She nodded. ‘Strictly business. Very well.’ She sat up. ‘You are used to dealing with women, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘Alexander isn’t.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘My mother wasn’t Olympias,’ he said. Alexander’s mother was a byword in Greece for cruelty and manipulation. He rose to his feet.
She rose gracefully, despite having taken two cups of wine in less than an hour. ‘I look forward to hosting you again. I burn for your copy of Aristotle.’
That made him grin. ‘If you want it, you will have to wait while I finish it,’ he said, and bowed.
She nodded her head and motioned at a slave to escort him. ‘Winter in Hyrkania is long and arduous,’ she said. ‘You’ll have time to read it many times. I hope that I can provide you with some equally worthy amusements.’
The next afternoon, Kineas was sitting with Leon and Eumenes in the smoky tunnel of his wooden megaron, reading scrolls by the light of twenty profligate oil lamps, with Niceas reclining, cursing the smoke and muttering advice.
A gentle tapping against the logs of the hall heralded Lycurgus, who came in through the layers of woollen blankets that covered the door. Greek military architecture wasn’t ready for the cold of highland Hyrkania.
‘Patrols just picked up a soldier,’ he said. ‘Ten local horsemen as guards. An Athenian gentleman. I expected that you’d want to see him.’
Kineas leaned back so far that his stool creaked. ‘Anything to free me from paperwork,’ he said. He went over to the hearth, waving a hand in front of his face and trying not to breathe. He started rebuilding the fire, trying to find the combination of wood and draught that would stop the incessant smoke.
‘Leosthenes of Athens,’ Lycurgus announced, returning.
Kineas had an actual flame going. He brushed off Leon’s attempts to take over — the boy reverted to being a house slave too easily — and coaxed the flame, adding twigs. What he wanted was the tube from his campaign kit, but he didn’t have it. He leaned forward to blow on the fire. Leon blew on it from the other direction. Then both men started coughing and had to turn away to the cold air beyond the fire. Kineas took a lungful of clean air and snatched a hollow quill from the table. He leaned close enough to the embers to scorch his eyebrows and breathed out. The embers began to make the noise — the low moan of wood on the edge of ignition. Both men redoubled their efforts and suddenly the whole pit sprang into flame, as if by magic. Light drove the winter shadows into the corners of the hall, and a rush of heat forced Kineas to take a step back.
‘You don’t look as if you eat babies,’ said a voice in aristocratic Attic Greek.
‘Hard to eat them if you can’t cook them,’ Niceas said.
Leosthenes and Kineas gripped forearms. Kineas smiled, and the other Athenian beamed. Leosthenes was of middle height, well proportioned, with curly black hair and green eyes like a cat. He sat on a corner of the table without invitation. ‘The famous Kineas of Athens,’ he said dramatically.
Kineas rubbed his beard, discovered that he had singed it and winced. He shrugged. ‘Where in Hades did you come from, child?’
‘Three years’ service in Alexander’s army and you call me a child? But suit yourself — I have to deal with all those years of hero worship.’ He turned to the other men. ‘Kineas was Phocion’s star pupil — the best swordsman, the best officer. We all loved him. But he went off to serve Alexander.’ Leosthenes grinned. ‘When I was old enough, I followed you.’
‘By all the gods, it is good to see you, Leo.’ Kineas couldn’t get the grin off his face. ‘Have you been home?’
‘Home?’ Leosthenes asked. He shook his head, and flushed. ‘I haven’t been home. I’ve been to Parthia and back.’
‘Are you rich, then?’ Kineas asked.
‘You know how Alexander uses mercenaries!’ Leosthenes said bitterly. ‘Second-line troops. Garrisons. And the fool never really conquers anywhere, so he always leaves it to the garrisons to do all the nasty bits.’ The younger man shrugged and Kineas could see that in fact most of his youth was gone. There was a set to his shoulders and hollows in his eyes that Kineas hadn’t seen at a glance. ‘You remember Arbela?’
Kineas nodded.
‘Of course you do!’ The younger man turned to the other officers. ‘You were a hero, leading the Greek horse. I was with the hoplites in the second line. We never engaged. Then I spent six months chasing tribesman with Parmenion.’
‘How’d you get here?’ Niceas asked.
