Funeral Games

16

The sand of the palaestra was cool on his cheek, but he shifted his weight and rotated his shoulders and his trainer rolled off him and backpedalled swiftly, regaining his feet in the motion.

Satyrus rose a little more slowly, with his hands up and his arms well extended. There was some scattered applause from other men who had stopped training to watch.

‘That used to get you every time,’ Theron said. He smiled. ‘Of course, you didn’t always have shoulders like an ox.’

Satyrus was three years older and heavier, taller and wider, a young man in peak physical condition with long, dark hair and shoulders as wide as many Alexandrian doors.

But he still hadn’t beaten Theron.

They circled, and more men gathered to watch. They were army officers and senior courtiers, Macedonians, most of them, although a few were Greeks. They knew a good fight when they saw one, and some quiet wagers began.

Satyrus spun on his right foot, raised his left a fraction and faked a blow at Theron’s face with his left hand.

Theron caught his jab and went to hold the arm, and Satyrus had to abandon his feint combination and backpedal to avoid the humiliation of giving his opponent an easy win. He felt the skin abrade as he ripped his left hand free.

Theron stepped in, following up his advantage, and shot his right fist out, catching Satyrus on the ribs – a bruising blow, but it was only pain. The younger man moved his hips to the right – the same way he’d spun out of the last two holds – and then went left.

Theron was caught by the move, and Satyrus managed to land a weak left jab to his coach’s head as he moved, and then he did it again, faking a third sliding step and then kicking out with his right foot at Theron’s left ankle. His blow went in, and the Corinthian rolled with the pain, put his weight on his good right foot and shot a fist at Satyrus, catching him high on the side of the head and rocking him back before losing his balance to the left and stumbling.

Both of them backed away, and every man in the gymnasium breathed as one, and a few cheered. The betting thickened. In Athens, betting on two gentlemen citizens in a public gymnasium would have been bad form, but Alexandria was a different city. A different world.

Theron circled warily, favouring his left foot.

Satyrus thought that he was lying. Faking injury was part of the massive repertory of tricks that a good pankrationist had to master, and Theron did it well.

Given that his left foot is fine, what should I do? Satyrus thought. He wiped sweat from his eyes and fought a temptation to attack just to cut the tension. He had landed several good blows – the leg kick would have put most of his friends down on the sand.

Theron feinted and Satyrus stepped back, declining the engagement, and both of them went back to circling.

Satyrus considered a feint based on the false assumption that Theron’s foot was hurt. In a few heartbeats, he assessed the possible blows and holds and chose two simple, obvious moves – a faked kick at the same ankle should draw Theron into committing on the very foot he pretended was injured. After that weight change, he would step in for a grapple.

No sooner had he seen the combination than he allowed his body to flow into the routine, not a sudden attack but a graceful sway of a body feint followed by the ‘real’ blow – no more real than Theron’s fake injury, a low sweep with his right foot against his opponents ‘weak’ left leg.

Theron obliged him by putting his weight on the ‘injured’ leg and striking like lightning.

Satyrus was quick too, and he took Theron’s blow on the point of his shoulder. The pain was a spike of lightning in his skull, but he was under much of it, and he butted his head straight into Theron’s jaw and then stepped on the man’s left instep and just barely avoided the instinctive planting of his left knee in his coach’s crotch, a killing blow combination that they practised for war but not for the palaestra.

In that hesitation, Theron’s left arm wrapped around his neck, pinning his head to the Corinthian’s chest. The second he felt the pressure, Satyrus pushed with the full strength of both legs, attacking into the hold and spilling the Corinthian backwards as he himself twisted to avoid the hold.

Both of them rolled as they hit the sand and there was a flurry of prone holds and blows and then both of them, scrambling like wounded crabs, rolled apart and got slowly to their feet.

Applause – hearty, this time. At least a hundred men.

Satyrus made himself smile. He’d had the fight there, just for a second, and somehow he’d missed his shot and now his confidence was ebbing and his coach was rising, blood leaking from a big gash on his thigh but otherwise unimpaired.

‘Lord Ptolemy!’ came the shout. Men scurried to get out of the ruler’s way, and many – not all – bowed.

‘Stop that!’ Ptolemy called. ‘Don’t stop the pankration! Hades! Is that Theron?’

He had a white chiton trimmed in purple and a diadem in his hair. He was one of the ugliest men in the room, with a nose like the prow of a ship and a forehead that rose into a naked egg of baldness.

Satyrus liked him. He clamped down on his fears and willed himself back into the fight.

Theron was smiling. He stepped in and launched his usual strong right. Emboldened by the king’s appearance, Satyrus didn’t step back. Instead, he tried the same trick that Theron had used earlier in the bout – he reached out to trap the Corinthian’s blow.

‘They’ve been at it five minutes and not a single fall,’ a courtier said.

‘You should have seen-’

‘Hush!’ the king said.

Theron was not surprised by his attempted trap. He let his pupil grasp the arm and then he reached out with his other arm and grabbed Satyrus’s right shoulder, half-rotated him on impetus and tripped him over an outflung leg.

But Satyrus still had the arm. As he went down he tightened his hold – virtually the same attack he’d tried as a much lighter twelve-year-old.

Theron tried to spin with the hold and Satyrus tried to keep his feet. Both of them failed, and down they both went, to a dogfight on the sand. They fell too close for either man, and Satyrus got an elbow in the face that blinded him and a foot in the gut that took his wind, and then he rolled clear. He’d landed at least one hard shot himself in the scrum. He got to his feet on training alone.

Theron was slower, rising with his right arm cradled in his left. But he shook his head to clear it and got his hands up to guard.

Satyrus exerted every mina of his will to raise his arms into the guard, but his left arm didn’t want to obey. It didn’t hurt – it just wouldn’t move. He shook his head and the room swayed. Nonetheless, he had enough grasp of the fight to see that Theron was as rocked as he, and he stepped forward to try a right overhand blow to end the fight.

‘Stop!’ the king said.

The men roared.

Satyrus rocked a little, frozen on the edge of his blow.

‘You are both on the verge of serious injury, and I need every man,’ the regent of Aegypt said. He grinned his farmer’s grin. ‘It was beautiful, though.’

‘Who wins?’ called one of the many Philips, an officer in the Foot Companions. ‘We have bets!’

Ptolemy looked at both of them for some beats of Satyrus’s heart. ‘Draw!’ bellowed the lord of Aegypt, and the crowd roared again.

Ptolemy came and clasped hands with the contestants before they went off to the baths. He and Theron exchanged a smile – Theron occasionally trained him. Then Ptolemy turned to Satyrus. ‘You are a very promising young man,’ he said.

That set tongues wagging throughout the court. Satyrus’s ‘family’, his ‘uncles’ Diodorus and Leon and Philokles, were important men.

Ptolemy’s words suggested to Satyrus that his turn was coming, and his heart soared. He clasped the lord’s arm and beamed. ‘At your service, lord,’ he said.

Afterwards, after the hot bath and the cold bath and the massage, they went out together with a crowd of Satyrus’s friends, down the steps of the public gymnasium in a tide of adulation.

‘You may yet defeat me,’ Theron said with a grin. ‘I doubt it, but I begin to think it is possible.’

Satyrus shook his head. ‘I had a moment today…’ He shrugged. His neck hurt, and his left eye would have a bruise like badly applied henna in an hour or so. ‘I still have a lot to learn.’

‘Music to my ears, boy!’ Theron said.

‘A cup of wine with you, master?’ Satyrus asked.

‘No. Go and drink with your cronies, boy.’ Theron put a giant arm around him and gave him a squeeze. ‘Your uncle Leon is home tonight. His ship is already in with the lighthouse. And when he’s home you’ll be worked like a dog, and no more playing with flute girls.’

Leon had taken Satyrus on a dozen voyages. Satyrus had rowed, he had served as a marine and he had served as a super-cargo, counting amphorae. Leon believed that boys needed to work. This summer, he had sailed twice as helmsman – under instruction, of course. Satyrus loved girls and wine, but so far, the greatest love of his life was the sea.

Satyrus grinned, already being tugged away by his friends. ‘I’ll be there. And I’ll sacrifice to Poseidon for his safe return.’

‘See that you have a safe return, boy!’ Theron called over the crowd, and then they were away, crossing the great agora where the four districts met.

‘You don’t believe all that shit, do you, Satyrus?’ Dionysius asked. Dionysius was a year older, the son of a Macedonian in Ptolemy’s service. He was handsome, well bred and intelligent, and he could quote most of the plays of Aristophanes and every new work by Menander. ‘Propitiating the gods? That’s for peasants.’

Satyrus wasn’t in the mood for a philosophical quarrel – the more so as Dionysius, for all his airs, wasn’t nearly as well educated as Philokles. ‘My tutor says that respect for the gods cannot ever be wrong,’ he said.

‘You’re such a prude,’ Dionysius said. ‘If you didn’t have a beautiful body, no one would speak to you.’

Satyrus had learned enough from his sister to sense that Dionysius was unhappy at having Satyrus at centre stage because of his near-triumph in the gymnasium.

‘Well fought, youngster!’ called Timarchus, one of the Macedonian cavalry officers. And Eumenes, far above him on the steps, waved. Satyrus waved back.

‘So much attention from a lot of washed-up old soldiers!’ Dionysius said.

‘They were my father’s friends. And mine,’ Satyrus said.

‘You look a lot less like a prig with a flute girl’s lips locked around your cock,’ Dionysius said. Some of the young men laughed – Satyrus’s somewhat Spartan ethics made some of the young men uncomfortable, and they loved to be reminded that he was as human as they – but Abraham, a smaller boy with rich, dark curls and a wrestler’s build, leaped to his defence.

‘You’re a godless lot,’ Abraham said. ‘You’ll pay, mark my words!’ He laughed as he said it, because it was one of his father’s favourite remarks.

Satyrus blushed and pulled his chlamys – a very light garment indeed, in Alexandria – over his shoulder. ‘Nonetheless,’ he said to all his friends, ‘I’m going to the Temple of Poseidon.’

‘Bah! No temple girls to ogle, no wine shops to trash, no actors. What’s the point? I’ll go to Cimon’s and wait.’ Cimon’s was their current addiction, a house that stood on the edge of a number of districts, both physical and legal. It was a private house that served wine all day. The wine was served in the form of an ongoing symposium – where a great many women, and not a few men, disported with the patrons. The house stood on the long spit of land where Ptolemy was building the lighthouse, and it had a remarkable view out over the sea. The inscription over the lintel said that it was ‘A house of a thousand breezes’, which Dionysius translated as ‘The house of a thousand blow jobs’ at every opportunity, to Cimon’s apparent delight.

The owner, Cimon, was a former slave who had risen to prominence running a brothel. Satyrus knew that he was one of Leon’s men, and that Leon owned the tavern at several removes. He went to Cimon’s because he knew it was safe. Whereas Dionysius went there because he thought it was dangerous. Satyrus wondered how Dionysius would deal with a storm at sea or a fight. Despite the young man’s pretty-boy airs, Satyrus suspected that he had a serious backbone.

‘I’ll meet you at Cimon’s, then,’ Satyrus said.

‘I’ll save you a flute girl,’ Dionysius said. ‘Her cunny will taste of salt, like the sea – perhaps you could make your sacrifice to Poseidon inside it?’

Satyrus blushed again and smiled. Abraham swatted the Macedonian. ‘You jest too much about pious things,’ he said, and this time he was almost serious.

The other young men were divided evenly between the two favourites and their differing errands.

Theodorus laughed. ‘No contest,’ he said. ‘If I go to the Temple of Poseidon with Satyrus, my father will shit himself with happiness. If I’m caught at Cimon’s again, I’ll get the opson and dissipation lecture and you won’t see me for a week. Poppy?’ he said, and a small boy-slave came up to him. ‘Poppy, run and tell Pater that I’m on my way to the temple of Poseidon to sacrifice. Get him to provide some cash.’

The other young men laughed. Xenophon, Coenus’s son and Satyrus’s best friend, shook his head. ‘None of you will live for ever in Elysium,’ he said.

‘You’ll lose interest in religion when your pimples clear,’ Dionysius said. He mimed picking at one. ‘Perhaps they are a gift from the gods?’

Xenophon stepped up close to the Macedonian. ‘Fuck you, boy-lover. Ass-cunt.’

‘Ooh,’ Dionysius said. ‘Very religious.’ He waved, slipping languorously out of Xenophon’s grasp. ‘Another time, darling. And I only love boys with beautiful skin – Satyrus, for instance.’

