Timaeus nodded. 'Fair enough. You've given us something to consider. When do you sail?'
Satyrus managed a smile. 'I sail when Aspasia says I sail.'
Timaeus and Panther exchanged a long look. 'Alexandria?' he asked.
'Yes,' Satyrus answered.
'Perhaps you could pick us up a cargo? And we'd meet again in a month,' Timaeus suggested.
'A cargo from Alexandria? In winter?' Satyrus asked. The seas south of Cyprus were deadly in winter. 'I'll charge you a bonus for every mina of grain.'
Timaeus shrugged. 'We'll take it out of our fee for the squadron,' he said. 'If we agree.' Alexandria spread before him like a basket of riches, the greatest harbour in the world surrounded by a city expanding so fast that a man could sit on the stern of his ship and watch the suburbs grow. At the end of the Pharos peninsula, a long spit of land that protruded like a caribou horn from the curve of the shore, workmen toiled with great blocks of limestone, laying the foundations of Ptolemy's proposed lighthouse even as thousands of other labourers carried baskets of earth from the mainland to widen and firm up the ground.
Satyrus stood by Neiron and watched Pharos slip past as his oarsmen dipped, paused and dipped again, bringing his ship slowly, carefully through the mass of shipping that filled the roadstead and crowded the beaches.
'There's Master Leon's house,' the lookout in the bow called.
Satyrus had a feeling of dread wash over him. He had no reason to feel that way, and he made a peasant sign of aversion.
'We'll land on the beach by the house,' he said.
Neiron nodded.
Satyrus had his rebroken arm splinted and tightly wrapped against his chest, but it hurt all the time. He watched the shore, attempting to rid himself of his mood and trying not to dwell on the pain in his arm.
Neither was particularly successful.
'Guard ship!' the lookout called.
'Messus has to go,' Satyrus said to Neiron.
'I'll see to it,' Neiron said. He shrugged. 'Messus is just as unhappy as you are.'
'I don't see him growing into the job,' Satyrus said, shaking his head.
'No,' Neiron said. He stroked his beard, his eyes on the approaching guard ship. 'Leon has merchant hulls – some of them quite fast. Like Sparrow Hawk. He could handle one of those, I think.'
Satyrus shook his head. Annoyed at always having to be the hard voice. 'He lacks authority.'
Neiron looked as if he was going to disagree.
'He lacks authority!' Satyrus snapped. Then he slumped. 'I'm becoming a bloody tyrant.'
'You do have a certain sense of your own importance,' Neiron said carefully.
Satyrus shook his head. 'It just goes on and on,' he said, but he didn't specify what it was.
'Oars – in!' Messus called. His timing was poor, and the oarsmen, who liked him, tried to compensate, but a hundred and eighty oarsmen can't all pretend that an order is properly given, and the Golden Lotus looked a far cry from her legendary efficiency as her wings folded in.
The guard ship coasted alongside and her trierarch stepped aboard trailing the smell of expensive oils. 'Cargo?' he demanded as his crimson boots hit the deck. 'I'm Menander, captain of the customs. Please show me your sailing bills.'
'Alum and hides,' Satyrus said.
'Hides for Aegypt? Leon's nephew must have lost his mind!' the man said. He made a note on his wax tablets.
Satyrus was growing angry again, but he knew that to lose his temper would be to act like a fool. He caught Neiron's look. 'I am injured, and not my best,' he said with a bow. 'My helmsman will handle this business.' Satyrus withdrew to the helmsman's bench. Neiron handed over a purse, and Menander peered into the hold, as if he could see past the lower-deck oarsmen and into the earthenware amphorae and the bales. 'All seems to be in order here,' he said, the purse bulging inside his chiton. He stepped back into his ship and they poled off, pulling strongly for their next victim.
'Now that's piracy, if you were to ask me,' Neiron said.
'T hanks,' Satyrus said. 'I'm in a mood to do harm. Something is wrong – I can feel it.'
Neiron shook his head. 'No – it's the poppy, Satyrus. That's all – throws your mind off. Sometimes a wound will do it alone – but a wound and the poppy can be deadly friends. I've had a few wounds.' He shrugged. 'Took one in my scalp – siege of Tyre, when I was young. It wouldn't heal, and the bump grew and grew. I thought I was going mad.'
'But you didn't,' Satyrus said.
Neiron stared at the approaching shore. 'Well – I did, for a bit. But that's not what I mean.'
Satyrus had to smile. 'This story is supposed to cheer me up?'
Neiron shrugged. 'I was saved by a good healer. And the gods, I suppose. You need to get to a doctor, just as Lady Aspasia said.'
'What did the doctor do with you?' Satyrus asked.
Neiron shook his head. 'Tied me down while I pissed the poppy out. Ares, it hurt. And that was after he cut a piece from my head, so that my skull felt odd for two years. I still rub it all the time.' He shrugged. 'That's what I mean, though. A bad wound changes you.'
Satyrus nodded. 'Everything looks right,' he said, cradling his arm. In his mind, there was a black smudge on the sky over the city.
Neiron sighed.
They went ashore beneath Satyrus's old bedroom window, and slaves and freemen were waiting on the beach with Sappho, having seen the famous Golden Lotus in the bay. Sappho smiled at him from the moment she caught his eye.
'We heard that you'd retaken the Lotus,' she said, and kissed him.
'I got him captured,' Satyrus said. He hugged her, and she responded fiercely. 'I'll free him in the end.' He looked around. 'Where's Melitta?'
'This is Kineas,' Sappho said. She held up a plump, round baby with huge blue eyes that wandered all around, as curious about the ship and the sky and the birds as about this strange man who'd taken him in his arms.
'Melitta's son! He's beautiful! Hello, nephew! Goodness!' Satyrus laughed. 'I feel quite old.'
'Melitta has gone to the Euxine to raise the tribes,' Sappho said quietly. 'I sent Coenus with her, and Eumenes when he came from Babylon.'
'Herakles!' Satyrus said. 'She left her son?'
Sappho's eyebrows made a hard line and the beauty of her face vanished in a mask. 'She did not run away,' Sappho said. 'Men tried to kill her – and me. This is war, Satyrus.'
Satyrus watched his sea bag going ashore. 'Aunt Sappho, you remember Neiron? He's my helmsman now. He proved himself this voyage. I hope he can stay in the house.'
Neiron bowed. Sappho inclined her head. 'Welcome to our house, Neiron.'
'Master Satyrus needs a healer,' Neiron said pointedly.
Sappho nodded. 'You look – pinched. Are you drinking too much, boy?'
'Poppy,' Neiron said. 'For a wound.'
'Herakles!' Satyrus didn't know whether to laugh or weep. 'I'm right here. I'm a grown man and I can see to my own needs!'
'So I see,' Sappho said, in a voice that suggested the opposite. She was already giving orders with her hands, and maids came running. Nearchus read the note from Aspasia. He scratched the bridge of his nose and smiled. 'Aspasia herself?' he said. Then he shook his head. 'You are in for a bad few weeks. Let me see the arm.'
He undid the bandages and the splints, and then replaced them. 'Beautiful, of course. Aspasia wouldn't do poor work. But she has left me the hard part. The night market is full of men who can set a bone.' He looked at Sappho, who had insisted on being present. 'I want him fed like an ox for sacrifice for a week. Satyrus, take what exercise you can with that arm. Because the next two weeks will be brutal.'
Satyrus shook his head. 'So you all keep telling me,' he said.
Nearchus scratched his nose again. 'We aren't kidding.'
