The Pillars of Hercules (31 page)

Cleon took a deep breath. The only way out of this was to get Ptolemy off balance. The Macedonian would be seeing him merely as a fat old man in bed. But the angrier Cleon could make him, the better. The truth was the best vehicle for that. “I was trying to sell her to Alexander,” he said.

There was a moment’s pause. “You’re shitting me,” said Ptolemy.

“Nice to see you can be surprised.”

“He was bidding against his own father?”

“Doesn’t the one serve the other?” asked Cleon disingenuously.

“If you really do have decent spies in Pella, they’ll have disabused you of that notion.”

“So the old man isn’t too happy about his son proclaiming himself king?” Cleon grinned at the look that flashed across Ptolemy’s face. “I mean his real son, of course.” For a moment he thought Ptolemy was going to attack him there and then. But instead the Macedonian noble took a deep breath.

“Let Alexander adorn himself with titles,” he said. “Let him heap his head with crowns. What does it matter? He may stand at the head of the largest army in the Mediteranean, but it’s his father that really pulls the strings.”

“You sure about that?”

“All the more so since Alexander doesn’t even realize it.”

“I guess when you’re the commander of eighty thousand hardened veterans that might be hard to spot,” said Cleon.

“Your sarcasm is duly noted.”

“And here I was thinking that Macedonians were too thick to register it.”

“But not too bereft of clue to follow your schemes. So: you thought to play the father and the son against each other, and in so doing maybe draw out the schemes of both. But irony of ironies—the one who stole your prize out from under you turns out to be a prize all her own. Especially to Alexander.”

“The Persian? I never saw her.”

“No,” said Ptolemy. “You didn’t. She just struck a deal with outlaw scum and organized a little fishing expedition. Which makes me merely the latest person to underscore just how pathetic your defenses are. What happened to the contents of the old man’s laboratories?”

“I heard he left most of those in Pella,” said Cleon.

“I can assure you he brought the best ones here. And it’s a safe bet she took them west with her when she split.”

Cleon tightened his finger on the crossbow’s trigger. “Perhaps she’ll even find what she’s looking for out there.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” snarled Ptolemy. “Do you even
realize
what’s at stake?”

“Does
anyone
know exactly?”

“We have our suspicions.”

“You mean your fantasies,” said Cleon.

Ptolemy’s face darkened. “I mean our knowledge. You who had Aristotle at your beck and call should know better than to indulge in such mockery. The superstitious think the gods used to walk the earth. The skeptics think it’s all just horseshit. The elect know they’re both wrong. These were
people,
same as us—”

“No,” said Cleon. He’d seen the reports prepared by Athenian intelligence, the reports that had been suppressed by the archons upon pain of death. “Not the same. Not the same at
all
.”

But Ptolemy was just talking right over him. “—who unravelled the secrets of the universe. A mere
fraction
of those secrets would conquer all the armies that ever existed. All of Alexander’s strategic genius—all the armies of the warring powers—all of it would be as nothing compared to the magick of the ancients.”

“And if that magick falls into your hands, you’ll build a Macedonian Empire that will last forever.”

“No one builds an empire intending it should last for less.”

“I’m sure the ancients said the same thing. And look where they are now.”

“Yes,” said Ptolemy. “Where. Exactly.
That’s the fucking question.”

Cleon laughed. “And how does Philip plan to answer it? Your half-brother already has two armies in the western Mediterranean. Your father has none.” Ptolemy’s hands tightened on his swords. “No one loyal to him for a thousand miles save you.” Cleon smiled, met Ptolemy’s smoldering eyes. “I knew Philip was past his prime, but I never dreamt for a moment that the
cripple
would be so foolish as to send the
bastard
to run his errands—”

The combination of those two words did it. Ptolemy was already leaping forward at Cleon, charging over the bed, both swords out.

Which made him a sitting duck.

Cleon raised his crossbow. Ptolemy started to hurl himself aside, but not fast enough. The bolt flew straight at him—

And glanced off one of Ptolemy’s blades, shooting up and burying itself in the ceiling.

For a moment all was still.

