Nearchus shrugged while working. 'I've never examined her wrists.'
Satyrus waved to Helios, who was sitting against the wall. 'Can you read and write, boy?' he asked.
Helios nodded. 'Well enough,' he said. 'Greek and a little of the temple script, as well.'
'Really?' Satyrus asked. 'How nice. You are full of surprises. I need you to run me an errand.'
Helios nodded. He stood.
'Go and find Alcaea. She works for the hetaira Phiale. See if you can get to know her a little. Then see if you can find out where she was, hmm, perhaps two nights ago.'
Nearchus raised an eyebrow. 'That's a tall order for a slave.'
Satyrus lay back. 'I've promised him his freedom,' he said. 'Let him earn it.'
He ate more soup, and Nearchus changed him – yet another humili ating small service the man performed for him. Satyrus thought that he himself would make a poor doctor. He hated touching people, hated the foulness of his own excrement, the bile from his stomach, the thousand details of illness. 'How do you stand it?' Satyrus asked, when he was clean.
'Hmm?' Nearchus asked. 'I'm sorry, what did you say?' He was looking out of the window.
Satyrus shook his head. 'Nothing,' he said. In the morning, he awoke with the sun and tried to get off his bed. He walked a few steps and discovered that he lacked the strength, and he tottered back to bed without hurting anything. He ate an egg for breakfast, and then another.
'You're done,' Nearchus said at noon, when the egg hadn't come up. 'I want you to be very, very hesitant to take poppy again. Even for a bad wound. The next time will be worse. In fact, you'll always have a craving for the stuff. Understand?'
'Yes,' Satyrus said.
'Good,' Nearchus answered. 'Sappho has wanted to see you for days, but you don't like to appear weak – I know your kind. And she's busy with the baby.'
'Where's Helios?' Satyrus asked.
'Haven't seen him. You have only yourself to blame – you gave him a task like the labours of Herakles.' Nearchus shrugged.
Satyrus read Herodotus while the doctor ground bone for pigment and then burned some ivory on a brazier outside.
'Phew!' he said, coming back. 'Sorry for the smell.'
Satyrus made a face. 'I've made a few smells myself, the last week,' he said.
Nearchus nodded, fanning himself. 'Let's get you dressed,' he said with a glance at the water clock. He refilled it, restarting its two-hour mechanism, and then found Satyrus a plain white chiton and got him into it and back on his couch.
'I'm sorry I sent Helios away,' Satyrus said. 'I hadn't realized you'd be stuck with his work.'
Nearchus shook his head. 'I made that decision. We have rules in this house – since the attacks when young Kineas was born. Slaves are taken on only after we check their histories. We do most work ourselves and we don't encourage visitors. There's a rumour in town that you are here – but we still haven't confirmed it. It may be you, or it may be Leon who brought the Lotus in to port. See?'
Satyrus nodded. 'I do see.'
'And Hama has contacts in the – how shall I say it? – the underworld. Among the criminals of the night market. We hear things. There are men in this town who offer money for your death.'
Satyrus smiled. 'Stratokles is dead, and his plots continue to roll along.'
Nearchus scratched his nose. 'Sophokles the Athenian is more to the point.'
Satyrus nodded. 'I know,' he said.
Even as he nodded, Sappho swept into the room with Kallista at her heels, cradling a baby.
Satyrus smiled at both of them. Sappho bent and kissed him, and so did Kallista.
'I never figured you for a nanny,' Satyrus said to Kallista. She was also an active hetaira, formerly his sister's slave and now a freedwoman and her own mistress.
'Hmm,' Kallista said, archly. 'I'm sure you are an expert on women, young master. I'm a mother now, thank you.'
'What do you think of young Helios?' Sappho asked. A maidservant placed a stool behind her and she settled into it.
Satyrus reached up and took his nephew, and cradled him to his chest. The boy was just old enough to sit up under his own power, and he blinked around at the world. 'He's excellent. I've promised him his freedom already.'
Sappho arched her eyebrows. 'Really? I thought perhaps you needed a servant.'
'I do. I'll get four years out of him – but apparently he's been promised freedom before. I thought I'd give him the bone first.' He smiled at Sappho, who nodded slowly – a nod of agreeable disagreement.
'And you know that he was taken by pirates,' she said. 'His parents killed, sold to a brothel, used like a whore for two years until an Aegyptian priest – a customer, of course – bought him to use as a scribe – and a bed- warmer.' Her voice grew harder and lower as she spoke. Like Uncle Leon, Sappho had been sold as a slave and used brutally before she was freed. It was the fate that every free Hellene dreaded – and the inevitable cost of a world that ran on slavery. But Leon and Sappho acted on their hatred. Both bought parcels of slaves, especially those who had been born free, and found them situations that would free them.
'By my ally, Demostrate,' Satyrus said.
'Your 'ally' is a very titan of Tartarus,' she spat.
Satyrus shrugged. 'Auntie,' he said, 'I have learned in the last year that if I intend to be king, sometimes I will have to do things that are, in and of themselves, despicable.'
Sappho remained stone-faced, but behind her, Kallista nodded.
Satyrus held out his finger and young Kineas latched on to it, pulled it, tried to swallow it. 'I can't win you over,' he said. 'So I have to ask you to trust me. I know what I'm doing.'
'Your mother made a pact with Alexander,' Sappho said. 'I never forgave her. I never could. It is one of the reasons we settled in Alexandria. And now you – you who are virtually my child – will sell yourself the same way.'
'My mother dealt with anyone who would deal with her, for peace. For security. Even Alexander.' Satyrus had no idea that there was bad blood between his mother and Sappho, but he kissed his nephew and then shook his head. 'I'm sorry. Really sorry. I feel dirty whenever I spend time with him. But he was my father's admiral. My father used him, and I'll do the same.'
'He wasn't covered in the blood of his victims then,' Sappho said.
Satyrus lay back. 'Hello, little man,' he said. 'Don't be in a hurry to grow up.'
Kineas made some gurgling sounds and stretched out his arms for Kallista. Kallista came and took him with the air of a woman who distrusts that any man can entertain a baby.
'Does he have a wet-nurse?' Satyrus asked.
'Me,' Kallista answered.
'You?' Satyrus asked.
She laughed, a low laugh, the seductive laugh that brought customers to her at five and ten minae a night, and sometimes twenty times as much. 'I think you know how babies are made,' she said.
Satyrus decided it would be indelicate to ask who the father might be. But the question must have shown on his face, for Kallista laughed aloud, not an iota of seduction to it.
'Not a client,' she said. 'A friend.' She put the child to her breast. 'They can grow up together,' she said.
Later that afternoon, Helios came in with a clean blanket and wrapped Satyrus up.
'Any luck on your mission?' Satyrus asked.
'I found her.' Helios nodded. 'I'm meeting her again tonight. She goes out at night – often. She's very trusted in that house – almost the steward. She's the sort of slave that scares other slaves. Hard to tell which side she's on, if you take my meaning.'
'I do,' Satyrus said. 'Need money?'
Helios nodded. 'I'd like a few darics,' he said. 'I'd like to appear a trusted slave myself.'
'You are no longer a trusted slave,' Satyrus said. He picked up a scroll that Nearchus had brought him. 'There you are,' he said. 'A free man. Not a citizen – although I'll see to that when the four years are up.'
