"There is no chance of that," said Kassandra. "Yet you must not be afraid, Helen; Menelaus has not fought all these years for revenge."

"I know that; I have spoken with him," Helen said, surprising her. "I know not why, but it seems he wants me back."

"You've spoken with him? When?" She started to ask how, but remembered that as Paris's wife Helen could go where she would, even down into the Akhaian camp. But why should she go and confer with the captains among the enemy? she thought suspiciously, then mentally absolved her friend of treason: it was no more than reasonable that Helen should wish to bargain for her own fate and that of her son.

She said, "If you speak with him again, ask him if there is something we can do to influence Akhilles and have Hector's body returned to us."

"Believe me, I have tried and will try again," Helen said. "Listen, the rain is slacking a little; if you go now perhaps you will be home before it starts to come down hard again."

She kissed Kassandra again, and went down to the heavy front gate of the palace with her; Kassandra went out into the icy rain. Before she had climbed half a flight of the long stairs the rain began to beat down with renewed fury, and the wind tore at her cloak like a wild beast's claws.

She thought for a moment, regretfully, that she should have accepted Helen's offer of a bed. Aeneas would be feasting and drinking with the men, and would be unlikely to join her tonight. But there was no point in turning back now; she struggled upward against the storm.

As she turned into the street of the Sunlord's house, she heard a light step in the street behind her. After so many years of war she was nervous of strangers, and turned to see, in the pale light of the torches hung up over the gateway, the face and cloaked form of Chryseis. Even in the torchlight she could see that the girl's dress was crumpled and stained with wine, and the cosmetics on her face were smeared. She sighed, wondering in what strange bed the girl had spent much of the night and why she had bothered to leave it in such a storm. She looks like a cat after a night of wandering—except that a cat would have washed her face.

The watchman at the gates of the Sunlord's house greeted them with amazement ('You are abroad late in this cruel weather, Ladies'), but no one had ever shown curiosity about Kassandra's comings and goings; she reflected that she might have had as many lovers as Chryseis, and no one would have known or cared. As they climbed the steep courtyards toward their rooms, located near the highest part of the temple, she slowed her steps to match the girl's.

"It is growing so late that it is almost early," she said. "Do you want to come into my room and wash your face before you are seen like this in the temple?"

"No," Chryseis said. "Why should I? I am not ashamed of whatever I do."

"I would spare your father the sight of you like this," she said. "It would break his heart."

Chryseis's laughter was brittle as breaking glass.

"Oh, come, surely he cannot still cherish any illusions that I came from Agamemnon's bed a virgin!"

"Perhaps not," Kassandra said. "He cannot blame you for the fortunes of war; but to see you like this would distress him—"

"Do you think I care for that? I was well content where I was, and I wish he had minded his own affairs, and left me there."

"Chryseis," Kassandra said gently,"do you have any idea how dreadfully he grieved for you? He thought of little else—"

"Then the more fool he."

"Chryseis—" Kassandra looked at the girl, wondering what was in her heart or indeed if she had one. She asked at last curiously, "Doesn't it shame you at all, to stand before all men in Troy, and know that all men know and recognize you for having been Agamemnon's concubine?"

"No," Chryseis said, defiantly, "no more than it shames Andromache to have all men know she is Hector's, nor Helen to have it common knowledge that she belongs to Paris."

There was a difference, Kassandra knew, but she could not muster her thoughts to tell this confused girl what it was.

"If the city should fall," Chryseis said, "all of us will be given into the hands of some man or other; so I give myself where I choose while I still can. Will you, Kassandra, keep your own maidenhood so that it may be taken by a conqueror by force?"

For that I cannot fault her at all. Kassandra could not speak, she only turned and went into her own room.

Inside, some neglectful servant had left the shutters wide open; the rain and wind were beating in through the window. Honey's bed was soaked with rain and the child had rolled off the quilts and on to the stone floor against the wall under the window to escape the rain. Even so she was soaked.

Kassandra closed the shutters, and lifted the child into her own bed. Honey felt as cold as a little frog and whimpered when Kassandra lifted her, but did not wake. Kassandra wrapped her in blankets and rocked her, holding her close against her breasts until she felt the icy little feet and hands beginning to warm and at last Honey was sleeping the heavy sleep of any healthy child.

She put the little girl down, and laid herself beside her, wrapping them both in her warm cloak. The noise of the storm outside the closed windows was muffled, but still rattled the shutters with its force. She closed her eyes, trying to move her spirit forth from where she lay.

To her surprise, once she had slipped free of her body, moving her consciousness away from the bed and through the window, she had no awareness of the storm, only a deep silence; on the level where her spirit now moved there was no weather. As swiftly as thought she glided down the hill into clear moonlight, flying over the plain between the gates of Troy and the earthworks which guarded the Akhaian camp.

Under that impossible moonlight, shadows lay sharp and black on the plain, silent and untenanted except by a single drowsing night watchman. Paris was right, she thought, they should have flung all their forces at the camp by night. Then she remembered that in the physical world the Akhaian earthworks were better guarded by the pouring rain than by all the watchmen in the world. She could see a dark-shadowed structure which she recognized for Akhilles's chariot, and a blurred shape which had to be Hector's bound body. Her first thought was gratitude that in this analogue of the afterworld—and how had she come to walk so handily in this world of the dead when she was still among the living?—Hector's body was not battered by rain and howling wind. And as she thought of him he was standing there before her, smiling.

"Sister," he said, "it is you. I might have expected to see you here."

"Hector—" She broke off. "How is it with you?"

"Why—" he stopped and seemed to consider. "Better than I ever expected," he said. "The pain is gone, so I suppose I am dead; I only remember being wounded, and thinking this must be the end; then I woke and Patroklos came and helped me to rise. He was with me for a while, and then he said he had to stay with Akhilles; and went away. After that I went to the palace tonight, but Andromache could not see me. I tried to speak with her and then with Mother, to tell them I was all right, but neither of them seemed to hear me at all."

"Well, when you were living, did you ever hear the voice of the dead?"

"Well, no, of course not; I never learned how to listen for it."

"Well, then; that is why they could not hear. What can I do for you, my brother? Do you want sacrifices or—"

"I can't imagine what good it would do," Hector said. "But do tell Andromache not to cry; it feels very strange not to be able to comfort her. So tell her not to mourn, and if you can, tell her I will come soon and take Astyanax with me; I would like to leave him to take care of her; but I have been told—"