The Ionia Sanction

by Gary Corby

“We did our best,” I muttered. “I didn’t get these injuries sitting still.”

  “Don’t whine,” he said testily. He turned his back and gazed out the window.

  “There are men worse off than you. Two of those guards are dead. One has his kneecap shattered and will probably never walk straight again. He was chosen to run at the next Olympics. How am I supposed to explain this to their fathers?” He turned back to me.

  “And how in Hades did a Phoenician ship get alongside the commercial docks without anyone noticing?”

  “I’ll ask the harbormaster, but Pericles, is there a law against it?”

  “If there isn’t, there will be now!”

  I decided not to point out that horse had bolted. In fact, any mention of a bolting horse would probably be a bad idea.

  “I’m disappointed, Nicolaos. I trusted you with a vital, delicate mission, and this is the result you bring me. I’m reconsidering our arrangement.”

  Disaster. If Pericles dismissed me, it would prove my father’s contention—that there was no future to be made from investigation—and I would be bound by our agreement to return to his sculptor’s workshop.

  “Pericles, this is unfair. The investigation has barely begun.”

  “It should be over. Look at the mess you’ve made so far.”

  Shouting would be the fastest route to my dismissal. “All right, that’s a fair point,” I conceded. “Araxes proved to be more able than anyone could reasonably have expected.”

  It sounded weak even to my ears, but I had to try something. “Who’s going to catch him, if I don’t?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that same question, but with a slightly different emphasis.”

  I dredged my brain for some morsel of progress, to show I was not a complete failure. “At least we know his name is Araxes.”

  “We know nothing.” Pericles glared at me. “Araxes is the name of a river in Asia.”

  “Oh.”

  Pericles drummed his fingers on his desk while I contemplated life as a sculptor and rehearsed the words I would use to tell my father I had failed. Then Pericles spoke.

  “We have wars with four cities dragging on. Four at once, how many cities could manage that? Plus there’s talk of a major war with Corinth or Sparta. If it gets any worse, we’ll have to think about bringing old men and boys into the army.” Pericles glared at me. “The only reason I’m retaining you, Nicolaos—for now—is we’re stretched so thin. You’re the only man available. That’s the only reason. When this commission is over, you can consider our agreement terminated.”

  “Unless I succeed,” I said at once.

  Pericles paused, while my heart gyrated about my chest.

  “Unless you are spectacularly successful,” he said at last, and I breathed again. “Which, frankly, I doubt.”

  It was the best deal I could hope for, perhaps better than I deserved, because Pericles was right; I had comprehensively underestimated my opponent, and been comprehensively defeated. I wasn’t planning on anything less than total success before I finished.

  He said, “You’re going to Ephesus. I’ll arrange transport.”

  That made me sit up. “Can’t we send the navy after the Phoenician?”

  “Do you know how many ports there are in the Aegean Sea? No? Neither does anyone else, there are that many. We may have the largest navy in the world, but even we don’t have enough ships to cover every hiding place. Besides, we have two hundred triremes committed against Cyprus, and that’s the bulk of the fleet.”

  It was true. Cyprus was still pro-Persian and agitating against Athens on the seas. Worse, the news from the fleet was not encouraging.

  “Ephesus is the source of the letter. We can’t retrieve the letter, so find whoever sent it, and recover the information.” Pericles paused and studied me for a moment. “I’d have thought you’d be overjoyed to go to Ephesus. Isn’t that where your girlfriend is?”

  “Diotima’s not my girlfriend,” I said.

  “But she’s in Ephesus, is she not?”

  So she was. Diotima was in Ephesus because she’d left me three months before, and I still hadn’t got over it.

  Diotima was the result of a long-standing affair between one of our statesmen and a high-class prostitute. Not the most regular of pedigrees. Yet when her father had been murdered, Diotima had hunted down his killers with a relentless determination that would have done credit to a firstborn son, let alone a disregarded daughter. By the time the two of us had caught the killer, my heart was set. Diotima was the girl for me.

