The Singer from Memphis Page 8

  “You couldn’t possibly see all that in a day,” I pointed out.

  “Who knows how long it will take?” my wife said happily. “Days, probably.”

  “Many days, certainly,” Max added. “As philosophers it is our duty to converse with the wise priests of the temples, to learn what we can.”

  “Good thinking, Max,” Diotima said.

  Herodotus rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We must not forget the pyramids, and the outlying temples. Perhaps a month?” he suggested.

  It occurred to me that I was sending two philosophers and an author out to play in a city full of ancient wisdom. I would have to hope they remembered to come home.

  Nevertheless the arrangement suited me very well. I intended to go in search of the mysterious Djanet. Inaros’s agent probably didn’t want a small committee to turn up and blow her cover. Besides, though I trusted Herodotus, I didn’t trust him completely.

  Inaros had told me that the singer could be found at an inn close by the fort. The moment the others left to explore the city to the north, I departed south.

  As I got closer I saw that the White Fort really was white. The walls were made of limestone. The soldiers I passed didn’t give me a second glance. They had nothing to fear from a single man, or so they thought. The gates were open but the guards posted there wouldn’t let me in. Persian confidence didn’t extend that far. They had no qualms though about passing through various local Egyptians who led donkeys loaded with supplies: quality fruit and vegetables and heavy containers of beer.

  The Persians had cleared away the houses surrounding the fort. The rubble told me it had been a recent demolition. I didn’t need a military man to tell me why they’d done that: the Persians were expecting to be besieged, and they didn’t want to give their attackers any easy access to the top of the walls. I was willing to bet that at the tops of those turrets there’d soon be plenty of rocks to drop and oil ready to boil and pour. I for one wouldn’t want to be standing at the base when that happened.

  The White Fort sat directly beside the river. It meant there was one side from which the fort couldn’t be attacked. It also meant the people inside would not go thirsty. Inaros had told us that the White Fort had never been taken. I could believe it.

  I still hadn’t found the tavern where Djanet the agent sang. I solved that by walking back to the guards at the gate. “Where do you men go to drink?” I asked them in Persian.

  The Eye of Horus was one of the better sort of taverns frequented by soldiers. Which is to say, even the officers came there to drink. The board out front had, inevitably, been painted with an Eye—the symbol was a single, stylized eye with a line above it for eyeliner and a funny squiggle below—the name and the sign designed to keep away bad luck. Even in the short time we’d been in the country, I’d come to realize that Egyptians were the most superstitious of people. But I guessed that a horde of off-duty soldiers who didn’t want to be bothered while they got quietly drunk would have contributed to the good luck, by keeping away anyone spoiling for a fight. Say what you like about Persians, they knew how to deal with troublemakers.

  I stood at the door to survey the scene. Even in late afternoon, there were innumerable Persians sitting at the benches. Some of them were already slumped over the tables. Maybe they’d been on night duty. Among the drinkers were plenty of natives, easily recognizable by their dress, their hair and their accents. There was no segregation. The natives and the soldiers were happy to socialize. They laughed and smiled together. They all chattered in Persian, even the locals. It went to show how much the city had accepted Persia.

  Someone at the back of the room was playing a flute. It was dark in that corner, but as my eyes adjusted I could see that the flute-player stood upon a small stage, and that a woman stood beside him. The woman crooned a song. She was tall, and dark, and lissome.

  I would have to get her attention, for surely this must be Djanet. I thought about waving, but decided that would be a disaster. I must under no circumstances let the Persians in this room know that she was an agent for Inaros. So instead I took a table as close as I could, wondering how I could get her attention. In the meantime I enjoyed the song.

  The music didn’t sound like normal Hellene music to me. The notes were different, the tunes like nothing I’d heard before, and the rhythm was strangely engaging. I had tried over the last days to pick up a few words of the local language, with help from Maxyates. Max had told us he was a natural student, but he had also proved a natural teacher who was very patient with my attempts to speak Egyptian. Now I applied my hard-won linguistic expertise to the lyrics.

  I bent my ear to understand the words. As far as I could tell, Djanet seemed to be singing that I resembled a small hunting dog. I guessed that probably wasn’t right. I made a mental note to ask Max for more lessons.

  I tapped my hand on the table in time to the music. That caused the serving wench to think I was impatient for my drink. She hurried over with a mug of the local beer. It wasn’t wine, but it was better than nothing.

  The appearance of the serving girl gave me an idea. I would write a note to Djanet and have the girl carry it to the singer. Men wrote notes to tavern singers all the time. The singers almost always ignored the suggestions in the notes. No one would take notice of such an approach. I pulled a piece of broken pottery toward me—like most inns, the tables had a few pieces lying about—and scratched a message, telling the singer that a mutual friend had suggested I look her up while I was in town. As written it was the usual sort of salacious scribble, but I was sure any agent good enough for Inaros would see the true meaning.

  I had just finished writing the note, and was about to signal for the serving girl, when I saw a man walk in. I think my heart must have stopped at that moment, if only for an instant. Because I knew that new arrival, and I never, ever thought to meet him at a tavern in Egypt. We had met before, and the last time Diotima and I had been lucky to escape with our lives.

