Funeral Games t-3

by Christian Cameron

  ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen this way!’ said the young woman at his side. She caught at his hand. ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  Her hand was remarkably smooth and soft for a slave. He looked at her, and in the increased light of the portico, he realized that she was Amastris – the princess of Heraklea. His Nereid. He had seen her dozens of times at court. They had shared long glances. But he hadn’t touched her hand since – well, since he was a supplicant at her uncle’s court.

  ‘Amastris!’ he said.

  ‘Shh!’ she said. ‘My beautiful plan is in ruins. I wanted to see you.’ She smiled, her lips red in the torchlight. She glanced past him, where Leon was sending a slave in to fetch Melitta. ‘I thought that your sister would stay for a few days. I’ve been on a ship for three weeks and trapped in my father’s politics for the summer.’

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ Satyrus breathed. He leaned a little closer.

  ‘There’s a rumour in the women’s quarters that you are to be exiled.’ Amastris was standing very close to him, in the darkness of the columns. ‘Oh, I feel like a fool.’

  Satyrus knew with his usual sense of doom that in three days or so he’d think of the words he should have said.

  ‘I have to go in,’ Amastris said. ‘I’m sorry that…’

  Satyrus felt his breath catch and cursed his cowardice – his knees were weak. His elbows felt weak. But he reached out anyway and caught her to him. Amazed that years of training in pankration should have prepared him so badly for this vital grasp.

  He missed her shoulders in the dark and his right hand brushed her waist. She turned towards him, just the way an opponent would turn to get inside the reach of his long arms. He felt her hands on his upper arms, the press of her breasts against his chest. His own breath rasped in and out and his heart pummelled the inside of his ribcage like a dangerous opponent trying to fight its way out. As he lowered his mouth on hers – her hands locked behind his neck like a triumphant wrestler; her mouth, her lips, soft as lotus flowers and yet tough and pliant; his lips on her teeth, and their tentative opening, like the gates of a garden, and the ecstasy of the softness of her tongue – the dispassionate part of his mind noted that his composure was far more affected than it had been while fighting Stratokles. His heart was going like a galloping horse.

  Then he stopped thinking, and lost himself in her.

  ‘Satyrus!’ Leon said in a voice of command. ‘Find him!’

  Amastris was out of his embrace before his heart could beat again, her fingers brushing down his arm as she fled, and then she was gone into the dark.

  ‘Here, sir,’ Satyrus called, emerging from the darkness of the colonnade.

  ‘Kissing a slave girl!’ Carlus growled approvingly. ‘I saw her!’ The torch-bearers were coming up out of the darkness.

  ‘Satyrus!’ Leon said. ‘We have enough troubles without you assaulting palace slave girls. By all the gods – keep that thing under your chiton.’

  Diodorus laughed.

  Melitta came to the door and embraced another girl – Satyrus strained to see if it was Amastris – and came outside. ‘Uncle, I was to spend the night!’ she said, in a tone that came close to a whine.

  ‘Come, my dear,’ Philokles said, putting an arm around her. ‘We’re sorry-’

  ‘Oh, Hades and Persephone, it’s true, then! Satyrus is to be exiled!’ Melitta looked around for him and then drew him into a hug. She whirled on Leon, who was arranging the torch-bearers. ‘I’m going with him!’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ Leon said.

  That left Melitta speechless. While she stood staring, Kallista emerged from the women’s quarters and threw her chlamys over her head. The torch-bearers closed around them and they walked for the main gate. Gabines, Ptolemy’s steward, met them on the way.

  ‘Sometimes a man has to take sides,’ Gabines said without preamble. ‘You are all in danger. Now. Tonight. Men – I will not say who – informed Stratokles as soon as you were summoned. Understand? And there’s a faction – you know them as well as I – of Macedonians here who would love to see you all dead.’ He looked around. ‘I think you are all the king’s friends. I’ve doubled the king’s guard and I’m sending three groups out of the gates to confuse them. Now go!’

  Philokles stepped out of the group and took Gabines by the arm. They spoke in private, rapidly, the way commanders speak on a battlefield. Then both of them nodded sharply, in obvious agreement even in the torchlight, and Gabines hurried away.

