‘By Artemis, goddess of virgins, may I kill a pirate before that snot-faced boy!’ Melitta proclaimed.
Nihmu leaned over towards the younger people. ‘You wish to go as an archer, perhaps? My husband could set a new fashion!’ She smiled her enigmatic smile. As a girl, Nihmu had been an oracle among the Scythians on the sea of grass. Her oracular powers had left her a serious young woman with a head for figures, and she had married Leon after his second expedition to the east. ‘Amazon crews? Eh?’ she asked.
Nihmu, as the only other Sakje woman, was Melitta’s special friend, a bridge between the world of Alexandria and the sea of grass. Melitta laughed. ‘Why can’t I?’ she asked. ‘Once at sea, who would know?’
‘The other archers,’ Leon called from his couch. ‘Take this seriously, friends. We are at war as of now.’
Melitta stood up and raised her wine cup. ‘We were always at war, Uncle Leon. We just forgot.’
Sappho shook her head, as if denying this assertion, but Philokles, coming in with his whole midriff wrapped in linen, nodded. ‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘Life is war.’
‘Spare us the Heraklitus,’ Sappho said.
‘Where are we going, Uncle?’ Satyrus asked. To have kissed Amastris and be going as a navarch all in one day seemed unbearable joy, despite everything, and thoughts of revenge on his mother’s murderers slipped farther away.
‘We aren’t going anywhere, lad,’ Leon said. ‘You will take Golden Lotus up to Rhodos and drop a cargo of grain they need desperately. Then, if the helmsman agrees, you will go north around Lesvos to Methymna and across to Smyrna, drop some hides and some odds and ends and pick up a cargo of dye. And then home on the wind. Three weeks if you are quick – a month at the outside. By then, I predict that the king will be your friend again.’
Melitta was consuming broiled squid at a rate that made Satyrus dizzy. ‘We have to pack!’ she said.
‘What if he is not our friend then?’ Satyrus asked. What if the king learns that I’ve kissed his ward?
Diodorus finished drinking a bowl of soup. He rubbed a hairy forearm across his mouth and Sappho made a gesture of resignation. ‘Then we’ll have Hyacinth meet you in the outer harbour and you can take her to Cyrene!’ He laughed and reached across his wife for wine. She scowled. He looked around. ‘Listen, friends. We’ve grown soft. Now we go back to being hard. We, here, have a month to do Stratokles all the harm we can. We need to destroy him and his power base in this city. That goes for every servant – every slave. If you see one of the Athenian’s slaves getting water, beat him – or her. Understand?’
The servants in the hall nodded – some looked eager, and others looked scared.
‘You make mighty free with my people and my triremes, brother,’ Leon said to Diodorus, but then he shrugged. ‘That is, of course, what we’ll do – keep the twins moving until the problem is solved, and fight Stratokles in the shadows.’ He shrugged apologetically to his wife. ‘It will be hard here. And the Macedonian party won’t just stand by.’
Satyrus ate some bread and fish sauce. ‘But Philokles will come with us,’ he said. And then he understood. ‘Won’t he?’ he added, sounding weak even to himself.
Philokles shook his head. ‘Time for you to fly on your own, lad,’ he said.
‘Theron?’ Satyrus asked.
Theron, lying with Philokles, raised his head and shook it. ‘Philokles and I are apparently raising an army to defend you, my prince,’ he said.
Satyrus recalled that earlier that day he had dreamed of commanding the Golden Lotus.
Lamplight, and Melitta standing by his bed. ‘Carlus came in!’ she said. ‘Alive – but wounded. Philokles is with him.’
Satyrus rolled to his feet with the ease of practice and followed his sister down the dark corridor and out across the courtyard between the two houses. He could sleep-walk the route to Philokles’ rooms.
Carlus took up the whole of Philokles’ oversized sleeping couch and still his lower legs dangled off the end.
‘I must have sent a dozen of them to hell,’ he said in his thick accent. ‘And they broke, but there were more, and more. Fifty.’ The big Keltoi shook his head weakly. ‘Zeus Soter, I was afraid, and then – they left me. Gone, like a herd of deer running in the woods.’
