take your Poseidon-forsaken trireme to Gades and Alba? Eh?’
I shook my head. It was hard to explain, and I didn’t really want to, but ‘If I go back, I have to go back,’ I said lamely. ‘Political power, my farm, my family, war, Athens-’ I realized that I sounded angry. I was angry.
What was I angry at?
‘What happened?’ Neoptolymos asked. He leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. ‘It’s none of my business. We all trust you. But you have things none of us has — none of us but bloody Gaius. It’s funny that you’re the one pressing us to move faster, as you are the one who has somewhere else to go. I’ll never take back my little kingdom. Even if I do, I’ll never… make it right. My sister told me to be careful of pirates, and I left her to her death. A horrible death.’ He stared at the stars, and wept.
I hugged him. ‘Don’t be an arse, brother. You did not rape your sister. You did not kill her. You are not responsible. Or rather-’ I thought of Heraclitus. ‘Rather, yes, you made an error, and you can atone for it by finding Dagon and putting a spear up his arse.’
At my crudity, he raised his face.
‘You are a good hater,’ he said.
‘I have imagined killing him twenty thousand times,’ I said.
‘Killing who?’ asked a gruff voice. Anarchos came out of the darkness with a half-dozen of his minions. He owned the boats. He wasn’t the one out of place.
‘A Phoenician named Dagon,’ I said, with perfect honesty.
Anarchos frowned, whether in real interest or simulated, I could not tell. But then he shrugged. ‘I hear you are looking to build a boat?’ he asked. His flunkeys stood around him, trying to look tough, which is difficult in the dark. One of them had a torch, and it didn’t throw enough light for anyone.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A triakonter, big enough for the tin trade.’ A little truth goes a long way.
‘You have a regular source with the Etruscans?’ Anarchos asked. He was really interested. We all knew this could lead to big money.
I shrugged.
Anarchos stepped up close to me, so I could smell the onion on his breath. ‘You have a problem, my young friend. Everyone I know is waiting for you to marry the bronze-smith’s daughter. Some say she‘s already baking your bread in her oven, eh? And yet, other people tell me you are looking to get a ship built.’ He eyed me, his head a little to one side like a curious dog. ‘And I say — to myself I say it — what if he’s playing her for a fool?’
Shit. Anarchos was that smart. And that was going to make it nearly impossible to take him for money.
‘And I wondered, does the old smith know his new young master is building a ship?’ Anarchos was very close, and very quiet. ‘Not that I’d tell him, unless I had reason. I am, after all, a reasonable man. And your patron.’ He took a step back. ‘I have six shipyards under my thumb, Arimnestos of Plataea. I think you know this, so I have to wonder why you don’t come to me. And then I have to find you in the dark and ask you all this. And it seems to me that your slave friends have just made a fine profit on a voyage, but not an obol has found its way to me. I wonder if we don’t need a little reminder of how this ought to work. Eh?’
It’s hard to glare at a man by torchlight.
‘I will apologize for our oversight,’ I said slowly, ‘and bring you our contribution in the morning. And you must understand, patron, that I might be a little shy about using your boatyards. I don’t wish to say any more about it.’
‘But I have two yards that need work — and can build your ship. By giving this work to either one, I am more important, and my patronage is secure. And you would deny me this?’ He laughed, as a man will when explaining a sticky problem to an infant.
I shrugged in the darkness. ‘We are not rich men,’ I said. ‘But I will try your yards.’
‘Ah! You sound as if you are doing me a favour. And perhaps you are. You are an odd duck, Plataean. You demand to be treated differently from all the rest of my clients — and I do treat you differently. You think I’m a fool? I’ve held this waterfront for thirty years. I know what kind of man you are. Don’t treat me as a fool, and we will continue as friends. Come and drink wine with me.’
‘Tomorrow, patron. ’
He laughed. ‘You know what is funny, Plataean? You think you are a better man than I. You don’t want to drink wine with a crime lord, eh? You have aristocrat embroidered on your forehead. And yet I like you, and I let you do things that I would kill other men for doing — like refusing to drink with me. And I’ll go further. I’ll bet that you’ve killed men and taken their gold without a qualm. Just like me. And you have friends and allies who depend on you — like I do. You keep your word. So do I.’ He pointed at me, and the torchlight caught the grey in his hair and made it flare. ‘I give you my word that if you come and drink with me, you will not regret it, and neither will your friends.’
He turned on his heel and walked up the wet stones to his house, leaving me with Neoptolymos and a body full of the daimon of combat. I had been so sure he was going to attack us.
The next evening I appeared at his house wearing a good Ionian chiton of my own, and over it a decent himation I’d bought secondhand. Of my friends, only Doola wanted to come, and I wasn’t sure that an African, however dignified, was going to win Anarchos over.
Slaves took my stick and my himation, and I went into his andron, which was beautifully appointed — more like that of a very rich merchant than a street fixer. He had a pair of marble amphorae on columns — they must have been a thousand years old. His kline were all Ionian work, like the ones on which Briseis and I made love, with wicker mats on a fruitwood frame. I sank onto mine, a slave took my sandals and I was given a cup of red wine.
He was on the other kline, and he raised his head over the arm rest. ‘So — you came,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised, after all my ranting last night. I’ll have to kill a rival to convince my bullies I’m still tough.’
I laughed. I wanted to hate him, but in truth, I liked him for all the reasons he named. We had a great deal in common.
‘Tell me about your boat,’ he said.
‘I have our contribution,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘That’s business. Bring it to me in public. This is private. No witnesses, no attribution. I’ll take no revenge for what you say here. So speak the truth, or keep your breath in the fence of your teeth.’
The six of us had debated all day what we should do. Daud and Neoptolymos were for instant flight over the sea to Etrusca. Doola and Demetrios and I were for looking at what the crime lord had to offer.
‘He can sell us to the Phoenicians!’ Seckla said. He certainly had Anarchos sized up.
‘Not if he’s in love with Ari,’ Doola said. He gave me a wicked smile.
Daud looked away. ‘You two make me uncomfortable,’ he said.
The Keltoi don’t take the love of men for men with the ease that Greeks do. And Etruscans and Aegyptians and everyone else, for that matter. Barbarians.
‘Not if he sees real profit,’ Doola said. ‘We represent a long shot at a lot of money, friends. Let’s not undersell our own possibilities. I am not saying we should share the whole truth with the whoreson. Just that if he really can get our boat built, he might be an ally. An untrustworthy ally, but an ally.’
Doola. He put everything so well.
So I was allowed to bargain with Anarchos.
I leaned on the arm of my own kline and smiled.
‘We want to enter the tin trade,’ I admitted. ‘We have the skills. We have the ability to do things few other men understand. I know what tin looks like at every stage. I can buy at the side of the stream, or at the mine head.
‘We can navigate and sail. There’s tin at Massalia in Gaul, and it comes from upcountry. There’s tin in the mountains behind the Tuscan plain, and there’s tin in Illyria. We have an Illyrian, a Gaul and an Etruscan.’ I shrugged. ‘I can’t be plainer than that.’
Anarchos drank his wine, and his slaves bustled to refill the cup. Another oddity — he didn’t have the terrified slaves of a bad master. He had the sort of slaves we all want to have. They were mostly silent, but when Anarchos made a witticism, they smiled or even laughed.
Interesting.
‘And you can do all this with a triakonter?’ he asked.
‘Well… yes. And the ship we have now.’ I shrugged. ‘And ten more, when we get into the trade.’