  The guard was being changed, and they took several minutes to get clear of the construction platforms and the smell of masonry, minutes that Coenus, Diodorus and Leon spent in whispered consultation with Philokles, who then took a weapon from one of the torch-bearers and walked off into the night, and another pair of torch-bearers doused their lights and ran off into the night with instructions from Diodorus. The gate guards watched this with some alarm, and Satyrus noted that one of them also left the guard post at a run.

  Diodorus barked an order and they were out on the darkened streets.

  They were well out on the Posideion when Philokles reappeared at a run, his chlamys wrapped around him. He made a gesture and Carlus raised his torch and swung it through a broad arc. ‘We are being followed, ’ Philokles said, breathing hard. There was a line of blood on his hip. ‘Be ready.’ He looked at Satyrus and shook his head. ‘I’m old and fat, boy!’

  Melitta didn’t turn her head. ‘Carlus,’ she said to the man behind her, ‘I’m unarmed.’

  The big barbarian – scarcely a barbarian after fifteen years speaking Greek, but his size still stood out – reached under his armpit and produced a blade as long as a man’s foot. The blade sparkled in the torchlight. ‘One of my favourites,’ he said.

  Melitta took the blade and slipped it under her cloak.

  They turned suddenly off the Posideion into an alley that ran behind the great houses and temples, and the whole group moved faster – and then Diodorus had Satyrus by the shoulder and turned him south, away from their route. Carlus had Melitta right behind them, and the rest of the torch-bearers continued on as if nothing had happened. The twins were swept along by the big Keltoi and Diodorus, down the narrow gap between two courtyard walls and into a back gate. Satyrus had a dim recollection of having visited this house by daylight – buying spices with Leon – and he saw an Arab man standing in the courtyard, wearing a white wool robe.

  ‘Thanks, Pica,’ Diodorus said.

  ‘I see nothing, friend,’ the Nabataean replied. He laughed.

  Then they went out of the front gate and found themselves down by the docks. They were almost opposite Leon’s private wharf.

  ‘Now we need some luck,’ Diodorus said. They ran from warehouse to warehouse along the waterfront.

  ‘This is living!’ Melitta crowed.

  Satyrus saw men moving just one alley to the north, and a shrill whistle sounded.

  ‘Hermes,’ Diodorus said. ‘He’s hired every cut-throat in the city.’

  ‘Uhh,’ Carlus grunted. ‘I could go and thin the herd.’

  ‘Do it. We’re going for the Lotus – Leon says there ought to be six boat-keepers aboard.’

  ‘Uhh,’ Carlus said. ‘I find my own way.’ And then he was gone.

  They dashed across the open road to the gate of Leon’s wharf. ‘Open up!’ Diodorus called.

  Nothing.

  Running feet behind them and a whistle like the cry of a falcon.

  ‘Open up! In Leon’s name!’ Diodorus cried. He had his sword in his hand – a wicked kopis with a long, heavy blade. He banged the backbone of the weapon on the gate, and started to look up along the wall, searching for a place to climb. Satyrus was several seconds ahead of him, up and over the wall and then drawing his own weapon.

  The rush of feet grew louder – bare feet, mostly. And then there was a sound like an axe hitting soft wood, or like an oar slapping water in the hands of an inexperienced oarsman – and another, the same. And then a t
hird, and this time the sound was accompanied by a shrill scream that cut across the night like fabric being ripped asunder.

  Satyrus got the gate open and looked out past Diodorus as the man pushed in. Carlus – no one else was that big – was killing men silently. The victims were not so silent, but there were more whistles after the scream.

  ‘Sorry, lord,’ said a voice at his elbow, the house porter. ‘It sounds like murder!’

  ‘Get the gate shut. Help me.’ Melitta and Satyrus helped the porter shove the gate, and it made a clang as it latched. They were in Leon’s precinct.

  ‘Is there a boat party on the Lotus?’ Diodorus asked.

  ‘No – that is, yes, lord.’ The man got the beam back across the gate. ‘Alarm, lord?’

  Diodorus nodded. ‘Better have it,’ he said.

  The man at the gate was short, broad and had the slightly stooped look of the professional oarsman. He picked up a billet of wood and started to hit an iron bell. ‘Alarm!’ he called.

  Diodorus took the twins by the shoulders.

  Melitta was still facing the gate, unwilling to be dragged towards the ship. ‘What about Kallista? Or Carlus? By Athena, Diodorus!’

