Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

by Christian Cameron

  He took the ink and wrote carefully:

  Please send me a reply as soon as you receive this. If you can spare the time, send a duplicate to Sappho and another care of Lady Amastris, Heraklea, and a third care of Eumenes, the archon of Olbia (if you can believe such a thing). A fourth via Panther, navarch of Rhodos, at the Temple of Poseidon, would give me the widest possible notice of your reply, as I will be a bird on the wing.

  ‘Have you ever thought that if you succeed, my husband will lose his command? The Exiles will no longer be exiles.’ Sappho laughed. ‘I don’t mean it. But – if Tanais is restored – what will we all do?’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘No idea, Auntie,’ he said. ‘But I’d be delighted to find out.’

  And later, much later that night, Helios came in. He smelled of a discreet perfume.

  ‘Well?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Did you spend a pleasant evening?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ the boy said. His voice was set, his face carefully blank. ‘She’s as dumb as a post, for all her hard-arse ways. She offered me a hundred gold darics to kill you.’ The boy dropped a purse on the sideboard, so heavy that the cedar creaked. ‘I told her a sad tale of your misuse of me, and she told me I was soft.’ Helios looked at the floor. ‘But after I pleasured her, she sang another tune, and there’s the proof. And yes – she’s out most nights. She has a taste for boys, like most women of her type.’ His own self-loathing was obvious, but so was his dislike of her. ‘She thinks she owns me!’ he spat.

  Satyrus shivered. ‘I – thought that you were too young. To – I’m sorry, Helios. I’ve put you in a position . . .’ Satyrus thought that killing the innocent was hardly the only price of kingship.

  Helios blinked his long blond lashes and shrugged. ‘I haven’t been too young – never mind. It’s nothing I haven’t done before, and in worse causes.’

  Satyrus kept his voice neutral. ‘Where’d the money come from? She can’t have a hundred gold darics on her own?’

  ‘No,’ Helios said. ‘And I don’t know myself. Is her mistress in the game? I don’t know. She’s coming tomorrow, by the way. To sing to you.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘We leave in three days. You should get yourself a blade, a helmet and a light cuirass. Have you ever worn armour?’

  Helios blinked. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Go to Isaac Ben Zion and ask his steward to sell you armour. How old are you, really?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘I think I’m fourteen,’ the boy answered. ‘I lost some time – in the brothel.’ He looked at the floor.

  Satyrus put a hand under his chin and raised his head. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you the rule of Leon’s house?’ he asked. ‘No man need regret what he did before he came here – only what he does here. You are free. Free yourself.’

  Helios gazed at him with uncomfortable admiration.

  Satyrus looked away. ‘If you are fourteen,’ he said, ‘get the Aegyptian linen armour. You’ll grow too fast to be worth bronze or scale.’ He pointed at the gold darics. ‘You can use those, if you like. But only after Phiale visits.’

  ‘What will you do to her?’ Helios asked.

  ‘To her?’ Satyrus said, and his voice was hard. He was surprised at the feeling in his heart – more like hate than he had expected. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I will do nothing to her.’

  Phiale came in just behind her scent – a touch of mint and jasmine that clutched at his heart. She whirled her fine wool stole over her head and tossed it to her maidservant, who caught it in the air and stepped over to the wall.

  Satyrus watched the maidservant exchange a glance with Helios, who was already standing against the wall. Then he allowed himself to kiss her on the cheek. Her breath on his face ought to have excited him – the subtlety with which she used her body was the height of her powers, and she felt his control immediately.

  She stepped back and crossed her arms. ‘You are angry with me?’

  Hama came to the door with Carlus, the biggest man among the Exiles, a giant German with scars that mixed with the tattoos on his face. He entered the room, drew a short sword and stood with it balanced across his hands.

  ‘Where is Sophokles, Phiale?’ Satyrus asked.

  Her hand went to her throat. ‘I am a free woman. You may not restrain me.’ Her eyes reproached him.

  ‘Take the slave,’ Satyrus said. ‘Do not touch the mistress.’

  Carlus closed his hand on Alcaea’s hair. Her hand came up with a knife, and he slammed her against the wall. She dropped the knife.

