.. | the walls of astyanax | chapter 4 For the hundredth time in his short life, Avicenna swore himself off of wine for good. The solace and escape it offered was only worth it for the hours before he would eventually fall asleep. His head simply could not take much more of this. With slow movements, he sat up on the edge of the bed with his pounding head in his hands and swallowed the nausea that that swirled in his stomach. Gods. It was like the morning after a Dionysian festival. He spared a thought to maybe have Pyrrhus fetch him some water, but decided to wait for his vision to clear. Groggily, he had just begun to turn around and wake the slave when the heavy doors to his chamber were thrust open so that they knocked with a resounding echo loudly against the walls. Two armed guards came bursting through, their faces were set to stone as they didn’t even hesitate to drag him from his bed to the cold floor. They thrust his robes at him. "Get dressed," one of them growled, looking about the chamber. Avicenna’s head began to spin and his stomach churned more threateningly. For a second he pressed his forehead to the cool floor; the purpose for such an invasion was secondary to this agony. By the time he'd found his voice, the guards had begin ripping his room apart in search of something. As Avicenna pulled on his chiton he dragged himself to his feet. "What is this?" he demanded in a hoarse voice. The other guard tossed Avicenna's sandals at him. "Where's your boy, eh?" he asked. "Where's that slave of yours?" Avicenna tucked and tied his sashes in a hurry to conceal himself from these men, his attention momentarily taken again by his doubling vision as he tried to navigate the ties to his sandals. He swallowed the taste in his mouth that he knew wasn't left over from the wine. The other guard began to chop at the bed with his sword, ripping up the hidden cushions. "Stop!" Avicenna shouted, pushing himself to his feet and fighting the dizziness with a vengeance. The wine would not get the best of him right now. He rushed to the bed to find only shredded sheets. Pyrrhus was gone. "By whose order is this?" he demanded. "Come on," the first man growled, seizing Avicenna's arms and practically throwing him towards the doorway. The other began rummaging through his trunks and underneath the bed some more. Avicenna struggled against the strong bruising hands with all his might, spitting curses and demanding reasons for such an invasion, but the guard would give him none. And where was Pyrrhus? Avicenna couldn't remember him leaving the bed last night; the slave had never had occasion to leave before dawn. And why were the guards looking for him? The man remained tight-lipped to the Avicenna's demands as he was half led, half dragged outside in front of the house where he found himself face to face with his late father's most trusted companion. Avicenna was pushed to his knees before him and his hands were bound behind his back. "Sinon!" he gasped. "What's going on? Whose order is this?" The black-haired man shook his head. "What have you done, Cenna?" Avicenna blinked at him. "I've done nothing!" "Where's the wineboy then?" Avicenna had known Sinon all his life and he was one of the few men who had retained his status as their house's close confidante after Philip's death. But that familiarity wasn't a comfort to him as Sinon gave orders to his men to search the house over for Pyrrhus. "Sinon, please! Where is Euchenor? What charge am I under?" The man raised an eyebrow. "Euchenor is dead, Cenna," he stated. "Stabbed in his bed." Avicenna fell back from his knees to his haunches. Dead... "But who?" he asked hoarsely. Who indeed! Surely Sinon knew he wasn't capable of such an act! Especially in the state he was in last night! Right? There were moments last night, he admitted to himself, that had been erased from his mind by his drink. He could remember arguing with Pyrrhus and then sleeping with him, but after that- It was blank. Not even the fuzziness of sleep, just... nothing. He groaned and put his still-throbbing head in his hands. "You can't believe it was me, Sinon. I beg you!" he whispered, his throat aching. "I don't know what to believe," the man admitted, coming to pull him up by the elbow, "except that I know your mother saw you do it!" High Apollo. Did it matter whether or not his father's trusted friend believed him? As he sat quietly in the cool cell, dark despite the rays of light that streamed through a small window that was too narrow to fit through and too high to even reach, he had plenty of time to think. He hadn't