'You seem to know everything.' He paused. 'Listen, boy. You have a level head. If we aren't careful, this household will fall apart. And if it does – if Master kills Mistress, if Briseis kills herself – we will all be sold. Understand me? It is not just our duty to keep them all apart until things get better – it's for our own skins, too.'
'Ares!' I said. 'Is it that bad?'
'I drugged Master's wine the night – the night it happened. And every night since.' Darkar had hollows under his eyes. 'He's going to kill her.'
'We should give him something else to think about,' I said. 'Like war with Persia.'
Darkar shook his head. 'I thought that would happen, but it's worse, not better.'
I shrugged. I was seventeen, and I didn't want to be responsible for the happiness of a household. 'I have a task to do,' I said.
Darkar nodded. 'Can I count on you?' he asked.
'I swore an oath to Artemis to support them,' I said.
He smiled. 'Good man. Go on your errand. What did she tell you to do?'
'She told me to kill Diomedes,' I said.
He stroked his beard. 'You can't kill him.'
'But I can hurt him,' I said.
'His father would have you killed,' he said.
'Not if Archi comes with me,' I said. 'I'm waiting for him to finish consoling Penelope.'
Darkar was a hard man. His eyes glinted in the lamplight. 'That would help the household,' he said. 'People will know we are still standing. I approve.' He looked at me. 'You could still end up dead, though.'
I laughed. Even then, I had begun to feel the power. I was not going to die in some night squabble in Ephesus. An hour later, Archi was done with Penelope, and I walked in on them with a clean chiton for her and clothes for him.
It may have been the most courageous moment of my life. It was hard to meet her eyes – she was naked, entwined breast to breast with him, and all but purring. She had wept and been comforted. And they smelled of sex.
'Master, I need you now.' I tossed clothes and a towel at Penelope. 'I am sorry to intrude.' I raised a hand – something a slave never does – and silenced my master. 'I have consulted with Darkar. We need to strike Diomedes. We need to show the city that we are not dead as a household. He insulted your sister. He might have broken the match in a dignified manner, but he called her a whore. Let's punish him.'
Archi met my eye and smiled. Bless him, he understood immediately. 'This is for my sister?' he said.
'For all of us,' I said. 'For your mother, too.'
Penelope looked at us. 'You are a slave!' she said. 'You cannot punish a free man!'
I ignored her.
Archi nodded. 'Let's get him. How do you propose we do it?'
'He'll be in the agora or the gymnasium bragging – shaming her and excusing himself. You know him – you know what he'll do. On and on, to everyone he meets. We take Kylix as a spy. He'll watch the fucker. We follow him when he leaves for his dinner, catch him in a street and beat the shit out of him.' Pardon my language, honey – that's how men speak when they are ready for violence.
Archi pulled a chiton over his head and I pinned it for him. Penelope was wiping herself with the towel. I watched her. She turned her back and blushed.
Archi took his new sword from a peg on the wall. I shook my head. In those days, I assumed that every man had the same daimon I had. 'We aren't going to kill him, master,' I said.
'He has thugs,' Archi said. Of course, I'd been going back and forth to the Persian camp for weeks. I'd missed a change. Diomedes' father, Agasides, had hired him a pair of Thracians as guards. In fact, like most of the gentlemen of the city, he was hiring bodyguards to increase his fighting strength if Persia came, but Diomedes flaunted his pair of Thracians everywhere.
I rubbed my chin. 'We can't just kill his thugs?' I asked. 'Your father-'
Archi shook this off. 'You have the right of it, Doru. We need to strike back. Just killing his thugs might be enough. But we have to get them, or they'll keep us off him. Right?'
Youth has its own logic. It isn't like the logic of the assembly or even the phalanx. Archi was angry, and Penelope had made him brave – and she was right there, bolstering his desire to be strong. In youth logic, we had to put those men down.
Poor bastards. A pair of Thracian slaves with clubs. It was three hours later, and Diomedes was heading home. He'd bragged so long and so loud about the insult he'd given us that we'd heard him in the agora, ranting like an orator. Kylix tracked him for us, and we were waiting when he turned off the broad Avenue of the Artemision and cut up the hill through an alley that ran between the looming walls of rich men's yards.
Diomedes saw me first. I was lounging against a wall, cleaning my nails with a knife that Cyrus had given me in my bag of gifts.
'Look who it is,' he said. 'The cock-licker! Get him, boys!'
Sometimes, the gods are kind. And hubris is the worst of sins. Diomedes had, in a single day, spurned a guest-friendship, broken a solemn vow and bragged of it in the public places.
The two Thracians were big men, and tattooed like warriors, although slavers often tattoo a peasant to get a better price.
They split up and came at me quickly, no nonsense, one on either side. I backed past the gatehouse of the next house and then turned and attacked, going for the Thracian on the left. The thug on the right tried to take me in the flank and Archi emerged from the shadow of the gatehouse and gutted him.
It was Archi's first kill, and it took him out of the fight. He just stood there, blood dripping from his blade, as the man writhed and screamed from the thrust into his kidneys.
The other man swung his club, and I backed away a step as they taught in Persia and Greece both, and then I swayed in and cut his wrist with the knife, and he dropped the club, but I was still moving – right foot past left foot, down cut – and suddenly he was sitting in the street with his guts around him.
I don't think they had earned their tattoos. I fought Thracians later – real Thracians – and they were, and are, scary bastards who will swing at you when their lungs are full of blood.
Diomedes turned to run, but Kylix tripped him. Before he could get to his feet, I was on him.
Archi was recovering, although he was white as Athenian leather. 'I killed him!' he said. And then, 'I killed him!'
'If you so much as touch me, my father will have you ripped apart by dogs!' Diomedes said. 'Don't touch me – I might be polluted by a family of prostitutes!'
He was a fool. We really should have killed him.
I grabbed his nose between my thumb and forefinger and broke it with a vicious twist. I'd seen a slave do it to another slave in the pits. 'Bring your dogs,' I said.
Archi kicked him in the groin while he writhed in the muck, his nose pouring blood. He kicked him quite a few times. In fact, it was then I discovered that my master wasn't any nicer than I was.
We beat him pretty badly. I'll save you the details. Except that when we were finished, we took a jar of Briseis's paint and tied him to a pillar in the portico of Aphrodite and painted 'I suck dicks for free' on his back while he wept. Why the portico of Aphrodite? That's where men sold their bodies in Ephesus. The boys cleared out while we did our work. They knew a revenge beating when they saw one.
We sneaked back into the house by the slaves' entrance. We thought, I think, that if we weren't caught coming in, Hipponax would swear to our innocence. Or some such adolescent foolishness.
The whole house was dark – it was late. Dinner had been served, and we'd no doubt been missed – so much for our so-called plan. And we were both covered in mud and blood and worse.
I got Archi past the kitchen, where Darkar was talking in a low voice, and to his room. 'I'll get you water,' I said.
'Bathhouse,' he said. 'I need to wash my soul.' But then he smiled. It wasn't a boy's smile, or a nice smile. But it was a brother's smile, not a master's. 'You need to be clean. If you're caught, they'll kill you. Me? I can take the weight.'
Frankly, I agreed. 'I'll bathe first, then,' I said. I slipped out of the door and down the hall into the kitchen.
