The Singer from Memphis Read online

  So Herodotus went his way with scroll in hand, and Diotima and I found a secluded spot at the end of the beach, where we proceeded with one of those better things to do. Married life is hard to maintain on an open boat with fifty sailors. Afterwards we splashed in the water, and I showed Diotima the basics of staying afloat. She was a natural. I put it down to the outstanding buoyancy of her breasts. She doubted this.

  We dried off by lying on the beach, then walked into town in search of dinner.

  The main road was parallel with the shore. A few dusty streets hung off it, all of which led away from the water. We passed a temple to Zeus (wooden), a warehouse, a baker, a blacksmith, a temple to Athena (wooden, with wood rot), a few non-descript buildings. Thera was a typical Hellene settlement.

  Diotima was offended that such a tawdry town should have been built in the midst of such spectacular scenery. “How could they do it?” she complained.

  “Did you hear Herodotus say this place was colonized by Spartans?” I asked her.

  “Oh, right. Good point.”

  Spartans are not known for their architecture.

  An idler told us there was a bigger city up the mountain, but we weren’t tempted to visit. Instead we asked for the local inn.

  The inn was down one of the side streets, on the opposite side of a small agora that smelled of stale fish. It was the largest building we’d yet seen in this dingy town, and the only one that looked alive. Thera was one of those places where everyone went to the inn to meet, rather than visit each other’s homes.

  We pushed our way in, past the drinkers standing at the door.

  The inn was the usual provincial affair: rough wooden tables whose tops had been smoothed to a sheen by years of supporting elbows and spilled wine; benches worn by the behinds of countless drinkers; a dirt floor covered with rushes to hide where the drinkers hadn’t made it outside before they pissed, or worse.

  Herodotus sat at one of the benches, looking boyish and animated in that way he did when he had a victim to interrogate. His papyrus scroll was open before him and his inked brush was in his hand. He was talking to a man who sat with his back to us.

  The room paid brief attention when we entered, as locals always do when a stranger walks in. This caused Herodotus to notice us. He waved and called, “Nicolaos, Diotima, there’s room over here. Come meet this man. He has many stories!”

  We walked over and around the table to meet Herodotus’s friend. A thin man, almost gaunt, his face pale—he looked unwell—but the eyes were alive.

  I stopped in shock when he looked up at us.

  “Hello, Nico,” said Markos. “I thought you might be coming this way.”

  I took a step back and moved my right arm to cover Diotima. Diotima’s hands fell instinctively to the pouch she always wore on a strap over her shoulder. In the pouch she carried her priestess knife. The blade was short, but sharp as a sword.

  Herodotus looked from one to the other of us in confusion. “You know each other?” he asked.

  “At the last Olympics,” I said, without taking my eyes off Markos. “It was a brief acquaintance.”

  “Brief but intense,” Markos added. “And memorable. I really should have killed you then. It’s good of you to drop by, Nico. I did hear the Athenians were sending an agent to Egypt. I guessed it would be you.”

  How in Hades did he know that? Was there a spy inside Athens? The answer to that was probably yes. I made a mental note to tell Pericles.

  The pressing question was, what was Markos doing here? Was he too on his way to Egypt? Could Markos be the agent working for Persia? But that didn’t make sense. Markos was Spartan, not Persian.

  Markos was the finest assassin Sparta had ever produced. I had been present three years ago when Markos had gone too far during an assignment. The king of the Spartans, a good man named Pleistarchus, had ordered his soldiers to arrest Markos. Markos had been carried off to Sparta to be executed. For these last years I had assumed that Markos occupied an unmarked grave.

  “Why aren’t you dead?” I asked.

  “King Pleistarchus tried,” Markos said. “He had me thrown into prison and bound in chains. Every day he ordered my execution. Every day the Council of Ephors vetoed him. Every day for three years they argued over whether I should live or die. Every morning I waited to hear if I would live another day.”

