Philyra, who had hung in the doorway listening to this, went back into the courtyard of the house. Marcus was there, taking down his master's laundry. Philyra studied him for a minute, wondering, for the first time, what he had been before he was a slave. She had no clear memories of the time before he came to the household: he had always been there.
Earlier in the day she had indeed mentioned her suspicions of him to her brother. Archimedes had dismissed them at once. "Marcus?" he'd said. "Oh no! He thinks slaves who steal deserve the whip, not the stick, and he prides himself on his honesty. No, no, I'd trust Marcus with a fortune." Now he had backed that confidence with a refusal even to contemplate selling the slave.
But the problem was, he had trusted Marcus with a fortune, and she still couldn't imagine how that fortune could have disappeared in a year without dishonesty from someone. Archimedes' confidence merely made her feel guilty about her own suspicions.
The slave felt her eyes on him and turned toward her, his arms full of laundry, his face mild and inquiring. She noticed, as though for the first time, the crooked identation where his nose had been broken, and she wondered how that had happened, and when. "What sort of Italian are you?" she asked him again.
He let out a long slow breath, looking away from her. "Mistress…" he began, then gave a helpless jerk of one hand, flapping linen. "Mistress, I'm a slave, your brother's. You know that's true. Anything else I said might be a lie."
She gazed at him soberly. "When did you break your nose?"
He set his armful of laundry carefully down on an overturned washtub and turned back to the line for the last item. "Long time ago, mistress. Before I came to Sicily."
A soldier had broken it, during the first year of his slavery. He'd resisted the man's attempt to bugger him, and had been beaten senseless because of it. When he woke up, it was to find himself lying at the feet of the Campanian slave merchant who'd sold him to the soldier, and the soldier and slaver arguing about whether the soldier was due his money back. "Look what you've done to his face!" the slaver had complained. "Who's going to want him now?" Marcus had lain there, mouth full of blood, aching in every muscle, and hoped that nobody was going to want him now, because he didn't think he'd be able to resist so fiercely again; he'd give in, and make a whore of himself. He had been seventeen.
"Was it in battle?" asked Philyra.
Marcus shook his head. He folded the last tunic, set it down on top of the others, then picked the pile up. "Just a fight."
"But you were in a battle. You were enslaved after a battle."
"Yes," he agreed, meeting her eyes. "I was in a battle. We lost."
Philyra was silent a moment, thinking of the war to the north, and of the precariousness of the freedom of Syracuse. She shook her head, and Marcus took the gesture as dismissal. He gave a nod and set off upstairs with his pile of clean dry clothes.
It was dusk when Archimedes arrived at the sea gate. if the tarentine had indeed shared straton's shift, he'd taken himself elsewhere, and Straton was alone, leaning against the inside of the city wall, shield forced half over his chest, one leg resting on his slanted spear. He unfolded himself when he saw Archimedes and tipped his shield onto his back again. "There you are!" he said with relief. "When I asked around about your question, my captain got interested. He says they do need more engineers, for the army and the city both. He wants to talk to you. He's waiting for us at the Arethusa. That all right?"
Archimedes blinked and mentally thanked his mother for her fussing over the cloak. "F-fine!" he stammered hastily. Straton's captain was presumably the man in charge of the garrison of Syracuse while the rest of the army was away. He could, if he wanted, ensure that Archimedes was offered a job.
The Arethusa proved to be an inn on the promontory of Ortygia, near the freshwater spring of that name. Archimedes was not familiar with it- he had rarely ventured onto the citadel- but he noticed as they approached that it was a good inn. The building was large, faced with stone, and had probably been converted from an upper-class mansion. Its sign, which had some artistic pretensions, depicted the nymph Arethusa, spirit of the spring and patroness of the city, reclining among the reeds with the citadel of Ortygia in the background. Archimedes eyed her shapely nudity, and decided that yes, the inn probably did rent female company as well as sell food. He fingered the coins in his purse resignedly. The evening was clearly not going to be cheap, and he knew that he would be paying. He could not complain: treating Straton's captain to an evening's entertainment would oblige the man to be helpful.
Straton clumped into the inn's main room, spear over his shoulder, and gave his name to an obsequious waiter. Archimedes glanced warily at the painting of carousing centaurs on the wall and the silver-chased hanging lamps, and added another three obols to the likely bill. The waiter smirked and bobbed and led them to one of the inn's small private dining rooms. A short wiry man in his early thirties was already seated on the single couch, nibbling at a dish of olives; he rose politely when Archimedes and Straton appeared. Straton saluted; Archimedes extended his hand.
The captain smiled and shook hands. "You're the engineer?" he asked. "I'm Dionysios son of Chairephon, captain of the garrison of the Ortygia. I've already ordered- I hope that's all right?"
Dionysios was not wearing armor, though a red officer's cloak hung over the back of his couch and a sheathed sword over the arm. When Straton hesitated awkwardly in the doorway, his superior grinned at him. "We're both off duty, man," he said. "Make yourself comfortable."
Straton gave a sigh of relief, set his spear and shield against the wall beside the door, then dropped onto the free end of the couch and began to unfasten his baldric. Dionysios grinned again, this time with knowing sympathy for long hours standing guard, for sore feet, a stiff back, and boredom.
Archimedes, feeling much the odd one out, took the least comfortable place, in the middle of the couch between the two soldiers. The obsequious waiter bobbed about taking orders, then retreated.
"Straton tells me you've just come back from Alexandria and are looking to be of service to the city in the war," said Dionysios.
Archimedes nodded. "But," he added awkwardly, "I've found that I can't go up to Messana to join the army. When I got home- That is, my father's dying. I can't leave Syracuse until- You understand what I mean. If there's something I can do here in the city…" He trailed off with an uncertainty he did not feel. He had left his father to endure illness alone: he would stay with him now, until the end.
"Ah," said Dionysios. "I am sorry."
"Bad thing to come home to," said Straton sympathetically. "That, and the war."
Archimedes made an inarticulate noise of agreement.
There was a decent silence, and then the captain asked about Alexandria.
They talked about the city through the first course of the mealthe Museum, the scholars, the temples; the beauty of the courtesans. Straton was silent at first, nervous in his commanding officer's presence, but Dionysios was cheerful and relaxed, there was plenty of wine, and before long they were all three talking freely. Dionysios swirled the fragrant red in his wide-bowled cup and praised Egypt. "The House of Aphrodite," he said. "That's what they call Alexandria, isn't it? Everything that exists anywhere in the world is there, they say- everything anyone could desire. Money, power, tranquility, fame, learning, philosophy, temples, a good king, and women as beautiful as the goddesses who once came to Priam's son Paris to be judged. I'd love to go there!"
"It's the House of the Muses," agreed Archimedes warmly. "It draws the finest minds in the world as the Heraclean stone draws iron. I didn't want to leave it."