Force of Kings

Part V

‘You have to hand it to him,’ Sophokles said to the empty air. ‘He has more lives than a cat, and he has changed the war.’

‘Isokles will kill him for me. You have failed,’ Phiale said. She was on a swing, well over his head — one of the divertissements of Lycurgus’s new Temple of Aphrodite. Sophokles was practising his knife pass, over and over, and apparently talking to the wall — or to the statue of Aphrodite as a war-goddess.

‘Isokles may be a dab hand at terrifying prostitutes, but he’s not exactly a man-killer,’ Sophokles said.

‘He’s quite mad. Perhaps god-possessed. Who knows?’ Phiale’s voice was dreamy.

‘Well, if so, perhaps he has a chance, because Satyrus and Melitta are, between them, quite the most god-helped pair I’ve encountered. I look forward to killing them’ — Sophokles flicked his dagger from right to left hand before making his lunge — ‘because it appeals to my highly developed sense of hubris.’

Phiale leaped from her swing and landed like the dancer she was. ‘Satyrus has a lover,’ she said.

‘That’s not really surprising,’ Sophokles put in.

‘Shush, you are ingracious. His lover is, if you can imagine, some barbarian girl of Alexandria. I want you to take her for me.’ She smiled over her shoulder at him and did a back flip, which stripped her, as her chiton fell away at the top of her leap.

Sophokles collected her garment, dabbed at his face with it, and handed it to her. ‘You have a superb body, despoina. I will not kill some barbarian slave in Alexandria for you. It is beneath me.’

Phiale kicked off her sandals. ‘I could say that a barbarian in Alexandria might be your speed. If I was in a cruel mood.’

Sophokles stopped moving, tossed his dagger into the base of the statue of Aphrodite, and watched her. She was naked, standing on the balls of her feet, her very pose an inflammation.

‘Am I being seduced?’ he asked.

‘No. Seduction is subtle.’ Phiale stepped inside his guard and ran a thumb up his thigh, brushed his penis with her fingers, and slipped away from him with the same sort of motions he used in combat. ‘This is more direct,’ she said.

She turned, her eyes never leaving him, and lay down on the side altar.

She had two killers to suit her needs, and she could bind them both with simple tools — her body, hard silver. But in the Temple of Aphrodite she was a priestess, and with a partner she could work the most powerful and dangerous magics.

Sophokles rutted away — in this, he was no assassin, but merely a typical man — and she chanted her spell to his rhythm. And she built the force of it in her head until it was a black dove, and she sent it winging away across the sea.

Isokles had a house in Heraklea and a pair of slaves, and his six men terrorised the neighbourhood. It was a good life. Isokles had messengers from Phiale, and from Cassander, and he revelled in his role as a dangerous man, courted by important people. He had wealth and position. He had been received by Amastris herself. He paid bribes to a dozen of her court functionaries, and he bribed her slaves, and if Stratokles had still been in her employ, he would by now have caught the intruder and punished him. But Amastris had made a different choice, and her captain of the guard was one of the men Isokles paid so well.

Isokles drank wine, forced sex on his slaves, and waited for spring, like a hideous spider waiting in a nearly invisible web.

Diodorus lay on a couch in the heat of Babylon. Sappho, his wife, lay on a separate couch. It was that hot.

‘Will Seleucus go?’ Sappho asked.

It was the question on the lips of every informed man and woman in the city. Lysimachos had requested that Seleucus come north and west with his army. It was an open secret that Lysimachos had almost been destroyed in the autumn, that Cassander was a wreck, that Ptolemy had retired to Aegypt in disgust.

It was said that Antigonus had two hundred elephants and eighty thousand men.

Diodorus was sixty years old. It lay lightly on him — his chest was still as well muscled as his breastplate, and his arms were like the arms of a statue of Ares. But his hair was entirely white. He sat up, and a slave fanned him harder, mistaking his motion for a demand for a cool breeze.

Diodorus looked at the woman he loved and shook his head. ‘Want to go back to winters?’ he asked. ‘I can’t go back to Alexandria. And I think I’m getting too old for this. Time to retire.’

‘Tanais?’ she asked.

‘We own about a third of it, you and I,’ he said.

‘So?’ she asked.

‘So Seleucus has summoned me for the second hour after the sun is at its peak to speak to him about Satyrus of Tanais,’ Diodorus said. ‘He has no love for Lysimachos.’

‘I could go home,’ Sappho said.

‘Home?’ Diodorus asked.

‘Olbia, where my life changed. Or Tanais.’ She smiled, and rose from her couch. ‘Babylon is too hot,’ she said. ‘And the bugs are oppressive, and the locals are too subservient. The only people to talk to here are the Jews and the Medes.’ She laughed. ‘Listen to me. I was a slave for six years, and now I talk like a Macedonian.’

Diodorus bent and kissed her. ‘May I make a confession?’ he said.

‘You made love to my new washerwoman? In that case, you can wash your own fighting clothes.’ She hit him with her fan.