Satyrus felt the flush even as the Macedonian went off into the crowd with a dozen howling youths.

‘I want to kill him,’ Xenophon said. His face was splotched red and white with fury.

‘Stop acting like a child,’ Abraham said. ‘You let him get at you far too easily. You have pimples. Big deal! I’m a Jew, Satyrus’s father is dead – it’s all grist for Dionysius’s mill.’ The dark-haired young man gave a practised shrug. ‘To be honest, Xenophon, he doesn’t even mean harm, and he is always surprised at the strength of your reactions.’

‘My father says that when a man offends you, you fight,’ Xenophon said.

‘My father says that when a man blasphemes, I should kill him,’ Abraham said. He raised an eyebrow.

Xenophon allowed his rage to evaporate under the other boy’s humour. He shook his head ruefully.

‘Can we go to the temple now?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Abraham’s right, Xeno. Dionysius is like that to everyone. You just need to roll with it, like a blow on the palaestra.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ Xeno spat. ‘You have beautiful skin.’

‘Temple of Poseidon,’ Satyrus said, like a battlefield command, and he started walking.

From the steps of the temple, he could see Leon’s dark-hulled ship with its deep-gored golden sail. The ship was hard to miss, with vermilion paint on the rails and vermilion oars flashing in the sun, so close to the temple as he weathered the point that Satyrus could hear the chant of the oar master and see Leon himself standing by the rail. Satyrus had often imagined commanding the Golden Lotus – he’d made two voyages in her, one just to Cyprus, the other the length of the sea to the coast of Gaul, serving under the helmsman, Peleus – one of the heroes of Satyrus’s adolescent pantheon.

‘Uncle Leon!’ he shouted across half a stade of water.

Leon, closer to the call of the timoneer and the creak of the oars, didn’t hear him as the beautiful ship swept on. Even as she passed the temple, her deckhands were getting the sail down and the whole rowing crew was settling on to their benches for the last pull into the harbour.

‘Uncle Leon!’ he called, and his friends took up the cry. Their combined efforts got the black man’s attention, and Leon waved. Leon had been up the Aegean to the Euxine, seeing old friends and avoiding enemies. He had been all the way to Heraklea, or perhaps Sinope. Trade was hard – all the contestants in the Great War had fleets, and every side had authorized pirates to seize shipping in their names. Athens, Rhodos and Alexandria still tried to keep trade going – all three cities required trade to flourish.

Behind his uncle’s flagship came a dozen merchant ships and then the triangular sails of heavy triremes – six of them. Leon was rich, even by the standards of Alexandria, and when he put together a convoy, only a fleet could take his ships.

‘Look at that,’ Xeno said. ‘My father says that when I’m sixteen, I can go with Leon as a marine.’

Satyrus smiled. He had already gone as a marine and hoped to go again soon – as a helmsman. The thought was never far from his mind.

But there was a rumour in the villa that Leon was going to take them home. ‘I loved being a marine,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’d love to do it again to get to sea. Even as an oarsman.’

Abraham chuckled. ‘Rumour is that you, sir, are a prince. Lord Ptolemy isn’t likely to let you ship out again as a marine. Xeno here – well-born Geeks are an obol a dozen.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘Not an obol a dozen – if they were, Ptolemy wouldn’t be so desperate to get settlers from Greece.’

Abraham tugged his beard. ‘Well argued,’ he said. One of his most endearing qualities was that he was open to reasoned argument and he conceded gracefully. The young Jewish man stopped at the edge of the temple precinct. ‘I’ll abide by Jehovah’s precepts and keep my body clear of your idolatry,’ he said. His smile took the sting from his words.

Satyrus nodded. Alexandria was home to twenty religions and hundreds of heresies, all of which fascinated his sister. Most citizens had learned to accept other religions, even if they were not entirely respected. Abraham’s people were monotheists, with a few exceptions and a complex set of beliefs about a feminine embodiment of wisdom – Sophia – and they didn’t hold with temples and statues. Not much difference from Socrates, Satyrus thought.

‘Enjoy the view,’ Satyrus said, and went inside, Xeno at his heels and Theodorus close behind. Just as they found a priest, Theodorus’s little slave caught up with him and handed him a purse.

‘Gentlemen, we’re in funds!’ Theodorus said. ‘Shall we have a ram?’

‘That would be noble,’ Xeno said with enthusiasm.

Satyrus reached into the breast of his chiton and extracted his purse. ‘I couldn’t cover my half,’ he said.

‘Don’t be foolish, Satyrus. My pater is paying.’ Theodorus turned to the priest and said, ‘We’d like to sacrifice a white ram for the safe return of Lord Leon. You can just see his Golden Lotus rounding the point.’

The young priest bowed. ‘Certainly, sir.’ The priesthoods at the new Temple of Poseidon were easy to acquire, and most of the priests were social climbers. This one was no different. He looked them all over and decided that Theodorus, the one with the purse and the silk chlamys, must be the one in charge. ‘Let me choose you a fitting animal.’ He bowed again.

Satyrus winced. ‘He represents the god. Surely he ought to have a little more spirit.’

Xeno nodded, and Theodorus laughed. ‘You two deserve each other. Listen, lads. If he was anybody he’d have been at the gymnasium. Do you know him? No. My money is that like all the other priests, his mother’s a local girl and he’s trying to make his way – by being as oily as possible. All the Gyptos are greasy.’

The priest came back leading a white ram – a very attractive animal. ‘My lord?’ he said to Theodorus.

‘My friend is actually making the sacrifice,’ Theodorus said dismissively. ‘I am merely attending.’

Satyrus took the halter of the animal and led it up to the altar. The ram began to buck and shake as he smelled the blood, but Satyrus’s arm was too strong for him, and Satyrus got the lead rope through the ring on the altar before the young animal could set his feet to pull. Satyrus wrapped the rope twice around his left arm, drew his sword – disdaining the offer of the priest’s dagger – and pulled hard on the rope, cinching the rein tight against the bolt so that the ram was stretched out almost on tiptoe. In one blur of movement he slashed the animal’s throat and then pivoted away from the gush of blood. The priest came up and put a bowl to catch it.

‘That was well done,’ Theodorus said. ‘Would you teach me? My father…’

Satyrus grinned, although both of his shoulder joints hurt from the fight. He turned to the priest and handed him a silver coin. ‘A second sacrifice is never amiss, is it?’ He winked, and the young priest bowed.

‘A goat, lord?’

‘Yes,’ Satyrus said. He stepped off with the young priest. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Namastis,’ the man said. He was a couple of years older than Satyrus, and his beard was wispy. ‘Namastis, lord.’

‘Listen, Namastis,’ Satyrus said. His sister was better at his sort of thing, but he could hear Theodorus’s comments playing over and over in his head. ‘You’re as good a man as any of us – and the priest of a great god. Greek men never call each other my lord. Priests are famous for their disdain.’ Satyrus smiled. ‘I appreciate your lack of disdain, but you should never call us lords.’

Namastis narrowed his eyes, unsure if he was being mocked.

Satyrus met his eye and held it.

‘Very well,’ Namastis said. ‘I’ll find you a goat, shall I?’

‘Exactly!’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m Satyrus,’ he said, extending his hand.

The other man took it. He tried a cautious smile. His hand was limp.

‘Now squeeze,’ Satyrus said. Egyptians never got the Greek hand clasp.

The squeeze was cautious, but Satyrus smiled and nodded.

‘Zeus Pater, Satyrus, must you make friends with every half-caste in the city? Is your house full of stray cats?’ Theodorus asked.

Satyrus grinned at him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Now, do you want to learn this, or not?’

Namastis came back with a goat – a healthy specimen with a plain brown coat. Then he set to work with his knife, butchering the first sacrifice. ‘Will you take the meat?’ he asked.

After a glance at Theodorus, Satyrus shook his head. ‘No. Keep it.’ He looked back at Theodorus. ‘It’s all in your left hand, Theo. The animals know what happens at the altar. They can smell it, right?’

‘Too right,’ Theodorus said, shaking his head. ‘At the feast of Apollo, I had to sacrifice a heifer for my family. I fucked it up. Completely. My father’s still not really speaking to me.’

‘A heifer is tough,’ Satyrus said in sympathy. ‘And a little more upper-arm strength wouldn’t kill you. Can you carry the weight of a shield?’

‘Who cares?’ Theodorus asked. ‘Pater has people to do that for us.’

Satyrus raised an eyebrow but said nothing. ‘Very well. Here’s my trick. I pass the lead through the ringbolt with my right hand. Then I take it with my left and draw my sword with my right – all one move – and pull and cut.’ He pulled the goat’s head hard against the ringbolt but only tapped the animal with his hilt.

‘That’s how my father taught me,’ Xenophon added. ‘Always use your own weapon. It adds dignity to the animal’s death and keeps your quick draw in training.’

Theodorus shook his head. ‘It’s like hanging out with Achilles and Patroclus,’ he said. He stepped up and made to take the lead from Satyrus, but Satyrus stripped the lead out of the ringbolt. He stepped away, dragging the goat. Well clear of the altar, he pulled his sword belt over his head. ‘Try this. See how it hangs.’

Xeno shot him a look as Theodorus pulled the belt on. It was clear that the rich young man had never worn a sword.

Satyrus stepped up behind him and tugged the hilt until it was under Theodorus’s arm, right under his armpit. ‘Draw it,’ he said.

Satyrus still carried the short blade he’d got in the Gabiene campaign, and Theodorus drew it easily, but Satyrus caught his wrist.

‘Tip the scabbard up, so that the hilt is down and then pull. See? That will work no matter what size sword you carry.’ Satyrus released the other young man’s wrist.

Theodorus shook his head. ‘You take all this as seriously as my father,’ he said. ‘If I started wearing a sword, Dionysius would mock me.’

Satyrus considered a number of responses. While he was thinking, Xenophon beat him to it. ‘So only wear a sword on feast days,’ he said. ‘Practise in private.’

Satyrus looked at the two of them, realizing that his friends didn’t always think the same way as he did. ‘Or you could just ignore Dionysius,’ he said. He could tell from their reactions that while his views on drawing a sword were valuable, his views on Dionysius were not so.

Theodorus drew the sword, tilting the scabbard each time in a manner that Satyrus found theatrical, but it worked.

‘Ready?’ Satyrus said, handing Theodorus the rein.

The goat immediately began scrabbling with his hind feet. Namastis looked up from butchering the ram. Theodorus dragged the goat up the steps and put the rein through the ringbolt right-handed, but when he switched the rein to his left he gave the animal too much slack and the goat ripped the rein right out of the bolt and ran.

Xenophon stopped the animal within a few feet of the altar, caught the lead and brought it back to Theodorus. He couldn’t hide his grin. ‘It’s all in the hand switch,’ he said.

‘All in the sword draw, all in the hand switch – I need more muscle,’ Theodorus said. ‘This is like spending an afternoon with my father, when he has time for me.’

‘No – we’ll go to Cimon’s when we’re done,’ Satyrus said, and got a smile from his friend. ‘Come on – try again.’ He knew instinctively that he needed to get Theodorus to succeed.

He caught a smell of burning hair from another altar, and then his spine prickled as he smelled wet cat fur – close. Satyrus looked around, feeling the presence of his god.

Xeno ignored him and handed the other young man the rein. ‘Through the ring, step in like a lunge, pull, cut,’ Xenophon said. He was about to say more – something like I was six when I learned this – but Satyrus kept him quiet with a look.

Theodorus was hesitant in his approach to the altar, and he managed to slip on a step and lose the rein. Satyrus stepped on it, his sandal slapping on the marble floor. He smiled at Theo, who took the rein back. He had to drag the goat up all three of the altar steps. His eyes were on his friends.

‘Keep your eyes on the animal – all the time,’ Satyrus said. ‘Start concentrating on where you’ll place the cut, and think of your prayer. I think today you should pray to give a good sacrifice!’

Namastis was watching, his eyes narrow.

Theodorus passed the hemp rope from his right to his left. Too fast, he pulled on the rein and the goat stumbled – the luck of the gods – and its head came up against the bolt. Theodorus swept the sword out, nicking his ear in the process, and cut – a little too hard, but accurately enough. Blood fountained, catching him across the legs and the lower folds of his chiton.

‘I did it!’ he said. He didn’t seem to care that he was drenched in hot blood. There was more flowing down his face from where he’d overdrawn the sword. Satyrus was prepared to glare at Xeno if he mocked him, but Coenus’s son smiled. ‘Well done, Theodorus,’ he said.

‘Yes, well done,’ Satyrus said.

‘I can’t wait to tell my father,’ Theo said. ‘Thanks! I’m going to do another.’