  I would know that dark hair anywhere, and the beard, black as night and curled into immaculate ringlets. I knew if I came close enough, I would stare into dark eyes that seared with remorseless, pitiless intelligence. For there, standing at the entrance of a tavern in Memphis, was the man named Barzanes, who was the Eyes and Ears of the Great King of Persia.

  The Eyes and Ears

  of the King

  Barzanes wore his brightly colored officer’s tunic with the careless ease of one who held so much authority that he’d ceased even to think about his rank.

  After my last run-in with Barzanes, I had put some effort into discovering the extent of the man’s powers. I’d learned that he had no limits. The Eyes and Ears reported directly to the Great King, his job to watch over everything that happened within the empire of the Persians. Wherever Barzanes went, he spoke in the King’s name. Barzanes could order even the execution of a satrap, if he thought the situation required it, and he would be answerable only to his sovereign for whether the action was justified. He could certainly execute a humble Hellene agent and no one would blink an eye.

  I wondered if I sat quietly in the corner, would Barzanes miss me?

  He didn’t. The Eyes and Ears of the King searched the room as if he expected something to be here. Or someone.

  Our eyes locked—I couldn’t force myself to look away—and Barzanes walked across the room to stand opposite me at the bench.

  “Athenian,” he said. That single word made my heart sink. At our last meeting I had pulled a little trick on Barzanes, one that he would probably still be angry about.

  Barzanes sat down. As he did, I pushed the pottery shard with the message to the side of the table, in the hope that the Persian agent wouldn’t notice it.

  To my relief, he didn’t. He said, “I would say that I am pleased to see you, Athenian, but I never tell a lie. So instead I will ask, what are you doing in Memphis?”

 
“I was wondering the same thing about you,” I said, in an attempt to show some bravura.

  Barzanes was entirely unaffected. “Do not be ridiculous,” he said. “You are surrounded by soldiers of the empire. In this place, I have power and you do not. So you will answer my questions.”

  I decided only the truth would do. “I got a job as a tour guide. I’m escorting a book writer around Egypt.”

  Barzanes snorted. “This is no good, Athenian. Cannot you at least attempt a lie I could believe?”

  “It’s true!” I protested. This was what came of being honest. Life is so unfair. “How did you find me, here in a random tavern?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.

  “I could hardly miss, after you blundered into the guards at the gate not a hundred paces away. You even talked to them. Do you think I’m such an idiot that I would not notice?”

  “I didn’t even know you were in Memphis, Barzanes. Whyever you’re here, it’s nothing to do with me, and I still don’t understand how you knew I was in the city,” I said.

  “I posted a man at the docks. I gave him descriptions of the ten most dangerous men in civilization, with orders to alert me if any of them arrived by boat.”

  I preened. “I’m flattered,” I told him.

  “You shouldn’t be. I can barely believe that someone as apparently incompetent as you deserves to be feared, Athenian, yet my own experience tells me that somehow you always seem to succeed where better men would fail.”

  I said, “I notice that didn’t stop you from writing a description of me so good that even a complete stranger could spot me.”

  “It was admittedly difficult,” Barzanes said. “Your looks are non-descript, your face unremarkable, your manner entirely unnoteworthy. You appear to be a complete nonentity—”

  “Thank you very much!”

  “But the same cannot be said of the dark-haired beauty you married. If you wish to remain anonymous, Athenian, then you must leave your wife at home. Every man between the docks and the agora watched her pass with great interest. I needed only warn the guards at the White Fort, and sure enough, you walked right into them.”

  “You didn’t come to Egypt merely to wait for me to arrive,” I said with certainty. “I myself didn’t know that I was coming until a few days ago. You had no way of knowing I’d be here.”

  “This is obvious. You are a mere distraction. My mission is otherwise.” His voice was short, he spoke with the slightest hint of anger. For a man of Barzanes’s self-control, that spoke volumes.

  “Problems?” I asked sympathetically.

  Barzanes said nothing.

  Why in Hades was Barzanes in Egypt? His presence could only mean that something had attracted the personal interest of the Great King of Persia. What could it be?

  Then I had the answer. I smiled.

  “Let me think,” I said. “Oh yes, the Great King’s uncle is dog food, isn’t he? Slaughtered by a bunch of amateur rebels. His body is lying out there in the desert, somewhere—”

  “The body was recovered,” Barzanes interrupted. “The Dowager Queen demanded it.”

  “Surely the body wasn’t shipped home!” I exclaimed. “A corpse carried across the desert, the smell alone—”

  “Achaemenes was cremated, you idiot. The ashes were returned to the court at Susa.”

  “Embarrassing moment when they arrived, I imagine?”

  “Very. The King’s Mother sobbed in public. Artaxerxes himself was furious. He demanded answers.”

  How many men could refer to the Great King of the Persians by his familiar name?

  I said, “That’s why you’re here then, isn’t it? The King wants answers. He sent you, his most trusted agent, to find them. He wants to know how this disaster happened. How did a professional army of the Persians end up cowering inside a fort?”