  Markos held up his wrists for us to see. Ugly white, calloused scars ran all the way round. They looked like bracelets. Markos flexed his wrists. The skin around the scars moved in an unnatural way. From numerous thin red lines at the edges, I guessed the skin and scars parted frequently and bled.

  “My ankles too,” Markos said in response to our visible distaste. “You’ve probably already noticed I lost a lot of weight. They fed me pig slops. I spent three years in agony—because of you, Nico.”

  “I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to be,” Markos said honestly. “I hope you’ll still feel the same when I exact my revenge.”

  Forthcoming revenge had been uppermost in my mind since the moment I recognized Markos. I had scanned the room as we talked, calculating the likeliest route to get us out.

  Our exit would have to be the door we’d come in. There was probably a back route, but I didn’t have time to find it, and didn’t know what we’d run into if we tried.

  I had to remind myself that we weren’t actually being threatened. We stood, while a weak and unwell Markos sat, yet such was the strength of the rivalry between us that it never occurred to me that Markos would not attack if he had a chance.

  I assumed that in any fight, Herodotus would be a bystander, which made it two against one. A healthy Markos would be more than a match for me and Diotima, but weakened as he was, I wondered if even Sparta’s assassin might consider the odds too great.

  Then the words of Herodotus came back to me. Did I know that Thera had once been a Spartan colony? I hadn’t cared when the historian told me at lunchtime, now I cared a great deal. If it came to a fight every man in this room would support Markos against me.

  Herodotus had listened to our exchange with increasing perplexity. He had no idea of the history between us and Markos, but he could hear the frigid tone. So could everyone else. It had gone quiet around the room.

  As we spoke, Markos had gestured with his hands quite a lot. They had rested below the table when he spoke to Herodotus; he had held them up to show us his scars, and afterwards he had gesticulated with one hand as he spoke. Markos hadn’t been the gesticulating sort three years ago. He shifted in his seat, but he wasn’t the seat-shifter type either.

  There was only one possible explanation: Markos was deliberately drawing our attention upwards. That made me look down. There was a strange contraption on the bench beside him, something that pointed beneath the table. Markos was slowly edging this machine, whatever it was, not towards me or Diotima, but towards our employer Herodotus.

  I saw a glint of something shining amongst the gears and knew instantly that it was an arrowhead. An arrowhead that was slowly but surely moving to point to the other side of the table.

  Markos wasn’t planning to attack me. At any moment he was going to kill Herodotus, and Herodotus had no idea what was happening.

  I yanked Herodotus out of the way at the same instant Markos shot the arrow. My sudden movement made Markos flinch. The arrow hit the bench where Herodotus had been sitting with such force that it sent it over backwards. Every man sitting on that side fell over.

  Markos rose to attack. I slugged, him, hard, before he could get to his feet. He fell back across the drinkers behind us and spilled their drinks. Cheap wine went into the laps of local farmers. As one they swore mightily and got to their feet in search of whoever had attacked them.

  Markos pointed at me and shouted. “The Athenian hit me. He’s insane!” He even managed to sound ag
grieved.

  Herodotus was sprawled across the dirty floor, where he’d fallen after I saved his life. He hadn’t seen a thing. If we had arrived a moment later, Herodotus might already be dead.

  Diotima hauled our employer to his feet.

  “Why did you hit him?” Herodotus demanded.

  Diotima and I grabbed Herodotus by an arm each and dragged him into a run.

  We didn’t have a hope of making it to the door. Not when there were at least twenty angry drinkers after our blood, and at least forty more interested in joining in.

  Ten men stepped in our way. We had to stop. They raised their fists.

  I had only a moment to think this was going to hurt before they were bowled over sideways by the sailors from Dolphin. Kordax had given his men the night off to go drinking, ands that’s what they’d done. They must have been sitting in a corner, I’d never noticed them.

  The Dolphins and the men of Thera brawled in the crowded room. The Therans had the numbers, but it’s a rare sailor who doesn’t know how to fight dirty. It seemed they were evenly matched.

