Gary Corby - The Ionia Sanction
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- Название:The Ionia Sanction
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- Издательство:Macmillan
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- Год:2011
- ISBN:9780312599010
- Рейтинг книги:4 / 5. Голосов: 1
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“What would you do if I said no?”
“Because never, in the history of the world, has there been a young man who wrote to his father merely to send his greetings. Not even the most dutiful of sons does this. Sons write for many reasons; to ask for money; to explain an embarrassing incident before it reaches the ears of the sire from someone else; to announce to the sire he is about to become a grandfather, usually to his surprise since the son is not married. But no son, ever, has thought it important to write to say”-Barzanes picked up the parchment and read from it-“‘The weather has been fine. I have seen many interesting things in Magnesia.’”
He put down the parchment.
“No, Athenian, if you want to cover a secret message, you will need to write something better than this offal.”
I swore silently.
“I ask you again, to venerate the Truth and abjure the Lie. Tell me where is the message.”
“I’m sorry you don’t like my writing, Barzanes, but that doesn’t mean there has to be anything more behind it.”
“Ah, behind it. Yes.” Barzanes picked up the backing boards. “In the time of the Great King Xerxes, before the wars between our people began, there resided in the court of the Great King a certain Demeratos of Sparta. This Demeratos had been king in his own land, but had been exiled by his people and accepted a guest’s obligations at the court of the Persians. When Demeratos learned of Xerxes’ plan to invade Hellas, he decided to betray his host, a crime in any land, no?
“Knowing his perfidy dare not be caught, Demeratos took a writing tablet, scraped away the wax and scratched into the backing board his warning to the Spartans. Then he replaced the wax and sent the tablet with no message.”
Barzanes paused. “Do you know how this story ends, Athenian?”
“Of course I do. Every boy in Hellas does. When the blank tablet arrived in Sparta, everyone was perplexed, except for Gorgo, the clever wife of King Leonidas. She realized since the wax surface was blank, there must be a message hidden beneath, and so the Hellenes had warning the Persians were on the way.”
“Just so. Are you another Demeratos, Athenian?”
“You can look at the tablet and any part of it you like, for as long as you like, Barzanes. You will find no secret message.” That, at least, I could say with confidence.
“I fear you are right.” He dropped the backing boards. They hit the ground with a bang that startled me, though I saw it coming. “I have studied the boards, and there is nothing on them. I also looked at the wax itself, most closely. Perhaps there were pinpricks over certain letters, to spell out a message within a message.”
If Barzanes wanted a reaction from me, he faced disappointment. This was obviously a test, mentioning one possibility after another to gauge my reaction. As long as I gave him nothing to work with, I was safe.
He continued, “But no, I found no pinpricks on the wax, nor any other intelligible sign. So I looked within the frame, to see if a slip of parchment was secreted there, or perhaps something scratched into the inside of the wood.”
He picked up a piece of frame and peered at its inner side, then back to me. “Nothing.”
I said, “Wasn’t there a satrap who tattooed a message onto a trusted slave’s scalp, and then waited for the hair to grow back?”
“There was, and his name was Histaeus of Miletus, yet another Hellene who betrayed the trust put in him by a Persian king. You see, Athenian, a certain pattern in the relationship between the Persians and the Hellenes? Like Demeratos, this Histaeus succeeded in his treachery, for a time at any rate. He was captured in the end and impaled upon the pole.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that example, but how was I to know the man had fooled some idiot king? There was no going back. “It’s a wonder you didn’t check the traveler I gave the tablets to for tattoos.” I said, speaking in jest.
“I did.”
Barzanes strode to the end of the room and pulled back the curtain that hung there. It revealed yet more room, and within was the cloth seller to whom I’d given the tablets. He was chained against the wall with his feet dangling, as I had been when Barzanes had me strung up. A rag was stuffed in the man’s mouth and his eyes rolled in fear. His hair had been cut back to the scalp, and his skin had been shaved wherever hair hid it, including about the man’s genitals.
“I looked most closely, but found nothing,” Barzanes said, as calmly as if we discussed a dropped coin.
The poor cloth seller focused on me for the first time and he recognized me. In his eyes I saw accusation and raging hatred.
I mouthed at him, “I’m sorry.”
I’d done it again. I’d made a terrible blunder, and now other people were to die for my mistake, just as the guards had back in Athens. Pericles was right to sack me; I wasn’t fit for this.
Something was wrong with the way the cloth seller looked-not counting the fact that he was chained to a dungeon wall in fear of his life-and it took me a moment to realize what it was. At the ends of his feet were blank spaces where his toes should have been. Blood had pooled and dried on the stone floor directly below.
Barzanes must have seen the direction of my gaze, and the horror on my face, because he said, “It was necessary to discover if you had passed on any verbal message. He is not crippled; you see the large toes have been left and the middle ones, so he can still walk.”
“Dear Gods, Barzanes, instead of torturing this innocent man, why didn’t you simply ask me?”
“I have asked you, Athenian, in this room, many times, and every time you have proven friend to the Lie.”
“Then think about this: by stopping that man and mutilating him, you’ve killed his unborn child. He was on his way to Ephesus to make money so he could afford their next child. Without the money they’ll have to expose the baby.”
“The cloth seller will be released with twice what he would have earned at market. I will pay this from my own wealth.”
Barzanes walked back to the table. “After all this effort, I came to a surprising conclusion. Was it possible that this letter was what it seemed, entirely innocent? I was almost persuaded to release the cloth seller and drop the matter, but after our conversation on the ride back from Ephesus I thought it wise to make one last attempt.”
Barzanes reached into a box beneath the bench with both hands, and pulled out two armfuls of wooden rods of different widths. He put them on the bench where they rolled about. He said, “I almost threw out the binding. In fact I made the mistake of cutting it instead of untying the knots. It was only when, having exhausted every other possibility, that I inspected the cord and noticed tiny scratches that might have been letters in your language. Then it was only a matter of finding how to reassemble the words.” Barzanes searched through the rods, selected one, and began to wind.
I should have been terrified, but I was angry. “You deliberately put me through all this for your own pleasure!”
Barzanes had maintained his composure and kept a calm, neutral tone throughout the whole interview, but now his face contorted and he shouted, “No, Athenian, you have not listened to a word I said! I gave you every possible chance to repudiate the Lie. And did you? No! Instead you prove yourself its closest friend. You are Demeratos all over again, only this time, I thank Ahura Mazda for giving me the wisdom to prevent your crime. When the time comes for you to die, and you cross the narrow bridge to the House of Paradise, Mithra who judges the hearts of men will cast you into the chasm of flowing iron.”
My heart almost stopped in fear, not because of this bizarre superstitious talk of angels and paradise and eternal punishment, but because it seemed to me at any moment Barzanes might call to the guards outside to take me away and kill me.
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