Wonder Woman: Warbringer Read online

  The deep bellow of a horn sounded from the Epheseum, and Diana’s heart gave a sick thud. The race was over. Someone had claimed the laurel crown she’d been so sure she would wear today. I saved a life, she reminded herself, but the thought was hardly comforting. If anyone found out about Alia, Diana would be sent from her home forever. Of all the island’s rules, the prohibition against outsiders was the most sacred. Only Amazons who had won the right to a life on Themyscira belonged here. They died gloriously in battle, proving their courage and heart, and if, in their last moments, they cried out to a goddess, they might be offered a new life, one of peace and honor among sisters. Athena, Chandraghanta, Pele, Banba. Goddesses from all over the world, warriors of every nation. Each Amazon had earned her place on the island. All but Diana, of course.

  That prickling coil tightened in her gut. Maybe rescuing Alia hadn’t been a misstep, but something fixed in Diana’s fate. If she had never really belonged on the island, maybe exile was inevitable.

  She hurried her steps as the towers of the Epheseum came into view, but her feet felt weighted with dread. How exactly was she going to face her mother after this?

  Too soon, the dirt of the road became thick slabs of Istrian stone, white and weathered beneath her bare feet. As she entered the city, she felt as if she could see people staring down at her from their balconies and open gardens, their curious eyes dogging her path to the arena. It was one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, a crown of glowing white stone perched atop slender arches, each emblazoned with the name of a different champion.

  Diana passed beneath the arch dedicated to Penthesilea. She could hear cheering and feet stamping, and when she emerged into the sunlit arena, the sight that greeted her was worse than she’d expected. She hadn’t just lost. She was the last to return. The victors were on the podium, and the presentation of the laurels had already begun. Naturally, Rani had placed first. She’d been a distance runner in her life as a mortal and as an Amazon. The worst part was how much Diana liked her. She was relentlessly humble and kind and had even offered to help Diana train. Diana wondered if it got tiring being splendid all the time. Maybe heroes were just like that.

  As she made her way toward the dais, she forced herself to smile. Though the sun had helped to dry her, she was keenly aware of the rumpled mess of her tunic, the seawater knots in her hair. Perhaps if she acted like the race hadn’t mattered, it wouldn’t. But she’d only taken a few steps when Tek emerged from the crowd and slung an arm around her neck.

  Diana stiffened and then hated herself for it because she knew Tek could tell.

  “Aw, little Pyxis,” Tek crooned, “you get bogged down in the mud?”

  A soft hiss rose from the people standing nearby. They all understood the insult. Little Pyxis, made of clay.

  Diana grinned. “Miss me, Tek? There’s got to be someone else around here for you to judge.”

  A few chuckles bubbled up from the crowd. Keep walking, Diana told herself. Keep your head held high. The problem was that Tek was a born general. She sensed weakness and knew exactly where to find the cracks. You’ve got to give as good as you get, Maeve had warned Diana, or Tek won’t back down. She’s cautious around Hippolyta, but eventually you’re the one who’s going to sit that throne.

  Not if Tek has her way, Diana thought.

  “Don’t be cross, Pyxis,” said Tek. “There’s always next time. And the time after that.”

  As Diana moved through the spectators, she heard Tek’s allies chiming in.

  “Maybe they’ll move the finish line for the next race,” said Otrera.

  “Why not?” Thyra replied. “There are different rules when you’re royalty.”

  That was a direct slight to her mother, but Diana grinned as if nothing in the world could bother her. “Amazing how some people never tire of the same song, isn’t it?” she said as she strolled toward the steps that led to the royal loge. “You only learn one dance, I guess you have to keep doing it.”