‘I was in the garrison at Ecbatana,’ Leo said. ‘Shit’s coming down there. I gathered a few like-minded friends and we ran.’
Kineas looked thoughtful. ‘Deserted,’ he said flatly.
‘It’s going to be war between Parmenion and Alexander,’ Leo said. ‘Not battlefield war — stab-in-the-back war. Parmenion sent me with a message to the king, and I thought I was going to be executed. So — yes. I deserted. With some friends. We took service with one of the Hyrkanian kings — these hills and the lowlands to the south are full of men from Alexander’s armies.’
Kineas caught himself rubbing his beard. ‘Is this a social visit, Leo?’ he asked.
Leosthenes had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘No,’ he said.
Niceas gave a snort.
Kineas turned to Eumenes. ‘Go and get Philokles and Diodorus. Ask Sitalkes to bring us wine.’ He turned to Niceas. ‘I need to buy a slave,’ he said, with irritation. Slaves annoyed him, but he was just too busy to fetch his own wine and get the fire burning.
‘Have you met your employer?’ Leosthenes asked.
He had to notice the intake of breath throughout the room.
‘I get it — you’ve all met her.’ He laughed.
‘Don’t be crude, Leo.’ Kineas smiled, but his voice was hard. ‘I like her.’
Diodorus pushed through the curtains, followed by Philokles, toting a sack of scrolls. ‘We’ve all met her,’ he said wryly. ‘Oh, my. Look who it is! The nursery must be emptying into the phalanx.’
Kineas rose. ‘Leosthenes, son of Craterus of Athens. An old friend.’ Kineas was grinning, which wasn’t his normal look these days. ‘More of an old student, really,’ he said with a glint in his eye.
Leosthenes grinned back. ‘I can take you, sword to sword. Any time, old man.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I’ve a Persian — Darius — you have to best first. He’s probably better than me.’ He grinned. ‘In fact, I’d like to see it.’
Philokles poured himself wine, and then poured wine for the others and distributed it. The local potters made good cups that fitted the hand, shaped like a woman’s breast with a nipple instead of a base. The joke was that you couldn’t put the cup down — you had to drink your wine. Or at least, that was one of the jokes.
Sitalkes pushed in through the blankets.
‘Would you be kind enough to mull us some hot wine, lad?’ Kineas asked.
The Getae boy went to work without complaint. It was a matter of months since he’d been freed, and he was still happy to serve — if asked politely.
‘So — you’ve met her,’ Leosthenes asked again.
‘Yes,’ said Kineas, into a silence as thick as the smoke had been.
‘And?’ the Athenian persisted.
Kineas shrugged. ‘She’s beautiful. Intelligent. Educated.’
‘Evil incarnate,’ Leosthenes said in a gentle voice.
Kineas shrugged again. He looked around the room. The smoke had mostly cleared.
‘You didn’t fuck her, did you?’ said Niceas. ‘I listened to all that griping and you didn’t fall for her.’
Kineas shook his head wearily. ‘My private life is mine. I am not about to endanger this expedition to satisfy my own lusts.’
Philokles made a face, rose to his feet and bowed. ‘I salute you, philosopher! And apologize. I, for one, thought that you would fall straight into her toils.’
‘Apology accepted,’ Kineas said. ‘Yes, I’ve met her. I wasn’t shown any particular sensuality
, but I was made to appreciate her intelligence. She wants us to fight a campaign in the spring. She can pay very well. I’m tempted.’
‘My employer is the target,’ Leosthenes said. ‘I’m here to buy you off.’
Kineas stopped himself from rubbing his beard. ‘What?’
‘She wants southern Hyrkania. Her recent and much-lamented husband held all the land as far as Parthia — she lost a lot of it when she murdered her husband and stayed loyal to Alexander.’ Leosthenes shrugged. ‘I serve Artabazus — Barsine’s father. Alexander’s satrap, not that his writ runs here. He’s a canny old fox. All he has to do is survive until Parmenion kills off Alexander and he’ll be king.’
Kineas nodded, aware that Artabazus had been named as the target of the spring campaign and unwilling to give that much away.
