the way a man in the desert needs water. You’re on. If your father comes for you, though, I’ll hand you over in a heartbeat. Understand me, boy?’
Melitta stood straighter. ‘Yes, sir!’
‘Pluton, none of my boys call me “sir”.’ Idomeneus grinned, his teeth glinting in the torchlight. ‘Can I buy you two a cup of wine to seal the bargain?’
Melitta wanted to accept, but Xeno shook his head. ‘I thought I’d go to the slave auction,’ he said.
Melitta flinched. ‘You know how Uncle-’ She reconsidered her sentence. ‘What do you want with a slave?’ she asked.
Idomeneus gave her a steady look. Xeno glanced around nervously. ‘I want a shield-bearer,’ he said. ‘I have all my share from the ship. All the rich boys have a shield-bearer.’
‘A fool and his money,’ the Cretan muttered. ‘Listen, boys – never buy anything at the night auction. Half those poor bastards were just kidnapped off the street, and the other half are shills who follow you home just to help their allies rob your house.’
‘I can’t afford anything at the day market,’ Xeno said. He was avoiding Melitta’s glares.
‘Go without,’ the archer-captain said, with all the firmness of age and experience. ‘Oh, fine. I’ll go with you – otherwise you’ll both end up on the block. Argon?’ he called, and another Cretan stepped away from a big fire, downed the wine in a cheap clay cup and handed it to another man.
‘With you, humpback. Who’s this boy?’ Argon was taller and handsomer and didn’t look very bright.
‘Bion – just joined. We’re going to the night auction. Come and cover my arse.’ Idomeneus grinned and the two men slapped each other’s backs.
The four of them made their way to the auction, where a deep throng of onlookers – many of them slaves themselves – gathered to bid on the dregs of the dregs of the city of Alexandria. Melitta was disgusted by the whole process – she shared her uncle’s views on every aspect of the trade. Most of the people on auction were hopeless – the kind you saw on the fringe of the agora in the daytime, begging and stealing, many scarcely capable of speech. They were scrawny, ill fed, most had few teeth and all flinched whenever a free man came too close. The only healthy, normal-looking specimens were children, and their version of normality was abject terror at being sold. One boy sobbed incessantly.
What kind of parent sells her child? Melitta asked in her head, but the answer was plain before her, as two of the children were auctioned off by a toothless bastard with an evil smile. The two children he sold were bruised and silent, watching the torch-lit crowd with all the interest of dead souls watching the living.
Melitta found that her right thumb was rubbing the hilt of her long knife. She wanted to kill the man.
The next lot was a single boy, the one who kept sobbing. Under his dirt and his scrunched, unhappy face he was healthy, blond and larger than most of the other children.
Xeno was shifting nervously, aware, like most boyfriends, that he had annoyed his lover, and unable to think of a way to make it right without giving up his precious project of buying a slave.
Melitta could read him so easily that it hurt her – hurt her opinion of him. But without weighing the morality of her actions, she smiled up at him. ‘Buy that boy,’ she said. ‘He looks strong enough.’
‘My aspis is taller than that kid!’ Xeno said, but he looked at the boy again. ‘He’s whimpering.’
‘Zeus Soter, he’s big, and in a few years he’ll be strong. Besides, he’s just the sort a certain uncle of ours tries to rescue. Don’t be a git, Xeno.’ Melitta tried to whisper, but the crowd was hooting for the next lot to be stripped – two whores being sold for debt.
Idomeneus caught something of what she said, because he leaned in. ‘That boy? He looks all right. I’ll go and look him over.’ The Cretan shrugged. ‘Boy that size is like having a kid, though. Have to teach him everything – but if he lives, a good investment.’
The crowd was so anxious to see the pornai that the hawker was having trouble getting bids on the blond child.
‘I fucking hate seeing kids sold,’ Argon said. He spat at the man who had sold the two children, now standing at arm’s length from them counting his silver coins. The man felt the moisture and whirled in anger.
Argon didn’t move. ‘Fuck yourself, clod.’
