Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities Read Free

and Amastris was older.
    Melitta nocked, drew and shot. Thwack. ‘You have a slave in your bed,’ she said, accusingly.
    Satyrus nocked, drew and loosed. His arrow flew over the top of the target. ‘By the Lord of the Silver Bow, sister, is that any of your business?’ he asked pettishly.
    ‘We swore to Mater that we would not lie with slaves,’ she said. ‘You missed, by the way. The horse is mine.’
    Satyrus struggled with his temper for as long as it took his heart to beat three times. ‘Yes,’ he said after the third heartbeat.
    ‘Yes, you are sleeping with a slave? Or yes, the horse is mine?’ Melitta asked. Just for emphasis, she drew, nocked and shot again – and her arrow struck dead in the centre of the mark.
    ‘Yes, I think it’s time you got moving on your spring progress,’ Satyrus said. He didn’t do a very good job of keeping the anger out of his voice.
    ‘Splendid!’ Melitta said. ‘What a very good job you are making of living up to Mater ’s desires. And Philokles’! And Leon’s! We said we would not have slaves. How are you doing with that, brother ? I seem to see more agricultural slaves arrive every day.’
    ‘Some of them on Leon’s ships!’ he shot back. ‘This is the real world, sister! You go and ride the plains and pretend to be a nomad princess. I have a kingdom to manage. We need agricultural labour.”
    ‘In our beds? Get me one, brother. A nice one with a big cock.’ She rolled her hips. ‘How’s that!’
    ‘Ares! You are the limit! It is not your business who’s in my bed!’ The King of the Bosporus realised that he had shouted the last, and that even on the Field of Ares outside the city people were watching them.
    Melitta shrugged. ‘Handsome boy like you ought to be doing better than agricultural labour,’ she said.
    ‘Perhaps I could sleep with the captain of my bodyguard?’ Satyrus asked his sister.
    ‘Shut your mouth!’ she hissed.
    ‘Of course, he’s twice my age – but surely Coenus is still a good-looking man,’ Satyrus finished, satisfied that he’d punched through his sister’s air of superiority. He had long suspected that she slept with her guard captain, Scopasis, a former outlaw.
    They stood and glared at each other for ten heartbeats.
    ‘At least he’s not a slave,’ she said – and she meant to hurt.
    ‘That’s all right,’ he shot back. ‘Go out on the plains and leave your son with me to raise.’
    In fact, she wasn’t the most devoted mother, and that shot hit its target squarely so that she turned bright crimson from the roots of her black hair to the tops of her breasts, just visible under her slightly open Persian coat.
    ‘You owe me a horse,’ she said, and walked away. She walked ten steps and turned, unable to stop herself. ‘You need to stop pretending that Amastris will marry you. Find yourself a girl. Fuck her and make some children, and then you can talk to me—’ She was choking up, getting angry, threatened with tears and hating herself for it. ‘Then you can talk to me about children.’ She walked to her horse, leaped into the saddle and dashed away.
    ‘That is the king?’ asked a foreign voice. The man sounded puzzled.
    ‘The king’s not available just now.’ Satyrus turned his head, anger still pounding away in his bloodstream and saw his hypaspist, Helios, standing with a powerfully built man – Satyrus had seen him arrive – Antigonus’ ambassador Niocles, son of Laertes of Macedon. Or so his morning report had said.
    Helios hurried to his side, and Satyrus handed him his bow and gorytos to carry. ‘What’s next?’ he asked, walking to his horse.
    ‘The new plough, lord,’ Helios said.
    ‘I’ll skip that,’ Satyrus said. Anger was still heavy inside him, so big that it seemed to fill his breast and choke him. How dare she tax him with his slave-girl. He took a deep breath. How disgusting it was of him to hit back at her motherhood.
    The problem of being twins was that you were born