“What filth have you let into our palace?” Antinous bellowed as he entered the hall.
“Some wretch the pig man dragged into our halls,” Eurymachus replied, appearing at my side.
Antinous waved a hand. “I can smell the stench of him from here. Someone send that dog away.”
“I was victorious in your competition,” the beggar said, his voice low and coarse, like knotted rope, though his accent was surprisingly refined.
“All you are is another mouth snapping at our table,” Antinous sneered, taking his usual seat. “Be gone, mutt.”
The beggar took a step forward. “You sit in another man’s home,enjoyinghisfood andhiscomforts, yet you would not share a crumb of your banquet with the likes of me?”
“Are you deaf, old man?” Antinous mocked. “I said:Be gone.”
The man’s weathered face darkened, though his eyes flashed bright. “The gods do not look kindly upon such vile greed. They will punish you for it.”
Antinous rose. “Is that a threat?”
“It is a fact.”
With a snarl, Antinous grabbed his stool and launched it across the room toward the beggar. But the old man moved with that same, regimented swiftness he had used to dispatch my brother. He caught the stool smoothly in his gnarled hands, plucking it from the air as if he were picking an apple from a tree.
A shocked stillness fell across the room. Then, with mockingly slow strides, the beggar approached Antinous and set the stool down beside him.
“You seemed to have misplaced your seat,” he said, holding the suitor’s gaze unflinchingly.
Without waiting for Antinous to reply, the stranger then turned and stalked from the hall, leaving a bemused silence in his wake.
***
Melanthius’s face was a mess.
He was in the courtyard, leaning back against a pillar as he probed his bloodied nose. Both eyes were already starting to darken with bruising, his bottom lip fat and swollen. Older bruises also marred his skin, as did fresh scars I had never seen before. He did not flinch under my scrutiny but lifted his chin a little higher, as if he were proud of his ruined face.
“You look like shit,” I told him.
He huffed a humorless laugh. “That what you came here to tell me?”
As I stared at him, I realized we were standing in the exact same way, mirroring each other so effortlessly: both leaning against adjacentpillars, arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other. I shifted uncomfortably, dropping my arms to my side.
“Why do you still do it—the fights?”
“They give me a cut of the winnings,” Melanthius said, prodding his swollen lip. “Slaves work themselves to death and get nothing for it. The suitors might like me getting bruised up a bit, but at least they pay me.”
“How much do you get?”
He shrugged. “Enough.”
“Where do you keep it? Your winnings?”
Melanthius looked away then, folding his arms tighter across his chest. “Eurymachus keeps it safe for me.”
Of course he does.
“Don’t,” he snapped.
“I didn’t say anything.”
His glare clashed against my own. “I can see it all over your face. Your judgment. You reek of it. Is that why you’re here? To look down on me from your mighty high ground?”
