Melitta was silent. ‘What about the men who are here?’ she asked.
Diodorus started to run. ‘Figure it out,’ he called as he dragged her towards the looming bulk of the Golden Lotus. Satyrus followed them, sword naked in his hand.
He hailed the deck from the pier, and the watch was awake. ‘What news?’ called an Athenian voice.
‘Leon told me to ask for Diokles!’ Diodorus said.
‘Here, mate! What do you need?’ Diokles was apparently the man coming down the plank.
‘We need the boat under the stern and two men to row us around to Lord Leon’s. Right now. And there’ll be armed men coming over the wall any moment.’ Diodorus punctuated his speech with glances over his shoulder.
Diokles didn’t hesitate. He grabbed a rope and pulled and in moments they were in a light boat – lovingly painted in red and blue, a display piece that nonetheless had serviceable oars. He pushed four men into the boat. ‘Kleitos, row them round to Leon’s – I’m going to cut the hawsers and pole off. Robbers won’t swim to get to the Lotus, and if they do,’ the man’s teeth shown white in the dark, ‘I’ll just gaff ’em like fish.’
‘Save the slaves,’ Diodorus said.
‘Sure!’ Diokles laughed. ‘They brought the wine.’ And then they were rowing, four pairs of arms pulling hard so that the low boat shot across the harbour.
Listen as they would, they heard no sounds of fighting behind them. Diokles shouted and the slaves and workers on the night shift ran aboard the Lotus as if drilled to it, and then – nothing.
The row home was uneventful, and then they were going up the water-steps to the back of Leon’s villa and into the dining hall, where Nihmu and Sappho and many of the household’s older servants were already dining.
Satyrus seated himself on a couch and untied his sandals. His feet were filthy. Her mouth had tasted of youth – very different from Phiale’s cinnamon and clove. Despite the nearness of death – or because of it – Amastris was at the surface of his thoughts.
‘She found you, didn’t she?’ Melitta asked, lying carefully on the couch they shared. She was careful of the covering, because her beautiful chiton had a long smear of something that looked to be tar and another even worse. ‘I can smell her scent even now. And you look as if you’ve been struck by lightning – or Aphrodite.’
Kallista came up beside him and made a show of picking up his sandals. Even as she did so, she dropped an oyster shell in his lap. A scrap of papyrus curled out of the corner of the shell, and Satyrus rolled on to the couch while scooping it up. ‘Thanks, Lista!’ he said. ‘You made it back!’
‘Always happy to help the goddess,’ Kallista said primly, and then flashed him a smile. ‘We’ve been back half an hour.’ And then, soberly, ‘Master Philokles killed a man. I saw it. And Master Coenus killed another.’
Leon was outlining the terms of Satyrus’s exile to his wife. Satyrus glanced down at the papyrus.
All it said was Stay safe and return.
Satyrus was grinning like a fool.
Nihmu met his eyes and smiled. ‘You look very happy for a boy who has just been attacked on the streets and exiled,’ she said.
Satyrus attempted to modify his expression.
‘You’ll have to send her a response,’ Melitta said. She poked him in the soft flesh over his hip so that he writhed in ticklish agony. ‘Kallista can carry it while we pack.’
‘No, I can’t,’ Kallista said. ‘Perhaps tomorrow. Master Leon says no slave is to leave the compound for any reason until further orders.’
‘What can I tell her, anyway?’ Satyrus asked. In a breath, he began to see the complications of kissing Ptolemy’s ward, the daughter of the Euxine’s most powerful tyrant. Men had tried to kill him in the city he’d come to think of as his own. He felt disoriented, as if the world had slipped off its axis.
‘Tell her you love her?’ Melitta said, and poked him again.
‘I’m to go as a marine!’ Xeno called from an adjoining couch. ‘Who cares if you’re exiled! You’ll be a navarch! We’ll fight pirates!’
‘I’m going too,’ Melitta said.
Xeno’s smile was rapturous. ‘We’ll protect you, despoina,’ he said. Then his face fell as he realized how badly this comment had gone down. Satyrus rolled over and saw his sister’s anger.
‘I don’t want to be protected, you overgrown boy!’ Melitta spat. ‘If you had as many brains as you have pimples, you’d understand!’
Crushed, Xeno rolled on his couch and faced the other way, the flush on his face spreading right across his back.
‘By Artemis, goddess of virgins, may I kill a pirate before that snot-faced boy!’ Melitta proclaimed.
Nihmu leaned over towards the younger people. ‘You wish to go as an archer, perhaps? My husband could set a new fashion!’ She smiled her enigmatic smile. As a girl, Nihmu had been an oracle among the Scythians on the sea of grass. Her oracular powers had left her a serious young woman with a head for figures, and she had married Leon after his second expedition to the east. ‘Amazon crews? Eh?’ she asked.
Nihmu, as the only other Sakje woman, was Melitta’s special friend, a bridge between the world of Alexandria and the sea of grass. Melitta laughed. ‘Why can’t I?’ she asked. ‘Once at sea, who would know?’
‘The other archers,’ Leon called from his couch. ‘Take this seriously, friends. We are at war as of now.’
Melitta stood up and raised her wine cup. ‘We were always at war, Uncle Leon. We just forgot.’
Sappho shook her head, as if denying this assertion, but Philokles, coming in with his whole midriff wrapped in linen, nodded. ‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘Life is war.’
‘Spare us the Heraklitus,’ Sappho said.
‘Where are we going, Uncle?’ Satyrus asked. To have kissed Amastris and be going as a navarch all in one day seemed unbearable joy, despite everything, and thoughts of revenge on his mother’s murderers slipped farther away.
‘We aren’t going anywhere, lad,’ Leon said. ‘You will take Golden Lotus up to Rhodos and drop a cargo of grain they need desperately. Then, if the helmsman agrees, you will go north around Lesvos to Methymna and across to Smyrna, drop some hides and some odds and ends and pick up a cargo of dye. And then home on the wind. Three weeks if you are quick – a month at the outside. By then, I predict that the king will be your friend again.’
Melitta was consuming broiled squid at a rate that made Satyrus dizzy. ‘We have to pack!’ she said.
‘What if he is not our friend then?’ Satyrus asked. What if the king learns that I’ve kissed his ward?
Diodorus finished drinking a bowl of soup. He rubbed a hairy forearm across his mouth and Sappho made a gesture of resignation. ‘Then we’ll have Hyacinth meet you in the outer harbour and you can take her to Cyrene!’ He laughed and reached across his wife for wine. She scowled. He looked around. ‘Listen, friends. We’ve grown soft. Now we go back to being hard. We, here, have a month to do Stratokles all the harm we can. We need to destroy him and his power base in this city. That goes for every servant – every slave. If you see one of the Athenian’s slaves getting water, beat him – or her. Understand?’
The servants in the hall nodded – some looked eager, and others looked scared.
‘You make mighty free with my people and my triremes, brother,’ Leon said to Diodorus, but then he shrugged. ‘That is, of course, what we’ll do – keep the twins moving until the problem is solved, and fight Stratokles in the shadows.’ He shrugged apologetically to his wife. ‘It will be hard here. And the Macedonian party won’t just stand by.’
Satyrus ate some bread and fish sauce. ‘But Philokles will come with us,’ he said. And then he understood. ‘Won’t he?’ he added, sounding weak even to himself.
Philokles shook his head. ‘Time for you to fly on your own, lad,’ he said.
‘Theron?’ Satyrus asked.