  Some of the onlookers nodded approvingly. They wanted a princess who didn’t flinch at the easy barbs, who stood her ground, who could spar with words instead of fists. After all, what real harm had Tek caused? Sometimes Diana wished Tek would challenge her outright. She’d lose, but she’d rather take a beating than constantly pretend the taunts and jabs didn’t bother her. It was tiring knowing that every time she faltered, someone would be there to notice.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. At least Tek was honest about what she thought. The hardest thing was knowing that, though many of the people smiling at her right now might be kind to her, might even show her loyalty because she was her mother’s daughter and they loved their queen, they would never believe Diana worthy—not to walk among them, certainly not to wear a crown. And they were right. Diana was the only Amazon who had been born an Amazon.

  If Tek found out about Alia, if she discovered what Diana had done, she’d have everything she ever wanted: Diana banished from the island, the clay girl lost to the World of Man—and Tek would never have to challenge Hippolyta outright.

  Well, she’s not going to find out, Diana promised herself. There has to be a way to get Alia off the island. Diana just needed to secure a boat, get Alia on it, and find some human to hand her off to on the other side of the boundary.

  Or she could tell the truth. Face ridicule, a trial if she was lucky, instant exile if she wasn’t. The dictates of the goddesses who had formed Themyscira were not to be taken lightly, and no offerings to Hera or prayers to Athena would change what she’d done. Would Diana’s mother speak on her behalf? Offer excuses for her daughter’s failings? Or just follow the punishment demanded by law? Diana wasn’t sure which would be worse.

  Forget it. She would get a boat somehow.

  She scaled the steps to the queen’s loge, keenly aware that all attention had shifted from the victors’ podium to her. Light filtered through the silken overhang, casting the shaded platform in red and blue, jasmine tumbling from its railings in sweet-smelling clouds. There were no seasons on Themyscira, but Hippolyta had the vines and plants changed with every equinox and solstice. We must mark time, she’d told Diana. We must work to maintain our connection to the mortal world. We are not gods. We must always remember we were born mortal.

  Not all of us, Diana had thought but hadn’t said at the time. Sometimes it was as if Hippolyta had forgotten Diana’s origins. Or maybe she just wanted to. There are different rules when you’re royalty.

  Diana had no doubt that her mother had seen her as soon as she entered the arena, but now Hippolyta turned as if glimpsing her for the first time and smiled in welcome.

  She opened her arms and embraced Diana briefly. It was the proper thing to do. Diana had lost. If her mother showed too much warmth, it would be perceived as foolish or inappropriate. If she treated Diana too coldly, it might be seen as a rejection and could have far-reaching repercussions. The embrace was as it should be and nothing more, balanced on the sword’s edge of politics. So why did it still prick her heart?

  Diana knew her role. She remained at her mother’s side as they placed the crowns of laurel on the victors’ heads, and smiled and congratulated the morning’s competitors. But the cold coil of worry in her belly seemed to have sprouted tentacles, and with every passing moment they squeezed tighter. She told herself not to fidget, to stop checking the position of the sun in the sky. She felt sure her mother could tell something was wrong. Diana could only hope Hippolyta would blame her behavior on the shame of losing the race.

  The games would continue through the afternoon, followed by a new play at the amphitheater in the evening. Diana hoped to be back at the cave long before then, but there was no escaping the first feast. Long tables had been set in the gardens beside the arena, laden with warm bread, heaps of poached cuttlefish, grilled strips of venison, and pitchers of wine and mare’s milk.

  Diana forced herself to take some rice and fish, and pushed a piece of fresh honeycomb around her plate. It
was usually her favorite, but her gut was too full of worry. She caught Maeve’s questioning glance from the end of the table, but she had to remain with her mother. Besides, what exactly was she going to tell Maeve? I definitely would have won but I was busy transgressing against divine law.

  “In Pontus we would have had lamb grilled on the spit,” Tek said, pushing at the venison on her plate. “Proper meat, not this gamey stuff.”

  No animals were raised for slaughter on the island. If meat was wanted, then it had to be hunted. It was not a rule created by the goddesses or a condition demanded by the island, but Hippolyta’s law. She valued all life. Tek valued her stomach.

  Hippolyta just laughed. “If you can’t find meat worth eating, drink more wine.”

