When the ship changed direction, the eunuch Mithredath summoned the captain to the starboard rail with a slight nod. “We draw near, then, Agbaal?” Mithredath asked. His voice, a nameless tone between tenor and contralto, was cool, precise, and intelligent.

The Phoenician captain bowed low. The sun sparked off a silver hoop in his left ear.”My master, we do.” Agbaal pointed to the headland the ship had just rounded. “That is the Cape of Sounion. If the wind holds, we should be in Peiraieus by evening-a day early,” he added slyly.

‘“You will be rewarded if we are,” Mithredath promised. Agbaal, satisfied, bowed again and, after glancing at his important passenger for permission, went back to overseeing his crew.

Mithredath would have paid gold darics from his own purse to shorten the time he spent away from the royal court, but there was no need for that: he had come to this western backwater at the royal command and so could draw upon the treasury of Khsrish, King of Kings, as he required. Not for the first time, he vowed that he would not stint.

The day was brilliantly clear. Mithredath could see a long way. The only other ships visible were a couple of tiny fishing boats and a slow, wallowing vessel probably full of wheat from Egypt. Gulls mewed and squawked overhead.

Mithredath tried to imagine what the narrow, island-flecked sea had looked like during those great days four centuries before, when the first Khsrish, the Conqueror, had led his huge fleet to the triumph that had subjected the western Yauna to Persia once and for all. He could not; he was not used enough to ships to picture hordes of them all moving together like so many sheep in a herd on its way to the marketplace of Babylon.