  In Athens, such things are arranged between the fathers. I’d been so sure my father would agree to a betrothal that I’d told Diotima my intention before I asked him.

  Then he’d said no. Father had thought only of the shame of his son married to the daughter of a noncitizen prostitute. When Diotima had eagerly pressed me next day, I’d had no choice but to tell her why she was not an acceptable bride. It was a conversation I cringed to recall.

  Diotima disappeared without a trace. I was eventually driven to ask her mother, who told me she’d left for Ephesus. My girl had been a priestess of Artemis in Athens; now she was a priestess at the Artemision in Ephesus. I didn’t have to ask why she’d gone, nor why she’d left without a goodbye. I hadn’t heard a thing from her in the three months since. I’d thought never to hear from her again.

  Pericles said to me, “You’ll be able to see her when you arrive.”

  I wasn’t about to tell Pericles the last thing I wanted was to see Diotima. At least, not until I’d worked out what to say to her.

  “Oh, and Nicolaos, you are invited to a symposium tomorrow night, at the home of Callias.”

  Callias? He was the richest man in Athens; a man far above my station. “Whatever for?” I asked.

  Pericles snorted. “Callias has about thirty years’ more experience with foreign missions than you do. Whatever advice he has, I suggest you take it.”

  * * *

  Any other man, when he’s been wounded in battle, visits a doctor at the gymnasium, an expert in treating sword cuts, spear punctures, broken bones, and bruises. The doctor tends the hero’s honorable wounds while his comrades in arms stand about, recounting his bravery on the field of battle and singing his praises.

  I, on the other hand, having risked life and limb in the shadowy world of investigation, went home to my mother.

  Phaenarete is a midwife. She sat me down with a bowl of hot water and a clean rag, and used bronze tweezers to pull out the splinters in my arms, one by one, all the while describing my various defects, intellectual and physical. It was a long list. Whenever she made a particular point she squeezed harder and I yelped. My mother told me not to be a baby.

  When she finished she applied a sticky, smelly lotion to my forearms and told me to lie still and let the lotion soak in, or I would die of the flesh-eating sickness. “Which would be no less than your own fault,” she sniffed, and walked off, leaving me to feel sorry for myself.

  I’d ritually cleansed my hands in the sea while I was at Piraeus. That allowed me to eat my fill, so I had a slave girl bring me yesterday’s bread soaked in wine, with olives, figs, and cheese. I lay there digesting, which gave my mind all too much time to replay the disastrous scene with Pericles and worry about my future.

  I’d known Pericles would be angry, but the strength of his backlash had shocked me. I hadn’t noticed during the argument, because I’d been too concerned for myself, but now I recalled the dark rings under his eyes. His movements, always graceful in public, had been twitchy in the privacy of his office. The voice of Pericles was the most beautiful and serene instrument the world had ever heard, but with me he’d had the grating, angry tone of a cornered man. Pericles had looked and sounded like a man under pressure, and no wonder.

  Pericles had come to the leadership of Athens at a moment of extreme crisis, when our new democracy had been only days old, and the man who founded it had been murdered. In the wake of the murder t
he city might have collapsed in civil war, but Pericles had stepped into the breach and saved us.

  Pericles had inherited a city that barely functioned. Men loved the new democracy, but they didn’t know how to run it. Citizen committees had sprung up. It would have been nice if some of the committees had actually worked. Men couldn’t agree, officials overstepped their powers, gaps appeared where everyone thought someone else had been responsible for something. Fingers pointed in every direction. The democracy was like some giant machine with levers that didn’t fit and not enough oil to stop the friction. Pericles spent his days being the oil. He went from one committee to another, to persuade where he could, correct where he had to.

  Then too, many cities had taken advantage of the turmoil within Athens to act against us. The army and navy were stretched beyond the limit. The agora seemed half empty. Women were conspicuous among the stalls because so many men were away, serving in the army or the navy. The stoas where men met to gossip and discuss politics were almost empty.