  ‘They are in a great deal less danger for not being with you, my dear. Well, not Carlus. I think he has sacrificed himself. Be brave, girl. This is the real thing.’ Diodorus paused to tighten his sandals. ‘Stupid things. Never wear anything you can’t fight in.’

  ‘I don’t want to run,’ she said.

  ‘Then you’ll die.’ Diodorus had no more patience. ‘Listen to me, girl. In a minute, a dozen paid thugs are going to come over that wall on ropes. They’ll kill everyone here. We’re getting on a boat and getting out. Understand? The moment to stand and fight will come another day.’

  Melitta was silent. ‘What about the men who are here?’ she asked.

  Diodorus started to run. ‘Figure it out,’ he called as he dragged her towards the looming bulk of the Golden Lotus. Satyrus followed them, sword naked in his hand.

  He hailed the deck from the pier, and the watch was awake. ‘What news?’ called an Athenian voice.

  ‘Leon told me to ask for Diokles!’ Diodorus said.

  ‘Here, mate! What do you need?’ Diokles was apparently the man coming down the plank.

  ‘We need the boat under the stern and two men to row us around to Lord Leon’s. Right now. And there’ll be armed men coming over the wall any moment.’ Diodorus punctuated his speech with glances over his shoulder.

  Diokles didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a rope and pulled and in moments they were in a light boat – lovingly painted in red and blue, a display piece that nonetheless had serviceable oars. He pushed four men into the boat. ‘Kleitos, row them round to Leon’s – I’m going to cut the hawsers and pole off. Robbers won’t swim to get to the Lotus, and if they do,’ the man’s teeth shown white in the dark, ‘I’ll just gaff ’em like fish.’

  ‘Save the slaves,’ Diodorus said.

  ‘Sure!’ Diokles laughed. ‘They brought the wine.’ And then they were rowing, four pairs of arms pulling hard so that the low boat shot across the harbour.

  Listen as they would, they heard no sounds of fighting behind them. Diokles shouted and the slaves and workers on the night shift ran aboard the Lotus as if drilled to it, and then – nothing.

  The row home was uneventful, and then they were going up the water-steps to the back of Leon’s villa and into the dining hall, where Nihmu and Sappho and many of the household’s older servants were already dining.

  Satyrus seated himself on a couch and untied his sandals. His feet were filthy. Her mouth had tasted of youth – very different from Phiale’s cinnamon and clove. Despite the nearness of death – or because of it – Amastris was at the surface of his thoughts.

  ‘She found you, didn’t she?’ Melitta asked, lying carefully on the couch they shared. She was careful of the covering, because her beautiful chiton had a long smear of something that looked to be tar and another even worse. ‘I can smell her scent even now. And you look as if you’ve been struck by lightning – or Aphrodite.’

  Kallista came up beside him and made a show of picking up his sandals. Even as she did so, she dropped an oyster shell in his lap. A scrap of papyrus curled out of the corner of the shell, and Satyrus rolled on to the couch while scooping it up. ‘Thanks, Lista!’ he said. ‘You made it back!’

  ‘Always happy to help the goddess,’ Kallista said primly, and then flashed him a smile. ‘We’ve been back half an hour.’ And then, soberly, ‘Master Philokles killed a man. I saw it. And Master Coenus killed another.’

  Leon was outlining the terms of Satyrus’s exile to his wife. Satyrus glanced down at the papyrus.

  All it said was Stay safe and return.

  Satyrus was grinning like a fool.

  Nihmu met his eyes and smiled. ‘You look very happy for a boy who has just been attacked on the streets and exiled,’ she said.

  Satyrus attempted to modify his expression.

  ‘You’ll have to send her a response,’ Melitta said. She poked him in the soft flesh over his hip so that he writhed in ticklish agony. ‘Kallista can carry it while we pack.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Kallista said. ‘Perhaps tomorrow. Master Leon says no slave is to leave the compound for any reason until further orders.’

  ‘What can I tell her, anyway?’ Satyrus asked. In a breath, he began to see the complications of kissing Ptolemy’s ward, the daughter of the Euxine’s most powerful tyrant. Men had tried to kill him in the city he’d come to think of as his own. He felt disoriented, as if the world had slipped off its axis.

  ‘Tell her you love her?’ Melitta said, and poked him again.

