“It is not death, My Lord,” said the Amazon with strain audible in her voice. “It is glory.”

“Often the two are the same,” said Priam. “Come, sit down next to me. Talk to me softly.” He waved his bodyguard and son, Deiphobus, back out of the range of hearing. The dozen Amazon women also took several steps away from the two thrones.

Penthesilea sat on the high-backed throne, once Hecuba’s, recovered from the wreckage of the old palace and now kept empty here in Hecuba’s memory. The Amazon set her shining helmet on the broad arm of the throne and leaned closer to the old man.

“I am pursued by Furies, Father Priam. For three months to this day I have been pursued by the Furies.”

“Why?” asked Priam. He leaned closer, like some future-era priest to some yet unborn confessor. “Those avenging spirits seek to exact blood for blood only when no human avenger is left alive to do so, my daughter—especially when one family member has been injured by another. Surely you have hurt no member of your royal Amazon family.”

“I killed my sister, Hippolyte,” said Penthesilea, her voice quavering.

Priam pulled back. “You murdered Hippolyte? The former queen of the Amazons? Theseus’ royal wife? We heard that she had died in a hunting accident when someone had seen movement and mistaken the Queen of Athens for a stag.”

“I did not mean to murder her, Priam. But after Theseus abducted my sister—seduced her aboard his ship during a state visit, set sail, and carried her off—we Amazons set our mind to revenge. This year, while all eyes and attention in the home isles and Peloponnese were turned to your struggle here at Troy, with heroes away and Athens lying undefended, we made up a small fleet, set our own siege—though nothing so grand and immortal in the telling as the Argives’ siege of Ilium—and invaded Theseus’ stronghold.”

“We heard this, of course,” mumbled old Priam. “But the battle ended quickly in a treaty of peace and the Amazons departed. We heard that Queen Hippolyte died shortly after, during a grand hunt to celebrate the peace.”

“She died by my spear,” said Penthesilea, forcing every word out into the air. “Originally, the Athenians were on the run, Theseus was wounded, and we thought we had the city in our grasp. Our only goal was to rescue Hippolyte from this man—whether she wanted to be rescued or not—and we were close to doing so when Theseus led a counterattack that drove us a day’s bloody retreat back to our ships. Many of my sisters were slain. We were fighting for our lives now, and once again Amazon valor won out—we drove Theseus and his fighters back a day’s walk toward his walls. But my final spearcast, aimed for Theseus himself, found its deadly way into the heart of my sister, who—in her bold Athenian armor—looked like a man as she fought alongside her lord and husband.”

“Against the Amazons,” whispered Priam. “Against her sisters.”

“Yes. As soon as we discovered whom I had killed, the battle stopped. The peace was made. We erected a white column near the acropolis in my noble sister’s memory, and we departed in sorrow and shame.”

“And the Furies hound you now, for your sister’s shed blood.”

“Every day,” said Penthesilea. Her bright eyes were moist. Her fresh cheeks had gone flushed with the telling and now were pale. She looked extraordinarily beautiful.

“But what does Achilles and our war have to do with this tragedy, my daughter?” whispered Priam.

“This month, son of Laomedon and scion of the line of Dardanus, Athena appeared to me. She explained that no offering I could make to the Furies would ever appease the hell-beasts, but that I could make amends for Hippolyte’s death by traveling to Ilium with twelve of my chosen companions and defeating Achilles in single combat, thus ending this errant war and restoring peace between gods and men.”

Priam rubbed his chin where the gray stubble he’d let grow since Hecuba’s death passed for a beard. “No one can defeat Achilles, Amazon. My son Hector—the finest warrior Troy has ever bred—tried for eight years and failed. Now he is ally and friend to the fleet-footed mankiller. The gods themselves have tried for more than eight months, and all have failed or fallen before the wrath of Achilles—Ares, Apollo, Poseidon, Hermes, Hades, Athena herself—all have taken on Achilles and failed.”

“It’s because none of them knew of his weakness,” whispered the Amazon Penthesilea. “His mother, the goddess Thetis, found a secret way to confer invulnerability in battle to her mortal son when he was an infant. He cannot fall in battle except by injury to this one weak place.”

“What is it?” gasped Priam. “Where is it?”

“I swore to Athena—upon pain of death—that I would reveal it to no one, Father Priam. But that I would use the knowledge to kill Achilles by my own Amazon hand and thus end this war.”

“If Athena knows Achilles’ weakness, then why did she not use it to end his life in their own combat, woman? A duel which ended with Athena fleeing, wounded, QTing back to Olympos in pain and fear.”

“The Fates decreed when Achilles was an infant that his secret weakness would be found only by another mortal, during this battle for Ilium. But the work of the Fates has come undone.”

Priam sat back in his throne. “So Hector was fated to kill fleet-footed Achilles after all,” he murmured. “If we had not opened this war with the gods, that destiny would have come about.”

Penthesilea shook her head. “No, not Hector. Another mortal—a Trojan—would have taken Achilles’ life after he had killed Hector. One of the Muses had learned this from a slave they called a scholic, who knew the future.”

“A seer,” said Priam. “Like our esteemed Helenus or the Achaeans’ prophet Calchas.”

The Amazon shook her golden curls again. “No, the scholics did not see the future—somehow, they came from the future. But they are all dead now, according to Athena. But Achilles’ Fate awaits. And I will fulfill it.”

“When?” said old Priam, obviously turning over all the ramifications of this in his mind. He had not been king of the grandest city on earth for more than five decades for no reason, to no purpose. His son, Hector, was blood ally to Achilles now, but Hector was not king. Hector was Ilium’s noblest warrior, but while he might have once carried the fate of the city and its inhabitants in his sword arm, he had never imagined it in his mind. This was Priam’s work.

“When?” asked Priam again. “How soon can you and your twelve Amazon warriors kill Achilles?”

“Today,” promised Penthesilea. “As I promised. Before the sun sets on either Ilium or Olympos visible through that hole in the air we passed on the way in.”

“What do you require, daughter? Weapons? Gold? Riches?”

“Only your blessing, Noble Priam. And food. And a couch for my women and me, for a short nap before we bathe, adorn ourselves again in armor, and go out to end this war with the gods.”

Priam clapped his hands. Deiphobus, the many guards, his courtiers, and the twelve Amazon women stepped back into earshot.

He ordered fine food be brought to these women, then soft couches made available for their short sleep, then warm baths to be drawn and slave women to be ready to apply oils and unguents after their baths, and massages, and finally that the thirteen women’s horses be fed and combed and resaddled when Penthesilea was ready to go forth to do battle that afternoon.

Penthesilea was smiling and confident when she led her twelve companions out of the royal hall.