by Gary Corby
“So the Persians will send an army south.”
Themistocles snorted. “That’s what Artaxerxes said in his message to me. But he’s wrong. Even now I compose the reply that will persuade him to do otherwise. Tell me, Nicolaos, if many Athenian soldiers are in Egypt, then where are they not?”
“Dear Gods,” I exclaimed. “Athens is exposed.”
“Good lad. Pericles didn’t see it, nor does Artaxerxes, but I do. Which means the time for the Persians to attack, and for me to become Satrap of Athens, is right now. I must have your answer at once.”
Themistocles offered me not merely his daughter, but power within Athens for her dowry. What I’d always said I wanted. Themistocles would be Satrap of Athens when the Persians took the city. When he died or retired—it couldn’t be too many years—then who knew what might happen? The cost was to support a war against Athens, and support a murderer who sold a child.
If I allied with Themistocles, I might very well end up the city’s ruler.
“What can I say? I accept, of course.”
* * *
I went to look for Asia, and to tell Diotima what had happened, but the soldiers found me first.
They presented themselves as I dried myself off and pulled on a fresh chitoniskos. A tall one with a bad eye, and a short one with a split nose. Neither looked the type of man you would wish to annoy. The shorter of the two said. “The Lord Barzanes commands you come.”
“Tell the lord I’ll come as soon as I’ve carried out a task for the Satrap.”
“You’re ordered to come at once.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said the task for Themist—” They drew their swords.
“—ocles will just have to wait until I’ve spoken with your lord. All right, let’s go.”
The short one walked before me, the taller behind with his sword drawn. They led me through corridors I’d been dragged down once before. We were coming depressingly close to the dungeon. Luckily for my nerves, we turned off before we reached it. The guards showed me into a room and pulled the door shut behind me. I heard the clank from the corridor as they took post outside.
“Ah, Athenian. Come, look at this.”
Barzanes stood behind a bench. Lying before him were the tablets I had given to the cloth seller to send to Pericles. They had been pulled to pieces. The wax from the tablets had somehow been cut from their frame still intact. The frames of the two tablets had been disassembled, and the strips of wood placed in their positions, as if ready to be put back together. In the middle of each disassembled frame was its backing board.
To the side lay the thong I’d used to tie the package together; the thong on which I’d written the true message. I told myself not to look at it, and to make sure I didn’t, stared into the eyes of Barzanes, the Eyes and Ears of the King.
“Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord, commands us to love the Truth and abjure the Lie. Do you love the Truth, Athenian?”
I tried to read his tone of voice, but I couldn’t decide what he knew or didn’t know. I swallowed, then licked my lips. “I don’t follow your God, Barzanes. You said it yourself when you called me Athenian. I follow the Gods of my own people.”
“I have spent my life dealing with the Hellenes. I know many of you would lie for your own advantage. So I do not think it too much to ask this simple question. Do you venerate the Lie, Athenian?”
“Life is never that simple, Barzanes. People are honest most of the time; sometimes they might tell a few lies. Even our Gods and Goddesses have been known to trick people, or each other…”
“Ah, trick. Yes. But you see, Athenian, the Wise Lord never lies, and through his prophet Zarathustra he commands us to follow this rule. Do you know, since becoming a man, I have never told a lie?” He shook his head. “There is a great deal of misunderstanding between our peoples, and it comes down to this: the Hellenes think it right to—what word do you use?—to prevaricate when you do not like the truth. For this we hate you. You lie to each other in your own courts, telling one falsehood after another to persuade a jury to vote your way. Your diplomats tell lies to each other. They tell lies to us.”
“Athens has never broken an oath to Persia.”
“You are wrong. In the days of our fathers the Spartans marched upon Athens, and the Athenians in their fear sent to the Satrap of Lydia to ask for his protection. The Satrap agreed, but only if the Athenians joined the empire by pledging earth and water to the Great King. The ambassadors accepted at once, every man of the court heard it. But then the Spartans returned home and the Athenians repudiated their promise. They lied, Athenian.”
“I’ve never heard of this, Barzanes.”
“I am not surprised. It is not something the Athenians would want their children to know, that their fathers break their oaths to kings. When the Athenians pledged earth and water, Athens became a part of the Persian Empire, legally and morally. All that followed has simply been the Great King claiming what is rightfully his.” Barzanes glanced down at the pieces on the bench. “But, here we are talking of the acts of men now dead, when we have practical matters to deal with. You see here the package you sent to your father in Athens?”
“It did rather come to my attention. I suppose, since you never lie, the courier accidentally dropped it? I can’t say I’m too impressed with the mail service.”
“I intercepted your tablets. I have been working many days now to decide if you are a friend of the Truth, or of the Lie.”
“My letter home is unlikely to tell you.”
“At first I thought there must be some code in the words you used.” He picked a sheet of parchment and stared at it. “I made copies to work upon. I tried every trick known to me, and that is many. I read off every second word, every third, every fourth, fifth, and sixth. Nothing worked. I looked for secret signs in the wax. I stared at it under strong light for something embedded in the wax. I found nothing.
