Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

  *

  When Crescas was new to Troas, he’d lived in a single room in Bunarbi, three miles north of Troy itself. It was a fisherman’s hut, really, and at that nearly more than he could afford. Later he took a little house in the main city, just inside the Scaean Gate in the south, on the site of what had once been a tannery. The old buildings had been demolished, and new ones built, but residents all said that when the summer heat was high and the wind still, the tanner’s smell still rose out of the ground. Crescas hadn’t believed the story. The next summer it had been impossible to doubt it.

  Two years ago, when he married, Crescas bought a house at the other end of the city, below the wall of the Pergamos. The best houses in Troy were there, places where royal cousins and master horse breeders lived. Crescas’ home was small compared to those, modest even, but it had seven rooms on two floors and a tiny garden on the roof. He’d never have said, back in Bunarbi, that he’d ever own such a home as that.

  It was a mark of the changes in his life that he hadn’t even chosen it.

  Thaïs was waiting just inside the door, at the top of the steps down to the street. She usually was; she liked the receiving room, the andron as it was called in Greece. She’d picked up the habit of using the term, but kept the tradition of women in the east, that they were an equal partner in any marriage. Which meant she was allowed in the andron. Thaïs insisted she was willing to learn from how things were done in Greece, but that didn’t extend to Crescas being allowed a room his wife couldn’t enter.

  And come to that, Thaïs might say they were equal partners, but it seemed to Crescas that he was only her equal when she let him be.

  Althea was sitting on the floor, banging a carved lion against a model ship. The lion was probably bigger. Children’s toys didn’t seem to make much sense.

  “Supper is ready,” Thaïs greeted. She kissed him, and for a moment he forgot all about his daughter in the taste of her lips, and the yellow sunfall of her hair. All the years of work had brought him a respectable standard of living, with a servant of his own and plenty of good food, but the prize he treasured most was Thaïs. His hands itched for a tiller sometimes, and his eyes squinted against the glare of a sea he hadn’t faced for years, but the thought of Thaïs stopped the itch and settled him heart. If only for a few days.

  And then a few days more, and more, and here he still was, enjoying his life while other men faced pirates and storms for him.

  He was hungry, he realised. “Good. Are we eating alone, or will we have a woman from the Dressmaker’s Guild to entertain? Again?”

  “Just the family,” she said, still in his arms. “Though any more quips like that, husband, and you can eat downstairs – alone.”

  “Point taken,” he said. A Greek wife wouldn’t say such a thing to her husband. Crescas would be so bored.

  Althea stopped hitting lion against ship when he crouched down beside her, and regarded him from huge blue eyes. Her mother’s eyes, in fact; she had Thaïs’ hair as well, but she’d inherited Crescas’ nose. A bit unfortunate, that. She was beautiful anyway, and Crescas prayed every night that she grow up more beautiful still. His prayers went to Aphrodite of Greece and Arinna of Troy alike. There was no sense in choosing one and ignoring the other.

  Supper was chicken in garlic, served with eggs and figs, and slabs of honeyed bread. Thaïs brought the plates herself, and they took turns feeding Althea, who loved eggs but stubbornly shut her lips against figs. She ate some chicken but then coughed it back out again, mysteriously mixed with an odd green liquid. Crescas and Thaïs were used to that sort of thing by now and just wiped the mess up before going on with the meal. If you let a baby’s horrible habits put you off food you’d starve in a month.

  Half an hour later Althea’s eyelids were drooping, and Crescas carried her downstairs to bed while Thaïs stacked the plates for washing in the morning. Then, finally, there was time to pull his boots off and relax on the divan, a glass of heavily watered wine on the table and a dish of raisins at his elbow. Thaïs sat beside him, her eyes half-closed. She looked very tired.

  “Althea was difficult today?” he asked.

  Thaïs nodded. “She gets frustrated that she can’t explain what she wants. It will only be a few weeks until she starts talking, I think, but until then she’s going to be bad-tempered.”

  “You could leave her with the maid.”

  “I know I could leave her with the maid,” she said irritably. “But I want to be there for her first word.”