‘Namastis?’ Satyrus said.

‘I only have a small goat left,’ Namastis said. There was a twinkle in his eye.

‘That’ll have to do,’ Theo said with some relief.

Satyrus gave Namastis a secret smile, having found that the priest had a brain.

His second animal, a little smaller, was better yet, and he didn’t need the hand of the god to get the kid up the steps. This time he made a better job of stepping clear of the jet of blood.

‘You two are the best,’ Theodorus announced. ‘Namastis, is it? I’ll mention you to my father.’

‘How many animals do you pagans plan to kill?’ Abraham asked from the base of the steps.

Namastis came up close to Satyrus. ‘Do you truly believe?’ he asked. ‘Do you truly pray when the stroke goes home?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘I do,’ he said. He turned aside so that the half-Aegyptian priest couldn’t see his friends. ‘I am a devotee of Herakles. I feel him at my shoulder. I have seen him in dreams.’

Namastis grinned like the Aegyptian hyena god. ‘You make my heart rejoice, Satyrus,’ he said seriously. ‘Sometimes I think that all Greeks are atheists, or posturing fools.’

‘But you are Greek yourself,’ Satyrus said.

The other man gave a grim smile. ‘Too greasy to be all Greek,’ he said, mimicking Theodorus.

‘I’m sorry you heard that,’ Satyrus said. He offered his hand to the priest, who clasped it.

‘Grip,’ he said.

Namastis gave a weak pulse of a squeeze, and Satyrus sighed. ‘Better,’ he said.

Theodorus washed himself in the public fountain. He managed to tell three different passers-by that he had been sacrificing at the temple. Then he sent his slave to fetch a clean chiton and a new chlamys. ‘Be sure my mother sees that it is blood!’ he called, standing naked. ‘From sacrifice!’ He turned to the other three. ‘Is it right to go straight from the temple to Cimon’s?’ he asked, suddenly inspired by religion.

‘Why would it be wrong?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Poseidon does not disdain wine, nor good company.’

Xenophon hung back. He gave a shy smile. ‘I should go home,’ he said.

Satyrus knew the trouble, so he said nothing, but Theodorus shook his head. ‘For what, nap time?’ For a youth who had been worried by impiety a moment before, he was suddenly lecherous. ‘You can have a nap at Cimon’s – with a nicer set of pillows on your couch!’

Xenophon turned salmon pink under his tan. ‘Can’t afford it,’ he muttered. Coenus had lost everything when the Sauromatae and the men of Pantecapaeum took the kingdom of the Tanais. He had survived a bad wound to rejoin his friends and now served as a phylarch in Diodorus’s hippeis. But he was no longer a rich man.

Theodorus shook his head. ‘On me, Xeno,’ he said. ‘The least I can do, really. Listen,’ he said, and he put an arm around the other two boys and kissed Abraham on the cheek by way of apology. ‘Listen. Will you guys teach me to fight? Pankration? And the sword?’

‘Your father can afford the best pankration tutor in the city,’ Satyrus said.

Theodorus shook his head. ‘No – Theron is yours. Besides, if I ask my father, he’ll want to watch.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘Sure,’ Xenophon said. ‘I’ve got your back, Theo.’

Theodorus glowed. ‘Listen – if you teach me all this hero stuff, I’ll see to it that you drink and fuck like a gentleman. Deal?’

Xenophon looked at Satyrus, who shrugged and nodded. It was quite a fair deal – Xenophon was excellent in all the warrior skills, a better spearman than Satyrus and already being watched for the Olympic Games as a boxer.

‘Deal,’ Xenophon said. ‘Do I get control of your diet, too?’

Melitta sat in the shade of the old town’s largest acacia tree. The priestess was a little younger than the tree, but not much.

‘Hathor does not need the worship of a Greek girl,’ she said.

Melitta bowed silently, her hands clasped. ‘I come seeking only wisdom,’ she said.

The priestess nodded and glanced at Philokles, who sat quietly, wrapped in just a chlamys. Egyptian women coming to pray for love or for children glanced at him. The nudity of Greek men never failed to amaze the natives of the oldest land. One young matron, probably younger than Melitta, tittered to her friend and stared at the Spartan, but she got no reaction from him.

Instead, he sighed and opened a purse. Reaching inside, he took out a number of silver coins and offered them to the priestess.

‘Of course, in return for proper respect, Hathor will teach all who come before her,’ the priestess said. ‘Are you a virgin?’

Melitta flicked a glance at her tutor. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Good,’ the priestess said. She smiled. ‘Greeks can be such prudes.’

Philokles coloured slightly.

When they had taken their leave, Philokles fetched his staff from where he had placed it against the temple wall and glared at her. ‘You are not a virgin?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘No woman can go to Hathor a virgin,’ she said. ‘My servants told me as much.’

‘So you went and lay with a slave boy? You could be pregnant. You will never marry.’ Philokles was biting his words, swaying slightly as he walked – drunk, and now angry. ‘You dishonour-’

‘Oh, Philokles,’ Melitta said. ‘For the love of all the gods, be quiet. When have I had the chance to get a man in my bed? Really? I lied. How will that old priestess ever know, do you think? Will she put a finger between my legs? Eh?’

‘Don’t be gross,’ Philokles said. His relief was obvious.

‘I am not a Greek girl! I am a Sakje, even here in the desert, and I will lie with whoever I please, and neither you nor my brother will gainsay me!’ She was going to go on about what age her mother had first copulated, but she held her tongue. Philokles was dangerous when drunk.

‘How many priests will I have to pay off so that you can explore divinity, child?’ Philokles asked.

‘Wasn’t it you who proposed that I should explore all the religions of the Delta?’ she asked. Her cork-soled sandals were getting to be too small. Everything was too small – her chitons risked scandal and her legs were too long and she was so obviously a girl that it took a major conspiracy of her uncle Diodorus and her uncle Coenus and her brother to get her time to ride in private, which was unfair. She visited temples because it was a pastime allowed to women, and it let her be out on the street, walking, in the heat and the sun and the flies. Today they had walked twenty stades to reach the old temple of Hathor, and now they would walk twenty stades back to the new city.

‘Don’t be cross, Philokles,’ she said.

He walked along next to her, trailing fumes of wine and garlic.

‘It’s boring! I have a brain! I have a body! I’d give anything to be a boy and spend an afternoon at Cimon’s drinking wine, hearing the news and getting my precious dick sucked.’

‘Melitta!’ Philokles snapped.

‘It’s not fair! Satyrus gets everything.’ She walked along more quickly, snuffling away a tear.

She could hear the thump of his staff as it hit the road behind her.

‘You were given too much liberty when you were young,’ Philokles said.

‘Donkey piss! And to think that I tell other girls that you are the smartest man in Alexandria! Donkey piss, Philokles. Let me go back to the sea of grass! Sakje doesn’t even have a word for virgin. But they have twenty words for smoking hemp, which you have forbidden me.’ She had the bit in her teeth.

Philokles stared straight ahead. ‘Only slaves smoke hemp. It is unseemly. ’

‘Slaves drink lots of wine, too.’ She stood and faced him in the road, and a two-wheeled donkey cart laden with rice from the Delta side of the port bumped past her, just missing her outflung elbow. ‘Let me have your wineskin. I’ll drink as much as you – no more.’

Philokles shook his head. ‘We have had this discussion before. And you are drawing a great many stares.’

Melitta blew out a great breath. ‘Men,’ she said to the hundreds of passers-by. Then she turned and walked on.

‘Are you calm enough for some news?’ Philokles asked some time later.

‘Yes,’ she said, her good humour restored by the sight of a troop of Aegyptian acrobats performing by a beer-house.

‘Your uncle Leon will be back today,’ he said.

‘Kallista told me as much when I awoke,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

Philokles smiled. ‘That girl has – sources of information.’

‘She can get blood from a stone, and no mistake,’ Melitta said with great satisfaction.

‘Your uncle ran up the coast to the Euxine to see how the ground lies,’ Philokles said. ‘We hear that Heron is losing his grip on Pantecapaeum – and Ataelus has made great strides in the east.’ He grinned at his charge. ‘Ataelus has spent years harrying the Sauromatae and raiding Heron. If there is any resistance to Heron’s usurpation, it’s because Ataelus keeps it alive. We all owe Ataelus.’ He was silent, and then he said, ‘And Leon will be bringing Amastris back from Heraklea.’

‘Oh!’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Will she still be in love with my brother?’

Philokles appeared stung. ‘Amastris of Heraklea is in love with your brother?’

Melitta looked stricken. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Wait! That means we’re going back!’ Melitta said, and clapped her hands together. ‘No more Alexandria? Back to Tanais?’

Philokles looked around. ‘This is not to be shouted on a public thoroughfare, girl – but I won’t have you make a mistake that can warp your life because you don’t know what’s in the wind. Leon and Diodorus and I – we see a time coming when it would be worth trying.’

Melitta clapped her hands together again, stepped in and kissed the Spartan. ‘I knew you were the best. I must have armour!’ She pointed at her breasts. ‘My old corslet won’t even cover my chest.’

‘I can’t imagine how hard it must be to fight with those things,’ Philokles said, waving vaguely at her chest. ‘But you do it well enough.’ Philokles still gave her lessons in private, as did her brother. Theron had reverted to the Greek code – that no girl needed to know pankration.

‘I wish that someone would attack us,’ Melitta said, looking around. ‘A beautiful girl like me, and an old man like you – why don’t these people see us as easy meat?’

Philokles rolled his eyes.

Melitta continued, ‘A pity about Olympias and her assassins?’ She grinned. ‘They would have attacked us!’

Philokles shook his head. ‘She lost us in the desert. And now she’s dead.’

‘Good riddance,’ Melitta said with a shake of her head. ‘She’s one we didn’t need to use the oath against. Or perhaps I should say that Artemis got her before I could.’

‘Olympias had so many enemies that the gods needed no tool to bring her down.’ Philokles shrugged. ‘Already nostalgic for the brave old days of age twelve and a half?’ he asked.

‘I used to do things,’ she said, in reply. ‘Now I just lie around watching my breasts grow.’

Philokles relented. ‘Listen, honey bee. When your uncle Leon is home, you’ll hear. But if Antigonus makes his summer campaign in Macedon, we’ll hire two thousand infantry and sail for Tanais.’

Melitta stepped up close to him, and her eyes bored into his although he was a head taller. ‘Promise me by all the gods that I’m going,’ she said.

Philokles met her gaze without flinching. ‘You are going,’ he said.

She threw her arms around him in the middle of the road. Heads turned. Philokles blushed.

‘May I tell Satyrus?’ she asked.

‘Best to wait. Leon will be home tonight.’ Philokles started to walk again. ‘I don’t like all the company your brother keeps.’

Melitta was quick to spring to her brother’s defence. ‘Who? You can’t object to Xenophon?’

‘Never in life, my dear. No, nor Abraham, for all that his father is a zealot. But Theodorus’s father would sell his mother for gain or social prestige, and that Dionysius-’ Philokles bit off his words.

Melitta had a different use for Dionysius, who, for all of his effete airs, had a beautiful body that he seldom hid and a wicked sense of humour. ‘Dionysius wrote a poem about my breasts,’ Melitta said.

Philokles quickened his pace. ‘I know. So does every man in the city.’

Melitta stuck her tongue out. ‘So? They’re right here. Everyone can see them. Why not read a poem about them?’ She bounced along, almost skipping, despite forty stades of walking. ‘What about that beautiful boy – Herakles?’ Just saying the name gave her a little tingle. ‘If my brother can have Amastris, perhaps I can have Herakles.’

‘Honey bee, Banugul is the last woman on earth that you want as a mother-in-law. All she wants is to make her son King of Kings.’ Philokles stopped to get a pebble out of his sandal. ‘Need I remind you that they are with Antigonus? Banugul is no doubt busy scheming.’

‘And yet you saved her, Master Philokles.’ Suddenly the bouncing gait was gone, and she eyed him appraisingly.

‘We saved her, my dear. And I did it, as did you, because the gods told us. Yes?’ Philokles raised an eyebrow.

‘I remember,’ she said.

When Philokles was in the mood to teach Satyrus lessons, he liked to say that the Greeks were used to colonization and cleruchy, rapid settlement and rapid building. Athens had dropped forts everywhere when she was queen of the seas, and Miletus had spread colonies the way a profligate spreads bastards. Greeks could move to a place, build a temple or two, run up some houses with the regularity of a marching camp, and before the architect could say ‘Parian Marble’, there was a new city. Or so the Spartan said.

