Orestes struggled and cried in my arms. He could hear his mother. He reached for her voice. The sounds of Clytemnestra’s weeping carried on the air, tiny pitiful sobs.

As for me, I felt airy, as if I were standing on the top of the limestone cliffs that surround Aulis harbor like the broken half of a bowl. Betrayal forced all our hearts to skip a beat, but mother and Orestes could still cry.

Parts of me were already gone. I knew there was no turning back.

“Tomorrow,” Iamas said. “They will do it tomorrow at dawn.”

Mother’s grip was painful on my arm. “Come on,” she said, dragging me out of the tent. Orestes screamed as we went. It was the sound I would have made if I could have.

Achilles saw my unprotected face. He shielded his eyes (dark and chary, above a beard like adolescent scrub) with his sword arm. “Does the girl have to be here?”

“My husband has made fools of us all,” said Clytemnestra. “He tricked me and used your name to do it. People will think you find it amusing to lure young girls to their deaths.”

Achilles paced angrily. Iamas flinched each time Achilles’s sword clanked against his armor. “He had no right to use my name.”

“You could make them stop this. They will listen to you. You’re a hero. If you tell them to stop, they’ll have to take heed.”

Achilles halted. “You want me to tell Agamemnon to stop the sacrifice?”

“For the sake of your reputation!”

“But how will we get to Troy?”

Mother approached him. At once, the stern and proper woman I had known all my life vanished (Helen arraying herself on the bench, the folds of her garment decorating her languorous body). She became a softer, reticent figure, her eyes averted, her hands gentle and hesitant as they lifted her hem to show her plump calves. Her fingers fastened on the laces of Achilles’s breastplate. Her lips moved near his neck, so close that her breath stirred the fine golden hair on his nape.