Tyrant: Force of Kings (2 page)

And the mind to use that body as she needed, to accomplish what she desired for the good of her city, and her own power.

Stratokles watched her with approval – approval and a distant tinge of desire. He’d loved her from their first meeting, but the years had mellowed his love into a kind of golden servitude. She rewarded him with trust and a thorough practice of the principles he instilled. And money. Stratokles was now a very rich man.

It should have been the day of his greatest triumph.

But the woman standing at Cassander’s elbow was not his wife, Penelope. Nor the woman most Macedonians accepted as his mistress: Euridyke of Athens. The woman on his arm was a courtesan named Phiale, and when her downcast eyes flicked up to touch Stratokles’ eyes, it was like the lightest possible cut from a razor-sharp xiphos at the start of a fight.

Stratokles had used Phiale – years before – in a failed plot to assassinate Ptolemy of Aegypt. The irony – and this wedding was full of historic irony – was that Stratokles had undertaken the assassination of Ptolemy at Cassander’s behest, to win favours for Stratokles’ beloved home city, Athens.

But the world had turned, and Cassander and Ptolemy needed each other against the power of Antigonus.

Stratokles struggled to remember how he had used Phiale and whether she had cause to hold it against him as he crossed the floor to her. He had warned her to leave Alexandria – that Leon the Numidian would certainly catch on to her eventually.

Why, then, did she look at him with such hate? Odd. But Stratokles had long since learned to attack a dangerous opponent and never leave one behind him, so he crossed the floor to her in a few strides, noting the averted glances of the courtiers around her.

‘Phiale?’ he said.

Cassander had stepped away from her to speak to Philip of Babylon and an older man by his side.

‘Stratokles the Informer,’ she breathed huskily. ‘What a pleasure to see you.’

Her eyes, carefully controlled, stroked him. There was no message of hate now. A far different message.

Stratokles stroked his beard. ‘We were friends, once,’ he said.

She laughed and put an arm on his. ‘Oh, my dear, we are still friends. What do you hear of Satyrus of Tanais?’

He noticed that her glance sharpened back into a sword when she said the name.

‘He remains something like a force of nature. Beloved of the gods.’ He managed a smile – there was something wrong, something he couldn’t pin down, something to do with someone he had just seen and the absence of men seeking his good will. He was isolated in the middle of his own party. And Phiale knew something.

Stratokles didn’t turn his head – but he managed to glance to his left, where the guards were. Plenty of them, good men – most men he’d picked himself. He rubbed his chin, flipped his cloak over his shoulder, and turned back to Phiale as if everything was fine.

‘Although,’ he said somewhat at random, ‘Satyrus is harmless enough,’ and saw her flush.

‘Really?’ she asked. ‘Last time you and I were
friends
, you wanted him dead.’

‘That is the way of politics, isn’t it? And may I say how very beautiful you are?’ Stratokles smiled at her.

She returned the smile, but it didn’t touch the tiny lines at the edges of her eyes. ‘You didn’t used to be so easy about Satyrus,’ she said.

Stratokles smiled, his eyes still scanning the room over her head.
What in Tartarus had happened?
Running on automatic, his mind put words into his mouth.

‘He didn’t used to supply grain to Athens,’ he said. ‘This season his ships escort our ships to Athens. Hence, we are friends.’

Phiale smiled again. ‘You are selling his bride to Lysimachos and you think he’ll escort your ships to Athens?’

Stratokles smiled back. ‘I made sure he was at sea before I let the news of the wedding out,’ he said. ‘Besides – he knows. He and Amastris have been estranged for a year. I made sure of it. She doesn’t need, or want, a military master. She wants a peer.’

Phiale controlled her face. Stratokles watched her do it, and read, in the careful play of the muscles in her jaw, his own doom.

She knew something. The word
peer
triggered her reaction.

‘So Satyrus is on his way to Athens?’ she asked.

‘Rhodes first, and then Athens,’ Stratokles said. ‘Will you excuse me, fair lady?’

Stratokles bowed and walked across the temple portico to where his second, the Latin, Lucius, waited. Lucius was as well dressed as he, and a handsomer man. Stratokles had a magnificent physique and a strong jaw, but his face was marred by a vicious old wound that left him looking like he had a comedian’s nose rather than a human one. Lucius was handsome by any standard – but his hair was bright red and that was not accounted a mark of beauty among Greeks.

‘Something feels wrong,’ Stratokles said.