  So did Crescas, actually, but that wasn’t likely unless he was very lucky. He was away most days, either down at the Bay checking over a ship, or overseeing the arrival or departure of a caravan from the Trojan Road. When he managed to find time away from those things, the warehouse needed to be watched over, and there were always Notaries to consult. Once they’d loaned him money to finance his plans: now he kept his money with them, and they fawned over him in gratitude. He didn’t trust them fully, though. There was a bag of gold rings buried under the ground floor, just in case they cheated him.

  “I heard a story in the market this morning,” Thaïs began, but she never got to tell Crescas what it was. Someone knocked on the door three times, quite hard, and she sighed.

  “That’s Eteon,” she said. “I recognise the way he raps.”

  Crescas doubted that, but his short marriage had already taught him there were some things a wise husband just didn’t say. He pushed himself up from the divan and went to open the door, and found Eteon standing there in the dark. He didn’t need to turn around to know his wife was looking satisfied.

  “Trouble, boss,” Eteon said.

  Domestic concerns vanished. “What trouble? Is the ship all right?”

  “Nereid Borne is fine,” the factor said. “But there’s trouble in the palace. Can I come in for a moment?”

  Crescas stood aside to let him pass. Eteon stopped just inside, so he didn’t track dust and whatever else might be on the streets of Troy at this late hour through the house. He bowed slightly. “Lady Thaïs.”

  She nodded her head. “Eteon. I’d like you better if you didn’t interrupt my husband quite so often.”

  “I apologise,” he smiled. Eteon knew her well enough to realise she wasn’t really complaining. “But this is important. Crescas, there’s word from the palace. Priam is going to increase duties on the Trojan Road for all Argive goods and merchants. It will be announced tomorrow.”

  “All of them?” He frowned. “By how much?”

  “By half,” Eteon said.

  Crescas nearly yelped. A fifty per cent increase would be impossible for most Greek traders, they couldn’t pay that and still maintain enough profit. It would shut Greek goods out of the Euxine market completely as well; they wouldn’t be able to reach that huge, rich market. Sales of their wine and olive oil would fall, their pottery and bronze work, emery and marble figurines. They wouldn’t be able to buy Colchian grain or salt fish. Prices of Indian lapis lazuli would soar, and of pepper and faience too. Greece was going to be hurt by this.

  So might he be, too. Any merchant who didn’t adapt fast enough was going to suffer.

  “Does it include Greeks living in Troy?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It might.” Eteon shrugged.

  “Diomedes is king of Argolis,” Crescas muttered, annoyed, “but he isn’t my king. I’ve been here ten years and people still call me an Argive.”

  “They always will,” Eteon said.

  “This is all because of Hesione, isn’t it?” he asked, exasperated. “It always comes back to her, and that bad crow Telamon.”

  “I expect so,” Eteon said. “Does it matter?”

  He supposed it didn’t. Not to him, at any rate. This was going to ruin his profits; roughly half of the business he did involved the Trojan Road, one way or the other. Except, he realised, that he might not be included in the new tax. He was an Argive by birth, but a Trojan by choice. He’d even married a woman from the city,
had a Trojan daughter with her. It should be possible to argue that the new duty didn’t apply to him.

  Then he remembered the Hittite in his warehouse earlier, and the offer from the royal treasury to pay weight for weight in silver, in return for iron. He dug a hand in the pocket of his shirt and pulled out the token of the stylised horse. Priam would have to give him some leeway, surely.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Thaïs, “but I think I have to go to the palace, before they all go to sleep up there.”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “Take Eteon. I don’t want you walking the streets alone at night.”

  He didn’t want to walk the streets in the dark at all, but there was no help for it. He snagged his cloak from behind the door and swung it around his shoulders. The bitter north wind had faded for the moment, but it could return quickly. Crescas tugged his boots on and went back to the door.

  “I’ll leave a light on,” Thaïs promised.

  He would have kissed her, except that Eteon was there. Instead Crescas just nodded, and went out into the Trojan dark.