease and in love with each other, while ,’… I, who had been bred to such luxury and such privilege, and who should have had love aplenty for the asking, was condemned to a husband I feared and a child I resented.

Unbelievably, shamefully, I began to cry again, and had to stand there, enduring Aethylla’s deep sighs and condescending pats on my shoulder, as I wept for all the love I’d lost.