  “Not cowering,” Barzanes said. “Look about you, Athenian.” He gestured at the relaxed soldiers. I couldn’t judge their competence, but they certainly looked comfortable.

  “Are they Immortals?” I asked. I was genuinely worried about that.

  The Immortals were the elite special operations force of Persia. It was the Immortals who had finally beaten the 300 at Thermopylae. It was the Immortals who had climbed the unclimbable face of the Acropolis when a small force of Athenians had held out there to the last man. If the White Fort was garrisoned with Immortals then we could give up now.

  “No, these men are mere regular soldiers,” Barzanes said. Though he was Persian through and through, he could not keep the disdain from his voice.

  At that moment, one of the more relaxed soldiers slipped off his bench onto the floor, where he lay comatose.

  Barzanes gave a moue of distaste. “Of course, I will address any discipline issues that I find.”

  If I was the garrison commander, I would be very nervous with Barzanes looking over my shoulder.

  Barzanes shrugged. “But I admit the obvious. I am to report into the administration of this province of our empire. It does appear that there have been some errors.”

  “Inasmuch as half the country is now in the hands of your enemy, I’d say that was an understatement.”

  “I have not been here long enough to form a definite opinion, but I suspect my report will not be entirely complimentary to the previous Satrap,” Barzanes said.

  “That would be the dead uncle of the king. Won’t such a report require some tact?”

  “The King does not want lies. He wants truth,” Barzanes said.

  Barzanes was more confident about that than I would be. I would be a trifle wary if I had to tell an absolute monarch that his uncle had not only brought about his own downfall, but had lost a province in the process. I said as much to Barzanes.

  He paused for a moment, then said, “It is possible the King might not share this truth with his mother.”

  If Barzanes was being honest with me—and I had never known him to lie, though he was the most ruthless man I had ever known—then he really did not know why I was in Memphis. By implication he also did not know of the crook and flail, and its importance to Inaros and the rebels. I would have to make sure he never found out.

  “I’m sorry about your problems, but I’m telling you the honest truth. There’s no need for us to be in conflict.”

  Barzanes might dislike lying, but personally I had no objections.

  “You think so, do you?” Barzanes said. I could here the contempt in his voice. “Then why is it that the rebel army surrounded Memphis the moment you arrived?”

  “What!”

  “Memphis has been ringed by the enemy. They moved into position just moments after you stepped onto the docks.”

  That bastard. Inaros had ordered his army to Memphis. He must have known he was going to do it, but he’d never told us. He’d hung me out to dry.

  “You’re not going to tell me this is a coincidence, are you?” Barzanes said.

  No, I wasn’t. I said nothing.

  “Then I repeat. Do you want to tell me what you are doing here?”

  I was saved from having to answer by a commotion at the door. Two soldiers pushed their way in. Between them was a man whose arms they held trapped. It was Markos.

  The soldiers dragged Markos to our table. One of the soldiers was carrying his arrow-firing machine.

  Barzanes didn’t show the least surprise at this sudden entrance. I did, though.

  “Hello, Nico,” Markos said. “So they caught you too.”

  The soldiers dumped Markos. The one with the machine laid it in front of Barzanes. The two saluted the Eyes and Ears of the King, then moved to stand guard at the front door, the only way out.

  Since Barzanes sat opposite me, Markos took the only other seat, at the head of the table, so that the three of us formed a triangle. I was determined not to show any reaction. Ba
rzanes for his part stared at Markos, and Markos at Barzanes.

  “I don’t believe I know you,” Markos said.

  “But I know you,” Barzanes said. “You are Markos, the son of Glaukippos. Your father died when you were young. You subsequently came first among your cohort in the deadly test known as the krypteia. As a result, you were picked by the Spartan elders for assassin duty, a job at which you excelled due to your complete lack of morals.” Barzanes said the last part with great distaste. He considered himself to be a highly ethical man. “You were imprisoned when you became over-enthusiastic in the application of your skills, but you were never executed, due to a power struggle among your leaders. At that point I become hazy. I have been in Egypt dealing with affairs, and thus out of touch with my usual sources. Obviously you were released, but why I do not know. However, you will soon tell me this.”

  Both Markos and I blinked at that remarkable speech. Barzanes had just revealed that he had an information source inside Sparta, one so good that he could reel off the biography of a senior agent of the Spartans. Did Barzanes have a similar source inside Athens? Of course he must. I wondered what the source had told him about me. Probably everything. Barzanes could give strangers directions to find my home.

  Barzanes was far too smart not to realize what he had just done. Then why had he done it? To send a message, of course, a very scary message. I know where you live.

  “I’m impressed,” Markos said. “But how did you know I was in Memphis?”

  “Don’t ask,” I told the Spartan. “The answer is embarrassing. We both should have noticed the spotter at the docks.”

  “Curses,” Markos said, good-naturedly. “That was sloppy of me, wasn’t it? But in my defense—and to answer your question, Barzanes—I’m a mere tourist, come to admire the sights of Memphis. I didn’t realize I needed to worry about a hostile reception.”

  “Me neither,” I said, trying to sound innocent.