But the Hellene did not depart immediately. Instead he stood with a faraway expression on his face, looking through Mithredath rather than at him. The eunuch was growing annoyed when at last Polydoros said dreamily, “I wonder how the conquest would have gone, had the Athenians stumbled onto that silver before Khsrish’s” -he pronounced it Xerxes’, too-” campaign. Money buys the sinews of war.”

A banker indeed, Mithredath thought scornfully. “Money does not buy bravery,” he said.

“Perhaps not, excellent saris, but even the bravest man, were he naked, would fare badly against an armored warrior with a spear. Had Athens been able to build ships to match the Persian fleet, the Hellenes might not have fallen under the empire’s control.”

Mithredath snorted. “All the subject peoples have their reasons why they should have held off Persia. None did.”

“Of course you are right, excellent saris,” Polydoros said politely, wise enough to hide his true feelings, whatever they were. “It was but a fancy of the moment.” He bowed. “Till the day after tomorrow.” He hurried off.

“I came to the proper decision.” Mithredath lifted his soft felt cap from his head and used it to wipe sweat from his face. “I shouldn’t care to have to make this journey coming and going each day.”

“As you say, excellent saris.” With a broad-brimmed straw hat and thin, short Hellenic mantle, Polydoros was more comfortably dressed than Mithredath, but he was sweating, too. Behind them the eunuch’s servants and a donkey bore their burdens in stolid silence. One of the servants led a sheep that kept trying to stop and nibble grass and shrubs.

Something crunched under Mithredath’s shoe. He looked down and saw a broken piece of pottery and, close by it, half-buried in weeds, a chunk of brick. “A house stood here once,” he said. He heard the surprise in his voice and felt foolish. But knowing this wilderness had been a city was not the same as stumbling over its remains.