The clod flinched and backed away. Argon was a big man.
Melitta nodded. ‘I wanted to kill him,’ she said.
‘Really?’ Argon asked. ‘Want to?’
Melitta realized then that she was in a different world – that Argon meant just what he said.
‘Three silver owls,’ Idomeneus said. ‘Argon, don’t make trouble. Bion, did you stir him up, the stupid lout? Argon, take a deep breath and back off.’ The Cretan shook his head. ‘He’s the kind of man who makes other people call us Cretans.’
Xeno handed the officer three big silver coins, and Idomeneus made them vanish. ‘Never flourish money like that at night,’ he said. ‘You boys should get some training in real life. Anyway, boy’s yours.’ He reached out and took a leash from the hawker. Xeno took it and pulled, but the boy didn’t move, and the crowd was howling for the prostitutes to be stripped.
Melitta put her arm around the boy’s shoulder. ‘Come on, boy,’ she said.
He sobbed and hunkered down.
Idomeneus picked him up as if he was made of feathers. ‘Let’s go somewhere bright and quiet and look at what you bought,’ he said. ‘Camp.’
Satyrus dropped from his balcony to the beach with a minimum of fuss, except for the pain in his side over his ribs, which burned anew as he hung from his fingers for a moment. Then he gathered the bundle he’d thrown from the balcony moments before and sprinted off down the beach, the sound of his feet covered by the shouts of the men and women on the beach.
The Golden Lotus was stern-first on the beach between the Hyacinth and the Bow of Apollo, her bow awash, ready for action in minutes, and her crew were drinking and enjoying the company of hundreds of Alexandria’s waterfront whores, who had turned the beach into an outdoor market, with wine and food and other delights for the thousands of oarsmen from Ptolemy’s fleet.
Satyrus had no difficulty slipping through them in a plain cloak, ignoring a few offers of companionship and his own sense of what he ought to be doing, and seizing hold of the rope that led to the ship’s boat, moored alongside the oar box. He pulled off his boots and climbed aboard, loosed the rope and rowed away.
Satyrus rowed across the harbour in the light of a new moon, the upside-down crescent that the Sakje and the Aegyptians both called the ‘maiden with her legs spread’. Whatever powers Sophokles and Stratokles possessed, Satyrus didn’t think they could track him across the harbour.
He rowed right past the guard post at the palace without a challenge – not the first time – and coasted silently into the tiny harbour, scarcely larger than a courtyard, where Ptolemy’s own barge loaded and unloaded. What he was doing was insane, but he was smiling, for the first time in days.
Her directions were specific – he was to come to the gate. Amastris had no way of knowing that the front gate full of Macedonian guards was the last place he wanted to be. He moored his boat at the trade dock and climbed the ladder to the pier, which was empty. Ptolemy had problems of his own – he was not going to fill his palace full of Foot Companions the night before he marched. Satyrus had bet on it, and his bet was coming up.
At the top of the ladder, he stripped off his chiton and pulled on the dun chlamys of a palace slave. Slaves seldom wore a chiton. He looked longingly at his sword, and then tossed it on top of his chiton. One thing no slave ever had was a weapon. Barefoot like a slave, he stole into the palace.
No one challenged him. There were slaves in every corridor, but they ignored him, although he got enough glances to see that many of them knew he was not one of them. Neither, however, did they seem inclined to betray him.
He passed through the court and the megaron, carrying a wine pitcher he found on a chest, and then he went out of the main entry under the wall painting of Zeus. He left the wine pitcher in the entryway and walked with his head bowed across the great courtyard towards the main gate.
The gate guard tonight were Cavalry Companions – the ruler’s own Hetairoi, and thus men he could have trusted. Many of them were friends of Diodorus, and although most were Macedonians, their fates were so tied to the house of Ptolemy that they would never betray him – or, by extension, Satyrus. He sighed for all his extra effort, and in between the beginning and end of that sigh, he spotted a slender shadow amidst the pillars and scaffolding of the new gate.
