Tyrant: Force of Kings (16 page)

In the distance a bell rang. ‘Eurydike!’ called a charming, cultured voice.

‘Ah. Sorry, sweetie. Customer for me,’ she said. She patted his foot. ‘Tell me you are going to make me rich, sweetie. Please.’

Satyrus grunted. He hurt. But he managed to twitch the right side of his face. ‘Rich,’ he said.

‘Hmm. I might be falling in love with you,’ she said cheerfully, in her grating voice. ‘See ya!’

And she was gone.

It was hours before he slept. He heard several porne beaten – some by customers who just wanted to hit someone. But other customers were tender, solicitous, and thus sounded just as foolish as the lusty ones and the violent ones.

At one point, every bed on the hall must have been working at the same time. Satyrus could
smell
the sex. He could hear it all around him. It was … curious.

Eventually the sounds began to die away. It was quite late – in fact, in farmer’s hours, it was more
very early
. Satyrus had slept – he had trouble ungumming his eyes, and now he was desperately thirsty.

He tried to swallow, tried to raise saliva. Decided he would have to get up. He was sure he could do it.

He had started to wriggle down the bed when the curtain opened. Ox-head glanced at him.

‘You doing all right?’ the boy, a young man, really, old enough to be a junior
ephebe
, asked.

Satyrus raised a hand. ‘Water,’ he said.

‘Oh, sure!’ the young man responded. ‘I was supposed to bring it to you when I came on shift, but I was sent to a party.’ He vanished.

Somehow, waiting for him to return was harder than all the waiting until then.

He came back through the curtain with a whole water jar, plain black ware, full to the brim. He dipped a sponge in and handed it to Satyrus, who slurped it dry.

Satyrus repeated this three times, and he felt immensely better.

‘Help me sit up,’ he said.

Young Alex got an arm around him and lifted. He was gentle, and strong and Satyrus leaned back against the wall, took the water jug and drank. ‘Of course,’ he said, to no one in particular, ‘now I’ll have to piss again.’

Alex laughed. ‘Happens to me whenever I have to stay over at a party,’ he said. ‘When they’re done with me, I get sent to the kitchen. I won’t go to the slave quarters – I’m not a slave. But they always lock me in – as if I’d steal from my customers? And when I have to piss?’ He laughed.

‘Not a slave?’ Satyrus asked.

‘Oh, no, sir. I’m a citizen. Both my parents were citizens.’ Despite his face, the boy sounded quite intelligent.

Satyrus drank more water. ‘What do you do at parties?’ he asked.

Alex rolled his head back and forth. ‘I dance, usually. Sometimes I play drums for one of the girls. Some parties pay for us to fuck – me and Aella, usually, which is fun. We do it well.’ He nodded. ‘At a good party, after we dance, someone will take me aside, and then it’s just business. Right?’ he smiled. ‘At a bad party, the men get drunk, and then they all want to fuck me at once. Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes the idiotes don’t pay.’ He shrugged. ‘My hair’s coming in, so my days of parties are about over, and that’s as well. I’ve made a bundle.’

Satyrus nodded. He’d been at parties with flute girls and boys. Now he was talking to the other side of the coin.

Aella poked her head through the curtain. ‘How’s our gentleman?’ she asked.

‘Better,’ Satyrus said.

‘Good for you, sweetie. I have some bread and honey for you, and some dates. What the doctor said to try.’ She came in, and she was naked. Satyrus smiled.

‘I will certainly try to make you both rich,’ he said. He had to get their loyalty, right away – before they sold him to someone else. Demetrios.

Aella grinned. ‘Do you know how many men have promised to make me rich, honey?’ she said. ‘But the only purse they want to deposit in never seems to hold any cash. Eh?’ she laughed.

Alex rolled his eyes.

‘I need to go to bed,’ Aella said. ‘Alex will go and find your friend Polycrates tomorrow, won’t you, Alex?’

‘Day off, after a party,’ Alex said. He shrugged. ‘A bad party.’

‘Oh, honey,’ Aella said – the first
actual
empathy she’d shown, Satyrus thought.

Alex shrugged. ‘I was well oiled – Sappho took care of me. But none of them wanted her and all of them wanted me, and some of them were bastards.’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s get to bed.’

They left the narrow room. Satyrus, who would have ignored them, scarcely even seen them as human under other circumstances, missed them instantly. He was bored and lonely, and afraid. He lay and thought about these things. Eventually, instead of passing out, he fell asleep, craving opium.

