Tyrant: King of the Bosporus (35 page)

Satyrus shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

In the morning, he awoke with the sun and tried to get off his bed. He walked a few steps and discovered that he lacked the strength, and he tottered back to bed without hurting anything. He ate an egg for breakfast, and then another.

‘You’re done,’ Nearchus said at noon, when the egg hadn’t come up. ‘I want you to be very, very hesitant to take poppy again. Even for a bad wound. The next time will be worse. In fact, you’ll always have a craving for the stuff. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ Satyrus said.

‘Good,’ Nearchus answered. ‘Sappho has wanted to see you for days, but you don’t like to appear weak – I know your kind. And she’s busy with the baby.’

‘Where’s Helios?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Haven’t seen him. You have only yourself to blame – you gave him a task like the labours of Herakles.’ Nearchus shrugged.

Satyrus read Herodotus while the doctor ground bone for pigment and then burned some ivory on a brazier outside.

‘Phew!’ he said, coming back. ‘Sorry for the smell.’

Satyrus made a face. ‘I’ve made a few smells myself, the last week,’ he said.

Nearchus nodded, fanning himself. ‘Let’s get you dressed,’ he said with a glance at the water clock. He refilled it, restarting its two-hour mechanism, and then found Satyrus a plain white chiton and got him into it and back on his couch.

‘I’m sorry I sent Helios away,’ Satyrus said. ‘I hadn’t realized you’d be stuck with his work.’

Nearchus shook his head. ‘I made that decision. We have rules in this house – since the attacks when young Kineas was born. Slaves are taken on only after we check their histories. We do most work
ourselves and we don’t encourage visitors. There’s a rumour in town that you are here – but we still haven’t confirmed it. It may be you, or it may be Leon who brought the
Lotus
in to port. See?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I do see.’

‘And Hama has contacts in the – how shall I say it? – the underworld. Among the criminals of the night market. We hear things. There are men in this town who offer money for your death.’

Satyrus smiled. ‘Stratokles is dead, and his plots continue to roll along.’

Nearchus scratched his nose. ‘Sophokles the Athenian is more to the point.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I know,’ he said.

Even as he nodded, Sappho swept into the room with Kallista at her heels, cradling a baby.

Satyrus smiled at both of them. Sappho bent and kissed him, and so did Kallista.

‘I never figured you for a nanny,’ Satyrus said to Kallista. She was also an active hetaira, formerly his sister’s slave and now a freedwoman and her own mistress.

‘Hmm,’ Kallista said, archly. ‘I’m sure you are an expert on women, young master. I’m a mother now, thank you.’

‘What do you think of young Helios?’ Sappho asked. A maidservant placed a stool behind her and she settled into it.

Satyrus reached up and took his nephew, and cradled him to his chest. The boy was just old enough to sit up under his own power, and he blinked around at the world. ‘He’s excellent. I’ve promised him his freedom already.’

Sappho arched her eyebrows. ‘Really? I thought perhaps you needed a servant.’

‘I do. I’ll get four years out of him – but apparently he’s been promised freedom before. I thought I’d give him the bone first.’ He smiled at Sappho, who nodded slowly – a nod of agreeable disagreement.

‘And you know that he was taken by pirates,’ she said. ‘His parents killed, sold to a brothel, used like a whore for two years until an Aegyptian priest – a customer, of course – bought him to use as a scribe – and a bed-warmer.’ Her voice grew harder and lower as she spoke. Like Uncle Leon, Sappho had been sold as a slave and used brutally before she was freed. It was the fate that every free Hellene
dreaded – and the inevitable cost of a world that ran on slavery. But Leon and Sappho acted on their hatred. Both bought parcels of slaves, especially those who had been born free, and found them situations that would free them.

‘By my ally, Demostrate,’ Satyrus said.

‘Your “ally” is a very titan of Tartarus,’ she spat.

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Auntie,’ he said, ‘I have learned in the last year that if I intend to be king, sometimes I will have to do things that are, in and of themselves, despicable.’

Sappho remained stone-faced, but behind her, Kallista nodded.