‘They weren’t paid enough to go chest to chest with you, Titan,’ Philokles said. ‘If it makes you feel better, I think we’ll be going into those neighbourhoods you wanted to clean. Soon.’
‘Uhh,’ the Keltoi grunted, and fell asleep.
‘Will he live?’ Satyrus asked.
‘Look at the muscle on that chest!’ Philokles said, shaking his head. ‘Yes – none of these dagger blows got through his muscle. Those were brave and desperate men, Satyrus. Contempt for your opponents is always a waste of time. Imagine facing Carlus in the dark. Two men got close enough to mark him. Imagine.’
‘He’s passed out,’ Melitta said.
‘Poppy – he’s so full of it he should bleed poppy juice,’ Philokles said. ‘So we all made it home. That makes me feel better – there was a moment in the dark when I thought we were all going down. Ares, I’m not as young as I used to be.’
‘I wish you were coming with us,’ Melitta said.
‘Me too,’ Satyrus said. He found that he was holding his sister’s hand.
Philokles got up, wincing and favouring his left side. ‘Listen,’ he said, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. ‘Pythagoras teaches that there are four seasons to life as there are four seasons to the world – spring, when you are a child, and summer, in the full bloom of adulthood – then autumn, when a man reaches his full power and a woman’s beauty fades, and winter, when we age towards death. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ the twins chorused.
‘I pronounce that you have passed from spring into summer,’ Philokles said. ‘Melitta, you are a woman, and Satyrus, you are a man. What is the first lesson?’
Together, the twins spoke, almost one voice. ‘To your friends do good, and to your enemies, harm.’
‘That is the lesson,’ Philokles said. ‘See that you live it.’
It was still dark when they were rowed aboard the Golden Lotus, which had been brought around from the yard and stood just off the beach, her oarsmen keeping her steady against the predawn breeze. Melitta went up the side, and then Satyrus swung his leg over and dropped to the deck amidships.
Peleus the Rhodian, Leon’s helmsman, stood with his legs apart, braced against the roll of the deck. ‘Welcome aboard, Navarch,’ he said. He put special emphasis on the word, but it wasn’t mockery – quite.
‘Peleus!’ Satyrus said. He clasped the older man’s arm, and his clasp was returned. He stepped back. ‘This is my sister, Melitta.’
‘Despoina,’ Peleus said, and turned his back on her, grasping Satyrus by the arm. ‘Let’s get the Lotus clear of the land, and then we’ll have time for girls and orders and all the crap that the land brings, eh? First time out in command? Feel any butterflies, boy?’
‘Yes!’ Satyrus admitted. He looked at Melitta, who had the look of a woman withholding judgment – Peleus’s comment hadn’t escaped her. He had to make Peleus, whose dislike of women at sea was legendary, accept his sister’s presence. He had to make his sister – well, toe the line.
‘Banish the butterflies,’ Peleus said. ‘Oars, there. Do ye hear me!’
A chorus of affirmatives, and the Rhodian turned to Satyrus. ‘Ready for sea, sir,’ he said.
Satyrus had been to sea since he was nine years old, but his heart was beating as if he was in mortal combat. He took a breath, and made his voice steady. ‘Carry on,’ he said, as if it was nothing to command a warship at sea.
Like wings, the oars rose together and dipped, and suddenly they were in motion, as close to flying as Satyrus was ever likely to achieve.
Two stades away across the port of Alexandria, a scarred man leaned on the rail of a trireme, head swathed in bandages, watching under his hands as the familiar shape of the Golden Lotus gathered way as the first fingers of dawn stretched across the sky.
‘There they are,’ said Iphicrates. ‘Kineas’s brats,’ he growled.
The Latin, Lucius, shrugged. ‘Frankly, boss, I think the gods love ’em. I think we should just let ’em go and good riddance.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Stratokles said. ‘Despite which, I want you to find them at sea and kill them. It is probably better this way,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Last night was too bloody and too obvious, and