‘The one with the squint, or the one with the strange skin disease? No. I wish to confess that I want to take the Exiles north and fight. If Seleucus goes, this will be the end. One way or another. The last cast of the dice.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s my curse.’

‘Damn that Kineas. He had to tell you that he left you all his battles.’ Sappho had heard the story a hundred times.

‘If he was alive, he would be there.’ Diodorus waved a slave towards him.

‘If he was alive …’ Sappho said, and smiled. ‘I hear Satyrus made a brilliant campaign.’

‘He changed the war,’ Diodorus said with satisfaction.

‘He is like his father,’ Sappho said.

Diodorus shrugged. ‘Yes and no. Kineas was a mercenary with the heart of a king. Satyrus is a king with the heart of a mercenary.’

Sappho shook her head. ‘No. I know him better than you. He is a man of worth. Like my brothers. Like you, my dear.’

Diodorus raised an eyebrow. ‘That is my yearly compliment — I had better treasure it. I hope he is a man of worth, my dear, because he has become the linchpin of this year’s campaign. I’d best be going.’

‘Give Seleucus and his paramour my deepest obeisance,’ Sappho said.

‘With or without the sarcasm?’ Diodorus asked, but the question was apparently rhetorical, as he didn’t wait for an answer.

Sappho called for her body servant, and asked for a stylus and a tablet.

Leon sat back on his kline and read Sappho’s letter for the third time. By his side, Nihmu lay with her head on the armrest, her eyes out to sea.

‘You will go again,’ she said.

‘You could come with me,’ he said.

‘To Tanais?’ she asked. ‘To the Sea of Grass?’ Her breath caught.

Leon shook his head. ‘We’ll rally the fleets at Rhodes,’ he said. ‘I expect that the fight, when it happens, will be in Asia — probably far from the sea. Plistias is at Miletus. Demetrios holds the mouth of the Propontus.’ Leon shrugged heavily. ‘All my ships, all Ptolemy’s and what Rhodes has left — all together, two hundred hulls. Demetrios and Plistias built all winter — no idea what they’ll have. But I’ll be surprised if they have fewer than two hundred hulls.’ Leon shook his head. ‘Everyone has their eyes on the armies and the elephants. A fleet of two hundred hulls has as many men as an army of fifty thousand.’

Nihmu sighed. ‘Yes, dear.’

Leon passed a hand down her back. ‘This is the end. Or at least, all of us will try to make it the end.’ He looked at the letter. ‘Diodorus and Crax and Sappho are coming up from Babylon with Seleucus.’

Nihmu looked out over the sea. ‘All of Kineas’s people, one last time.’

Leon looked at her, and she was crying.

‘Did he know what was to come?’ she asked. ‘I never saw this.’

Leon smiled. ‘Why cry? We will see all of our friends.’

Nihmu managed a small smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And then we will die.’

Leon smiled. His wife had been a prophetess, and she was wont to say such things. Sometimes they had meaning, and sometimes they didn’t, and sometimes the meaning was subtle. So he smiled, kissed her, and got to his feet. ‘The children of men are born to die,’ he said.

Nihmu nodded. ‘I should practise my archery,’ she allowed.

Antigonus sat on a leopard skin thrown over a stool, and watched two oarsmen wrestling for a prize.

Demetrios sat beside him, and the boy’s presence made him … whole. Happy. Even if the young fool wanted to be a god. That was a young man’s fantasy. Antigonus One-Eye had eighty-two years’ worth of pain, wounds, and age. He no longer wanted to live for ever, but he was damned if he was going down easily.

‘I have the best army I’ve had since the king died,’ Antigonus said.

‘You mean Alexander,’ Demetrios said. ‘You and I are kings, now.’

‘I mean the king. He was king. We … are fighting in the ruins of his temple.’ Antigonus watched the sun setting over the sea. ‘Bring me your whole army — everything. Leave fucking Cassander holding his limp dick and come over to Asia. Let’s do it — one throw for everything. I’m tired, and I’ve been this close ten times, and I want to win.’

A slow smile spread over Demetrios’s face. ‘You and me … together? One army? Nothing will defeat us.’

Antigonus nodded. ‘Nothing ever has,’ he said. ‘Mind you, buy every fucking hoplite in Greece before you come. Buy everyone. Bloat yourself. Buy them even if it is just to deny them to fucking Cassander. Buy all the Thessalians you can find.’

‘You have cash?’ Demetrios asked.

‘You own Athens, son. Don’t expect cash from me.’ Antigonus grunted. ‘I met your Satyrus,’ he noted.

‘You liked him!’ Demetrios said.

‘He’s worth fifty of Lysimachos. Not a bad little strategos — fell for an old chestnut in the mountains, then put one over on me.’ Antigonus chuckled. ‘Wish you could buy him. Since you can’t, I’ve paid to have him poisoned.’

‘Poisoned! Pater, he’s a hero!’ Demetrios shook his head. ‘That’s womanish.’

‘My child, I’m eighty-two years old. I can be as womanish as I want.’ The old man smiled, though. ‘You know why we’ll win?’

‘Because I’m going to be a god?’ Demetrios asked.

