And wine.
Wine flowed for a week as if they were sitting on the plains of Arcadia and not those of Sogdiana. Olbians paid Sauromatae maidens to weave garlands of the shiny leaves that looked most like laurel, and they celebrated the mid-summer feast of Aphrodite a few days late, and no man or woman was altogether sober.
Coenus’s lady sat with Sappho, modestly dressed. The two of them had been sewing and embroidering for two days without cease, washing their hands frequently, and hiding their work from all comers.
‘You’ve shared the plan with the gentlemen, I take it?’ Coenus asked.
Kineas nodded, chewing on some unleavened bread made from proper wheat. ‘I proposed it to Srayanka and Diodorus as well.’
Philokles waved his bread at them. ‘Me, too,’ he said with his mouth full.
Coenus waved his arms at the west. ‘It’s becoming a reality already,’ he said. ‘Heron put a hundred men into the fort on the Rha under Crax and then sent his troop of horse to clear my way. Crax is the lord of all the Rha’s mouth, and he has recruited men in your name.’ Coenus gave a wry smile. ‘I also recruited some men in Olbia and Pantecapaeum, and I added mine to his rather than ship them across the Kaspian. Many of them had already guessed how much bullion I had.’ He shrugged.
‘And Lykeles?’ Kineas asked.
‘Not a complete fool,’ Coenus said fondly. ‘He had no idea of how he was being used. I set him straight. But mark my words — there will be war in the cities before next summer. Heraclea, the strongest city on the Euxine, is making noise of grabbing at the east-coast cities, and neither Olbia nor Pantecapaeum are ready.’
‘Heron?’
‘Heron is slowly gathering and training an army of the trash of Hyrkania, with Leosthenes as his captain and Lycurgus as the governor of Namastopolis.’ Coenus smiled. ‘He’s not hurting anyone, and his gold is keeping the best men for us. The rest have already gone south over the mountains to Parthia. The knives are out there, and everywhere that Alexander’s writ runs. He’s a fool to stay in the east. His western lands are going to desert him.’ Coenus shook his head. ‘And on top of all that, he’s recruiting Greeks himself.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m not one of Alexander’s worshippers,’ he said, ‘but a year ago, the tyrant of Olbia was telling me that Parmenion would bury him. Now Parmenion is dead. Alexander may be mad, he may leak hubris as most men bleed, but he is canny when it comes to ruling men.’ He paused. ‘He needs those Greeks. He’s bled a lot of men.’
Diodorus gave a hard smile. ‘We helped.’
Coenus nodded. ‘I won’t argue with you. Antipater walks in fear. Olympias is a force to be reckoned with, or so they say.’ He drank wine. ‘Ares, but that all seems so distant here.’
Diodorus gave a foxy grin. ‘The politics may be distant, but the God-King himself is just a thousand stades that way.’ He motioned to the east. ‘Probably less.’
Coenus sat up as if stung by a wasp. ‘That’s less than the distance from Athens to Sparta!’
‘Just so.’ Diodorus reached past his friend and poured wine into his cup. ‘His patrols and ours are already on the same ground. If he weren’t so focused on Spitamenes, he’d be after us already.’
‘So Crax is in the fort at Errymi,’ Kineas interrupted.
Coenus rubbed his beard. ‘He’s a good lord, and the Maeotae like him. His patrols keep them safe. There are already new farms on the Rha. I rode over the divide to the Tanais — there and back, if you know what I mean. I talked to the farmers on the Tanais. They know we cleared the bandits. Unless we over-tax them, they’ll be satisfied to have a lord — and a town.’
Kineas shook his head again. ‘I haven’t sworn to it yet.’
Coenus drank off the dregs of his wine. ‘Nonsense. The thing is as good as done.’
Sappho smiled, and so did Artemesia, and Srayanka laughed, all three of them watching the two babies.
Philokles slapped Kineas on the back. ‘Will you be a king?’ he asked.
