her. ‘May I share your couch?’ she asked.
Melitta moved aside and the older girl lay down. Melitta put an arm around her and they snuggled against each other.
‘I haven’t been dismissed, but Kinon won’t want me listening,’ the beautiful girl said. ‘He’s flirting with the Spartan. Why don’t they just say what they want?’
Melitta peeked over the back of her couch. The men had forgotten them altogether. They were laughing in the way that Melitta associated with jokes about sex, or women. In that respect, Sakje men and Greek men were little different.
‘Philokles doesn’t know what he wants,’ she said.
‘My master wants him,’ Kallista said.
Melitta held her breath a moment. ‘I thought that – that is to say, it seemed. Oh dear. I thought that he loved you?’
Kallista laughed. ‘First, mistress, I’m a slave – he can have me when he pleases, or send me to pleasure his guests. I’ve done all that. But no – in this house I’ve never been asked to oblige my master in any way, except to wait at table. I am an adornment. Much like the silver pitchers.’
‘Oh,’ Melitta said. ‘Do you-Is it better? Than – obliging?’
Kallista laughed. ‘How old are you, mistress?’
‘Twelve,’ Melitta said.
‘I’ve had men since I was eleven,’ Kallista said. ‘Sometimes it’s nice. Sometimes it’s big, drunk men who want me on their cocks in the middle of a party.’ She shrugged, turned away so that Melitta couldn’t see her face. ‘But I’ve never kindled, Aphrodite be thanked, and Kinon hasn’t pushed me at a man since I went into this house. Perhaps my hymen will grow back,’ she said. She rolled over carefully so that the couch didn’t make a noise. ‘Have you? Had a man?’
Melitta felt herself blush. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It all looks – silly.’
The older girl chuckled. ‘You don’t know the half of it. And your brother? Has he?’ The girl pulled her a little closer.
Melitta felt an alarm bell begin to ring softly in her head. ‘Why do you ask?’ she said.
‘No reason,’ Kallista replied. ‘He’s pretty enough, for his age. Men would want him – girls too.’
Melitta thought about that for a moment. ‘I don’t think he’s given it much thought,’ she said.
Kallista stiffened, then rolled away again. She lay with her back to Melitta for a little, and then rolled to her feet. ‘That must be nice,’ she said bitterly, and vanished into the darkness.
Melitta lay by herself for a moment, and then followed the other girl. She could hear the sound of her feet on the colonnade, and she tracked her. The older girl was crying very softly. Melitta caught up with her at the entrance to a dark room by the simple expedient of running a few steps and grabbing her shoulder.
‘I’m stupid sometimes,’ Melitta said.
The older girl collapsed in her arms, sobbing. Her sobs were very quiet. Melitta realized that when you were a slave, you didn’t even own your sobs.
‘Hey!’ Melitta said. She came from a family without a great deal of patience for tears. ‘I’m sorry!’
Kallista put her head on Melitta’s shoulder.
Then she started kissing the nape of Melitta’s neck.
Melitta froze for a moment, and then wriggled out of the other girl’s embrace with all the skills that her brother had taught her. ‘Hey,’ she said again, the sound of her voice threatening to get louder if required.
‘Oh,’ Kallista said. ‘I thought-’
‘Aphrodite,’ Melitta said.
‘I’d like to be friends,’ Kallista said.
‘Do you always chew on your friends?’ Melitta asked.
‘It’s fun,’ the older girl breathed.
‘Listen, Kallista,’ Melitta said, stretching a hand out. ‘I ride with the spear-maidens in the summer. I know what girls do.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe we can be friends.’ She pushed away from the column at her back. ‘But not lovers. I’m twelve, not five – I know how all that works.’
‘Do you?’ the beautiful girl asked, and Melitta caught the derision.
‘Well,’ Melitta admitted, ‘probably not.’
Kallista squeezed her hand.
Melitta felt a flutter of something, like a flush that spread from her chest to her groin. She let go of Kallista’s hand and fled for her room, leaving Kallista laughing, or crying, behind her.
But she didn’t get to sleep quickly.
Kallista was on her mind when she awoke, and as soon as she bathed she walked around to her brother’s room, where he was stretching as if for the palaestra.
‘You look better,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Comes and goes,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘The same.’ She sat on his sleeping couch. ‘You have a thing for Kallista,’ she said accusingly.
That got her brother to grin. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Just like our Lady Mother promised – all the feeling in the world, as if she was the only woman who had ever lived, Aphrodite incarnate.’ He spoke with self-mockery, because their mother had lectured them so often on the perils of young love and the intrigues of sex.
Then he sat down next to her and they embraced, both thinking of their mother.
‘Maybe Mama is all right,’ Melitta said.
Satyrus held her more tightly, and she hugged him back.
‘Kallista made a pass at me last night,’ Melitta said.
Satyrus stiffened and then sat back. ‘Oh,’ he said.
‘She asked me about you,’ Melitta said. ‘I rather like her. It’s nice having a girl to talk to. But there’s another face to her – something else. When she asked about you, she sounded – greedy.’
Satyrus got up and went back to doing his pankration guard positions. ‘Oh, I understand,’ he said. ‘With my well-known riches, she thinks I’ll make a good client? I think I’ve seen the play.’
‘Yes,’ Melitta said. ‘I think that’s just how she sees you.’ She was sorry to inflict pain on her brother, but she saw her shaft sink into him. She promised her mother, alive or dead, that she’d fill that role whenever she had to – somebody in the family had to be tough. And she wasn’t letting her brother get taken by a hetaira, no matter how lovely. It made her feel better.
‘Ouch,’ Satyrus said. He faked a kick with his left leg and then struck with his left hand, but in a flare of anger he misjudged his distance and his hand hit the plastered wall. Dust flew, and he cursed, holding his hand under his right armpit. ‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘Satyr!’ his sister admonished.
‘I feel like an idiot,’ he said.
‘I’ll withhold the obvious comment,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and eat.’
‘I need to get out of this house,’ Satyrus said. ‘Wine one night and slave girls the next. Save my virtue, Lita.’
‘I’m doing my best,’ she said.
‘Weren’t you tempted by her, though?’ he asked. He put his hand in the water pitcher.
‘No,’ she lied.
They walked out together to breakfast, pancakes and honey with sesame seeds. They both ate all they were offered, and then had to bathe again because they were so sticky. Philokles laughed at them, and Melitta laughed at herself, because for all her wisdom (and she offered prayer and libation to Athena for her help the night before), she was still a little girl who ate too many pancakes.
By mid-morning, they were in the business courtyard again, cleaning helmets under Theron’s exacting direction. Philokles had a pile of horsehair.
While they worked, Philokles went over his plan. ‘Tomorrow or the next day, we’ll go south,’ he said. ‘Theron will go as the captain of the escort and I will go with him. You are just two noble children travelling under our charge. We’ll be travelling through a war. I hope that we don’t have to do it for long.’
Theron shook his head. ‘Why don’t we just take a ship for Athens?’
Philokles spoke quietly. ‘Tenedos says that the marines from the trireme are watching the waterfront. I think
