King of the Bosphorus

13

Lemnos, Lesvos – a night in Methymna, and fresh lamb – and down the sea to Chios, past Samos to a day of fevered trading in Miletus while his arm throbbed as if his wound was new, and then down the Sporades to Rhodos. The wind didn't always serve, but they were in the most protected parts of the sea, and they could make a good anchorage and a town every night.

Satyrus needed a town every night – his arm was so bad that he began to wonder if it would have to be rebroken and reset, and he had a fever, which didn't seem possible from such an old wound. At Miletus, he went to the old Temple of Apollo and made a sacrifice, and only willpower kept them at sea past the sanctuary of Asclepius on Cos.

Byzantium had left other scars as well, and Satyrus could neither sleep nor rest without his mind running off along his various choices, the paths of his own choosing and the choices thrust upon him. He felt himself grow sullen. He regretted the lack of Theron, or even Diokles. Neiron was older, cautious, proud of his new rank and determined not to lose it. Where Diokles might have censured his acerbic comments, Neiron bore them with a patience that simply stung Satyrus to further annoyance.

The entrance to the harbour at Rhodos was framing the bow when he boiled over.

'Oars! Stand by, all tiers.' The oar master was Neiron's replacement. His voice didn't carry authority, and his sense of timing was poor. He was a master rower, and had sat the stroke bench in two triremes, and yet he wasn't good enough to make the next step. Satyrus was sorry for him – he was a good man, and a loyal one – Messus was his name, and he was Tyrian, like Diokles, although older and greyer.

'That man has no authority,' he said.

Neiron's eyes were on his landfall and the harbour entrance.

'I'm speaking to you,' he barked.

Neiron's eyes never moved. 'Sorry, sir. I'm conning the ship.'

That stung Satyrus. Feeling foolish – hurt, angry, off centre and foolish – he sat on the helmsman's bench and watched the Temple of Poseidon grow larger.

'All benches! Oars – in!' Messus called. His rhythm was no better than it had been in the other harbours, and the starboard oars were slow coming in, turning the ship slightly, so that Neiron had to compensate.

Messus hung his head. He turned red in the face and looked anywhere but the stern.

The Lotus was coasting, losing speed against the water but still moving quickly enough, and the beach under the Temple of Poseidon was crowded.

'We're going too fast,' Satyrus said.

Neiron was watching the beach.

Satyrus knew that he was angry, that his decision-making wasn't its best, but he was also an experienced trierarch now, and he knew when Lotus was going too fast. 'Reverse your benches!' he called. He ran forward, heedless of his arm. 'Reverse your benches!'

Messus shrank against the mast, clearly unsure what to do next.

Satyrus ignored him. He looked down at the thranitai, the upper-deck oarsmen, and the stroke oar nodded.

'Give way, all!' Satyrus called. The oars went up to the catch and down, and the blades bit the water. 'Mind your helm, Neiron. We'll birth between the two warships.'

Neiron's face grew dark, but he obeyed. The flush was still in his cheeks when Satyrus returned to the stern.

'I was intending a different landing,' Neiron said carefully. 'Among the merchants.'

Satyrus saw, suddenly, that Neiron had seen a berth – a distant berth that needed more momentum.

Neiron continued: 'I didn't know that we had the right to put in among their warships.' He was angry, but his anger showed only in the careful enunciation of his Greek.

Satyrus clutched his arm. 'My – apologies, helmsman. I see it now.'

Neiron shrugged. 'No matter,' he said.

'I feel like an idiot. I'll apologize in front of the men if you like.' Satyrus was miserable.

'No matter, I said.' Neiron slapped his oars to get the bow to move – threading the needle of the narrow space between a pair of Rhodian triemioliai, the same burthen and design as the Lotus, just as Messus called for the oars to come in, his voice tremulous.

Satyrus went ashore in the ship's boat, the throbbing in his arm just an echo of the throbbing in his head. He shook it to clear it. Rhodos was a beautiful town, cleaner and better tended than Alexandria, old in a way that lent dignity rather than squalor. Neiron followed him up the steps to the temple. Satyrus wanted to say something – wanted to clear the air – but Neiron's rebuff to his apology left him nowhere to go.

At the top of the steps, Timaeus of Rhodos waited, his broad hands tucked into a girdle made of hemp rope. At his side stood the other navarch for the year, Panther, son of Diomedes, a man who had killed more pirates than any other.