‘No. Not by a long chalk.’ Antigonus drank some wine. That part of life remained good. He still liked good wine. And strong bread with a crust. And the sight of a field he’d won.

‘Because we have Athens and Tyre and all the money?’ Demetrios said.

‘I won’t pretend that won’t help,’ Antigonus said, and chuckled. ‘But no. It’s because Cassander is a useless fuck, and Ptolemy wants it to end, and Lysimachos can’t find his arse with both hands in the dark, and Seleucus is an arrogant pup … and they all hate each other. You and me, son, we trust each other, and when the bronze meets the iron, that’s what will count.’

Demetrios put his arms around his father and kissed him. ‘I’ll be there when you call,’ he said.

Antigonus drank off his wine and tossed the cup into the sea. ‘Then sod ’em all,’ he said. ‘We’ll be kings of the world.’

The caravan came to Heraklea with fifty camels and a hundred horses, laden with spices and silk and fine cottons, wool shawls from the lands east of Hyrkania, swords forged by legendary giants, and twenty loads of lapis lazuli quarried in the high, high passes of Sogdia and Bactria.

The caravan was commanded by a woman, and her tribesmen called her ‘The Widow.’ She was rumoured to be beautiful, and her voice was gentle, but the tough, dark Sogdian mercenaries told the boys in the souk how she had killed a bandit in the high passes with her steel, and how she had killed another — one of their own, who thought she might warm his bed — with a thumb into his brain through his eye.

Covered in dust, robed to the throat and wearing a Persian burnoose, she was slim, but that was all that could be said of her. And rich — she was certainly about to be rich. The lapis alone was the largest cargo of the fine stone to arrive in thirty years.

She spoke Greek with rapid, accurate fluency. The traders of the souk loved and hated her at once, and her vicious guards, who caught a thief by the camels, gutted him, and staked him by their lines as a warning to others.

She was still covered in dust when she finished bargaining with a jewel merchant for a handful of uncut rubies — the only sale she was interested in making — and it brought her a bag of gold darics and the eyes of every thief in Heraklea. Only her eyes showed, which the jeweller thought was an unfair advantage in making a deal, but they were beautiful eyes, large and liquid and a remarkable, lapis-dark blue, and besides, for all her bargaining, he’d just made a year’s wage. He felt beneficent when she asked her question.

Leon the Nubian? Of course he still had a factor here. Directions were provided.

The widow shouted orders, and men did things, and the souk made room for fifty camels and their attendants. She had an astounding number of Sogdian mercenaries, and some Hyrkanians. Their horses alone were enough to excite envy.

She walked, accompanied by two Hyrkanians, through the alleys behind the agora to the warehouse she’d been told to visit. Really, an old Greek home sandwiched between two warehouses.

Leon’s factor was a young man with a black beard and dancing eyes — hard to see that he had been a slave since birth, or perhaps all that joy was the result in ending free. He bowed; informants had already brought him word of her arrival, but he was stunned to have the agora’s new star descend on his doorstep.

Before her heart had beat a hundred times, she was reclining on a couch with a cup of wine in her hand. A slave helped her roll the burnoose off her shoulders and head, and under the folds of her dusty Persian coat, she wore a man’s chitoniskos. Her Persian boots were replaced by gold sandals from her bag.

Leon’s man, Hector, raised his cup. ‘To Hermes, god of travellers, who brings you to my door. And to whom should I pledge this cup, lady of the beautiful eyes?’

She had a playful smile, for a matron of mature years. ‘Your master and I have been more rivals than friends,’ she said. ‘Nonetheless, I believe we are allies now, and I have brought a cargo to help finance an army.’

Hector shook his head. ‘You have the better of me, my lady. If my master had a rival such as you, I would surely know.’

‘Bah,’ she said, and the lapis eyes flickered. ‘I am an old woman and the world has forgotten me. My name is forgotten. But when I was young, men called me Banugul.’

Hector knew her then: the woman that his master called the ‘Viper of Hyrkania’.

But as she was proposing to give him the contents of the richest caravan in thirty years, he was hard put to see how she might be plotting against him.

By the end of the day, she and her men had largely taken over his house. It worried him but she allowed — insisted, in fact — that he write letters to Tanais and to Alexandria. He sent a third copy to Rhodes. And then he was busy, as he found himself in control of the lapis market. It was a delightful way for a merchant to live.

Miriam sat on a couch, her legs stretched out before her, and opened the scroll. She did a great deal of her brother’s business — it kept her from thinking. And thinking made her feel ill.

But the letter from Heraklea was for Leon, not for Abraham. She hesitated, but the name Satyrus of Tanais leapt off the page at her, and she couldn’t help herself. At some point in the long missive, she pivoted her legs from couch to floor, rose and walked out of the garden — lovingly restored — across the tile floor of the former andron, now part of the larger reception hall, and up the short steps to her brother’s warehouse.

Abraham, dressed in the long robes of a Jew, stood with Daedelus of Halicarnassus. They were old comrades, of course, but her brother’s eyes positively glittered.

