But we did not get far. At the great doors a Persian soldier stepped before us.
“Ambassador Svertaketu, barbarian Orion, follow me.”
He did not look like a Persian; his skin was more olive-toned and he was much bigger than the bejewelled dainty men I had seen at Dareios’ court. In fact, he was the biggest I had seen in Parsa, nearly my own height and size. And a squad of six other equally big soldiers fell into step behind us as he led us out of the audience hall into the bright warm sunshine of the early afternoon.
“Where are you taking us?” Ketu asked.
“To where I have been commanded to bring you,” said the soldier. His voice was deep, almost a growl.
“And where might that be?” Ketu probed.
“To see one of the Great King’s slaves, in the palace. A Greek slave.”
“Where are you from?” I asked.
He turned a level, cool-eyed gaze at me. “What difference does that make?”
“You don’t look like a Persian. Your accent is different from the others we have spoken to.”
He thought about that as we walked out into the sunshine and across the flagstone square between the audience hall and the palace proper.
“I am from Media, from the high hills where the old worshippers still tend their sacred fires. My people, the Medes, conquered Babylon and created this great empire.”
His voice was flat, his tone unemotional. Yet I felt there was a world of scorn and bitterness behind his words.
“You are descended, then, from Cyrus the Great?” Ketu asked. It was more a statement than a question. Cyrus had founded the Persian Empire ages ago.
“From Cyrus, yes. Though today the Medes are hardly more than one tribe among the many that compose the empire, still we serve the Great King whose power has come from Cyrus’ mighty army. We serve, and we remember.”
Another sign of unhappiness in the empire. Another man with an unsettled grievance. It began to look to me as if the vast empire of the Great King were rotting from the inside. Perhaps Alexandros could conquer it after all.
But all such thoughts flew out of my head when I saw the “Greek slave” to whom the Median soldier had been commanded to bring us.
Demosthenes.
“Don’t look so surprised, Orion,” he said to me, sitting at his ease in a cushioned chair in a luxurious palace apartment. A slave woman knelt in the far corner of the room. The table in the room’s center was decked with a huge bowl of fruit and a silver decanter of wine chilled so well that its curved surface was beaded with water droplets. Demosthenes wore a long woolen robe of deep blue. He seemed to have recovered his aplomb since the last time I had seen him, or perhaps it was simply that he was not facing the fierce hatred of Alexandros. Still, he had grayed, and his eyes squinted beneath their bushy brows.
“You knew I was receiving the Great King’s gold,” Demosthenes said, leaning back in his chair.
“I did not know that you were his… servant.”
“I serve Athens,” he snapped. “And democracy.”
“The Great King supports democracy?”
Demosthenes smiled uneasily. “The Great King supports anyone who can help him defeat Philip.”
“Have you been exiled, then?” Ketu asked.
His smile turned grim. “Not yet. But Philip’s friends are working hard to have the Assembly ostracize me. That’s his way: show the open hand of peace and friendship while he gets his lackeys to stab you in the back.”
“Why have you sent for us?” asked Ketu.
As if he suddenly realized that he was being less than polite, Demosthenes indicated the other chairs with his out-swept hand. “Sit. Please, make yourselves comfortable. Slave! Bring cups for my guests.”
Ketu sat. I walked over to the window and looked down. A lovely courtyard garden was being tended by ragged dark-skinned slaves. Through the open doorway I saw the Median soldier and his squad lounging out in the corridor.
“Why have you summoned us?” I repeated Ketu’s question.
“I am now an advisor to the Great King. You might say that I have his ear. He has asked for my opinion of Philip’s offer. I want to hear what it is for myself, from the lips of the Great King’s ambassador.”
“You don’t need me for that,” I said.
“No, there’s something else that I want you for,” said Demosthenes.
“What is it?”
“The ambassador first.”
The slave brought us cups and poured the wine. It was cold and biting, yet warmed my innards as I drank of it. Ketu repeated Philip’s offer and demands practically word-for-word.
“Much as I expected,” Demosthenes muttered when the ambassador was finished, blinking nervously.
“What will be your advice to the Great King?” asked Ketu.
“That is for me to tell Dareios, not you,” he answered, with some of his old haughtiness. “You will learn of his decision when he is ready to give it.”
I thought I knew what Demosthenes would say to Dareios: refuse to surrender the cities and the islands, but make no warlike step against Philip. Demosthenes wanted to get Philip to start the war, so that he could tell the Athenians and anyone else who would listen that the barbarian king of Macedonia wanted to drown all the world in blood.
He looked at me as if he could read my thoughts. “You don’t like me, do you, Orion?”
“I serve Philip,” I replied.
“You think me a traitor to Athens? To all the Greeks?”
“I think that, no matter what you tell yourself, you serve the Great King.”
“Yes! I do!” He pushed himself out of his chair to face me on his feet. “I would serve the Furies and Chaos itself if it would help Athens!”
“But you said that Athens no longer listens to your voice, no longer wants your service.”
“That doesn’t matter. The danger of a democracy is that the people will be misled, will be tricked into following the wrong road.”
“I see. Democracy works fine as long as the people do what you want them to. If they vote otherwise, it is a mistake.”
“Most people are fools,” said Demosthenes. “They need leaders. They need to be told what to do.”
“And that is democracy?” I asked.
“Bah! No matter what the people think they want, I serve Athens and the cause of democracy! I will use the Great King, the Spartans, the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air if it helps me to fight Philip and his bastard son.”
It was my turn to smile. “You had your chance to fight them at Chaeroneia.”
The barb did not bother him in the slightest. “I’m a politician, Orion, not a warrior. I discovered that at Chaeroneia, true enough. Now I fight in the way I know best. And I will beat Philip yet.”
“I am a warrior, not a politician,” I replied. “But let me ask you this question: would Athens and its democracy be safer under the Great King’s authority, or under Philip?”
He laughed. “Yes, you’re no politician at all, are you? You see things in black and white too much.”
“So?”
“The Great King will leave Athens and the other cities of Greece alone, leave them free, if the threat of Philip can be eliminated. He wants the Ionian cities to remain in his empire. I am willing to let him have them in return for Athens’ freedom.”
Ketu spoke up. “That is the nature of politics: you give something to get something else. Give and take—favors, gifts, alliances… even cities.”
“Aristotle told me,” I said, “that the Persian Empire will inevitably engulf all of Greece. Athens will become a vassal of the Great King, just as Ephesos and the other Ionian cities are.”
Demosthenes frowned. “Aristotle is a Macedonian.”
“No—” objected Ketu.
“Stagyrite,” said Demosthenes. “They’ve been part of Macedon long enough.”
“But what of Aristotle’s prediction?” I asked. “If he’s correct, by helping the Great King you are slowly strangling the democracy you cherish so much.”
Demosthenes paced the length of the room, all the way to the window and back to me, before answering. “Orion, I have a choice between Philip and the Persians. Philip is at Athens’ gates; the Great King is many months’ journey away. Philip will swallow us up in a gulp, like a wolf—”
“But he has left Athens alone,” Ketu pointed out. “He has not occupied the city with his soldiers nor demanded any political power in the city’s government.”
“Of course not. What he does is to place his friends in power, Athenians whom he has bought with gold and silver. He uses our democracy to serve his own ends.”
“But he leaves your democracy untouched,” I said. “Would the Great King allow that, if he were in Philip’s place?”
“But he’s not.”
“He will be, sooner or later, if we can believe Aristotle.”