Kineas was still laughing when Upazan rode by and something in the set of the man’s shoulders killed his laughter. ‘I would rather found a city with an assembly.’
Srayanka shrugged. ‘We have assemblies, too. But we have lords for war. If we do this thing, I think we should have a king.’
Nihmu reached into the circle of adults and took a warm round of bread. ‘The time of kings is coming,’ she said. She smiled apologetically, either for her words or for her theft of bread. ‘The time of assemblies is almost past.’ She smiled timidly. ‘That is what the priests said in Olbia.’
Philokles looked at her and frowned. He was bleary with wine. ‘Why must it be a time of kings, child? Sparta has kings, and this is scarcely her finest hour,’ he said. ‘And why must you play the barbarian seeress all the time?’
Sappho shook her head. ‘The girl speaks only the truth, Philokles. And wasn’t Cassandra a Greek woman, and no barbarian?’
Kineas nodded. ‘Nihmu, your priests are aristocrats to a man and they desire a time of kings. Bad prophets predict futures that they desire. Good prophets speak only what the gods send.’
‘Oh, aristocrats are at fault, are they?’ Philokles asked.
‘Go to bed,’ Sappho said. ‘You are arguing, not debating.’ She sent Nihmu away with a whisper, and Kineas knew that she had sent the girl for Temerix.
Philokles resented her tone. He drew himself up. ‘I’m sorry if my wit is not up to your standards, madam,’ he said, and walked off into the night.
Sappho, after a worried look, took Diodorus’s hand and led him off. off. Srayanka put her daughter to her breast. ‘If that girl is Kam Baqca’s daughter,’ she asked, ‘who was her mother?’
Kineas drank wine and shook his head. ‘She told me. I can’t remember. Some lady with your name was her grandmother.’
‘Really?’ Srayanka asked. ‘Srayanka the archer? That would make us cousins. Why don’t I know her?’
‘No idea, my dear. I didn’t grow up here.’ Kineas stroked her hair, and then took his daughter and held her, marvelling again at the tiny hands and feet — and how it all worked. And how holding a child made him feel.
‘She frightens me,’ Srayanka said. ‘And if Kam Baqca ever lay with a woman, I would expect to know.’
Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘I like her. Even when she’s a Cassandra.’
Srayanka took her daughter and put her back to the breast. ‘Greedy beast,’ she murmured. ‘I may be wrong, love. Kam Baqca was the oddest of beings, and he sacrificed his manhood, hmmm, seven years ago, or perhaps eight. So the thing is possible.’
Kineas could understand many things of the Sakje, but Kam Baqca’s exchange of gender made his stomach turn and he changed the subject. ‘You are ready for this wedding?’ he asked.
She switched breasts, while Samahe came and took the boy from his basket and began to change him. ‘We are already wed, husband. But it will be good for your Greek men to see the ceremony performed, and all our people want to drink wine.’ She smiled and changed the subject herself. ‘I like Lot’s wife.’
Kineas allowed his eyes to follow Upazan. ‘I wish she would bear him a son,’ he said.
Srayanka made a chucking sound with her tongue. ‘Stop thinking like a Greek. His son will not be his heir. That is not the Sauromatae way, or the Sakje way or the Massagetae way.’
‘His son might be his heir,’ Kineas said.
She nodded. ‘Less likely with the eastern clans than the western, but possible. But Upazan is his heir, and no child of Monae’s will change that. But they are young yet, and Lot is in the full flower of his warrior life. What concerns you?’
‘Upazan wants him dead. Upazan hates us, for whatever reason.’
‘No reason but the folly of youth.’ She smiled. ‘Lot should have brought him west.’
Samahe got up, her sewing rolled away in a sheet of linen. ‘That’s enough milk for any child,’ she said. She reached out and took the girl, who cried and had to be shushed by Kineas. Kineas played with her while his son latched on to Srayanka’s nipple in moments.