Tyrant: Force of Kings (43 page)

‘This letter is for Leon,’ she said. She shrugged, an eloquent shrug that suggested that she, as a mere woman, made these mistakes, and she’d read it, and really, no one should chide her for it – all in a shrug. ‘Banugul of Hyrkania is at Heraklea with a convoy of goods to be made into money for her son to buy mercenaries.’ She held out the letter. ‘Almost a thousand talents, the letter says.’

Daedelus shook his head. ‘A thousand talents? By Hephaestus’s forge – that’s enough to buy Antigonus.’

Abraham scratched his beard. ‘She’s … an enemy. But of course, her son is with Stratokles, and Stratokles …’ He looked at his sister.

Miriam sighed. ‘Stratokles is a side all by himself.’

Daedelus made a face. ‘I’ve heard of her, too. Alexander’s mistress. But what does this change?’

Abraham shook his head. ‘Nothing. But we couldn’t get a message back through anyway. As soon as the winter storms are off the heavens, Demetrios will close the Propontus. As it is, the captain who brought the letter must be a madman.’

‘Insane,’ said a voice from the warehouse door.

Miriam’s heart stopped.

‘I thought that the winter winds were a safer bet than two hundred triremes,’ Satyrus said. He had on his ancient, pale blue chiton and his sea boots, and he looked more like a fisherman than the King of the Bosporus.

Abraham threw his arms around his friend.

Satyrus had the good grace to look at his friend while he embraced him. Then his glance went back to Miriam.

‘I came to try you one more time,’ he said. He seemed unembarrassed to have Daedelus and Abraham present.

The hardened sea-mercenary grew red. His eyes met with Abraham’s.

‘I … think I hear my mother calling me,’ he muttered.

‘Cup of wine before you go?’ Abraham asked.

‘Jews are the most hospitable of men,’ Daedelus said.

He reached out for her hand, and she gave it to him. They sat – uncomfortably – on a chest of Athenian blackware and wood shavings. For a time that would have bored an onlooker, they said nothing.

‘You must be Poseidon’s own son,’ she said quietly.

‘Surely your Jehovah doesn’t tolerate Poseidon,’ Satyrus said. ‘As he’s a jealous god.’

She grew red.

‘There are Jews in Tanais, now. I tried to get their priest to teach me Hebrew. He had to admit he wasn’t very good at it himself.’ Satyrus shrugged. ‘We spent the winter talking Greek, instead. He’s building a temple – a small one. I’m paying.’

She looked away.

‘I can’t be a Jew,’ Satyrus said. ‘Please look at me, this is no jest. I understand that it is the religion of your people. I can respect it, but I heard nothing from that good man in Tanais that would cause me to leave the worship of Herakles … or Apollo, or Athena, or Pythagoras or Socrates or even Aristotle. But to me, it is a list of rules – rules made to govern people in a place far from my people. Perhaps every religion is such. But Herakles cares nothing for my taste in meat, only that I be excellent. That I pour everything I have into that excellence, and never allow myself to settle for second-rate. And it occurred to me, this winter, that you were the most excellent person I had ever met – that I would not settle for some Greek girl or some Sakje princess with a thousand horses, any more than I would allow other men to settle the world while I watched.’

‘You might have died, sailing here.’ She was angry.

He nodded. ‘I thought that I would die last autumn. Melitta thought so. There was an augury.’ He rubbed his chin. There was salt in his hair, making him look older than he was. ‘I am not a stripling. So I won’t tell you that I will die without you. But I would certainly
live
with you.’

She nodded. ‘Shouldn’t you be at Heraklea with Cassander and Lysimachos? Preparing for the last act of the war?’

He looked into her eyes. ‘No. That’s for Stratokles. He should be there by now. My sister and I have sent out the word, gathered our taxes, talked to our farmers and our tribesmen. Stratokles can negotiate for us.’

‘You trust him?’ she said, her eyes wide.

Satyrus smiled. ‘There is some magic to him,’ he said. ‘I have come two thousand stades across storm-racked seas to see the woman I love, and we are discussing Stratokles.’

They gazed at each other.

‘If you will live with me – wife, mistress, friend, whatever role you choose – we can look into each other’s eyes for ever,’ he said.

She licked her lips, then looked away. ‘No,’ she said. ‘In time, it will lose its savour. We will argue about raising our children, about the rights of Jews in the town, about the way you levy tolls. About Stratokles. About war.’