'There are few men in the circle of the world who would dare to sail direct from Demostrate to Rhodos and then berth in my harbour among my ships,' Timaeus said.

Satyrus was winded just from climbing the steps of the temple. He made himself stand straight.

Satyrus let himself breathe. 'I need a favour,' he said.

'You need a doctor, lad,' Panther said.

That was the last thing Satyrus remembered. When he returned to consciousness, he had no idea of the passage of time and felt panic until a stranger – a woman – came into the room and took his hand.

'Who are you?' he asked.

She ignored him and put a cool hand on his, then turned it over and placed a thumb on his wrist. 'Lie down,' she said, in the same tone that Diokles used on drunken sailors, if quieter.

'How long have I been out?' Satyrus asked.

'How long have you been taking poppy juice for pain?' she asked him.

He tried to think. 'A week's sailing to reach Rhodos – sparingly the two weeks before that, and then perhaps two more weeks before that.'

'You took poppy for five weeks for a broken arm and a fevered wound?' she asked. 'What fool advised that?'

Satyrus felt too weak to argue.

'Your body now craves the poppy as much as it craves healing,' she said. 'Your arm is so badly hurt that it must be rebroken – which will be excruciatingly painful. For which I will have to give you poppy.' She shrugged. 'I recommend that you find a proper physician – preferably one with the same training I have – and let him take the poppy from your body.'

Satyrus sighed. 'I have a great deal to accomplish this winter.'

'You may find things harder if you are dead. Or permanently enslaved to the poppy. But – that is not my business. I have said my piece.' She poured a spoon of clear liquid that smelt of sugar and almonds. 'Drink this.'

'What is it?' he asked, and then he was gone.

Colours – an endless language of colours and shapes, smells, and an explosion, even in his dreams, of meanings so intense that he experienced an endless, fractal emotion, as if he was creating and destroying everything in the universe – gods, ships, monsters – and he swam inside his own body, which was itself as great as all the cosmos – what would Heraklitus say?

And then he sat in a meadow that rolled to every horizon, with a clear blue sky above and flowers like a carpet under him. He rose to his dream feet and looked around.

'You are nearer death than your physician seems to know,' the big man next to him said. Indeed, he was too big to be a man – Satyrus's head came only to the man's pectoral muscles, which were enormous. He had a lion skin on his shoulder and a wreath of laurel in his hair and he smelled like a farmer.

Satyrus bowed his head. 'Lord Herakles!' he said.

'Do I look like a lord?' the man in the lion skin asked. 'Are you mindful of my city?'

Satyrus nodded. 'I am. I intend to ask the tyrant-'

'Ask nothing. As the city will never give you the prize you desire, so you must not give it aught.' He yawned. 'Let us fight a fall. On your guard!'

Satyrus was suddenly naked, facing this giant on the sands of an eternal palaestra. He took his guard position and the moment that both of them acknowledged the contest, Satyrus shot in, powered by his legs, reaching for a lock on his opponent's knee.

He got his right arm behind those mighty thews and pulled, and then his left arm was caught in a stronger grip.

'Well fought,' his opponent said, and he felt all the bones in his arm shatter…

And he awoke to sunshine on his face. His left arm was hurting.

'He's back with us,' a male voice said. 'Get the lady.'

Time passed – a minute, a day? – and again he felt the cool hand on his wrist and then on his forehead. 'Hmm. Less fever. Hard to tell, with so much poppy. How do you feel?'

'Herakles broke my arm,' Satyrus said, before he realized what he was saying.

'Really?' she asked. She turned away, outside his line of vision, and came back with a five-page wax tablet, on which she wrote furiously, her stylus moving like the shuttle on a loom. 'What were you doing?'

'Fighting the pankration,' Satyrus said. He felt silly now.

'Wonderful!' she said. 'I do not need to consult a professional astrologer to say that this bodes well for your healing.' She reached for something. 'Drink this,' she said.

Time went away again.

Neiron came and went, and Panther, and he bathed every night in the colours and the gardens of the gods. Time flowed away from him – sometimes, he could see time itself, the stream that Heraklitus had described, flowing by him, and every drop was itself a sea of human deeds and choices, and yet once it flowed by, none of it could be caught.

Rhodos – a perfect landfall.

