‘Fuck off,’ Satyrus said, but he took the lyre and he embraced this man — this outspoken bastard who had become his friend. Then he embraced Charmides and Apollodorus.
‘I think you should have me with you,’ Apollodorus said. ‘Me, at the very least.’
‘You are all laying far too much emphasis on this,’ Satyrus said. ‘And Apollodorus, you are my designated commander. I need you with the fleet.’
He embraced the smaller man, picked up his bags, and made the leap from the rail of the Medea up onto the waist of the much higher-sided Miranda. Polycrates followed him, and then Philaeus, his oar master, threw Polycrates’ bags aboard, his muscles powering the bags high into the air before they came down with a smack on the smooth planks of the merchant ship.
And then his friends were just a ship length away for another two hours as they ran up the coast of Attika, Anaxagoras clearly visible as he played his lyre in the bow, and then his kithara, and then sang for the rowers. During the entire time he made music, the oars worked flawlessly — the timing was precise, and Anaxagoras’s emphasis on rhythm and meter in playing had a visible effect on the working of the oars. And he heard Charmides singing — taking lessons from Anaxagoras. And Thrassos laugh, and Apollodorus’s voice, punishing a marine for what he called ‘wilfulness’, a crime that could be manipulated by Apollodorus to suit any occasion.
‘I don’t usually find it suits — freeing slaves,’ Polycrates said, eventually. ‘But I can tell that you are of the opposite view, and I am not seeking a quarrel.’
Satyrus found the working of the merchant ship interesting enough. They had twenty oars in the water, but they also manipulated the big, square mainsail on the standing mast with a good deal more delicacy — the mast came out of a bigger hull, and had many more brail ropes to it, allowing it to be brailed up to many different points, and allowing the massive yard which held it to be rotated through half a circle. No individual item of tackle was very different from its equivalent on a warship, but the total was easier to manipulate and allowed a slightly broader set of angles of sailing. Satyrus was attempting to measure just how a warship might be rigged the same way when Polycrates interrupted his thoughts.
‘Hmm?’ he asked.
‘You think that I should free Jason,’ Polycrates said.
Satyrus made a face. ‘Not my business,’ he said.
‘It was plain enough. And your helmsman took the time to inform me that you free almost all the slaves you buy.’ The Athenian had his shoulders square like a man preparing for a fight.
‘I do, at that. When we were children, my sister and I swore to have as few slaves as ever we might. I’m aware that no society can live without them but it seems like a piece of arete to improve their lot if I may.’ Satyrus could see Aegina now, clear on the port bow. He turned his head — indeed, Medea was already signalling, and the line of warships was reacting. It was prettily done — the column of ships all turned together, and suddenly they were a fighting line, their oars flashing in the sun.
‘Apollodorus is giving us a demonstration,’ Satyrus said.
‘Your men fear you’ll be taken in Athens.’ It wasn’t a question.
Satyrus shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he answered.
Polycrates shook his head. ‘I can’t imagine it,’ he said. ‘Demetrios thinks as highly of you as he does of any man in the circle of the world.’
Satyrus smiled. ‘I can’t tell you how much you put me at my ease,’ he said. In his heart he wondered, suddenly, if this was all a put-up job — the priest, Delos, the whole prepared to lure him …
Foolishness. No one but the gods knew he was going to Delos. And as he was headed for Athens either way — as in his heart he knew that it was Miriam, and only Miriam, that brought him in person to Athens — no plot could have been laid. He needed no lure. And no one could know the power of his attraction to Miriam, unless …
‘Why don’t you stay with me, guest friend?’ Polycrates asked. ‘You need have no fears in my house — I have guards and men and all that, and besides, everyone knows me.’
‘I’d be delighted,’ Satyrus said. ‘But I am a citizen — I have my own house.’
Polycrates nodded, a distant look in his eye. ‘I had forgotten. But I must add — you are welcome. Perhaps until you can settle in, engage staff?’
Satyrus laughed. ‘I only plan to be here for three days — and now that I consider it, it would be foolish to sleep in a musty farmhouse outside the walls when I could be snug in a well-appointed house of a friend. So yes — I’ll accept your offer.’
‘You have business beyond merely landing your grain? I’m sure that King Demetrios would be delighted if you would visit him but I suspect that he is off at Corinth. He has the Acrocorinth under siege.’
Satyrus hadn’t known that. The most impregnable place in Greece. You didn’t take Rhodos, so you’re having a go here. Rather the way I had to win with the sword what I lost at pankration.
‘I don’t think I have time this trip,’ he said. ‘Besides — my allies would probably not take the message correctly if I were to pay Demetrios a social call.’
Polycrates nodded. ‘I had wondered.’
‘Wondered?’ Satyrus asked.
‘Hmm.’ Polycrates gave a small smile. ‘All this about having business in Athens. I had wondered what you were about.’ The Athenian raised his hand. ‘Please — I’m not asking for your secrets. But people will talk.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Personal business. My friend Abraham Ben Zion — a citizen of Rhodes — is here as a hostage. I need to see him.’
Polycrates’ smile remained in place. ‘Of course,’ he said, in a tone of voice that suggested that he didn’t believe a word.
Satyrus had no intention of telling anyone about Miriam. The complications of their relationship would only grow with sharing. And for a political animal like Polycrates — guest oath notwithstanding — such knowledge would give him immense power … and a hold over Satyrus.
Yet again it occurred to him that what he was doing was foolish. If he did manage to see her, it would not be private. It would not be easy. And it would be all too apparent to an observer that he had come to see her.
The safest thing would be not to see her, of course.
Satyrus smiled. He was not going to do the safe thing. Since Rhodos, he had become familiar with his own mortality. Life was, in fact, likely to be short.
I want her now, he thought. There may not be a tomorrow.
‘Piraeus,’ Polycrates said. ‘Athens.’
And there was the port, and the Parthenons gleaming in the sun, far away atop the acropolis, one of the noblest sights in the world.
Miranda was the last ship to come in — Kleosthenes, her captain, was the senior merchant officer from Olbia, and he wanted to see all the cargoes safe before she landed, which raised him in Satyrus’s estimation. The warships were gone — lost in the haze off Aegina — and Satyrus knew that, by now, Apollodorus and all the trierarchs were paying the oarsmen, and soon they’d be drinking, rutting, or, just possibly, visiting family ashore. He knew that Aegina provided a good few oarsmen.
Piraeus had more piers than any other city in the world except perhaps Alexandria, and the grain fleet was expected — announced by every fishing craft who had seen them in the early morning. Two piers were cleared end to end, and all was ready — two hundred city slaves waiting in squads to help the longshoremen unload the vases of grain, wagons, donkeys — and almost at Satyrus’s feet as the Miranda pulled alongside stood Leo’s factor in Athens, Harmonius, a freed man from Alexandria. Satyrus had known him from boyhood. He was neither tall nor physically imposing, but he had a head for figures unmatched in Leon’s counting house and he had designed many of the ciphers that Leon and his men used throughout their trade. He had dark brown skin like polished leather — good expensive leather — and curly dark hair, and despite an early life of slavery — or perhaps because he’d been freed — he wore a perpetual smile that made him easy to talk to and easy to learn from; Satyrus had had his geometry from Harmonius in Tanais and Athens, before Philokles came back from campaigning with Diodorus to be his tutor.