But Alexandria represented city-founding on an unprecedented scale, as if someone had desired to create a new Athens or a new Corinth. Some said that it was the will of the God-King Alexander, and others that it was the solid administration of Ptolemy and the fifteen thousand talents of silver he drew from the treasury of Aegypt every year. Philosophers – and there was no shortage of them – gathered in the agora, or in the shade of the new library, so far just a pile of materials and some gardens – and debated the virtues and vices of mixing religions and races, of trade, of kingship.

But a new city lacks traditions and in their absence often creates new habits. In Athens or Corinth, men from the highest classes never drank in wine shops. They worked from their homes, held business meetings in their homes, threw parties, wild or decorous, in their homes. Virtue and vice were practised in the confines of the home. Satyrus had experienced it, had visited Athens repeatedly until Demetrios of Phaleron became the de-facto tyrant of Athens and Kineas’s son was one of the casualties of his regime. In Athens, where Satyrus owned a house, he might give a party – or he might go to a party. But if he were seen to buy wine or flute girls for his own use alone, he would be mocked. And the thought of going to a wine shop would be enough to label him a thetes, a low-class free man, and not a gentleman.

Philokles theorized that in Athens, the will of the people in the assembly – even under a tyrant – had the effect of minimizing private display of wealth. If you showed that you had too much, the people would vote that you should give an expensive entertainment or maintain a trireme or something equally ruinous.

Alexandria had a king, not an assembly, despite the fact that Ptolemy had not yet assumed the title or the formal honours of a king. The thousand richest men in the city competed to demonstrate the extent of their wealth and the beauty of their lives. Many competed in an old, Athenian way – by raising monuments, even by maintaining a trireme for the service of King Ptolemy. Uncle Leon was one of these. He maintained a squadron. His money had laid the foundation of the Temple of Poseidon. He was always in the public service.

Other men, however, used their money in different ways – to keep beautiful mistresses, to give lavish parties on a scale unknown in Athens, to dress in silks brought overland from Serica, a hundred thousand stades, or in the finest wools from Bactria, dyed in the most elaborate colours from Tyre and Asia.

Philokles despised all this display and often spoke against it, and he said that the outcome was places like Cimon’s, because if men had clothes worth twenty talents of silver, they needed a place to wear them – and that the kind of man who spent twenty talents on a chiton was not the kind of man to maintain the perfection of his body in the gymnasium or the perfection of his mind in the agora.

Philokles said that in Sparta or Athens – two cities often presented as contrasts, but Satyrus’s Spartan tutor said they had more in common with each other than either had with Alexandria – a man went to the gymnasium and to the agora to show that his body was ready to serve the state in war, and his mind ready to serve the state in peace. Satyrus loved it when Philokles spoke in such a fashion, and he could quote the Spartan at length, and he often thought about his words when he walked.

Even when he walked to Cimon’s.

Cimon’s stood among a row of hastily built private houses backing on the sea. The low bluff on which they were built allowed the owners to catch the sea breeze after the rest of the city had lost it, and the houses had been built in the first flush of the city’s wealth, back in the decade after the founding.

But fashions change. When Ptolemy began building the royal palace complex, the western end of the city became unfashionable, the home of warehouses and workers. A few wealthy Macedonians hung on, but most moved, if only to be close to the seat of power. Many of them had never finished their houses, and few of them had ever been landscaped or had gardens planted, so that the neighbourhood appeared ruinous, as if a conquering army had swept through, stealing mulberry bushes.

But Cimon’s was an island of green. The first owner had gardened himself, importing plants from the interior of Africa and from all over the sea. When he died and Cimon the public slave purchased his property, Cimon had purchased the gardeners with the land. Inside, the former owner had arranged for expert painters to render scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey, from Alexander’s conquests, and from the tales of the gods in brilliant gesso work, so that a bored patron might feel as if he watched the siege of Troy – or, in some rooms, the rape of Helen.

Satyrus understood the philosophical reasons why Cimon’s was bad for him and bad for the city, but he loved the place – the quiet green alcoves, the hard-edged mirth of the pornai and the flute girls, the acrobats and the broiled tuna and the art, the gossip and the fights.

‘What can I get the hero of the hour?’ asked Thrassylus, the former slave who acted as the steward of the house. You could always gauge your status in a heartbeat with Thrassylus, and the oiled Phrygian seemed to know every nuance of gossip from every quarter. ‘Ptolemy clasped your hand? And sacrificing for your uncle? What splendid piety, young master. Wine?’ A Spartan cup was put in Satyrus’s hand – other cups went to Abraham, Xeno and Theo – and wine was poured from a silver pitcher while they all sat in the entrance hall. Two children, a boy and a girl – twins, he could see – washed his feet.

‘Aren’t they adorable?’ Thrassylus said. ‘I bought them today.’

The girl washed his hands. She had a serious expression on her face and her tongue showed between her teeth. ‘Yes,’ Satyrus said, with his usual unease about slaves.

‘Kline?’ Thrassylus asked, referring to the long couches on which well-off Greeks reclined to eat and drink. ‘I have the whole of the seaward garden open, young master.’

Satyrus nodded, and his party was escorted past the two main rooms, where dozens of young men, and a few past youth, cavorted with each other and with the house’s numerous offerings.

‘May we have Phiale, Thrassylus?’ Satyrus asked. Phiale was a genuine hetaira, a free woman who sometimes acted as an escort and sometimes as a hostess. In addition to her beauty – a particular, square-jawed beauty that was not the typical fare among hetairai – she played the kithara and sang, often composing mocking songs to tease her clients.

Phiale had consented a year before to deprive Satyrus of his virginity. Satyrus suspected that his uncle had paid her for the service, as she was very choosy about her clients, and ever since she had treated him with warmth and a certain reserve – as if she was a distant cousin, he had joked to Abraham.

‘I will see if she is at leisure,’ Thrassylus said with a bow. ‘She is with us this afternoon.’

Abraham laughed. ‘She’s a little over our heads, don’t you think?’ he asked.

Xeno beamed. He liked Phiale, and she didn’t make him uncomfortable the way the pornai and the flute girls did, an aspect of his friend that Satyrus understood perfectly.

Theo, on the other hand, pouted. ‘I want a flute girl to play my flute,’ he said. ‘Phiale drives them all away.’

Satyrus allowed a boy to take his sandals and his chlamys and he reclined, arranging his chiton as well as he could. He didn’t love Phiale – she was, after all, a hetaira – but he didn’t want to let her down. Or perhaps he really did seek to impress her. He sighed and arranged his chiton again.

He met Abraham’s raised eyebrow and laughed.

‘You Greeks,’ Abraham said. ‘She’s old enough to be your mother!’

‘I heard that, Samaritan!’ Phiale said. She was laughing, and she slapped Abraham on the shoulder and sat on the edge of his kline.

‘I’m no Samaritan-’ Abraham began, and then threw his head back and laughed. ‘You are the wonder of the city, madam! You even know how to tease a Jew!’

‘I can do more than tease a Jew,’ she said, leaning over him, somewhere between seduction and threat. ‘I can flirt with one!’

Abraham mimed panic and terror. ‘Ahh! Ahh!’ he cried, clearly delighted at the attention.

The other young men laughed. ‘Flirt with me!’ Theodorus pleaded.

‘No, no! You’re all bad boys. I’m with another party and I just came to visit the hero. You went three falls with Theron and came up in a draw? That must have been beautiful to watch, Satyrus?’

Just the way she used his name made him feel older, stronger and more handsome.

‘My party are all cursing that they missed the fight. One of them – a stranger – asked if you were by any chance from the north – from the Euxine? I said that I thought you were from Athens – dear me, Satyrus, I find myself shockingly under-informed about you,’ she said. She put a hand on the side of his face – a lovely touch, personal and intimate and warm. ‘And your uncle is home tonight,’ she asked.

‘We sacrificed for him,’ Theo said.

Satyrus winced a little at his friend’s adolescent self-importance. ‘We saw his ships from the temple, and we saw him standing with the helmsman on the Golden Lotus.’ It was the first time that Phiale had ever asked him a direct question, and her manner seemed – odd.

‘I will send him a basket of flowers with a note to Nihmu,’ Phiale said. Many wives would resent a basket of flowers from a hetaira, but Nihmu was different.

She stretched her long legs, flexing the toes, and then shot to her feet like an acrobat. ‘I really can’t stay.’

Satyrus was bold enough to place a hand lightly on her side – not possessively, not holding on, but not hesitant either. ‘Might you come back and sing for us?’

Phiale made an actor’s bow. ‘I might,’ she said, ‘if I don’t find a dozen flute girls already playing your instruments,’ and she winked at Theodorus, who blushed.

She walked off, drawing every eye in the garden, and was replaced by a pair of laughing wine attendants. ‘We’ll be invisible now,’ said the elder, a dark-haired Aegyptian with full breasts and a face that was nearly round. ‘Nobody wants to flirt with a wine girl after Phiale saunters by.’

‘Much less give us a tip,’ said the younger, a Cypriot who was as sylphlike as a Nereid. ‘How is a girl to buy her freedom?’ she asked rhetorically, sucking a fingertip. ‘Wine, anyone?’

The boys laughed, patted, drank wine and ogled as a troop of acrobats pirouetted, a pair of Africans did a war dance that impressed Satyrus, and a single olive-coloured girl danced alone with a spear in a way that caused all the young men to consider the green arbours at the back of the garden.

Theodorus winked at his companions. ‘I don’t want to offend Phiale’s delicate sensibility,’ he said, ‘so I’m going to oil my lamp-wick in private.’

Xeno blushed. Abraham laughed.

‘Was that good?’ Theo said, pausing. ‘Really? I got it off one of my father’s slaves.’

‘It’s not as dumb as some of the phrases I hear,’ Abraham said. ‘Go and find a sausage-eater!’

Theo nearly choked with laughter and hurried away.

A group of middle-aged men came in, stopped by Satyrus’s couch and paid their compliments. They were all men Satyrus knew – officers who served with Diodorus. Panion, a taxeis commander and a rising star, let his eyes wander over Satyrus’s body until the young man was uncomfortable.

‘Come and see the drill of the Foot Companions,’ Panion said. ‘I hear that Lord Ptolemy made much of you.’

Satyrus felt the heat rising on his face. Panion was the leader of the ‘Macedon’ faction – the men who felt that mere Greeks and Jews must be kept in their place. But he had never hidden his admiration for Satyrus.

Satyrus thanked all the men politely. As a younger man, he rose and attended them to their own couches before returning to his own, flushed with praise and the embarrassment of Panion’s obvious advances. Macedonians didn’t flirt – that was a flute-girl saying, but one with a great deal of truth to it.

Slaves appeared and dusted his kline, scraping away breadcrumbs and cheese.

‘I should go home,’ Satyrus said.

‘Not until I sing for you,’ Phiale said, appearing suddenly and dropping on his couch.

Satyrus immediately brightened. ‘I thought that you were – busy.’

‘Silly boy.’ She touched his face again. ‘You’re not really a boy, are you, Satyrus?’ Her hand stroked down his arm, her thumb following the line of his muscle, and his groin stirred.

‘Half and half,’ he admitted. Her eyes were as big as cups. Her lips had minute ridges and were so rich in colour that they were almost brown. Her nipples were the same – he could remember them.

Vividly.

‘May I sing something of my own?’ she asked.

The three young men all nodded.

She stood up and faced them, and then sang – no build-up with Phiale. Her arms spread as she sang, a simple, unaccompanied song of a girl whose love had gone off to Troy and who wanted to follow him or die.

When she was done, they were quiet a minute. The whole garden was quiet, and then all the circles of couches began to applaud, sometimes with men standing up by them.

‘You didn’t sing for us,’ a young man said. He didn’t sound angry, just bored. ‘Should I have paid more?’

Satyrus knew him. Everyone did. Gorgias was the youngest rich man with his own fortune in the city – the death of his father and uncle had left him a massive amount of wealth and no adult supervision. Philokles used him as an example of dissolution because he ran to fat and disdained philosophy. His friends were always older men who he used and was used by.

He had a soldier with him, a bigger man with a red line all down one side of his body from his jaw to his right knee, and another man that Satyrus couldn’t quite see though the crowd, a shorter man of perhaps forty years.

‘I might have paid for more than a song,’ said a barbarian voice, with an Athenian accent. The big man gave Phiale a wry smile. ‘I don’t pinch every obol, either.’ He laughed. ‘When a man is as old as I am, he prizes a song. And a singer.’

Satyrus couldn’t really see past Phiale’s hips from his couch, but he could see by the set of her back that she was unhappy.