Lucius nodded. ‘No one is licking your arse, lord,’ he said.

That settled it. Crude as he could be, Lucius had hit the rivet square. On a day like this – a day that capped a generation of clever diplomacy and careful betrayal, Stratokles should have been surrounded by sycophants and flatterers and great men seeking favour.

Instead, he’d been left alone, and his involvement with the details of the costumes and the lighting and the ceremony had fooled him.

‘I’m for the axe,’ he said. ‘I can feel it.’

‘You see Phiale?’ Lucius asked.

‘Like seeing a ghost.’ Stratokles risked a glance over his shoulder. He was a realist, but his heart was pounding and he still couldn’t believe it. Why –
why
? Why would his beloved mistress sacrifice him? But Phiale’s controlled reactions told him an answer. His mistress was to be used, not courted. Lysimachos wanted him gone.

His glance happened to intercept that of one of the bodyguards. The man flinched – visibly. He was a man Stratokles had chosen himself – a Macedonian left behind by one of Satyrus of Tanais’s military adventures, a man who owed Stratokles his very life. And the man wouldn’t meet his eye.

‘Arse-cunt,’ Stratokles said softly. If the guards were in on it, then Amastris herself had sold him.

The wedding was heartbeats from commencement. He could see the two priestesses of Hera at the head of the procession of religious figures and Heraklean gentry, most of them awestruck to be in the presence of the leading figures of their day.

‘We need to go,’ Stratokles said.

Lucius nodded.

Phiale pressured her lover’s arm gently. ‘My lord?’

Cassander turned to her, and waved at a handsome, dark-faced man by his side. ‘My lady, the Courtesan Phiale of Athens. This is Mithridates, lord of Bithynia. A new ally against Antigonus.’

‘I have long
desired
to be your ally, my lord.’ Mithridates looked Persian, with a long, straight nose and perfect skin. Phiale found him attractive – she wanted to touch that skin. ‘But this wedding puts your forces on my side of the Bosporus, and makes our cooperation possible. If I can evict my uncle from the throne.’

‘It was very clever indeed of Stratokles to have seen that you could be enticed to join us.’ Cassander smiled brilliantly. ‘He outdoes himself. Sometimes I think that we are all merely his puppets. Have you seen him?’ Cassander asked.

Phiale turned her head slightly. ‘There he is, lord. Talking to the red-haired man.’

‘Herakles, how can a man live, being so ugly? You have met him, Mithridates?’ Cassander’s eyes were moving rapidly around the room. ‘What did he have to say to
you
, my dear?’

Mithridates bowed. ‘I have met him. My lord, I must make my introductions to Philip of Babylon. Phiale, you are the most beautiful woman in the room.’ His eyes lay on hers for a moment, and she sighed at the unexpected compliment. Mithridates stepped away into the throng, and Cassander pulled her wrist until they were beside a pillar – the closest to privacy a king could manage at the edge of a great wedding.

‘What did he say to you?’ Cassander hissed.

‘You know him, my lord?’ Phiale asked.

‘I know him, my dear. I have – hmm – made use of him in my day.’ Cassander smiled, a handsome, charming man at the height of his powers. ‘You are no friend of his, I take it?’

Phiale smiled brilliantly at Seleucus’s brother, causing the younger man to spill some wine. ‘I hate him. He used me – ill.’

‘Then you’ll be pleased to know that he’s living his last hour,’ Cassander said. He gave her a thin smile. ‘He is a dangerous man who has outlived his usefulness. He arranged this wedding, and Lysimachos wants him gone. Lysimachos wants this city and its trade and its back door into Asia to lie like a woman, ready to his will – not to have ideas of its own. Stratokles must go. He is too good.’ Cassander sighed. ‘So good that I will miss him. Even when he fails, he owns up. Few of my tools are so apt to the hand as he.’

Phiale gave Cassander a brief look. ‘And Satyrus of Tanais?’ she asked.

Cassander laughed. The Priestess of Hera was at the head of her procession, visible just across the temple portico, and the ceremony was ready. His laugh carried easily over the temple, and heads turned. ‘Lysimachos will settle him,’ Cassander said.

‘If I told you that I could rid you of him – with no repercussions?’ she asked.

Cassander kissed her. ‘Then I would love you more, if possible, than I do now.’

She smiled. ‘After the wedding, I will require a fast ship for Athens.’

‘After the wedding I had other plans for us, my dear.’ He ran a finger under her chin.

