me.
‘I’ll come. I lift my curse, trierarch. I offer my apologies, but your friend hurt my wrist something cruel. Seckla and I have made a deal.’
Seckla said, ‘I gave her my word. She gets the same share that I get.’
I was staggered. ‘Seckla — listen, lady. Without meaning to dicker, he can’t offer you the same share he has. Not without seven men voting to agree.’ I glared at him.
‘She can have my share, then,’ Seckla said.
‘We’ll split it,’ she said. Her eyes were interesting. She could be cold as — well, as cold as a warrior. Or quite the passionate thing. She’d settled her claws into Seckla, and I couldn’t decide if she was a porne or not. In her heart, I mean. In fact, she was.
Dionysus came up.
She slipped behind Seckla.
‘Good morning, young lady,’ he said. He looked at me. ‘Slit her throat and let’s be on our way.’
She stepped back.
He grinned. Seckla stepped up to him, fists clenched. Dionysus, however, was twenty years his senior and had a dignity not usually found in pirates — although, come to think of it ‘Let her alone,’ Seckla said.
‘It’s a trap,’ Dionysus said. ‘One of the Carthaginians you’ve robbed is setting you up. Or that fellow — what’s his name? Who enslaved the lot of you.’
‘Dagon,’ I said. While I loathed Dagon and wanted him under the edge of my sword, I didn’t really think of him all that often, and I didn’t see him as — well, as intelligent enough to plan something like this. He was sly — crafty — evil. But not capable of setting a trap with, of all unlikely allies, a woman.
I looked at the dancer. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Men call me Despoina,’ she said. When I made a face, she shrugged. ‘I was born to Geaeta.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Athens,’ she said.
I shrugged. ‘Beware,’ I said. ‘I know Athens fairly well.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘I’d have said you were a Boeotian bumpkin who had visited once or twice.’
‘Not bad,’ I allowed. ‘Tell me where the bronze-smiths gather.’
‘The Temple of Hephaestos, on the hill below the Areopagus,’ she said.
‘What’s the rostra?’ I asked.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Anyone knows that. The speaker’s stone in the Pnyx.’
‘How did Miltiades die?’ I asked.
‘His wound festered while Cimon tried to raise the money for his debts,’ she said.
I looked at the ground. ‘Damn,’ I said. My emotion must have showed.
Her eyes softened. ‘Don’t tell me you really are the great Plataean?’ She laughed. ‘Come on. Arimnestos of Plataea is dead. Everyone says so.’ She looked at me. ‘I wish I could ask you about Plataea.’
‘How is it with Aristides?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘We’re not exactly bosom friends,’ she allowed.
‘What are you doing in Magna Greca?’ I asked.
She looked around. Men were watching from a distance.
‘I was sold,’ she said. She raised her face defiantly. ‘I was a free woman, but I was sold. As a porne. I ran, and got caught. They sold me to a Carthaginian.’ She shrugged. ‘I lived. They didn’t know I could swim. I jumped over the side at Rhegium. I’m better-trained than any kid on this coast. Better-looking, too.’ She shrugged. ‘And I won’t be a slave again, and I don’t open and shut for free, either.’ She looked at Dionysus.
‘A pretty story,’ he said.
‘Fuck you, pirate,’ she said.
His fist smashed into her cheek and she fell. ‘Speak respectfully, whore,’ he said. ‘I am not your equal.’
‘Women who sell their bodies are so much lower than men who kill for money,’ she spat from the sand.
He looked at me while Seckla fumed. Don’t imagine Seckla was too much the coward to fight for his woman. It was more complex than that. Dionysus was a superior officer and also an old friend of mine. And Seckla didn’t trust his sleeping companion yet.
Anyway, Dionysus looked at me. ‘I’m inclined to try her,’ he said.
‘If it’s a trap, we’ll fight our way out,’ I said. I remember grinning.
He shrugged. ‘The best way to get out of a trap is never to enter it.’
‘We need Gaius,’ I said. I looked at the woman, who was rubbing her cheek. Dionysus liked to hit women. I’d figured that out. ‘Despoina, how much time do we have?’
She considered rebellion. I saw it on her face. She considered telling us all to fuck ourselves. She had a lot of pride and a lot of
… arrogance for a woman who’d been so ill used.
But good sense won out.
‘If you believe me, you need to catch them at the new moon,’ she said.
That gave us two weeks.
‘Where?’ I asked softly. I held her eyes.
‘Do we have a deal? I split Seckla’s share?’ she breathed.
‘If you tell the truth, and we get a prize, you will have a sizeable share,’ I said. ‘Not less in value than one half of Seckla’s share. Is that agreeable? And I guarantee your body, your person and your freedom on my oath to Zeus, the God of Kings and Free Men, and I offer you bread and wine, hospitality and guest friendship from my house to yours until my heirs and yours are all shades in Elysium.’ I held out my hand. ‘Unless you betray me or mine, in which case, by the same oath, I will hunt you like the Furies and cut your throat.’
Seckla nodded at her and gave her a small smile. ‘He means it.’
She smiled back, and took my hand. ‘Deal,’ she said.
Dionysus snorted in disgust.
‘New Carthage,’ she said. ‘The tin fleet.’
19
Carthage got her tin from Iberia, as I’ve mentioned. Four times a year, when the Iberians had filled the Carthaginian warehouses, they sent a fleet to pick up the tin and sail it home — half a dozen round ships guarded closely by a squadron of galleys.
This was, well, I won’t call it common knowledge. It was uncommon knowledge. Shippers, tin miners, bronze-smiths and pirates knew it.
I’d say that the Carthaginians kept the movement of the tin fleets secret, but that wouldn’t do justice to how secret they kept it. They didn’t want the Greeks to know where the tin came from, or how much there was. Most merchants — even tin traders — thought that the tin came from Etrusca, or Illyria. Or some hazy point outside the Gates of Heracles.
Geaeta had quite a story — an adventure of her own, with knife-fights, lovemaking and clever escapades worthy of Odysseus. I even believed a few of the stories. She had courage and strong muscles, and I can witness that those two things alone can win you free of slavery.
Her story — the parts that made sense and I believed — was complex. She had started the spring sailing season in a slave pen in Carthago, and gone west in a consignment to New Carthage, a colony on the Inner Sea coast of Iberia facing the Balearic Islands. She said that she was sold off to a brothel there, and two weeks later, the first ships of the spring tin convoy had arrived, all badly storm-damaged by a freak spring storm in the strait.
‘They were all afraid, and angry,’ she said. ‘All the owners. All the rich men.’ She shrugged. ‘Your friend says navarchs don’t talk to porne. Maybe; maybe not his kind,’ she spat. ‘But most men talk. And good friends — a pair of them will hire a pair of girls — you know, together.’ She shrugged. ‘And the men will chat while-’ She shrugged again.
