#and it’s sort of not a good excuse for MQ to just keep being an ass

[undercover-stories]

My beef with Mu Qing can be summed up into “bruh you’re 800 years old. Do some self reflection and get your head out of your ass”

[mecomptane]

MQ: Barnabas of the Adrestia

Part one of... many. So many. Oh no.

Also, my italics for Greek and/or emphasis no longer exist, so that’s great. 10/10. Might try uploading to dreamwidth first from now on, and then copying/linking in to here.

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“Kephallonia is… here?”

Barnabas leaned over from the wheel, turning so that his good eye focused on where Kassandra was pointing. “Hm? Aye, that’s Kephallonia--and just to the north, there, that’s Ithaka!”

“I know Ithaka,” Kassandra retorted, toeing the island painted on the deck of the Adrestia idly. “I’ve looked at it almost every day.”

The real Ithaka--and Kephallonia--were well behind them, bare specks on the horizon. She’d spent the first few hours since departing sitting on the stern bench, watching over her shoulder as the land she’d spent the last twenty plus years on slipped away. They weren’t home, not really: not Ithaka where she’d honed her hunting skills, and not even Kephallonia, though all the friends left to her in the world lived there.

But a job was a job, and between the plague slowly spreading over the islands and the sudden hush of contracts that came in the wake of facing off against the only other mercenary on the island in spectacularly violent--and public--fashion, there wasn’t much work or coin coming her way any time soon. Kassandra sighed and scuffed her toe against the painted map again, slowly cataloguing the different lands and waters, so carefully rendered. So many places to see, so many people to meet, armies to fight… and somehow, with all those people and across all those lands, Elpeanor managed to find her. Decided to hire her.

To kill the Wolf of Sparta.

Nikolaos hadn’t been a young man when Kassandra was growing up, a General of Sparta and one of the greatest warriors the city had seen since the death of King Leonidas. He’d gained fame within Sparta for his tactics and skillful maneuvering, and renown through the rest of the Peloponnese for his treatment of enemies and allies alike. Not merciful--he was Spartan, after all--but a certain amount of respect. Other generals might take prisoners as slaves; Nikolaos was more likely to ransom them back to their cities or, if seriously injured, grant them an honourable death.

“It’s so isolated,” Kassandra remarked, still staring at the map. “But I can see the coast of the Peloponnese from my house.” House, shack, hut. It was newly built a hundred years ago and left to ruin sometime after; she’d claimed it and fixed it up, but it wasn’t any sort of luxurious.

Barnabas laughed at her, gesturing to the map as he turned back to the helm. “You can? You must have the sight of the gods, then!”

“Or maybe I just have two working eyes,” she snarked back. Sight of the gods, right.

But Barnabas laughed again; did nothing upset this man? “Or perhaps four eyes; I see you talking with that eagle of yours!”

The eagle in question--proud, defiant, and a mother hen in turns--was perched on the wooden screen that shielded part of the stern bench, alternating between watching the sea and watching Kassandra and Barnabas. Kassandra clicked her tongue to get his attention; Ikaros shrilled at her, fluffed his feathers, and turned back to the sea.

She sighed at him; her oldest friend was an eagle. A stubborn eagle, at that. “The only thing we talk about is him taking off to hunt and me scolding him when he shows up just in time to annoy me.”

Kassandra looked up just in time to see Barnabas shaking his head, his whole body shuddering. “Hey! Are you laughing at me?”

“You talk about your Ikaros like my old friend talks about his wife.”

She snorted. “You live with someone long enough, I suppose it all starts to sound the same.”

One of the skeleton crew below called out for Barnabas and instructions; as the old captain saw to his people and ship, Kassandra lounged back against the bench, tilting her head towards the sun.

They were heading for Megaris, which Barnabas assured her was the current major battleground in the war between Athens and Sparta. Elpeanor had said that Nikolaos would be there, but she trusted the old seaman over some shady mainlander who let his guards get killed as a test to see her skills. Or however he reasoned it; she didn’t want to ask, because that meant interacting with him more. Whether he was hiding out on Kephallonia to avoid Nikolaos and the bounty he’d put on the Wolf’s head was Elpeanor’s way of avoiding some consequence, or if he was on Kephallonia for another reason and wanting Nikolaos killed was incidental, she didn’t know that, either.

Kassandra shifted, pulling out the old broken spear her mater had given her, so long ago. She’d never taken a bounty contract before--the closest was hunting down a handful of local thieves (who were a drachmae a dozen on Kephallonia; the island wasn’t entirely made up of criminals, but it was probably a fifty-fifty split between law abiding citizens and those who just did not care). The contract to kill Nikolaos was more an excuse to get off the island that’d been her home since she was eight, see more of the world, make a name for herself. That didn’t mean she didn’t intend to uphold her end, and to do that… sword, short sword, spear, bow and arrows would all work, but using the broken spear wouldn’t just be effective. It would be poetic justice.

The man who married Leonidas’ daughter, killed by Leonidas’ own broken spear. One of the kings had sent Spartans to recover the spear from Thermopylae at the same time as they recovered Leonidas’ body for a burial with honours, and it had been given to Myrrine after the internment. Or, knowing the woman, she had demanded the last relic of her father to be handed over immediately, and everyone who stood in her way suffered for it.