even been capable of true rational thought until he had retched his stomach out outside. Gods. Euchenor was dead. And his mother, hysterical now from Sinon's account, had seen him with the bloodied knife in his hand. He couldn't have done it. He had to have been with Pyrrhus all night! From their argument in the courtyard to mutual unspoken apologies later in Avicenna's chambers. He could almost recount for the entire night, even the time that he dozed between the times they... But the doubt was there. He couldn't for the life of him recall his actions after Pyrrhus's last kisses. Had he passed out? And where was the slave himself? Why on this night of all others would he choose to slip out of bed early? But the slave's alibi was his only salvation, if they could find him. Unless Pyrrhus had... Avicenna growled in anguish and raked his fingers through his hair roughly. How much soul-searching could he do in a dark quiet place like this? The other man in the cell was watching him silently. He was old and grimy, looking as if he'd been here for quite some time. Avicenna met his eyes but said nothing. He then turned away, not wishing to provoke any kind of conversation. He chewed on a finger nail. Was he capable of killing someone so coldly? He had certainly entertained the idea enough, but the thought and act were two different things, weren't they? He thanked the gods that he'd never breathed a word of it to anyone but Pyrrhus. The slave came to the forefront of his mind again. Certainly Pyrrhus, Ganymede incarnate, couldn't have done such a thing. Apollo, he silently prayed. Help me! Outside, echoing off the stone walls, he could hear shouting and sounds of struggling. Someone was cursing and putting up a hell of a fight against what sounded like several men. Avicenna stood up and moved away from the door as the sounds grew nearer. The other prisoner crawled to the opposite corner and drew his legs up again, watching the door. The heavy door opened and two burly guards threw a man in bodily to the floor. He snarled and was up in a flash, pounding at the heavy door after the guards had closed it. He shouted obscenities at them, beating his fists against the thick plank wood postern. Avicenna remained where he was, frozen. His first thought was a madman. They'd put him with a madman! He looked about instinctively for somewhere in the solid cell that he could hide or something to defend himself with. Nothing. After a moment, the man stopped his shouting and beating and stepped away a bit, seeming to size up the doorway. Then he turned around and spotted his cellmates. He had an odd look to him. His sweated skin was dirty as if he'd been thrashing on the ground, which perhaps he had. His arms were marked with bright red scratches and there were painful-looking raw spots on his elbows and knees. He was nearly naked too but for remains of what looked like a tunic that had been ripped to hang just about his waist by its ties. Avicenna backed away along the wall under the man's odd golden-eyed gaze. But the stranger said nothing. He seemed content with staring Avicenna down like a wild animal stalks his prey. Gods, he was big too. Too muscular, and much too dark-skinned to belong anywhere near Avicenna's class. "Who are you?" he said finally in a deep hoarse voice. He turned his eyes to the silent old man who cowered in the dark corner. Avicenna swallowed and straightened up. He cleared his throat, berating himself for being a coward. "Why?" he snapped, hoping his voice didn't sound as shaken as it had sounded in his own ears. The stranger shrugged, moving into the stream of sunlight to sit cross-legged on the floor in it. He lifted his face and closed his eyes to it, as if he could absorb it through his skin. "Who are you?" Avicenna ventured, his fear dissipating. The man's hair was as gold as his eyes in the sun. He began to look less and less like a madman and more like some sweaty wrestler he'd seen competing in the festival games. Gold eyes were turned to him again, the sunlight piercing them from the angle his head was tilted at. "No one important," he said. He closed his eyes and turned back to the sun and let a long silence pass by. Then he studied Avicenna again as if in afterthought. "You're not what one normally sees in places like this. What did you do?" He didn't like him. That was Avicenna's first reaction to this... this dirty man. Even the deep tone of his voice made the hair rise on the back of his neck. "I didn't do anything!" he snapped. The man shrugged again. For some reason that made Avicenna even more angry. "They think