The Song of Achilles Read Online Free

fish. Her reluctant womb bore only a single child. The hour her sentence was finished, she ran out of the house and dove back into the sea.
    She would return only to visit the boy, never for any other reason, and never for long. The rest of the time the child was raised by tutors and nurses and overseen by Phoinix, Peleus’ most trusted counselor. Did Peleus ever regret the gods’ gift to him? An ordinary wife would have counted herself lucky to find a husband with Peleus’ mildness, his smile-lined face. But for the sea-nymph Thetis nothing could ever eclipse the stain of his dirty, mortal mediocrity.
    I WAS LED through the palace by a servant whose name I had not caught. Perhaps he had not said it. The halls were smaller than at home, as if restrained by the modesty of the kingdom they governed. The walls and floors were local marble, whiter than was found in the south. My feet were dark against its pallor.
    I had nothing with me. My few belongings were being carried to my room, and the gold my father sent was on its way to the treasury. I had felt a strange panic as I was parted from it. It had been my companion for the weeks of travel, a reminder of my worth. I knew its contents by heart now: the five goblets with engraved stems, a heavy knobbed scepter, a beaten-gold necklace, two ornamental statues of birds, and a carved lyre, gilded at its tips. This last, I knew, was cheating. Wood was cheap and plentiful and heavy and took up space that should have been used for gold. Yet the lyre was so beautiful no one could object to it; it had been a piece of my mother’s dowry. As we rode, I would reach back into my saddlebags to stroke the polished wood.
    I guessed that I was being led to the throne room, where I would kneel and pour out my gratitude. But the servant stopped suddenly at a side door. King Peleus was absent, he told me, so I would present myself before his son instead. I was unnerved. This was not what I had prepared myself for, the dutiful words I’d practiced on donkeyback. Peleus’ son. I could still remember the dark wreath against his bright hair, the way his pink soles had flashed along the track. That is what a son should be.
    He was lying on his back on a wide, pillowed bench, balancing a lyre on his stomach. Idly, he plucked at it. He did not hear me enter, or he did not choose to look. This is how I first began to understand my place here. Until this moment I had been a prince, expected and announced. Now I was negligible.
    I took another step forward, scuffing my feet, and his head lolled to the side to regard me. In the five years since I had seen him, he had outgrown his babyish roundness. I gaped at the cold shock of his beauty, deep-green eyes, features fine as a girl’s. It struck from me a sudden, springing dislike. I had not changed so much, nor so well.
    He yawned, his eyes heavy-lidded. “What’s your name?”
    His kingdom was half, a quarter, an eighth the size of my father’s, and I had killed a boy and been exiled and still he did not know me. I ground my jaw shut and would not speak.
    He asked again, louder: “What’s your name?”
    My silence was excusable the first time; perhaps I had not heard him. Now it was not.
    “Patroclus.” It was the name my father had given me, hopefully but injudiciously, at my birth, and it tasted of bitterness on my tongue. “Honor of the father,” it meant. I waited for him to make a joke out of it, some witty jape about my disgrace. He did not. Perhaps, I thought, he is too stupid to.
    He rolled onto his side to face me. A stray lock of gold fell half into his eyes; he blew it away. “My name is Achilles.”
    I jerked my chin up, an inch, in bare acknowledgment. We regarded each other for a moment. Then he blinked and yawned again, his mouth cracked wide as a cat’s. “Welcome to Phthia.”
    I had been raised in a court and knew dismissal when I heard it.
    I DISCOVERED THAT AFTERNOON that I was not the only foster child of Peleus. The