Satyrus held out his finger and young Kineas latched on to it, pulled it, tried to swallow it. ‘I can’t win you over,’ he said. ‘So I have to ask you to trust me. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Your mother made a pact with Alexander,’ Sappho said. ‘I never forgave her. I never could. It is one of the reasons we settled in Alexandria. And now you – you who are virtually my child – will sell yourself the same way.’

‘My mother dealt with anyone who would deal with her, for peace. For security. Even Alexander.’ Satyrus had no idea that there was bad blood between his mother and Sappho, but he kissed his nephew and then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Really sorry. I feel dirty whenever I spend time with him. But he was my father’s admiral. My father used him, and I’ll do the same.’

‘He wasn’t covered in the blood of his victims then,’ Sappho said.

Satyrus lay back. ‘Hello, little man,’ he said. ‘Don’t be in a hurry to grow up.’

Kineas made some gurgling sounds and stretched out his arms for Kallista. Kallista came and took him with the air of a woman who distrusts that any man can entertain a baby.

‘Does he have a wet-nurse?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Me,’ Kallista answered.

‘You?’ Satyrus asked.

She laughed, a low laugh, the seductive laugh that brought customers to her at five and ten minae a night, and sometimes twenty times as much. ‘I think you know how babies are made,’ she said.

Satyrus decided it would be indelicate to ask who the father might be. But the question must have shown on his face, for Kallista laughed aloud, not an iota of seduction to it.

‘Not a client,’ she said. ‘A friend.’ She put the child to her breast. ‘They can grow up together,’ she said.

Later that afternoon, Helios came in with a clean blanket and wrapped Satyrus up.

‘Any luck on your mission?’ Satyrus asked.

‘I found her.’ Helios nodded. ‘I’m meeting her again tonight. She goes out at night – often. She’s very trusted in that house – almost the steward. She’s the sort of slave that scares other slaves. Hard to tell which side she’s on, if you take my meaning.’

‘I do,’ Satyrus said. ‘Need money?’

Helios nodded. ‘I’d like a few darics,’ he said. ‘I’d like to appear a trusted slave myself.’

‘You are no longer a trusted slave,’ Satyrus said. He picked up a scroll that Nearchus had brought him. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘A free man. Not a citizen – although I’ll see to that when the four years are up.’

Helios flung himself on the scroll. He unrolled it, and Satyrus saw him mouth the words of the scroll as he read. He read it twice.

‘I still have to present myself to the chief priest,’ he said.

‘Better hurry.’ Satyrus nodded. ‘About an hour before . . .’ He laughed aloud, because he was speaking to an empty room. ‘You need Nearchus as a witness!’ he called after the boy.

Nearchus came in after half an hour, looking flustered. ‘I’ve been kissed by that beautiful boy in public,’ he said. ‘Believe me, it’s quite an experience.’ Nearchus raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve made him very happy. But – won’t he wander off? He’s free.’

‘I can tell you’ve never been a slave,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’ll spend four years teaching him to be free. If he wanders off, he’ll be a slave again in a week. And he knows it. Where will he work? At a brothel? As a free man?’

Nearchus nodded. ‘I see.’ He scratched his beard. ‘He could go to the temples and sign as an apprentice. Perhaps as a doctor.’

‘He’ll be the handsomest oar master in Leon’s fleet in four years,’ Satyrus said. ‘Or dead.’ He gave Nearchus half a smile. ‘I think he fancies revenge, and I don’t mind handing him the means and the opportunity.’

Nearchus stopped grinding his powders. He turned his head. ‘You would betray your ally?’

‘Betray?’ Satyrus asked. He laughed. ‘Really, Nearchus, what a sheltered life you’ve lived.’ Then he changed his tone. He picked up a barley roll – one of the cook’s best – and ate it, staring at his scroll. ‘Can you take a letter for me, Nearchus?’

‘I’m a doctor, not a scribe. And Helios has a nice clear hand.’ Nearchus’s pestle continued to
scrape.

‘I’m already fond of the boy, but I can’t trust him with a letter for Diodorus,’ Satyrus said.

Nearchus nodded sharply. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘You’re a lot of work, you know that?’ he asked with a mock frown.

