Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [71]
Exactly. So when this rich girl twinkled her eyes at me, I reacted. And she smiled. ‘I own her,’ the rich girl said. She shrugged. ‘I suspect that you are the famous Spear-Boy, Doru of the barbarous west. Yes?’ She laughed. ‘My brother’s companion making love to my companion. Oh, I will have such fun!’ She clapped her hands together.
And that’s how I met Briseis. Yes – you know that name. She’s as much a part of this story as Miltiades or Artaphernes.
I bowed. ‘I apologize for hurting you, mistress.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘What will you do for me if I don’t report you, boy?’ She called me pais, like a small boy who runs errands. She meant to cut me, and she succeeded.
‘Nothing, kore,’ I returned. A kore was a little girl of good family.
‘Doru . . .’ Penelope cautioned.
‘Nothing. Report us to Darkar. Better yet, to your parents.’ I smiled. ‘I will be punished for hurting you.’ I shrugged. But I knew a few things – I was not a new slave. I knew that allowing someone to blackmail you was deadly. Masters loved to play this game – get someone else’s slave in your debt and then use them as a spy. Oh, yes. Darkar was on top of all those tricks – he was steward and spymaster, too. He knew how to put oil on bread, I can tell you.
She looked at me for a long time. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Very well.’
‘Don’t forget to explain what you were doing outside the house after dark, naked under a chlamys.’ That was the free man in me, unable to shut up. Somehow, she was like my sister. And I knew what I’d say to my sister if she tried to blackmail me. Which, come to think of it, she had done, a hundred times.
She whirled. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ she shot at me.
I shrugged. ‘Despoina, I am a slave, and slaves are notorious for protecting themselves. And you are naked under that chlamys.’
She turned red – blushed so hard that you could see it under the fretful light of a house lamp.
She pursed her lips and got up – carefully clutching her boy’s cloak around her figure – and ran back into her father’s house by the slaves’ door.
Penelope paused only long enough to push two fingers rather painfully into the spot where my hip’s muscles stopped. ‘You idiot!’ she hissed. ‘She meant to scare you. For fun. Why did you have to challenge her?’
I thought that I had behaved like a hero. On the other hand, I also realized that I had forgotten Penelope’s existence for three minutes.
I went inside, shaking my head. I didn’t lose any sleep worrying about Briseis.
Morning presented me with new troubles.
I was summoned with Archi to face Hipponax as soon as Archi had breakfasted.
Briseis was standing behind her father, dressed in an embroidered Ionic chiton of linen and a pair of golden slippers.
‘My daughter says that your companion was caught last night kissing her companion,’ Hipponax said. His eyes were on his son, not on me.
Archi shrugged, as young men will do – a reaction that always infuriates a parent, I can tell you. ‘He kissed Penelope?’ Archi asked, looking at me. ‘Why?’ Then he grinned. ‘Or rather – why not?’
Hipponax had a javelin on the table, a light spear with a shaft of cornel wood. He slapped it on the table. It made a noise like the whip of a muleteer. I jumped. Archi blanched.
Briseis smiled.
Only then did Hipponax look at me. ‘Well?’ he asked me.
‘Yes, lord,’ I said. ‘I kissed her.’
Hipponax glanced back at his daughter, and then at me. ‘I do not encourage flirtation among my people, young man. But I am angered by your casual use of my andron as a place to debauch my daughter’s companion.’
I flicked my eyes to that lying little fox, Briseis. So I had kissed her companion in the andron, had I?
But when my eyes met hers, a curious spark passed.
Eyes can pass many messages.