Miriam was suddenly conscious that she was not dressed to receive. But she was in the warehouse, where women were not welcome, and she couldn’t bring herself to leave and change.

Abraham grinned at her like a fool. ‘Leon’s on his way!’ he said. ‘Ptolemy has sent part of his fleet — I’m to have a command!’ He caught himself, tried to restore the imperturbable demeanour of a man of worth. Failed, and grinned again. Then tried to put his grin away, all too aware how Miriam was going to feel when he rowed off to fight alongside Leon … and Satyrus.

‘This letter is for Leon,’ she said. She shrugged, an eloquent shrug that suggested that she, as a mere woman, made these mistakes, and she’d read it, and really, no one should chide her for it — all in a shrug. ‘Banugul of Hyrkania is at Heraklea with a convoy of goods to be made into money for her son to buy mercenaries.’ She held out the letter. ‘Almost a thousand talents, the letter says.’

Daedelus shook his head. ‘A thousand talents? By Hephaestus’s forge — that’s enough to buy Antigonus.’

Abraham scratched his beard. ‘She’s … an enemy. But of course, her son is with Stratokles, and Stratokles …’ He looked at his sister.

Miriam sighed. ‘Stratokles is a side all by himself.’

Daedelus made a face. ‘I’ve heard of her, too. Alexander’s mistress. But what does this change?’

Abraham shook his head. ‘Nothing. But we couldn’t get a message back through anyway. As soon as the winter storms are off the heavens, Demetrios will close the Propontus. As it is, the captain who brought the letter must be a madman.’

‘Insane,’ said a voice from the warehouse door.

Miriam’s heart stopped.

‘I thought that the winter winds were a safer bet than two hundred triremes,’ Satyrus said. He had on his ancient, pale blue chiton and his sea boots, and he looked more like a fisherman than the King of the Bosporus.

Abraham threw his arms around his friend.

Satyrus had the good grace to look at his friend while he embraced him. Then his glance went back to Miriam.

‘I came to try you one more time,’ he said. He seemed unembarrassed to have Daedelus and Abraham present.

The hardened sea-mercenary grew red. His eyes met with Abraham’s.

‘I … think I hear my mother calling me,’ he muttered.

‘Cup of wine before you go?’ Abraham asked.

‘Jews are the most hospitable of men,’ Daedelus said.

He reached out for her hand, and she gave it to him. They sat — uncomfortably — on a chest of Athenian blackware and wood shavings. For a time that would have bored an onlooker, they said nothing.

‘You must be Poseidon’s own son,’ she said quietly.

‘Surely your Jehovah doesn’t tolerate Poseidon,’ Satyrus said. ‘As he’s a jealous god.’

She grew red.

‘There are Jews in Tanais, now. I tried to get their priest to teach me Hebrew. He had to admit he wasn’t very good at it himself.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘We spent the winter talking Greek, instead. He’s building a temple — a small one. I’m paying.’

She looked away.

‘I can’t be a Jew,’ Satyrus said. ‘Please look at me, this is no jest. I understand that it is the religion of your people. I can respect it, but I heard nothing from that good man in Tanais that would cause me to leave the worship of Herakles … or Apollo, or Athena, or Pythagoras or Socrates or even Aristotle. But to me, it is a list of rules — rules made to govern people in a place far from my people. Perhaps every religion is such. But Herakles cares nothing for my taste in meat, only that I be excellent. That I pour everything I have into that excellence, and never allow myself to settle for second-rate. And it occurred to me, this winter, that you were the most excellent person I had ever met — that I would not settle for some Greek girl or some Sakje princess with a thousand horses, any more than I would allow other men to settle the world while I watched.’

‘You might have died, sailing here.’ She was angry.

He nodded. ‘I thought that I would die last autumn. Melitta thought so. There was an augury.’ He rubbed his chin. There was salt in his hair, making him look older than he was. ‘I am not a stripling. So I won’t tell you that I will die without you. But I would certainly live with you.’

She nodded. ‘Shouldn’t you be at Heraklea with Cassander and Lysimachos? Preparing for the last act of the war?’

He looked into her eyes. ‘No. That’s for Stratokles. He should be there by now. My sister and I have sent out the word, gathered our taxes, talked to our farmers and our tribesmen. Stratokles can negotiate for us.’

‘You trust him?’ she said, her eyes wide.

Satyrus smiled. ‘There is some magic to him,’ he said. ‘I have come two thousand stades across storm-racked seas to see the woman I love, and we are discussing Stratokles.’

They gazed at each other.

‘If you will live with me — wife, mistress, friend, whatever role you choose — we can look into each other’s eyes for ever,’ he said.

She licked her lips, then looked away. ‘No,’ she said. ‘In time, it will lose its savour. We will argue about raising our children, about the rights of Jews in the town, about the way you levy tolls. About Stratokles. About war.’

Satyrus got to his feet. ‘Yes, I agree. I think it sounds like a lovely way to pass the time. I’d rather argue acrimoniously with you than grow restless with the dull smiles of a princess and feel guilty while I fuck her slaves.’ He turned back to her. ‘Was that too blunt?’ He took both her hands. ‘We survived a year in the siege of Rhodes, and I saw you tested in the crucible of Ares — and you wanted nothing.’

