Christian Cameron - Force of Kings

It should have been the day of his greatest triumph.

Stratokles was dressed in his very best — a chiton with flames of Tyrian red licking up the shining white wool from the hems, themselves so thick with embroidery that the gold pins that held it together were difficult to push through the cloth. Over his shoulder hung a chlamys of pure red-purple, embroidered in gold, and on his brow sat a diadem of gold and red-purple amethysts, worth the value of a heavy penteres all by itself, without reckoning the other accoutrements he wore — gold sandals with gold buckles, gold mountings on the dagger under his armpit, gold rings on his fingers.

The extravagance of his costume was matched — or exceeded — by every other person in the temple of Hera. Despite being Herakles’ foe, Hera was well represented at Heraklea, and her temple shone with white marble columns and magnificently painted statues. The vault of the portico had inlaid panels of lapis with bands of hammered gold around every panel, so that the recessed coffers seemed to radiate light. Cunning engines — engines that Stratokles had devised himself — allowed alternating coffers to be opened or shut, allowing rays of the sun to fall straight to the temple’s polished, inlaid floor.

And standing on that floor were the guests; the wedding party of the bridegroom. They stood in shadow, carefully arranged by Stratokles with due concern for precedence. They represented a dramatic shift in policy and five tense months of desperate diplomacy; Stratokles had had to sail a stolen warship through Demetrios’s siege lines at Rhodes, and later he’d had to ride across Greece with his mistress, Amastris, Queen of Heraklea, in his arms.

But he’d pulled it off, and the reward stood at the head of the procession. Lysimachos, Satrap of Thrace. Soon to be King of Thrace. One of the leading players in the war for Alexander’s empire — a near neighbour, and a dangerous professional soldier with all the resources of the Thracian silver mines and the Thracian war-tribes at his back. And at his back, Cassander, King of Macedon, still, despite the best efforts of Antigonus and his son Demetrios, the lord of most of Greece. And just behind him, Amyntas, brother of Ptolemy of Aegypt. And behind him , resplendent in purple and gold, stood Seleucus’s brother Philip of Babylon. Together, the four men represented the alliance that faced Antigonus, lord of Asia, and his son, Demetrios the besieger. Stratokles had arranged to bring them all here, to Heraklea, to celebrate the marriage of his carefully fostered pupil, Amastris, who stood almost alone in a shaft of golden sunlight that he had carefully arranged to fall like the benison of heaven on her golden head. She looked like Aphrodite come to earth, dressed in a long chiton of shining gold embroidery over linen so fine that the sun shone straight through it. And Amastris had the body to bear the scrutiny of the most critical of men.

And the mind to use that body as she needed, to accomplish what she desired for the good of her city, and her own power.

Stratokles watched her with approval — approval and a distant tinge of desire. He’d loved her from their first meeting, but the years had mellowed his love into a kind of golden servitude. She rewarded him with trust and a thorough practice of the principles he instilled. And money. Stratokles was now a very rich man.

It should have been the day of his greatest triumph.

But the woman standing at Cassander’s elbow was not his wife, Penelope. Nor the woman most Macedonians accepted as his mistress: Euridyke of Athens. The woman on his arm was a courtesan named Phiale, and when her downcast eyes flicked up to touch Stratokles’ eyes, it was like the lightest possible cut from a razor-sharp xiphos at the start of a fight.

Stratokles had used Phiale — years before — in a failed plot to assassinate Ptolemy of Aegypt. The irony — and this wedding was full of historic irony — was that Stratokles had undertaken the assassination of Ptolemy at Cassander’s behest, to win favours for Stratokles’ beloved home city, Athens.

But the world had turned, and Cassander and Ptolemy needed each other against the power of Antigonus.

Stratokles struggled to remember how he had used Phiale and whether she had cause to hold it against him as he crossed the floor to her. He had warned her to leave Alexandria — that Leon the Numidian would certainly catch on to her eventually.

Why, then, did she look at him with such hate? Odd. But Stratokles had long since learned to attack a dangerous opponent and never leave one behind him, so he crossed the floor to her in a few strides, noting the averted glances of the courtiers around her.

‘Phiale?’ he said.

Cassander had stepped away from her to speak to Philip of Babylon and an older man by his side.

‘Stratokles the Informer,’ she breathed huskily. ‘What a pleasure to see you.’

Her eyes, carefully controlled, stroked him. There was no message of hate now. A far different message.

Stratokles stroked his beard. ‘We were friends, once,’ he said.

She laughed and put an arm on his. ‘Oh, my dear, we are still friends. What do you hear of Satyrus of Tanais?’

He noticed that her glance sharpened back into a sword when she said the name.

‘He remains something like a force of nature. Beloved of the gods.’ He managed a smile — there was something wrong, something he couldn’t pin down, something to do with someone he had just seen and the absence of men seeking his good will. He was isolated in the middle of his own party. And Phiale knew something.

Stratokles didn’t turn his head — but he managed to glance to his left, where the guards were. Plenty of them, good men — most men he’d picked himself. He rubbed his chin, flipped his cloak over his shoulder, and turned back to Phiale as if everything was fine.

‘Although,’ he said somewhat at random, ‘Satyrus is harmless enough,’ and saw her flush.

‘Really?’ she asked. ‘Last time you and I were friends , you wanted him dead.’

‘That is the way of politics, isn’t it? And may I say how very beautiful you are?’ Stratokles smiled at her.

She returned the smile, but it didn’t touch the tiny lines at the edges of her eyes. ‘You didn’t used to be so easy about Satyrus,’ she said.

Stratokles smiled, his eyes still scanning the room over her head. What in Tartarus had happened? Running on automatic, his mind put words into his mouth.

‘He didn’t used to supply grain to Athens,’ he said. ‘This season his ships escort our ships to Athens. Hence, we are friends.’

Phiale smiled again. ‘You are selling his bride to Lysimachos and you think he’ll escort your ships to Athens?’

Stratokles smiled back. ‘I made sure he was at sea before I let the news of the wedding out,’ he said. ‘Besides — he knows. He and Amastris have been estranged for a year. I made sure of it. She doesn’t need, or want, a military master. She wants a peer.’

Phiale controlled her face. Stratokles watched her do it, and read, in the careful play of the muscles in her jaw, his own doom.

She knew something. The word peer triggered her reaction.

‘So Satyrus is on his way to Athens?’ she asked.

‘Rhodes first, and then Athens,’ Stratokles said. ‘Will you excuse me, fair lady?’

Stratokles bowed and walked across the temple portico to where his second, the Latin, Lucius, waited. Lucius was as well dressed as he, and a handsomer man. Stratokles had a magnificent physique and a strong jaw, but his face was marred by a vicious old wound that left him looking like he had a comedian’s nose rather than a human one. Lucius was handsome by any standard — but his hair was bright red and that was not accounted a mark of beauty among Greeks.