CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  PART I: IOLKOS

  1 Coming to Iolkos

  2 Masters, Servants, and Slaves

  PART II: ABOARD THE ARGO

  3 Shipmates

  4 Birds with the Faces of Women

  5 The Clashing Rocks

  6 A Sacrifice to Aphrodite

  PART III: COLCHIS

  7 The Mask of the Huntress

  8 The King’s Daughter

  9 The Gift of Hecate

  10 A Feast for the Furies

  PART IV: ATHENS

  11 Men and Monsters

  12 Queen’s Son, Slave’s Son

  13 Lessons Taught, Lessons Learned

  14 The Laughter of Gods and Men

  15 In the House of Agamemnon

  Epilogue

  “She Can’t Do That to Myths!”

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This book is dedicated to

  Erica Christine Sullivan

  Strength, style, and true beauty

  1

  COMING TO IOLKOS

  I stood in the bow of the little fishing boat and gazed at the glittering city high on the bluff ahead. Even so late in the day, with the sun setting and the early summer light fading from the sky, I could see how tall the palace walls stood. I marveled at how many buildings clustered at their feet. Only the richest cities were so crowded with houses and shops and temples.

  Iolkos! I thought happily. It must be Iolkos. After so many days’ sail from Delphi, the gods grant it’s no place else. My heart beat faster as I scanned the harbor that lay in the shadow of the citadel, seeking one special ship among all the rest. Where was it? Where was the vessel that would carry me off to adventure? Was it that one, with the almond-shaped eye painted in red just above the prow? Or that one, with a swarm of men busily at work, taking down its blue-bordered sail? Where was my ship, the ship Prince Jason was going to sail to the farthest shores of the Unfriendly Sea, the ship of heroes who would dare anything to fulfill the quest for the Golden Fleece? Where was the Argo?

  “There she stands, lads, Iolkos!” the fisherman called out to Milo and me from his place at the steering oar, confirming my hopes. “And less than a day’s sail away.” He winked at me when he said “lads,” and I grinned back. Though I wore a boy’s tunic and my skin was deeply tanned from our voyage, I was no more a lad than that man’s daughter.

  The fisherman knew my true name and rank—Helen, princess of Sparta, Lord Tyndareus’s heir, Queen Leda’s daughter—but I’d spent so much of our voyage from Delphi teaching him to call me “Glaucus,” the boy’s name I’d chosen for myself, that it came to his tongue naturally. He’d keep my secret. The real question was whether I could do the same. My brothers, Castor and Polydeuces, waited behind the walls of Iolkos, waited to sail with Prince Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece. I intended to join them on that quest, but for that to happen they must not recognize me as their sister or my adventure would be over before it began.

  I leaned as far forward from the prow as I could without toppling out into the waves. Sea spray was cool and salty on my lips. There was a fine breeze filling our sail, and the sky swirled with squawking gulls. Soon we’d land, and I’d put the next step of my plan into action.

  I wasn’t the only one in a hurry. “Is it true?” Milo exclaimed eagerly, scrambling to stand beside me. “Are we there at last?” My friend was not the world’s happiest sailor.

  “Soon enough,” the fisherman said. “Tomorrow morning.” He leaned against the steering oar and turned our boat’s nose toward the shore.

  “‘Tomorrow’?” I echoed. “Why not today?”

  The fisherman chuckled. “You know the answer to that.”

  So I did. “Always keep the shore in sight,” I recited dutifully. While I’d spent our voyage from Delphi teaching the fisherman to call me by a boy’s name, he’d spent it teaching me the basics of sailing. “A strayed boat’s a doomed boat.”

  “And—?” he prompted.

  “And only owls and foxes can see in the dark,” I went on. “The wise sailor beaches his boat by dusk.”

  “Good. Now come here and show me what else you’ve learned.” He stood to one side and patted the steering oar that guided our little vessel.

  “You want me to beach us?” I could hardly believe it. I’d never expected such a privilege. My father could buy a dozen great ships with the oil from just one season’s olive harvest, but for the fisherman this lone little boat was his entire existence, his livelihood, his only way back home.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “I know this shore. It’s friendly enough. Go on, steer us. I’ll mind the sail, but I’ll step in if I see you doing something wrong.”