He awoke to a quiet brothel. From the angle of the sun, he knew it was morning – late morning, and the beds were quiet. He lay and listened, and all he heard was some distant laughter and the cry of a baby. Two babies.

He thought about young Alexander. About how bad a bad party might be – bad enough when you were a guest. He’d seen how a group of Macedonian officers could behave; to each other, to any man they might use. Worse if you were a porne. Probably much worse.

The swelling in his cheek was down. The pus was crusted over.

Alex or Aella had put more water in his jug, and he drank some. He made it to the amphora unaided. It hadn’t been emptied.

He was just back on the bed when the doctor came in.

‘Up and about, are we? Excellent.’ He opened his bag and took out a small alabaster jar.

‘No more poppy, thanks,’ Satyrus said.

‘Really? Don’t tell me you’re a miser.’ The doctor put the jar away, rolled in a piece of soft leather.

‘I’ve had quite a lot of it,’ Satyrus said. ‘Too much, for one life.’

‘Soldier?’ asked the doctor.

‘Something like that,’ Satyrus said.

The doctor nodded. ‘Well. You’d know best. But when I take that bandage off, it’s going to hurt like Hades.’

He was right. It did.

He didn’t pass out, but the pain was remarkable. He cried out – not once but twice. Then he was wrapped up again.

‘Somebody really doesn’t like you,’ the doctor said.

Satyrus nodded.

The doctor grinned. ‘Well. Hope you make the whores rich, lad. You can keep this bandage wrapped, I assume, and if you don’t want poppy … well, your cheek wound is clean and dry, and you’ll hurt for weeks – but I’m done with you. I’ve crotches to look at.’

Satyrus offered his hand, but the man vanished through the curtain.

Satyrus began to think that he could tell the difference between different sex acts by the sounds. He was appalled – sometimes amused – by the frankness of the vulgarity and the customers. Men asked for the crudest things – some in sing-song, little boy voices, some in harsh demands. Aella came in to check on him, and stayed to chat while washing and rubbing olive oil into her vagina, an act she performed without the least coyness or shame.

‘No girl can make enough juice to last a whole night – not during the feast of Aphrodite,’ she said. ‘That’s my bell!’ And she was off out the curtain.

Feast of Aphrodite!
Satyrus thought.
I’ve been here two weeks.

Afternoons were slow. The boys and girls talked, or bathed, sulked, read, debated – they were Athenians, and Satyrus had to laugh at how very Athenian they were: debating political matters, arguing the relative merits of Cassander and Lysimachos, Ptolemy and Antigonus. Aella was a confirmed supporter of Demetrios, who she had seen in person.

‘He’s like one of the gods,’ he heard her say as she walked down the hall. ‘His father has captured Mithridates – not the good one. The bad one. The one who’s against us.’ She laughed like the supporter of a winning sports team. No one disagreed.

Satyrus lay and wondered about how easily men could be labelled ‘good’ and ‘bad’ because of their beliefs, or which side in a civil war they backed. It was … fathomless. He philosophised on it until he heard the proprietress inspecting the girls.

The proprietress was an older woman, with wide-set, large eyes and hair dyed jet black. In some lights she could be quite hideous, with a large nose and bad teeth – but when evening came, she was lovely, attractive the way an older matron is attractive, with a sense of dignity that Satyrus would never have associated with this world of porne and sex. Her name – frequently called out – was Lysistrada.

He knew her by voice and by glimpses through his curtain, but that afternoon she entered his cubicle.

‘Medea!’ she called – the voice of command, or of a mother.

A young woman came in. Her Sakje blood was obvious – her cheekbones were high, and besides, she had tribal scars on her right shoulder and down her arms. She had a strong face, not a pretty one. ‘Yes, despoina?’ she asked. She was meek, and her eyes were downcast.

‘Empty this pot. It stinks. The smell of urine is not an aphrodisiac, young lady.’

‘Yes, despoina.’ The Sakje girl flicked her eyes at Satyrus.

‘Good afternoon,’ Satyrus said, in Assagetae.

She started, eyes wide. Then she fled, carrying the broken amphora full of waste. In moments, she could he heard sobbing in the hall.

‘That was a fine trick to play me, sir, and my house footing your bills.’ Lysistrada glared at him. ‘I came to see to your well-being, and – what did you say to her?’