  ‘I accuse your slave of plotting against my life.’ Satyrus waved at Helios. ‘Freeman Helios will testify that your slave offered one hundred gold darics to kill me.’

  Phiale shrunk back into a corner. ‘Sappho!’ she screamed. ‘Satyrus has lost his wits!’

  ‘Listen to me, Phiale. Stratokles and Sophokles bought you. But I cannot prove it, and besides – you are for sale. Who could blame you for being bought?’ Satyrus struggled to keep the bitterness from his voice, and he thought how much amusement his sister would draw from the situation. She had never liked the hetaira, and had warned him repeatedly about engaging his feelings with her – she had mocked him, in fact.

  ‘You are insane. The drug has addled your wits. Let me go.’ She stood straight. ‘I came to sing for you!’ she said.

  ‘If I ordered you stripped, what interesting vials would I find? A quill full of poison, perhaps?’ Satyrus shook his head.

  ‘I demand—’ she began. Satyrus rose to his feet and she was silent.

  ‘You mistake me for a much nicer boy you once knew. There will be no demands, Phiale. Today – this very hour – you will board a ship for Athens, after you reveal every iota of your plots. You will go there and you will never return to Alexandria. And you will write a letter for me, to your master.’

  Phiale was white now. But she held his gaze. ‘You are delusional.’

  ‘Entirely possible,’ Satyrus said. ‘But not in this.’

  Sappho came in, with Nearchus behind her. ‘You have her!’ she said.

  Phiale’s eye widened. ‘We are friends!’ she said.

  ‘You have spied on my house for the last time,’ Sappho returned.

  ‘Hypocrite!’ Phiale spat.

  ‘Not, perhaps, your best defence.’ Satyrus walked over to Alcaea.

  ‘Why would I go to Athens?’ Phiale asked.

  ‘You lodge all of your earnings with Isaac Ben Zion, do you not?’ Satyrus asked. ‘I think that when I tell him you betrayed his business partner into captivity, he will perhaps seize your fortune.’ Satyrus smiled. ‘It was – short-sighted, shall I say? To leave your money where it could be used against you. By tomorrow, every obol will be locked in my aunt’s coffers. If you ever want it again, you’ll have to obey us. Go to Athens. Stay there. Hate us if you will – but hate us from a distance. And if we ever, ever catch you acting against our interests again – spying, muttering, gossiping – some men like Carlus will appear at your house, seize you and carry you off. And they will take you to Delos – and sell you into slavery. Am I clear? You are not young any more. I do not think you could earn your way free again.’

  Phiale began to sob. She went straight from imperious to broken without passing through another emotion. ‘It is not fair! You are not fair! You, who were my lover – who has defamed me like this? You would exile me on the word of a slave?’

  Alcaea spoke up. ‘What of me, lord?’ she asked.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Death, unless you tell me everything. And I already know a great deal. So much that I have little reason to offer you leniency unless you tell me things that I don’t know. Let me offer you a beginning. You meet with Sophokles in the night market, behind the false wall of a certain tavern—’

  Phiale’s hand went back to her throat, and Alcaea threw herself on the ground. ‘I am a slave, master! What else can I do but obey her?’

  Sappho crouched on the floor next to the abject slave. ‘Obey who, my dear?’ she asked.

&n
bsp; ‘My mistress!’ Alcaea wailed.

  ‘She will say anything to be saved,’ Phiale said.

  ‘I have her notes to the doctor,’ Alcaea said, clasping Satyrus’s knees in supplication. ‘She wrote to him – every week, reporting on your household.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘And who have you suborned in this household?’ he asked.

  Sappho started, and Satyrus put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Who provides you with information from within this household?’ Satyrus asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alcaea answered. Seeing Sappho’s face, she wailed, ‘I don’t know! There’s a wax tablet left under the rain barrel at our house every week. It’s almost always there.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘That, I did not know. It is possible you will live. Hama? Would you care to question her?’

  Hama nodded. ‘At your service, lord.’

  Satyrus turned to Phiale. ‘Will you go to Athens, despoina? Or shall I take another action?’

  She shrugged. ‘I will not go.’

  ‘Really?’ Satyrus asked. ‘I am not sure that my eudaimonia would survive killing you. But please don’t mistake me, despoina. I will kill you if I must. I will be king in the Euxine. I will not be stopped by a provincial hetaira and a hired killer. Where do I find Sophokles?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I deny your charges. You have no evidence. I will go to Athens and hate you from there.’

