Tyrant: King of the Bosporus by Christian Cameron Page B

in there.’ The voice was sing-song, as if a clown or a mime was demanding entry.
    Talkes looked at his mistress.
    Penelope stood up and looked at Satyrus. ‘I’ll hide you,’ she said. It was a simple statement of fact. She took his hand and led him up into the exedra. She opened a heavy wooden chest and pulled out a quilted wool mattress, which she shook out and placed on her bed. She had his sword, and she handed it to him.
    ‘Get in,’ she said.
    ‘I could—’ he began.
    ‘You could get us all killed. Now get in.’ She held the lid and he climbed in, clutching his sword between his hands. He just fitted, with his ankles pulled almost under his head. The position hurt, and it hurt even more a few minutes later, when the screams in the courtyard began.
    The next hour was the longest, and worst, of Satyrus’s life. His curse was that he could hear everything. He heard the men in the courtyard, the mime’s voice mocking Penelope, the soldiers spreading out tosearch, the sounds of breaking crockery. He heard himself betrayed by the old slave up the road, and by the blood and offal he’d left cleaning the rabbit.
    He heard the clown voice threaten Talkes, and he heard the same voice threaten to sell Penelope into slavery.
    ‘Or I could give you what your father got, stupid woman. Where is he?
Where is he?
’ The man sounded honestly angry.
    ‘Do as you will,’ Penelope said. ‘When Lysimachos comes, you are a dead man.’
    ‘All you dirt farmers sound the same sad song. Look, slut, your precious satrap is
not
coming. I’m lord here now. Eumeles is king of the Euxine and I’ll be archon here. Want me to burn the house? Tell me where this man is.’ The sing-song voice sounded unnatural, like a priest or an oracle.
    ‘Nothing in the barns!’ shouted another man, deeper voiced.
    ‘Search the upstairs – the exedra. Slash every mattress and dump the loom. Everything!’ clown-voice said.
    ‘Two slave girls in the cellar. No men.’ Another deep voice, this with the accent of the Getae.
    ‘Let’s see ’em!’ came a shout, and then there were hoots, catcalls. More broken crockery and the sound of screams, and two men were in the exedra with him, searching. He could hear them poking around, he could
smell
the results as they broke a perfume jar. And below, he could hear Teax being raped – catcalls, sobs.
    ‘May all of you rot from inside! May pigs eat your eyes!’ Penelope screamed.
    ‘Shut up, bitch, or you’ll be next.’ A laugh, and more laughing.
    ‘I want a piece of that,’ said a voice near his box.
    His knees burned like fire and his sense of his own cowardice rose like the fumes of wine to fill his head.
If I were worth a shit, I would rise from this box and kill my way through these men or die trying
, he thought. He clutched his borrowed sword, prepared to kill the man who opened the chest.
    ‘Athena’s curse on you, man with the voice of a woman!’ Penelope’s voice, strained with rage and terror, carried clearly. ‘May your innards rot. May you never know the love of a woman. May jackals root in your innards while you still have eyes to see. May worms eat your eyes. May all your children die before you.’
    Teax screamed again.
    ‘Why are we up here? The fucker’s long gone – if he was ever here.’ The deeper voice kicked the box where Satyrus lay.
    Penelope screamed.
    ‘Burn it,’ clown-voice said in the courtyard. ‘Kill them all. Stupid fucking peasants.’
    They lit the roof, but the beams never caught, and Satyrus crept from his box and dragged himself, his legs unusable, down the stairs to the courtyard, heedless of the danger. But poor as they were at arson, they were skilled at killing. Penelope lay in a black pool of blood, so fresh that it glittered in the fitful light of the burning roof, and Teax lay naked. The look on her face – the horror, the terror, the loss of hope – burned itself into his brain. He closed her eyes, fouling his legs with her blood,