Becoming: Dancing with the Lion Book 1 Read online

  “He’ll send my father a complaint, demanding Hephaistion’s return,” Alexandros replied, hoping to validate his presence among them by sheer wealth of information.

  Yet Leonnatos didn’t even let him finish before continuing, “Maybe Amyntor’ll recall the Europos cavalry regiment! By the dog, we could have a real feud here.”

  Breath short from the struggle to keep pace, Harpalos said, “Don’t be daft. All that’ll happen . . . is Amyntor . . . will send the king . . . a letter telling him . . . to send Hephaistion home.”

  Which was what Alexandros had just said. Pursing his lips, he wondered if he’d become transparent.

  Harpalos was still speaking. “The king’ll tell Amyntor . . . ‘Take up the matter . . . with your son . . . not me . . . He came on his own.’ . . . And that’ll be the end of it . . . Amyntor’s pugnacious . . . He’s not stupid.”

  Nobody slowed for lame Harpalos; they’d all learned better.

  Still trying to inveigle his way into notice, Alexandros blurted, “My father assigned him to delta squad.”

  This time, his ploy succeeded. The other three stopped dead and broke up laughing. “Ai!” cried Harpalos. “The king put him . . . in with Kassandros.” Slapping a hand over his heart, he staggered as if from a mortal blow, making Leonnatos and Erigyios howl louder. Then they began walking again. Alexandros had to hurry to catch up.

  Reaching the Page’s dormitory, they found it deserted. Boys not on duty were out riding, hunting, or in the gymnasion. A long, single-story building, it held two rows of bedcouch cots flanking a center aisle. Each couch had a chest beneath, a shelf above, and wall hooks to hang armor. Alexandros plopped down on an empty one to lean against the white-washed, mud-brick wall.

  “Actually,” Harpalos said, throwing himself across his own couch, “I’m not sure if it’s poor Hephaistion or poor Kassandros. Philippos may have put him right where he belongs: with the lackwits, egoists, and peacocks.”

  “You know Hephaistion?” Erigyios asked.

  “Sort of. Amyntor raises the best horses in all Makedonia, but you wouldn’t know that.” Erigyios suffered for his foreignness. “My cousins knew Hephaistion’s brothers, so I’ve met him. He’s not like the rest of his family. He’s got his nose stuck so far up his arse, all he can smell is his own shite.”

  “Maybe he’s shy.” Erigyios liked to give others the benefit of the doubt.

  “He’s not shy.” Harpalos sat up. “He’s shut-mouthed. You never know what he’s thinking. His great-grandfather came from Athenai and he assumes that means something.”

  Hephaistion picked that moment to walk through the door, and Alexandros wondered how much he’d overheard. He carried a panoply of arms—fighting, not dress—a large pack, and a smaller bag that clanked with cooking gear. Two dogs followed him, but it seemed he had no servant, which was just as well. As a Page, he’d be doing his own body service for a while, in addition to the king’s. “Is one of you Koinos?”

  At his voice, Leonnatos glanced over, then burst into laughter. It must have been the hair. Turning with an uncommon amount of poise, Hephaistion stared down the other boy until all trace of humor was wiped from Leonnatos’s mouth. “Is Koinos here?” he repeated.

  Erigyios answered. “Koinos is at the gymnasion, I think. Come on; I’ll show you a cot.” He led Hephaistion down the aisle to a few empty spots near the middle. Their voices drifted back, too low to make out what they said.

  Leonnatos was patting his hair and batting his eyelashes.

  “Stop it! He can see you,” Alexandros scolded.

  “So?”

  Coming back up the aisle, Erigyios frowned at Leonnatos. “Let’s go.” He called to Hephaistion, “Supper’s served at dusk; you can eat your portion where you like, but most of us eat here. You’re welcome to join a circle.”

  Hephaistion glanced up—“Thank you”—then returned to the business of unpacking.

  “See what I meant?” Harpalos said as they exited the dormitory. “Shut-mouthed.”

  “Well you hardly made him feel welcome,” Erigyios replied.

  As soon as the others left, Hephaistion tore off his fine leather browband, fingers raking out oiled curls to braid them into a single tail down his back, the way he wore it most of the time. Doffing the linen tunic, he replaced it with an old one of simple wool.

  He’d dressed with care to see the king, but instead of making an impression, he’d come off looking like an arse. He told himself it didn’t matter; he owed his brother’s shade. Yet he felt it acutely.

  Still, he’d sworn an oath, and he’d rather look like an arse than be an oath-breaker.

  Alexandros associated certain smells with his mother’s rooms: dried herbs, incense, beeswax, new wool, and just now, food. He squinted through early evening dimness to the table servants had stacked with cuttlefish in garlic, lettuce, figs, strong cheese, and bread.

  He snitched a dried fig, and she slapped his hand. “Wait for the libation.”

  Grinning, he popped the fruit in his mouth, giving her sticky kisses in greeting.

