‘You’re the dangerous one,’ Leon said. ‘A taxeis of locals? Suddenly you’re going to have political power. And enemies. Welcome to my world.’
‘I expect I will,’ Philokles said. ‘Should that deter me from an action that will help to balance the disaffection of the Macedonians and will render all of us safer? Stratokles is here, Leon. In this city. We need to gather our friends.’
Outside in the darkness, they all gulped lungfuls of smoky Alexandrian air. Satyrus was old enough to realize that they had all been as scared as he.
‘Where will we go?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Rhodos, really?’
‘We?’ Leon asked. ‘You will take the cargo as my navarch. You’ll have excellent officers who you will listen to as if they were your uncles. You can sell a cargo and buy one, I hope?’
Satyrus’s heart swelled to fill his chest. ‘I’ll be navarch myself ?’ he asked.
Diodorus slapped him on the shoulder. ‘You keep telling us you’re a man,’ he said.
A slave approached from the shadow of the megaron, guiding a woman with a shawl over her head. ‘Lord Satyrus,’ she called quietly.
Before his uncles could restrain him, Satyrus responded, ‘Here!’
The young woman took his hand. ‘Your sister intends to stay the night,’ she said in a whisper, ‘and requests that you visit her for a moment before you go.’
Leon shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that I cannot allow my niece to spend the night in the palace,’ he said. ‘She has urgent duties to which she must attend.’
The young woman’s face was white as tawed leather under the shawl. ‘Oh – oh dear!’ she said. ‘Then you must come with me, lords.’
She led the way to the women’s quarters.
‘Where are my torch-bearers?’ Leon asked the palace slave.
‘I don’t know, lord. I’ll find them and meet you on the portico of the women’s wing.’ The slave turned and ran.
The women’s palace was well lit, and sounds of laughter and music carried out into the night. A kithara was being played – two kitharas. And Melitta was singing with Kallista. Satyrus grinned.
‘This wasn’t supposed to happen this way!’ said the young woman at his side. She caught at his hand. ‘Come with me,’ she said.
Her hand was remarkably smooth and soft for a slave. He looked at her, and in the increased light of the portico, he realized that she was Amastris – the princess of Heraklea. His Nereid. He had seen her dozens of times at court. They had shared long glances. But he hadn’t touched her hand since – well, since he was a supplicant at her uncle’s court.
‘Amastris!’ he said.
‘Shh!’ she said. ‘My beautiful plan is in ruins. I wanted to see you.’ She smiled, her lips red in the torchlight. She glanced past him, where Leon was sending a slave in to fetch Melitta. ‘I thought that your sister would stay for a few days. I’ve been on a ship for three weeks and trapped in my father’s politics for the summer.’
‘You wanted to see me?’ Satyrus breathed. He leaned a little closer.
‘There’s a rumour in the women’s quarters that you are to be exiled.’ Amastris was standing very close to him, in the darkness of the columns. ‘Oh, I feel like a fool.’
Satyrus knew with his usual sense of doom that in three days or so he’d think of the words he should have said.
‘I have to go in,’ Amastris said. ‘I’m sorry that…’
Satyrus felt his breath catch and cursed his cowardice – his knees were weak. His elbows felt weak. But he reached out anyway and caught her to him. Amazed that years of training in pankration should have prepared him so badly for this vital grasp.
He missed her shoulders in the dark and his right hand brushed her waist. She turned towards him, just the way an opponent would turn to get inside the reach of his long arms. He felt her hands on his upper arms, the press of her breasts against his chest. His own breath rasped in and out and his heart pummelled the inside of his ribcage like a dangerous opponent trying to fight its way out. As he lowered his mouth on hers – her hands locked behind his neck like a triumphant wrestler; her mouth, her lips, soft as lotus flowers and yet tough and pliant; his lips on her teeth, and their tentative opening, like the gates of a garden, and the ecstasy of the softness of her tongue – the dispassionate part of his mind noted that his composure was far more affected than it had been while fighting Stratokles. His heart was going like a galloping horse.
Then he stopped thinking, and lost himself in her.
‘Satyrus!’ Leon said in a voice of command. ‘Find him!’
Amastris was out of his embrace before his heart could beat again, her fingers brushing down his arm as she fled, and then she was gone into the dark.
‘Here, sir,’ Satyrus called, emerging from the darkness of the colonnade.
‘Kissing a slave girl!’ Carlus growled approvingly. ‘I saw her!’ The torch-bearers were coming up out of the darkness.
‘Satyrus!’ Leon said. ‘We have enough troubles without you assaulting palace slave girls. By all the gods – keep that thing under your chiton.’
Diodorus laughed.
Melitta came to the door and embraced another girl – Satyrus strained to see if it was Amastris – and came outside. ‘Uncle, I was to spend the night!’ she said, in a tone that came close to a whine.
‘Come, my dear,’ Philokles said, putting an arm around her. ‘We’re sorry-’
‘Oh, Hades and Persephone, it’s true, then! Satyrus is to be exiled!’ Melitta looked around for him and then drew him into a hug. She whirled on Leon, who was arranging the torch-bearers. ‘I’m going with him!’
‘Yes, you are,’ Leon said.
That left Melitta speechless. While she stood staring, Kallista emerged from the women’s quarters and threw her chlamys over her head. The torch-bearers closed around them and they walked for the main gate. Gabines, Ptolemy’s steward, met them on the way.
‘Sometimes a man has to take sides,’ Gabines said without preamble. ‘You are all in danger. Now. Tonight. Men – I will not say who – informed Stratokles as soon as you were summoned. Understand? And there’s a faction – you know them as well as I – of Macedonians here who would love to see you all dead.’ He looked around. ‘I think you are all the king’s friends. I’ve doubled the king’s guard and I’m sending three groups out of the gates to confuse them. Now go!’
Philokles stepped out of the group and took Gabines by the arm. They spoke in private, rapidly, the way commanders speak on a battlefield. Then both of them nodded sharply, in obvious agreement even in the torchlight, and Gabines hurried away.
The guard was being changed, and they took several minutes to get clear of the construction platforms and the smell of masonry, minutes that Coenus, Diodorus and Leon spent in whispered consultation with Philokles, who then took a weapon from one of the torch-bearers and walked off into the night, and another pair of torch-bearers doused their lights and ran off into the night with instructions from Diodorus. The gate guards watched this with some alarm, and Satyrus noted that one of them also left the guard post at a run.
Diodorus barked an order and they were out on the darkened streets.
They were well out on the Posideion when Philokles reappeared at a run, his chlamys wrapped around him. He made a gesture and Carlus raised his torch and swung it through a broad arc. ‘We are being followed, ’ Philokles said, breathing hard. There was a line of blood on his hip. ‘Be ready.’ He looked at Satyrus and shook his head. ‘I’m old and fat, boy!’
Melitta didn’t turn her head. ‘Carlus,’ she said to the man behind her, ‘I’m unarmed.’
The big barbarian – scarcely a barbarian after fifteen years speaking Greek, but his size still stood out – reached under his armpit and produced a blade as long as a man’s foot. The blade sparkled in the torchlight. ‘One of my favourites,’ he said.
Melitta took the blade and slipped it under her cloak.
They turned suddenly off the Posideion into an alley that ran behind the great houses and temples, and the whole group moved faster – and then Diodorus had Satyrus by the shoulder and turned him south, away from their route. Carlus had Melitta right behind them, and the rest of the torch-bearers continued on as if nothing had