I killed someone on purpose," the stranger said. "Did you?" The gold eyes opened to pierce him again. "No." Avicenna didn't know to believe him or not, and he could care less except for the fact that he could be the man's next victim if he let his guard down. The old man in the corner crept out a bit, smoothing his beard. Both Avicenna and the stranger looked at him. He said nothing though, but pointed at the stranger's wounds. "What?" The man with the gold eyes dusted the scratches on his forearms and examined the rough scrapes on his knees. "I'll be fine," he said, smiling a little at the little man. "Who are you?" The old man shook his head, opened his mouth and pointed. He had no tongue, only a black scar where it should have been. He made some noise in his throat. Then he retreated back to his place in the opposite corner and curled up again, stroking his grimy yellow beard. The gold-eyed stranger looked at Cenna. "An Athenian court's answer to treason," he said. The silence, if nothing else, was going to kill him. Avicenna fidgeted with the bits of straw that were strewn about on the grimy floor, idly wondering if it would be strong enough to strangle someone if he could bunch enough of it together. The younger of his two strange companions, however, sat quite still where he was, chewing his lower lip in silent thoughtfulness between dozing and watching his cellmate. How could he be so still? It was almost frightening. The beginning of the first night came and with it, the cold. Avicenna drew his legs up, now more or less convinced that the odd man and the old mute one posed no threat to him. Forgetting them for a moment, he lowered his face into the warmth of his knees and found himself fighting tears. Would he be judged? Killed? Or would he be left here to rot away with these strangers who even now he was sure, were watching him? And what of the slave- had they ever found him? He feared for Pyrrhus, and the emotion appalled him. A slave was dispensable, especially one like Pyrrhus who had probably given Euchenor nothing but trouble in the past, besides obvious other things. What cause would Kassandra have for keeping him either? She had plenty of her own. He imagined Pyrrhus not as another Lysander, but one who he would be sorry to see continue life as someone else's property. That thought frightened him too. He shifted uncomfortably. He didn't hate Pyrrhus as he had hated Lysander. And what cause would an estranged mother have to even remotely try to save the son of a long-dead man who she seemed to have only just tolerated in her house? She had seen him with the knife in his hand. Avicenna's anger flared, though his face was warmed by silent tears. He felt mentally exhausted from thinking. He wished he could scream out his anguish and beat the walls until he was too tired to lift his arms. To knock his head against the stone, or inflict some sort of bodily harm upon himself that would take his mind off of the torment on his head. Perhaps if he hit it hard enough- He became aware of someone near him and his head shot up. "Why are you crying?" the man asked. Avicenna thrust himself away. "Leave me alone! What business is it of yours?" Barely in the dark, he could make out the man blinking up at him. "None," he admitted. "But you're keeping me awake." Had he been crying so loudly? Avicenna crawled his way to the other end of the cell. After a moment, the man asked, "Perhaps we should sleep closer, the three of us. It will get colder." "Freeze," Avicenna hissed, wrapping his arms about himself. He'd be damned before he would seek comfort like that. He could do without heat. To his annoyance, the stranger didn't see it fit to let him be. With a glance to the silent dozing old man in the corner, he made his way over and crouched a bit away from where Avicenna leaned against the wall. "My name is Achatës," he said finally. Avicenna tightened his arms about himself. "Well?" "Well what?" Gods! Why couldn't he just be left alone? "What am I supposed to call you?" "Why should I tell you?" He could almost envision the man shrugging. "Why not? I have to call you something." "You don't have to call me anything. You don't have to talk to me at all!" Silence. Thank the gods the man got the hint. He could hear Achatës shifting in the straw, exhaling. "Shall I make up a name for you?" It was said in good humor, but Cenna couldn't take it that way. "Gods, Avicenna. Avicenna!" he cried, moving away again and scraping his knees. There was another pause before a deep, satisfied voice said, "Avicenna, then." part 5 | back to part 3 | back to main