She stood aside, the knife held firmly. ‘Be my guest,’ she said. ‘I’ll just watch.’
There was a chuckle from the doorway, and Nestor, the guard captain, came in. His armour was off, and he was just another big man, now wearing a handsome chiton of Tyrian purple wool. ‘Let her alone, Athenian,’ he said. ‘She’s a titan.’
The doctor sighed. ‘She needs to be in bed.’
Nestor chuckled again. ‘She nearly gutted one of my men. Girl, you’ll get a husband faster if you wave that about less.’
‘I am not waving it about. This is the low guard, and my hands are steady!’ She wished she hadn’t sounded quite so anxious.
Nestor stepped fully into the room and his grin flashed in the lamplight. ‘Sheathe the weapon, my lady. As a favour. The doctor means no harm and neither do I.’
Melitta bowed. ‘My pardon,’ she said. She really was tired.
‘A chair,’ he said to the slaves.
‘Where is Kallista?’ Melitta asked.
‘The other girl? In the slave quarters. Is she yours? I’m sorry – I took for granted she was Kinon’s. Shall I ask her to attend you?’ Nestor made a motion and another slave ran from the room.
‘Where is Philokles?’ she asked.
‘In the next room, with the other man,’ Nestor said.
Melitta nodded. ‘When Kallista comes, I will go to bed,’ she said.
Her brother lay unmoving, as pale as the Aegyptian linen on which he lay. His lower right leg was wrapped in bandages that were slowly becoming the colour of Nestor’s chiton.
‘He’s not going to die,’ she said.
Nestor met her eye. ‘Good. I honoured his courage.’ He was very serious.
‘He doesn’t think he has any courage,’ Melitta said.
Nestor gave a small smile. ‘Many men who appear brave suffer from the same failing,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they die trying to prove themselves brave when no one has ever questioned their courage,’ he added.
‘That’s my brother,’ she said proudly.
Nestor shook his head. ‘Make sure you save him then,’ he said to the doctor, as if he could just order such a thing.
When Kallista came, she looked more like Medusa than Helen of Troy, her make-up smeared, her eyes wild and her hair unkempt. She stepped straight into Melitta’s arms. ‘They killed everyone!’ she said. She burst into tears.
Melitta held her while she sobbed, and then started to walk her to the door. ‘Take me to my room,’ she said.
‘I’ll take you to the women’s wing,’ Nestor said.
‘I want to be right here,’ Melitta said.
Nestor nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said with a yawn. With two slaves, he took her past where Philokles lay unsleeping on a couch, past Theron’s snores and into a darkened room. The slaves moved about, filling the pitchers with water and wine, lighting lamps, turning down the linens on her sleeping couch.
‘Shall I make up a pallet on the floor?’ one of the palace slaves asked.
‘If you would be so kind,’ she replied. Kallista kept right on crying.
Nestor bowed. ‘If my lady will permit, I, for one, intend to get a few dreams through the gate of horn before the sun rises.’
Melitta returned his bow. ‘Thanks for your courtesy, sir.’ She paused. ‘How long has the Athenian been a doctor here?’
Nestor thought a moment. ‘Not long,’ he said. ‘Why?’
Melitta bit back her answer, born of fatigue and unreason, she was sure. ‘No matter,’ she said. ‘Thank you for all your help, Nestor. May the gods be with you.’
He smiled and patted her head, which she normally hated. This time, it was somewhat reassuring.
When he was gone, she waved her hands at the slaves. ‘Go!’ she said.
They both looked at her. Kallista continued to sob.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘Go and attend the doctor!’
Both slaves left silently. She steered the other girl to the bed.
‘It’s my fault!’ Kallista said through her sobs.
Melitta had suspected something like this. ‘Why were you in my brother’s room? At Kinon’s?’ she asked, and her voice was sharper than she meant.
‘Tenedos told me to fuck him,’ the beautiful girl sobbed. ‘I was supposed to take a lamp and leave it burning outside the room!’ she wailed. ‘We would all be free! That’s what he said!’ She looked around wildly. ‘And now they’re all dead.’
Melitta got up from the couch and went to the table, where, as she expected, the doctor’s poppy juice was freshly prepared by the ewer of wine. She mixed the two, filled a cup and handed it to Kallista.
‘Listen, girl,’ she said. ‘Do you want to live?’
Kallista nodded. She sobbed and choked again.
‘You are my slave. Listen! You came here with me. There’s no one to say otherwise. Right?’ Melitta called upon her dwindling reserves. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow. Drink this.’
Obediently, the older girl took the cup and drank.
‘Good,’ Melitta said. ‘You can start by tasting my food and wine.’
The slave girl was asleep in minutes.
Melitta watched the darkness and blood behind her eyes until the sun rose.
At some point she must have slept, because she woke to the bright light of a noon sun pounding through the courtyard outside and into her room. For a long moment, she didn’t know where she was. Her back hurt like fire, and she was in a chair.
Kallista was snoring in her bed, a breast bare in the reflected light, her usual beauty restored by sleep. Melitta got up and found that every muscle in her body hurt. She limped across the room and pulled a cloak over the slave girl. Then she stood in the middle of the room, rubbing her hips and buttocks.
She stretched, and remembered that her brother was dying – might already be dead. She was out of the door of her room, flying along the row of pillars. Philokles’ room’s door was covered by a curtain of beads that dazzled in the sun, and her brother’s was tied back. There was a slave asleep in a chair with a Thracian cloak over his legs.
Satyrus was as pale as unworked clay. Her hand went to her mouth and a sob escaped her. She stepped up beside him, reached out a hand and hesitated.
As long as she didn’t know that he was dead – the world would not end.
She put a hand on his forehead.
It was cold as ice.
She pulled it back as if it had been burned, and another sob escaped her. I should kill myself, she thought. I’m really not sure that I can deal with this. The problem was, as she realized immediately, that she didn’t want to kill herself, any more than she had wanted to do so in the dark and flame of the fight.
But with her mother and brother both gone…
His chest moved.
The sound of his exhalation seemed to echo inside her head for some time, like the west wind in the halls of Olympus.
‘Philokles!’ she yelled in her joy.
She slept again and woke to softer evening shadows, with Kallista sitting by her bed, fanning her. ‘Mistress?’ she said, as soon as Melitta’s eyes fluttered open.
‘Kinon gifted you to me,’ Melitta said. Her brain was running at a high speed, like a chariot rolling effortlessly on a smooth road. She could see a great many things, and one of them was that Kallista was in as much danger as the twins themselves. ‘That’s why you are mine. He gifted you at dinner last night. Understand? And you were in my room when the attack started.’
‘Yes, mistress,’ the other girl said. There were dark smudges under Kallista’s eyes, as if she had been punched, and the whites of her eyes lacked their usual clarity, but otherwise she was unaffected.
Melitta rose on one elbow. ‘Tenedos told you to go to my brother’s room and leave a lamp outside?’
‘Yes,’ Kallista replied.
‘So that his murderers could tell what room he occupied,’ Melitta said.
‘You must believe me, mistress. I knew nothing of what he intended.’ The beautiful girl shuddered.
‘You understand, Tenedos may still be alive. He needs you dead. What do you know of this Stratokles?’ Melitta asked.