  I said a prayer to Poseidon as I took the steering oar with both hands and braced my bare feet against the boat’s sun-warmed hull. I leaned against the long wooden oar and felt the power of the waves pushing back against me. There wasn’t much resistance, just enough for me to feel the message of the sea: I am immortal, endless, stronger and wilder than a thousand bulls. If you think that you’ve tamed me because you’ve made me carry you where you want to go, you’re a fool. Respect me, or pay for your pride.

  Yes, Lord Poseidon, I thought as I turned the boat toward shore. I hear. I know. I ask your blessing.

  The god answered in his own way, by letting me beach the boat without much trouble. When I felt the bottom grate along the sand and pebbles, I took a deep breath of relief.

  Milo was the first to leap from the boat. “I’ll make the fire!” he called out, racing away to gather bits of wood.

  “Helpful, isn’t he?” the fisherman remarked as we dragged the boat a safe distance onto the beach.

  “He’d volunteer to kill a dragon if it meant he’d have solid ground under his feet,” I replied.

  After Milo got the fire started, we cooked some red mullet we’d caught and ate them along with the last of the bread and cheese we’d bartered for at a small village two days’ voyage south. I was convinced that I’d be too excited to eat or sleep that night. My mind rang with Iolkos! Iolkos! Iolkos! My body had other ideas. I gobbled up every bit of food in front of me and my eyes closed as soon as my head touched the ground.

  That night, my dreams were strange and terrifying. I was back in the forests of Calydon, once more running with the hunt for the monstrous boar that was ravaging the land. The beast rushed out of the darkness the same way that he’d come when I’d helped the great huntress Atalanta meet his attack.

  In my dream I stood alone.

  Stop! I shouted at the charging beast, holding the great boar spear steady. Stop! I order you, as Sparta’s future queen!

  The boar kept coming. I jammed the spear’s butt against the earth and dug in my feet to meet his attack, but when I glanced down, I saw a blood-chilling change. Instead of wearing a boy’s tunic, I was weighed down by a heavily flounced dress. Instead of a spear, I held a spindle tangled with gleaming gold thread. A strand leaped out and lashed itself around my wrists.

  Then the boar struck. One moment I was standing, the next I sprawled across the beast’s back. The boar tore on down the mountain, through the trees. My thoughts were thunder. With one win-all/lose-all motion I jerked my bound hands down and slashed the thread apart on the boar’s own tusk. I gave a shout of triumph as I grabbed the creature’s shaggy pelt and threw one leg over his spine, ready to ride him to the edge of the world.

  “Wake up! Lady Helen, wake up! You’re having a bad dream.” A strong hand on my shoulder shook me. I bolted upright. The sky was just beginning to turn light, the horizon shimmering with a pearly glow soft and rosy as the smile of Aphrodite. As I rubbed grit from my eyes, I felt my hair stir in the dawn breeze. My nostrils filled with the clean, briny smell of the sea, my ears with the cries of gulls and other seabirds.

  “You’ve got to stop calling me ‘Lady Helen,’” I said drowsily.

  “I’m sorry, Lady Hel—” Milo squatted beside me on the beach, biting his lower lip.

  “Never mind, it’s all right.” I wanted to take that look off his face. Milo was my friend, but he always took anything I said to him much too seriously. It was as if I were already queen of Sparta instead of just fourteen, probably not much older than he was himself. Of course, it was impossible to say exactly how old he was: No one kept track of a slave boy’s age.

  Milo was no slave now. I had bought his freedom from my uncle, the king of Calydon. I had bought my own freedom as well, freedom from skirts and spindles and the life everyone said a royal daughter must lead, but I hadn’t made that bargain using gold. I’d bought my liberty with a decision, choosing to turn away from the safe road home to Sparta to go on the quest for the Golden Fleece.

  I got up and stretched, then patted Milo’s shoulder. “There’s no harm in you calling me by my real name when there’s only the two of us. I’m just worried about what could happen if you slipped up in front of other people.”

