With no specific directives from Athena, Adresteia decided to separate from the Greek army and do things the way she had for decades - independently. It was easy to slip into Troy as a bird. Eagles and owls did draw some attention and apprehension from the superstitious denizens, but no one in the streets was willing to take off running across roof tops to keep an eye on a suspicious owl.
The Trojan leadership maintained an air of optimism and went to great lengths to stir feelings of Trojan supremacy and convey the certainty of victory, while still persuading the people that they needed to adhere to rationing, curfews, and other security measures that had been implemented to make the siege survivable. Beneath that optimism, however, Trojans at every level of society reflected frequently on the fates that would befall them if the city were taken, and across the board, the options were essentially slavery, rape, and death – and the categories weren’t mutually exclusive.
Troy had been attacked by the Greeks before, under Herakles. The men of Priam’s family had led the Trojan army into battle and engaged the Greeks valiantly. But the Greeks had Herakles, and a number of old Argonauts, at the head of their forces. Priam’s brothers, uncles, and father had been slaughtered wholesale. Priam had been fortunate enough to be captured on the battlefield by Teucer and Ajax’s father, rather than crushed underfoot by Herakles. Fortunately for the Trojans, Priam’s older sister had negotiated a dignified surrender, using herself, one of Troy’s last remaining heirs, as collateral.
After the desecration of Apollo’s temple, however, any hope of such a civilized end to the war seemed to be gone. Given the opportunity, the Greeks would massacre the Trojan soldiers without mercy. The influential men in the city would be killed to squash any potential for future reprisals, and the same fate would be extended to their sons, no matter how young they were. Their wives would be taken as slaves. Some might be ransomed if their families went free, but many would be taken back to Greece as status symbols. Those among their daughters who survived the initial brutality of their capture, would be sold to the far reaches of the earth as if they were used goods.
The Trojans feared enslavement by the Greeks more than anything else. Depending on the master, slavery could mean a lifetime of rape, borderline starvation, and daily humiliation. Worse, though, it would be a fate passed onto their descendants. The bastards born in the slave quarters would be slaves from birth, as would their children and their children’s children. Being captured by the Greeks meant a grim fate not only for oneself, but ones bloodline in perpetuity. Adresteia nearly felt sorry for them.
She hated the notion of slavery in any form so passionately that it had, at times, been a divisive issue between her and Odysseus – and Odysseus had no love of the institution to be sure. Adresteia hated the common practice of taking prisoners of war as slaves, even when they were treated as well as Achilles had treated Briseis – she believed it was fundamentally unjust. But Adresteia’s compassion for the Trojans was tempered by the reality of their society.
Adresteia couldn’t exactly walk about the palace and talk to people as an owl, so she had assumed her human form and created a simple tunic that would mark her as a slave. It was a good disguise, because no one important would expect to remember a simple slave, or be interested in knowing her in any depth. It was the next best thing to invisibility.
Granted, in any of Troy’s businesses or middle class homes, a Trojan citizen would have raised more than an eyebrow at an unfamiliar slave on their property, but Priam had a hundred children in his palace, half of which had families and children of their own, and those families had retinues of servants to attend to them, as did Priam’s nephews and nieces, advisors and administrators. Effectively, the palace was like a city within a city, complete with a large underclass of forgettable workers. When moving about the palace in the guise of a slave, the greatest risk of detection came from the actual slaves, and the best way to deal with that was to become one of them. Adresteia took an unclaimed bed in their quarters, shared meals with them, and spent months learning their stories.
Underneath it all, the Trojans' fear of Greek slavery reflected the callous inhumanity of the way they themselves traded and abused human beings. That they feared the fate so greatly was proof that they understood very well how horrific an institution it was, yet no Trojan said, “Well, if being a slave would be the worst fate I could possibly have at the hands of the Greeks, then maybe I shouldn’t own slaves myself!” The Trojans explicitly feared the possibility that they might share the same terrible fate they had inflicted upon countless others, and that fear gave them no remorse, no regret, no inclination to repent.
The Greeks were no better of course, but the hypocrisy on both sides of the conflict precluded any idealism one might have attempted to impose upon the war. As far as Adresteia was concerned, she had no allegiance but to her friends. She’d promised Penelope that Odysseus would return to her, and that would not happen unless the Greeks either won the Trojan War, or made the radical and politically dangerous decision to retreat. So, she helped the Greeks.
And then there was Helen.
Helen who, Menelaus claimed, could lift boulders, run without tiring, and even seemed to hear his thoughts at times. Helen who seemed to have stopped aging about ten years ago. Helen, who was born about the same time Adresteia had gone to Hades and Persephone for help with her pregnancy. Helen who, as many had told her, looked uncannily like Adresteia’s human form.