He killed the Sauromatae girl in the meadow, over and over again, and the two men on the beach. He watched Teax being raped, and he heard Penelope killed. Over, and over. And he wrestled with a god. He saw Eumeles kill his mother. He watched Philokles die. He imagined the Sauromatae chief, Upazan, killing his father, who he had never seen.

After a time, none of them were events of horror, but simply drops in the stream that ran through the field where Herakles stood in his lion skin.

And then he was awake, and the field and the wrestling and all the life and death flowed away and became dreams.

*

'Two weeks?' he asked. 'Despoina, I don't even know your name!'

'You may call me Aspasia,' she said. 'I am a doctor. Indeed, I am the only Asclepius-trained physician in Rhodos. And you may leave my house whenever you like, but if you want that arm to hold a shield again, you will remain here, taking only light exercise, eating the diet I prescribe, and perhaps reading, for two weeks.' She was tall – as tall as a man, and well formed, but her air of authority and the grey in her hair put her a little above his level, as if she was an officer and he was an oarsman.

On his third day of wakefulness, during the hours that were mostly normal, before he was dosed with poppy, he met her husband, a Rhodian captain and amateur scholar. He was dark-skinned, tall and broad, named Memnon.

'My father had a friend who was Memnon of Rhodos!' Satyrus said.

'It is a common name here, especially among those of us of Libyan and Ethiopian blood,' Memnon said. 'But surely you mean Memnon, the polemarch of Olbia?'

'Is he yet?' Satyrus was lying on a couch, his head propped on pillows. 'He must be quite old.'

'Is fifty old?' Aspasia asked. 'In Aegypt, a peasant would be ten years in his grave – but among Greeks, it is no great age.'

Satyrus was determined to show that he, too, had an education. 'Not too old to serve in the phalanx, at least in Sparta,' he said. 'I stand corrected.' And then he looked at Memnon the captain. 'Do you know Memnon of Olbia?' he asked.

'I do. It is a small world – and really, Rhodos is but a small town. He is my cousin. He has just written to me.'

'Will you write back?' Satyrus asked. 'May I include a note?'

'Of course!' Memnon said.

The relationship established, Memnon was quickly a friend, whereas Aspasia kept her distance. She was always courteous but never friendly. She would spend an hour by Satyrus's side, mixing drugs, and yet communicate only on medical matters. At first he took her distance for disapproval. Only with time did he see it for what it was – the mask of authority. She was a woman who gave orders to men. She was not a friend to them.

When he finally understood, he nodded in appreciation. Lying on a couch for two weeks, awake and mostly in command of his mind, left him with too much time to think, and much of it was spent considering the manner in which he commanded.

That evening, he brought it up with Memnon as they shared a game of shells and ships – a game that, at least symbolically, represented a naval battle. Memnon's board was carved of lapis and marble, so that it looked like squares of the sea, deeper and shallower, and a master had carved his ebony and ivory triremes. Each ship was different, so that some were twenty-oared boats and others were pirate hemioliai, biremes, triremes.

'Do you befriend your officers?' Satyrus asked.

Memnon laughed. 'Not as often as I'd like. It can be lonely on a long voyage – as you well know. I'm not used to a twenty-year-old trierarch. Anyway, I like to be friends with my helmsman, but it isn't always that way.'

'Ever try too hard?' Satyrus asked.

Memnon laughed. 'Maybe you should be talking to my wife – or a priest. Certainly, Satyrus, I have tried too hard. When you are my age, though, it all seems less important. I have my friends – I am who I am. Some men like me and others cross the street to avoid me, and that's as it is.' Memnon shrugged. 'I care less and less as I grow older.'

Satyrus shook his head ruefully. 'I seek humility, not further advice towards insularity.'

'Or arrogance?' Memnon asked. He laughed. He was a man who laughed easily, even at himself. 'You aren't arrogant. You are just used to being obeyed. It's a good thing in an officer. Perhaps a little difficult in a friend, eh?' He sat back, made his move and drank some wine. 'So, you really stared Manes down and called him a coward?'

Satyrus nodded. 'I did.'

Silence lay between them, and then Satyrus made his move. He was going to lose – and knowledge that he had lost made him play better, so that his ivory fleet might minimize its losses.

'Most boys – men – your age would have quite a tale to tell,' Memnon said.

Aspasia entered with his dose. She mixed the poppy and the almond juice by his bed, and Satyrus felt the craving rise in him as he smelled it.