  Tek raised her glass and they clinked cups, then bent their heads together giggling like girls. Diana had never seen anyone make Hippolyta laugh the way Tek did. They’d fought side by side in the mortal world, ruled together, argued together, and together they’d chosen to turn from the World of Man. They were prota adelfis, the first of the Amazons on Themyscira, sisters in all but blood. Tek didn’t hate Hippolyta—Diana was fairly sure she couldn’t hate her—only what she’d done when she’d created Diana. Hippolyta had made a life from nothing. She’d brought a girl into being on Themyscira. She’d made an Amazon when only the gods could do such a thing.

  Once, when Diana was just a child, she’d woken in her palace bedroom to hear them arguing. She’d slid from her bed, the marble cold beneath her feet, and padded down the hall to the Iolanth Court.

  This was the heart of their home, a wide terrace of graceful columns that overlooked the gardens below and the city beyond. The palace was full of objects that hinted at the world her mother had known before the island—a golden cup, a shallow black kylix painted with dancing women, a saddle made of tufted felt—pieces of a puzzle Diana had never been able to fit together into a whole story. But the Iolanth Court held no mysteries. It ran the length of the western side of the palace, open on three sides so that it was always flooded with sunlight and the sound of fountains burbling in the gardens below. Sweet, waxy plumeria twined around its columns, and its balustrade was marked by potted orange trees that drew the gossipy buzz of bees and hummingbirds.

  Diana and her mother took most of their meals there at a long table that was always cluttered with Diana’s schoolbooks, half-full glasses of water or wine, a dish of figs, or a spill of freshly cut flowers. It was where Hippolyta welcomed new Amazons to Themyscira after they had been purified, her voice low and gracious as she explained the rules of the island.

  But with Tek, Hippolyta ceased to be the dignified, benevolent queen. She was not the mother that Diana knew, either; she was someone else, someone a little wild and careless, someone who slouched in her chair and snorted when she laughed.

  Hippolyta was not laughing that night. She was pacing back and forth on the terrace, the silks of her saffron-colored robe billowing behind her like a banner of war.

  “She is a child, Tek. There is nothing dangerous about her.”

  “She is a danger to our very way of life,” Tek said. She was seated on a bench at the long table in her riding clothes, elbows resting on the table, legs stretched out before her. “You know the law. No outsiders.”

  “She isn’t an outsider. She’s a little girl. She was made of this island’s very earth, fashioned by my own hands. She’s never even been outside.”

  “There are rules, Hippolyta. We are immortal. We’re not meant to conceive, and the island was intended for those of us who have known the perils of the World of Man, who know what it is to fight against the endless tide of mortal violence, who choose to turn away from it. You had no right to make that decision for Diana.”

  “She will be raised in a world without conflict. She’ll walk a land in which blood has never been spilled.”

  “Then how will she know to value it? The gods did not intend this. They made their laws for a reason, and you have subverted them.”

  “The gods blessed her! They endowed her with living breath, made my blood to flow in her veins, bestowed their gifts upon her.” She sat down beside Tek. “Be reasonable. Do you think it was my power that gave her life? You know none of us have magic like that.”

  Tek took Hippolyta’s hands in hers. Seated like that, hands clasped, they looked like they were making a pact, like they were colluding over some wonderful plan.

  “Hippolyta,” Tek said gently, “when do the gods give such a gift without exacting a price? There is always a danger, always a cost, even if we haven’t seen it yet.”

  “And what would you have me do?”

  “I don’t know.” Tek rose and rested her hands on the balustrade, looking out at the dark stretch of city and sea. Diana remembered being surprised by how many lanterns were still lit in the houses below, as if this were the appointed hour in which adults argued. “You’ve put us in an impossible position. There will be a reckoning for this, Hippolyta, and all for the sake of something to call your own.”

  “She belongs to us, Tek. All of us.” Hippolyta laid a hand on Tek’s arm and for a moment, Diana thought they might make peace, but then Tek shrugged her off.

  “You made the choice. Tell yourself what you need to, Highness, but we’ll all pay the price.”