Adresteia had wanted to push the thought away at first, but she had eventually accepted the truth – Helen of Sparta was her biological daughter. A cynic might have said that shared blood gave them no obligation to one another, but that blood was gods’ blood. Adresteia looked back on what had befallen Helen – manipulation by Aphrodite, mental slavery by Paris – and believed that none of it would have happened if Adresteia had kept Helen close and raised her to know and embrace what she was. Adresteia had thought that the best thing she could do for her children was to give them up to be raised by someone else, but that someone else had by necessity been human, and a god allowing their children to be raised by humans was about as responsible as a human allowing their children to be raised by wolves.
So, now she stalked the palace of Troy, listening, studying, waiting for the right moments to ask questions and volunteer help, all so she could maneuver, gradually, to her daughter’s side. She’d come closer than ever before when the royal family made an evening visit to Troy’s largest street market, Priam hoping to manage the people’s anxiety. Adresteia inserted herself into their retinue and watched as Priam walked among the people with his second wife, Hekuba, his daughter-in-law, Andromache, his son, Paris, and Paris’s lover, Helen. Had Hector been there, things would likely have gone smoothly, but in the charismatic warrior’s absence, trouble began to brew as soon as their personal guard parted the sea of traders and shoppers for Priam and Hekuba.
Although the king and queen of Troy talked a good game in front of their people, the market was one place where the consequences of the war were undeniable. The Greeks hadn’t yet managed to cut the city off wholly from its surrounding lands – the Achaeans simply didn’t have the resources to station that many men outside every gate of the large city. However, they’d still shut down all resources flowing in from the Aegean, and the siege of Dardanus had stopped all traffic from the Black Sea. Troy had tried to bypass the Greeks at Dardanus by establishing overland trade caravans between Troy and Abydus, a city farther up the strait, but many of those caravans were picked off by the same Greek patrols and raiding parties that combed Troa’s hillsides for resources to sustain the Greek war effort. While Priam had not needed to implement rationing yet, food and other bare necessities were becoming increasingly expensive within the city. The poor were starving, and the middle class was having to severely tighten their belts. And everyone inside and outside of Troy blamed Helen for their problems.
Priam, lifelong politician that he was, was wandering about shaking hands, Hekuba close at his side. Andromache conducted herself like an ordinary person, discussing with an apothecary the best spices to improve fertility. Paris was trying to cheer Helen up through jokes, offers of gifts, and flattery. None of it was working.
“They hate me here,” Helen whispered, “This, all of this, is my fault.”
“They don’t hate you,” Paris said stroking her hand.
“Look around you Paris, do those look like friendly faces to you?”
Paris looked around; about a third of the people in the market had both eyes fixed on the couple, with Helen getting the harrier of the two eyeballs.
“They’re fools,” Paris said, “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Didn’t do… I left my daughter, Paris! I abandoned Hermione!”
“Well, of course you did; can you imagine what a shitstorm it would have created if the only living heir to the Spartan throne had defected to Troy?”
“There are thousands of angry Achaeans waiting outside these walls for us,” Helen said, “I don’t think bringing my daughter here would have worsened the situation.”
“Is that what you want? You want your daughter here in Troy?”
“… No. She’s better off with her father. Or she would be, if her father was in Sparta with her instead of trying to rescue me. Gods damn it.”
“Rescue you?!” Paris exclaimed, “You talk as if I kidnapped you, but I did no such thing, did I? You came to my room that night. You made love to me. You asked to go with me when I left. You were the one who wanted to escape, and I was happy to accommodate that, but…”
“I didn’t want to escape,” Helen said, “There was nothing to flee from; I was happy with Menelaus until you came to Sparta.”
“I can’t imagine that’s true.”
“It is,” Helen said, “we were happy together. We used to…”
Paris cut her off with a shush, “I don’t want to hear about your marriage to Menelaus. I hear enough about him from everyone else, I don’t want to think about him … ugh. Putting his hands all over you. It disgusts me.”
“Why? He is a good man!”
“Helen!” Paris scolded her, “Drop it. Unless you want me to sleep somewhere else tonight?”
Helen bit her lip. She wanted to tell him to go cut his own cock off and shove it up his ass, but then she imagined the look she would receive if she said something like that to his face. The thought of tears in his eyes churned her stomach – she couldn’t bear to upset him.
“I didn’t think so,” Paris said, “Now come on, there must be something here I can buy you to make everything okay?”
Paris found an intricate, elegantly crafted armband, and made an offer to the foreign merchant selling it. The man in the stall rattled back something in a language Helen didn’t know, and then pointed at her necklace. Helen clutched it before she even understood what was going on.
“No, no,” Paris said, “The necklace isn’t for sale.” The man turned to arguing vociferously, with the exchange escalating until Priam took notice.
“What’s going on?”
“I wanted to purchase this armband for Helen,” Paris said, “but now our eastern friend here is leaning on her to give up the necklace I gave her.”
