Free The Pillars of Hercules by David Constantine

spy for Athens?”
    “A spy for Philip .”
    “Zeus. Who knows of those suspicions?”
    “Besides me—Hephaestion, certainly. Craterus, probably. Beyond that, I’ve no idea.”
    “You and I need to stick together,” said Harpalus.
    “That’s why we’re having this conversation.”
    “If Alexander’s getting this paranoid, the others will seek to take advantage of it.”
    Eumenes nodded. “They already have. Meleager—”
    “I heard. He’s been imprisoned.”
    “You mean executed.”
    Harpalus leaned against the battlements as though he’d been struck. “What? When?”
    “Four nights ago. Back in Egypt.”
    “Does Alexander even plan to announce it?”
    “He’ll probably tell the army he died in a skirmish with Arab raiders or something—give him a grand funeral, lots of tears, a moving oration, all the usual trappings now he’s safely dead.”
    “Safely?” Harpalus’ tone bordered on incredulity. “Meleager was the ultimate loyalist. He would never have—”
    “I know. His downfall’s thanks to Craterus. Who saw his chance to rid himself of a rival, and used Alexander’s mindset to make it happen. So now he can put a more pliable man in command of the part of the phalanx that’s been left back in Egypt.”
    Harpalus seemed to be struggling to absorb all of this. He gazed out at the ocean, slowly shaking his head. Eumenes almost felt sorry for him. Buried in his figures and charts, the treasurer had gradually lost touch with the intensifying pace of court-politics… had lost touch, too, with just how much the character of his boyhood friend Alexander had changed. Eumenes knew there was a time when Alexander and Harpalus had been inseparable. But the fantastic success visited on Macedonian arms had transformed everything. Harpalus looked back at Eumenes, his gaze hollow.
    “So what happened out there?” he asked.
    “We almost died,” said Eumenes.
    “I mean, what happened when you reached the oasis.”
    “The priests hailed him as Son of Zeus.”
    Harpalus shook his head. “Zeus knows what he’d have done to them if they hadn’t.”
    “And then he went inside the temple. By himself. No bodyguards, no nothing. No witnesses. We waited. And waited. To the point that we wondered whether the priests had been paid by the Athenians to kill him and ride hell for leather out the back door. And then, just as we were about to bust in ourselves, Alexander comes out looking like….” Eumenes trailed off, wondering how to phrase it.
    “Like what?” asked Harpalus impatiently.
    “Like a man who’s just been told his heart’s desire.” Eumenes thought it over. “But also… like a man who’s just had the surprise of his life.”
    There was a long pause.
    “And he was in there for the better part of an hour, ” added Eumenes. “So if it was a revelation from Zeus-Ammon, it was rather a long one. Presumably fairly specific too.”
    “Those damn priests. They could have said anything.”
    “Assuming it was the priests.”
    Harpalus mulled that one over. “But he didn’t tell you what the message was?”
    “I’m not sure he’s even told Hephaestion. Whatever happened in there is between the prince and the gods. But he’s been acting stranger than ever in the weeks since. The paranoia, the moodiness, the drinking—”
    “We might be able to piece some of it together,” said Harpalus.
    “What do you have in mind?”
    “Well. Doesn’t it strike you as funny that we’re here?”
    “In Tyre?”
    “Yes. In Tyre.”
    Eumenes pondered this. Try as he might, he couldn’t see what Harpalus was driving at. “It’s a natural place to stop on the way back north. And Alexander was never a man to resist revisiting the scene of one of his greatest triumphs—”
    “Right, but he captured this city so he could sacrifice at the temple of Melkart. That was the whole point, remember?”
    There was no way Eumenes could forget. Melkart was the Phoenician incarnation of Hercules, who Alexander