milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Fate is as the Spinners spin it, and if one's life-thread turns for a time away from certain doors, there is not much to be done about that. Days may spin out into weeks, months; years, even, and at the end of that much time one may perhaps be forgiven for forgetting that merely because a door has opened onto one place for all the time you have known it, it may not necessarily always open so.

The lad who opens the door is not quite the height of a man yet, and moves with the odd grace of a young man striving to overcome the awkwardness that comes of shooting up a hand or two in height without warning. He wears dark kidskin breeches and a leather jerkin that might have been blue once. That was some time ago, by the sight of him. One does not end up covered in the grime of a roadside struggle, red to the elbows, without it leaving some mark on one's clothes. And one's weapons; while the bronze spear he bears looks as if he tried to wipe it clean, it could do with almost as much cleaning as he.

He stands a little inside the doorway, staring around him in something like wonder as very old memories come back to him. "Oh," he says. "This place again." The spear is shifted to his left hand as he awkwardly touches still-wet knuckles to his brow and bows deeply to the Bar.

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There's something familiar about the young man who comes into the bar. It takes Zhaan a few moments to place him. "Hektor?" she mutters to herself, disbelieving.

Well, there's only one way to find out. She goes over to him, looking him up and down all the while. "Hektor? Is that you? You've..." Another up-and-down look. "...grown somewhat," she finishes.

Hektor blinks a few times, wiping the hair away from his forehead with the back of one hand; it leaves a bloody smear. "I remember you," he says. "Six years ago, it was... you're Zhaan, the priestess, am I right?"

"Kahalen, six years...yes, I am." A smile appears on her face. "I assume you managed to tame the horse?" The last time she saw Hektor, she had given him a blessing to aid his efforts in that direction.

He nods. "I did," he confirms, "and I remember- as soon as I had done with the offerings to Poseidon, after, I went straightaway to the Goddess' shrine to give Her thanks as well. Thank you. It was... it helped, I think. All of it."

He looks down at his hands as if seeing them for the first time in days.

"You wouldn't happen to be able to take blood-guilt off a man, would you? Or ought I to go to a temple of Apollo for that, as I would at home?"

Zhaan looks at his hands, too, and for the first time she takes in the spattered, dried blood on them, the cut on one hand and forearm. But what worries her is that, though Hektor speaks of removing blood-guilt, he does not seem particularly disturbed by having done the deed that requires it. Then again, he is from what Zhaan would call a very martial culture.

"Yes," she says, nodding slowly. "I can do that. It will require some preparation, and we must go out to the lake." She will need her vestments, a knife and a silver bowl, and Hektor will need to make prayer boats. She can do the calligraphy for them, but he must fold them himself.

"All right," says Hektor. In truth, he shows more surprise at being asked to fold paper than anything; he had expected some sacrifice to be involved. Perhaps the paper will be burnt. That, at least, would be a sacrifice in Troy. The Egyptians alone know the way of making paper, and the stuff is as rare as hen's teeth.

About an hour and a half later, Zhaan and Hektor stand in the shallows of the lake in the fading light. Hektor's submerged up to his waist, Zhaan barely to the hips. She wears her silver Pa'u's stole over a cassock that she doesn't mind getting wet. Both of their sandals have been left on the bank.

Zhaan's got the silver bowl in one hand and the knife in the other. In the bowl is Hektor's prayer boat. "Merciful goddess," Zhaan intones, "one comes before you seeking forgiveness. Hektor, son of Hekabe and Priam, asks that you cleanse his soul."

It is not quite what Hektor had expected, but then the Mother of his mother's folk is not like the Mother as she is known around Mount Ida; it will do all the same. "The man I killed today was my kinsman from afar off, the son of one of my grandfather's by-blows," he says. "He slew my cousin Iros, and raised his spear against my brother Aisakos; for that I cut him down. I would pay his blood-price right away if he had any kin willing to ask it."

Very carefully (his hand is still stinging where the spear grazed it) he makes his people's sign against evil, and looks up to Zhaan.

"Accept the offering of the blood of your supplicant, and let it be washed away." Zhaan holds out the bowl and the knife to Hektor.

That, at least, is a thing Hektor understands. His bronze dagger (not the little one of his first days at Milliways, but a more practical knife by far) still has its edge, although he will have to smooth a few nicks out of it later. But for this it is enough; he draws the blade and swiftly pulls it across his palm. When the red wells up he turns his hand over, watching the blood bead and drip onto the boat for a little while. Then, as the priestess told him, he sets the paper boat down on the water and steps back.