‘In Alexandria,’ Phiale said, ‘we don’t discuss the prices a hetaira might charge. If you have to discuss them, you can’t afford her.’ She gave the men a hard smile. ‘But I owed my friend a song for his exploits, and I always pay my debts. Being, as you must understand, a free woman and capable of choosing my clients.’ She laughed lightly, but Satyrus thought that she was nervous. He’d never seen her like this. She also clapped her hands – a girl’s signal that she needed the house to intervene.

The big foreigner frowned, obviously offended. ‘All prostitutes like to be called hetairai,’ he said. ‘But the only difference is the price.’ He said the last in a tone of contempt, a man who was used to getting his way and didn’t like being mocked in public by a mere woman. ‘They both look the same when their lips are around my dick,’ he said, and several men nearby laughed.

Satyrus swung his legs over the far side of his couch and stood up. In the same motion he reclaimed his sword from the peg where it hung from its cord. Now he could see the shorter man. He had only seen him two or three times, but he knew him in a glance. The Athenian. Stratokles.

‘This isn’t your fight, boy,’ the big foreigner said. He put a hand on Satyrus’s chest. ‘Just an uppity girl who needs-’

‘Watch it!’ Stratokles called. His attention had been divided between Xenophon and Phiale, and he hadn’t seen Satyrus past Phiale’s hips. He saw him now.

Satyrus put one hand on the mercenary’s shoulder, gently, as if ready to remonstrate, One of Theron’s lessons about fighting was that when your life was on the line, there were no rules, no manners and no requirement for announcing your intentions, and Satyrus’s adventures at the age of twelve had convinced him of the truth of the Corinthian’s assertions. So he didn’t posture or shout or work himself up like a young man. He reversed his hold and turned the scarred man under him, rotating his arm in the socket and making him scream with pain.

Even as he struck, body running on trained responses from the palaestra, Satyrus’s mind ran on like a philosopher’s automaton. Stratokles, he thought. What in Hades is he doing in Alexandria? Satyrus’s head was flooded by the daimon of combat, and he had to concentrate on the strength of the foreigner. He went down clutching Satyrus’s arm and growling, and Satyrus reckoned him tough enough that he paused to spend a full-weight kick to his head. That took him out of the fight. Then Satyrus drew his sword.

Stratokles was, for once in his life, caught unprepared. He leaped back, trying to get his chlamys off his shoulder and into his hand and producing a sword from under his arm. ‘Grown up quite a bit, haven’t you?’ he said. And then, ‘I didn’t recognize you. You planning to kill me in cold blood?’ he asked, backing away.

Satyrus stepped across the fallen soldier, undeterred. ‘Call the watch!’ he shouted at the patrons. ‘He’s a murderer!’ In the distance, Thrassylus was approaching with two big slaves, but he would be too late to save Stratokles. He started into a simple combination, a feint to the head, and suddenly Phiale caught at his arm. ‘Satyrus, stop!’ she said.

The Athenian used the pause as his opponent was pinned by the hetaira to cut at Satyrus’s legs. Satyrus, with nowhere to retreat, managed a clumsy parry that allowed the Athenian’s sword to clip his shin – and Phiale’s. She screamed and went down, her hands on her leg.

Clear of Phiale’s obstruction, Satyrus leaped to attack the Athenian. Their swords rang together – edge to edge – and sparks flew. Satyrus was stronger – but not faster. He almost lost fingers on the next exchange – only a clumsy, desperate parry with his cloak saved his hand.

Sword fighting without armour was merely pankration with a blade. It was something on which Satyrus prided himself. He growled and stepped forward. Stratokles changed his guard, raising his sword hand slightly, and Satyrus pounced, wrapping his cloak-clad hand around the Athenian’s sword in a carefully timed grab.

The Athenian stepped in and grabbed his sword.

Satyrus headbutted the other man, catching him under the chin and rocking him back.

At the same time, Stratokles swung back with his blow, minimizing it, and punched with his cloaked hand up between them, catching Satyrus’s shoulder and knocking him back. The Athenian fell.

Satyrus planted his feet on either side of the downed man and cut at Stratokles’ head, but despite the blow to his head, the Athenian wasn’t done yet. Their blades rang together, and Satyrus grabbed his opponent’s sword hand at the pommel – a dangerous move that Theron had made him practise a thousand times. He ripped the blade from the Athenian’s hand just at Stratokles landed a heavy left, this time to the side of his ankle, which made him stumble back. Stratokles gasped for air, grabbing at a couch and getting to his feet. Then Satyrus stepped in to finish him.

‘By Apollo! He’s unarmed!’ Abraham caught at his left hand.

Stratokles raised his hands. ‘Ho, young Herakles!’ he croaked, and stepped back again. ‘If you cut me down unarmed, even your bloody uncle can’t save you.’

The man’s grin was so offensive that Satyrus ripped himself free of Abraham’s restraint and punched the pommel of his sword into the man’s forehead, laying him flat in one blow, choking on the tiled floor.

Phiale’s cry – ‘He’s the Athenian ambassador!’ – stopped the descent of his back cut into the man’s neck.

Gorgias stood aside, and then slowly subsided on to a kline. ‘Oh, Zeus!’ he said. ‘All my guests are dead!’

‘Let’s get you out of here,’ Abraham said. ‘That was – ill-considered, my friend.’ He shrugged. ‘But spectacular to watch.’

As the soldier shook and mewled on the floor, Satyrus looked at Phiale, trying to discern if this had been – what had it been? An assassination attempt? They happened every day, in Alexandria.

She had tried to pin his arms.

‘He tried to kill me and my sister when we were children,’ Satyrus said. It sounded pretty weak, with two men bleeding on the tiles.

‘He’s the ambassador of Athens!’ Phiale said again. ‘He brought the king a message from Cassander! They are allies! Are you insane?’

Abraham had his arm. ‘Argue later,’ he said.

Xenophon already had their cloaks at the door. Fights were not uncommon at Cimon’s, but the two rich foreigners lying prostrate on the marble floor were attracting a great deal of attention.

Satyrus looked back again at Phiale, who was looking at the men on the floor and who then lifted her eyes.

What did he see there? Confusion? Or complicity?

‘Argue later,’ Abraham said again. ‘Come.’

The garden was starting to return to life – noisy, shouting life – as they hurried down the steps.

‘Let’s run,’ Abraham urged.

‘What are we running from?’ Satyrus asked. He was already moving at an easy lope.

‘I don’t know,’ Abraham said.

Satyrus ran in through the business gate, past the sailors and into the courtyard.

Uncle Leon was by the fountain, issuing unpacking orders to a phalanx of slaves and servants and retainers and some sailors who had carried his most precious cargoes up from the warehouses.

Theron had an armful of Serican silk hangings and looked as if he was afraid to move.

‘I just half-killed the new Athenian ambassador,’ Satyrus said. ‘Welcome home, Uncle Leon!’

Leon wasn’t tall, but he had piercing eyes of dark brown and his brown skin was perfectly tanned to an even leather colour. He looked like a dark-skinned god – a mature Apollo.

Abraham, coming in behind him, bowed his head respectfully to one of the city’s richest men, and Xeno looked sheepish.

‘I heard you were sacrificing for my return,’ Leon said. He took Satyrus in a hug. ‘We don’t usually sacrifice ambassadors.’ Then he caught sight of the other young men. ‘Is this serious?’ he said. ‘Every time I come home, you have something stupendous to announce, don’t you?’

‘It’s Stratokles!’ Satyrus panted. ‘Remember him? From Heraklea?’

‘Oh!’ Leon said.

‘Fuck,’ Theron said. He was still holding the silk. ‘Did you kill him?’

‘Kill who?’ Philokles asked. He pushed his way past the crowd of young men at the entrance to the garden courtyard, and Melitta came with him, ignoring Xeno’s sudden blushes of confusion as she rubbed against his back.

Satyrus filed that little scene away for further consideration.

‘The new Athenian ambassador to the court of Ptolemy is your former nemesis, Stratokles,’ Leon said, having taken in the whole sweep of the problem with his usual acuity. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’ he asked, looking at his factor, Pasion.

Pasion bowed. ‘It was in the morning’s reports,’ he said sheepishly. ‘I missed the importance of the fact.’

‘Too late to unspill the wine,’ Philokles said. ‘Demetrios of Athens let that cur be his ambassador?’

‘Put a suit against him,’ Leon said. ‘I’m sure we can make a deal with him. He’s a man of business.’

Philokles pulled his himation closer. ‘I’ll do it this instant.’

‘Exactly.’ Leon nodded. ‘Go!’

Philokles, despite three years of heavy drinking and endless agora debates, could still move quickly when required. He was out of the gate before Leon was done thinking out the next step.

‘Tell us what happened,’ Leon said.

Satyrus related the incident, with some hesitant description of Phiale’s role.

‘You put two grown men down,’ Theron asked. ‘Then you let them live.’

‘Thank the gods he did!’ Leon said. He rubbed his chin and his shoulders slumped. ‘Killing an ambassador would make any political career here impossible.’

Theron stood his ground. ‘Being dead is worse. Listen, Satyrus. The next time you have an enemy under the edge of your kopis, push the blade home. Then he’s dead and your story is the only one in the law courts.’

Leon shook his head. ‘That’s evil advice to give a boy, Theron. Always leave your opponents dead.’

Melitta came and put her arms around her brother. ‘You have all the luck,’ she said. ‘I was just wishing for assassins.’

‘Careful what you wish for,’ Theron said.

‘This alliance with Cassander means a lot to our Ptolemy,’ Leon said. He tugged his short beard. ‘I think you are best out of the city, lad. Pasion, summon Peleus the helmsman to keep his crew in hand – one night on the waterfront, and on duty by sunrise in the morning. Move!’ He turned to look at Theron. ‘I have a hundred pieces of news for all our friends,’ he said. ‘I’ll try and get through it all at dinner.’

One of the many ways in which Satyrus’s ‘uncles’ differed from other men was the manner in which they lived. Leon and Diodorus were both rich men, yet they had built their houses together – so close together that they shared doors and gardens. Nihmu, Leon’s Sakje wife, and Sappho shared women’s quarters. Theron, Philokles and Coenus all lived in the same houses, and the establishment, four times the size of most houses, was run on military lines, with common meals and a certain regular discipline.

The other thing that set them apart from other men of property was that Leon, Philokles, Coenus, Satyrus, Diodorus, Theron and the women, Sappho, Melitta and Nihmu, all took dinner together with Leon’s upper servants in a manner not unlike the Spartan mess system, except that the food was superb and women ate with men. These communal dinners had been a feature of life in Tanais before its fall, and Leon had transferred the system to Alexandria. Diodorus added some of his officers – Eumenes was almost always with them for dinner, and Crax – and Leon added his senior helmsmen and his business friends and the tribal leaders he used to keep his caravans moving, when they came. Philokles brought philosophers and divines from the agora and the temples, and Coenus added an occasional barracks-mate, and once the king himself, who knew Coenus of old. Dinners were sprawling affairs of twenty or thirty klines, food, wine and debate.

Dinner was where they all came together – especially now that Leon was back.

‘Don’t leave the house,’ Leon said to Satyrus. ‘You boys were there?’ he said to Xenophon.

‘Yes, sir,’ Xenophon said.

‘You had best stay, then. Until I know more.’ Leon nodded to Abraham and called to a slave. ‘Run and tell Ben Zion that I have his son at my house for dinner as a guest, and that I will send a message home with him.’

The slave nodded. ‘Ben Zion. Son for dinner. Message later.’

‘Good,’ Leon said. ‘Go.’

Pasion came back from his last errand. ‘Both men are alive,’ he said.

Leon nodded. ‘Close the gates. No admittance without my express permission. Ask Crax for Hama’s file as guards on the gates.’

‘We aren’t overreacting, are we?’ Theron asked.

‘I wasn’t there, Theron. I’ve tangled with Stratokles – and done deals with him – and I find he has a tendency to focus very hard on success. If memory serves, he tried to kill both of Kineas’s children.’ Leon raised an eyebrow. ‘He stormed a private house in Heraklea. Yes?’

Theron bowed his head. ‘Point taken.’ He looked at Satyrus. ‘See? You should have killed him, Satyrus.’

Satyrus felt himself growing angry. ‘I-’

‘We took an oath!’ Melitta said.

This criticism was the last straw. ‘That’s not fair!’ he said. ‘Stratokles is the ambassador of Athens! That makes his person sacred! And when exactly did Stratokles get included? Are we killing every flunky, or just the people who ordered Mama’s death?’