  Now Diotima, Herodotus and I had a chance. Diotima placed a well-aimed kick into the nether regions of a man who came at her. I backhanded a drunk. Together we dragged Herodotus out of the inn and into the rancid agora.

  Behind us, Markos was ignoring the riot and pushing his way after us. He had his arrow-shooting weapon in hand.

  “Get Herodotus to the boat,” I said to my wife. Herodotus was a fit young man, he should have been able to run fast, but I knew Markos could outpace Diotima. “I’ll hold him up at the door, then join you.”

  Diotima was too smart to argue in the middle of a crisis. She said, “Be careful,” and then she took off with Herodotus in tow.

  Markos burst through the knot of brawlers and stood in the doorway. He saw me outside waiting for him. For the first time I got a good look at his weapon. The machine he held was in the shape of a T, with an arrow resting upon it and a taut cord behind the arrow. It was a like a small bow, but held sideways, with a long wooden stock. I’d never seen anything like it.

  Markos raised the weapon to his stomach.

  I didn’t know what the machine was, but I knew that arrow was pointing at me and I knew it was going to hurt.

  I’d pulled my knife, but there were ten paces between us and I couldn’t cross that distance before he could shoot me.

  I dodged from side to side, to spoil his aim. Markos moved the arrow shooter to cover me. He grinned and said, “This is going to be fun.”

  A man flew through the doorway and hit Markos square in the back. Markos stumbled forward and as he did, jerked a lever. The machine fired.

  The arrow whisked past my head and hit the wall behind me. But the heavy arrow didn’t stop there, oh no. The arrow went straight through a wooden wall, leaving behind an arrow-sized hole and a few splinters.

  Dear Gods, if that thing had hit me in the chest it would have passed right through. If Diotima and Herodotus had been standing behind it could have killed all three of us with a single shot.

  Markos cursed. He reached behind his back and brought out another arrow.

  I didn’t stay to find out how long it would take him to nock and shoot.

  I ran, zigzagging hard, like my drill sergeant had taught us to do against archers when I was in the army. My back felt hideously exposed. Another shot whizzed by as I turned the corner, but it was nowhere close.

  By the time I arrived at the beach, Diotima and Herodotus had already waded out to Dolphin. Kordax was hauling them up the side as I hit the water.

  Either Markos was more crippled than I thought by his years of imprisonment, or he had decided to take his time. Either way, he wasn’t on my heels.

  I was relieved to see all the sailors return to the boat, as I sat on the deck panting with exhaustion. It seemed they’d retreated in good order after the three of us had made our escape. Sailors are generally very good at getting out of town when there’s trouble behind them.

  The hands reported that along the way they’d knocked unconscious a man who was following me. I could only wish they’d killed him, but as far as the sailors were concerned, this had been an everyday, run-of-the-mill barroom brawl. Nothing worth getting killed over.

  “Row,” I said to Kordax, when our men were all aboard.

  He looked at me as if I were insane. “Are you crazy? It’s the middle of the night.”

  I thought about Markos on the shore with his new toy, using us for target practice all night long.

  “If you hope to see the dawn then you’ll row,” I told him. “Now.”

  The Cretan Connection

  Herodotus spent all of the next day berating me.

  “I hired you to keep me safe, not land me in the middle of a riot!” he shouted.

  This from a man who was hurrying to a war zone. I forbore from pointing out that there wouldn’t have been any trouble if Herodotus had stayed on the boat.

  Instead I said, “It’s hardly my fault if an enemy was lying in wait for us.”

  “Us? He was waiting for you. He’s not my enemy.”

  “Herodotus, he was aiming that thing at you.”

  Diotima nodded at my words, but Herodotus didn’t believe me. He hadn’t seen what I’d seen.

  “I don’t even know the man,” Herodotus said. “Who is he, anyway?”

