‘They mean for you to – copulate. With her. Now.’ Abraham’s face was carefully neutral. ‘I warned you!’
Aphrodite flicked her thumb across the tip of his manhood and he was hard. Just like that.
‘Relax,’ she said. ‘Would you prefer me on top or beneath you?’ she asked, her right hand working his penis like raw dough.
Simple courtesy came to Satyrus’s rescue. ‘The goddess must be on top,’ he said, and rolled under her. ‘Please mind my arm.’
The other men roared to see her straddle him. She squatted and impaled herself on him, and then lay along his length. ‘The longer this takes,’ she said, ‘the better they will like you, and the more luck you bring us.’ She moved slowly up and down, and then bent her head so that her white-gold dyed hair covered his face. He could hear the roar of the captains, but he couldn’t see them – he felt his response quicken.
He noted that her gilded nipples left traces of gold across his chiton.
‘Unpin my chiton,’ he said up into her hair. ‘I don’t stand a chance of lasting—’
She pressed a hand on his left arm, and pain welled up like water from a spring. ‘If you let me, I can make you last a long time,’ she said in his ear, her breasts moving along his chest.
Outside the tent of her hair, they were pounding their couches, singing the hymn to Aphrodite, and Satyrus could hear Demostrate’s voice raised the loudest. The man was a fine singer.
She had his chiton unpinned, and he used his right arm to strip it over his head – more distraction, and more pain in his left arm, and more cheering.
‘Second time!’ Demostrate shouted, and the hymn began again.
‘You are very beautiful,’ Satyrus said. ‘Are you a slave?’
Aphrodite breathed out suddenly, raising her face from his. Her lips were so precisely formed that they looked as if they were
sharp
. ‘I am yours,’ she said. ‘Demostrate has given me to you.’ She sank along his length, rose up and gave a shout – simulated ecstasy, Satyrus suspected, having seen Phiale do the same – but brilliantly simulated. The room roared and the hymn rolled on.
‘Third time!’ Demostrate shouted, and the hymn began again.
‘Hurt me again,’ Satyrus said into her hair. The hair was saving him – he could see neither the lush provocation of her skin nor the leering faces of his dinner companions, and he kept it that way, confining himself to the privacy she made him.
She rubbed her thumb with deadly accuracy along the line of the break on his forearm, and then her other hand rubbed up between his legs as the pain rolled through his body, compensating – what kind of a life gave a woman this sort of skill? Satyrus was no longer fully in the symposium, instead hovering in a separate world, a place that smelled of spice and perfume and sex, where wine and poppy filled his head, pain and pleasure ran together – he had no control over his body, and it made him
afraid
, more than battle, so that his manhood began to wilt, and she writhed against him and hissed, and his hips rolled in response to her, and he grabbed her head and his mouth closed on hers. She gasped, as if being kissed shocked her, and he reached down and ran his hand between them, and she gasped again into his kiss.
‘Fifth time!’ Demostrate yelled, and the room cheered as if they had just won a fight. Satyrus wondered where the fourth time had gone and suddenly passed the point of control and finished, his body arching into hers, his hands clenched in her flesh, and she shouted again, and this time he neither knew nor cared whether her pleasure was simulated.
She moved to roll away, but his right arm crushed her to him. ‘Don’t move,’ he said.
She rode him for part of another verse, laughing softly against him, and then he pulled his chiton – his best – from the floor and wiped both of them clean while the other guests hooted and cheered and the woman who had sung the hymn looked away in distaste. Satyrus got
up, naked, and walked over to Demostrate, his member still tumescent, usually a social gaffe at a symposium.
‘That may have been the best gift of my life,’ Satyrus said. ‘But you still owe me a ram for
Black Falcon
.’
Demostrate laughed. ‘Was that five times, or six?’ he asked. ‘Good luck either way. You are a cunning one, lad. I saw you!’ He laughed and pulled Satyrus down on to his couch. In a whisper, he said, ‘You think we’re fucking barbarians, lad. And maybe you’re right. But now we all know that
you
are, too.’ He sat up. ‘Can you get us a port on the Euxine?’ he asked. Sitting on the edge of his kline, he took a heavy silver
mastos
cup two hundred years old, dipped it in a krater held by two slaves and drank it off.