Then Ptolemy picked himself off the floor.

“Would that I could make this slower,” he said, walking toward Cleon.

“Wait,” said the viceroy. “I have gold.”

“That which we gave you,” snarled Ptolemy.

The last thing Cleon saw was that blade coming at him.

“Dying was the best thing that asshole ever did.”

It wasn’t the most tactful of eulogies, but it might just be the most accurate, Leosthenes reflected. Though to be sure, not everyone in the room shared the opinion. In particular Phocion, whose patron Cleon had been, was looking less than pleased with Hypereides’ judgment. The death—and by all accounts, the abject failure—of Cleon would mean that the advantage passed to Hypereides on the council. And that man was going to try to make the most of it. Hypereides met Phocion’s eyes, smiled broadly.

“You don’t look too happy,” he added.

“How can I be happy?” said Phocion in that rumbling voice of his. It sounded like Zeus himself; the fact that the man who possessed it was so much less impressive was merely one of life’s little ironies. “A servant of Athens is dead. His faults notwithstanding—”

“His faults are precisely the issue here,” shot back Hypereides.

“We don’t know the details,” said Phocion mildly.

“We know enough of them,” said Leosthenes. All the other archons looked at him, and there were more than a few eyebrows raised. Was Leosthenes at last committing himself in the ongoing struggle between Hypereides and Phocion? Or was this just his perpetual tacking back and forth, throwing support to first one, then the other? “The situation in Syracuse is a
disaster
,” Leosthenes added. “For all we know, Agathocles and his rebels are—”

“Perhaps you’d like to go out there and take charge of the city yourself?” asked Phocion.

“Maybe I should,” said Leosthenes, and he could see how that remark set more wheels to turning, as the other archons wondered if he was serious and how his absence would affect the council.

“
Someone
is going to have to,” said Hypereides. “Someone we trust.”

“We don’t even trust each other,” muttered somebody, and there was general laughter at the understatement. That Macedonian intelligence had been in touch with members of the council wasn’t open to dispute. Leosthenes was reasonably sure that everyone had been approached—he certainly had been, on multiple occasions, though it was hard to tell which inquiries were serious and which were jokes and which were attempts by Athenian intelligence to entrap him. But there was no denying Athens was a hotbed of espionage these days.

It was also a hotbed of sedition. The situation in the wake of Alexander’s assault on the city had only grown more volatile. That was why the archons were meeting in secret, in the northern wing of the Propylaea, the gateway to the Acropolis. Through the windows, the moonlit city was visible below; pictures of the city’s famous battles lined the walls. The meeting had started late and was probably going to run much later.

“And Aristotle? Have we heard whether he’s still in Syracuse?” said Thrasybulus impatiently. He had extensive business interests in the West, and those who knew him knew that business was all he really cared about. Which was all very well—Athens’ economic power constituted the sinews of its strength, but viewing everything through the lens of money could lend itself to a certain myopia. And if the smart money started to think that Macedonian rule might actually be more profitable….

“We haven’t heard shit,” said someone.

“I don’t know about that,” drawled Hypereides lazily. “I heard that Phocion here has heard something.” All eyes turned to Phocion, who looked uncomfortable.

“That may have been what Cleon got himself killed over,” he said softly.

“Do tell,” said Hypereides.

“Cleon may have taken Aristotle into custody,” said Phocion, and his voice was almost a whisper.

“I didn’t hear you,” said Hypereides. “Can you say that louder?”

“I think you heard me just fine,” said Phocion, and for a moment the two men exchanged a look of pure hatred.

“But we could use some help on the implications,” said Erasinides. A retired veteran, he spoke little but when he did speak, his voice carried more weight accordingly. “If Cleon was killed not by Syracusan rebels but by Macedonians—then Aristotle may be back in Macedonian hands.”

“He’s not,” said Phocion, “he’s dead.” Hypereides’ face remained expressionless, but Leosthenes knew in that moment that this was the admission he’d been intending to force from his rival. Consternation broke out amidst the council-chamber; it seemed like every archon in the room was talking. But then Hypereides’ voice rose above the din.