‘I gave her good afternoon, in the language of her folk.’ Satyrus suddenly felt exposed. Traders from Alexandria don’t know Sakje languages.

‘She’s the worst slave imaginable,’ she sniffed. ‘She’s injured two gentlemen. I should sell her as a nurse but some of those households are … well, worse than brothels.’ Lysistrada smiled. ‘And it took me for ever to break her to our ways. I’ll make my investment back – and you, sir. I will make my investment back on you, as well. I understand from my young people that you have a connection with our Polycrates.’

Satyrus nodded.

She crossed her arms. ‘Only, dear, there’s another rumour on the street that someone is offering a very large sum of money in cash for the location of a man from Olbia or Pantecapaeaum. A man with a cut on his cheek like an alpha, and tall.’ She smiled.

Satyrus knew he was taken. She’d sent the Sakje girl in on purpose. His brain ran on – he was fit enough to grab her. Perhaps … use her as a hostage?

No. Phiale would care nothing for that. He had to run. Immediately. He was naked on the stained sheets of a cot in a brothel – no clothes, no money …

‘What is it worth to you – in cash, not promises – for me to continue to hide you? Sir?’ she asked.

Satyrus struggled for a calm he really didn’t have. He took a breath, as if squaring off on the palaestra. ‘Polycrates will pay for me,’ he said, more to buy time than anything. The most likely result was that she would sell him to Phiale
and
to Polycrates. Except that Polycrates was dead, and unless he managed to meet with, and talk to, a family member, they’d have no reason to help him.

Two weeks!
His grain ships would be gone. Leon’s factor would have the grain money – plenty to ransom a king or two.

A bold front was the essence of the thing. He managed a smile. ‘There is a woman seeking to have me killed,’ he said, succinctly. ‘If she succeeds, and your house is blamed …’ Satyrus left the threat unspoken. ‘Whereas, if I make it to my friends, I would expect that you might receive a great deal of money, and perhaps something more.’

‘Empty threats and promises I might receive from any agora ruffler,’ she said – but she was interested.

Satyrus had seen Leon and Diodorus do this – had watched Philokles do it a thousand times, using a person’s cupidity and greed against their better judgement. But Philokles, sometime spy and spymaster, had spoken against it for a king. ‘Manipulation is the poorest form of management,’ he was wont to say.

Satyrus had no options. ‘My promises are not empty. You be the judge – do I look to you like a man of worth?’

‘Give me a name,’ she said.

‘I have. Polycrates. Bring me a member of his family.’ Satyrus paused – this woman was intelligent, and he didn’t want to give away his weaknesses. ‘Or the man himself, and I will see you paid – an enormous amount. A shocking amount.’

‘My dear sir, your rival is offering a shocking amount. And you may even have multiple rivals.’ She laughed – a harridan’s laugh. ‘Maybe they will bid for you, like men bid for a beautiful slave.’

He’d misjudged her. Somehow she was personifying in him all the men she disliked – all the men who had bought and sold her. Or perhaps that’s how she reacted to all men. ‘I can pay more,’ Satyrus said, with a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘And my death – you would feel it.’

‘I know every politician in this crooked city,’ she said. ‘I have most of them by the balls.’

Satyrus shrugged. ‘It would be a pity to see you sold back to slavery,’ he said.

She started, went white and then red. ‘Fuck you, you rich ponce.’ She was gone through the curtain before he could retract.

The moment her cork sandal soles had gone down the steps, Aella appeared. ‘Bitch,’ she said. ‘She’s trying to cut me and Alex out of our money, ain’t she, sir?’

Satyrus nodded. ‘Help me up.’

Aella looked out in the hall. ‘She’s gone out.’

‘She’s gone for my enemies. Please – this is life and death.’

Aella paused. ‘Swear!’ she said. ‘Swear by Styx that you’ll make me rich, and Alex too.’

Satyrus raised his hand. ‘I swear on Styx, and on my father’s grave, and on all the gods, may the furies plague me, that I will raise you and your friend Alex, and make you rich.’

She pursed her lips. ‘It’s a beating for me, or worse, if she catches me.’

Satyrus smiled. ‘It’s death, for me.’ He took a breath – having failed miserably as a manipulator, he tried a different tack with Aella. ‘How long will you be able to live like this, honey? Before … before your skin coarsens and your breasts sag? What
other
chance do you have?’

Outside, in the street, there was a stir.

‘Aella!’ came Alex’s voice.

She ran out through the curtain.