The older girl shook her head. ‘He’s Athenian. Kinon spoke of him with – contempt.’ She shrugged. ‘He wasn’t one of our friends.’
Melitta nodded. ‘Get some more slaves,’ she said. ‘Make up the room, bring me something to wear and fetch me Nestor.’ She took one of the other girl’s hands. ‘Stand by me, and I’ll see you free before the year is out. Fuck with me, and I’ll see you dead.’
‘I swear-’ Kallista began.
‘You’ll do anything to survive,’ Melitta said. She nodded, mostly to herself. ‘I must not hold that against you. Let me tell you that I think you know more about this than you are telling. Now go!’ She shooed the slave out of her rooms.
Melitta shrugged into a chiton, cursing the foolishness of Greek female garments. Then she ran down the hall and looked at her brother. He had a little more colour in his face, and he was still asleep. She watched his chest rise and fall for a while.
‘How soon will I be shouting at you for something stupid you say to hurt my feelings?’ she said aloud. ‘How long before I slap you?’
‘Any time now, I would think,’ Philokles said. He was sitting where the slave had been sitting, and she’d missed him. Now she ran and embraced him.
‘We got off easy,’ he said.
‘Not so easily,’ she said, still hugging him.
‘True enough. Kinon is dead,’ he said. ‘And Zosimos, whom I liked. And many other men and women. All of the Bosporan marines.’
‘Marines?’ she asked.
‘The armed men who attacked us were mostly the marines off the trireme.’ Philokles sighed. ‘Whatever god told me to kill their wounded, I feel like a murderer today. None survived. So we will never know who ordered their attack. It must have been Heron.’
‘It was Stratokles, the Athenian. I heard him.’ Melitta stepped away from her tutor. ‘And Kallista was ordered to leave a lamp burning outside my brother’s door when she went to – to make love to him.’
Philokles started. ‘Ordered? By whom?’
‘Tenedos – the steward.’ Melitta went back to watching her brother.
Philokles was silent for several breaths. ‘I must tell the tyrant,’ he said. ‘How do you know that Stratokles was involved? He was the man Kinon was going to use to get us to Athens!’
‘I heard him. He talks like a man with a cold, because of the scar across his nose. I heard other men call him by name. And he has my arrow in him,’ she said proudly.
‘He may be dead in the house,’ Philokles said. ‘The tyrant’s bodyguard were not kind.’ He got to his feet, and Melitta could see that he was as stiff as she, or worse. ‘Gods, I am old,’ he said.
‘You are a hero,’ she said.
‘Just a killer,’ he said. ‘You were a hero. Your father’s daughter.’
Melitta caught his hand. ‘Why do you never praise my brother like that?’ she asked.
‘Men don’t need to be praised,’ Philokles said. ‘He is Kineas’s son. Of course he’s brave.’
Melitta shook her head. ‘He thinks – I don’t know. I have only his silences to go on. I think he thinks that he is a coward, and that you think the same.’
Philokles grunted. ‘I was raised in a barracks,’ he said. ‘No one praised me. I survived.’
Melitta shook her head. ‘And look how little it affected you,’ she said.
Philokles paused for a second at the curtain, as if to retort, but then he thought better of it, and went out.
Kallista came with a flock of palace slaves, and her room was cleaned and her bed made. Kallista continued a fawning devotion to her new mistress, but Melitta was very careful with the beautiful girl.
Slaves brought food, and Kallista tasted all of it. Slaves turned down her bed, and Kallista offered to share it. ‘I like to sleep with someone, mistress,’ she said. ‘I’d be happy to warm your bed – or more.’ She smiled, and the artful winsomeness was slightly offset by the fatigue and the desperation.
Melitta wasn’t interested. ‘On the floor, please,’ she said.
She lay awake until Kallista began to snore softly. Then, right hand clutching her short sword under her blanket, she fell asleep.