Melitta bit her lip. ‘I-’ she began.

‘Don’t turn into Medea,’ Satyrus said. He squeezed her hand.

‘Sorry, Satyr.’ She knelt and touched the blood on his leg. ‘You’re wounded.’

Theron raised an eyebrow.

‘He’s good,’ Satyrus said. ‘You know, I’m pretty sure that putting down two trained fighters would be cause for praise in most households. ’

Leon stared off into space, rubbing his short beard. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

Satyrus looked around, chewed back an angry response and crossed his arms.

He stood silent and angry as Leon dispatched messengers to various quarters and sat in his garden, saying little, and his silence was more ominous than his orders.

Nihmu and Sappho came from the women’s quarters and sent everyone off to the baths before dinner. By the time that Satyrus, feeling disoriented in his own home, had towelled off, he could see Hama setting a pair of armoured cavalrymen at the front gate – men of Olbia or Tanais, absolutely loyal. That settled him.

Nonetheless, he hung his sword over his chiton.

A servant came in through the curtain at his door and bowed. ‘Leon asks that you dress in your best, lord,’ the man intoned. ‘I am to help you.’

Off came the sword and the chiton. Satyrus opened the chest under the window and poked through the folded wool there, looking for his favourite – a plain white wool chiton with a minute stripe of Tyrian Purple. He found it as much by feel as by sight – the wool was superb.

‘How about this?’ he asked the servant.

‘Certainly, sir,’ the servant replied. This time he was oiled, his hair carefully arranged and the chiton adjusted so that every fold fell as if it had been sculpted by Praxiteles, closed by a girdle made of gold cord.

Satyrus added a knife that hung around his neck from a cord, vanishing into the folds of the chiton. The servant made a face. ‘Hardly required, sir,’ he said.

Satyrus was always annoyed by talkative servants. ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ he said, and sat to have his best sandals put on his feet. When he was shod, he nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said to the servant.

‘Yes, sir,’ the servant replied, and retreated through the door.

Not for the first time, Satyrus wished he had a servant or a slave of his own – a comrade. Someone who would understand his own needs. All of Leon’s freedmen treated him like a child.

Caught up in all that was the thought that he had treated Phiale badly. He sat at a table in the courtyard and scribbled a note, searching for a nice bit of poetry to use to express himself, but finding none. So he wrote:

That man is my enemy, and has been for years. I am sorry that you were injured in our squabble. If I can be of any assistance, please send to me.

He sealed it with his Herakles ring and sent it with a slave.

It occurred to him as he walked down the cool marble halls towards the garden that he hadn’t asked why he was dressed like a prince.

Melitta was still lying naked on her day-bed, trying to will herself to calm and coolness in the evening breeze, when a senior woman servant came to her chamber. ‘I am to ask you to dress your best,’ the old woman said, with a smile. ‘You have an invitation from the palace.’

Kallista, also naked, rose from the balcony and clapped her hands. ‘Amastris! It must be! I heard that Master Leon brought her home.’

Melitta smiled. ‘Thanks, Dorcus! I’ll be ready.’

Dorcus turned to Kallista. ‘It wouldn’t be amiss to pack a wrap for morning,’ she said, laying a finger along her nose. ‘The palace messenger suggested that the Lady Amastris might wish to entertain our mistress overnight.’

‘Dorcus? Be a dear and tell the steward that I’ll be out for dinner. And does Uncle Leon know? Oh – it’s his homecoming. Perhaps-’ She paused. ‘Amastris is going to use me to see my brother, isn’t she?’ Melitta asked the older woman.

Dorcus shook her head slightly. She was a woman of consequence in the household, and Melitta knew that every rumour came to her ears. ‘Master Leon has an invitation of his own,’ she said. ‘As does your brother – from the king himself. If the princess wishes to see your brother, she will have to scheme very quickly indeed. Dress well, young mistress.’ She paused. ‘Given the – incident – this afternoon, all may not go as the princess imagines. Understand me, despoina?’

Kallista didn’t need a second admonition. She had Melitta’s best Greek gown laid out on the bed – wool so fine as to be transparent, carefully oiled to a fine finish, the colour a dark purple-blue with gold stripes. There were also the Artemis brooches that Kinon had given her three years ago, and a dagger, and a wicked bronze pin in her hair, the knobbed grip hidden by an enormous pearl that matched the strings that held her long black tresses.

Kallista slipped long, dangling gold earrings into her ears and clasped a necklace at her throat. Her hands rested on her mistress’s shoulders. ‘You are beautiful,’ she said. She held up a silver mirror so that Melitta could admire herself.

‘Not as beautiful as you,’ Melitta said. Her slave was like an avatar of Aphrodite – in fact, some men called her that very title. Melitta had been offered sums of up to twenty talents of silver for her slave’s favours.

‘Hmm,’ Kallista said. She put her head down next to Melitta’s, so that the two were side by side in the mirror. ‘Dark and fair. You are more the image of Hera or Artemis. A colder beauty – but no less beautiful.’

‘Flatterer,’ Melitta said. She poked Kallista in the side and made the other girl squeal.

‘Not with you,’ Kallista giggled. ‘Every man’s head will turn when we walk in the palace. Hah! I feel like a cat among mice when I go there.’

‘Freedom has not made you modest,’ Melitta said.

Kallista lowered her eyes in a parody of virginal modesty. ‘Has it not, my mistress?’

‘How was Amyntas?’ Melitta asked. Amyntas was one of Ptolemy’s Macedonian officers. He was supposed to command the phalanx, and he was a famous soldier, but he spent little time on his duties. He had offered Kallista ten talents of silver for a single night.

‘Adequate,’ Kallista said with a shrug. ‘For the money.’

‘No transports of joy?’ Melitta asked.

‘I can buy all the transports I wish for ten talents of silver, mistress.’ Kallista smiled.

‘You make love sound so – mercenary!’ Melitta complained.

‘Mistress, I’m a hetaira!’ The older woman shrugged. ‘Men started mounting me when I was eleven. There’s never been a great deal of romance involved.’ She stroked Melitta’s shoulders. ‘It will be different for you – I’ll see to that. A boy your own age – a beautiful boy.’

Melitta smiled. ‘Your lips to Aphrodite’s ear,’ she said. She rose to her feet, complete from her gilded sandals to the tiny touch of rouge on the tops of her ears and the long tendril of black hair that seemed to have artlessly escaped her diadem – one of Kallista’s best contrivances. ‘Mind you, dressed like this, I might as well be a hetaira!’

Obligingly, Kallista walked to her household altar – to Aphrodite of Cyprus, like most hetairai – and knelt. She fingered the ivory statue and spoke quietly to it as if the statue were the goddess herself, and then kissed it and put it back in its place.

‘Shall we?’ she said.

Melitta walked to the door.

Leon was waiting in the foyer. ‘We are expected at the palace,’ he said. Even as he spoke, Philokles came from the garden with Coenus, talking about hunting, at his side. Diodorus came in the main gate. He was in armour, and Philokles was wearing a plain white chiton and the long himation of a scholar. Coenus and Leon were dressed well, although their clothes were more befitting merchants than leading aristocrats.

Leon addressed them all together.

‘Satyrus and I have been ordered to attend the king. Melitta has been invited to visit the princess of Heraklea.’ He looked around at them. ‘After today’s events, we can’t be too careful.’

‘Surely you don’t expect that Ptolemy will do anything foolish,’ Philokles said.

Leon raised an eyebrow. ‘I wish to ensure that he does not,’ he said. ‘So I would like you gentlemen to accompany us.’

Philokles rubbed his jaw. ‘Do I need a sword?’ he asked.

‘If it comes to that, there’ll be no saving us,’ Leon said.

Diodorus nodded. ‘Let’s get this over with then,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see Sappho before the day is over. Hello there, Satyr. Lita, you look like – like a particularly seductive nymph. And to think that I watched you being born!’

Coenus rolled his eyes. ‘In my day, young lady, you would never have been allowed out like that. Aren’t you even going to cover your hair?’

Kallista muffled a squeak of outrage. Melitta put a hand on her companion’s wrist. ‘Troy has fallen, Uncle,’ she said with a smile. ‘Penelope is cold in her grave. In the modern era, young women of good family are allowed out of their houses.’

Coenus made a noise between a grunt and a laugh.

Leon waved them all out through the garden and on to the street like a dog herding sheep.

‘Goodness,’ Kallista murmured. ‘Are we going to walk?’

If Leon heard her, he gave no sign. He strode off and eight torch holders arranged themselves around the party. Satyrus knew them immediately – although masquerading as house slaves in simple chitons, they were all soldiers, troopers from Eumenes’ squadron.

They walked along the streets, only one such group among dozens, although Melitta and Kallista drew attention like a new vendor in the agora. Satyrus watched the crowds as they walked, annoyed that his best sandals might be stained by the rubbish in the street while simultaneously fascinated by the scenes around him, as he always was in the city. Women waited at public fountains with jars for water on their heads or hips. Men stood in the cool evening air and grumbled, heckled and bartered, or discussed the new city’s politics. Criminal factions eyed each other from opposing street corners. Couples mooned in dark corners or fought in tenements, and a late caravan of camels from the Red Sea stood in a long row on the central avenue, liberally decorating the clean sand of the street with droppings as they waited for slaves to unload the incense of the southern Arabian kingdoms.

Their torch-bearers watched everything and their eyes went everywhere. The man closest to Satyrus was the giant, Carlus, and Satyrus wondered how anyone could take him for a slave. His eyes were moving, appraising, watching. He looked up at the rooftops and down in the doorways.

‘See anything, Carlus?’ Satyrus asked by way of conversation.

The big Keltoi shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Lots of bad men, but they don’t want us.’ He glared at a beardless Aegyptian on a street corner, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. He was small, and light, and young, but he met Carlus’s stare with cool indifference. ‘I’d love to come down here with some of the boys and clean up,’ he said. ‘Forced loans, prostitution, extortion, arson – these scum do it all.’

Satyrus looked at the Aegyptian as he passed him. The young man didn’t even raise an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

Carlus grunted.

Leon’s villa was comparatively close to the new library and the palace precincts, and it dawned on Satyrus that Leon was parading his group through the most public thoroughfares for a reason. After half an hour’s walk they climbed the low hill that led to the palace gates, still under construction. As far as Satyrus could see, the palace was in a permanent state of construction.

Bored Macedonians greeted Leon, gave perfunctory salutes to Diodorus and ogled Melitta and Kallista, their comments loud enough that Satyrus became offended on his sister’s behalf.

‘Soldiers,’ Leon said, putting a hand on Satyrus’s shoulder. ‘Calm yourself.’

Slaves led them from the gate to the main hall, and female slaves came and took Melitta and Kallista away. Greek women might walk the streets and even sometimes attend a party, but at the palace many of the old ways were preserved, and women were received in women’s rooms. Satyrus kissed his sister on the cheek while Amastris’s personal attendant waited patiently, her shawl over her head. He had a sudden premonition – as if an icy hand had rubbed his back.

‘Watch yourself, sister,’ he whispered.

She looked back at him and squeezed his hand. ‘And you, brother.’

Then the women were gone and they were walking up the steps of the central megaron. Ptolemy’s Greek steward was waiting for them, and he bowed. ‘Lord Ptolemy wishes to greet you in private,’ he said. ‘Please follow me. Your torch-bearers can wait.’ He snapped his fingers and a pair of slaves emerged from the portico and gestured to the torch-bearers.

‘I understood that we were to have an audience,’ Leon said.

‘Lord Ptolemy wishes to speak to you in private,’ the steward insisted.

Leon looked around and then nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. He turned to follow the steward. The Greek shook his head. ‘Just you and Master Satyrus,’ he said. ‘My regrets to these gentlemen.’

Philokles snorted. ‘Gabines, take us to Ptolemy, and stop pontificating. ’

The Greek steward looked more closely at Philokles. He gave a short and rather discontented bow. ‘Master Philokles. I didn’t see you. Philosophers are always welcome in our lord’s presence.’

Diodorus and Coenus pressed closer in the gathering gloom. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have been so quick to send the torches away, Gabines. Now, take us to the king,’ Diodorus said.

Gabines looked around, as if expecting help.

Satyrus checked to make sure that he had his knife. It was absurd to feel physically threatened in the palace, but he was on edge, walking as if he expected ambush, and he noted that Diodorus and Coenus were the same, starting at shadows. Philokles, on the other hand, pulled his chlamys back over his head and walked with the calm of a priest.

