Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [179]
She made me feel more alive.
She climbed the cliff while I walked down to the beach, and then she watched us sail away from the top.
I never promised you a happy story.
Miltiades was waiting for me on the beach at Mytilene. I hadn’t learned, yet, that he was the greatest spymaster in the west, and knew of every event long before it happened. Indeed, his reach was long.
He embraced me as I stepped ashore, but he was curt. ‘Walk with me,’ he said.
He was my commander. I walked away with him, thinking of Briseis. I saw the cloud on his face and wondered how I could next see her.
‘You had Aristagoras’s wife in your boat,’ he said.
‘The bastard tried to ambush me.’ I didn’t know what else to say.
‘He tried to ambush you when you sneaked off to fuck his wife,’ Miltiades said. He turned to face me. ‘That’s what he’s going to say.’
‘She’s two months pregnant!’ I said – which was not, strictly speaking, a denial. ‘I went to get my ransoms!’
‘What ransoms?’ Miltiades asked me, and he was as shrewish as a woman buying fish in the agora.
I hadn’t told him, and suddenly I realized that this, not Briseis, was the real matter. ‘I had Phoenicians to ransom after the fight at Amathus,’ I said.
‘You thought to take the money for yourself?’ he asked, and his voice was dangerous.
I stopped walking. ‘What?’
‘The ransom for the Phoenicians,’ he said. ‘You sought to sneak away? You thought that I wouldn’t know?’ This was a different Miltiades – a sharper, more dangerous man.
‘What?’ I asked, foolishly. And then, ‘What concern is it of yours?’
‘Don’t try that on me,’ he said. ‘Half of anything you take is mine. You expect me to squander political capital to save you from Aristagoras and then you try to steal my money?’
I stepped back. ‘Fuck off,’ I said. I shook my head. ‘Those are my ransoms from Amathus. Nothing to do with you.’
‘Half,’ he said. ‘Half of every penny you take. That is the price of being my man. I pay the wages on your ship. You agreed to the contract.’ He spat. ‘Don’t act like a fucking peasant. You got more than a talent.’
I think that my hand went to my sword hilt, because he looked around – suddenly the great Miltiades was afraid to be alone on the beach with me. It wasn’t the money, thugater. I am a killer and a lecher, but I have never been a greedy man.
But I thought that he was cozening me, and I can’t stand to let other men get the better of me. ‘This is my money from before the contract!’ I said. ‘I’ve promised part of it to my men!’
‘That will have to come from your half, then,’ he said. He crossed his arms. He was a little afraid – even then, men saw me as a mad dog. But he was bold, and he must have needed the silver.
If you want to know how great a man truly is, see him talk about money.
I sighed. ‘Why didn’t you come to me – like a man?’ I might have said, like a friend, but I had just discovered that pirates have no friends.
‘If you ever speak to me that way again, I’ll have you killed,’ Miltiades said. ‘Now pay up your half, and we can forget all about this.’ He was shaking with fury, and yet he was above mere insults of manhood. He didn’t point at the boat behind me, but he did jut his chin at it. ‘You think it’s going to be easy to keep you alive after this? He hates you. And you come sailing back from a rendezvous with his wife.’
Oh, I can be a fool.
I paid. Perhaps you’ll think less of me, but Miltiades was the only anchor I had in that world. I had no family and no friends, and I was living far above my birth. So I walked back down the beach, took the rolled cloak out from under the floorboards of my boat and I paid Miltiades half of the ransoms that I had earned without him.
Paramanos watched me do it without a muscle moving on his face, but I knew who the sycophant was by watching. Herakleides wouldn’t meet my eye.
I couldn’t believe it. He was such an upright man.
But he was an Aeolian, and such men can be bought.
Cheap.
I cursed.
Miltiades counted it out and threw me back a gold bar – an enormous sum of money. ‘That’s to take the sting out,’ he said. ‘I’m going