The letter took most of the afternoon. At some point, Sappho became involved, adding her own instructions and best wishes for her husband, and adding news that he might use, far away in Babylon with Seleucus – news that Satyrus wanted as well. Kallista sat with the two babies, a slave-nurse taking them in turn, and Satyrus was quick enough to realize that Sappho was passing him news as she wrote, without having to speak it aloud. They were writing in black ink on the boards of a wax tablet, where all the wax had been stripped away. She wrote in her firm, square hand:

Ptolemy is preparing for a naval campaign against Cyprus. Antigonus is in Syria, firming up his support with the coastal cities, while his son Demetrios rebuilds his power base in Palestine after last year’s defeat. Cassander is trying to gain control of young Herakles, the last son of Alexander – whether to make him king of Macedonia or to murder him, no one can say. And Lysimachos works to build his own city, to rival Alexandria and Antioch. Every one of the Diadochoi seems to need to have his own city.

And Satyrus wrote:

I hope you have had my first letter by now. I will have need of the Exiles and our phalanx in the spring. If Seleucus can spare you, I will await you at Heraklea on the Euxine by the spring feast of Athena. Please send my regards to Crax and Sitalkes, and also to Amyntas and Draco, and tell them that Melitta has gone east to raise the Sakje.

She read what he wrote. ‘You are that sure,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘No,’ he said. ‘My sister may already be dead. Or my naval alliance may fail. Or Dionysius of Heraklea may refuse to let me use his town to base my army – or we may just lose.’ He shrugged. ‘So many things can go wrong – the word “sure” never enters my mind.’

He took the ink and wrote carefully:

Please send me a reply as soon as you receive this. If you can spare the time, send a duplicate to Sappho and another care of Lady Amastris, Heraklea, and a third care of Eumenes, the archon of Olbia (if you can believe such a thing). A fourth via Panther, navarch of Rhodos, at the Temple of Poseidon, would give me the widest possible notice of your reply, as I will be a bird on the wing.

‘Have you ever thought that if you succeed, my husband will lose his command? The Exiles will no longer be exiles.’ Sappho laughed. ‘I don’t mean it. But – if Tanais is restored – what will we all do?’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘No idea, Auntie,’ he said. ‘But I’d be delighted to find out.’

And later, much later that night, Helios came in. He smelled of a discreet perfume.

‘Well?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Did you spend a pleasant evening?’

‘Not particularly,’ the boy said. His voice was set, his face carefully blank. ‘She’s as dumb as a post, for all her hard-arse ways. She offered me a hundred gold darics to kill you.’ The boy dropped a purse on the sideboard, so heavy that the cedar creaked. ‘I told her a sad tale of your misuse of me, and she told me I was soft.’ Helios looked at the floor. ‘But after I pleasured her, she sang another tune, and there’s the proof. And yes – she’s out most nights. She has a taste for boys, like most women of her type.’ His own self-loathing was obvious, but so was his dislike of her. ‘She thinks she owns me!’ he spat.

Satyrus shivered. ‘I – thought that you were too young. To – I’m sorry, Helios. I’ve put you in a position . . .’ Satyrus thought that killing the innocent was hardly the only price of kingship.

Helios blinked his long blond lashes and shrugged. ‘I haven’t been too young – never mind. It’s nothing I haven’t done before, and in worse causes.’

Satyrus kept his voice neutral. ‘Where’d the money come from? She can’t have a hundred gold darics on her own?’

‘No,’ Helios said. ‘And I don’t know myself. Is her mistress in the game? I don’t know. She’s coming tomorrow, by the way. To sing to you.’

Satyrus nodded. ‘We leave in three days. You should get yourself a blade, a helmet and a light cuirass. Have you ever worn armour?’

Helios blinked. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Go to Isaac Ben Zion and ask his steward to sell you armour. How old are you, really?’ Satyrus asked.

‘I think I’m fourteen,’ the boy answered. ‘I lost some time – in the brothel.’ He looked at the floor.

Satyrus put a hand under his chin and raised his head. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you the rule of Leon’s house?’ he asked. ‘No man need regret what he did before he came here – only what he does here. You are free. Free yourself.’