“I was eventually forced to conclude that your message was no more than it seemed; the near-illiterate ramblings of a young man with nothing to say. But this did not satisfy me. Would you like to know why?”
“What would you do if I said no?”
“Because never, in the history of the world, has there been a young man who wrote to his father merely to send his greetings. Not even the most dutiful of sons does this. Sons write for many reasons; to ask for money; to explain an embarrassing incident before it reaches the ears of the sire from someone else; to announce to the sire he is about to become a grandfather, usually to his surprise since the son is not married. But no son, ever, has thought it important to write to say”—Barzanes picked up the parchment and read from it—“‘The weather has been fine. I have seen many interesting things in Magnesia.’”
He put down the parchment.
“No, Athenian, if you want to cover a secret message, you will need to write something better than this offal.”
I swore silently.
“I ask you again, to venerate the Truth and abjure the Lie. Tell me where is the message.”
“I’m sorry you don’t like my writing, Barzanes, but that doesn’t mean there has to be anything more behind it.”
“Ah, behind it. Yes.” Barzanes picked up the backing boards. “In the time of the Great King Xerxes, before the wars between our people began, there resided in the court of the Great King a certain Demeratos of Sparta. This Demeratos had been king in his own land, but had been exiled by his people and accepted a guest’s obligations at the court of the Persians. When Demeratos learned of Xerxes’ plan to invade Hellas, he decided to betray his host, a crime in any land, no?
“Knowing his perfidy dare not be caught, Demeratos took a writing tablet, scraped away the wax and scratched into the backing board his warning to the Spartans. Then he replaced the wax and sent the tablet with no message.”
Barzanes paused. “Do you know how this story ends, Athenian?”
“Of course I do. Every boy in Hellas does. When the blank tablet arrived in Sparta, everyone was
perplexed, except for Gorgo, the clever wife of King Leonidas. She realized since the wax surface was blank, there must be a message hidden beneath, and so the Hellenes had warning the Persians were on the way.”
“Just so. Are you another Demeratos, Athenian?”
“You can look at the tablet and any part of it you like, for as long as you like, Barzanes. You will find no secret message.” That, at least, I could say with confidence.
“I fear you are right.” He dropped the backing boards. They hit the ground with a bang that startled me, though I saw it coming. “I have studied the boards, and there is nothing on them. I also looked at the wax itself, most closely. Perhaps there were pinpricks over certain letters, to spell out a message within a message.”
If Barzanes wanted a reaction from me, he faced disappointment. This was obviously a test, mentioning one possibility after another to gauge my reaction. As long as I gave him nothing to work with, I was safe.
He continued, “But no, I found no pinpricks on the wax, nor any other intelligible sign. So I looked within the frame, to see if a slip of parchment was secreted there, or perhaps something scratched into the inside of the wood.”
He picked up a piece of frame and peered at its inner side, then back to me. “Nothing.”
I said, “Wasn’t there a satrap who tattooed a message onto a trusted slave’s scalp, and then waited for the hair to grow back?”
“There was, and his name was Histaeus of Miletus, yet another Hellene who betrayed the trust put in him by a Persian king. You see, Athenian, a certain pattern in the relationship between the Persians and the Hellenes? Like Demeratos, this Histaeus succeeded in his treachery, for a time at any rate. He was captured in the end and impaled upon the pole.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that example, but how was I to know the man had fooled some idiot king? There was no going back. “It’s a wonder you didn’t check the traveler I gave the tablets to for tattoos.” I said, speaking in jest.
“I did.”
Barzanes strode to the end of the room and pulled back the curtain that hung there. It revealed yet more room, and within was the cloth seller to whom I’d given the tablets. He was chained against the wall with his feet dangling, as I had been when Barzanes had me strung up. A rag was stuffed in the man’s mouth and his eyes rolled in fear. His hair had been cut back to the scalp, and his skin had been shaved wherever hair hid it, including about the man’s genitals.
“I looked most closely, but found nothing,” Barzanes said, as calmly as if we discussed a dropped coin.
The poor cloth seller focused on me for the first time and he recognized me. In his eyes I saw accusation and raging hatred.
I mouthed at him, “I’m sorry.”
I’d done it again. I’d made a terrible blunder, and now other people were to die for my mistake, just as the guards had back in Athens. Pericles was right to sack me; I wasn’t fit for this.
Something was wrong with the way the cloth seller looked—not counting the fact that he was chained to a dungeon wall in fear of his life—and it took me a moment to realize what it was. At the ends of his feet were blank spaces where his toes should have been. Blood had pooled and dried on the stone floor directly below.
Barzanes must have seen the direction of my gaze, and the horror on my face, because he said, “It was necessary to discover if you had passed on any verbal message. He is not crippled; you see the large toes have been left and the middle ones, so he can still walk.”
“Dear Gods, Barzanes, instead of torturing this innocent man, why didn’t you simply ask me?”
“I have asked you, Athenian, in this room, many times, and every time you have proven friend to the Lie.”
“Then think about this: by stopping that man and mutilating him, you’ve killed his unborn child. He was on his way to Ephesus to make money so he could afford their next child. Without the money they’ll have to expose the baby.”
