sensible decision about what to buy in the market! Why do you think I can pick a husband for Philyra when I can't even buy olives?' He pulled his knees up and looped his arms round them. 'Philyra will make a much more sensible decision than I ever could. Sensible Philyra. Marcus, you think geometry is completely and utterly senseless, don't you?'
'No.'
'Don't you? You always used to. You used to watch the scholars going into the Museum with a look on your face like a… like a banker watching an heir squander his estate. So much intelligence to be spent on air! Deep down, Dionysios agrees with you. When we first met, he praised Alexandria and called it the house of Aphrodite, but tonight he did nothing but tell me what I owe Syracuse.- I think my flutes may be in my room.'
'I'll fetch them,' croaked Marcus helplessly. He set the lamp down beside his master, hoping that its light would be some protection, then ran up the stairs three at a time and burst into the bedroom. The clothes chest was a black oblong under the gray rectangle of the window. He felt along it and found first the notched rim of the abacus and then, like fresh air in a dust storm, a set of smooth wooden boxes heaped one on top of another: the flute cases. He grabbed all of them and ran downstairs again, heart pounding.
Archimedes was still sitting quietly on the bench, turning one hand back and forth in the light of the lamp, watching the shadows shift in his palm. Marcus closed his eyes a moment, weak with relief.
The auloi were seized upon at once, and Archimedes sorted eagerly through them for the soprano and the tenor. He slid the reeds in, adjusted the slides, and without another word launched into a complicated melody.
It was a dance at first: a rapid joyful trill on the soprano, with a quick steady beat supplied by the tenor. A ring dance, a line dance, a tune to dance to in the street. But it changed under his quick fingers. The rhythm shifted to the soprano, and the tenor took up the tune with sudden disquieting shifts of tempo, speeding up and slowing down again, almost out of synchrony, then suddenly resolving into it again. The mode shifted without warning, and the tone became plaintive, with an underlying coloration of darkness. The disquiet grew. What had been fast became faster still, a headlong rush of sound over a chaos of dissonance; the tenor and soprano fought each other, irresolvable notes clipping each other's heels, almost but not quite out of tune. And then, all at once, the notes did overlap, and they were in harmony: the true harmony that was rare in Greek music, two notes singing a chord that brought a shiver up the backbone, and the melody they sang was sad and slow. The dance theme returned, but it was a march now, a slow march of farewell. Harmony became unison, sang quietly to the night, then faded softly into stillness.
There was a long silence. Marcus realized that he had no idea how long the music had lasted, and that while it had lasted he had been aware of nothing else. Archimedes blinked at the flutes in his hands as though he'd forgotten what they were.
'My darling,' came Arata's voice from an upstairs window, 'that came from a god. But the neighbors may not appreciate it, and you ought to be in bed.'
'Yes, Mama,' Archimedes called back at once. He slid the reeds out of the auloi and set the instruments back in their cases, then stood up and ran his hands through his stiff hair.
'What was that?' asked Marcus, in a shaken voice.
Archimedes hesitated. 'I think it was a farewell to Alexandria,' he said bemusedly. 'But there's no hurry to decide.' He wavered across the courtyard, and Marcus heard the stairs creak as he went up to bed.
Marcus sat down on the bench and stayed there for a little while, trembling. Then he noticed that the lamp was guttering, and blew it out.
The door to the dining room opened soundlessly, and the two fugitives slipped through it. 'Jupiter!' whispered Fabius. 'I thought that young fool would never stop playing!'
'You be quiet!' Gaius whispered vehemently back. 'Gods and goddesses, that boy can play the flute!'
'We don't have time for concerts!' replied Fabius. 'If we're going to get out of the city, we need to go!'
'Sshhh!' said Marcus. 'Let the household settle.'
