you, I’d be tempted to crucify the messenger to make my point.’
Leosthenes nodded soberly. ‘I made much the same point to my employer. Luckily, I am me.’
‘This time,’ Kineas said. ‘Next time, you might be mistaken for someone else.’
After Leosthenes and his ten Hyrkanian nobles had ridden for home in the dark, Kineas tugged on his cloak. Niceas and Philokles were still on their couches.
‘I’m for the palace,’ Kineas said.
‘I thought you weren’t smitten,’ Philokles said.
‘I’m not smitten. But I’ll wager that she has excellent sources in this camp, or at least in the agora outside our gate, and she’ll know in an hour what’s been offered. I want to make sure she got the right message. And double the guards. I don’t like anything about this place.’ Kineas finished the last wine in his cup and tipped it up on the sideboard. Was he smitten? He certainly had the same urges as any soldier.
Philokles nodded agreement. ‘I’d like your permission to try and place someone in the palace,’ he said.
‘Slave?’ Kineas asked.
‘Best you not know,’ Philokles said. Kineas could see how uncomfortable this conversation made his friend. He desisted with a grunt.
The ride up the hill in blowing snow and the warmth of the rooms with their hypocaust floors couldn’t have been a sharper contrast. Kineas shed his cloak and sandals in the outer rooms and passed, clad only in his tunic, to the inner sanctum, where the queen sat in state surrounded by her slaves and courtiers.
‘You had a visitor,’ she said cheerfully, as soon as he entered.
‘A very old friend,’ he said. ‘I taught him to swing a sword.’
Banugul rose, took wine from a naked woman whose pubic hair was shaved to resemble the Greek letter alpha, and brought the cup to Kineas with her own hands. The smell of her caught at his breath — the hint of a smell, somewhere in the arch of his nose. A clean, delicate smell, like mint. Her head came to his shoulder, and from his advantage of height, he could see even more of her to admire. He raised his cup to her.
‘What did he offer you to betray me?’ she asked, very close.
Kineas wondered if there was a killer standing behind him. He was weaponless and her tone belied the clean purity of her scent — she was angry, working herself up for murder. ‘I refused to hear his offer,’ Kineas said.
‘Really?’ she asked. For the first time, he had said something that took her by surprise. She returned to her throne and sat. To Kineas, her motions seemed to take a very long time.
‘Really,’ Kineas answered.
She sighed. ‘I would like to trust you,’ she said.
Kineas shook his head gently. ‘You trust no one,’ he said. He looked around. ‘May I have a chair?’
She gave him a small smile. ‘I can do better than a chair.’ She motioned, and a proper couch was brought for him. While he arranged himself on it, another was brought for her. More couches arrived and her courtiers, half a dozen men in a mix of Persian and Greek dress, settled on to them uneasily. She arranged herself on hers with her usual grace, rose on one elbow and toasted Kineas with her gold goblet.
Kineas poured a libation to the gods and then toasted her with a line from Aristophanes that made her smile.
She took a long drink of her wine and then rolled on to her stomach. ‘If I have you killed, right now, I can buy your soldiers and fight any campaign I please,’ she said.
Kineas’s stomach twisted. He was not immune to fear, and his hands betrayed him. He clenched his goblet. She was serious.
‘My soldiers would storm this citadel and put everyone in it to the sword,’ he said, with the best imitation of calm he could muster. He could hear the fear in the end of his sentence.
Her guard captain revealed himself, standing just out of his line of vision to his right, by snorting his disdain. ‘Try, fucking Greek.’
Banugul gave an enigmatic smile and indicated her guard captain with her chin. ‘This is Therapon, my strong right arm.’
Kineas took a deep breath. He didn’t turn his head, although he noted the alcove where the man was standing. ‘Every one of your men is bribable. You have little discipline — so little that even now, the towers on the citadel’s north walls are empty because the men don’t want to get that cold. No one is watching the north wall.’
‘No one can climb the north wall,’ the queen said, but her eyes flicked to the guard captain, and he looked away.
‘Like Leosthenes, Diodorus, my second, is a childhood friend from Athens. You could never bribe him, lady. Unlike this dog of a Thessalian you keep to bully your guards, my men are soldiers, fresh from a summer of victory.’ He was beginning to convince himself, and his words flowed faster. ‘If you murder me, all of you will die.’
She met his eye easily, and smiled. It wasn’t a smile of seduction, but a smile of pure calculation. She was not young. Nor was she old. She was at the turning point of age, where the lines at the corners of her eyes did not mar her looks but only added to her dignity. ‘What was Artabazus’s offer?’ she asked for the second time.
‘I refused to hear it,’ Kineas repeated.
Her eyes opened wider for a fraction of a second and then narrowed. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘I cannot be tempted by something I haven’t heard,’ Kineas said. ‘Do you know the famous soldier Phocion?’
‘I know his name and his reputation. His honour is proverbial.’ She raised her eyebrows expectantly. She smiled, and Kineas knew that he was not going to die. He thought he had her measure.
‘He used to tell us that the best way to avoid temptation,’ Kineas felt the tension falling away from him, ‘was to avoid temptation.’
She nodded, eyebrows arched. ‘I often seek temptation out,’ she said. ‘But I am a queen.’ She looked at the grapes in the bowl next to her. ‘Every grape,’ she said, taking one, ‘has been seeded in my kitchens by slaves. That is the fate that awaits you if I discover that you have received more messengers from Artabazus. Have I made myself clear?’
Kineas held his ground. ‘If Leosthenes the Athenian comes to my camp, I will always receive him, Despoina. And I will present myself for examination immediately afterwards.’
‘Strange man,’ she said. She looked at him for some time, eating grapes. ‘Am I a temptation?’
‘Yes,’ Kineas said.
She nodded, her face serious. ‘Yet you do not avoid me.’
Kineas rubbed his chin and chewed a grape. ‘I concede your point.’
She leaned forward, interested. ‘Men do not usually allow women victories in conversation. You concede my point. But? There is a but?’
‘You are observant, my lady. But you are my employer, and to avoid you would create misunderstanding. You are a queen, and any temptation you offer will come with enough barbs to hook a Euxine salmon.’
She raised her chin and allowed a slight smile to indicate that his point had merit. ‘I grew to womanhood at a Persian court. Both of my uncles were poisoned. My mother was murdered with a sword. My father now seeks to kill me. Do you understand?’
Kineas nodded, hands calming gradually. ‘You keep your slaves nude to know if they carry weapons.’
She pulled her legs under her and leaned towards him. ‘I disarm my enemies in any way I can,’ she said. ‘I have few enough weapons. If I were a man, I would be strong. I am a woman. What would you have me do?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m a canny fish. I can see the hook and the bait and even the boat.’
She curled a lip. ‘What a very safe answer.’ She motioned past him, and a man with a lyre sat on a stool and began to sing. He was excellent and his purity commanded silence. Kineas turned his head to find that the singer was fully clothed — not a slave.
‘Persian?’ he asked after the first performance.
‘Lycian,’ she answered. ‘Or Carian.’
Kineas stroked his chin. ‘The words are strange, but the cadence is like Homer.’
Her body faced the singer, but she turned her head to him, stretching her neck and back. Her smile was as beautiful as dawn in the mountains, and as fresh. ‘Are all Athenians as well educated as you are?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. He put a hand over his goblet so that the wine slave backed off. ‘Where did you learn Greek?’ He looked away, towards the singer. Therapon glared at him steadily. His hate made an emotional counterpoint to