  Now Diana watched Tek and her mother talking as if that argument and all the others that had followed didn’t matter, as if Tek’s regular torment of Diana was a fond game. Hippolyta had always waved away Tek’s behavior, her coldness, claiming that it would fade as the years passed and no disaster befell Themyscira. Instead, it had gotten worse. Diana was almost seventeen, and the only thing that seemed to have changed was that she presented a bigger target.

  Diana’s eyes flicked to the sundial at the center of the feasting grounds. Alia had been alone in the cave for nearly three hours. Diana didn’t have time to fret over Tek. She needed to figure out how she was going to get her hands on a boat.

  As if she could read Diana’s mind, Tek said, “Somewhere you need to be, Princess?” Her eyes were slightly narrowed, her gaze speculative. Tek saw too much. It was probably what made her such a great leader.

  “I can’t think of anywhere,” Diana said pleasantly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted me to leave.”

  “Now, what would give you that idea?”

  “Enough of that,” Hippolyta said with a flick of her hand, as if she could simply wipe away discord. And sure enough, the musicians began to play and the feast table filled with song and laughter.

  Diana moved the food around on her plate and did her best to be merry as the sun arced westward. She couldn’t be the first to leave and risk looking like she was sulking after her loss. At last, Rani rose from the table and stretched. “Who wants to run to the beach?” she asked. She held the red silk flag aloft and shouted, “Catch me if you can!”

  Chairs were shoved backward as the Amazons rose, whooping and cheering, to follow Rani down to the shore before the next round of games began. Diana took the chance to slip away to the alcove where Maeve was waiting. She wore a crushed-velvet tunic in pale celadon that barely counted as a dress and that she had paired with nothing but sandals and a circlet of leaf-bright green beads braided into her red hair.

  “I think you may be missing your trousers,” Diana said as Maeve looped an arm through hers, and they headed toward the palace.

  “Two things I love best about this place—the lack of rain, and the lack of propriety. Sweet Mother of All Good Things, I thought that meal would never end.”

  “I know. I was seated across from Tek.”

  “Was she terrible?”

  “No more than usual. I think she was on good behavior because of my mother and Rani.”

  “It is hard to be petty around Rani. She always makes you feel your time would be better spent improving yourself.”

  “Or emblazoning her profile on a coin.” They passed beneath a colonnade thick with curling grape vines. �
�Maeve,” Diana said as casually as she could, “do you know if the Council has mentioned a mission on the horizon anytime soon?”

  “Don’t start that again.”

  “It was just a question.”

  “Even if by some chance they did, you know your mother would never let you go.”

  “She can’t keep me here forever.”

  “Actually, she can. She’s the queen, remember?” Diana scowled, but Maeve continued on. “She’s going to use any excuse to keep you here, and you gave her a good one today. What happened? What went wrong?”

  Diana hesitated. She didn’t want to lie to Maeve. She didn’t want to lie to anyone. Still, if she shared this secret, Maeve would be forced to either reveal Diana’s crime or keep Diana’s confidence and risk exile herself.

  “There were rocks blocking the northern road,” said Diana. “Some kind of landslide.”

  Maeve frowned. “A landslide? Do you think anyone followed you? Knew your route?”

  “You’re not actually suggesting sabotage. Tek wouldn’t—”

  “Wouldn’t she?”

  No, Diana thought but didn’t say. Tek doesn’t think she has to sabotage me. She thinks I can fail all on my own. And Diana had proven her right.

  “Hey,” Maeve said, giving Diana’s shoulders a squeeze. “There will be other races, and—”

  Maeve seized Diana’s arm. Her eyes rolled back and she swayed on her feet.

  “Maeve!” Diana gasped. Maeve crumpled to her knees. Diana curled an arm around her waist, supporting her. Her friend’s skin felt wrong. It was too hot to the touch. “What’s the matter? What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Maeve panted, then bent double, releasing a low howl of pain. Diana felt it a second later, the echo of Maeve’s anguish. All Amazons were connected by blood, even Diana through her mother. When one felt pain, they all shared it.