Between Lions and Men

15: this self-same morning

Ithaca

I walk into the empty room. Good. I'm the first here. We meet in the attic. I walk over to the plans on the wall in chalk. Time to make some adjustments.

"How are things going?" she is at my side in a sliver of shadow. She doesn't appear as herself, instead as a man, they'll all think her one of the soldiers. But it is none the less her piercing eyes upon me.

"Better than they were, yet not as well as they could be," I say.

She says nothing.

"A girl is missing from the village. I spent the night searching, we'll find her soon," I say.

"Just a girl?"

"The best singer in the town, the daughter of one of their priests," i say.

"You don't know where she is?"

"I know where she is not. And that is a beginning," I say, as the door opens.

"Why do we do these things this early?" Captain Peleus saunters in, hair full of sand from the beach, blouse unbuttoned, followed closely by his boy, who is smiling.

"Why does he smile? What have you done?" I ask.

"Is mirth outlawed as well now, Ithaca? Because you can't have any none of us shall?" Menoetius asks. He'll be the death of us all that man.

"Yes, you're awfully accusatory. It isn't as though the two of us often or ever do things," Captain Peleus simpers, in a manner I'm sure is effective only with his father, casting pathetic big blue eyes on me as though I'll give him a sweet and tell him he's been good.

"So there's no reason you're both smiling?" I ask, folding my arms.

"He pushed me down the stairs!" Aias bursts in fully prepared to strangle Menoetius, "And he watched!"

"There it is," I say as Peleus protects the other one.

"Our three greatest warriors," the goddess watches without amusement.

"You're done," I slap my hands together to get their attention, "We have more pressing matters at hand. I have spoken with the gods."

"I told you we needed to start getting him to sleep more," Peleus whispers, not at all quietly, to the other two.

"—and the plague that afflicts our men is not natural," I finish, ignoring them.

"Okay, somebody told you that? Can you describe them to us?" Menoetius asks. He almost definitely believes me, having been in the courts of gods himself, but enjoys needling me in front of the others.

"One of the village girls is missing, Briseis and I searched half the night. I believe if we find her we can end the plague," I say.

"I think Briseis is outside," Aias says.

"Not her, the village girl who is missing," I sigh, heavily.

"Okay fine, if she's missing," Captain Peleus says, "It doesn't hurt to look. Is that what the war meeting is about? Can I go now? "

"You're helping look, not sneaking off to your tent--- didn't you get enough pleasure last night?" I growl.

He shrugs innocently.

"We are all looking. Aias, go and ask the other men if they've seen this girl," I say, handing him a photograph that I procured from her mother's house.

"They probably won't know, she looks the same as all the others," he says.

"I know. You're doing it anyway---you two, come with me," I say, taking the other two's arms.