Satyrus tried to push the desire down, wondering at the same time how he would ever stop using the stuff. He thought about his dose twenty times a day. More. 'I arranged an ambush, and it didn't go as well as I had expected. This happens to me – I make plans, and they never carry quite as well as I expect.' He shrugged. 'I tried to make him fight me. In effect, he ran away. That made him the victor and me the defeated. I was not… careful enough.'

Memnon smiled into his wine cup. 'You would have taken Manes all by yourself?' he asked.

Satyrus nodded. 'To get what I want from the pirates, I will have to kill Manes,' he said. 'All by myself. Or die trying.'

Memnon smiled at that and poured a libation. 'To Apollo, and all the gods. Here's to living to tell our stories, even if we add a little to them with the passage of years.'

'If you will pour libations on my new floor, you can fetch a slave to clean it up,' Aspasia said. But she smiled at her husband. He smiled back, and Satyrus was – jealous? Not jealous, precisely. He felt that they had something that he was missing. Something he really only shared with his sister. He took his dose and drifted off, thinking of Melitta. The next day, Timaeus and Panther came with Neiron. Memnon came in, too, although Satyrus knew he had a ship in lading. They crowded around Satyrus's bed while cold winter rain lashed the pebbles of the beach outside.

Timaeus took a cup of wine from a slave, saluted his hostess and nodded to Satyrus. 'Only the man who called Manes a coward could get me out on a day like this, lad,' he said.

Panther went straight to the point. 'Neiron here says that you have a proposition for us.'

Satyrus gave his helmsman a brief look. He couldn't imagine Neiron approaching the Rhodians. The man didn't have that much initiative – unless Satyrus had badly misjudged him.

Neiron shrugged. 'If I was out of line, I beg your forgiveness, lord. But these men have your trust, and they asked a hundred questions about Byzantium. It seemed easiest just to tell them.'

Satyrus nodded. 'No apology required. Timaeus, I have come in hopes that Rhodos will loan me a powerful squadron – in exchange for my clearing the Bosporus and the Propontis of pirates.'

Panther leaned forward. 'And how, exactly, will you do that?'

Satyrus met Panther's eye. 'I'll lead them into the Euxine and use them against Eumeles of Pantecapaeum.'

Timaeus laughed. He was heavily bearded, and men said that he was the avatar of Poseidon, and today, with rain in his curly hair and the summer tan gone from his skin, he looked the part. He laughed like a god as well – a heavy laugh that shook the rafters. 'You are bold!' he said.

Satyrus laughed with him. 'Laugh all you like,' he said when they were done. 'My way will not fail. If I win, the pirates are gone – employed by me. If I lose, they are still gone – to the bottom of the Euxine.'

'But you want a squadron from us,' Panther said.

'I will not win without a disciplined core,' Satyrus said. 'The pirates have thirty or forty ships that can stand in the line of battle, but they are not a fleet. I will have a few ships of my own, and I hope to add a few more from Lysimachos. None of my ships – except perhaps the Lotus – is as good as a Rhodian.'

'We have steered well clear of helping any of the Diadochoi,' Timaeus said. 'Why would we help you?'

'Because I will reopen trade into the Euxine – a grain trade that Rhodos needs and Athens needs. Lysimachos needs it and so does Cassander. Because I will get rid of more pirates in the spring than your whole fleet in a year's campaign – just by taking them away.'

'Yes, lad – but why would we serve with you? You'll take them away whether we come along for the ride or not.' Timaeus laughed again. 'And personal feeling aside – if you plan to take them to fight Eumeles, perhaps we should prefer that he then triumph over you? Then the pirates are dead, and we haven't lifted a finger.'

Satyrus nodded. 'Two points, Lord Navarch. First, one of morality. Some of the pirates are vicious men – look at Manes. But more of them are merely displaced. Alexander built fleets and now all the Diadochoi follow suit – they use them and then discard them.'

'Hence our distaste for them, lad,' Timaeus said.

'But the pirates themselves – many of them – are scarcely to blame.' Satyrus could see that this point was of no interest whatsoever to his audience, so he waved negation. 'Never mind,' he said. 'Second point. The day is coming when your neutrality will be tantamount to declaring a side. Already, twice, Antigonus and his son have blockaded you. If they'd had the siege machines, they'd have attacked. If Antigonus ever tries for Aegypt again, he must have your alliance or your submission.'

'True,' Panther said.