She took a deep breath. He saw it in her face.

‘Must I beg?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Listen, Satyrus. Stop your chatter and listen. After Ephesus, I asked myself this: if I am not a Jew, what am I? Who am I?’ She shook her head. ‘And inside my head, I hear the same voice I have heard since my husband died. Since I told my father that I wouldn’t go back to him.’ She clenched his hands hard, as if she was drowning and he could save her. ‘I think that you imagine that I am strong, and I am weak. I fear to fail you, and I fear to find that you have subsumed me — that I will become a body and a complacent smile. I am not your match.’

He was smiling. His smile annoyed her.

‘You think that you know everything,’ she said pettishly.

‘I know you. What you say is true, but you are you. You think I lack these fears? Last year, I nearly lost my life and my kingdom through ignoring the counsel of my counsellors. I am ignoring my sister to plunge my kingdom into debt to fight a war that may not be my business. I am more like Demetrios than I would admit to anyone but you, and to be honest, my love, I am giving my all to defeat Demetrios and Antigonus, and I’m all but sure that they are the better men. I am tired of war and I’m no longer sure of what my motivations are for fighting. My road here is littered with corpses of people I loved — Diokles died in the autumn, Helios died here, Philokles, Nestor — like paving stones in the road, and when I am drifting off to sleep, I wince and roll and roll again, trying to be someone else, someone who does not kill people every summer. And despite all that, I enjoy my wine, and I love the sea, and I would trade the rest of my life to lie tonight in your bed.’

She flushed. ‘That was too blunt,’ she said with a smile.

‘No it wasn’t.’ He put his arms around her.

She kissed him. He had hesitated, because forcing his kisses on her was far from his intention. She didn’t raise her face and wait — she locked her hands behind his head and kissed him.

‘You … changed your mind?’ he said.

‘No. Listen, love. I will talk to Abraham, and if I have his agreement, I will try you — us — a day at a time.’ She shrugged. Kissed him, and stepped away. ‘And you will not be in my bed tonight. Curse it. But once you are there, I suspect that I will never have you out of it.’

Satyrus grabbed her, ran a hand down her side to her hip, and she squealed, and he laughed.

The sound of their laughter carried into the garden.

‘The King of the Bosporus is seducing my sister,’ Abraham said, and raised his cup for more wine.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Daedelus said.

Stratokles arrived in Heraklea like a priest going to a festival. It was, in every way, the high point of his life, the culmination of his work, and the discovery that Banugul of Hyrkania was living in the house of Leon’s factor added to its savour. And the money she had, of course.

Her arrival pointed up something he had believed all his life, jumping from web to web across the plots of lesser men. That if you planned well, worked hard, and did your very best, the gods would grant you luck. He had never planned on Banugul. But the cash she brought made his job easy.

Cassander came to Heraklea, a broken reed, but still strong. He had raised a new army in Europe, and a small fleet. Lysimachos was there, with Amastris; now undisputed lord of Mysia and the Troad, with thirty thousand professional soldiers, twenty elephants, and a fleet of heavy ships.

Aiax Seleucus, the King of Babylon’s nephew, was there, representing fifty thousand men and a hundred elephants, already said to be marching across Asia up the Royal Road to Sardis.

No one spoke for Ptolemy, but Stratokles had his letter in his scroll bag, telling of two hundred ships gathering in the harbour of Rhodes to open the Dardanelles when the summer winds began to blow.

Mithridates of Bithynia was there, lord of ten thousand cavalrymen, master of the gates of Asia, and now their firm ally.

It made Stratokles laugh, as he lay by Banugul in a house he had once stormed to kill Satyrus and Melitta of Tanais — where he was now an honoured guest. He stroked her side and thought of how, a year before, these same ‘allies’ had elected to murder him. And now, as the captain general of Satyrus and Melitta, his money and his acumen and their soldiers were the porpax of the alliance — the handle by which all the other rivals grasped the shield.

‘I have never seen you so happy,’ Banugul murmured.

‘Nor I, you,’ he said into her ear.

‘My son is a better man,’ she said. ‘And more important — he is alive.’

‘He is a fine man, and one who has, I think, found that he does not want to be Alexander’s son. He wants to be his own man — perhaps King of Hyrkania.’ Stratokles smiled.

‘Meaning you no longer need him,’ she said.

Stratokles rolled over, kissed her, reached across her and took the wine cup from the table by the bed, sharing it with her. ‘I cannot help who I am,’ he said. ‘I have plots, and plots, and plots. Some succeed, and some fail. And my greatest flaw is that I hedge my own bets, and some of my plots are rivals to other of my plots.’ He lay back and grinned into the lamplit darkness. ‘I had planned to use your son to drive Cassander mad. As it is, Cassander has placed himself in my hands, and your son doesn’t want to be a tool. So I have become wise enough not to struggle.’

