Free The Ghosts of Athens by Richard Blake Page B

enjoy more than loading me with chains. If blinding really is on the menu, he’ll hold the white-hot metal himself in front of my eyes.’
    I didn’t care if I was seen to grip the rail and steady myself. ‘When exactly were you in Athens?’ I asked weakly.
    He pulled himself gradually back together. ‘It was in the ninth year of Phocas the Tyrant,’ he said just as weakly. He stopped and scowled and repeated the hated words of kinship to the fallen Emperor. He tried to clear his throat again, but failed. He bent forward as far as his armour allowed and tried again. This time, he managed a long and thunderous burp. Then he did clear his throat. Without bothering to turn, he spat on to the deck. ‘It was two years ago – just before everything went really bad for the Tyrant,’ he added when he’d recovered his composure, ‘and the barbarians were pushing closer and closer to the ruined fort at Thermopylae. I was sent out to see what defence could be made of the Greek cities. Unlike everywhere else north of Corinth, Athens did have a wall in nearly decent shape.’ He stopped and cleared his throat again. This time, he swallowed and looked about for his box of drugs.
    ‘I wasn’t aware that Athens had a Count,’ I said. I might as well go through the motions of interest. ‘I thought it was under direct rule from Corinth.’
    Priscus looked up from fussing with his powders and smiled bleakly. ‘Because, even today, the place has a certain prestige,’ he explained with a hint of the didactic, ‘Athens has its own administration. Since Heraclius didn’t see fit, after the revolution, to recall Timothy the Utterly Idle from Corinth, it would normally be a favour to Athens. But you haven’t met Nicephorus.’ He sniffed in a pinch of something dark. He laughed and leaned back against the rail as tears ran down his green paint.
    ‘You’d better go and get everyone ready,’ I said to Martin. I looked closely at him. His own eyes were heavy with tears. ‘Please remember everything I told you,’ I repeated.
    He bowed and went below.
    Priscus sniffed and coughed. He closed his eyes for a long groan of ecstasy. Then he was back with me. ‘Have you told our obese friend that this galley will dump us in Piraeus before going straight off to Corinth? Does he know there won’t be so much as a slave getting off with us?’ His face now creased into a smile so broad, the lead underlay on his face cracked and a few specks of white and green fell on to his breastplate.
    I shook my head. ‘It’s enough that he’s ready to make a dash once we’re ashore,’ I said. Poor Martin, I thought sadly. Until Cyprus, he’d been counting off the days to when he and his family could settle back into my snug palace in Constantinople. Safe inside the impenetrable walls of the City, he could regard the simultaneous collapse of every frontier with an almost philosophic calm. It was now a question of whether he could avoid being swept up in a double arrest in Piraeus and, without a single slave to carry baggage, get everyone out of the Empire. Poor Martin – I felt almost lucky by comparison. But Sveta would get them all to safety. With her glowering looks and vicious temper, she might be proof of the more acetic denunciations of marriage. But if anyone could ward off a general arrest on the docks, it would be Sveta. The Emperor himself might look away from her Medusa-like stare.
    ‘Your nose is a proper sight!’ Priscus said as his drugs brought him to a semblance of his old self. ‘Still, I think I did tell you that wanking was bad for the complexion.’ He managed an unpleasant laugh.
    I looked up at the sail. It was obvious the galley wouldn’t be staying in Piraeus longer than it would take to dump the pair of us into custody. So far as I could tell, Corinth had the only shipyard in the whole region capable of putting the galley back into order. The Captain would doubtless make for there. After that, he could go about