'And I am not one of the Diadochoi. I am Leon's nephew, and when I am king of the Bosporus, I can guarantee you a friendly fleet and a constant grain supply. When Antigonus makes his move and Rhodos is besieged, you will need me.' Satyrus sat back and crossed his arms.

Now Panther stroked his beard.

Timaeus shook his head. 'Pirates!' he said.

'Mercenaries,' Satyrus shot back. 'Daedalus is an exile from Halicarnassus, and Demostrate is an exile from Pantecapaeum. Why is one a mercenary and the other a pirate?'

'You might yet have a career as a sophist,' Timaeus answered. 'A pirate is a pirate. You may call sheepdogs the same as wolves, but when the real wolves come, everyone knows what they smell like.'

'The ally we need is Lysimachos,' Panther said. 'And he hates Demostrate as much as we do.'

'If I can show you an alliance with Lysimachos?' Satyrus asked. 'I have asked him. Eumeles has attacked his Thracian possessions in the Euxine – only raids now, but he will land to stay in time. As long as Demostrate holds the Bosporus, Lysimachos cannot reinforce his garrisons. But if I take Demostrate away, instantly Lysimachos is master of his own shores.'

Panther looked at his co-navarch. 'I see this,' he said.

Timaeus shook his head. 'It is complex.'

Memnon, silent until now, leaned forward. 'I'm sorry to betray a confidence, Satyrus, but I'm a Rhodian first. You said yourself that your plans are often too complex.' He shrugged. 'Can you carry this off?'

Neiron shook his head. 'His plans are excellent. No man – not even the gods – can plan for everything.' The Cardian looked around. 'He planned the ambush of Manes, and failed. But none of your captains brought the Terror to heel. This man will.'

Satyrus looked at his helmsman, vowing to give the man anything he asked. Neiron spoke out better in this foreign council than even Diokles might have – Diokles would have been handicapped by service to Rhodos. 'I do make complex plans,' he admitted. 'I am one man, trying to restore my kingdom. If Olbia had a straight road from Alexandria, I wouldn't trouble you – or Demostrate.'

Timaeus nodded. 'Fair enough. You've given us something to consider. When do you sail?'

Satyrus managed a smile. 'I sail when Aspasia says I sail.'

Timaeus and Panther exchanged a long look. 'Alexandria?' he asked.

'Yes,' Satyrus answered.

'Perhaps you could pick us up a cargo? And we'd meet again in a month,' Timaeus suggested.

'A cargo from Alexandria? In winter?' Satyrus asked. The seas south of Cyprus were deadly in winter. 'I'll charge you a bonus for every mina of grain.'

Timaeus shrugged. 'We'll take it out of our fee for the squadron,' he said. 'If we agree.' Alexandria spread before him like a basket of riches, the greatest harbour in the world surrounded by a city expanding so fast that a man could sit on the stern of his ship and watch the suburbs grow. At the end of the Pharos peninsula, a long spit of land that protruded like a caribou horn from the curve of the shore, workmen toiled with great blocks of limestone, laying the foundations of Ptolemy's proposed lighthouse even as thousands of other labourers carried baskets of earth from the mainland to widen and firm up the ground.

Satyrus stood by Neiron and watched Pharos slip past as his oarsmen dipped, paused and dipped again, bringing his ship slowly, carefully through the mass of shipping that filled the roadstead and crowded the beaches.

'There's Master Leon's house,' the lookout in the bow called.

Satyrus had a feeling of dread wash over him. He had no reason to feel that way, and he made a peasant sign of aversion.

'We'll land on the beach by the house,' he said.

Neiron nodded.

Satyrus had his rebroken arm splinted and tightly wrapped against his chest, but it hurt all the time. He watched the shore, attempting to rid himself of his mood and trying not to dwell on the pain in his arm.

Neither was particularly successful.

'Guard ship!' the lookout called.

'Messus has to go,' Satyrus said to Neiron.

'I'll see to it,' Neiron said. He shrugged. 'Messus is just as unhappy as you are.'

'I don't see him growing into the job,' Satyrus said, shaking his head.

'No,' Neiron said. He stroked his beard, his eyes on the approaching guard ship. 'Leon has merchant hulls – some of them quite fast. Like Sparrow Hawk. He could handle one of those, I think.'

Satyrus shook his head. Annoyed at always having to be the hard voice. 'He lacks authority.'

Neiron looked as if he was going to disagree.

'He lacks authority!' Satyrus snapped. Then he slumped. 'I'm becoming a bloody tyrant.'

