Black Salt

Black Salt - Chapter 31

 Apollophanos had opened his eyes, blinking like a pup fresh from a bitch's teat, and when his sense had returned, he had begged him to stay, his voice thick and nasal from the blood that clogged his nose and glistened as it congealed on his lips. "It's death if you leave me."

"You think you'll live forever with my floorboards for your bed?"

He'd gone. Against the Spartan's pleas and threats, he'd left the man, but first he'd put him in the care of four of his most trusted men, with orders not to leave him alone for the time of a breath. He'd wanted to set Kalliphas to guard the man, but decided against it; his brain made him too valuable to waste on guard duty.

The king gave him a royal welcome.

"All gods damn you," he said, rubbing at bleary, swollen eyes, and tugging a crimson cloak over his fleshy torso. "Why can't you leave me alone? It's tradition to grant a condemned man his peace, but you, you're worse than the blowfly of Athens."

"Gadfly."

Bull Gut narrowed his eyes, and peeled his fat lips back from his yellowish teeth. "If I say blowfly, you say blowfly. Don't forget I'm your king... For now." He sighed, and sagged in his throne. "Once Rathea-"

"Once Rathea what?"

He didn't jump. Nikias gave the king credit for that much; the man managed with just a fleeting wince, little more than a tightening of the flesh around his bulbous eyes.

Rathea walked into the throne room with rather more grace than her brother. She contrived to make her yellow silk gown glide over the floor, but the diaphanous fabric failed to disguise her heavy belly and dugs, or those brawny arms. Ptolemaios had styled himself 'the condemned king', and Nikias felt the force of it. Their union would be unnatural, yes, and an affront to any self-respecting gods, but for a man with the king's appetites, it also promised to be simple and plain torment.

"Once I what?" she said, and her throne creaked under her weight.

Ptolemaios shot him a pleading look, something more familiar every day.

"My words are for the king," he said.

She sucked her teeth. "I'll be the king tomorrow."

Ptolemaios choked. "You-"

"One flesh," she said, looking at him with hooded eyes. "One blood. One bed."

His anger died in his throat, and he took a sudden interest in the hairs on the backs of his hands.

Nikias felt more pity for the king, then, than he had ever felt for any creature.

"So," she said. "You woke up my beloved, at this godless hour, to whisper secrets in his ear. Whisper to me. Or by the gods below I'll see you spiked up and swinging by your ears... Tomorrow."

They should have been brothers, he thought. She was born for a man's body. As she was, her existence was an insult to womanhood. But what he said was "I hope to serve you, your majesties, with my ears and my whispers and my sword." He didn't want to, but he saw no choice. He told them the story he'd had from Apollophanos.

Rathea showed herself cold and hard, harder than he'd expected. She showed no change, but her eyes narrowed as he spoke on, and her nails dug into the arms of her throne. The king betrayed his warrior image, for his eyes grew wide, his lips fell apart and his jaw sagged. By the end of it he was pale as the white of an egg.

"And the traitor?" he said. "His name. Give me his name."

"The Spartan demands assurances. I-"