Satyrus got to his feet. ‘Yes, I agree. I think it sounds like a lovely way to pass the time. I’d rather argue acrimoniously with you than grow restless with the dull smiles of a princess and feel guilty while I fuck her slaves.’ He turned back to her. ‘Was that too blunt?’ He took both her hands. ‘We survived a year in the siege of Rhodes, and I saw you tested in the crucible of Ares – and you wanted nothing.’

She took a deep breath. He saw it in her face.

‘Must I beg?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Listen, Satyrus. Stop your chatter and listen. After Ephesus, I asked myself this: if I am not a Jew, what am I? Who am I?’ She shook her head. ‘And inside my head, I hear the same voice I have heard since my husband died. Since I told my father that I wouldn’t go back to him.’ She clenched his hands
hard
, as if she was drowning and he could save her. ‘I think that you imagine that I am strong, and I am weak. I fear to fail you, and I fear to find that you have subsumed me – that I will become a body and a complacent smile. I am not your match.’

He was smiling. His smile annoyed her.

‘You think that you know
everything
,’ she said pettishly.

‘I know you. What you say is true, but you are
you
. You think I lack these fears? Last year, I nearly lost my life and my kingdom through ignoring the counsel of my counsellors. I am ignoring my sister to plunge my kingdom into debt to fight a war that may not be my business. I am more like Demetrios than I would admit to anyone but you, and to be honest, my love, I am giving my all to defeat Demetrios and Antigonus, and I’m all but sure that they are the better men. I am tired of war and I’m no longer sure of what my motivations are for fighting. My road here is littered with corpses of people I loved – Diokles died in the autumn, Helios died here, Philokles, Nestor – like paving stones in the road, and when I am drifting off to sleep, I wince and roll and roll again, trying to be someone else, someone who does not kill people every summer. And despite all that, I enjoy my wine, and I love the sea, and I would trade the rest of my life to lie tonight in your bed.’

She flushed. ‘That was too blunt,’ she said with a smile.

‘No it wasn’t.’ He put his arms around her.

She kissed him. He had hesitated, because forcing his kisses on her was far from his intention. She didn’t raise her face and wait – she locked her hands behind his head and kissed him.

‘You … changed your mind?’ he said.

‘No. Listen, love. I will talk to Abraham, and if I have his agreement, I will try you – us – a day at a time.’ She shrugged. Kissed him, and stepped away. ‘And you will not be in my bed tonight. Curse it. But once you are there, I suspect that I will never have you out of it.’

Satyrus grabbed her, ran a hand down her side to her hip, and she squealed, and he laughed.

The sound of their laughter carried into the garden.

‘The King of the Bosporus is seducing my sister,’ Abraham said, and raised his cup for more wine.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Daedelus said.

Stratokles arrived in Heraklea like a priest going to a festival. It was, in every way, the high point of his life, the culmination of his work, and the discovery that Banugul of Hyrkania was living in the house of Leon’s factor added to its savour. And the money she had, of course.

Her arrival pointed up something he had believed all his life, jumping from web to web across the plots of lesser men. That if you planned well, worked hard, and did your very best, the gods would grant you luck. He had never planned on Banugul. But the cash she brought made his job easy.

Cassander came to Heraklea, a broken reed, but still strong. He had raised a new army in Europe, and a small fleet. Lysimachos was there, with Amastris; now undisputed lord of Mysia and the Troad, with thirty thousand professional soldiers, twenty elephants, and a fleet of heavy ships.

Aiax Seleucus, the King of Babylon’s nephew, was there, representing fifty thousand men and a hundred elephants, already said to be marching across Asia up the Royal Road to Sardis.

No one spoke for Ptolemy, but Stratokles had his letter in his scroll bag, telling of two hundred ships gathering in the harbour of Rhodes to open the Dardanelles when the summer winds began to blow.

Mithridates of Bithynia was there, lord of ten thousand cavalrymen, master of the gates of Asia, and now their firm ally.

It made Stratokles laugh, as he lay by Banugul in a house he had once stormed to kill Satyrus and Melitta of Tanais – where he was now an honoured guest. He stroked her side and thought of how, a year before, these same ‘allies’ had elected to murder him. And now, as the captain general of Satyrus and Melitta, his money and his acumen and their soldiers were the porpax of the alliance – the handle by which all the other rivals grasped the shield.