Kassandra ran a finger down the edge of the spear’s blade, testing the sharpness and checking for rust. None, as normal. As much as she liked to think it was all the maintenance and care she paid to the old weapon, the metal shone in a way that she’d never seen before and no matter what she stabbed or threw the spear into the edge never dulled. Good for a quick kill, then, and that’s what this would have to be: a quick kill. Stealthy, maybe. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that between Nikolaus’ skills and the Spartan army, there was only one way she could really hope to complete the contract: a proper assassination.

“What are you frowning about, o mighty misthios?” Barnabas’ voice broke her from her thoughts.

She startled upwards, coming to her feet and not-so-accidentally treading on the painted islands in the process. “Barnabas! Don’t startle me like that.”

“Eh, I know you wouldn’t hurt this poor old, one-eyed man,” he shrugged off her annoyance. “I need to go below; do you know how to handle a ship?”

That brought her up short. “Do I know how to… what?”

He waved her forward to the helm. “Come, come, let me teach you quickly. We have another day of sailing before we make it to Megaris, more than enough time for lessons!”

She reached out to grab the old wood, worn smooth by many hands over the years. “What am I--what do you want me to do?”

“Keep her on the same heading, there--no, no, sun just slightly behind and to the right, we want to head east-south-east,” he instructed. “There we go! See? I knew you’d be a natural!”

Kassandra flexed her fingers, checking her grip. “And I just… stand here?”

“Exactly! Any questions?”

“Yes: why are you trusting me with this?”

He laughed and patted her shoulder. Flinched slightly away when his hand contacted the hard lines of metal and buckles that were hidden by the Shroud of Penelope Kassandra had wrapped around her shoulders and head. “Well, obviously you have sailed before! How else would you get from the mainland to Kephallonia?”

She tried not to stiffen or show another reaction, but from the corner of her eye she could see Barnabas looking at her worriedly. “Me? From the mainland?”

“From the Peloponnese, somewhere, probably,” Barnabas confirmed, would-be casually. “You sail as long as I have to as many places as I have, and you can pick out details like that, too. A bit of an accent, and a way of framing your sentences that sounds more like Lakonian or Messenian, maybe Arkadian. But most of the time you sound Kephallonian! If that’s why you’re worried, the accent of your latest home comes through clearly.”

She shook her head at him. “Kephallonia isn’t my home.”

“Even after… however long you’ve lived there?”

“No,” Kassandra confirmed. Even with Marcos and Phoibe and the few other people who were almost friends, almost family. “No, not Kephallonia.”

Barnabas hummed, apparently having forgotten being called away. “Then… wherever you were from before? Is that your home?”

She couldn’t help herself; she snorted. In her mind’s eye she could easily picture the spear, Myrrine, Nikolaos, the masked men, baby Alexios, the mountain. “I might have been born in Sparta, but I was never really Spartan.”

“Spartan?” Barnabas asked, surprise lacing his words. “And you’re looking for the Wolf of Sparta?”

Kassandra nodded; Barnabas had said he took no side in this war, even having been an Athenian captain, once upon a time. Still, Kephallonia supported Athens, and so far most of public opinion--that Kassandra had heard, anyway--swayed in favour of Athens, too. It would make sense for her to be after a Spartan General if she had been from Athens or somewhere that was firmly part of or on the side of the Delian League. She could see why Barnabas would be surprised.

“I am,” she confirmed, her lips curling upwards. Not a smile, not a sneer; she wasn’t sure what she was feeling about this, but it wasn’t anything good. “I’m going to track Nikolaos down, and before I kill him I am going to get some answers.”

“Answers?” Barnabas parroted.

She nodded, shortly. “Answers. When I was eight, the oracle said that my baby brother--who was in perfect health--would bring about the fall of Sparta if he was allowed to live. Mater fought against the order, but we were all brought up Mount Taygetos and---and Alexios was thrown off the mountain cliff.”

Barnabas hadn’t completely retracted his hand before from her shoulder; he rested it again against the shroud, patting gently. “That must have been difficult to witness, Kassandra. I am sorry. ...but what does that have to do with the Wolf?”

“He was there,” she answered after a minute. She had to refocus; Barnabas had actually sounded sincere. When was the last time someone had actually meant what they said to her? “He was there, he let them kill Alexios… and when I fought back, pushed the priest who had thrown Alexios off and killed him…. Nikolaos threw me off Mount Taygetos, too.”

She could feel Barnabas withdrawing, air abruptly sucked through clenched teeth. “And you survived?”

“I did,” she nodded. “That’s the night that Ikaros found me.”

“So you’ve known him for a long, long time,” Barnabas surmised, looking up at the eagle. Ikaros’ attention was focused wholly on them; she’d noticed the minute he’d zeroed in on them, but the predatory gaze had long been comforting. “But you know what happened then. What answers are you looking for?”

Kassandra shrugged, careful to not jostle her hands and change their heading. “Just one answer, I guess,” she conceded. “I want to ask him… I want to know why, when the priests said that Alexios would bring us to ruin, when they told him to kill me in return for the life of one of their own…

“I want to know why he sided with them over his own children.”