Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) by Christian Cameron Page B

love for the Carthaginians, however.’
    They all looked at me.
    ‘They enslaved me,’ I said.
    From their looks, I might as well have said ‘and sold me in a brothel’. Every face closed.
    ‘You are a
slave
?’ Theodorus asked.
    I shook my head, but I already knew we were done. I had seen this attitude in Athens.
    ‘I am not a slave, was not born a slave and was only made a slave by force,’ I said.
    Theodorus got up. His hip had been against mine, sitting for wine, and he moved away as one would from a leper. ‘No slave can take exercise in our gymnasium,’ he said.
    They all looked at me with marked distaste.
    I got up. ‘I’m sorry to have intruded, gentlemen,’ I said. I drained my cup – the wine was excellent. ‘I appreciate your hospitality, even if you do not desire my
company. May the gods be kind to you.’ I collected my chlamys, and made what exit I could.
    I could feel their stares until I got to the door of the wine shop, where one of the serving girls suddenly went up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss on my beard. ‘I hate them,’ she
said.
    Aphrodite, that little brush of a kiss went to the very roots of my being. And took much of the sting out of my humiliation.
    The next morning I told my master, Nikephorus, the entire story.
    We were polishing – a nasty job, and one usually done by slaves, but Nikephorus liked to see things gleam. Every day. So we often started the days polishing. I’d polished all day for
my first week, until he had time to test me. And of course, I knew the grips and handshakes of a master. They were different for Syracusa, but not so different.
    At any rate, we polished for a while and then he sat back on the bench and admired our work. ‘I don’t exercise as much as I should,’ he said. ‘But the crafts have a
gymnasium with a bath. You should have asked.’ He smiled his slow smile, and his eyes twinkled. He was grey without seeming old – bent, and strong, like Hephaestos himself. His wife,
let me add, was much younger, and they fought often, and made up in the traditional way, and were equally loud in both pastimes. I liked his wife, too, Julia. She was, and she had a neat, orderly
mind that catalogued everything that came her way – the heroes of the
Iliad
, the ships in the harbour, the wares in the shop – which was odd, as her house was the messiest
I’ve ever seen. She never put anything away, and her slaves were just like her. But she was kind to apprentices and journeymen: she gave us food from her larder and juice from her store, wine
was always free and she had a great store of scrolls to read – like a rich woman, which I think she was. I first read a good copy of
Pythagoras on Mathematics
at her house.
    My daughter is making that face that means I’m rattling on.
    So Nikephorus said, ‘I’d have loved to see those rich fucks when they found out you had been a slave. Like you’d poured shit on them.’ He laughed aloud. ‘Well,
well. After work today, we’ll go and exercise.’ He groaned. ‘But it may kill me.’
    We went through the streets at twilight, through parts of the city I hadn’t yet seen. I discovered that the textiles I’d bought down by the harbour were a pale shadow of what was
available in the weavers’ street, where women hung recently completed items in the doors of their shops. Weaving is a woman’s craft, and the women of Syracusa were at least as dexterous
as those of Athens or Plataea.
    I saw wine shops better than the ones I frequented, and a street of iron-smiths where we stopped to drop off a whole leather-wrapped bundle of bronze fittings. I saw good swords and bad, fine
spears and cheap spears, good eating-knives and dull eating-knives.
    The craftsmen’s gymnasium was small, but quite pleasant. It didn’t have its own track, but it did host three professional trainers, paid by the guilds, and it had good equipment
– a matched set of lifting stones with handles, for instance. I was introduced