“The cloth seller will be released with twice what he would have earned at market. I will pay this from my own wealth.”
Barzanes walked back to the table. “After all this effort, I came to a surprising conclusion. Was it possible that this letter was what it seemed, entirely innocent? I was almost persuaded to release the cloth seller and drop the matter, but after our conversation on the ride back from Ephesus I thought it wise to make one last attempt.”
Barzanes reached into a box beneath the bench with both hands, and pulled out two armfuls of wooden rods of different widths. He put them on the bench where they rolled about. He said, “I almost threw out the binding. In fact I made the mistake of cutting it instead of untying the knots. It was only when, having exhausted every other possibility, that I inspected the cord and noticed tiny scratches that might have been letters in your language. Then it was only a matter of finding how to reassemble the words.” Barzanes searched through the rods, selected one, and began to wind.
I should have been terrified, but I was angry. “You deliberately put me through all this for your own pleasure!”
Barzanes had maintained his composure and kept a calm, neutral tone throughout the whole interview, but now his face contorted and he shouted, “No, Athenian, you have not listened to a word I said! I gave you every possible chance to repudiate the Lie. And did you? No! Instead you prove yourself its closest friend. You are Demeratos all over again, only this time, I thank Ahura Mazda for giving me the wisdom to prevent your crime. When the time comes for you to die, and you cross the narrow bridge to the House of Paradise, Mithra who judges the hearts of men will cast you into the chasm of flowing iron.”
My heart almost stopped in fear, not because of this bizarre superstitious talk of angels and paradise and eternal punishment, but because it seemed to me at any moment Barzanes might call to the guards outside to take me away and kill me.
Barzanes strode across the room and flung open the door. He barked an order in Persian.
Diotima appeared from down the corridor, dragged between two Persian soldiers who held her arms in a lock. Her mouth had been stuffed with rag. She had a swelling black eye and a cut on her cheek. They hadn’t taken her without a fight, but she was in pain; her head was bowed. She looked up and our eyes met, and the look in hers was anger, not fear. I know she saw fear in mine.
I’d promised I would never let anyone hurt her.
“The priestess is being held against your behavior.”
I said, “You’re holding the life of an innocent woman to protect a murderer, because you need the murderer to wage a war.”
“Do not think I take pleasure in this, Athenian.”
“You don’t have to enjoy evil to do it, Barzanes, and I thought you were the ethical one. How’s that pocket in your vest? Shall we take a look inside?”
“How I balance the good and evil I do is my problem.” His voice was returned to neutral calm, but I heard the slightest tremor. “I have a duty to the Great King.”
“Looks to me like I’ll be seeing you in the boiling iron.”
Barzanes winced as if I’d slapped him.
He gave me plenty of time to view the disaster, then said, “Marry the Satrap’s daughter. Become his son, as shall I, and we will be brothers. Become his lieutenant when the Great King gives Athens to Themistocles. Rise high within the empire. All these things you can do. But if you make another attempt to save the Athenians, the priestess will die.”
17
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.
“Open up.”
The two guards at the entrance to the cells looked at each other.
One began, “We must ask Lord Barzanes if—”
“You know who I am?” I interrupted.
They nodded. I was the Athenian traitor who spent so much time closeted with Themistocles, another Athenian traitor. Everyone knew I was to marry the Satrap’s daughter.
The one I’d spoken over said, “What’s in the basket?”
> “Fruit, from the paradise.”
He held out his hand. “Your dagger, and we must see the basket.”
They were so interested in looking for hidden tools that they forgot to search me. Unfortunately I’d never counted on that. I’d brought nothing to help Diotima.
They opened a thick, wooden door that creaked into a narrow corridor with enough dust in the air to make me sneeze.
“Nico, what’s happening?” A voice from a small cell on the left. The cell door was made of planks with gaps wide enough to pass a hand through and so allow air and a little light, which was necessary because there were neither windows nor ventilation within the cell itself. The corridor ended only a few paces along in a blank stone wall. I looked for any gap, anything that might give us a chance at a jailbreak. I saw nothing.
I said, “Pericles has no idea what’s coming. Barzanes intercepted our invasion warning.”
“Then our families are in the path, and a hundred thousand other Hellenes.”
“Yes.”
Diotima leaned close to the bars and whispered, “Nico, you must kill Themistocles.”
“If I do, you’ll die.” I didn’t bother to mention I was unlikely to escape either.
“So what? Can you save my life and let thousands and thousands die? And Athens conquered? And everyone we know a slave to the Persians? My family? Yours? Besides, he killed Brion and I want him to pay for that. You have to do it.”
“You know what the local fashion is in executions, don’t you? You want to spend days on a pole?”
“Give me your knife.”
That shocked me. “I don’t have it. The guards took it when I entered.”
“Don’t lie to me, Nicolaos. I know you better than that. Give me your backup, the one you have hidden beneath your tunic.”
With the greatest reluctance, but unable to deny the logic of her demand, I reached behind and handed over the small, jagged knife. Diotima tested the edge with her finger before secreting it between her breasts underneath her clothing.
She whispered, quieter than ever, “If they come for me, I’ll slit my throat. It’ll be fast and painless.”