Normally this would be done in a sacred river, but there are no rivers here - only the lake. Still, it seems that the Goddess accepts the offering, for the little boat goes spinning off into the distance. Zhaan is glad for that.

"Now blood has been repaid with blood," she says. "Let the burden of sin be washed away." She dips the silver bowl in the water and holds it up high. "As he is cleansed by this water, let him be cleansed by you." With that she tips the contents of the bowl onto Hektor's head.

She remembers doing this herself a long time ago, after she killed Be'tal and before the Peacekeepers arrested her for it. At the time, she did not think that the Goddess had accepted her prayers, but now she knows that she was forgiven - or, at least, had the opportunity to earn forgiveness.

Zhaan takes Hektor's hands in her own. "Hektor, son of Hekabe and Priam: through your repentance and the mercy of the Goddess, your sin is washed from you. Now go forth in peace."

Repentance is not really how he would describe it, but it does not do to question a goddess in Her precincts, or one of the goddess' representatives, either. So he only bows as best one can when standing in water, and turns to make his way out of the lake.

Before he has taken two steps he stops and looks to Zhaan. One does not speak much on the way home from a sacred rite in his country, but if she needs some assistance herself, his hand is not so badly harmed that he cannot lend her aid.

Zhaan can get out of the lake all right: she smiles at Hektor as she moves into shallower water and then onto the bank, where she slips her feet into her sandals. It is not customary for Delvians to talk after a ritual either, especially this one. The time after cleansing is meant for stillness and reflection.

The two of them walk side-by-side back to the bar. Fortunately the evening is a warm one, and so their being wet does not discomfit them.

Hektor is going to have to have the breeches cleaned by one of the more skilled women, when all is said and done. Likely they will not be fit for anything but riding, after today.

Once inside the Bar, he supposes there is no further rule against speaking; he looks up. "Thank you. I will be going to Apollo's altar when I go home, of course, but I owe him anyway; and there is no harm in praying to him without need, anyway."

"That is a good idea," Zhaan says. "Hektor...I know you will have to go into combat again, and kill again. Such is the way of your world, from what I have gathered. But do not kill unless it is necessary, and then not in anger. It is not worth the price you will pay if you do." She knows that firsthand.

Hektor blinks, and then shrugs. "He spilled my cousin's blood; for that I owed at least some vengeance. And there was Aisakos to protect, though he is older than me, and betrothed now. It needed doing, that is all."

"I know. You had a reason, and since there was someone to protect, it was a good reason." Or, at least, a fair justification - Zhaan does not believe it is ever good to kill. "But if you fight and kill for petty reasons, or mere vengeance, you will destroy yourself. I only ask that you be careful not to act out of anger or pride." Her tone is even, her words straightforward. Zhaan is not begging a promise of Hektor, but merely offering advice.

Hektor shakes his head. "Uncle Klytios says random murders coarsen the spirit anyway," he says. "But there are some things for which a man will have blood if he is even half a man."

That sounds very Luxan - which is all right, she supposes, for though the Luxans are a warlike people, they are also honorable. "As long as there is some reason for it," she says, "and it is a good reason."

"There is no sense in bringing a blood-price down on my father's house; if I cannot pay it myself, all of us will have to, and I would not put our people in harm's path that way," says Hektor. "Perhaps in other lands they do, but there are feuds enough among my father's barons. We don't need more."

"Very sensible," Zhaan says approvingly. "One can always do with less conflict and bloodshed." She realizes now that the Hektor before her is not all that different from his younger self: more thoughtful and restrained, true, but the intelligence he has was there six years ago as well.

"A king's son, whether or not he is the heir, can't be his own man as other men's sons can," says Hektor. "There are always the people to think about, and what will become of them because of him."

"If you keep that in your mind, you will be a good prince," Zhaan says. "And, I hope, a good king. You serve your people: not the other way around." The leaders on her own world forgot that. She would not like to see that happen again.

Hektor nods soberly. "The king's heir is called Shepherd of the Poeple for a reason," he says. "Among us and the Hellenes, anyway."

Then there is another kid in the bar. Older than himself but still a kid- at least that is what George tells himself studying Hektor's odd sort of clothing. He'd seen stuff like that in the history books before but..something was just odd. Maybe it was the spear that is doing the trick.

"Are you an Indian?" he asks curiously from where he's sitting at a table looking at his comics.

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