‘Tonight?’ Niceas asked.
‘Can you arrange it?’ Kineas asked.
‘Give me another day,’ Niceas said. ‘And Temerix.’
Kineas nodded. ‘And Diodorus, perhaps you would invite the man himself to pay us a visit — perhaps the day after tomorrow.’
Diodorus fingered his red beard. ‘I don’t like it. If Niceas is caught, we’re giving him what he wants.’ He shrugged, glanced at Niceas and smiled. ‘If only Kineas was tyrant.’
Philokles snorted again. ‘If he was tyrant, we’d be doing this every day, putting the screws to every man in the city.’
Sappho laughed. ‘That must be why it is called democracy,’ she said.
7
The next evening Kineas hosted a symposium. The attendees were mostly his friends and officers, although after the campaign, neither group was as exclusive as it had been before.
Diodorus shared a couch with Sappho, the first time he had done so in public. He received some glances — Olbia was an old-fashioned city, and even in Athens the presence of a woman, any woman, at a symposium threatened a debauch — but his place as a hero of the city was so secure that glances were inevitably followed by smiles.
One of those smiling was Petrocolus, who lay with his son, Cliomenedes, trying to ignore the presence of the woman. Cliomenedes couldn’t ignore her, as he had to lean over her to talk to Diodorus, whom he idolized. Instead, he asked her about her life, her hairstyle, her role as a courtesan, and she answered him with clear, direct, intelligent answers.
Philokles shared his couch with Kineas. He was particularly well dressed in a beautiful wool tunic and fine dark leather sandals, and he smelled like a talent of gold. Kineas wondered whom the Spartan sought to impress, and even tried to make a joke about it — a joke that fell flat.
Niceas shared his couch with Sitalkes, the Getae boy’s first symposium. He was still a recovering invalid, and had a cup of heavily watered wine to keep him from excess. Past him, Memnon shared his couch with Craterus, a city hoplite who had made a name for himself during the campaign and now bid fair to replace Lycurgus as Memnon’s lieutenant. Lycurgus lay on the next couch with Heron of Pantecapaeum — two taciturn men who were likely to remain silent throughout the meal. But they were both officers, and both had agreed to go on the eastern expedition. Lycurgus was the oldest man present save Petrocolus, with a beard that was mostly grey, pale skin and pale eyes. His beard had white streaks where it sprouted from the scars on his face. His feet and lower legs were blotchy with the ingrained dirt of twenty campaigns. Heron, by contrast, was young and dark-haired, wore no beard and was ruddy-skinned like the Sindi, and his legs were unblemished.
Coenus shared his couch with young Dion, the heir to the political family formerly headed by Cleitus and Leucon. Dion had served with honour if not distinction throughout the summer, and his father’s death at the battle left him heir to three fortunes. He was close to Cliomenedes in age and temperament, and Kineas had assigned Coenus to woo him for their faction and for eventual office. Coenus, with his education, flawless manners and aristocratic habits, made easy work of the boy’s affections.
Lykeles, another of Kineas’s old companions, lay alone, still too pained by wounds to make an easy companion at dinner. He would not be going east because his days as an active soldier were probably over — and the angry marks at his neck and shoulder suggested that even routine motions might hurt for years to come. But he smiled as often as pain would allow, glad to be alive. He would be left behind to help Cliomenedes manage the hippeis — and to maintain the company’s communications with the city. With Arni as a factor, he would manage their fortunes and their estates, plead their lawsuits, and keep the wolves from their various doors. He had the experience of city politics to manage such a job, and Kineas hoped that he had enough reputation from the summer to keep the likes of Demosthenes from becoming too bold.
The two Gauls, now both men of property, shared a couch. Andronicus, the larger of the pair, had blond hair and blue eyes, while Antigonus had dark hair and green eyes and tattoos just visible at the neck of his tunic. Both of them had practised for a year to attend a symposium, with Philokles and Diodorus as the drillmasters, and they could hold both wine and discourse, although Antigonus’s more limited command of Greek tended to leave him smiling genially rather than conversing.
Leon lay just by them, and completed the circle of couches by lying close to Kineas and Philokles as well. Crax shared his couch. The Bastarnae had also begun his life with Kineas as a slave, and he, too, was now free and richer by a string of horses and a shelf full of gold cups made in Macedon. Crax had taken many blows in the great battle, but none had broken his skin, and he was the healthiest of all of them. Every other veteran present bore wounds, and they lay on their couches in comfort that verged on somnolence. Alone of all of them, Lot sat in a chair, uncomfortable with Greek dining but happy with a cup at his elbow and men he liked all about him. He raised the first toast, offered libation to his own gods and thanked his host.
‘Who is closer to me than my battle brothers?’ he said. ‘Who could be closer than men who will follow me east to fight Iskander?’
Lot’s bold assertion silenced them for a while, and when talk restarted, it was light and seldom dwelled long on any subject, and only the efforts of Sappho at one side of the circle and Coenus at the other end — both, in their own way, masters of social intercourse — kept the gathering from silence.
The dinner itself was superb, the product of Kineas’s kitchens and Leon’s cooks — or vice versa. They had not divided their fortune, and so far owned Nicomedes’ property together. Neither seemed in any hurry to divide the estate, as such a division would only serve to make lawsuits easier.
The dinner featured more opson than Kineas liked — fish followed fish, oysters in sauce, lobster in more sauce, bits of bread that looked more like decorations than the main course — but there were no Athenian moralists there to decry the decadence, and given the way they’d all eaten during the summer, no one could really accuse them of wanton luxury. Every man ate to surfeit. Lot spilled lobster on his fine silk robe and laughed, and Philokles, already a little drunk, tripped with a ewer of wine and spattered half the room. By the time the last mutton went round and the last flatbread to wipe up the last of the fish sauce, they were all a little greasy.
As the meal went on, they discussed matters of the city, such as lawsuits and politics, and listened politely to Sappho as she played on her instrument and sang. When the main courses were done, they pulled their couches closer and drank together, the wounded men more quickly flushed, but soon they were all redder of face and louder, and Sappho smiled and withdrew.
Diodorus tried to restrain her, holding her hand. ‘Stay!’ he said. ‘You are no Greek matron, to be shocked at what men say with wine in them.’
She shook her head, and her smile warned him that he had wounded her. ‘I am a hetaira,’ she said with grim courtesy, ‘not a flute girl.’
When she was gone, Diodorus looked ruefully at Kineas. ‘Who knows?’ he asked.
Kineas knew, but he rubbed his beard and made a mental note to explain to Diodorus sometime what was plain enough to him — that in her mind, Sappho was still a matron of Thebes. Ill usage, slavery and worse had not broken her notions of proper behaviour. He honoured her for it.
When Sappho was gone, the talk grew louder, the jokes a little wilder, but every speaker seemed to be waiting for something, and the party lacked focus until Kineas rose to his feet. Kineas waited for a pause in the noise and raised his cup, and they all raised theirs, as if they had been waiting all evening for this moment.
‘I want to talk about the expedition to the east,’ he said. He gave them a grin. ‘Against Alexander!’
They sighed together, as if relieved. Lot gave a shrill yip like a Sauromatae war cry.
‘Are we allowed to say that aloud?’ Philokles asked.
Kineas was sober and serious. ‘I am going east because I need to be out of this city, and because my destiny is there. Moira awaits me in the east. I cannot be plainer with you than that.’
Around him, the men who knew of the power of his dreams nodded, all gaiety gone, while others looked puzzled. Memnon laughed.
Kineas ignored him. ‘I must go. That is not true of you. Many of you — all of you, now — have property here
