Chapter 226: The Search

Hector divided the search.

"I take the palace and the gardens. Lysander takes the harbour and the lower town. Paris takes the temple and the walls."

Paris looked at him. "We’ll find her. She’s alive."

Hector did not answer. He walked toward the palace.

Lysander looked at Paris. Paris’s hands were shaking. He had his bow but no arrow nocked — his fingers could not hold the string steady.

"Check every room," Lysander said. "Every stairwell. Every corner."

Paris nodded and went.

Hector opened every door in the palace.

Her chamber first. The bed — untouched. The weaving on the chair. The lamp burned out. He opened the chest beside her bed. Her jewellery. Her shawl. Priam’s letter, folded on the table.

She had taken nothing.

He searched the gardens. The fig tree. The stone bench where Andromache sat. The paths between the hedges. He checked the council chamber, the war room, the storage rooms, the servants’ quarters.

A maid was crying in the corridor. He put his hand on her shoulder.

"Search again."

"My lord, we’ve searched everywhere — "

"Search again."

He moved on. Hallways. Stairwells. The eastern wing. The western wing. Every room. Every door.

He stopped in an empty corridor. Looked at the stone floor. Nothing.

He stood there for a long time.

Lysander went to the harbour.

He searched the docks. The guard chambers. The supply offices. The storage rooms along the harbour wall. He opened every door. Checked every corner.

Then he found the room.

Small. Near the harbour gate. Used by the harbour master for storage — charts, rope, spare lamp oil. The door was unlatched.

He pushed it open. The air was stale. The lamp was out.

He lit it.

A table. A chair — pushed back, not overturned. On the floor: a broken tablet. Three pieces. He knelt and picked them up. Tried to fit them together. The clay was cracked through the middle. He could read fragments.

...harbour... rotation... the source...

He set the pieces on the table. Looked at the floor. Near the chair leg — a small piece of fabric. Dark wool. Fine weave.

He picked it up. Held it between his fingers.

Palace cloth. His mother’s.

He stood in the room. No blood. No weapon. No body. But she had been here. She had sat at this table. She had been writing — or reading — and then she had stood up. Quickly. The chair was pushed back, not placed.

Something had interrupted her.

He pocketed the fabric. Picked up the broken tablet pieces. Walked out.

Paris searched the temple first. Empty. Cold. The altar was bare. The sanctuary was dark. No one had been here since the High Priest’s execution.

He moved to the walls. Eastern section. Northern tower. Southern gate. Every guard post.

"Have you seen the Queen?"

No one had.

He walked the parapet. The full circuit. His bow on his back, his hands empty, his eyes scanning every shadow, every doorway, every stairwell.

Nothing.

He stopped at the eastern tower. Looked down at the city. The lower town. The harbour. The streets where twenty-five thousand people were living and dying and he could not find his mother.

His chest was tight. His breathing was wrong — too fast, too shallow. He gripped the parapet.

He kept searching.

Noon. They met at the harbour room.

Hector stood in the doorway. Paris behind him. Lysander inside, the broken tablet on the table, the piece of fabric beside it.

"Palace. Nothing," Hector said.

"Temple. Walls. Nothing," Paris said.

Lysander pointed at the fabric. "Hers. Found on the floor. Near the chair."

Hector picked it up. His fingers closed around it.

"And this." Lysander pointed at the broken tablet. "Three words I could read. Harbour. Rotation. Source."

Hector set the fabric down. His hand was steady. His face was not — a muscle in his jaw twitched, once.

"She was here," Hector said.

"She was investigating. She found something. She sat at this table and — "

"And then what."

"I don’t know. No blood. No weapon. No body."

Hector looked at the room. At the chair. At the table. At the door.

"The door was unlatched."

"Yes."

"She left. Or was taken."

"Or both."

Paris was standing in the corridor. He had not entered the room. His back was against the wall. His eyes were on the fabric.

Lysander knelt. Examined the floor. A mark — faint, almost invisible. A scratch in the stone. He followed it. From the table leg to the door. Through the door. Into the corridor. Along the wall. To a corner. To a narrow stairwell that descended toward the harbour.

"Here," Lysander said.

They followed the scratch. Down the stairwell. Along a narrow passage behind the harbour wall. Through a turn. Through another.

The passage ended at a corner. Dark. Sheltered. Hidden from the harbour and the wall and the city.

Lysander reached it first.

He stopped.

Hector reached it second.

Paris reached it last.

Hecuba sat against the wall.

Her back was straight. Her hands rested on her knees. Her fingers were relaxed. Her face was calm — eyes open, mouth closed. No fear. No pain. The expression of a woman who had seen what was coming and faced it.

A sword protruded from her chest. The blade had entered from behind — through her back, between the ribs, emerging just below the collarbone. The hilt was visible behind her shoulder. The blade was bronze.

Greek bronze.

The hilt bore a mark. A lion. The seal of Mycenae.

Paris dropped to his knees.

The sound that came from his throat was not a word. Not a scream. Something deeper — a sound that started in his chest and broke apart before it reached his mouth.

Hector did not move.

He stood above his mother. Looking down. His eyes were dry. His face was stone. His hands hung at his sides.

Lysander stood beside him. He looked at the sword. The Mycenaean seal. The angle of the blade — entered from behind, which meant she had been facing away. She had been leaving. Or she had been speaking to someone she trusted enough to turn her back.

"She didn’t fight," Lysander said.

Hector knelt.

Slowly. The way a man kneels when his body does not want to bend but his knees give anyway. He sat beside her. On the stone. His hand reached out and covered hers. His fingers pressed against her fingers. Cold. Still.

He did not speak. He did not weep. He sat with his mother and held her hand in the dark corner where someone had driven a Greek sword through her back.

Paris was on the ground. His forehead against the stone. His shoulders shaking. No sound now — the first sound had broken and what remained was silence and shaking.

Lysander stepped back.

He looked at the sword. At the seal. At his mother’s face — calm, open-eyed, unafraid.

She had found the spy. She had confronted the spy. And the spy had killed her with a weapon that should not have been inside Troy.

A Greek sword. Inside the walls. Inside the harbour. In a hidden corner where no one would have found her for days.

He looked at Hector. At his brother sitting on the stone, holding a dead woman’s hand.

He looked at Paris. At his youngest brother, folded against the ground, shaking without sound.

He looked at his mother.

"Who did this," he said.

No one answered.

The harbour sounds drifted over the wall. The Greek fires burned. The war continued.

And Hecuba, Queen of Troy, wife of Priam, mother of Hector and Paris and Lysander, sat dead against a stone wall with a Mycenaean sword through her chest and her children kneeling around her in the dark.