‘I have put money into a rumour,’ Banugul said. ‘That he is the son of Eumenes of Kardia.’

Stratokles laughed. ‘Well played, lady. No Macedonian would cross the street to serve a bastard son of Eumenes.’ He reached for her shoulders. ‘But he is Alexander’s son.’

‘Perhaps,’ she allowed. ‘Are you really friends with Kineas’s son? Will this alliance last?’

He chuckled, and gave her no answer, and they passed the time with other things.

But in the morning, with Lucius at his back, Stratokles walked up to the Temple of Hera.

He was dressed in his very best — a chiton with flames of Tyrian red licking up the shining white wool from the hems, themselves so thick with embroidery that the gold pins that held it together were difficult to push through the cloth. Over his shoulder hung a chlamys of pure red-purple, embroidered in gold, and on his brow sat a diadem of gold and red-purple amethysts, worth the value of a heavy penteres all by itself, without reckoning the other accoutrements he wore — gold sandals with gold buckles, gold mountings on the dagger under his armpit, gold rings on his fingers. It had cost him extra time and effort to reassemble the costume, but the effect was worth it. For his chiton and his diadem proclaimed to all of them: You tried to kill me, and here I am, and I hold the reins of this chariot.

It was no longer about Athens. Stratokles had loved Athens all of his life but Demetrios was sucking the marrow from Athens’s bones. And when he fell — if Cassander could be destroyed with him — Athens would be free. Or as free as a city could be in the world of monsters that Alexander had created.

So he walked up the steps. Nodded to Lysimachos, bowed to Amastris, smiled at Phiale, and laughed at Cassander, whose eyes flashed with venom.

Once, this man called me a viper.

They mouthed pious nothings.

‘And where is your new master?’ Phiale asked.

‘Satyrus of Tanais?’ he asked, as if unsure who she meant. ‘Elsewhere, engaged in more important business.’

The shock that this statement engendered was worth all the torments of the last year.

‘His sister?’ Lysimachos asked.

‘On the Sea of Grass,’ Stratokles said. ‘They send their regrets.’

‘Ares!’ Lysimachos said. ‘They have deserted the alliance?’

Stratokles smiled. He had all the time in the world. ‘I have their instructions,’ he said.

‘This is intolerable!’ Cassander said.

Stratokles smiled, swirled his wine, and contemplated an excellent image of the goddess — imperious, matronly, and yet beautiful. Not his favourite goddess — and yet, and yet.

‘Allies,’ Stratokles said. They all looked at him. He bowed to the priestess of Hera. ‘My instructions are that we all swear an oath in the names of our principles, to support the alliance until Antigonus is defeated — and for one year after. I have taken the liberty of drawing up copies in advance.’

‘I do not take orders from a petty king, nor from his petty minister,’ Cassander said. His face was puffy, and his fingers under their rings were bloated, like those of a corpse left in the water.

Stratokles didn’t need the doctor to tell him — Cassander had oedema. He wasn’t fat, he was bloated with water.

Oh, the gods do what a man cannot, Stratokles thought.

‘These are not orders,’ Stratokles said. ‘We are here as allies — as peers.’

‘I am the King of Macedon, and you are a paid informant.’ Cassander had once been the handsomest of mortals. Now he was hideous, and he seemed unaware of the change in his physique; speeches that had once seemed imperious now seemed pathetic.

Stratokles turned to the other kings. ‘I had no intention of offending. It was our intention to plan a campaign — we had assumed that all were in favour of it.’

The younger Seleucid nodded. ‘Stratokles of Athens, it is my brother’s intention to march west with his elephants and his cavalry. But if Cassander will not come …’

‘I am the King of Macedon,’ Cassander said again. ‘I am the head of this alliance.’

Lysimachos took the man by the elbow. Stratokles saw the King of Macedon wince in pain at the touch.

Lysimachos spoke quickly, his voice low, and when Phiale attempted to step in close to her lord, Lysimachos straight-armed her away — almost a blow. She turned on her heel and walked away down the steps of the temple.

If only I had thought to have assassins waiting for her. Stratokles watched her, and then looked back at Cassander, who was nodding. He looked at Lucius, and Lucius gave the smallest nod towards Phiale, and Stratokles blinked once. That was all. Lucius was gone in the swirl of his chlamys, away down the steps, apparently in the opposite direction from Phiale.

The King of Macedon brushed his cloak, bowed to the priestess of Hera, and walked carefully to Stratokles.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m in pain in the mornings, and I get pettish. We all know’ — the words seemed to come out of him like gallstones from a surgeon’s patient — ‘how much you’ve done for the alliance.’

Damn, that was good, Stratokles thought. I could die now.

Cassander lowered his voice. ‘I will not forget this,’ he said.

Stratokles met his eyes. ‘You mean, you will not forget that despite your best attempts to have me killed, I continue to serve your interests? I forget nothing, sir. I would have to offend you for years before I would hold myself avenged. But,’ he said mildly, ‘I am not master in this house. The object of this alliance is the destruction of Antigonus. Are we agreed?’

