Tyrant: King of the Bosporus by Christian Cameron Page A

basket full of wool. ‘They know all about you, Satyrus. You will not survive staying here. They killed my father for being your friend, and Calchus is next, if they catch him. If I keep you, they’ll come here and kill us.’ She shrugged. ‘But I am an obedient daughter and I will not refuse you. Perhaps it would be better for me to end that way.’
    ‘Hide me overnight, and I will avenge your father at nightfall,’ Satyrus said. ‘I will not be your death.’
    She came out of an unlit corner with a cup in her hand. ‘I am Penelope,’ she said. ‘Here is the cup of welcome. No one here willbetray you. I welcome you for the sake of your father, the first man I ever looked on with a woman’s eyes. He might have wed me.’
    ‘He wed my mother, the queen of the Sakje,’ Satyrus said. He drank from the cup. There was cheese in it, and barley, and it went down well. He could smell the rabbit cooking.
    ‘It is better to have a queen as a rival than another woman, I suppose,’ Penelope said. ‘At any rate, your father never promised, and he never returned.’
    ‘And did you marry?’ Satyrus asked, after a pause.
    ‘Do I look like a maiden?’ she laughed, and her laugh was angry. ‘I married Calchus’s youngest son.’ Her bitterness was obvious. ‘No queen for a rival there!’ she said, and snorted.
    Satyrus lacked the experience to know how to pass the subject over. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
    She raised her head and glared at him. ‘Spare me your pity, boy.’ Then she shook her head. ‘How do you plan to avenge us? And what makes you think that more killing will make this better?’
    Satyrus drank his wine to cover his confusion. Finally, he shrugged. ‘I have a ship,’ he said. ‘I will clear them out of the town.’
    She nodded. ‘The satrap will be here any day, and then Eumeles will find himself in a war. Best stay clear of it, Satyrus son of Kineas.’
    Satyrus shook his head. ‘Who commands them?’
    Penelope shook her head. ‘I could find out, I suppose.’ She smiled, then raised her eyes and gave an odd smile that seemed to catch only half her face. ‘When you let yourself die, it is often hard to bring yourself back to life,’ she said. And then, ‘Never mind. Pay me no heed. I’m a bitter old woman, and might have been your mother.’
    ‘You aren’t old,’ Satyrus said, gallantly. Indeed, under the heavy folds of her drapery, she was no less attractive than Auntie Sappho – and that was saying something.
    ‘Hmm,’ she said softly. ‘I had forgotten the taste of flattery.’
    ‘Dinner, mistress,’ Talkes said from the doorway.
    Dinner was simple. His rabbit vanished into a stew made of barley and some late-season tubers, with good, plain bread and a harsh local wine. The slaves – or servants, he couldn’t tell – ate at the same table as their mistress, a big, dark table worn to a finish like the black glaze of the Athens potters.
    He ate and ate. The stew grew on him; he’d been eating whatever his mess cooked up on various beaches for weeks. The wine was acidic, but hardy. The bread was excellent.
    ‘My compliments to your cook,’ Satyrus said.
    The four Bastarnae girls all tittered among themselves.
    ‘You will stay the night?’ Penelope asked.
    ‘Yes, despoina,’ Satyrus answered.
    ‘Do not, on any account, try to have sex with my girls. Teax is young enough, and silly enough, to warm your bed – but I can’t afford to lose her or feed her baby. Understand, young sir?’ Penelope’s hard voice was a far cry from her apparent weakness earlier. Satyrus concluded she was a different woman in front of her staff. A commander.
    ‘Yes, despoina,’ Satyrus said.
    Penelope raised an eyebrow. ‘You are a most courteous guest, to obey the whims of an old woman.’
    Satyrus went back to eating his soup. Talkes, the overseer, watched every move he made.
    Satyrus was just reaching for a third helping of stew when there was a rattle at the gate of the yard.
    ‘Open up