At the top of the hill, a small citadel of stone, a fifth as large as her father’s but larger than she would have thought for a nameless people. The king’s wife will come down and weep and wail, and his children if he has any. Medea would like to see this, to judge how well the queen grieves, so she hurries toward the gates, which are only a gap in a low wall, abandoned, a torch to either side. Any army could walk through right now. Everyone in the city gone to the citadel.

A street of mud and shit, dug by the hooves of animals wandering freely, Medea’s feet sinking into the mire. As if there were no stone available. A lazy, disgusting people. Mud hovels woven with sticks, the smell of human shit also. Yards of shadow, only a few torches remaining along the road, all light gathered above, and the only souls left the old and infirm, sat and gazing dumbly into nothing.

Higher on the hill, the road turns to stone. Medea wipes her sandals on the edge, but the filth is all the way past her ankles. She’ll have to wade into the sea.

New shrieks above, more urgent and terrified, but not the shrieks of a single woman, the queen. Instead, this is many voices and spreading. Some new thing has happened. Medea fears for Jason, alone at the head of that procession. She runs, and hears her own blood.

A crowd all moving into the citadel, bodies packed. Too small here, loose walls of stone with narrow entrances and passageways, a maze, no towering citadel above but lost as she gets close. Directionless and maddening. Smoke of torches, the walls moved by flame, seeming to shift as shadows within them hunch and resettle.

Pushing through bodies filthy and bare, reek of urine and sweat and smoke. Disgorged into a courtyard just as crowded, and she sees Argonauts. Every person here looking toward a narrow flight of stone stairs just above, leading to the upper room of this low citadel. Something has happened in there.

Medea finds her way to Jason. Cyzicus lies on the ground forgotten.

His queen, Jason says. Cleite has hanged herself.

Medea laughs. It’s perfect that the queen of the nothing people would hang herself. Maybe the rest will set themselves on fire now. Jason’s hand over her mouth, and he forces her down to her knees. Tears on his face. He’s ruined by this night. Crying over the non-king and idiot queen. But Medea will not mourn any woman stupid enough to kill herself for a husband.

She struggles to free herself, but Jason is too strong. He shakes her hard and pushes her flat to the ground, stone covered in dirt and mire.