Oracle by Jackie French Page B

dyed even one colour was a luxury.
    Nikko longed to explore the palace grounds, and Thetis sat peering out the door for hours. But Orkestres was firm.
    ‘No one must notice you. I want the Chamberlain, the guards, anyone who has ever seen you to forget that you’re here.’
    Nikko hugged his knees and looked up at him. ‘Why?’ Orkestres liked being asked questions, instead of responding to them with a cuff on the ear.
    ‘If the High King hears about you he may get curious, and want to see you perform. And if you dance for him before you are properly trained, before you can bring gasps to the audience, a smile to the High King’s face, you may never be called again. Do you really want to go back to herding goats, this time for the King? And as for your sister…’
    Nikko nodded. There was no need to say more. Dora had gossiped about the High King’s women. Not just his wife, the queen and mother of his sons, who was rarely seen beyond the women’s courtyards, and his sister Xurtis, the High Priestess, who made the sacrifices to the Mother, and took the omens from the house snake, but the other women who shared the King’s bed, and bore him children.
    It was an honour to share the bed of the High King, said Dora. But it wasn’t what Nikko wanted for his sister, nor a life as a servant or a weaver in the sheds beyond the walls.
    In between practice sessions they peered out of the gap in the window shutters. Even those small glimpses of the life beyond their rooms were fascinating. Many others, it seemed, lived in rooms about their courtyard: retired soldiers with scars up their arms and on the legs below their leather kilts; dancing girls trudging back tiredfrom a night at the palace, shadows under their eyes and filmy tunics that left their breasts bare, and everything else besides almost as plain to see.
    Other performers lived in this courtyard too. Sometimes they might even practise outside where the children could watch them: Herakles the strong man, who could break a bronze chain tied around his chest just by flexing his muscles; Simonedes the juggler, who could keep ten daggers in the air at once. Wrinkled men, too old to perform any more, gathered on the stone benches under the trees, and watched the acts or gossiped as they drank their watered wine.
    The city wall above one side of them was even more entrancing than the courtyard. These walls were flat on top, and wide enough up there for two to pass abreast. They were used as a road, it seemed, by the palace lords and ladies. These women were carried in litters of polished wood inlaid with turquoise or silver: big chairs set up on poles for four slaves to carry.
    The wealthy women wore long skirts of thin wool, with patterns around the edges, or many flounces below their tightly belted waists. Most had bare breasts, which peeped out of the folds of their shawls, and made Nikko blush till he got used to it. Their hair was curled and plaited, twisted with jewels and ribbons. Their necks were covered with bands of gold or silver, right up to their chins. Some were as young as Thetis, others older than any woman Nikko had ever seen, with grey hair in silver circlets and tame bright birds sitting on their shoulders. The young women kept their gaze down modestly, but the older oneslooked the men in the eye, or even stared appraisingly at the younger ones.
    The lords also wore skirts: not tunics like the villagers but kilts that resembled what the soldiers wore, knee high and folded at the front to make it easier to run or ride, with tight belts to make their waists seem smaller. Their bare chests were shaved and shiny with oil, and their beards were curled and oiled like their hair. None carried swords inside the palace walls—that was the duty of the guards—or even spears, unless they were headed out for a day’s hunt. But all wore jewels: gold at their wrists and ankles; gold chains set with stones of blue or red or green. One man carried a small creature