  “You can trust me,” Milo replied. “I’d die to protect your secret.”

  “You won’t have to.” I spoke quickly. “Just watch how you speak to me. The moment we set foot in Iolkos, there is no Lady Helen of Sparta, understood?”

  He ventured a small smile. “I’ll guard my tongue, but who’s going to guard yours?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you were asleep, you kept yelling about who you are, how you’re Sparta’s next queen—” He
spread his hands, letting go of any blame. “It woke me up.”

  It was my turn to feel embarrassed.

  “People say all sorts of things in their dreams,” he reassured me. “Once we’re aboard the Argo, I’ll look out for you, awake or asleep.”

  “And what happens when you topple overboard and drown because you’ve spent your nights standing guard over my dreams?” I teased.

  “If it was for your sake, I’d be glad to—”

  “What are you two jabbering about?” The fisherman appeared from behind the far side of his beached boat, a wooden spear in one hand, a string of fat fish in the other. “Not bad for a little wading in the shallows, eh?” He held up his catch proudly. “Now build up the fire or we’ll have to eat these beauties raw.”

  Later, as we picked the last of the fishes’ meat from their bones, our host looked at me and said, “Today we part ways. You’ve brought me good fortune and safe seas on this journey…Glaucus. Is there any favor I can do for you when I return to Delphi?”

  I didn’t have to think twice to answer that. “Tell Eunike I send her my love and thanks for everything she’s done for me,” I replied. “Tell her that you left Milo and me well, safe, and happy at Iolkos.”

  The fisherman made a face. “As if it’s that simple for a man like me to get an audience with the holy Pythia.”

  I gave him a knowing smile. “You’ll be able to do it easily enough if Lady Helen of Sparta puts in a good word for you.”

  Then we both laughed, for we shared a secret: The only reason I’d been able to steal away to Iolkos was because people have eyes and ears, yet most don’t use them. My friend Eunike was the Pythia, priestess and prophet of Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. When she spoke, people heard the all-seeing sun god’s own words, predicting the future. When she declared that Lady Helen would not leave Delphi when her guardsmen headed home, everyone assumed it was Apollo’s will. (She didn’t lie: My guards marched off to Sparta one day before Milo and I sailed for Iolkos.) After that, whenever any of the priests who kept Apollo’s shrine saw a royally dressed girl walking through the temple grounds, who else could she be but Lady Helen? In reality she was the daughter of the same fisherman who’d brought me this far in my journey.

  I hoped that the same trick that let a fisherman’s daughter pass for a Spartan princess would also fool my brothers on the Argo. Even the largest ship is a small, enclosed world. We would run into one another, unless I spent the whole voyage hiding in a chest, and what would be the point of that? When my brothers saw me, I wanted them to look right at me and say to each other:

  Is that our sister?

  What, here? Did you get too much sun? That’s just one of the other men’s weapons bearers.

  I was very confident that was exactly how things would work out. I was so eager to see it all unscroll smoothly that after breakfast I danced around our smothered fire, urging the fisherman to launch his boat. I wanted to be in Iolkos now.

  The winds were with us. The sun wasn’t even a hand-span above the horizon by the time we beached on the strand at the foot of the great city on the Wavy Sea. I reached into the leather belt-pouch I carried and pulled out a little golden disk as big as my thumbnail. My best skirts from home were trimmed with a fortune in such charms, dresses fit for a princess. Before we left Delphi, I’d harvested the gold, silver, and gemmed ornaments to trade for necessities. I tried to give this one to the fisherman, but he refused it.

  “Pay me back by coming back,” he said. “My daughter’s life is in your hands. That’s worth more to me than a fistful of gold.” He threw his wiry arms around Milo and me in a quick hug, and walked away.

  Milo turned to me with a Now what? look in his eyes.

  “Now we go up there,” I said, pointing to where the citadel walls of Iolkos shone in the early morning sunshine. “We’ll find a pair of warriors who’ve come to Iolkos to sail with Prince Jason but who haven’t got weapons bearers to serve them. This quest may fetch more men than the Calydonian hunt. We’ll get to pick and choose from a whole mob of masters.”