“The armband is nice, but that trade would be ridiculous,” Priam said to the dealer. The dealer pushed more of his wares across the table. “Oh, I see. You’re offering all of your inventory for that one necklace? That is a generous offer…”
“You say that as if we need the money,” Paris said.
“If the Greeks remain outside our walls for long, we may,” Priam said, “but more pressingly… look around you son.” The number of people staring at them had increased dramatically. There were now many disapproving looks fixed right on them. “These people see us as out of touch because of our wealth. Refusing an offer like this is… well, it reinforces that perception. What if I need to raise taxes again? How am I to persuade our people the city needs money when my son puts on airs of godlike wealth?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Paris turned back to the vendor, “It’s not for sale. It was a gift. A very important one. Lots of sentimental attachment. Loads of sentimental attachment. I’d trade anything else.”
The vendor studied him with a look of annoyance, then nodded in understanding.
“Great, great – what would you ask for the bracelet, and… let’s say those ear cuffs?”
The man pointed at Helen with a vicious smirk and said something. Helen didn’t understand all of it, but she recognized the words ‘Greek whore’.
Paris grabbed the man by the front of the shirt and hauled him over his table. The king's guards put their hands on their swords and braced for trouble, but before Paris could even begin to ream the man for his insult, another man in the surrounding crowd ran up to Helen, ripped her necklace off, and ran.
Helen screamed and clutched her chest. Paris let the vendor go and chased after the thief. The guards moved to help him, but when one of them knocked over a stand full of food, spilling good, expensive fruit into the horse-dung littered street, tension in the crowd boiled over. People began throwing the fruit, then the dung, and then vases and everything else they could grab. The crowd surged inward as it rioted, while the guards closed ranks around Priam, Hecuba, and their daughter-in-law. Helen, the foreign girlfriend, was left on her own.
People became frenzied, grabbing her and ripping her clothes off. A couple of the men in the crowd tried to force themselves on her right there, but even in her disoriented state, they couldn’t overpower her. And then someone suggested they return her to the Greeks. They threw heavy ropes around her and lifted her up, carrying her as the riot moved towards the nearest staircase to the city walls. If Helen had had her full faculties, she likely could have snapped the ropes, but she writhed wildly, ineffectually.
Adresteia had been roughly ignored by the rioters – she was only a slave, after all. She thought about letting them toss Helen off the wall. It’d be a long fall, but if she was as resilient as Adresteia believed, the woman would survive – certainly her mother had had worse falls. On the other hand, part of that was knowing how to deliberately heal oneself, and Helen had never been taught to use any of her powers. Adresteia’s mind was made up for her when someone threw a noose on Helen – her neck wouldn’t break, but strangulation was a real danger for their kin.
Adresteia didn’t shape-shift fully to her god form, but she thickened up her skin and toned up her muscles a bit before sprinting into the mob. She careened off of or over everyone who got in her way, her elbows and feet doling out dozens of bruised ribs and black eyes. There were too many though; they had Helen up the stairs and were dragging her up to the top of the wall. Two guards slowed them down briefly but ended up getting tossed off the inside of the wall into the crowd below. The crowd caught them and began carrying them away from the wall. Adresteia ran forward, used a broken table as a ramp to launch herself onto one of the incapacitated guards, then jumped off of him before the crowd dropped him.
Adresteia caught the edge of the stone stair case with her nails and pulled herself up with a grunt. She ran up the remaining steps, tossing citizens aside and leaping over those she couldn’t. She reached the top of the wall just as they pitched Helen off. Adresteia released her claws, slashing the throats of the two men who’d thrown her daughter off before jumping after her. Helen hit the end of the rope and bounced slightly. A human’s neck would have snapped, but Helen’s held fast, leaving her to die slowly from asphyxiation. Adresteia caught onto her, used her claws to cut the rope, and then shape-shifted to god form as they fell. There wasn’t enough time to reorient and fly, so Adresteia put her back to the ground, pulled Helen in front of her, and took the brunt of the fall with a muffled crack on the rocks below.
Adresteia pushed Helen off of her and scrambled to her feet – her back was in severe pain from the impact – she looked around and saw why – the rocks piled at the base of the wall had been left over from Poseidon and Apollo’s construction of the wall, and somehow the two of them had used a great deal of natural hematite in the base of the wall. Shards and flakes of black, metallic rock riddled Adresteia’s wings. Unfortunately, the guards would be coming soon, so she needed to get back into disguise. With a groan that transitioned into a whimper, Adresteia returned to human form, the hematite splinters spread across her wings concentrated into her back by the shape shift.
Adresteia created a black cloak and pulled it over her back to hide the burning scars, and then turned to Helen. Though she looked extremely pallid, the woman was on her feet, one hand on the wall, staring at her rescuer aghast.
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