The sound of a woman’s laughter pealed through the garden. I knew her laugh immediately — the laugh of a deep-voiced, deep-chested woman.
She came along a gravel path with the grace of a goddess. She was tall, as I have said. Her face was… magnificent, but not beautiful. The angles were too sharp, her nose almost like a beak, her eyebrows fierce, her mouth a long slash. And yet Dano of Croton was, and remains, as enigmatic as her father.
‘He argues like a sophist, changing his ground as fast as you change yours,’ she said.
‘I practised debate as a boy, when I was learning to be a swordsman,’ I said.
Gelon raised an eyebrow. ‘ Learning to be a swordsman,’ he said, with gentle contempt. ‘Any well-born boy is born knowing how to wield a sword. It is an innate skill. Like virtue.’
He truly believed what he said. It is important that you understand this to understand the complexity of our lives. He was a great man: a great mind, a deep thinker, a superb general. And yet he truly, utterly believed that the well born were superior in every way — far more like the gods than, say, one of his Sikel or African slaves.
But my growing respect for him couldn’t stop the sneer from touching my face. ‘Would you care to put one of your well-born young men against me?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘You claim descent from Heracles,’ he said. ‘Naturally, you are a better warrior than other men.’ He smiled. ‘Even if you waste your talents working bronze.’
It was like the feeling of a heavy Persian arrow hitting my aspis.
‘Would you care to put one of your well-born gentlemen against a slave of my choosing?’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘There are always exceptions. But in general… Come, you won’t deny that the well born are handsomer, with better bodies and more aptitude for anything. It doesn’t surprise me that you are a fine bronze- smith. Any gentleman will excel at any of the lesser trades. But this is like an adult stooping to enter the boy’s events in the Olympics. Let the lesser men work bronze. A gentleman should work with men.’
‘If this is true,’ I said, trying once more, ‘why are so few gentlemen any use at the helm of a ship in a storm?’
Dano of Croton laughed. ‘He doesn’t know, and you should stop trying to beat him. And Gelon, be a good host. This is the man who saved me from the Phoenicians. Even now my great height would be fetching a stunning price at some brothel in Carthage.’ She smiled at me. ‘I failed to thank you at the time, Arimnestos. I was… disconsolate. It is difficult to explain. I do not live in a world of ship battles and pirates. I read about such things.’ She shrugged.
Well. It is rather difficult to harbour resentment against someone thanking you in front of the ruler of a tenth of the known world. She offered her cheek to be kissed, and I kissed it.
The Tyrant laughed. ‘Do you know who she is, son of Heracles? She’s Dano of Croton. Pythagoras’s daughter. One of my best friends. I owe you immeasurably for her rescue — but we had no notion of what kind of man you might be. I had imagined a much blacker pirate.’
I shrugged. ‘I have been a black pirate. I imagine that the darkness of one’s acts is often judged differently, depending on which end of the sword faces you.’
Dano shook her head. ‘I confess that you rescued me, and I am grateful. But despite that, I believe that all violence makes men lesser — more like animals.’
‘War is the king and father of all; some men it makes kings, and others, slaves,’ I said. ‘Peace begets nothing but dull care. Strength comes through change. The wise adapt.’
‘Heraclitus!’ she said. ‘That charlatan.’
‘He was my master and teacher,’ I said. ‘And he honoured your father.’
‘My father did not honour him,’ she said. She paused. Her voice had begun to grow coloured, heated, and she took several breaths. More than any Pythagorean I ever knew, Dano controlled herself at all times.
Now the Tyrant laughed. ‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘I have a follower of Heraclitus to debate with my daughter of Pythagoras; we can form a three-sided triangle of discussion. Arimnestos, be free in my city. I may have a matter of… hmm… policy to discuss with you, now that I have met you. I’m sure many people here will want to meet you. Do you wish me to give you a guide?’
‘I know the city well,’ I said.
Gelon gave me an odd look, and said, ‘Very well. I will have rooms assigned to you in the palace.’
‘I would be too afraid of being murdered by fanatic Pythagoreans,’ I said.
She started to bite back, and realized she was being mocked. Instead of glaring at each other, we found ourselves smiling. It was an odd interaction. I was quite sure that I didn’t find her attractive, so I wondered at the readiness of my unintended smile.
The pretty young Dionysus, son of Anchises, reappeared to lead me out of the palace. We didn’t leave the way we’d come, but went up into the main apartments so that he could show me, I suppose, the sheer magnificence of the palace, and then we headed down a grand outside marble stair that wrapped around a small temple platform to Nike. A priestess was just emerging from the temple; her sheer gracefulness caught my eye. She wasn’t tall, but willowy and her neck rose from her sheer white chiton It was Lydia.
I stopped on the steps and almost fell.
She looked at me, put a hand to her chest and then turned and went back into the temple of Nike. Without intending it — indeed, without any conscious thought — I ran back up the steps to the temple, but Dionysus caught my hand.
‘You cannot go in there,’ he said. ‘Gelon would have you killed.’
I saw that the temple doors — well-worked bronze, the height of a man, with deeply inset panels that showed scenes from the triumph of the goddess — were slightly ajar. She was watching me. Or watching for me to go.
‘I know her,’ I said. It was, all things considered, a foolish thing to say.
Dionysus looked at me. ‘I must suggest that you are mistaken,’ he said primly.
The next few days passed in a pleasant, but confusing, whirl. Doola was busy selling our tin, and through him, our inn became a hive of mercantile activity. Gelon might disdain merchants, but his factor made it clear that Syracusa needed tin.
I received invitations to the palace, which I accepted. I dined with Gelon and the nobility of Syracusa. Lydia — if it was Lydia I had seen — was nowhere in evidence. I shared a couch with Gaius, and we were bored. I didn’t see Dano. Of course, I was back in civilization and women didn’t, in general, dine with men, especially in conservative, aristocratic Syracusa.
Dull.
After two days of it, I couldn’t stand the inaction. At first I wandered the waterfront. I met men from Athens and Croton, from Rome, from all the cities of the Etrusca, from as far away as Tyre. The Tyrian, a senior officer of a merchant on the beach, looked me over carefully from the deck of his ship and then beckoned to me.
‘You are the great Greek pirate,’ he said. He grinned. It wasn’t a real expression — more like a dog showing its teeth. He sent a boy for spiced wine, and we sat on bales of his linens from Aegypt and he told me without preamble that Darius, the Great King for all of my life, was rumoured to have died at Persepolis, which was about as far from Syracusa as I could imagine in distance. His successor was Xerxes, or so my Phoenician helmsman informed me.
He talked about Persia’s determination to conquer Athens, and after a while we moved up the beach to a taverna. Men came and went, asking his leave to buy one thing or sell another. After some small talk about his family, he got to the point. He leaned back, stuck two fingers in the top of his linen kilt and smiled.
‘Now I have told you something, yes? So you tell me. You make war — sea war — on Carthago, yes?’ He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
‘Carthago enslaved me,’ I said mildly.
He nodded. ‘You have killed many of my people. Many. Yet I sit here and make the talk with you, and you do not seem like a monster. Why so much war, eh?’
I spread my hands. ‘It seems to follow me,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘So tell me this. Is it true you went to the Tin Islands? All the way into the Outer Sea?’
I was watching him carefully. I didn’t think it impossible that the Phoenicians would murder me in cold blood, for all sorts of reasons — but first and foremost because I knew the route to the tin. ‘Yes. All the way to Alba. And back.’
He smiled, leaned forward and extended his hand. ‘I’m Thato Abn Ba’al. I, too, have crossed the northern
