Chapter Text
He sees how it all begins.
Antochilus is first serving as a door guard in the Great Hall, when the salpinx players start up their fanfare, and the mass of soldiers and palace staff alike gathered within the tapestry-adorned walls fall quiet.
The King is at the front, up on the stage, his golden hair threaded with ash as it catches the sunlight, hands folded within the folds of his red tunic, a rich velvet yet simply cut. His face, worn like tanned leather run smooth with use, holds the expression of a man who has seen the world been built up and burnt down, and at the clearing of his throat, he has the kingdom pivoting on his every word.
The Queen stands beside him, regal and beautiful in the way one might expect an icicle to be: crystalline, delicate, and yet sharp and cold. Her posture is proud, she stands only half an inch behind Peleus, as if she cannot bear to step further back. Draped in a sash of the palest grey, the colour of the sky in early autumn, a thick rope of sapphires encircles her neck, her raven hair pulled so tightly up into an elegant twist that the razor-like profile of her neck and collarbones cut crisply against the warm Phthian air, like a snowflake amidst the sand. It takes such a woman to not be dominated by the extravagance of her jewellery.
But it is on the King's other side where all eyes are drawn.
The Prince Achilles, dressed simply in forest green cotton, stands with the grace of someone impossibly at ease with his body. Even Antochilus can't stop his eyes being drawn towards him, the green of his clothes bringing out the darker tones in his grassy eyes, like crushed moss. It's a nice touch, Antochilus muses absentmindedly, though not the most remarkable thing about the Prince's appearance.
He cuts a striking figure, golden waves that would usually tumble to an inch or two below shoulder length bound back at his nape with a piece of thin leather. His hands rest casually on the hilt of his sword, the brawny weapon juxtaposing his refined features clearly inherited from the Queen. There was a type of solidity to his beauty, despite the refinement: his features were not delicate, but strong, and carefully crafted. The slightly curved nose, the wideness of his jaw, the eyes set the perfect distance apart.
Antochilus has heard stories of him, of course. They all have. Of his silver tongue, his wit. Of his whetted blade, just as sharp. Of his beauty, the fair-headed Prince from across the seas, whose hair glimmered like sunlight atop the cresting waves, whose golden armour had led his father's dwindling armies to war - and won.
Achilles, they say, felled more men than most others combined. It was his cunning that allowed the Myrmidons to return to the arms of their wives, victorious.
After only eighteen years on this earth, Antochilus thinks, Achilles was already a living legend.
There's a strange magnetic quality about him, a subtle type of room-shifting gravity. Young lords trail after him all night, striving for his approval. Noble's daughters throw themselves at him and heiresses all giggle and conspire in hushed whispers as he walks by. He charms them all, with a quip or an effulgent smile.
There's a depth to him as well, a certain ambiguity to his every expression, every carefully guarded thought. Much like the Queen, Antochilus can never get a read on him. But this is, after all, in the world of scheming politicians and warring monarchs, a good skill to have. For he is Phthia’s pride and joy, the saviour of the fading throne, a dying monarchy. The resurrecter of a falling kingdom.
The hall is silent, apart from laments of the solstice winds sweeping through the courtyards outside.
"As many of you know," Peleus begins, and Antochilus hopes it's just his imagination, but his voice sounded frailer than it had the last time he had heard it, "this summer, my son, your Crown Prince Achilles, turns of age."
"In light of this joyous milestone," Peleus continues, pausing to smile fondly at his son, who breaks his stoic facade to offer a small smile in return, "in fourteen days, on his eighteenth birthday, Phthia shall be hosting a ball that is to be attended by all the Kingdoms of Thessaly, Epirus, Aetolia, Achaea."
Susurrations of excited whispers rippled throughout the crowd.
The Queen's eyes narrowed, and she cleared her throat. "This ball," she spoke, her voice frigid and smooth, like a frozen lake, "shall be attended by much gentility, including," her dark eyes whipped to her son, "many young women of pure blood."
Achilles did not react, at least not visibly. In fact, he looks rather bored.
"I should wish to make it known that this season," Thetis paused for effect, "the Prince intends to find a wife."
Murmurs erupted across the crowd, as the stable hands conversed with one another and the scullery maids conspired in hushed, gossipy tones.
It would not be long before the entire of Greece knew that Achilles was intending to marry.
Thetis' lips, a gush of blood red against her snowy skin, quirked up into a tiny smirk. Achilles was a coveted prize, and she knew it. And more than that, Phthia needed a rich ally.
"That is all," Peleus nodded, "we shall begin preparations instantaneously. You are all dismissed."
Antochilus sighed, blowing a resigned puff of air out through his lips.
A huge ball. Attended by all the crowns of Thessaly and beyond.
What a gods-damn security nightmare. Antochilus winced just thinking about all the extra drills and patrols the Captain was going to make them do.
Gods above, it was going to be a long month.
Antochilus knows he is not the only one to see it.
The Hall is beautiful, wreaths of larkspur and yarrow hanging in great garlands from the walls, the golden-threaded tapestries catching the light of the fires that burn, unextinguished, in the candelabras, the cheeks of the wealthy warm with the spiced wine that flow from Peleus' golden mixing bowls in endless quantities, as shallow and sweet as the words they pour down each other's mouths.
The dancing girls twirl in the middle of the room, hair bound by silk cloths of milky white, golden bangles tumbling round their ankles, and the wealthier women - princesses, ladies, heiresses - spin around them, diamonds and jewels pouring from their ears and necks like the mythical springs on Mount Pelion. Around them, courtesans gilded in gold threads and dull silks clap in time to Antochilus’ pounding headache. Gods, when was the last time he had drunk any water?