  Milo and I had to hike a fair distance along the shore before we reached that part of the waterfront where the great ships and their crews waited. Once again I felt my heart beat faster as I looked from one grand vessel to the next.

  “Glaucus, put on your shoes,” Milo said. I ignored him. Men scurried here and there on a hundred unknown errands, or grunted under the burden of massive clay amphorae and wooden chests. Some sat mending nets, others untangling lengths of rope. The reeks of fresh pine pitch, salt, and sweat fought each other, no one winning.

  “Glaucus…” Milo’s hand fell on my shoulder and gave me a little shake.

  “Oh! Sorry. Were you talking to me?”

  “Were you listening?” he countered. “If you won’t answer to ‘Glaucus,’ why insist I call you by that name? I said, put on your shoes.” He gestured at the pair of sandals I was carrying slung around my neck. On the fisherman’s boat, I’d gone shoeless for better footing.

  Now I was ashore, and it was pure luck that I hadn’t stepped in something disgusting or rammed a chunk of broken wood or baked clay into my foot. I knew from painful past experience how long such wounds took to heal. What warrior would hire a lame weapons bearer? I leaned against a building and put on my sandals, then announced, “Let’s get started. If the gods are with us, we’ll be serving good masters before the sun’s overhead.”

  “The gods grant it,” Milo said. “How do we find good masters?”

  “First, by finding the Argo,” I replied.

  “And how are we going to do that?”

  I waved away his question. “Easily.” I set off with a light step, arms swinging, heart full of confidence.

  It didn’t last. I can’t tell you how many ships, great and small, we passed. The longer we walked along the water, the less certain I felt. I began to stare at every vessel, struggling to find a clue that would tell me beyond any doubt that it was the one we sought. All I knew was that the Argo would have to be big. Before my brothers went off with Prince Jason, all they’d talked about was how their ship would sail crewed by fifty heroes. I thought it would be easy to find a single vessel large enough to carry so many.

  There were many big ships at Iolkos, all pulled up onto the shore to keep them safe. Their sails and masts were down to keep any sudden strong winds from carrying them away.

  Then Milo said the unthinkable: “What if the Argo’s already sailed?”

  My heart went cold. Could he be right? It was possible. It could’ve happened the day before we arrived, for all I knew.

  Lord Poseidon, help me, I prayed, fighting back the ghost of bitter disappointment. Grant that the Argo hasn’t sailed without us. Master of the seas, send me a sign and I’ll make a rich thanksgiving sacrifice to you as soon as I have something worthy to offer.

  Suddenly Milo tapped my arm and pointed farther down the strand. “Look there, Glaucus,” he said. My false name no longer sounded forced on his lips. I shaded my eyes and let out a yelp of joy when I spotted what he’d already seen: the ram.

  It was painted in mid-leap on a green sail edged with blue. Its fleece wasn’t golden, but the next best thing, a crocus yellow brilliant enough to dazzle the eyes. You could tell that sail was still waiting to see its first voyage. When the wind blew toward me, I swear that I could smell the newness of the cloth, the tang of the dyes.

  The ship itself was the largest craft in the harbor. The only reason I’d missed seeing it before was that it lay beached between other vessels, around a curve in the shoreline that disguised its length. The shallow black hull was as newly made as the sail unfurled from the single mast, the gleaming prow freshly painted with a long blue-and-red-rimmed eye for luck, to watch over the waves ahead. The prow itself curved up like a beckoning arm, and was decorated with carvings from base to tip. I was standing too far away to see whether they meant anything or were just for decoration, but I was positive that I’d get a close enough look at them soon.

  “That’s it, Milo,” I said as we walked a little closer. “That’s got to be the Argo. I thought those other ships harbored here were big, but this…” I couldn’t help counting the short wooden poles sticking up in pairs along the side rails. I’d overheard enough sailors’ talk on the few voyages I’d made to learn those were called thole pins, and that they were used to hold the oars steady when the crew rowed. “Enough of them on this side to hold twenty-five oars steady, so there must be the same on the other. Fifty oars, fifty men, just as my brothers said. And the picture on the sail—”