‘Does Socrates not say that the pleasures of revenge are more beautiful than the pleasures of love?’ Phiale asked.

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ Cassander said.

‘He should have,’ Phiale answered.

‘Well?’ Lucius asked. ‘Do you have a brilliant plan?’

Stratokles didn’t have the energy to laugh. He was angry, and under the anger was the start of a bleak depression.
How could Amastris have betrayed him?
He wanted to confront her – but that was madness. If he was wrong, she would be very angry, and if he was right, she would kill him.

‘No brilliant plan. Just start walking. Come on.’ He began to walk with a purposeful stride towards the inner temple. He was careful to keep his head down, as if he was listening attentively to Lucius.

‘They won’t just let us walk away,’ Lucius said.

‘They may,’ Stratokles opined. ‘Listen – the procession of priests is at the portico. Custom holds men rigid – better than chains. No one will interrupt the ceremony. Keep walking.’

A few steps from the inner temple – almost safe – he saw the flicker of a cloak and his peripheral vision caught a nose, an eyebrow shape.

‘Zeus Meilichios,’ Stratokles said. ‘It’s the doctor.’

Leon paused for a moment, savouring the weight of the white stones in his hand. He examined the board carefully, and then chose to make his capture rather than move. He took another white stone off the board and rattled them in his hand.

Ptolemy laughed his gruff, farmer’s laugh. ‘You know,’ he said, rolling his knucklebones, ‘I
have
courtiers who know enough to lose to me.’

Leon watched the king roll a four. ‘You should play with them, then,’ he said.

Ptolemy moved two stones and removed one of Leon’s black stones. He hesitated a long time over his fourth move, and finally, with enormous hesitation, he advanced a single stone. ‘It’s different,’ he said.

Leon rolled his knucklebone without a moment’s hesitation. It came up a six. As the king of Aegypt groaned, he moved his forces swiftly, isolating Ptolemy’s latest, hesitant attack, capturing two white stones, and leaving the result of the game in no doubt.

Ptolemy shook his head. ‘More wine?’

Leon shook his, too. ‘No. I have all my accounts to review tomorrow, and ships in the yard to inspect.’ He rose. ‘I could tell you how to play better,’ he said.

‘Bah, you could no doubt tell me how to run my kingdom better,’ Ptolemy said. ‘I recommend you don’t.’ He took a drink of wine while slaves rushed about – some getting Leon’s sandals, others his mantle.

Leon paused for a moment. ‘Did you ever think, when you were fighting in the Kush with Alexander, that someday you’d have all this?’

Ptolemy grinned. ‘Remember when Kineas took me prisoner? I didn’t know you then – were you there?’

Leon nodded. ‘I was at the fire when Philokles brought you in.’

‘There was a fine man,’ Ptolemy said.

‘The best,’ Leon agreed.

‘I think of it often. When I was taken – after the skirmish – I was sure I was for it. The locals always tortured prisoners to death – we’d find them staked out on the roads. I thought that I was a dead man – dead for nothing, in a lost campaign, in a particularly nasty way. Then Philokles picked me up, and he was a Greek, and I knew I was going to live.’ The king took a long drink of wine. ‘But if I’d been taken by your Sakje – well, it would have been pretty ugly, eh?’

Leon shrugged. ‘Hard to tell. But yes – especially young people. They like to see what they can do.’

Ptolemy swirled the wine in his golden cup. ‘I think of it often. Because – when things look bad, I think,
Thank the gods, I could be old bones at Marakanda now
.’

‘Very Pythagorean of you,’ Leon said.

Ptolemy shrugged. ‘I do more thinking about … about things. Old age, I guess. How’s your nephew?’

Leon’s ‘nephew’ was Satyrus of Tanais. They weren’t related in any real way, but Leon had been part of Satyrus’s father’s household, and Leon had taken Satyrus into his own household, and all the world called them uncle and nephew.

‘Thriving, since the siege. He’s up in the Euxine, seeing to his own people.’ Leon smiled. ‘I’ll change my mind to the tune of half a cup of wine.’

Instantly, a slave placed a cup in his hand.

He tasted it – good Chian wine, but nothing fancy.

‘He’s not,’ Ptolemy said. ‘Galon told me this morning. He’s headed back to Rhodes – probably there now.’

Leon, whose intelligence service was one of the finest in the world, was surprised. ‘He’s got the grain fleet? So early? Whatever for?’