  ‘I’m to go as a marine!’ Xeno called from an adjoining couch. ‘Who cares if you’re exiled! You’ll be a navarch! We’ll fight pirates!’

  ‘I’m going too,’ Melitta said.

  Xeno’s smile was rapturous. ‘We’ll protect you, despoina,’ he said. Then his face fell as he realized how badly this comment had gone down. Satyrus rolled over and saw his sister’s anger.

  ‘I don’t want to be protected, you overgrown boy!’ Melitta spat. ‘If you had as many brains as you have pimples, you’d understand!’

  Crushed, Xeno rolled on his couch and faced the other way, the flush on his face spreading right across his back.

  ‘By Artemis, goddess of virgins, may I kill a pirate before that snot-faced boy!’ Melitta proclaimed.

  Nihmu leaned over towards the younger people. ‘You wish to go as an archer, perhaps? My husband could set a new fashion!’ She smiled her enigmatic smile. As a girl, Nihmu had been an oracle among the Scythians on the sea of grass. Her oracular powers had left her a serious young woman with a head for figures, and she had married Leon after his second expedition to the east. ‘Amazon crews? Eh?’ she asked.

  Nihmu, as the only other Sakje woman, was Melitta’s special friend, a bridge between the world of Alexandria and the sea of grass. Melitta laughed. ‘Why can’t I?’ she asked. ‘Once at sea, who would know?’

  ‘The other archers,’ Leon called from his couch. ‘Take this seriously, friends. We are at war as of now.’

  Melitta stood up and raised her wine cup. ‘We were always at war, Uncle Leon. We just forgot.’

  Sappho shook her head, as if denying this assertion, but Philokles, coming in with his whole midriff wrapped in linen, nodded. ‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘Life is war.’

  ‘Spare us the Heraklitus,’ Sappho said.

  ‘Where are we going, Uncle?’ Satyrus asked. To have kissed Amastris and be going as a navarch all in one day seemed unbearable joy, despite everything, and thoughts of revenge on his mother’s murderers slipped farther away.

  ‘We aren’t going anywhere, lad,’ Leon said. ‘You will take Golden Lotus up to Rhodos and drop a cargo of grain they need desperately. Then, if the helmsman agrees, you will go north around Lesvos to Methymna and across to Smyrna, drop some hides and some odds and
ends and pick up a cargo of dye. And then home on the wind. Three weeks if you are quick – a month at the outside. By then, I predict that the king will be your friend again.’

  Melitta was consuming broiled squid at a rate that made Satyrus dizzy. ‘We have to pack!’ she said.

  ‘What if he is not our friend then?’ Satyrus asked. What if the king learns that I’ve kissed his ward?

  Diodorus finished drinking a bowl of soup. He rubbed a hairy forearm across his mouth and Sappho made a gesture of resignation. ‘Then we’ll have Hyacinth meet you in the outer harbour and you can take her to Cyrene!’ He laughed and reached across his wife for wine. She scowled. He looked around. ‘Listen, friends. We’ve grown soft. Now we go back to being hard. We, here, have a month to do Stratokles all the harm we can. We need to destroy him and his power base in this city. That goes for every servant – every slave. If you see one of the Athenian’s slaves getting water, beat him – or her. Understand?’

  The servants in the hall nodded – some looked eager, and others looked scared.

  ‘You make mighty free with my people and my triremes, brother,’ Leon said to Diodorus, but then he shrugged. ‘That is, of course, what we’ll do – keep the twins moving until the problem is solved, and fight Stratokles in the shadows.’ He shrugged apologetically to his wife. ‘It will be hard here. And the Macedonian party won’t just stand by.’

  Satyrus ate some bread and fish sauce. ‘But Philokles will come with us,’ he said. And then he understood. ‘Won’t he?’ he added, sounding weak even to himself.

  Philokles shook his head. ‘Time for you to fly on your own, lad,’ he said.

  ‘Theron?’ Satyrus asked.

  Theron, lying with Philokles, raised his head and shook it. ‘Philokles and I are apparently raising an army to defend you, my prince,’ he said.

  Satyrus recalled that earlier that day he had dreamed of commanding the Golden Lotus.

  Lamplight, and Melitta standing by his bed. ‘Carlus came in!’ she said. ‘Alive – but wounded. Philokles is with him.’