‘Yes,’ Satyrus said.
Demostrate handed him the cup.
Satyrus drank all of it, every drop, and turned it, licked the nipple and rattled the bead, and men cheered him.
‘Then let’s go and fuck Eumeles as hard as you fucked the goddess, lad. I think the boys fancy you.’
Satyrus couldn’t stop the bitter smile that crossed his lips. ‘The feeling is not mutual,’ Satyrus said.
Demostrate had his diadem on his head, the jewels winking in the firelight. He grabbed Satyrus and pulled him close, so that their naked shoulders rubbed against each other. The pirate king’s skin was a loom of scars, a far cry from the cream and doeskin of Aphrodite, and an odd contrast to Satyrus, whose mind was running too fast. The old man thrust his face into Satyrus’s face.
‘Good,’ Demostrate said. ‘They’re scum. Never forget it – they’re all circling, ready for me to die.’ He laughed. ‘And not one of them could keep all this together.’ His breath wasn’t foul. It smelled of cloves and wine. ‘You could command them, in a few years.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.
Demostrate leaned close. ‘When you have a chance, kill Manes.’
Satyrus looked at the old pirate, as shocked as when the goddess’s thumb had flicked his penis. The effect of his words was physical.
Demostrate laughed. ‘Welcome to Tartarus, lad. If you want us to fight for you, you’ll have to do more than make love at a symposium. Manes needs to die, lad. And if you kill him, the others – well, many of them are sheep, for all they’re the terror of the seas.’ He laughed.
‘Now go back to your own couch before the others decide that
you
have to die.’
Satyrus rose. Demostrate kissed him – a man’s kiss, no different from any kiss that any guest would get at a symposium, but it chilled Satyrus. And as he began to walk back across the tiled floor, he happened to look at Manes, where he lay entwined with his seductive Ganymede. The man looked back at him like a beast in a cage. Satyrus looked away – made himself look around, as if amused at the whole scene, and then back into Manes’ animal eyes.
He had no trouble seeing why all these hard men feared Manes.
He walked back to his couch. Aphrodite rolled off, but he grabbed her hand. ‘Honour my couch, Goddess,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘If you ask,’ she said. ‘My, you have nice manners.’
‘I’m from Alexandria,’ he said. Then he set himself to talk to her, because her tent of hair had kept him sane.
Hours later he walked home naked under his chlamys, cold and damp, and halfway home he stripped the cloak over his head and stood in the marketplace with the icy rain running over his skin.
Abraham stood by him, and when he felt that he had punished himself sufficiently, he followed Abraham, and they walked home together, with Aphrodite following them, her belongings balanced on her head. She followed Satyrus into the house.
Theron was surprised by his nudity, but not for long. ‘Looks like quite the party,’ he said. He looked at Aphrodite. ‘You were a party favour?’ Theron asked. ‘Wish I’d been invited.’
Satyrus threw himself into one of Abraham’s comfortable chairs – heavy wooden ones, like the Nabataeans used. ‘You’re free. And you have my thanks. You played your role beautifully.’
Aphrodite smiled. ‘Free? Are you serious?’
Satyrus couldn’t help but smile at her joy – so much more real than her gasps in his arms. ‘Who would tease a slave that way? Yes, of course.’
She stood, her eyes downcast. She was as old as Satyrus – perhaps nineteen. Quite old, for a sex slave. Her body was superb, muscled, fit and well-kept, but her face was showing signs of her profession.
Theron raised her chin. ‘You are Corinthian!’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘You actually
are
a priestess of Aphrodite,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was. I ran away. The goddess followed me.’ She looked down again, her cheeks red.
Satyrus wanted to be sick. ‘You are free. And if I can do anything for you – passage, perhaps? Or a place in a household?’
Abraham put a hand under her elbow. ‘Let me find you a place you can sleep,’ he said. ‘I have a friend upstairs who will be happy to meet you.’
Satyrus had had no idea that Abraham had a
friend
. He put his head in his hands as soon as she was gone. ‘Oh, gods,’ he said.