'You do have a certain sense of your own importance,' Neiron said carefully.

Satyrus shook his head. 'It just goes on and on,' he said, but he didn't specify what it was.

'Oars – in!' Messus called. His timing was poor, and the oarsmen, who liked him, tried to compensate, but a hundred and eighty oarsmen can't all pretend that an order is properly given, and the Golden Lotus looked a far cry from her legendary efficiency as her wings folded in.

The guard ship coasted alongside and her trierarch stepped aboard trailing the smell of expensive oils. 'Cargo?' he demanded as his crimson boots hit the deck. 'I'm Menander, captain of the customs. Please show me your sailing bills.'

'Alum and hides,' Satyrus said.

'Hides for Aegypt? Leon's nephew must have lost his mind!' the man said. He made a note on his wax tablets.

Satyrus was growing angry again, but he knew that to lose his temper would be to act like a fool. He caught Neiron's look. 'I am injured, and not my best,' he said with a bow. 'My helmsman will handle this business.' Satyrus withdrew to the helmsman's bench. Neiron handed over a purse, and Menander peered into the hold, as if he could see past the lower-deck oarsmen and into the earthenware amphorae and the bales. 'All seems to be in order here,' he said, the purse bulging inside his chiton. He stepped back into his ship and they poled off, pulling strongly for their next victim.

'Now that's piracy, if you were to ask me,' Neiron said.

'T hanks,' Satyrus said. 'I'm in a mood to do harm. Something is wrong – I can feel it.'

Neiron shook his head. 'No – it's the poppy, Satyrus. That's all – throws your mind off. Sometimes a wound will do it alone – but a wound and the poppy can be deadly friends. I've had a few wounds.' He shrugged. 'Took one in my scalp – siege of Tyre, when I was young. It wouldn't heal, and the bump grew and grew. I thought I was going mad.'

'But you didn't,' Satyrus said.

Neiron stared at the approaching shore. 'Well – I did, for a bit. But that's not what I mean.'

Satyrus had to smile. 'This story is supposed to cheer me up?'

Neiron shrugged. 'I was saved by a good healer. And the gods, I suppose. You need to get to a doctor, just as Lady Aspasia said.'

'What did the doctor do with you?' Satyrus asked.

Neiron shook his head. 'Tied me down while I pissed the poppy out. Ares, it hurt. And that was after he cut a piece from my head, so that my skull felt odd for two years. I still rub it all the time.' He shrugged. 'That's what I mean, though. A bad wound changes you.'

Satyrus nodded. 'Everything looks right,' he said, cradling his arm. In his mind, there was a black smudge on the sky over the city.

Neiron sighed.

They went ashore beneath Satyrus's old bedroom window, and slaves and freemen were waiting on the beach with Sappho, having seen the famous Golden Lotus in the bay. Sappho smiled at him from the moment she caught his eye.

'We heard that you'd retaken the Lotus,' she said, and kissed him.

'I got him captured,' Satyrus said. He hugged her, and she responded fiercely. 'I'll free him in the end.' He looked around. 'Where's Melitta?'

'This is Kineas,' Sappho said. She held up a plump, round baby with huge blue eyes that wandered all around, as curious about the ship and the sky and the birds as about this strange man who'd taken him in his arms.

'Melitta's son! He's beautiful! Hello, nephew! Goodness!' Satyrus laughed. 'I feel quite old.'

'Melitta has gone to the Euxine to raise the tribes,' Sappho said quietly. 'I sent Coenus with her, and Eumenes when he came from Babylon.'

'Herakles!' Satyrus said. 'She left her son?'

Sappho's eyebrows made a hard line and the beauty of her face vanished in a mask. 'She did not run away,' Sappho said. 'Men tried to kill her – and me. This is war, Satyrus.'

Satyrus watched his sea bag going ashore. 'Aunt Sappho, you remember Neiron? He's my helmsman now. He proved himself this voyage. I hope he can stay in the house.'

Neiron bowed. Sappho inclined her head. 'Welcome to our house, Neiron.'

'Master Satyrus needs a healer,' Neiron said pointedly.

Sappho nodded. 'You look – pinched. Are you drinking too much, boy?'

'Poppy,' Neiron said. 'For a wound.'

'Herakles!' Satyrus didn't know whether to laugh or weep. 'I'm right here. I'm a grown man and I can see to my own needs!'