  ‘Choose,’ Satyrus said. ‘Tell me everything, and live. Where do I find him? If you tell the truth, you are off to a new life in Athens.’

  ‘I deny your charge. I don’t know anyone named Sophokles. Stratokles hired me as a courtesan and you, apparently, have a mad resentment about it. How could I know? I am a hetaira!’ Phiale stood tall.

  ‘I have her notes to him,’ Alcaea spat.

  ‘You lie!’ Phiale said. ‘How could you?’

  ‘You ordered me to burn them,’ Alcaea said. ‘I kept them against such a day as this.’

  ‘Bah – she could write them herself,’ Phiale said. ‘She does all my writing for me anyway.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘I don’t think you are taking me seriously,’ he said.

  Phiale crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I will not be tricked into condemning myself.’

  Hama spoke regretfully. ‘I can have her speaking about anything in an hour,’ he said.

  Nearchus stepped forward. ‘I will not be party to torture,’ he said.

  Satyrus looked around at all of them. ‘Once, when I did not kill Stratokles, you all advised me to strike first in the future. Aunt Sappho, this woman is a viper who will hurt us any way she can. Even now, an assassin – her ally – stalks us. He tried to kill Lita, and you took a dagger in the chest to save her. This woman provided the information that prompted that attack, and the information that led to Leon’s capture – and she has perhaps done as much against Lord Ptolemy and Diodorus. This is not the time to be soft.’

  Nearchus looked at Phiale. Her eyes implored him. ‘I am innocent,’ she said to him. ‘Satyrus is mad.’

  Nearchus turned back to Satyrus. He shook his head and turned to Phiale. ‘I will not see you tortured,’ he said. ‘But you, not Satyrus, are mad.’

  ‘I know where you can find Sophokles the physician,’ Alcaea said from her position of supplication on the floor.

  ‘As do I,’ Satyrus said. He did not want to kill Phiale. But he didn’t see much choice. It was the situation on the beach again – more deaths to haunt him. But Satyrus had begun to understand people. If he didn’t break her, the hetaira would come back for him.

  And then he thought, What would Philokles do? And he saw it. Philokles would never kill her. Philokles would simply draw her fangs and leave her. The moral act.

  ‘Bring her,’ he said.

  They missed Sophokles by the thickness of a door. The Athenian physician vanished into the tunnels behind the tavern even as Satyrus’s men broke down the false wall. Hama had his sword at the innkeeper’s throat and they flooded the streets with soldiers, but they still missed him. Carlus dragged Phiale wherever they went, on every search, so that every denizen of the night market saw the hetaira’s presence with the Exiles.

  Later, over hot wine, Satyrus shook his head. ‘I was precipitate,’ he said. ‘I allowed my need to get back to sea to drive my actions. I should have let her develop her plot and taken her in commission. And the same with the doctor. I see that now.’

  Hama, sitting by the hearth with his Thracian boots up on the hearth’s lip, grinned. ‘But every thief, pimp and whore in the market thinks she gave us the doctor, eh?’ he said to Neiron, who laughed grimly. His oarsmen had swept the streets with Hama’s soldiers.

  Satyrus nodded. ‘That part went well,’ he said.

  Sappho came in with cheese and olives, which she set by the men. ‘What of the maidservant?’ she asked.

  ‘I leave Alcaea to you, Aunt. Kill her, torture her, sell her – her utility to us is done.’ Satyrus shrugged.

  Sappho looked at him. ‘She is a person, Satyrus. She has an existence beyond her utility.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he allowed.

  ‘If you propose to become Eumeles, I see no reason to support you,’ Sappho said.

  ‘Aunt! I have acted only to save this family! To protect you!’ Satyrus was stung – the more so as his aunt said things that he wondered about himself. The Stoics said that no insult hurt you unless you already believed it.

  Sappho came and stood before him. ‘You are working on making yourself a monster,’ she said. ‘You were preparing to kill Phiale in cold blood, like a tyrant. I saw it in your eyes. Had you done so – despite her evil actions, despite everything – many of us would not have forgiven you. Theron is far away, and Philokles is dead, and my husband is off fighting. It is left to me to discipline you – and I am not any softer than you, nephew. You are working on making yourself a monster. Wake up!’ she said.

