Demostrate leaned close. 'When you have a chance, kill Manes.'
Satyrus looked at the old pirate, as shocked as when the goddess's thumb had flicked his penis. The effect of his words was physical.
Demostrate laughed. 'Welcome to Tartarus, lad. If you want us to fight for you, you'll have to do more than make love at a symposium. Manes needs to die, lad. And if you kill him, the others – well, many of them are sheep, for all they're the terror of the seas.' He laughed.
'Now go back to your own couch before the others decide that you have to die.'
Satyrus rose. Demostrate kissed him – a man's kiss, no different from any kiss that any guest would get at a symposium, but it chilled Satyrus. And as he began to walk back across the tiled floor, he happened to look at Manes, where he lay entwined with his seductive Ganymede. The man looked back at him like a beast in a cage. Satyrus looked away – made himself look around, as if amused at the whole scene, and then back into Manes' animal eyes.
He had no trouble seeing why all these hard men feared Manes.
He walked back to his couch. Aphrodite rolled off, but he grabbed her hand. 'Honour my couch, Goddess,' he said.
She smiled. 'If you ask,' she said. 'My, you have nice manners.'
'I'm from Alexandria,' he said. Then he set himself to talk to her, because her tent of hair had kept him sane.
Hours later he walked home naked under his chlamys, cold and damp, and halfway home he stripped the cloak over his head and stood in the marketplace with the icy rain running over his skin.
Abraham stood by him, and when he felt that he had punished himself sufficiently, he followed Abraham, and they walked home together, with Aphrodite following them, her belongings balanced on her head. She followed Satyrus into the house.
Theron was surprised by his nudity, but not for long. 'Looks like quite the party,' he said. He looked at Aphrodite. 'You were a party favour?' Theron asked. 'Wish I'd been invited.'
Satyrus threw himself into one of Abraham's comfortable chairs – heavy wooden ones, like the Nabataeans used. 'You're free. And you have my thanks. You played your role beautifully.'
Aphrodite smiled. 'Free? Are you serious?'
Satyrus couldn't help but smile at her joy – so much more real than her gasps in his arms. 'Who would tease a slave that way? Yes, of course.'
She stood, her eyes downcast. She was as old as Satyrus – perhaps nineteen. Quite old, for a sex slave. Her body was superb, muscled, fit and well-kept, but her face was showing signs of her profession.
Theron raised her chin. 'You are Corinthian!' he said.
She smiled. 'Yes,' she said.
He laughed. 'You actually are a priestess of Aphrodite,' he said.
'Yes,' she said. 'I was. I ran away. The goddess followed me.' She looked down again, her cheeks red.
Satyrus wanted to be sick. 'You are free. And if I can do anything for you – passage, perhaps? Or a place in a household?'
Abraham put a hand under her elbow. 'Let me find you a place you can sleep,' he said. 'I have a friend upstairs who will be happy to meet you.'
Satyrus had had no idea that Abraham had a friend. He put his head in his hands as soon as she was gone. 'Oh, gods,' he said.
Theron said nothing.
After a while, Satyrus looked up. 'We need an allied port on the Euxine,' he said.
Theron sighed, and said nothing.
After a while, Satyrus went to bed.
10
When she awoke, she had lost years of her life, and she was a child in her mother's felt yurt, camping on the sea of grass. Gryphons and eagles warred with stags and leopards on the worked felt hangings, and pine resin scented the air. A brazier of worked bronze hung from the central poles over the hearth, and the air was warm, like summer. She was wrapped in fur. The woman by the brazier, in her white deerskin coat, was her mother.
In one great rush, all her life came back to her, a single cascade of memory, so that her mother died and she gave birth in a single instant, and she wept for her distant son and her dead mother with the same tears.
'So,' Nihmu said. She was sitting on her knees, wearing a robe of white deerskin worked in red and blue patterns with dyed hair, with rows of golden plaques at the seams and golden cones with dyed deer-hair tufts tinkling as she raised her arm to feed hot wine to Melitta. 'So – you are back to us.'
Melitta drank the wine, smiled at Nihmu and was gone again. When next she awoke, Nihmu was kneeling by her, arranging crisp wool blankets and a clean fur. 'Hush, child,' she said.
Melitta sat up so suddenly that her head spun, and she lay back on her side. 'I'm awake!' she said.
'Yes,' Nihmu said. She was speaking Sakje. They both were. Melitta got her head up again. 'I almost died, didn't I?'
'Some of the people think that you did die.' Nihmu frowned. 'I find the people – different. But it is I who am different.'
'You seem the same to me,' Melitta said.
Her appetite returned like her memories, and she ate and ate. It was two days before her fingers explored the stiffness of her face. She felt a chill despite the fur robe that wrapped her.
'Aunt Nihmu?' she asked. 'How bad is my face?'
'Were you planning to be a Greek matron?' Nihmu asked. 'If so, I suspect you'd have some difficulty.'
Coenus pushed through the flap of the yurt. 'I will go and sacrifice – something. By Hermes and all the gods, Melitta – I'm sorry to have lost you. It must have been brutal!'
'Brutal?' Melitta was fingering her cheek. 'That's exactly what it was,' she said. She sat up. 'I felt that I was being tested,' she said.
'Perhaps you were,' Nihmu agreed. 'She's worried about the scar.'
Coenus kissed her. 'No man worthy of the name will think less of you for the scar,' he said.
Melitta frowned. 'That bad?' she asked. She could see in their eyes that it was bad. 'May I have a mirror?' she asked.
'How did you get it?' Nihmu asked her. She took a mirror out of her sleeve, as if she'd been waiting for this moment.
'Did my good horse make it? The one with the gryphon brand?' Melitta asked.
Coenus nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'Quite a horse.'
'I killed the last owner. He was trying to put an arrow on his bow when I jumped him.' She looked away. 'His arrow scratched me.'
'It was poisoned,' Nihmu said.
'I think it saved me,' Melitta admitted. 'I was in a haze – almost living in the spirit land. I might not have made it in this world.'
Coenus made the face he always made at barbarian notions of reality. 'It almost killed you, girl.' His protestation sounded odd, and Melitta realized that he too was speaking in Sakje.
Samahe came in through the tent flap. 'Now we shall rejoice,' she said. She came and folded herself into the space between Nihmu and the bed of furs. She took both of Melitta's hands in hers, and Melitta had another moment of memory, because Samahe's hands were the same rough and smooth that her mother's had been, ridges of callus and muscle and the backs as soft as any woman's. She saw the mirror and shrugged. 'You look like a woman who is ready to be a war queen,' Samahe said. 'Not like some soft Greek girl. Take the mirror and look. Then put it away. There is much to do.'
