Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [83]
Penelope must have recognized him, because she was silent after that first scream.
And then Artaphernes stepped out of the room behind me – Mistress’s room – and I understood.
‘You’ve always told me that you never lie,’ Master said to Artaphernes.
He had the sword loosely in his hand. He was no swordsman. And he was calm – murderously calm, I think. He had already dismissed Penelope and me as superfluous to the scene. Penelope backed away from him and into my arms. I put a hand over her mouth.
Artaphernes was naked, and it was no secret what he’d been doing. ‘I do not lie,’ he said. He was afraid, but covering it well.
‘Why did you have to fuck my wife?’ Hipponax asked.
Artaphernes met Hipponax’s eyes. He shrugged. ‘I love her,’ he said. ‘And if you kill me, Ionia will burn.’
Hipponax laughed grimly, and I knew what he intended. ‘Let her burn, then,’ he said.
I had spent the last heartbeats with my hand over Penelope’s mouth, and now I pushed her, hard, into Hipponax. Remember, I’d walked with him – I knew he was sober. But it was a risk that he would spit her. Perhaps I did blame her for her little ride. She’d looked well pleased under Archi’s cock, damn her.
At any rate, she was not spitted on Master’s sword. He lifted the blade to keep her safe, and I stepped in and stripped it from his hands. And then fell to the ground, as if I too had stumbled.
All three of us went down in a tangle.
Artaphernes was no fool. He ran.
Everything might yet have been well – or well enough – but Pharnakes came into the corridor with his three friends at his heels. They had blades in their hands, and as soon as they had their satrap clear, they charged us. Who knows what they thought.
I had the sword. I got to my feet and stopped their rush with a parry and then Pharnakes and I exchanged a flurry – four or five cuts and parries. That’s a lot in real combat. A man can only take so much, and then he falls back. The tension is too high. We both backed a step, and Cyrus said, ‘It’s the slave boy. Hold hard, brother!’ in Persian.
I didn’t have the daimon in me yet – I hadn’t been injured.
‘Our lord is safe,’ Darius said. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
Pharnakes shook his head. ‘We should kill the husband.’
‘This isn’t Persia, you fool!’ Cyrus said. ‘Greeks don’t care! And murder is not what our lord needs right now.’
‘Come and try,’ I said in Persian. Aye, I’m a fool.
Pharnakes shot me a look – such a look. Even in torchlight, I knew that look. But Cyrus laughed. ‘Quite the bark, for a pup,’ he said.
All that was in Persian.
And then they were gone.
Pharnakes was right, though. They should have killed the husband. Because that night, Ephesus changed sides, and the Ionian Revolt began, in a corridor in the women’s quarters. The Long War. And like the Trojan War, it started over a woman.
Part III
Freedom
It is hard to fight with anger, for what it wants it buys at the cost of the soul.
Heraclitus, fr. 85
10
You bring more of these handsome boys into my hall every day, thugater. Is the tale so good? Or the opposite – so dull that you need supporters to get you through it? You are not the first young woman I have known, honey. Don’t let the power of your sex go to your head, or you’ll be one of those ambitious harridans who haunt our tragedies.
Don’t give your love to every comer, either, or you’ll be a priestess of Aphrodite and no wife. Hah! I’m a crude old man. Do as you will, thugater of my old age. It is the irony of my life that you grow up to look like Briseis. What fury, what fate, put those looks in your mother’s womb? Will we have games to settle your suitors? Perhaps I can meet them in single combat, one at a time, until one of them bests me. Even at my age, I think you would be a maiden for some time.
You blush. Ah – honey, when you blush, you most resemble my Briseis. But when she blushed, she was dangerous.
You might think otherwise, but my status in the house didn’t change at all, that day. In