‘Nice Jewish girls,’ Kallista said, ‘don’t meet prostitute-slaves. I was a porne, and then I was a courtesan — slave, then free. And now I am Theron’s wife. In Alexandria, it would be a shame to him. In Tanais,’ she said with calm happiness, ‘we are whomever we want to be. That is all I can tell you. You bring what you have here, and make what you want.’
‘You make it sound easy,’ Miriam said. She was embarrassed — mortified — that this woman must have overcome ten times the obstacles that she had overcome.
‘My husband says that every fight is the only fight — that’s what he says about pankration.’ She shrugged. ‘It is true for all people. Your challenge: can you be a queen? Because Satyrus wants a partner, not a bed-mate. I’ve known him for a long time.’
‘And been his bed-mate?’ Miriam asked with an acerbity she regretted.
Kallista rose to her feet, the picture of elegance. ‘Perhaps, and perhaps not — I would never tell, and you, my dear, should not care either way, as that would belong to a different world, would it not? I have never been his bed-mate in Tanais. I sleep with just one man here, and only when I desire him. It is like paradise for me. Now — I can go, or I can entertain you with music and poetry.’
Miriam found herself on her feet, feeling very ungracious. ‘Stay and drink wine.’
Kallista smiled, and sank into a chair. ‘Tell me about being a Jew,’ she said.
Banugul sold her cargo, put money with bankers, and cooled her heels. Once she drank too much and cried for Herakles and for Stratokles. For what she would lose if they were gone.
One of Leon’s ships swept into harbour, borne on the wings of its oars. Borne on the wings of Nike.
Leon was on board in person, and Nihmu, his Sakje wife, and they came to visit her. They told her that Seleucus and the allies were absolutely victorious, and that Herakles would lose his left arm at the elbow, but was strong.
‘He will never fight again,’ Leon said. He clearly didn’t know how this news would be received.
Banugul rose on her toes and kissed him. ‘Hah! I love his lost arm!’ she said. ‘He is coming home?’
‘When he can travel, he will come here,’ Nihmu said. ‘And Stratokles is alive. No more wounded than other men, and much in demand. Sends you this letter.’
Banugul read the letter, and then she cried so hard that the kohl ran out of her eyes, and only the man who truly loved her would have found her beautiful.
Nihmu and Leon, who had expected a very different reaction, rose to go.
‘Stratokles swore it would make you happy!’ Nihmu said. ‘Bastard.’
Banugul rolled the letter away. ‘It does,’ she said. ‘I have been alone for too long with only my guards. Which reminds me … a piece of unfinished business.’
She explained.
Leon saw Amastris alone as his next visit, gave her the official letter from her husband Lysimachos, and she, too, wept. Then Leon craved the loan of her captain of guards, who followed Leon out the door and was immediately taken into custody by two files of Leon’s marines.
Who further blocked six alleys and two streets in the foreigners’ quarter with the ruthless efficiency of victorious men with too much to lose to want to take any chances. And they’d cleared a great many neighbourhoods in the last few summers. They knew the business.
Banugul’s Hyrkanians and her Sogdians had done the scouting, and they stormed the building, killing everyone, slave and free. Isokles and his people were so surprised that his retainers were mostly unarmed. The Hyrkanians were not disturbed by such things.
Isokles was dragged out into the street, cursing in his curious voice.
‘I have friends here — every man in the guard, every courtier is mine. You are a dead man,’ he said to Leon.
‘Name them,’ Leon said.
After he had, one of the marines opened his neck.
And Phiale — taken screaming — watched with growing horror, and finally threw herself violently at Leon’s feet. ‘He would have killed me!’ she shrieked. ‘Oh, Leon, you were always my friend!’ She grabbed his knees. ‘Mercy, lord!’
Leon hesitated. She was beautiful. He could remember her dancing at a party …
She was not so beautiful when Nihmu put an arrow in her throat.
‘There is my mercy,’ Nihmu said. ‘I didn’t ruin her face.’ She looked at her husband, and smiled.
‘Men,’ she said, and bent to retrieve her arrow.
Epilogue
Satyrus landed from his own flagship to find that Theron and Leon had arranged the sort of reception that Alexandrians regularly provided Ptolemy — in miniature, and at a greatly reduced cost, as both of them assured their king with grins wide enough to split their faces.
The Olbian cavalry performed one last duty for their king, escorting him to his palace, and hoplites lined the streets, and farmers — Thracians, Maeotae, and Sindi and Sakje — all the men and women who hadn’t felt the ice-cold touch of war — pressed against their backs and yelled themselves hoarse.
In the agora, the Exiles dismounted — the survivors — between the statues of Kineas and Srayanka.
Diodorus mustered them one last time, and paid them.
And the priests of Apollo and Herakles, Athena and Zeus made sacrifice, and all the people gathered to sing the paean.
Satyrus embraced them all; man after man, his father’s friends and his own friends. His patience was unbreakable … because he already knew that she was here. She was waiting.
He went from man to man. And finally, when gods and men were done, he climbed the steps to her.
He wasn’t thinking it, but he had never looked better in his life — in his blue military cloak, armour and a fresh white chiton.
The steps seemed quite remarkably long, and he was not without doubts, although Abraham had embraced him at the foot of the steps as if they would never be parted.
But when he saw her with Banugul and Sappho, and Kallista, he knew his case was made, and the jury was all his own.
Their eyes met.
She gave him the grin — the impish grin — he remembered from her father’s house. She stuck out the tip of her tongue.
Something flowed out of him, then — some lingering effect of wounds, or the last spirit of the blow to his head, or just some lingering poison of evil, and he was filled with eudaimonia. He walked up to her and — greatly daring — bent to kiss her in public.
Her eyes suggested he would pay later for this familiarity, but she stood her ground.
‘Marry me?’ he asked.
‘What, no foreplay?’ she asked. ‘I hear you make pretty speeches.’
‘Marry me?’ he asked again.
‘This is your notion of wooing?’ she asked.
‘It is when all the people I love are together — and I’m in a hurry.’ He grinned.
And she grinned.
And somewhere beyond the rim of the world, armies marched — Pyrrhus of Epirus prepared to invade Sicily, and Cassander laid siege to Corcyra, and busy, busy plotters and hardened killers up and down the Inner Sea faced each other across tables and battlefields.
But north of the Euxine, the grain grew in endless plains, unburned by war. The farmers tilled the ground, and the groves gave olives, if only small ones, and the horses grew fat on the plains, and cattle grew fat in the fields, and the Sakje and the Sarmatians, the Maeotae and the Sindi, the Greeks in the cities, from the lowest to the highest, put their shields on the walls and their swords and axes above their hearths and made babies. And grain, and silver and gold. And older men told boys what it had been like when Niceas held the dooryard in Hyrkania, when Philokles fell saving Alexandria, when Kineas defeated Alexander, when their king warred the One-Eye and saved Asia.
But they were also careful to tell their sons and daughters that in war there was blood and torment, fire and loss, many losers and few victors.
It might have lasted for ever, this paradise.
In fact, they had less than thirty years.