“Aristotle is alive,” he said. Everyone stared at him.

“So where is he?” asked Thrysabulus.

Hypereides sighed. “That’s the part I’m still trying to figure out,” he said.

Moonlight lit the desert as the man staggered through the sands. His horse had long since died, and he knew that he was halfway there himself. He was only capable of moving at night now, and he realized with what little cognition he had left that the coming day would almost certainly finish him off. His tongue had swelled to the point where it felt like someone had shoved their foot down his throat. He could no longer swallow, and he had forgotten what water tasted like. But he kept on moving forward, up one dune and then down the next until he wondered if he had already died and gone to a hell of sand that stretched out in all directions forever.

But he was still alive. Still lost in the middle of the desert known to man.

The worst of it was that he’d been going home. He’d finally been given the task of returning to Egypt as the bearer of a message from the expedition that had been charged with taking Carthage. The expedition that would almost certainly never reach that city. He’d been so busy thanking the gods for his deliverance it was a long while before he realized that they’d abandoned him. They’d done it in their time-honored fashion: by cursing him with hubris. He’d been trying to take a short-cut west of Cyrene where the land bulged out into the sea. Naturally he’d gotten lost. Now he was well and truly fucked. It was hard to see how this could any worse.

That was when he heard the howling. It sounded like wolves. But there were no wolves in this desert.

Other than the human ones.

Adrenaline surged through him, fueling him with sufficient strength to somehow pick up the pace. The Berbers had found his trail. Or they’d smelt him out. Flesh-eating marauders who had harassed the army ever since it had left Egypt, picking off stragglers—and now he’d become one himself. He could hear them calling to each other in their barbaric tongue, incomprehensible to him yet filled with the dire warning of all the things they would do if they took him alive. He resolved not to let that happen. Ahead of him the desert was so flat it looked like water.

He blinked. It
was
water, moonlight shimmering off its rippled surface. He’d reached the sea once more. As he raced down the sand dunes and onto the beach, he realized that it offered him one final chance at survival. Waves lapped at his feet as he charged toward the water. Behind him he heard the cries of the Berbers intensify as they closed in on him. As he waded out into the surf, he chanced a glance backward, saw shadowy figures coming over the crest of the dune. They were sprinting toward him—but now he was neck deep in the water that they believed it was death to enter. As they reached the edge of the ocean, he was already swimming, paddling out to sea, their furious cries dimming in his ears as the waves crashed over him. There was so much salt in the water that he had no trouble keeping his head above the surface. He kept on swimming, praying for a miracle from heaven. Athenian ships had been stalking the expedition since they left the Nile, keeping pace and keeping watch. Maybe one of them lay off the shore tonight. Maybe they would spare him in exchange for the secrets he carried.

But only if he knew them.

His hands clutched frantically at the scrollcase at his belt. He lifted it above the water, slid away its lid, drew out the scroll enclosed within and broke the seal of Craterus, the man to whom he’d delivered the message from Alexander and Philip all those weeks ago. He continued to thresh his way further from the voices on the shore as he read the words by the light of the moon overhead. Had Craterus and Perdiccas discovered a way forward? What would they do if they reached Carthage? Did they have a plan for getting out of the mess they’d gotten into?

Incredibly, they did.

The scale of the lie he’d been fed—the lie the whole army had swallowed—was so colossal that he started laughing in spite of himself. The truth was on the paper in front of him and yet he still couldn’t believe it. Nothing was what it seemed. Everything was a subterfuge. He laughed and laughed, and couldn’t wait to tell somebody—anybody—the truth.

He barely noticed the tug on his foot.

At least, it felt like a tug. And the nudge against his leg felt like just a nudge. But as the blood pooled on the surface of the water around him he realized otherwise. He didn’t even have time to scream—next moment he was pulled under as the sharks that had found him fought one another for his flesh. He broke the surface once more—thought he heard the jeering voices of the Berbers back on the beach. Then he was hauled under for good, leaving behind that single piece of paper floating on the surface, the water making the ink run until it was just another piece of flotsam floating beneath the starry field above.