Amidst all the jewels and wine and golden light, all the sparkles and the shimmers and the shadows, Achilles’ hair still shines the brightest of all. He sits by his father at the head of the table, leaning back in his low-backed chair, chin resting thoughtfully on a knuckle as he props his elbow up on the chair's gilded arm.
The noblewomen giggle, shake their coiffures and curls, and prance, vying for his attention. The Prince does not throw them a second glance. The music rolls on, flutes and pipes and lyres strumming the same, heady melody.
At the same table, to the King's left and right, sit other monarchs - kings and queens of lands both close and far away, from Macedonia to Achaea. Their princesses sparkle, pendants and pearls dripping from their slender necks like tears, appearances carefully orchestrated, like ancient coins buried in the seabed, designed to ensnare the Prince's attention, and thereupon, his hand.
Achilles does not seem to even notice them. For his gaze keeps returning to a dark corner of the hall, where even the licentious light of the braziers fail to touch, where a young man stands, slouched casually against the wall.
He, too, is tall, but where Achilles' golden waves stretch a few inches past his shoulders, this man's dark curls are shorter, cropped an inch or two from his head, a couple curls flopping over his forehead. The golden goblet he holds elegantly between two fingers never seems to touch his lips: instead, he twirls it in his hand, almost pensively, the golden cup matching the rim of his black tunic, dark eyes trained on the aureate Prince above.
Antochilus cringes as the Queen's indicolite gaze follows the Prince's to the man in the shadows, and shivers as an icy cold glare is thrown the stranger's way. Achilles notices this, tearing his eyes away from the dark corner with a haste rarely exhibited, and throwing himself animatedly into conversation with who Antochilus believes to be the aggressively enthusiastic Princess of Thessaly.
The Queen relaxes slightly, straightening her rope of diamonds meticulously as if angling a spearhead, but every now and then her cool gaze darts to the dark man in the corner, and her beautiful eyes catch the firelight strangely, like the first tendrils of hoarfrost on a starlit night.
The dark man in the corner - roughly Achilles' age - seems unaffected by her contemplation. He has his own admirers: a few lesser noblewomen, whose fathers aren't high up enough the dazzling, unstable ladder that are Achaea's elite, mill about on the dance floor directly in front of him, waving their glittering plumes and sashaying their ruffles of silk like strangely coloured birds.
Interesting. Royal engagements were affairs so boring that Antochilus and many of the other guards found themselves shamelessly people-watching. It wasn’t as if he had an actual important station, like his superiors, who were stationed at the main doors to the hall, or up on the dais by the king’s table and standing ramrod straight. Antochilus rolls his eyes. No, they put a lowly private like him on servant passage duty, and Antochilus had been doing his best to avoid speaking to the idiot guard serving next to him all night.
So, he had been finding entertainment in observing the inner mechanisms and machinations of the Phthian court, tonight, indeed, of those courts overseas: who was trying to impress themselves upon who, who was attempting to intimidate, gain favour, cut off who. Who was having an affair, who was ending an affair. Really, though, they were all fish wriggling in the same catch, all, as Aristotle believed, striving towards the same thing. Antochilus watched in bored amusement as the messy web of lies and love and politics presented itself to him on a giant golden platter. And the Prince’s intrigue of this mysterious stranger in the corner of the hall served as the perfect centrepiece.
Antochilus turns reluctantly to the guard standing on the other side of the balcony that runs around the entire rim of the hall they keep watch from. "Who's that man in the corner, there?"
Automedon stpps picking his teeth with the tip of his spear, and his black eyes flicker to where Antochilus indicates.
"Prince of Opus, I reckon. Heard some of Chrys' friends giggling about him… apparently, tall, dark and morose is what all the ladies dig these days."
Antochilus nods, musing over this new divulgement, resuming his position against the small door to the balcony that leads to a servant’s spiral stairwell.
“Do you think I should grow a beard?” Automedon asks, admiring his own reflection in his polished spearhead.
“What?”
“It would make me more dark-and-morose looking.”
Antochilus snorts. “You still aren’t tall.”
“Offensive. I’m average height, thank you very much.”
“Yeah, for an eleven year old.”
“Shut up, Private . How long you been serving here, and you still ain’t got promoted.”
“You’ve been here twice as long, dimwit. Besides, Opus doesn’t have a beard, if that’s the look you’re going for.”
Automedon rolls his eyes. “Well, duh, but it would make me look more… dark and stormy.” He bounces his eyebrows.
“Think you have to be attractive in the first place to pull that look off,” Antochilus chuckles, and Automedos just huffs and tries to prod him with his spear.
“Whatever, man.”
The Prince of Opus. Opus, much like their own country, was one of the more economically vulnerable. Lands so south often tended to be, with the scorching sun and barren soil. But unlike Phthia, their king was notoriously bad-tempered, refused to seek help from other countries, and their Prince, although handsome, possessed none of Achilles' eminence.
Now, what was Opus' Prince doing here? Perhaps trying to secure a marriage for his own. But he didn't seem particularly interested in engaging with the spousal market on offer, barely throwing any of the ladies a second glance.
Antochilus' attention is drawn away, as he has to fling his spear across the servant passage to stop a pair of drunken young noblewomen stumbling into the winding tunnels leading into the heart of the Palace.
He sighs as they pout and throw themselves at him, slurring something incoherent about men in uniform.
This is above his pay grade.