They walked down the back of the megaron and across the central courtyard to the royal residence. Reliefs of Alexander’s victories decorated every surface on the exterior, meticulously painted so that the horses seemed to ride out from the walls, and on the peristyle were ships under oars. Satyrus stared and stared – even Leon’s villa had nothing like this for sheer display.

Leon wasn’t looking at art, but at the guards. He motioned with his chin where more Macedonian guards waited on the portico, and yet more inside.

‘He’s got half of the Foot Companions on duty,’ Diodorus said. ‘Something is wrong.’

Leon shrugged. ‘We already knew that something was wrong,’ he said. He climbed the steps, nodded at the guards and entered.

Satyrus followed him up the steps. He noticed that the colonnade was full of men, and he saw the white glimmerings of the new quilted linen armour that the guards wore. His shoulders prickled as he passed them, and then he was in the residence, directly under the fresco of Herakles that filled the entryway arch. Up on the ceiling the gods sparkled, their faces adorned with real jewels as they seemed to watch both living men and the deeds of the demi-god. The floor was five colours of marble inlaid in a complex pattern that baffled the eye. At the centre of the arch, Herakles was carried by chariot into the heavens to become a god.

‘Your majesty? Master Leon of Tanais, his nephew Prince Satyrus, Master Philokles the Spartan and Strategos Diodorus, as well as Phylarch Coenus of Olbia to see you.’ The steward gave a deep and very un-Greek bow and, as he said their names, led them into the main hall, a sort of roofed garden in the middle of the building. Up on the ceiling, gods disported. A burly Apollo forced his favours on a not very unwilling nymph, while smiling over her shoulder at – Athena?

It looked blasphemous to Satyrus. And very beautiful.

‘Leon? You brought an army to visit me?’ Ptolemy was running to fat, and his high forehead and straight nose made him so ugly he was almost handsome. He rose from a heavy chair of lemonwood and ivory to clasp the Numidian’s hand.

It was not the tone of a king about to murder one of his richest subjects. Satyrus felt the blood retreat from his face, and his pulse slowed.

‘We all thought it wisest to come together,’ Diodorus said.

‘Meaning that you feared my reaction to this young scapegrace’s attack on the Athenian ambassador. And well you might. Boy, what in Hades or Earth or the Heavens above moved you to attack the Athenian ambassador?’

Satyrus looked at Leon and received a nod of approbation. So he told the truth. ‘He has tried to murder me before – and my sister. I want to kill him. Despite this, Lord Ptolemy, I took no action against him. His man attacked me, and I dealt with him.’ He bowed his head. ‘I am conscious of the religious obligations of a man towards a herald or an ambassador.’

Ptolemy smiled. His wide eyes appeared guileless when he smiled, giving him that look of pleased surprise that had earned him the nickname Farm Boy. Those who knew him well knew that the look was utterly deceptive.

‘In other words, you are the outraged innocent and he is a viper at my breast?’ the king asked.

Leon stepped in front of his nephew. ‘Yes, lord. That is exactly so.’

Ptolemy fingered his chin and sat back down in his chair. ‘Seats and wine for my guests. I’m not some fucking Persian, to keep them all standing for awe of me. Boy, you’ve put me in a spot and no mistake. I need Cassander. I need Athens. Stratokles is the price I pay for it, and he brought me news. I need him!’ He glared at Leon. ‘You and this Athenian have a history. Don’t deny it – Gabines is a competent spymaster and I know things.’

Leon remained closest to the king when stools were brought. ‘Is it nothing to you, Lord Ptolemy, that I have finished my summer cruise, and that I, too, have news?’

‘Credit me with a little sense, Leon. I invited you here. No one has been arrested.’ Ptolemy pointed at a side table with a wine cooler on it and closed his fist. At the signal, a squad of slaves appeared and began to pour wine.

Leon took a phiale from the side table and poured a libation. ‘To Hermes, god of merchants and wayfarers and thieves,’ he said. It was a curious gesture – the host usually poured the libation. Satyrus thought that his uncle was telling the king something. He just didn’t know what it was.

‘Since you are all three of them,’ the king said with a smile.

Leon shrugged. ‘Heraklea is buzzing with rumours of war,’ he said. ‘Antigonus is planning a campaign against Cassander and he’s put his son in charge of an expedition – somewhere. No one knows where the golden boy is going. He had already marched when I left the coast.’ He looked around. ‘And his fleet is at sea, and we don’t know where it is going. Rumour is he’s going to lay siege to Rhodos.’

Ptolemy nodded. ‘Exactly what Stratokles says.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Cassander has asked me to send him an army.’

‘Don’t do it, lord,’ Diodorus said.

Ptolemy glanced at the red-haired man. ‘Wily Odysseus, why not?’

‘Call me what you will, lord. Cassander has the whole of Macedon to recruit. If we send him our best, he’ll buy them as well – with farms at home, if nothing else – and we’ll never have them back. We’re far from the source of manpower, and he’s close. Let him raise his own levies. And perhaps send us some!’ He looked around. ‘We’re recruiting infantry from the Aegean and Asia and soon we’ll be reduced to Aegyptians.’

Ptolemy nodded. ‘I may send him some ships,’ he said. ‘But I regret to say that I have summoned you to forbid your expedition into the Euxine, Leon.’

Leon nodded slowly. ‘I had your promise, lord.’ He glanced at Satyrus.

Satyrus held himself still. No one had told him anything directly, but he had felt the expedition must be close – Philokles had dropped hints.

He wasn’t sure whether he was angry or relieved.

Ptolemy put his chin in his hand and nodded. ‘Circumstances change. Eumeles and his kingdom are allies of Cassander. I can’t afford to have you making trouble there just now. I need to know that Antigonus and his army are going to Europe and not coming here. Then I’ll let you go – with my blessing, which will have a very tangible effect. You and your nephew ruling the northern grain trade would be of the utmost value to us – to Aegypt and to our allies in Rhodos. But not this year.’

Leon gave a faint shrug. ‘Very well, lord.’

‘I’m sorry, Leon, I need better than that. Your oath, and your nephew’s, that you will obey me in this.’ Ptolemy’s voice hardened for the first time, and suddenly he wasn’t a genial old duffer. He was absolute ruler of Aegypt, even if he didn’t call himself pharaoh yet. Yet.

Diodorus – one of Ptolemy’s most valued men – nodded, the closest to a sign of submission that an Athenian aristocrat ever made to anyone. He glanced at the guards. ‘Lord, you know us,’ he said.

Ptolemy nodded.

‘You know that we – Coenus, me, Leon, Philokles and a few others – follow the Pythagorean code.’ He spoke forcefully, if quietly. Satyrus leaned forward, because all his life he had heard from his tutor about Pythagoreans, and it had never occurred to him that his tutor and his mentors were all initiates.

Ptolemy gave a half-smile. ‘I know it.’

‘We do not lightly take oaths, lord. In fact, we avoid them, as binding man too close to the gods. But if you require our oath, we will keep it. For ever. Is that what you want?’ Satyrus had never heard Diodorus sound so passionate.

‘Yes,’ Ptolemy said. ‘Get on with it.’

Leon took a deep breath. ‘Very well, lord. I swear by Hermes, and by Poseidon, Lord of Horses, by Zeus, father of the gods, and all the gods, to obey you in this. My hand will not fall on Eumeles this year – though he betrayed my friendship and murdered Satyrus’s mother, though his hands are stained in innocent blood to the wrists, though the Furies rip at me every night until he is put in the earth-’

‘Enough!’ the king cried, rising from his seat. ‘Enough. I know that you have reason to hate him. I have reason to demand your oath. And you, boy?’

Satyrus stepped forward. ‘I have sworn to the gods to kill every man and woman who ordered the death of my mother,’ he said. ‘The laws of the gods protect Stratokles, and now you, my king, order me to preserve Eumeles. Can you order me to break my oath to the gods?’

Ptolemy nodded. ‘I carry the burden of every oath I ask my subjects to carry,’ he said. ‘Obey!’

Satyrus took a deep breath. ‘By Zeus the Saviour and Athena, grey-eyed goddess of wisdom, I swear to wait one year in my vengeance against Heron, who calls himself Eumeles,’ he said. ‘By Herakles my patron, I swear not to take the life of Stratokles for one year.’

Ptolemy raised an eyebrow at Leon. ‘One year? Is the boy attempting to bargain with his lord?’

Satyrus made himself meet Ptolemy’s heavy gaze. ‘Lord, yesterday I didn’t even know that there was to be such an expedition. I can wait a year. If the year passes, perhaps I can wait another year.’ Satyrus felt the grey-eyed goddess at his shoulder, guiding his words. ‘Perhaps we can renew the oath like a truce.’

‘Philokles, you have nurtured a rhetorician!’ the king said.

‘Satyrus has grown to manhood at this court,’ Philokles said. He sipped his wine. ‘And the essence of the teaching of Pythagoras has apparently slipped into his blood.’ The Spartan gave Satyrus a smile that made Satyrus feel as light as air.

‘There’s more,’ Leon said. ‘You wouldn’t have summoned us merely to prevent the expedition.’

‘You mistake me, Leon,’ Ptolemy said. He held out his cup for more wine. ‘Or perhaps you don’t. Yes, there is more. I am going to exile young Satyrus for a few months. To placate the Athenian.’

‘Good gods!’ Leon said. He shot to his feet, and his anger rolled off him in waves. ‘You get my oath and then exile my boy!’

Ptolemy gave a grim smile. ‘Got it in one. Send him to sea, Leon. Later, I will of course allow my erring young prince to return.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Satyrus. But I need the Athenians right now, and I need Cassander sweet – and bearing the brunt of One-Eye’s attack.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a hard thing, ruling. I suspect that Stratokles the Viper intends to kill your charges.’ Ptolemy shrugged, and grinned. ‘If I exile you, and you take your sister – well, he can hardly complain, and he’s unlikely to find a way to kill you, either. Everyone’s equally unhappy.’ Ptolemy looked around. ‘I don’t intend to let him kill these children, but neither, frankly, will I imperil an alliance that I need – that Aegypt needs – to preserve two teenagers, however wonderful.’

Coenus stood up. ‘Listen to me, Ptolemy. You call yourself lord of Aegypt – I remember you as a page, and as a battalion officer. Is that what you learned about loyalty and command? What is this, Hephaestion’s style? You know what they say about you in the army? That Antigonus will take us any time he wants, because he’s a real Macedonian. Understands duty and honour and loyalty to his own.’ The big man shrugged. ‘Half the men in the city saw what happened today at Cimon’s. You know yourself that the boy is guiltless. When you exile him, it’s another sign you won’t protect your own.’

‘Watch yourself, old man,’ Ptolemy said.

Diodorus stretched his legs in front of him. ‘I remember a campfire in Bactria,’ he said dreamily. ‘You owe us, O King. And we’re your friends.’

Ptolemy nodded. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Yes, I do think that you men are my friends. And so I believe that I can ask this of you – I call you in private and I ask for this exile, so that I can preserve appearances. And so you can preserve the boy’s life – I’m not a fool, Leon. I told you that I know that this Stratokles will try for the boy – and the girl, too. Because Cassander’s stupid ally needs them dead.’

Leon raised his face, and the scowl dropped from his dark features. ‘Oh – are you asking, lord?’

Ptolemy’s face underwent a remarkable set of changes – anger, puzzlement, amusement, laughter. ‘I’ve been playing at royalty too long,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’m asking. If you decline, I’ll find another answer.’

‘Ah!’ Leon said. ‘That’s another thing entirely. If you ask,’ he glanced at Satyrus, ‘as a favour, then we will of course do it for you.’

Ptolemy nodded. ‘As for the army,’ he said to Coenus, ‘I know that they are discontented. What can I do? Send them to fight in Nubia? Pay them better?’

‘Make them feel noble,’ Coenus said. ‘They want to be heroes, not bodyguards.’

Ptolemy sighed. ‘Do they even remember how fucking miserable life in Macedon was?’ he asked. ‘Or the campaigns in Bactria? Zeus Soter, that was Hades risen to fill the middle world. Tartarus incarnate.’

Leon rose to his feet. ‘Lord, it occurs to me that I can send a cargo to Rhodos as early as tomorrow. They are our allies, and they are virtually under siege – every mina of grain will count. It will do us no harm to see if Demetrios has laid siege to Rhodos – or Tyre. Or gone elsewhere – and what armament he has. I must go and make my preparations.’ He glanced at Coenus. ‘Is Xeno ready to ship out?’

Coenus smiled. ‘Now there’s at least one man happy in all this!’

Ptolemy rose and clasped hands all around. ‘I’m glad you all came to put me in my place,’ he growled. He turned to Coenus. ‘How bad are the Macedonians, Coenus?’