  So if Pericles shouted at me because I had failed in the one task assigned to me, who was I to complain? On the other hand, like Pericles, I was new to my job, and I was an apprentice with no master from whom to learn, because no one before had taken the trade I’d assumed: to be an agent when the truth was needed. Wasn’t an apprentice permitted a few mistakes? It was all terribly unfair.

  My twelve-year-old brother entered the courtyard.

  He took one look at me and said, “What happened to you, Nico?”

  I closed my eyes. “Go away, Socrates.”

  He sat down beside me. “You get in a fight?”

  “Yes, and the other guy got hurt too.”

  “Did you win?”

  “It was a draw.” I refused to admit Araxes had defeated me.

  “You look like you’ll be lying there for days.”

  “It’s only a few scratches. Anyway, I have work to do. I’m to go to a symposium tomorrow night at the home of Callias. Pericles invited me along.”

  “Wow!” Socrates was right to wow. Callias and Pericles were not normally given to socializing with young men of no consequence.

  “I want to go to the symposium too,” Socrates said, surprising me.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, you’re still a child.”

  “If I was a slave boy I’d be able to come, wouldn’t I?” he wheedled. “You’re taking an attendant, aren’t you?”

  I was so young and inexperienced in the field of formal socializing that I hadn’t even thought about it. But Socrates was right. No citizen would dream of going to a symposium without at least one slave to see him home.

  “Of course I meant to take an attendant,” I lied without hesitation. “I’ll ask Father for one of his slaves.”

  He smiled. “Don’t bother. For one night only, I’ll be your slave.”

  The idea of having my irritating younger brother as my slave held a certain appeal, and it meant I wouldn’t have to ask a favor of my father, with whom I was at odds, but, “Why are you so desperate to go?” I asked, suspicious.

  He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I want to see what goes on. I’ve never been to a symposium before. Do you think I’ll be good at it when I’m old enough?”

  “No Socrates, you’d be rotten,” I said, quite certain.

  * * *

  It was an earthquake. No, it was one of my father’s slaves, shaking me awake next morning. I opened a bleary eye to see a grimy foot on my chest, and above it the same slave whom I’d ordered to stand over me the night before. I suspected the slave disliked me, and I was certain he needed to cut his toenails, they were digging into my skin.

  “There’s a man outside on a horse,” he said it as if he were announcing plague. “He says he needs to see you.”

  I groaned. Every bruised and abused muscle whined when I sat up.

  “Did you get his name?”

  “No, but he says his father’s dead.”

  The son of Thorion. “Bring him in.”

  “What about the horse?”

  “Bring it in too.”

  “Through the front door?”

  “No, you idiot, through the window.”

  But still he looked blank. I took pity upon him. Our family doesn’t keep horses and he had no experience. I said, “Open the gates to the courtyard. Show him in through the back lane.”

  “I came as fast as I could,” said Onteles, the son of Thorion.

  He had indeed. His hair was damp and hung like seaweed. I could smell the sweat of the ride upon him.

  “Where were you when you heard?”

  “At our country estate, to the north.”

  “How did you get here so quickly?”

  “I rode hard. I stopped at home only to confirm the news my father was dead and learn you are investigating the crime, though the Gods know why. I rode here at once.”

  The horse breathed heavily and had drunk buckets of water but was sleek and looked fit for more. The muscles rippled beneath the skin, a powerful beast.

  “This is a magnificent horse.”

  “One of the best. Father bought him for me.”

  I was instantly jealous. I’d always wanted a horse. After I left the army I begged my father, Sophroniscus, to buy one, but he refused, saying what possible need had the son of a sculptor for a horse?

  “Thorion must have been a wealthy man.”

  “He did well from trade. Import, export, anything that was profitable.”

  “Recently it was pottery.”

