Satyrus sighed.
'I'll go back,' Coenus said, 'and find Melitta.' He glanced at Nihmu, and a long look passed between them. 'But first I'll have a word with Demostrate.'
That night, Satyrus dreamed that he was juggling eggs. One after another he dropped them – each containing a tiny man who died as his egg splattered on the cobbles of the street. At first the men were faceless, but then he watched Demostrate die, gasping for air like a fish, and Nihmu, her body broken. He woke to silence and lay awake for an hour, and then another. Eventually he rose and walked to the yard, where Coenus was putting his bed roll on a horse. He had another pair behind him. Satyrus recognized Darius's magnificent Nisaean charger.
'That's Darius's horse!' Satyrus said without thinking.
Coenus smiled. 'Darius is my brother,' Coenus said, 'as Leon is. As Philokles was and Diodorus. Surely you know that.'
Satyrus had never thought about it. In a heartbeat, he understood better what had been before his eyes all his life. 'You really do share,' he said.
Coenus ruffled his hair. 'Wish me luck,' he said. He vaulted into the saddle. 'Getting too old for this. Listen – my last military advice. Take your time. Force Eumeles to a battle on the sea if you can. But remember – it is the sight of your fleet that will aid your sister and crush Eumeles. Your sister will be pinched hard for the lack of you. Understand me? I'll go hard. If she's on the Hypanis, I'll find her in ten days – perhaps less.'
Satyrus nodded. 'I understand. And I know how you hate to give advice.'
'Bah, your sister's got me into the habit.' He used his knees to turn the Nisaean and made for the gate. 'Athena guide your guile, Satyrus.'
'And Hermes your travels,' Satyrus said. But the dream was still with him. And he shivered.
And in the morning, Nihmu was gone as well.
*
Twenty-three days after Darius sailed away, Diodorus's advance guard marched into Heraklea. Satyrus rode out to meet them, and he almost wept to see the men of his childhood – Sitalkes and the giant Carlus, the Keltoi, a handful of Olbians and dozens of men he knew by sight if not by name. Diodorus himself led the column in a plain breastplate, his copper and grey beard moving with his horse.
'You look like a king,' Diodorus said. He reached out and clasped Satyrus's arm. 'Sorry to be late, lad,' he added.
To Satyrus, his soldier uncle, the one who had always seemed the most vital, the most powerful, now seemed a husk of himself. He seemed smaller. He hunched his shoulders.
'Will of the gods,' Satyrus said. 'How much rest do your men need?'
Diodorus took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. 'The horses need a week of food and pasture. It's still winter in the hills. The infantrymen – they could march right up the gangplanks. Crax says you need our Macedonians for marines.' He waved at the infantry trudging along. They were four files wide on the road, two files of shield-bearers between two files of spearmen. The two officers at the head of the column looked familiar.
Satyrus touched his heels to his mount and trotted over to the road. 'Amyntas! Draco!' he called, and the two mercenaries grinned at him.
'Thought you'd forgotten us,' Draco said.
'Although it didn't seem all that likely,' Amyntas said.
Satyrus slipped down and clasped their hands. 'I need your taxeis,' he said. 'I need them as soon as I can get them afloat. How much rest do you need?'
Amyntas stared at the sky and Draco laughed. 'I'd like to have a cup of wine and a fuck,' he said.
'He's old,' Amyntas said, as the soldiers behind Draco shouted their agreement. 'All I need is the fuck.'
'I'll take that as meaning you can sail tomorrow,' Satyrus said. He felt the weight of the world lifting away, to be replaced by a new feeling in his stomach.
He carried that feeling up the hill to the palace, where suddenly he was again welcome. Dionysius the tyrant received him like a peer, and he sat through a dinner on a couch at the man's right hand.
The tyrant mocked his former soldiers. Draco and Amyntas had left Heraklea years before as escorts and had never returned. Macedonian soldiers were too valuable to be allowed to wander about. 'Deserters!' he roared, and laughed to watch them flinch.
Satyrus watched Amastris. She looked everywhere but into his eyes until the meal was mostly gone, and then her gaze skipped over his – her eyes drew his to her maid-slave, who handed something to Helios.
She was a fine actress, his Amastris. She acted her indifference to him so well that he was coming to believe it, except for these notes.
'You'll sail tomorrow?' Dionysius asked, snapping him out of his reverie.
'With the favour of the gods,' Satyrus said piously.
'I'd swear you asked me for twenty days,' Dionysius said. 'And now you've been here twenty-five. You owe me, boy.'
Satyrus nodded. 'I do owe you, my lord,' he said. 'On the other hand, I have not stormed your city to pay my bills,' he added.
Dionysius laughed. 'Did I teach you to speak so?' he asked.
'Yes,' Satyrus said. He swayed when he walked away from the symposium that followed the dinner, and Helios put a hand under his arm and helped him walk.
'What's Amastris say?' Satyrus asked. His head was swaying as if his ship was moving under his feet.
Helios stopped, propped him against an alley wall and reached in his script for a piece of papyrus. 'She asks if you intend to sail away without tasting her,' he said, his voice deadpan.
'Tasting?' Satyrus asked. 'Aphrodite – how does she expect me to get to her?'
Helios shook his head and held out the note. 'You read, lord,' he said.
Satyrus walked along the buildings until he came to a prosperous shop with a torch in a cresset. 'Aphrodite's long and golden back,' he muttered. Do you truly intend to taste salt water before you taste me? it said.
Helios stood still.
Alcohol swirled in Satyrus's head. 'I needed to see this before I drank so much,' he said. He looked up at the citadel above them, and he saw that a lamp burned on one of the balconies that hung over the sea. And that the rooms beyond the balcony were lit. He shook his head and there was anger at the bottom of his love. 'She treats me unfairly,' he said.
Helios nodded agreement.
'To Hades with her,' Satyrus said. He began to walk down the road, towards the house that had been Kinon's, and bed. Then he stopped and looked back. 'I love her, Helios,' he said.
'Yes, sir,' Helios agreed.
'What would you do?' Satyrus asked.
Helios shrugged.
'What if I command you to speak?' Satyrus said. He was mocking the boy. Picking on a freedman because he couldn't allow himself to be angry at his love.
'Then I will speak,' Helios said. His tone of voice suggested that he had something to say. 'Do you command me?'
'I command you,' Satyrus said, responding to the challenge in the boy's tone.
'Then I say that she demands you to visit to prove her power, not because her body wants yours. And I say that if you were caught, the tyrant would have you taken or killed. And that you are not a citizen of Alexandria, the city of love, but a king who goes to win his kingdom.' Helios shrugged. 'And if you need to lie in a woman's arms tonight, I can find you one who will not steal your kingdom.'
Satyrus stumbled. 'You don't like her!' he said.
Helios shrugged again. 'I am less than the sandals on her feet,' he said. 'My likes or dislikes are nothing to her.'
Satyrus looked up, and saw the light on the balcony. There was someone moving there, too.
'The fleet sails at dawn,' Helios said. 'You ordered it.'
Satyrus nodded. He turned away from the palace. 'To bed,' he said. Dawn, and a warm breeze off the land carried the hint of rain. Diodorus, Crax and Sitalkes stood on the beach with a dozen other officers, telling off files of
