‘I have witnesses.’ I laid the sheet of papyrus with his portrait on the table and tapped it. ‘Witnesses who will swear that they saw this man painting those lies and defaming me to all and sundry who might walk past and see them.’
The arrogant youth gaped like a fish. But he could still flip himself out of this net if I wasn’t careful. I waited for him to speak.
Predictably, he chose defiance. ‘What of it? Nothing will come of this if we go before the courts.’
I raised a chiding finger. ‘Why should I want to drag you into court, if we can come to some other arrangement?’
He looked at me blankly for a long moment. Then his lip curled as he thought he understood me. ‘How much?’
I was happy to oblige, and even happier that I hadn’t had to explain what I meant. This was going to work far better if he thought he was the one with the upper hand.
‘One mina should be sufficient compensation for the employment I’ve lost thanks to your filthy slurs.’
‘One mina?’ He was startled into a laugh of contempt. ‘You greedy rogue.’
That was good, coming from him. But I knew this demand for money would allay his suspicions. Those who reduce everything to its worth in coin rarely imagine that other men might value different things more highly.
He shook his head. ‘I have no such funds.’
‘You’ve got the money to pay the highest prices for all the festival sacrifice hides,’ I pointed out. ‘Where’s all that coin coming from? Or shall I go and ask your father?’
‘That’s business.’ He looked me straight in the eye. ‘We raise capital like everyone else, through loans against the harvests from our land holdings. I cannot divert such silver for my personal use.’
His tone was firm, his expression convincing. A tense quirk of his lips betrayed him. This bastard was lying through his teeth about where his money was coming from.
I leaned back, hands on my knees, as if I was about to stand. ‘Then I’ll see you in court.’
‘Half,’ he countered quickly. ‘Thirty drachma.’ Presumably making that clear in case I was too ignorant to calculate such large sums. ‘I’ll wager that’s more than you earn in half a year.’
As it happened it was about what I earned in a really good month, so he was right about one thing: demanding one whole mina really was more extortion than compensation, or it would be, if I really was as mercenary as he imagined.
‘One mina,’ I said placidly. Now he was haggling I knew I had him on the hook. ‘Or you can take your chances before a jury.’
He stared at me, clearly infuriated and just as obviously trying to work out how to get around this.
I rose to my feet. ‘Bring the money to my house just before sunset. Oh, and bring Iktinos,’ I added as though that was an afterthought.
‘Iktinos?’ Abruptly, Nikandros looked wary. ‘Why?’
I leaned on the table, looming over him, my voice low and menacing. ‘I know he tried to knife me when you and your foolish friends beat me up. I want his oath that he’ll stay away from me and my household, and I want you there to witness it. Then if his shadow so much as crosses my path, or he goes anywhere near me or mine, I’ll call you both before the courts for attempted murder.’
‘All right, all right.’ Nikandros recoiled to escape my vehement spittle.
‘One mina.’ I jabbed a finger in his chest. ‘At sunset today.’
I strode away, fighting the urge to look over my shoulder to see what the boy was doing. Hopefully he’d go running straight to Iktinos. That’s what we were counting on. But if either of them realised he had been followed, they’d know something was up. We just had to trust to Athena.
Meantime, I had more preparations to make. Various tasks kept me criss-crossing the city for the rest of the day. I was weary and footsore by the time I got home but I didn’t mind. Our plan had gone well, so far.
There’s a phrase the tragedians play with. I’d even made a note of the last variation I’d heard, thinking I might be able to turn it into a joke. When the gods wish to bring down a man, first they make him smug. I should have remembered that.
At least Nikandros was prompt. The sun was barely dipping below the roofs of the neighbouring houses when he arrived and hammered on our doorpost. ‘Hello within!’
I was relaxing on a bench with a jug of amber wine, or trying to at least. I set down my untasted cup and went to open the gate.
‘Good evening.’ I stepped back to invite the two men into the courtyard.
‘No slave to do your bidding?’ Nikandros looked around my modest home with undisguised disdain. ‘Is that why you want to steal my money? To buy yourself a man of all work?’
‘Has your Phrygian run off?’ Iktinos fixed me with an unfriendly stare. Even with that bandaged and splinted arm he looked very dangerous.
I ignored the brute, while making sure that I stayed well out of his reach. ‘You don’t seem to have brought my money,’ I pointed out to Nikandros. A mina is too much silver to carry in a purse tucked inside a tunic.
‘Because you’re not getting an eighth of an obol,’ the wrestler spat. He stepped forward, pushing Nikandros aside. There was no mistaking who was in charge. ‘Not until you tell us who your witnesses are. Prove you can make a case against us.’
I took a step away and looked past the brute through our open gate to Mikos’s house. Our neighbour’s gate stayed stubbornly closed. I did my best to conceal my apprehension, folding my arms with an air of unconcern that I’d copied from Apollonides.
‘You want me to tell you who to threaten until they recant their testimony?’ I looked at Iktinos.
‘You tell us and you