  “If you say so. I never paid much attention. The estate is my future. Father had less interest in it. The farmland has become rather run-down.” Onteles looked me over. “You’re younger than me.”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Then why are you avenging the crime? Does my family know you?”

  “Pericles asked me, for the good of the state.”

  “You?”

  “I’ve done this sort of thing before. It seems your father wanted to confess to a crime against Athens. Now we’d like to know, what crime?” I told Onteles about the note.

  Onteles snorted like his horse and said, “Ridiculous. Whatever this note, there’ll be a strange but innocent explanation.”

  I couldn’t agree, but an argument with the son would be pointless.

  “What are your plans?” I asked him.

  “To bury my father. After that”—he shrugged—“there’s the estate, and to be a citizen of Athens. I have responsibilities now.”

  Onteles, son of Thorion, was only three years older than me, but already an adult. In Athens, a man is a child in the eyes of the law so long as his father lives. Pericles himself was still a legal child, and he’d been the foremost man of the city for months.

  By the death of his father, Onteles, son of Thorion, became responsible for his mother for the rest of her life, and for his sisters until he found them husbands, which he would probably do as quickly as possible to relieve himself of the burden.

  I asked, “You won’t trade?”

  “That was always my father’s business. I’ll wind it down.”

  “Or continue as proxenos for Ephesus?”

  “Gods no! I have enough to keep me busy.” He paused in thought. “I think I’ll marry.”

  I felt a pang of envy. Onteles no longer needed his father’s permission to marry as he chose. If only that were me.

  * * *

  Onteles departed to see to his household. I ate breakfast and then hobbled my way down to Piraeus to find the harbormaster. I chose the southern route to see again the places where I’d fought for my life. It was an odd experience. I irrationally felt the struggle should have left its mark deep in every step of the way, yet the hard surface of the road was untouched. The same did not apply to the Long Walls, which were satisfyingly gouged where the cart had crashed into them, and strange cyclic marks showed where the wheels had scraped the wood.

  Men swarmed over the broken lower gate. Carpenters worked on the shattered
support posts, prying off the heavy, metal hinges to be reused. The frame for a new gate was already taking shape on the ground. Men with hammers and chisels and drills kneeled over it, working to fit the joints. There was more than the usual amount of swearing.

  As I stepped over planking, a fellow traveler stopped to ask a workman what had happened. The workman wiped the sweat from his brow, spat in the dust, and said, “Some idiot drove a horse and cart right into the gates. It’ll take a month to fix.” He spat again. “I’d love to get my hands on the asshole who did this.”

  I tiptoed through.

  At the docks I was directed to the harbormaster, a stocky, older man perched on a small, three-legged, wooden stool in a small alcove, which was nestled between two large warehouses, one of which reeked of spice, and the other of oil. His entire attention was upon a tarnished bronze brazier, in which something sizzled over a respectable fire. He held a metal skewer in his right hand, which he used to poke his lunch. His face was fleshed out and ruddy, either from the heat of the fire or naturally, I didn’t know which.

  He looked up as I stopped before him, and his face fell at once.

  “Are you the harb—”

  “Oh Gods, what is it now?”

  “Huh?”

  “I walk away for the briefest moment to have a quiet bite, and the first thing that happens is someone interrupts me. Is some ship blocking you in?”

  “Me? No.”

  “Got a problem with your pier allocation?”

  “No.”

  “Other captains bitching about dock space again? Oh Zeus, I hate that.”

  “No one said anything to me.”

  “If the street kids are stealing your cargo, that’s your problem.”

  “I don’t have any problems with street kids.”

  “Anyone drowned?”

  “No.”

  “Your ship sank?”

  “No.”

  “So you got no problems?”

  “I need—”

  “Good. Then don’t bother me till I’ve eaten.” He turned back to the brazier and did his best to ignore me.

  I stood and watched him stir the sizzling food. The aroma overwhelmed me. Eventually I had to ask, “That smells great. What is it?”