  Satyrus tried to swallow his wine, and it stuck in his throat. Hama looked elsewhere. Nearchus nodded at every word, and Neiron looked like a man who wanted to hide under his seat.

  ‘Hama?’ Satyrus asked. ‘Do you think I did wrong?’

  The Gallic officer looked at his boots. He shrugged. ‘In war, men do hard things,’ he said. ‘Such things are – uglier – in peace.’

  Satyrus stood up, suddenly angry. ‘We are at war!’ he said.

  Sappho shook her head. ‘No, we are not. You choose to make war on Eumeles. My husband and Leon support you because of their love for your parents – and for you. And such a war will take lives, nephew. People will die. If you are no better than Eumeles – a selfish, grasping man, but a competent administrator – if you are another of the same, who sees his own interest as the height of all law, who kills women to make sure that his path to power is secure – then all those people die for nothing.’ She slumped. ‘She is despicable. But her bad actions would never excuse yours. I saw your eyes – you were that close to killing her.’

  ‘She might have killed us all!’ Satyrus yelled.

  ‘Eumeles could say the same of your mother!’ Sappho shouted back. ‘He killed her because he feared her!’ She came and took his hands. ‘Do you honestly fear Phiale?’

  Satyrus stood with his hands on the back of his chair, clenched as if his ship was in a storm and he was clutching the rail to keep from being swept overboard. His eyes flicked from man to man to woman around the hearth, and his rage soared – and then sank away, like flames on damp wood. He loosed his grip on the chair. ‘What would you have me do?’ he asked.

  Nearchus shrugged. ‘Send her to Athens,’ he said. ‘And wash your hands of her.’

  Sappho shook her head. ‘Leave her here,’ she said, ‘and I will watch her. With Alcaea.’ Sappho raised a manicured eyebrow. ‘I will purchase Alcaea’s interest, and put her back with her former mistress as our spy.’

  ‘And Phiale will kill her, or avoid her,’ Satyrus said.

 
; ‘I doubt it,’ Sappho said. ‘And I think that you should let me try.’

  Satyrus looked at Hama. ‘Well?’ he asked.

  Hama shook his head. ‘Lord, don’t involve me in this. I obey. I would kill her for you, if you asked. And yet – I agree with the lady, too. About what a chief can become. I have seen a good chief become a bad chief, but I have never seen a bad lord become a good one.’ He shrugged. ‘For me, I wish we had caught the doctor.’

  Satyrus flicked his eyes to his helmsman. ‘And you, Neiron?’

  Neiron shook his head. ‘Land has problems that don’t exist at sea. I prefer the sea. But I’ll say this. When we go to sea – no enemy here will be a danger to us unless they have a faster ship and a better crew. We’ll be gone with the tide. By the time this woman has power and money again,’ the old seaman shrugged, ‘we’ll feed the fishes – or you’ll be king.’

  Satyrus nodded. ‘Good advice.’ He looked at his aunt. ‘From all of you,’ he said. And sighed. ‘I do not want to be a monster.’

  ‘Good,’ Sappho said.

  Satyrus took a deep breath. ‘But – word of our sailing must not leave the city when we go. Hama, Sappho – can you keep Phiale from sending a letter? A tablet? A scroll? One slave, slipping out on a merchanter? And Sophokles—’

  Neiron put a hand on his navarch’s shoulder. ‘They can’t. But they can try – and they can, by the gods, make it harder.’

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘We need time. If Eumeles is warned . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Life is risk.’ He managed a smile. ‘I’m twenty, and I’m losing my nerve. Very well, Auntie. You have her.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She touched his cheek. ‘Hama and I will do our best.’

  In the morning, Satyrus presented himself to Gabines, Ptolemy’s steward, for his appointment. He expected to wait – in Aegypt, no one was ever granted his first request to meet the lord of the land.

  To his own surprise, he found himself ushered immediately to the lord of Aegypt’s presence. Ptolemy sat under the magnificent fresco of the gods and heroes, on a carved ivory stool, as if he was just the archon of the city and not its uncrowned king.