And that was without his magnificent new ship, the Arete. New built from stem to stern, and all to his specification. He could see the towering mainyard above the sea gate. She was cubits taller than any other ship in the harbour, and broader in the beam, with room for two men sitting on every bench — a hexeres, or ‘sixer’. He longed for his wide deck the way he longed for a girl — any girl — in his bed. The way he longed for Amastris, except that he didn’t always think of her when he wanted a woman. Amastris, whose birthday gift, a golden dolphin, had cost two talents of pure gold.
Satyrus sighed, tried to forget the price of everything and walked towards the agora, trailing Helios and Crax and Coenus and two dozen guards. No one bowed. Men did run to him, demanding his attention concerning their lawsuits, or seeking his approval for their wares, or for merchant ventures.
It took him the better part of the afternoon to cross the agora.
Finally he freed himself from the last anxious citizen — a farmer complaining about the moving of his boundary stones — and walked under the gate to the citadel where he was, at last, on his own ground. And this was Tanais — next to Olbia the easiest of his cities to administrate. In Pantecapaeaum, it might have taken him all day to get across the agora and he’d have needed the soldiers at his back. There were still many men who hated him in Pantecapaeaum.
‘My lord?’ purred Idomenes. Idomenes was the Steward of the Household — the man who made sure that the king was fed and clothed and had a place to sit. He was also the Royal Secretary. He’d held both of these jobs for the former occupant of the throne, and Satyrus suspected he’d do the same for the next.
‘Dinner — just friends.’ Satyrus dropped his chlamys on the tiled floor of his own apartments. A dozen servants came forward to lay out his clothes for dinner.
‘Bath?’ Karlus asked, a giant German who served as Satyrus’ personal guard and often worked as his manservant, as well. The big German was getting white in his hair, and his body was criss-crossed with scars earned in thirty years of near-constant fighting.
‘Yes, Karlus. Thanks,’ Satyrus said. The living areas of the palace had hypocausts — heated floors — and a central furnace that kept water hot all day. Satyrus slipped into the water, swam around his little pool for a few minutes and climbed out to be greeted by a pair of attendants with towels.
Massaged, oiled and clean, Satyrus lay down on his couch for dinner as the sun set in red splendour over the valley of the Tanais River. Satyrus rose only to say the prayer to Artemis and pour the libation of the day, and then he led the singing of a hymn to Herakles, his ancestor, before he reclined alone.
On the next couch, Coenus raised a wine cup. ‘You did well, lad,’ he said.
Satyrus made a face. ‘Posturing. Philokles would laugh. I had a spat with Melitta, and took my aggression out on the Macedonians.’
Coenus shook his head. ‘Philokles would say that it was well done. He was the very master of deceit when he needed to be, lord. You should have seen him fool the Tyrant of Olbia with spies-’
Satyrus nodded and cut off the impending story. ‘I did see him fool Sophokles, the assassin of Athens,’ he said.
Coenus laughed. ‘I’m getting old, lord. You did, right enough.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Never say old.’
Crax scratched his head. ‘I’m just a dumb barbarian,’ he said. ‘Why exactly do we have to do this dance?’
Satyrus exchanged a long glance with Coenus. ‘To keep Antigonus off balance until our grain fleets are safely in Rhodes and Athens,’ Satyrus said. ‘We’re at sea in what, two weeks? Antigonus has more than two hundred hulls in the water, and he could pick our merchants off like a hawk takes doves.’
‘So we offended his ambassador?’ asked Hama. Hama was another barbarian — a Keltoi from the far north, who had served Satyrus’ family for twenty years as a bodyguard and war captain. ‘How does that help?’
Coenus gave a half-grin. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘It’s not simple. We offended the ambassador to make him believe what he saw and heard here. If we’d been nice to him, he’d have wondered what was up — after all, we’ve never exactly been friends. The truce between Antigonus and Ptolemy is a dead letter, now. It’s war, across the Ionian Sea, and our people have to sail through the middle of it.’
Hama sat up on his couch. ‘I see it!’ he said. ‘By appearing to offend One-Eye, it seems possible that Satyrus is. . available.’
‘Or mad,’ Coenus said. ‘Niocles can report it either way, and Antigonus might choose to keep his distance from our merchantmen this summer.’
‘Ares,’ Crax spat. ‘What do we do next summer?’
Satyrus raised his cup and slopped a libation. ‘Next summer is in the hands of a different Moira,’ he said. ‘Let us remember the Fates and Fortunes, gentlemen. This summer will be tough enough.’
‘You are determined to accompany the fleet?’ Coenus asked, for the fifth time.
Satyrus shrugged.
It was morning — a glorious spring morning. From the height of the palace towers, he could see men ploughing in their fields beyond the walls, and far off to the east, an Assagetae horse-trader riding briskly west towards the city with a string of stout ponies raising the dust behind him. Closer to hand, a gaggle of girls went to the public fountain in the middle of the agora (sixty talents for the fountain of marble and bronze, a hundred and seventy for the well, the piping and the engineer and the workmen to dig down into the rock and make a channel so that the waterworks would provide water all year round).
Satyrus watched them draw water; watched the shape of them as they leaned out over the water to draw it, watched as one young woman drank from the pool provided for the purpose and then washed her legs.
Why can’t I just summon her? What a fool I am — as if my sister actually cares. And who am I harming? Hyacinth takes no harm from me.
Because I know perfectly well it’s wrong, of course. I’m not avoiding my slave-mistress to please my sister. I’m doing it because it is right.
I think.
‘I don’t think I have your attention,’ Coenus said from a very great distance.
‘You do, of course,’ Satyrus said. He forced his eyes back over the parapet and onto his father’s friend. ‘But I do request you say that last bit again.’
‘I thought that you were going to take an embassage to Heraklea this spring,’ Coenus said.
‘And so I shall,’ said the king.
‘You mean, you’ll cut a more dashing figure with a war fleet than with some ambassadors,’ Coenus said. ‘Your prospective father-in-law — now, I’ll note, the “king” of Heraklea — may not see it that way.’
Satyrus disliked having his mind read. He disliked it all the more when he felt that he was being mocked — as all of his father’s friends tended to do, all the time. His sister Melitta called it the ‘conspiracy of the old’. In fact, Coenus was exactly right. Satyrus wanted to see Amastris with twenty ships at his back and resplendent in armour — perhaps fresh from a victory or two.
‘Coenus, with what we spend on the fleet, we might as well get some use from it,’ Satyrus said.
Coenus grunted. ‘You’ve got me there, lord.’
‘And I’m the best navarch, if it comes to a fight,’ Satyrus said. ‘You’ve said so yourself.’
‘If you get into a fight with Antigonus One-Eye’s fleet, all the skill in the world won’t be worth a fuck,’ Coenus said. Then he shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, lad. I’m not myself. You are the fittest navarch. I dislike the both of you gone at the same time — you at sea and your sister out on the Sea of Grass. And neither of you with an heir old enough to rule.’