see that? Rome and Carthage have both been expanding their power, neither trusts the other, they've been building up to war for a long time. Fine! All that makes sense. But now Rome makes an alliance with Messana and attacks Syracuse! Where's the sense in that?'
'It's what the Senate and People decided was best,' said Fabius reprovingly. 'You think you know better than they do?'
'Yes!' declared Marcus. 'I know Syracuse, and you've proved to me yourselves that the Roman people don't. Some bandit spews out a brazen-throated lie about Syracuse, and the great Roman people lap it up like dogs! When Rome started this war I don't think she had any more idea what she was doing than your general did when he sent your maniple out against the catapults. Gaius, I'm sorry, but it's true.'
'Marcus,' said Gaius urgently, 'Marcus, you must come with us. Those guards will remember you came to see us, and they'll guess that it was you who helped us. If you stay here, they'll crucify you!'
'You really don't know anything about Syracuse,' Marcus told him in disgust. 'It's the Carthaginians who crucify: Greeks behead or poison. But I don't think they'll do that, either. Nobody knows I saw you. As far as the guards are concerned, I was looking at the quarry. My master's well-known and trusted, and his reputation will protect me. And even if I'm caught- listen to me, Gaius! — even if I'm caught, I'm willing to pay the penalty. I deserted my post once, and I've had to live with it. I destroyed my own place in life, and crawled into slavery for a refuge. Now my place is here. I'm not deserting my post again.'
'Oh, gods and goddesses!' exclaimed Gaius wildly. 'Marcus, you can't do this! I thought you meant to come with us! If I'd known you planned to stay, I would never have tried to escape myself!'
'So?' replied Marcus. 'I told you not to. I told you you'd be better off staying where you were. You didn't want to. But nobody forced me to help you: that was my own free choice. If I can live with the consequences, why can't you?'
'I've already had to live with having caused your death once! Don't force that on me again! You must come with us!'
'No.'
'Jupiter!' exclaimed Fabius, after a silence. 'All this for Syracuse. What was it your master's son said about the Alexandrians?' He repeated in heavily accented Greek, ' 'So much to be spent upon air!' '
Marcus stopped walking and frowned at him. 'My master's son?' he asked.
'Nephew, then,' said Fabius. 'Or lover, if that's what he is- I know these Greeks incline that way. The flute player.'
'You didn't realize who he was!' exclaimed Marcus. He was instantly certain that his instinctive suspicion had not been wrong, after all: that if Fabius had known who was sitting there, Archimedes would have died.
'Well, who was he, then?' asked Fabius impatiently.
'My master,' said Marcus with satisfaction, and began walking again.
'That boy?' said Gaius in astonishment.
'He's twenty-two,' replied Marcus. 'I was originally sold to his father.'
'But you said- and they said at the fort- and I thought…' Gaius stopped, then suddenly burst out laughing. 'Oh, Jupiter! I'd pictured him as a stern old man with terrible eyes and a white beard! A fearful magician, I thought. I was wondering what that talkative young flute player could be doing in the same house!'
Marcus was suddenly swamped by another wave of love for his brother, and he joined in the laugh. 'Fearful magician?'
Gaius flipped his good hand dismissively. 'You said he could number the sands and make water flow uphill. That sounds like magic to me.'
Marcus laughed again. 'It practically is,' he said, longing suddenly to tell his brother everything he had seen and done and thought since he was enslaved. 'The water-snail still seems magical to me, and I've helped build them. That's the machine that makes water run uphill, Gaius, it's a sort of- no, you have to see it, really, to appreciate it. It's-'
Gauis's laugh suddenly stopped. 'Marcus, come with us!' he repeated. 'Please!'
'Gaius, if I come with you, I'll die,' Marcus replied wretchedly. 'You know I will.'
'You won't! Not if you come back as a loyal Roman who helped us escape.'
'I'd have to prove it by betraying Syracuse! And I won't. I owe her too much.'
'What can you possibly owe to a city where you were a slave?'
Marcus shrugged. He thought of music: the family concerts, the public concerts he'd heard while he attended the family; the plays. And there were people- neighbors, the other household slaves, Arata, Archimedes. Philyra. More than that, there was the vastness of the world he had touched, the constant stream of ideas that had flowed past him, uncomprehended and bewildering, but, now that he looked back on it, enlarging. He had hated his slavery and he hated it still- but he could not regret the rest.
'More than I can explain,' he said softly. 'Trying to talk about it is like trying to weigh things with a pint measure: I can't do it. But believe me, Gaius, if I betrayed Syracuse, I'd destroy whatever honor and loyalty are left in me. Don't ask me to do that.'
Gaius touched his shoulder gently. 'I pray to all the gods, then,' he whispered, 'that you're right, and that they don't suspect you. If they kill you for helping me, Marcus, I… don't know what I'll do.'
12
At dawn the following morning, Agathon woke the king with the news that Dionysios son of Chairephon had arrived at the house and was asking to see him.
'Dining room,' commanded Hieron succinctly. 'Tell him I'll join him in a minute.'
A minute later the king appeared in the dining room, barefoot, belting his tunic, and found the captain of the Ortygia garrison standing to attention by the door. Dionysios had the crumpled, excessively awake look of a man who's spent most of the night on his feet and the expression of one who brings bad news.
'Sit down,' said Hieron, taking his own place on the central couch and gesturing toward the place on his right. 'What's the matter?'
Dionysios ignored the invitation to sit. 'Two of the Roman prisoners escaped last night,' he said bluntly. 'My troops were guarding them. I accept full responsibility.'
Hieron looked at him curiously, then sighed. 'Was anyone hurt?'
Dionysios grimaced. 'One of the guards was killed. Straton son of Metrodoros- a fine man, one of my best. I had my eye on him for promotion. I have informed his family.'
Hieron was silent for a moment. 'May the earth be light upon him!' he said at last. 'Tell me exactly what happened, as far as you know it, and- Captain? I will decide who is responsible. Not you. Also, do sit down, or I'll get a crick in my neck.'
Dionysios sat, stiffly. 'About an hour after midnight,' he said, 'the guard on the middle section of the quarry wall noticed that Straton, the guard on the western section, wasn't in his place. He went to look for him, and found him lying on top of the wall with his throat cut. There was a rope hanging down the front of the wall beside him. The sentry raised the alarm at once, and the file leader in charge at the quarry- Hermokrates son of Dion- instantly doubled the watch on the walls and sent a messenger running to find me. He himself went to check on the prisoners. Most were sound asleep, and the guards on the sheds were awake and in their places, but two men from the middle shed were missing: Gaius Valerius and Quintus Fabius, both heavy infantrymen from the same maniple. Fabius was an officer of some kind- tessararius, I think the title was.'
'Watch commander,' translated Hieron. 'A junior rank within a century.'
'The two missing men had been next to each other,' Dionysios went on. 'Valerius was wounded- broken arm and ribs- and had not been shackled, but Fabius had been in leg irons. He'd got them off somehow, probably just by working his feet out through them- they'd been left in his place, weren't obviously damaged, and guards on the shed say they were old and he was built like a snake. Behind where the two had been, two planks in the shed wall had been sawn through, then propped back into place. Hermokrates had the shed searched, and found the saw tucked under a mattress.' Dionysios removed it from a fold of his cloak and set it down on the king's dining table: an unremarkable strip of toothed iron, with a strip of cloth wound about one end in place of a handle. Hieron picked it