Her brother was awake in the morning. His leg was infected, but the doctor seemed unconcerned and let him hobble about on it. He proved his fitness by hobbling into her room just after sunrise. His nose was still red.
‘We’re alive!’ he said. He hugged her, gathering her in his arms where she lay, and she woke up slowly, already happy at the sound of his voice. ‘I didn’t even know I was wounded, Lita. Oh, I feel so – alive!’
‘My muscles still hurt,’ she said. ‘By Artemis, goddess of all maidens, I’ve never been so stiff. Your skin has colour!’
‘Most of it in my nose!’ he laughed. ‘The doctor says I’ll be pale for days,’ he said. ‘I’m to eat all the meat I can find. The tyrant is giving us a public dinner tonight. Philokles says that Stratokles has fled the city. I saw him – noseless bastard, as if he was a leper!’
‘I think you need to slow down, brother. How’s Theron?’ she asked, throwing her legs over the side of the bed and wriggling past her brother, whose eyes seemed to have strayed to Kallista’s body. ‘Did you make love to her?’ Melitta asked.
Her brother shrugged. ‘We started. Then the attack came.’ He shivered.
‘She was ordered into your bed, brother. To show the attackers where you slept.’ Melitta put her fingers on his cheek. ‘Remember what our mother says about slaves. She’ll do anything to survive. Anything.’
Satyrus watched her. Then he looked at his sister and smiled his old ‘let’s go and make some trouble’ smile. ‘I hear everything you just said,’ he admitted. ‘And then I look at those feet – that leg.’ He grinned. ‘I just want her.’
Kallista reached out an arm, gave a snort and rolled over.
Melitta gave her brother a mock slap. ‘She’s mine now. Hands off.’
‘Yours?’
Melitta leaned close. ‘I’m telling everyone that Kinon gifted her to me at the dinner,’ she whispered. ‘It’ll keep her alive.’
‘I’d forgotten,’ Satyrus said, straightening. ‘Okay, she’s yours. Can I have her when you’re done?’
He had a satyr’s smile, and Melitta’s slap had some venom in it this time. She’d forgotten his broken nose, and he sat down hard. ‘Ouch!’ he said.
While she cosseted him she thought, That’s how long it took me.
Satyrus was stiff too, and his ankle hurt like fire, and his nose was two sizes too big, but he was an instant favourite with the guard and he was young enough to bask in their admiration, so he wandered the citadel all day, looking at the armoury, eating in the military barracks where the tyrant quartered his most trusted guards. The guardsmen were all mercenaries, some of whom had been elite soldiers under Alexander: Hypaspists or even Argyraspids with the king of Macedon. All seemed to be named Philip or Amyntas, and all seemed to be fond of boys. He was kissed a little too often, but they said good things too, and made rough jokes. He refought his part of the action, lying on the clean floor of the barracks hall and showing how he had cut at the feet of his attackers, and they roared their appreciation.
‘That’s good thinking, for a boy,’ one old veteran said.
‘Get your head out of your arse, Philip!’ another with a grey beard said. ‘His da beat our sorry arses over the Jaxartes. Remember that? Kineas the Athenian! I knew your da, boy. You’ve got his head on your shoulders. He was a strategos.’
‘Was he brave?’ Satyrus asked, and then regretted the question.
Philip rubbed his beard. ‘Not brave like Alexander,’ he said. ‘Don’t get all soppy on me, Amyntas! Nobody was brave like the king. He was afraid of nothing.’
‘He was as stupid as a mule,’ Amyntas grumbled. ‘That’s not courage. That’s tom-foolish.’
The two veterans glared at each other. To Satyrus it had the sound of an old argument.
‘You remember Cleitus? Not black Cleitus, who the king killed. Remember red Cleitus? In the phalanx?’ Another man with the heavy accent of Macedon came in and slung his cloak on a bed. ‘He was brave.’
‘He was fucking insane!’ Philip said. ‘I was there when he went over the wall at Tyre!’