It took four days. But it turned out, in the end, that they had this in common — they hated Antigonus more than they hated each other.

Phiale broke every cup in her borrowed house. She went to the slave quarters and started on their pottery.

‘Satyrus isn’t even here!’ she roared.

Isokles shrugged. ‘He’ll have to come. Then I kill him.’

‘He isn’t coming!’ Phiale said. ‘Aphrodite, he must be guided by the gods. Or you have a spy in this house.’

Isokles crossed his arms. ‘Despoina, shut up. Listen. This is the heart of the alliance. This port receives their soldiers — this is their supply base. Ares’ rock-hard dick, he will come here in time, and I’ll have him. I have people in every warehouse, every pier, on the beaches, gate guards … this town is mine.’ He grinned. ‘He will sail in here, or march in here, and I’ll have him.’

Phiale threw another pot — a heavy water jug. The smash was satisfying.

‘What if he never comes here?’ she asked.

The Latin returned with a cut on his arm. ‘It’s like kicking a beehive,’ he said. ‘The killer she hired in Athens? I saw him. He’s got twenty soldiers and some local thugs.’

Stratokles made the same face that an armourer makes when looking at another craftsman’s shoddy work. ‘Amastris is getting sloppy,’ he said.

That evening he had a long talk with Banugul, one professional to another.

‘I need you to befriend Amastris,’ he said. ‘As one queen to another. She could be a useful ally, and she’s been infiltrated. Cassander — or Phiale — or maybe even Demetrios’s Neron. I’m not sure who they’re all working for but this town is full of bribes and traitors. And we need this town.’

Banugul smiled. ‘I admire your version of love talk.’ She nodded. ‘Heraklea would make me a good ally. Will you introduce us?’

Stratokles grinned. ‘Best she not know that we share … anything.’

‘I still think you were her lover.’ Banugul flicked a finger into his side and made him jump.

‘She’s too young for me, and besides, not every woman can see through my ugliness to the worthy philosopher inside.’ He laughed.

She tickled him. ‘You are a fool.’

‘Would you marry me, if we live through the year?’ Stratokles asked.

Sophokles knew that Satyrus of Tanais was on Rhodes as soon as he landed. It wasn’t exactly a secret, but the news was new enough not to have made it across the straits to Miletus.

He had gone to Alexandria on her orders and found no quarry at all. Her information was wrong. Sophokles, released from the spell of her presence, had a profound and abiding temptation to ride away into Asia and be shot of the whole thing. He had no interest whatsoever in killing the Jewish girl. No challenge — and as like as not, Phiale was wrong about the whole thing. She was — he allowed himself to think it — cursed. Perhaps mad.

Sophokles also suspected that she was working for Neron, Demetrios’s spymaster. A double or even triple agent. And that made her tasks too dangerous even to contemplate, because he wouldn’t know the consequences.

But Satyrus of Tanais — that was a worthy target. Beloved of the gods, or so men said. And as Phiale, Cassander, and Antigonus all offered substantial rewards for his death, he was the most valuable contract Sophokles had ever had. That anyone had ever had.

Balanced against that, Sophokles had only failed a dozen times in his life, and most of them had involved Satyrus to one extent or another.

The memory of the twelve-year-old boy’s searing contempt was burned into his head.

Sophokles took rooms in a house that rented to merchants, and began to make his plans. He had four men, and he used them carefully — the agora, the warehouses. It took him three days to establish for a fact that Satyrus was living with Abraham the Jew. Was surrounded by well-armed friends. Was deeply in love with the Jew’s sister — no secret here on Rhodes.

‘Miriam?’ Satyrus came into the garden with three big men — big even by the standards of a tall woman with a tall warrior brother.

She rose, and they touched hands. They had reached a stage where they couldn’t help but touch each other in public — the tension was a delight and a temptation and a deep frustration. Satyrus suspected that the slaves were laughing at them. He knew Anaxagoras was laughing.

‘These are friends of yours?’ Miriam asked. They were a frightful trio — like Titans come to life. Easily the grimmest men Miriam had ever been confronted with.

‘These three are Achilles, Odysseus and Ajax,’ Satyrus said, and grinned.

Miriam smiled. ‘I can believe it,’ she said.

‘They have served me well. And deserve better than being dragged through a war.’ Satyrus shook his head — just being with her clouded his wits.

Achilles laughed. ‘You two’re a picture, you know that, eh?’ He stuck out a great hand to Miriam. ‘Satyrus wants us to be your guards.’

She looked at them. ‘I will be the envy of every matron in Rhodes.’

Odysseus leered at her. ‘Yep,’ he said.

Ajax stroked his beard, looking at the house. ‘I could learn to like it here.’

Achilles looked at Satyrus. ‘No strings? This is it — look after this woman?’ He nodded. ‘I’d think you’d done right by us, and more.’

‘Until the horde of barbarians attacks,’ Ajax said.

Miriam put her hands on her hips. ‘You know what I see? Three agora toughs who are going to make all my slaves pregnant and drink all my wine. Why do I need guards?’