‘And he’s told us a lot about her. She’s not Greek. She’s more like one of the Persian demons — some kind of monster.’ Leosthenes leaned forward, pressing his point.
Kineas sat back. ‘Child, you put me in mind of the tale of the fox and the grapes.’
Leosthenes laughed aloud, his head back. ‘I think you have it right, at that.’ He went on laughing. ‘Persians never read Aesop. They ought to!’ He had to clutch his hands over his stomach.
Kineas stood. ‘Stay for dinner, child. But don’t press me on this. I keep my bargains, and I wouldn’t sit here and banter with your Persian fox were I ten times more a mercenary.’ He nodded, glanced at Niceas. ‘If it weren’t you, I’d be tempted to crucify the messenger to make my point.’
Leosthenes nodded soberly. ‘I made much the same point to my employer. Luckily, I am me.’
‘This time,’ Kineas said. ‘Next time, you might be mistaken for someone else.’
After Leosthenes and his ten Hyrkanian nobles had ridden for home in the dark, Kineas tugged on his cloak. Niceas and Philokles were still on their couches.
‘I’m for the palace,’ Kineas said.
‘I thought you weren’t smitten,’ Philokles said.
‘I’m not smitten. But I’ll wager that she has excellent sources in this camp, or at least in the agora outside our gate, and she’ll know in an hour what’s been offered. I want to make sure she got the right message. And double the guards. I don’t like anything about this place.’ Kineas finished the last wine in his cup and tipped it up on the sideboard. Was he smitten? He certainly had the same urges as any soldier.
Philokles nodded agreement. ‘I’d like your permission to try and place someone in the palace,’ he said.
‘Slave?’ Kineas asked.
‘Best you not know,’ Philokles said. Kineas could see how uncomfortable this conversation made his friend. He desisted with a grunt.
The ride up the hill in blowing snow and the warmth of the rooms with their hypocaust floors couldn’t have been a sharper contrast. Kineas shed his cloak and sandals in the outer rooms and passed, clad only in his tunic, to the inner sanctum, where the queen sat in state surrounded by her slaves and courtiers.
‘You had a visitor,’ she said cheerfully, as soon as he entered.
‘A very old friend,’ he said. ‘I taught him to swing a sword.’
Banugul rose, took wine from a naked woman whose pubic hair was shaved to resemble the Greek letter alpha, and brought the cup to Kineas with her own hands. The smell of her caught at his breath — the hint of a smell, somewhere in the arch of his nose. A clean, delicate smell, like mint. Her head came to his shoulder, and from his advantage of height, he could see even more of her to admire. He raised his cup to her.
‘What did he offer you to betray me?’ she asked, very close.
Kineas wondered if there was a killer standing behind him. He was weaponless and her tone belied the clean purity of her scent — she was angry, working herself up for murder. ‘I refused to hear his offer,’ Kineas said.
‘Really?’ she asked. For the first time, he had said something that took her by surprise. She returned to her throne and sat. To Kineas, her motions seemed to take a very long time.
‘Really,’ Kineas answered.
She sighed. ‘I would like to trust you,’ she said.
Kineas shook his head gently. ‘You trust no one,’ he said. He looked around. ‘May I have a chair?’
She gave him a small smile. ‘I can do better than a chair.’ She motioned, and a proper couch was brought for him. While he arranged himself on it, another was brought for her. More couches arrived and her courtiers, half a dozen men in a mix of Persian and Greek dress, settled on to them uneasily. She arranged herself on hers with her usual grace, rose on one elbow and toasted Kineas with her gold goblet.
Kineas poured a libation to the gods and then toasted her with a line from Aristophanes that made her smile.
She took a long drink of her wine and then rolled on to her stomach. ‘If I have you killed, right now, I can buy your soldiers and fight any campaign I please,’ she said.
Kineas’s stomach twisted. He was not immune to fear, and his hands betrayed him. He clenched his goblet. She was serious.
‘My soldiers would storm this citadel and put everyone in it to the sword,’ he said, with the best imitation of calm he could muster. He could hear the fear in the end of his sentence.
Her guard captain revealed himself, standing just out of his line of vision to his right, by snorting his disdain. ‘Try, fucking Greek.’
Banugul gave an enigmatic smile and indicated her guard captain with her chin. ‘This is Therapon, my strong right arm.’