  I explained that the man who had tried to kill us the night before belonged to a special, clandestine unit of the Spartans, men who were trained to act independently as expert scouts and silent killers. Markos was the best of them.

  “You sound like you admire him,” Herodotus said.

  “I do,” I admitted. “Who wouldn’t want to be the best of the best? If it’s possible to fear and hate and admire a man at the same time, then I admire Markos.”

  In this explanation I included Kordax, who had a right to know. Kordax had transported me on missions twice before, back when he was a naval commander. He wasn’t surprised to hear that something was afoot. He looked from Herodotus to me and back again. I was sure Kordax realized there was more to this than I had said.

  I finished with, “It’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think, running into Markos?”

  “Not so much as you might think,” Kordax said. “Crete via Thera is the fastest route to Egypt for both us and the Spartans, and as Herodotus has pointed out, Thera was once a Spartan colony. What more natural place for your enemy to stop?”

  Kordax’s words sounded reasonable, but I wasn’t satisfied. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that luck was playing a strange hand here. That Herodotus had randomly chosen someone to interview for his book, and ended up selecting a Spartan assassin, was too much of a coincidence to be credible.

  So I asked, “Herodotus, what made you approach Markos?”

  Herodotus shook his head. “I didn’t. He approached me. I was walking about the town, talking to people, gathering stories for my book, you understand—”

  I could imagine Herodotus accosting people in the streets. Any busy man would have told him to go away.

  “Your Spartan friend said he was a stranger in town, and we got to talking.”

  I nodded. That made much more sense.

  “Herodotus, you were targeted.”

  Herodotus scoffed. “It’s impossible. How would he recognize me? How would he know I was going to be here?”

  That was the part that worried me. I didn’t know why Markos had tried to kill Herodotus. It might be that when I found out, I would want to kill Herodotus too. I wondered if Markos had been assigned to eliminate the Persian agent who, on that theory, might still be my client.

  “Herodotus, that Spartan is an incredibly dangerous man,” I warned him.

  “Then you shouldn’t have provoked him,” Herodotus said.

  I didn’t r
ecall provoking Markos. I recalled running away from him.

  Herodotus was still angry with me. We barely spoke for the rest of the voyage. The men blamed me too, for having to row all last night and today without sleep. Diotima was exhausted. She curled up under the shade cloth that the men had stretched across the center of the boat, and she went to sleep.

  That left me plenty of time to think.

  Markos had said he knew the Athenians were sending an agent. Pericles had said he knew Persia had an agent from among the Hellenes. It was like someone was issuing news reports on what the world’s secret agents were doing. Everyone was getting updates but me.

  The very early start meant we made landfall in Crete in excellent time, though I’d never seen Kordax so nervous as when we sailed through the dark, with no way to see what was in front of his boat.

  The men hadn’t slept. As Dolphin glided into Itanos Port they collapsed in exhaustion over their oars.

  Kordax insisted the men take a day to rest. Herodotus, who was generous to a fault whatever his dubious status might be, paid for the men’s meals, drink and accommodation in a good inn, on the strict condition that I stayed away to avoid starting another riot. Once again I wondered about the source of my client’s wealth.

  Kordax meanwhile proved true to his word. He refused to move on until the wind came from the north. Every night he stood on the deck of Dolphin and inspected the skies and frowned. Every morning he rose at dawn, held a feather in the air, and frowned again. Until the fifth day, when dawn saw Kordax smile. He sent a runner for the deckhands, another for Diotima, Herodotus and me, and we were on our way for the final leg of our journey. There was nothing between us and Egypt but open water. Nothing could go wrong now.

  “Pirates! Pirates on the port bow!” Our proreus, the officer at the front of the boat, pointed to the southeast and called out in a worried voice.

  Diotima and I had been dozing under the awning, but that announcement was enough to wake us up. Kordax came forward and hooked his arm around the mast, where I joined him. Sitting directly between us and our destination was a tiny blob that floated on the water.