Gaius sat down on the bench; Marcus could feel the taut linen of the sling that supported his brother's splinted arm. They sat together in silence, feeling the heat of each other's body through the warm, soft dark. Marcus remembered a time when he was eight years old and his father had beaten him, and Gaius had sat beside him, like thisnot touching because he was bruised raw and a touch was painful; merely giving him the comfort of his presence. The love he had always felt for his brother, which had lurked baffled under his own shame and confusion, now flooded him, and with it a blind, bewildered grief that they should meet again only like this.
The house was still, still. If the neighbors had been disturbed by the concert, they had chosen to say nothing about it and gone back to sleep. Marcus at last rose and went to the storeroom next to the kitchen. Archimedes had built machines at home when he was still a child, and the storeroom still contained all his equipment. There was plenty of rope- there had been a phase when every machine was a kind of crane. Marcus took all of it, setting it in a large wicker basket, which he slung over his shoulder, then added a windlass and little wooden anchor that had been part of a hoist. Fully equipped, he went back to the courtyard. 'All right,' he whispered. 'We can go.'
As he unbolted the door, he caught a faint gleam out of the corner of his eye, and he glanced around quickly to see Quintus Fabius checking the knife. He shivered, reminded himself that the man had, after all, kept his oath, and set out.
The back streets of the Achradina lay dark and deserted under the stars. A watchdog barked as they went past, then fell silent. Marcus led the others quickly through the maze, then up along a narrow path which zigzagged up the side of the Epipolae and emerged on the plateau opposite the temple of Fortune. He kissed his fingers to the goddess and trotted past her temple to the right. They quickly passed the last of the hovels of the Tyche quarter and struck off across the bare scrubland of the heights.
'Where are we going?' asked Fabius, moving up beside him and taking advantage of the open country around them to talk.
'I'm going to let you down the sea wall just where the plateau turns inland,' Marcus replied. 'Since you don't have a fleet, there aren't many guards posted on it. The wall runs along the top of the cliff and the cliff's steep, but we've got plenty of rope. At the bottom there's a bit of broken rock to scramble along, and once you're over that you've only got to walk north and inland a bit to reach your camp.'
'You keep saying 'you,' ' observed Fabius. 'It should be 'us,' shouldn't it?'
'No,' replied Marcus evenly. 'Not while you're besieging Syracuse.'
'Marcus!' exclaimed Gaius, also moving forward to join him. 'You're coming with us!'
'No.'
'You are a Roman!' Fabius protested angrily. 'You don't belong here!'
'I'm a slave,' Marcus said harshly. 'A Roman would have died at Asculum.'
'Stop it!' cried Gaius. 'Asculum was a long time ago. You panicked, but you were sixteen, and you'd had about three weeks' training. You should never have been in the legion to begin with. I was the one who brought you along- what happened was more my fault than yours.'
'Liar,' said Marcus wearily. 'You know I'm the one who insisted on coming. I didn't want to stay home with Father. I'm the one who ran away, and I'm the one who chose to stay alive afterward.'
'You were telling that flute player that a sixteen-year-old can't be expected to make a sensible decision about the future,' said Fabius. 'Why are you making an exception for yourself?'
'You speak Greek?' asked Marcus in surprise.
'A little.'
'Asculum's over with,' said Gaius, returning to the point. 'You can come back now.'
'To accept my punishment?' demanded Marcus.
'No!' said Gaius, catching his shoulder. 'To come home. I'm sure you'll be pardoned. It was a long time ago, and you've redeemed yourself by helping us escape. You can go to the consul and tell him what you know about the defenses of Syracuse, and he'll give you a free pardon. I'm sure he will.'
'Oh?' asked Marcus bitterly: he had thought of this. 'But what if I don't tell him what I know about the defenses of Syracuse? What would happen then?'
'Why wouldn't you tell him?'
'Because I'm not going to help anyone take Syracuse,' said Marcus firmly. 'May the gods destroy me if I do!'
'B-but, Marcus!' stammered Gaius disbelievingly.
'You're the ones who have no business being here!' Marcus exclaimed, turning on him furiously. 'Don't you