Kineas took a deep breath. He didn’t turn his head, although he noted the alcove where the man was standing. ‘Every one of your men is bribable. You have little discipline — so little that even now, the towers on the citadel’s north walls are empty because the men don’t want to get that cold. No one is watching the north wall.’
‘No one can climb the north wall,’ the queen said, but her eyes flicked to the guard captain, and he looked away.
‘Like Leosthenes, Diodorus, my second, is a childhood friend from Athens. You could never bribe him, lady. Unlike this dog of a Thessalian you keep to bully your guards, my men are soldiers, fresh from a summer of victory.’ He was beginning to convince himself, and his words flowed faster. ‘If you murder me, all of you will die.’
She met his eye easily, and smiled. It wasn’t a smile of seduction, but a smile of pure calculation. She was not young. Nor was she old. She was at the turning point of age, where the lines at the corners of her eyes did not mar her looks but only added to her dignity. ‘What was Artabazus’s offer?’ she asked for the second time.
‘I refused to hear it,’ Kineas repeated.
Her eyes opened wider for a fraction of a second and then narrowed. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘I cannot be tempted by something I haven’t heard,’ Kineas said. ‘Do you know the famous soldier Phocion?’
‘I know his name and his reputation. His honour is proverbial.’ She raised her eyebrows expectantly. She smiled, and Kineas knew that he was not going to die. He thought he had her measure.
‘He used to tell us that the best way to avoid temptation,’ Kineas felt the tension falling away from him, ‘was to avoid temptation.’
She nodded, eyebrows arched. ‘I often seek temptation out,’ she said. ‘But I am a queen.’ She looked at the grapes in the bowl next to her. ‘Every grape,’ she said, taking one, ‘has been seeded in my kitchens by slaves. That is the fate that awaits you if I discover that you have received more messengers from Artabazus. Have I made myself clear?’
Kineas held his ground. ‘If Leosthenes the Athenian comes to my camp, I will always receive him, Despoina. And I will present myself for examination immediately afterwards.’
‘Strange man,’ she said. She looked at him for some time, eating grapes. ‘Am I a temptation?’
‘Yes,’ Kineas said.
She nodded, her face serious. ‘Yet you do not avoid me.’
Kineas rubbed his chin and chewed a grape. ‘I conc
ede your point.’
She leaned forward, interested. ‘Men do not usually allow women victories in conversation. You concede my point. But? There is a but?’
‘You are observant, my lady. But you are my employer, and to avoid you would create misunderstanding. You are a queen, and any temptation you offer will come with enough barbs to hook a Euxine salmon.’
She raised her chin and allowed a slight smile to indicate that his point had merit. ‘I grew to womanhood at a Persian court. Both of my uncles were poisoned. My mother was murdered with a sword. My father now seeks to kill me. Do you understand?’
Kineas nodded, hands calming gradually. ‘You keep your slaves nude to know if they carry weapons.’
She pulled her legs under her and leaned towards him. ‘I disarm my enemies in any way I can,’ she said. ‘I have few enough weapons. If I were a man, I would be strong. I am a woman. What would you have me do?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m a canny fish. I can see the hook and the bait and even the boat.’
She curled a lip. ‘What a very safe answer.’ She motioned past him, and a man with a lyre sat on a stool and began to sing. He was excellent and his purity commanded silence. Kineas turned his head to find that the singer was fully clothed — not a slave.
‘Persian?’ he asked after the first performance.
‘Lycian,’ she answered. ‘Or Carian.’
Kineas stroked his chin. ‘The words are strange, but the cadence is like Homer.’
Her body faced the singer, but she turned her head to him, stretching her neck and back. Her smile was as beautiful as dawn in the mountains, and as fresh. ‘Are all Athenians as well educated as you are?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. He put a hand over his goblet so that the wine slave backed off. ‘Where did you learn Greek?’ He looked away, towards the singer. Therapon glared at him steadily. His hate made an emotional counterpoint to Banugul’s magnetism, and Kineas steadied himself on it.
‘Darius’s chief eunuch was a Greek. And my sister and I were prisoners of Alexander for two years.’ She smiled as if they were conspirators. ‘While you still served him.’
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