The wine came from stores behind pitch barrels. Black crept through the seal like veins.

  "From before the siege," Priam explained, pouring for his Greek guests. "To peace."

  Agamemnon drank first. It tasted wrong, copper and old bread, but refusing hospitality meant declaring war intentions. Everyone drank.

  "Where's Achilles?" he asked. His chair stood empty.

  His pupils slowly ate themselves.

  Achilles couldn't find his room.

  The stones melted, revealing the truth. He'd walked these halls forever.

  It made it easier to be honest, and honestly, he'd been lost since he was seven.

  "Sir?" A young soldier approached. "Can I help?"

  Achilles's sword went through him. Muscle memory. His body searching while his mind wandered.

  "Sorry," he said to his corpse. "I'm looking for my mother."

  Another soldier was bringing aid. His body knew its business. Twenty years of practice.

  Through the fog, he heard it: metallic shrieking, rhythmic and wrong. But familiar. Like his mother's loom when she'd woven his funeral shroud, showing him each thread.

  His chariot.

  He followed the sound through Troy's corridors, then out into evening light.

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  Odysseus crawled through the gate mechanism. Almost there. Gears descended like hammers. He rolled left. Stone cracked where he'd been.

  His hand found another hand. It wasn't attached to anything.

  "Sorry," he said to it. "You were almost right."

  The central lever hung above. The wine showed him. It was about asking in the right way.

  "Please," he said to the mechanism. "We're all already dead."

  The gates groaned open.

  Paris stood on the wall with a bow he didn't remember fetching. Below, Achilles walked through the streets. Through Greeks. Through Trojans. Through their bodies.

  Athena stood beside him. Her grey eyes beheld the world patiently.

  He didn't hear her speak, but his hands were already drawing, his aim inevitable. He knew exactly where: the heel, where the tendon was thin, where his mother had held him.

  The arrow flew.

  It took Achilles in mid-step. He looked down at the white feathers, the shaft humming from impact. The tendon separated with a wet pop.

  "Oh," he said. "There you are."

  He'd been waiting for this pain since his mother described it. She'd held him by this exact heel, dipped the rest in water that burned. "This spot," she'd said, "is where you'll come home."

  His leg folded. He caught himself on his hands. Started crawling.

  The workshop doors were open. Inside, three figures fought with a bronze eagle. Wings spread, screaming. His chariot. Of course it had a cock. The gods left nothing out.

  "I'm ready," he told it.

  It was racing toward the doors. He crawled into its path.

  "Move!" the pointed-eared woman shouted.

  "Mother sent you," he said to her.

  Its body was perfectly polished. He could see his reflection, not the hero, just a tired boy.

  The blade kissed his neck. Softer than expected. Then harder. Then nothing.

  The bronze bird gathered him up briefly, then left him behind as it climbed toward the stars.

  Cassandra fought the controls as Troy shrank below. Anaktoria gripped the frame, knuckles white.

  "Who was that?" Anaktoria asked.

  "That was Achilles" Cassandra said softly.

  They climbed through smoke into clean air. Below, Troy had resumed burning.

  At the workshop door, Athena lowered her head to Achilles's throat. He was tender, a short but eventful life.

  Damon stood beside her, watching the bronze bird disappear behind a cloud.

  "Want to steal a boat?" Democritus asked, appearing with his usual timing.

  Damon looked at the empty sky. At his hands that had no one left to hold.

  "Yeah. Let's fish."