Page 7 of The Song of Achilles

“I don’t know.”

“You must say something.”

His insistence sparked anger in me. “You are the prince,” I snapped.

That surprised him. He tilted his head a little, like a curious bird. “So?”

“So speak to your father, and say I was with you. He will excuse it.” I said this more confidently than I felt. If I had spoken to my father for another boy, he would have been whipped out of spite. But I was not Achilles.

The slightest crease appeared between his eyes. “I do not like to lie,” he said.

It was the sort of innocence other boys taunted out of you; even if you felt it, you did not say it.

“Then take me with you to your lessons,” I said. “So it won’t be a lie.”

His eyebrows lifted, and he regarded me. He was utterly still, the type of quiet that I had thought could not belong to humans, a stilling of everything but breath and pulse—like a deer, listening for the hunter’s bow. I found myself holding my breath.

Then something shifted in his face. A decision.

“Come,” he said.

“Where?” I was wary; perhaps now I would be punished for suggesting deceit.

“To my lyre lesson. So, as you say, it will not be a lie. After, we will speak with my father.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Why not?” He watched me, curious. Why not?

When I stood to follow him, my limbs ached from so long seated on cool stone. My chest trilled with something I could not quite name. Escape, and danger, and hope all at once.

W E WALKED IN SILENCE through the winding halls and came at length to a small room, holding only a large chest and stools for sitting. Achilles gestured to one and I went to it, leather pulled taut over a spare wooden frame. A musician’s chair. I had seen them only when bards came, infrequently, to play at my father’s fireside.

Achilles opened the chest. He pulled a lyre from it and held it out to me.

“I don’t play,” I told him.

His forehead wrinkled at this. “Never?”

Strangely, I found myself not wishing to disappoint him. “My father did not like music.”

“So? Your father is not here.”

I took the lyre. It was cool to the touch, and smooth. I slid my fingers over the strings, heard the humming almost-note; it was the lyre I had seen him with the first day I came.

Achilles bent again into the trunk, pulled out a second instrument, and came to join me.

He settled it on his knees. The wood was carved and golden and shone with careful keeping. It was my mother’s lyre, the one my father had sent as part of my price.

Achilles plucked a string. The note rose warm and resonant, sweetly pure. My mother had always pulled her chair close to the bards when they came, so close my father would scowl and the servants would whisper. I remembered, suddenly, the dark gleam of her eyes in the firelight as she watched the bard’s hands. The look on her face was like thirst.

Achilles plucked another string, and a note rang out, deeper than the other. His hand reached for a peg, turned it.

That is my mother’s lyre, I almost said. The words were in my mouth, and behind them others crowded close. That is my lyre. But I did not speak. What would he say to such a statement? The lyre was his, now.

I swallowed, my throat dry. “It is beautiful.”

“My father gave it to me,” he said, carelessly. Only the way his fingers held it, so gently, stopped me from rising in rage.