'So I see,' Sappho said, in a voice that suggested the opposite. She was already giving orders with her hands, and maids came running. Nearchus read the note from Aspasia. He scratched the bridge of his nose and smiled. 'Aspasia herself?' he said. Then he shook his head. 'You are in for a bad few weeks. Let me see the arm.'

He undid the bandages and the splints, and then replaced them. 'Beautiful, of course. Aspasia wouldn't do poor work. But she has left me the hard part. The night market is full of men who can set a bone.' He looked at Sappho, who had insisted on being present. 'I want him fed like an ox for sacrifice for a week. Satyrus, take what exercise you can with that arm. Because the next two weeks will be brutal.'

Satyrus shook his head. 'So you all keep telling me,' he said.

Nearchus scratched his nose again. 'We aren't kidding.'

Satyrus ate, and walked. He sacrificed at temples. On the third day he went across the city to the Aegyptian quarter, escorted by Namastis, a priest of Poseidon who had served with him at Gaza.

'You're sure they can forge the true steel?' Satyrus asked.

Namastis rolled his eyes. 'As you tell the story, a priest of Ptah made the sword in the first place. Yes?' Namastis grinned. 'You Greeks and your arrogance. You call us "Aigyptioi" – yes?'

Satyrus was watching the whole world of the Aegyptian quarter, and he nodded perfunctorily. It smelled different. It looked different. The people on the street seemed younger – vibrant with energy, fast-moving, alive.

A pretty girl flashed him a smile – not a common experience in the Greek streets.

'Do I have any of your attention?' Namastis asked. He paused and put his hand on the girl's head, and she accepted his blessing with a mixture of pleasure and impatience, like a child being praised by a parent.

'We call you "Aigyptioi",' Satyrus said in sing-song repetition.

'All you are saying is the "home of Ptah" or the "home of craft".' Namastis led him up the steps of the temple, where a very normal-looking god in robes presided – a god without the usual animal head.

The priests were immediately interested, thanks to a few words in private from Namastis, and when Satyrus unrolled the shards of his father's sword, they gathered around like dogs with a bone, whispering and touching the steel.

Namastis took him aside. 'They say many things. Mostly, they say that Sek-Atum made this, and he is old, but still the best. He is downriver at Memphis. How long will you be here?'

Satyrus shrugged. 'Until I am no longer friends with the poppy,' he said.

Namastis nodded, the import striking deep. 'Oh, my friend,' he said, and put a hand on Satyrus's shoulder.

He spoke to the priests. They looked sombre. The eldest among them came and put a thumb on Satyrus's lips, surprising him, and then looked deeply into his eyes. He nodded brusquely and stepped away, speaking quickly to Namastis.

'They will send the hilt and shards downriver to Memphis today. They say that the breaking of the blade and your health are one – that the blade must be reforged or your health will be broken like the blade, and the poppy in your body is the flaw in the blade. They say many things – they are priests.' Namastis shrugged. 'They say that the blade should have gone into your father's grave. Does this make sense to you?'

Satyrus thought of the kurgan by the Tanais River. It had a stone at the top, like every kurgan. 'I know what they speak of, yes,' he said. 'But they will reforge the blade?'

'As soon as it can be done. A donation would not be unwelcome. A mina of silver would be appropriate.'

'I will send them a mina of gold, if they are successful.' Satyrus hugged Namastis. 'This means a great deal to me.'

'It is well that you brought me. And it is good that you respect the ways of this land.' Namastis led him by the hand down the steps of the temple of Ptah and out of the Aegyptian quarter. They shared a meal and then Namastis had to go back to his duty at the temple.

'I will pray for you. Come and visit me!' Namastis said.

Satyrus went straight from the Temple of Poseidon to the palace. At the palace, he made an appointment with Gabines, the steward of the lord of Aegypt. He listened to the news in the agora and spread some rumours of his own.

On the fourth day, he visited Abraham's father, Isaac, who met him in the courtyard and had him in to drink qua-veh.

'How is my scapegrace son?' Ben Zion asked.

Satyrus drank the bitter stuff carefully. He realized that he had hoped that Miriam, Abraham's talkative daughter, would put in an appearance, although he had come to recognize that the poppy, when present, muted all such longings, and when absent, accentuated them. Right now he was as far from his last dose as he ever got, and thus on edge.

