two young men wearing what were clearly their nicest clothes, rough silks that looked as though they’d been lovingly washed and patched and ironed for years.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
The guard stood perfectly straight, face hard to see under his helmet. Between the early hour and the confusion, Klea didn’t even bother to check the rest of him out. “You’re to go with these young men,” he said. “Birds are attacking their crops.”
Klea stared. No one moved.
“Birds,” she said.
The two teenagers exchanged a look.
“It’s not even light out yet,” she said. The two young men—boys, really; brothers, it looked like—looked at her wide-eyed. They’d probably never seen a woman either this tall or this barely dressed before. The guard, on the other hand, couldn’t have seemed less interested in any of that.
“King’s orders,” he said.
“The king knows I got back from his last task not six hours ago,” she said. “I only just fell asleep.”
He said nothing, but seemed to stare at a spot on the wall just beyond her head.
“Come back in five hours,” she said, closed the door in their faces, and went back to bed.
She had only just gotten under the covers and started to drift off when something in the chair by the fireplace started to glow. Klea shut her eyes and pretended it wasn’t happening: she was sleep-deprived was all, and if she just nodded off, no one would appear in her bedroom and tell her to do anything.
“Wake up, slut,” said a female voice. A voice she’d heard heard before. Klea opened one eye from deep under the covers, only to see a very tall, very large, glowing woman sitting in a chair, examining her nails.
“What do you want, Hera,” she said, not moving.
“I’m just here to remind you of our agreement,” Hera, queen of the gods, said.
Six weeks before, Klea had seen Hera in a remarkably similar situation. That time, she’d also been wearing little more than bedsheets, though back then she’d just fucked her husband into a coma, and Hera was sitting on her throne, next to Zeus, telling her that her punishment was to go work for the king. Apparently this sort of thing happened when you were the product of Zeus and a mortal woman.
“That agreement was with Zeus,” Klea said.
“I take care of his affairs when he’s busy,” Hera said. Klea opened her eye again. Hera looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. “As you and your mother know, he’s often busy.”
“It’s not my fault he wants to have sex with everyone but you,” Klea said, and suddenly the room was filled with crackling heat and she was being lifted from her bed to the ceiling, pressed against it, something hot and hard and iron around her throat.
“Don’t forget your place,” said Hera, her voice huge and raspy. It sounded like a thousand snakes. Klea couldn’t say anything. She clasped both hands around the thing at her neck and pulled with all her strength, but it wouldn’t budge, no matter how much she struggled. Black spots wiggled at the edge of her vision and the crowded in like ants until, as she was about to pass out, she was thrown back on her bed.
“Get to it,” said Hera, in human form again. Then, with a sizzling sound, she disappeared. Klea lay back, gasping.
The birds, at least, were ferocious, fierce, bronze-taloned man-eaters, according to the two teenagers who’d been sent to fetch her. They destroyed crops, they chased farmers out of their fields and into their homes, and worst of all, they crept into the peoples’ houses at night and... at this point, the boys would always go silent and refuse to say more, no matter how Klea goaded or threatened them. After a while, once she couldn’t get more out of them, they lapsed into silence and she tried to go to sleep in the saddle. It was hours to Stymphalos, may as well get some sleep.
The town itself was too small to have an inn, so when they arrived in the evening, Klea went to stay with the