Coenus drained his wine and handed the cup to a slave. ‘Do I look like an informer, Ptolemy? Eh?’ Satyrus thought that the gentleman-trooper had to be one of just a handful of men who called Lord Ptolemy by name all the time. Then the Megaran’s face changed, softened, and he shook his head. ‘No, but listen. They don’t hate you – some still love you. But the word in the ranks is that any contest with Antigonus is a foregone conclusion. I’ve heard men in the Foot Companions say that the phalangites won’t fight – they’ll just stand ten yards apart and watch.’ Coenus shook his head again. ‘Of the officers – there’s rot there, but you know it as well as I.’

Ptolemy drained a cup of wine. ‘Gabines?’

The steward hurried forward from behind the throne. ‘It is much as he says, lord.’ Gabines looked apologetic. ‘I could bring you wit nesses.’

‘I have all the witnesses I need standing in front of me. Leon, listen to me – you and a dozen like you are the pillars that support this city. Understand me – and tell your friends, the Nabataeans and the Jews and all the other merchants. We cannot afford to fight. I know my army has rot all the way to the officer cadre. I know it! And that means that I have to rely on guile to keep Cassander and Antigonus off me.’

Philokles raised an eyebrow. He raised a hand to speak, opened his mouth and fell silent – his lips moving like a fish. It was rare for Philokles to behave so, but such was his power at court that the king waited, and on the second attempt, Philokles managed to speak.

‘It seems to me that it is time to try an alternate source of manpower,’ Philokles said.

Ptolemy nodded. ‘What do you suggest? Spartans?’

Philokles frowned. ‘Aegyptians. A citizen levy, like the hoplites of any Greek city.’

Ptolemy scratched under his chin, eyes on his guards, some of whom couldn’t stop themselves from mutters as the idea was broached. ‘They make awful soldiers,’ he said.

‘They once conquered the world, or so I understand,’ Philokles said. ‘Besides, I rather intended to suggest the citizens of this city – Greeks and Hellenes. And Nabataeans and Jews and native Aegyptians and the whole polyglot crew. You have been generous in granting citizenship – now is the time to see if these people are citizens in fact or only in name.’

‘By the gods, Philokles, listening to you is like having an ephor of my very own. Who will command this mongrel mob?’ Ptolemy asked.

Silence fell over the room. Ptolemy’s eyes met Satyrus’s, and the young man couldn’t look away. It was odd, to have the eye of the ruler and want to be out from under it. Why is he looking at me?

‘The Macedonian army has a nice tradition,’ Ptolemy said. ‘The author of a “great idea” is considered to have volunteered to lead. Why don’t you raise this city levy, Spartan? I know you are the hoplomachos of all spear-fighters in the city. You can train them to be Spartans!’

Philokles got red in the face. ‘You mock me,’ he said.

‘Careful there, Spartan. You Pythagoreans are supposed to avoid anger.’ Ptolemy grinned. ‘But I do not mock you. It’s a fine idea – and I can afford it. Money we have. Find me a taxeis of locals and I’ll arm them. If nothing else, it offers me-’ He hesitated, and then smiled. ‘Options.’ Lord Ptolemy didn’t describe what his options might be.

Philokles nodded and pursed his lips. Satyrus knew him so well that he could feel the oncoming rebuke. The skin over the Spartan’s nostrils grew white, and the philosopher’s grip on the staff he usually carried grew white-knuckled. And then his face softened, and he gave a faint smile.

‘Very well,’ Philokles said. ‘I accept.’

‘Good. Gentlemen, for all that you are the very foundation of my rule in Aegypt, it is late, and I have had too much wine.’ Ptolemy rose.

Leon and Satyrus bowed gracefully. Diodorus, Philokles and Coenus nodded and clasped Ptolemy’s hands like the old friends they were, whatever his power.

‘My chair is always filled for any of you. Even the boy. Listen, boy – I saw you fight Theron today. I liked what I saw. Go away for a while and I’ll have you back in style. Here’s my hand on it.’ Satyrus took the king’s hand. Then Ptolemy smiled around at all of them like a conspirator and vanished into a screen of soldiers, and they withdrew.

‘It seems to me that for all your complaints, you got exactly what you wanted,’ Philokles said quietly to Leon.

‘You’re the dangerous one,’ Leon said. ‘A taxeis of locals? Suddenly you’re going to have political power. And enemies. Welcome to my world.’

‘I expect I will,’ Philokles said. ‘Should that deter me from an action that will help to balance the disaffection of the Macedonians and will render all of us safer? Stratokles is here, Leon. In this city. We need to gather our friends.’

Outside in the darkness, they all gulped lungfuls of smoky Alexandrian air. Satyrus was old enough to realize that they had all been as scared as he.

‘Where will we go?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Rhodos, really?’

‘We?’ Leon asked. ‘You will take the cargo as my navarch. You’ll have excellent officers who you will listen to as if they were your uncles. You can sell a cargo and buy one, I hope?’

Satyrus’s heart swelled to fill his chest. ‘I’ll be navarch myself ?’ he asked.

Diodorus slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You keep telling us you’re a man,’ he said.

A slave approached from the shadow of the megaron, guiding a woman with a shawl over her head. ‘Lord Satyrus,’ she called quietly.

Before his uncles could restrain him, Satyrus responded, ‘Here!’

The young woman took his hand. ‘Your sister intends to stay the night,’ she said in a whisper, ‘and requests that you visit her for a moment before you go.’

Leon shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that I cannot allow my niece to spend the night in the palace,’ he said. ‘She has urgent duties to which she must attend.’

The young woman’s face was white as tawed leather under the shawl. ‘Oh – oh dear!’ she said. ‘Then you must come with me, lords.’

She led the way to the women’s quarters.

‘Where are my torch-bearers?’ Leon asked the palace slave.

‘I don’t know, lord. I’ll find them and meet you on the portico of the women’s wing.’ The slave turned and ran.

The women’s palace was well lit, and sounds of laughter and music carried out into the night. A kithara was being played – two kitharas. And Melitta was singing with Kallista. Satyrus grinned.

‘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 third, 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.’

Satyrus rolled to his feet with the ease of practice and followed his sister down the dark corridor and out across the courtyard between the two houses. He could sleep-walk the route to Philokles’ rooms.

Carlus took up the whole of Philokles’ oversized sleeping couch and still his lower legs dangled off the end.

‘I must have sent a dozen of them to hell,’ he said in his thick accent. ‘And they broke, but there were more, and more. Fifty.’ The big Keltoi shook his head weakly. ‘Zeus Soter, I was afraid, and then – they left me. Gone, like a herd of deer running in the woods.’

‘They weren’t paid enough to go chest to chest with you, Titan,’ Philokles said. ‘If it makes you feel better, I think we’ll be going into those neighbourhoods you wanted to clean. Soon.’

‘Uhh,’ the Keltoi grunted, and fell asleep.

‘Will he live?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Look at the muscle on that chest!’ Philokles said, shaking his head. ‘Yes – none of these dagger blows got through his muscle. Those were brave and desperate men, Satyrus. Contempt for your opponents is always a waste of time. Imagine facing Carlus in the dark. Two men got close enough to mark him. Imagine.’

‘He’s passed out,’ Melitta said.

‘Poppy – he’s so full of it he should bleed poppy juice,’ Philokles said. ‘So we all made it home. That makes me feel better – there was a moment in the dark when I thought we were all going down. Ares, I’m not as young as I used to be.’

‘I wish you were coming with us,’ Melitta said.

‘Me too,’ Satyrus said. He found that he was holding his sister’s hand.

Philokles got up, wincing and favouring his left side. ‘Listen,’ he said, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. ‘Pythagoras teaches that there are four seasons to life as there are four seasons to the world – spring, when you are a child, and summer, in the full bloom of adulthood – then autumn, when a man reaches his full power and a woman’s beauty fades, and winter, when we age towards death. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ the twins chorused.

‘I pronounce that you have passed from spring into summer,’ Philokles said. ‘Melitta, you are a woman, and Satyrus, you are a man. What is the first lesson?’

Together, the twins spoke, almost one voice. ‘To your friends do good, and to your enemies, harm.’

‘That is the lesson,’ Philokles said. ‘See that you live it.’

It was still dark when they were rowed aboard the Golden Lotus, which had been brought around from the yard and stood just off the beach, her oarsmen keeping her steady against the predawn breeze. Melitta went up the side, and then Satyrus swung his leg over and dropped to the deck amidships.

Peleus the Rhodian, Leon’s helmsman, stood with his legs apart, braced against the roll of the deck. ‘Welcome aboard, Navarch,’ he said. He put special emphasis on the word, but it wasn’t mockery – quite.

‘Peleus!’ Satyrus said. He clasped the older man’s arm, and his clasp was returned. He stepped back. ‘This is my sister, Melitta.’

‘Despoina,’ Peleus said, and turned his back on her, grasping Satyrus by the arm. ‘Let’s get the Lotus clear of the land, and then we’ll have time for girls and orders and all the crap that the land brings, eh? First time out in command? Feel any butterflies, boy?’

‘Yes!’ Satyrus admitted. He looked at Melitta, who had the look of a woman withholding judgment – Peleus’s comment hadn’t escaped her. He had to make Peleus, whose dislike of women at sea was legendary, accept his sister’s presence. He had to make his sister – well, toe the line.

‘Banish the butterflies,’ Peleus said. ‘Oars, there. Do ye hear me!’

A chorus of affirmatives, and the Rhodian turned to Satyrus. ‘Ready for sea, sir,’ he said.

Satyrus had been to sea since he was nine years old, but his heart was beating as if he was in mortal combat. He took a breath, and made his voice steady. ‘Carry on,’ he said, as if it was nothing to command a warship at sea.

Like wings, the oars rose together and dipped, and suddenly they were in motion, as close to flying as Satyrus was ever likely to achieve.

Two stades away across the port of Alexandria, a scarred man leaned on the rail of a trireme, head swathed in bandages, watching under his hands as the familiar shape of the Golden Lotus gathered way as the first fingers of dawn stretched across the sky.

‘There they are,’ said Iphicrates. ‘Kineas’s brats,’ he growled.

The Latin, Lucius, shrugged. ‘Frankly, boss, I think the gods love ’em. I think we should just let ’em go and good riddance.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Stratokles said. ‘Despite which, I want you to find them at sea and kill them. It is probably better this way,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Last night was too bloody and too obvious, and sooner or later, that fat parasite Gabines will know we did it.’

‘Fucking public service,’ Lucius said. ‘The sheer number of street thugs who died last night has got to make this city a better place to live.’ He laughed.

Iphicrates shook his head. ‘We should have had them last night. And Diodorus and fucking Leon into the bargain.’

‘They were on to us from the start of the evening, gentlemen,’ Stratokles said. ‘I don’t like losing a contest any more than the next man, but it is a pleasure to be up against men of worth. You’ll have to be on your toes, Iphicrates. Golden Lotus is the toughest ship in these waters, or so I’m told.’

The scarred Athenian mercenary stretched and shook his head. ‘I’ve been fighting at sea since I was twelve, Stratokles. And I’ve taken a few Rhodians in my time, and they are never easy. But if I have a clean chance, I’ll take ’em. The new engines will give me an edge they can’t be ready for.’

‘Engines?’ Lucius asked. He had quite a bit of intellect, but most of it was reserved for war.

‘Like big bows, with ratchets to hold ’em cocked. Shoot a bolt the size of a sarissa. Goes right through a trireme’s hull.’

‘Despite which,’ Stratokles added, ‘your first duty to me is information. I need to know what One-Eye is up to on the coast of Syria – and Cyprus. And what Rhodos is doing. Golden Lotus is bound for Rhodos. Need I say more?’

‘No, sir,’ Iphicrates said.

‘Go get them then,’ Stratokles said, and slapped the mercenary on the back. ‘I’ll take care of business here. I’ve fomented a fair amount of treason,’ he said. ‘Macedonians are the most perfidious race on the face of Gaia. And they call Greeks treacherous.’ He laughed. Then he turned back to Iphicrates and put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t loiter out there. I know you have piracy in your blood, but I need your reports – and I need to know I have a way out of here. When Gabines starts to follow up on the tags I’ve left – I can’t help it! He’s going to be after me like a pig on slops. And Leon will strike back after last night – count on it.’

‘Hurry out, take the Lotus, check Rhodos and Syria, hurry back. Anything else?’ Iphicrates shook his head. ‘Tall order and no mistake.’

‘That’s why I’m sending the best,’ Stratokles said.