Theron said nothing.
After a while, Satyrus looked up. ‘We need an allied port on the Euxine,’ he said.
Theron sighed, and said nothing.
After a while, Satyrus went to bed.
W
hen she awoke, she had lost years of her life, and she was a child in her mother’s felt yurt, camping on the sea of grass. Gryphons and eagles warred with stags and leopards on the worked felt hangings, and pine resin scented the air. A brazier of worked bronze hung from the central poles over the hearth, and the air was warm, like summer. She was wrapped in fur. The woman by the brazier, in her white deerskin coat, was her mother.
In one great rush, all her life came back to her, a single cascade of memory, so that her mother died and she gave birth in a single instant, and she wept for her distant son and her dead mother with the same tears.
‘So,’ Nihmu said. She was sitting on her knees, wearing a robe of white deerskin worked in red and blue patterns with dyed hair, with rows of golden plaques at the seams and golden cones with dyed deer-hair tufts tinkling as she raised her arm to feed hot wine to Melitta. ‘So – you are back to us.’
Melitta drank the wine, smiled at Nihmu and was gone again.
When next she awoke, Nihmu was kneeling by her, arranging crisp wool blankets and a clean fur. ‘Hush, child,’ she said.
Melitta sat up so suddenly that her head spun, and she lay back on her side. ‘I’m awake!’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Nihmu said. She was speaking Sakje. They both were. Melitta got her head up again. ‘I almost died, didn’t I?’
‘Some of the people think that you did die.’ Nihmu frowned. ‘I find the people – different. But it is I who am different.’
‘You seem the same to me,’ Melitta said.
Her appetite returned like her memories, and she ate and ate. It was
two days before her fingers explored the stiffness of her face. She felt a chill despite the fur robe that wrapped her.
‘Aunt Nihmu?’ she asked. ‘How bad is my face?’
‘Were you planning to be a Greek matron?’ Nihmu asked. ‘If so, I suspect you’d have some difficulty.’
Coenus pushed through the flap of the yurt. ‘I will go and sacrifice – something. By Hermes and all the gods, Melitta – I’m sorry to have lost you. It must have been brutal!’
‘Brutal?’ Melitta was fingering her cheek. ‘That’s exactly what it was,’ she said. She sat up. ‘I felt that I was being tested,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you were,’ Nihmu agreed. ‘She’s worried about the scar.’
Coenus kissed her. ‘No man worthy of the name will think less of you for the scar,’ he said.
Melitta frowned. ‘That bad?’ she asked. She could see in their eyes that it was bad. ‘May I have a mirror?’ she asked.
‘How did you get it?’ Nihmu asked her. She took a mirror out of her sleeve, as if she’d been waiting for this moment.
‘Did my good horse make it? The one with the gryphon brand?’ Melitta asked.
Coenus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Quite a horse.’
‘I killed the last owner. He was trying to put an arrow on his bow when I jumped him.’ She looked away. ‘His arrow scratched me.’
‘It was poisoned,’ Nihmu said.
‘I think it saved me,’ Melitta admitted. ‘I was in a haze – almost living in the spirit land. I might not have made it in this world.’
Coenus made the face he always made at barbarian notions of reality. ‘It almost killed you, girl.’ His protestation sounded odd, and Melitta realized that he too was speaking in Sakje.
Samahe came in through the tent flap. ‘Now we shall rejoice,’ she said. She came and folded herself into the space between Nihmu and the bed of furs. She took both of Melitta’s hands in hers, and Melitta had another moment of memory, because Samahe’s hands were the same rough and smooth that her mother’s had been, ridges of callus and muscle and the backs as soft as any woman’s. She saw the mirror and shrugged. ‘You look like a woman who is ready to be a war queen,’ Samahe said. ‘Not like some soft Greek girl. Take the mirror and look. Then put it away. There is much to do.’
Melitta picked up the mirror – a Greek one, with a bronze and
ivory handle and a silver reflector. The image was true, even in the firelight of the yurt. The same slightly upturned nose, the same black hair. And on the left side of her face, a black line like a tattoo, jagged like a lightning bolt, from the corner of her left eye to her chin.