‘I won’t pretend that won’t help,’ Antigonus said, and chuckled. ‘But no. It’s because Cassander is a useless fuck, and Ptolemy wants it to end, and Lysimachos can’t find his arse with both hands in the dark, and Seleucus is an arrogant pup … and they all hate each other. You and me, son, we trust each other, and when the bronze meets the iron, that’s what will count.’
Demetrios put his arms around his father and kissed him. ‘I’ll be there when you call,’ he said.
Antigonus drank off his wine and tossed the cup into the sea. ‘Then sod ’em all,’ he said. ‘We’ll be kings of the world.’
The caravan came to Heraklea with fifty camels and a hundred horses, laden with spices and silk and fine cottons, wool shawls from the lands east of Hyrkania, swords forged by legendary giants, and twenty loads of lapis lazuli quarried in the high, high passes of Sogdia and Bactria.
The caravan was commanded by a woman, and her tribesmen called her ‘The Widow.’ She was rumoured to be beautiful, and her voice was gentle, but the tough, dark Sogdian mercenaries told the boys in the souk how she had killed a bandit in the high passes with her steel, and how she had killed another — one of their own, who thought she might warm his bed — with a thumb into his brain through his eye.
Covered in dust, robed to the throat and wearing a Persian burnoose, she was slim, but that was all that could be said of her. And rich — she was certainly about to be rich. The lapis alone was the largest cargo of the fine stone to arrive in thirty years.
She spoke Greek with rapid, accurate fluency. The traders of the souk loved and hated her at once, and her vicious guards, who caught a thief by the camels, gutted him, and staked him by their lines as a warning to others.
She was still covered in dust when she finished bargaining with a jewel merchant for a handful of uncut rubies — the only sale she was interested in making — and it brought her a bag of gold darics and the eyes of every thief in Heraklea. Only her eyes showed, which the jeweller thought was an unfair advantage in making a deal, but they were beautiful eyes, large and liquid and a remarkable, lapis-dark blue, and besides, for all her bargaining, he’d just made a year’s wage. He felt beneficent when she asked her question.
Leon the Nubian? Of course he still had a factor here. Directions were provided.
The widow shouted orders, and men did things, and the souk made room for fifty camels and their attendants. She had an astounding number of Sogdian mercenaries, and some Hyrkanians. Their horses alone were enough to excite envy.
She walked, accompanied by two Hyrkanians, through the alleys behind the agora to the warehouse she’d been told to visit. Really, an old Greek home sandwiched between two warehouses.
Leon’s factor was a young man with a black beard and dancing eyes — hard to see that he had been a slave since birth, or perhaps all that joy was the result in ending free. He bowed; informants had already brought him word of her arrival, but he was stunned to have the agora’s new star descend on his doorstep.
Before her heart had beat a hundred times, she was reclining on a couch with a cup of wine in her hand. A slave helped her roll the burnoose off her shoulders and head, and under the folds of her dusty Persian coat, she wore a man’s chitoniskos. Her Persian boots were replaced by gold sandals from her bag.
Leon’s man, Hector, raised his cup. ‘To Hermes, god of travellers, who brings you to my door. And to whom should I pledge this cup, lady of the beautiful eyes?’
She had a playful smile, for a matron of mature years. ‘Your master and I have been more rivals than friends,’ she said. ‘Nonetheless, I believe we are allies now, and I have brought a cargo to help finance an army.’
Hector shook his head. ‘You have the better of me, my lady. If my master had a rival such as you, I would surely know.’
‘Bah,’ she said, and the lapis eyes flickered. ‘I am an old woman and the world has forgotten me. My name is forgotten. But when I was young, men called me Banugul.’
Hector knew her then: the woman that his master called the ‘Viper of Hyrkania’.
But as she was proposing to give him the contents of the richest caravan in thirty years, he was hard put to see how she might be plotting against him.
By the end of the day, she and her men had largely taken over his house. It worried him but she allowed — insisted, in fact — that he write letters to Tanais and to Alexandria. He sent a third copy to Rhodes. And then he was busy, as he found himself in control of the lapis market. It was a delightful way for a merchant to live.
Miriam sat on a couch, her legs stretched out before her, and opened the scroll. She did a great deal of her brother’s business — it kept her from thinking. And thinking made her feel ill.
But the letter from Heraklea was for Leon, not for Abraham. She hesitated, but the name Satyrus of Tanais leapt off the page at her, and she couldn’t help herself. At some point in the long missive, she pivoted her legs from couch to floor, rose and walked out of the garden — lovingly restored — across the tile floor of the former andron, now part of the larger reception hall, and up the short steps to her brother’s warehouse.
Abraham, dressed in the long robes of a Jew, stood with Daedelus of Halicarnassus. They were old comrades, of course, but her brother’s eyes positively glittered.
Miriam was suddenly conscious that she was not dressed to receive. But she was in the warehouse, where women were not welcome, and she couldn’t bring herself to leave and change.
Abraham grinned at her like a fool. ‘Leon’s on his way!’ he said. ‘Ptolemy has sent part of his fleet — I’m to have a command!’ He caught himself, tried to restore the imperturbable demeanour of a man of worth. Failed, and grinned again. Then tried to put his grin away, all too aware how Miriam was going to feel when he rowed off to fight alongside Leon … and Satyrus.
‘This letter is for Leon,’ she said. She shrugged, an eloquent shrug that suggested that she, as a mere woman, made these mistakes, and she’d read it, and really, no one should chide her for it — all in a shrug. ‘Banugul of Hyrkania is at Heraklea with a convoy of goods to be made into money for her son to buy mercenaries.’ She held out the letter. ‘Almost a thousand talents, the letter says.’
Daedelus shook his head. ‘A thousand talents? By Hephaestus’s forge — that’s enough to buy Antigonus.’
Abraham scratched his beard. ‘She’s … an enemy. But of course, her son is with Stratokles, and Stratokles …’ He looked at his sister.
Miriam sighed. ‘Stratokles is a side all by himself.’
Daedelus made a face. ‘I’ve heard of her, too. Alexander’s mistress. But what does this change?’
Abraham shook his head. ‘Nothing. But we couldn’t get a message back through anyway. As soon as the winter storms are off the heavens, Demetrios will close the Propontus. As it is, the captain who brought the letter must be a madman.’
‘Insane,’ said a voice from the warehouse door.
Miriam’s heart stopped.
‘I thought that the winter winds were a safer bet than two hundred triremes,’ Satyrus said. He had on his ancient, pale blue chiton and his sea boots, and he looked more like a fisherman than the King of the Bosporus.
Abraham threw his arms around his friend.
Satyrus had the good grace to look at his friend while he embraced him. Then his glance went back to Miriam.
‘I came to try you one more time,’ he said. He seemed unembarrassed to have Daedelus and Abraham present.
The hardened sea-mercenary grew red. His eyes met with Abraham’s.
‘I … think I hear my mother calling me,’ he muttered.
‘Cup of wine before you go?’ Abraham asked.
‘Jews are the most hospitable of men,’ Daedelus said.
He reached out for her hand, and she gave it to him. They sat — uncomfortably — on a chest of Athenian blackware and wood shavings. For a time that would have bored an onlooker, they said nothing.