‘I have never seen you so happy,’ Banugul murmured.

‘Nor I, you,’ he said into her ear.

‘My son is a better man,’ she said. ‘And more important – he is
alive
.’

‘He is a fine man, and one who has, I think, found that he does not want to be Alexander’s son. He wants to be his own man – perhaps King of Hyrkania.’ Stratokles smiled.

‘Meaning you no longer need him,’ she said.

Stratokles rolled over, kissed her, reached across her and took the wine cup from the table by the bed, sharing it with her. ‘I cannot help who I am,’ he said. ‘I have plots, and plots, and plots. Some succeed, and some fail. And my greatest flaw is that I hedge my own bets, and some of my plots are rivals to other of my plots.’ He lay back and grinned into the lamplit darkness. ‘I had planned to use your son to drive Cassander mad. As it is, Cassander has placed himself in my hands, and your son doesn’t want to be a tool. So I have become wise enough not to struggle.’

‘I have put money into a rumour,’ Banugul said. ‘That he is the son of Eumenes of Kardia.’

Stratokles laughed. ‘Well played, lady. No Macedonian would cross the street to serve a bastard son of Eumenes.’ He reached for her shoulders. ‘But he is Alexander’s son.’

‘Perhaps,’ she allowed. ‘Are you really friends with Kineas’s son? Will this alliance last?’

He chuckled, and gave her no answer, and they passed the time with other things.

But in the morning, with Lucius at his back, Stratokles walked up to the Temple of Hera.

He was dressed in his very best – a chiton with flames of Tyrian red licking up the shining white wool from the hems, themselves so thick with embroidery that the gold pins that held it together were difficult to push through the cloth. Over his shoulder hung a chlamys of pure red-purple, embroidered in gold, and on his brow sat a diadem of gold and red-purple amethysts, worth the value of a heavy penteres all by itself, without reckoning the other accoutrements he wore – gold sandals with gold buckles, gold mountings on the dagger under his armpit, gold rings on his fingers. It had cost him extra time and effort to reassemble the costume, but the effect was worth it. For his chiton and his diadem proclaimed to all of them:
You tried to kill me, and here I am, and I hold the reins of this chariot.

It was no longer about Athens. Stratokles had loved Athens all of his life but Demetrios was sucking the marrow from Athens’s bones. And when he fell – if Cassander could be destroyed with him – Athens would be free. Or as free as a city could be in the world of monsters that Alexander had created.

So he walked up the steps. Nodded to Lysimachos, bowed to Amastris, smiled at Phiale, and laughed at Cassander, whose eyes flashed with venom.

Once, this man called me a viper.

They mouthed pious nothings.

‘And where is your new master?’ Phiale asked.

‘Satyrus of Tanais?’ he asked, as if unsure who she meant. ‘Elsewhere, engaged in more important business.’

The shock that this statement engendered was worth all the torments of the last year.

‘His sister?’ Lysimachos asked.

‘On the Sea of Grass,’ Stratokles said. ‘They send their regrets.’

‘Ares!’ Lysimachos said. ‘They have deserted the alliance?’

Stratokles smiled. He had all the time in the world. ‘I have their instructions,’ he said.

‘This is intolerable!’ Cassander said.

Stratokles smiled, swirled his wine, and contemplated an excellent image of the goddess – imperious, matronly, and yet beautiful. Not his favourite goddess – and yet, and yet.

‘Allies,’ Stratokles said. They all looked at him. He bowed to the priestess of Hera. ‘My instructions are that we all swear an oath in the names of our principles, to support the alliance until Antigonus is defeated – and for one year after. I have taken the liberty of drawing up copies in advance.’

‘I do not take orders from a petty king, nor from his petty minister,’ Cassander said. His face was puffy, and his fingers under their rings were bloated, like those of a corpse left in the water.

Stratokles didn’t need the doctor to tell him – Cassander had oedema. He wasn’t fat, he was bloated with water.

Oh, the gods do what a man cannot
, Stratokles thought.

‘These are not orders,’ Stratokles said. ‘We are here as allies – as peers.’

‘I am the King of Macedon, and you are a paid informant.’ Cassander had once been the handsomest of mortals. Now he was hideous, and he seemed unaware of the change in his physique; speeches that had once seemed imperious now seemed pathetic.

Stratokles turned to the other kings. ‘I had no intention of offending. It was our intention to plan a campaign – we had assumed that all were in favour of it.’