Anaxagoras came in with her brother. He saluted her on the cheek, clasped hands with Achilles. ‘Ask that again, despoina?’

‘Why do I need guards?’ Miriam asked.

‘Satyrus is here because we convinced him that there were so many different people trying to kill him that he should evade the net, do something unexpected, and vanish.’ Anaxagoras put a hand on Satyrus’s shoulder. ‘Satyrus thinks that everyone in the world knows … well, that you and he are close.’

Miriam flushed.

Abraham raised an eyebrow. ‘Everyone on Rhodes, anyway.’

Anaxagoras nodded. ‘My point exactly. So Satyrus has brought these three fine men, ‘ he aimed a little bow at Achilles, who grinned, ‘to protect you.’

Miriam raised an eyebrow. ‘And you? Are leaving?’ The slightest tremor touched her voice.

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I’m a fool, Miriam. I should have started with this. Yes — I won’t wait for Leon, much as I want to see him. I’m going by sea to Aigai, then overland to Seleucus. I have the plan of the summer campaign. And I’ll deliver it in person. It seems unlikely to me that anyone will manage to assassinate me on the Euphrates — indeed, no one will even know who I am.’ He took a breath. ‘But you will be a target. And if you are not then these three n’er-do-wells will have a place to have a well-earned rest.’

‘Well,’ Miriam said. ‘I see. No need for me to complain, then.’

Satyrus, it turned out, was a hero of epic proportions to the Rhodians.

Sophokles hadn’t lived so long in his business by being a fool. No murder on Rhodes — an island — would be survivable. The Rhodians would torture the man who killed their hero. He could see ways to make the kill and escape but the risk was enormous.

Worse, the Jew girl suddenly had three very dangerous-looking bodyguards — huge, showy men who had the eyes of the real thing. Sophokles saw those eyes in the mirror. He knew the type.

His men were scared of the new bodyguards.

Best, he thought, to bide his time.

Sophokles liked Rhodes, and he was in no hurry. He felt as if he was at the hub of the world. He lay on his hard linen mattress and listened to the world turn. All news came to Rhodes; that Seleucus had marched from Babylon, that Antigonus was marching to meet him. That the allies had signed a compact at Heraklea, and that Stratokles had directed it. Sophokles raised a cup of wine to his former … comrade? Co-contractor? The man had turned the tables on Cassander — widely held the wiliest of the Diadochoi.

Demetrios had an army and a fleet in the Dardanelles, and was marching east to oppose Lysimachos. His fleet was waiting at Abydos to face the combined fleets of Rhodes, Aegypt, and Cassander.

And Satyrus of Tanais was lying on a couch on Rhodes, apparently taking no part.

Sophokles took a week to develop his informants. Abraham’s house was virtually impossible to penetrate, he found; instead of slaves, the man had Jews, and they were immune to bribes. Or rather, as Sophokles found to his cost, they took the bribes and reported them.

The next thing he knew, one of his local thugs was bleeding to death in the street, and one of the big bodyguards was pounding on the door of his rooming house, and the other two were watching the back of the building.

Sophokles had not stayed alive by being a fool. He was off across the roofs in a moment. In an hour, he was back on a ship for Miletus, a step ahead of the men who had started watching him.

He was sitting in a wine shop on the old harbour in Miletus, watching fish rise to his breadcrumbs and considering, once again, the possibility of giving up the whole thing and riding away, when he saw a triakonter come into the harbour like a racing boat — oars flowing like the legs on a water bug, flashing in the watery spring sun. And then the boat turned end for end, slowed in the chops of its own turn, and backed stern first onto the beach, almost at Sophokles’ feet. The men took a meal, and hired a pilot for the Cilician coast. And Satyrus of Tanais leaped into the shallow surf. Several of his friends leaped after him, calling for wine.

Satyrus of Tanais was ashore in enemy-held Asia, with a handful of friends and no escort.

Sophokles was so tempted by the immediacy of it that he strung his bow and put an arrow to it before he reconsidered. He couldn’t guarantee a kill at this range.

He followed them as they purchased food — always expensive on Rhodes — and two slave rowers, who they freed on the spot. Sophokles watched them all night, but they were in among the wealthy men of the town and Sophokles had abandoned his men and had no henchmen.

And in the morning, the lithe triakonter sped away south, towards the distant shores of Cilicia and Aigai, their destination. That much, Sophokles had gleaned.

Sophokles gathered new men, waited a day, chartered a boat, and followed. He was excited enough that he had trouble sleeping. The gods were handing him his prey.

Ten days later, they landed at Aigai, and Sophokles was a day behind them. He landed up the coast, rode in disguised as a Jew — the irony was not lost on him — in time to hear them buying horses — good horses, at an exorbitant rate in the agora. They weren’t quiet men, and the two most handsome bickered constantly, and bragged to the horse-wrangler that they were going to ride ‘clear across Asia’.

All the time in the world, then. Sophokles brought in his men, purchased a pair of thugs who passed as caravan guards to bulk up his force, and tried to decide whether it was better to sell Satyrus to the highest bidder, or just kill him.