'He is well,' Satyrus said carefully. 'He sent a cargo, which I carried in the Lotus and sold at Rhodos. I brought alum from Rhodos – here are my bills. And that sack has the silver.'

Ben Zion waved a hand at two weeks of winter sailing. 'I would rather have my son. He is playing pirate while he ought to be getting married.'

Satyrus had a vivid image of Abraham playing 'feed the flute girl' at the symposium of Aphrodite. 'He will come back in the summer,' Satyrus said. 'I only came to assure you that he is well.'

'Well? He is fornicating like a stallion amongst heathens who would murder him for his curly hair. He is playing pirate with men who would eat his heart when they cut it out – and you took him there.' Ben Zion didn't seem particularly angry. He said these things as simple facts.

Satyrus met his eye. 'He is my best captain – my right hand. In a year, I will be king, or not.'

Ben Zion nodded. 'Listen, Satyrus son of Kineas, who would be king. If you fall, my son's head will lie beside yours. If you triumph, what value to me? What value to me if my son dies? I would rather that he came back here to his own and left your world of adventure. When he is dead, it will be too late for him to repent.'

Satyrus stood up. 'He is my best friend,' Satyrus said. 'I am sorry you don't value his accomplishments. He is as brave as a lion – thoughtful in council. He sees far, and he does not hesitate to do what must be done. If he were my son, I would be proud that he was accounted a great captain. They know his name in Rhodos and in Byzantium.'

'You are a young fool, like my son, Satyrus son of Kineas. What makes you think that I am not proud? I was proud when he came home from the fight at Gaza, like a young David in his pride. Men come to me and say, "Your son took an enemy galley in a fair fight, when the battle was lost," and again, "Your son saved his ship, and his friend." I hear these things, and I rejoice that my son is made of such stuff. And I still want him back here, where I can love him, and not dead with you.' Ben Zion held up the pot. 'More qua-veh?' he asked. 'We Jews speak our minds, young Satyrus. Don't bother to be offended. Bring him back to me.'

He walked Satyrus to the gate, and Satyrus felt better than he'd expected. He smiled at the older man, who tugged his own beard and laughed.

'How long will you be here?' Ben Zion asked. 'Surely all your busy schemes need you?'

Satyrus looked up at the exedra and saw movement behind a curtain. He looked back at Ben Zion, moved somehow to simple honesty.

'I took poppy for a wound and I've had too much of it. My physician is going to take it out of me. This will take more than a week.' He smiled ruefully.

'God be with you, then,' Ben Zion said. 'It is no small matter.' The older man took his elbow. 'You are looking for my daughter, I think.'

Satyrus nodded. 'I liked her.'

Ben Zion shook his head. 'She is married now. You have enough of my family already.' He guided Satyrus out of the gate.

Miriam married. Well, he scarcely knew her really, and that only to be annoyed at her. 'And how is the machine?' Satyrus asked.

Ben Zion tugged his beard again. But the smile that came to his lips was unforced. 'Magnificent. Lord Ptolemy has been here – to my house! To see it function. He wants one for his library. The tyrant of Athens has sent me a letter about it.' Ben Zion shook his head. 'I am one of the greatest grain merchants in the world, and no one knows my name outside the trade. But now that I have financed this machine – now men know me. What is the Greek word I am looking for?'

'Irony?' Satyrus asked.

'You have it, young man. The irony threatens to overwhelm me.' Ben Zion nodded to himself. 'There is a lesson there somewhere. Perhaps about the futility of human striving.' He studied the ground and then, raising his eyes, he seemed to study Satyrus. 'Two of the philosophers who worked on the machine are coming to Alexandria – indeed, I expect them any day. They come from Syracusa – students of Pythagoras and Archimedes. Would you like to meet such men? Or are their mathematics too academic for an adventurer such as yourself?'

Satyrus clasped the older man's hand. 'I would be delighted. It will give me something I can look forward to – while I lie on a bed and curse the poppy.'

'Good. I will send word to Leon's house. You will rescue him?' Ben Zion asked suddenly.

'Yes,' Satyrus said.

'Good. For that, I loan you my son. Leon and I are partners – it is fitting that my son help his nephew.' Ben Zion squeezed his arm and went back through his gate, leaving Satyrus wondering whether Ben Zion was speaking to himself or to Satyrus. The next day, Nearchus pronounced Satyrus fit.

Satyrus lay on his bed with a bucket of scrolls.

'Read while you can,' Nearchus said.

And so it began.