Gary Corby - The Ionia Sanction

Barzanes strode across the room and flung open the door. He barked an order in Persian.

Diotima appeared from down the corridor, dragged between two Persian soldiers who held her arms in a lock. Her mouth had been stuffed with rag. She had a swelling black eye and a cut on her cheek. They hadn’t taken her without a fight, but she was in pain; her head was bowed. She looked up and our eyes met, and the look in hers was anger, not fear. I know she saw fear in mine.

I’d promised I would never let anyone hurt her.

“The priestess is being held against your behavior.”

I said, “You’re holding the life of an innocent woman to protect a murderer, because you need the murderer to wage a war.”

“Do not think I take pleasure in this, Athenian.”

“You don’t have to enjoy evil to do it, Barzanes, and I thought you were the ethical one. How’s that pocket in your vest? Shall we take a look inside?”

“How I balance the good and evil I do is my problem.” His voice was returned to neutral calm, but I heard the slightest tremor. “I have a duty to the Great King.”

“Looks to me like I’ll be seeing you in the boiling iron.”

Barzanes winced as if I’d slapped him.

He gave me plenty of time to view the disaster, then said, “Marry the Satrap’s daughter. Become his son, as shall I, and we will be brothers. Become his lieutenant when the Great King gives Athens to Themistocles. Rise high within the empire. All these things you can do. But if you make another attempt to save the Athenians, the priestess will die.”

“Open up.”

The two guards at the entrance to the cells looked at each other.

One began, “We must ask Lord Barzanes if-”

“You know who I am?” I interrupted.

They nodded. I was the Athenian traitor who spent so much time closeted with Themistocles, another Athenian traitor. Everyone knew I was to marry the Satrap’s daughter.

The one I’d spoken over said, “What’s in the basket?”

“Fruit, from the paradise.”

He held out his hand. “Your dagger, and we must see the basket.”

They were so interested in looking for hidden tools that they forgot to search me. Unfortunately I’d never counted on that. I’d brought nothing to help Diotima.

They opened a thick, wooden door that creaked into a narrow corridor with enough dust in the air to make me sneeze.

“Nico, what’s happening?” A voice from a small cell on the left. The cell door was made of planks with gaps wide enough to pass a hand through and so allow air and a little light, which was necessary because there were neither windows nor ventilation within the cell itself. The corridor ended only a few paces along in a blank stone wall. I looked for any gap, anything that might give us a chance at a jailbreak. I saw nothing.

I said, “Pericles has no idea what’s coming. Barzanes intercepted our invasion warning.”

“Then our families are in the path, and a hundred thousand other Hellenes.”

“Yes.”

Diotima leaned close to the bars and whispered, “Nico, you must kill Themistocles.”

“If I do, you’ll die.” I didn’t bother to mention I was unlikely to escape either.

“So what? Can you save my life and let thousands and thousands die? And Athens conquered? And everyone we know a slave to the Persians? My family? Yours? Besides, he killed Brion and I want him to pay for that. You have to do it.”

“You know what the local fashion is in executions, don’t you? You want to spend days on a pole?”

“Give me your knife.”

That shocked me. “I don’t have it. The guards took it when I entered.”

“Don’t lie to me, Nicolaos. I know you better than that. Give me your backup, the one you have hidden beneath your tunic.”

With the greatest reluctance, but unable to deny the logic of her demand, I reached behind and handed over the small, jagged knife. Diotima tested the edge with her finger before secreting it between her breasts underneath her clothing.

She whispered, quieter than ever, “If they come for me, I’ll slit my throat. It’ll be fast and painless.”

“Diotima!”

“It’s better than three days on the pole. You said so yourself.”

I knew Diotima could give herself a quick death. As a priestess she had sacrificed many times, and once she had slit the throat of a human enemy.

I said, alarmed, “Do not do anything unless you are absolutely sure it’s your last chance. Hear me, Diotima?”

“Yes, Nico.”

On the spot, I came to a decision that amazed me. I didn’t even know I would say the words until I heard them coming from my mouth, but my heart lifted as I said them.

“Diotima, I want you to take the knife, right now, and cut off some of your hair.”

Diotima looked puzzled, uncomprehending. “But, I’m not in mourning. Not yet, anyway, and it’s my death we’re talking about. There’s no need for me to do it.”

“I want you to cut your hair, and then sacrifice it to Artemis.”

There was no need to say more. Diotima knew the rituals far better than I. Her mouth and eyes became three large circles of astonishment. “Oh, Nico, do you mean this?”

“Yes, I do.”

“But, we don’t have everything we need according to the rites…”

“Just do it, Diotima. Please.”

Diotima hesitated for a moment, then felt about her hair with her left hand. She decided on some locks at the back of her head, bent her neck, and sawed them off. They should have been burned, according to the ritual, but we had no fire. She kneeled on the floor and, intoning the prayers that she knew by heart, used the knife to slice her dark locks into tiny pieces. They became mixed with the dirt of the floor.

“Now hand me your girdle.” All unmarried Athenian women wear a girdle. The woman gives it up at the time of her marriage. Diotima stood and, without a word, removed the girdle and passed it through the bars to me. It should have been handed to her mother, but I was the only choice.

There was a bucket of water at the end of the corridor. We should both have bathed in the fountain of Kallirrhoe, but this would have to do. I took the scoop from the bucket and poured a trickle over my head. Diotima, more solemn than I had ever seen her, bent her head close to the view hole, and I reached through to pour a trickle on her too.

Diotima should have been carried in a chariot from her father’s home to mine, dressed in fine robes for all the people to admire, and as she did she would eat an apple. We didn’t have the chariot, nor her mother to walk behind holding torches, nor the fine robes, but I picked up one of the apples I had brought from the paradise and offered it to her.

There were tears in her eyes as she reached through the view hole and took it from my hands. She bit into it, and could barely chew or swallow, because now she was crying, but she finished it, all except for one bite that she left for me. That wasn’t according to the ritual, but I liked it. I took the last bite and kept the core.

We reached up and held hands together.

“We can’t do the most important bit,” she said, and smiled through her tears.

“We already have.”

We had performed as much of the marriage ceremony as a man and woman can when separated by a prison door and without their families or any of the trappings that go with a wedding.

“What will your father say when he finds out?”

“He’ll get over it.”

“He might not. He could repudiate this, you know.”

“No, he won’t, my wife. I promise you.” He would never find out, because we were both going to die here.