  Tiers of candles lit the supper table, an oasis of yellow amid gray shadow. His mother, Myrtalē, stood tiny beneath them, pale hair shining and pinned in curls atop her head to add four fingers to her height. Making a libation to the gods, she sat him down to serve him herself.

  He was too old to eat with the girls and little boys, but too young to dine with his father and Companions except for special occasions. Sometimes he went out to the Pages’ dormitory, but mostly, he ate with his mother, and sometimes his sister Kleopatra, who was almost twelve. Tonight, Kleopatra must be in charge of the children, and secretly he was glad. He loved these rare chances to have his busy mother to himself when she might entertain him with endless tales of gods and heroes. He’d first heard Homer on her lap. “You are born of Akhilleus’s line,” she’d finish. “Never forget it!”

  From his father, he had the blood of Herakles and so of immortal Zeus, but his mother gave him descent from proud Akhilleus. She thought the latter the greater honor. “Herakles was stupid,” she’d say. “Big, brutish, and stupid. Akhilleus was beautiful, strong, and a great spear-fighter.”

  Once, Alexandros had asked why, then, had Akhilleus tied the body of mighty Hektor behind his chariot to drag it in the dust? She’d answered, “Hush! Hektor killed the one he loved. Vengeance is sweet. Someday you’ll understand.” Alexandros had resented her words. He understood now but would never so disrespect the body of a worthy enemy. It seemed unkingly. He hadn’t told his mother this.

  After serving him a generous portion of cuttlefish, she sat opposite to ask about his day. It made him feel important. Here, he was never too young or too precocious.

  “Well,” he said, “Amyntor’s youngest arrived today.”

  “Really? I didn’t think Amyntor planned to send him.”

  “Amyntor didn’t. He ran away. Father’s decided to let him stay, but assigned him to delta squad: the one with Kassandros. Harpalos isn’t sure who’ll wind up the worse for it. I gather Hephaistion is . . .” He searched for the safest word. “. . . unusual.”

  His mother reached for a fig. “It’d serve that brat right if he’s met his match.”

  “Hephaistion?”

  “Kassandros. I don’t know Hephaistion. I’ve met the father only a few times. He’s from Pydna originally—married a Paionian royal, a distant cousin of their king, Patraios.”

  Alexandros stored away the information. “Leonnatos expects a major feud with Amyntor.” He didn’t necessarily agree but wanted to see what she thought.

  She shook her head. “Your father doesn’t feud. He’d march the young fool home first.” If she and the king sometimes crossed spears over the proper raising of a prince or the freedoms she was due as a royal wife, when it came to politics, they tended to agree. “The boy’s not needed as surety for his father. Amyntor has less ambition than a clam.”

  Having just taken a sip of well-watered wine, Alexandros
snorted it out through his nose, all over her. She sucked in breath. “Oimoi! I’ll set a new fashion in purple spots.” Wiping futilely at the violet stains pockmarking her dress, his mother smiled with fond tolerance. “So tell me about the rest of your day.”

  “Father’s found a philosopher for me.” Eyes on his hands, he turned them over to examine the ragged nails. Finally, he looked up.

  Her chin was raised, nostrils flared. “Why wasn’t I consulted?”

  “Father wanted a man who’d come here. He won’t send me to Athenai—thinks it too dangerous—so he’s having the old villa at Mieza fixed up. That’s where we’ll study. Some of the Pages are coming too. The man’s name is Aristoteles of Stageira; he studied under Platon. His father, Nikomakhos, used to physic for my grandfather, so my father knew him when they were boys.” He spilled these details as if enough words would quiet the volcano.

  Chin lowered, she leaned back in her chair. “I know who Aristoteles is. Philosopher, true, but also Philippos’s spy at the court of the Tyrant Hermias; it’s not far from Troy. He’s making a deal to give your father a bridgehead to Asia. Things must not be going well, and Aristoteles needed to flee.”

  Spy? Nobody had mentioned that to Alexandros, but he didn’t doubt her assertion. Few at court knew more than Myrtalē, and not necessarily because the king had told her.

  Now, she pushed to her feet, stalking about the room. “That black-eyed dog.” She swept an arm across a table, smashing incense holders and a decanter of lilac water as he hunched down on the couch, making himself small. The smell of violets, myrrh, and lilac competed now with cuttlefish and garlic, turning his stomach. Ceramic shards littered the floor. “He can’t just take you away from me like this. Your education is my duty as well.”

  Alexandros clawed at his hair. He daren’t tell her he wanted to go, needed to go; he was stagnating here like the Emathian marsh. All she could see was that Philippos had played a new tactic in their eternal war over him. “He can and he will,” he told her softly. “Please don’t fight it. He’ll just take it out on me.”

  That wasn’t strictly true, but Alexandros had his own share of weapons at hand, and sometimes grew desperate enough to use them.

  Shoulders slumping like a beaten boxer’s, she subsided. “Go.”

  At sunset, Hephaistion watched boys pour back into the Page’s dormitory for supper, and they, spotting a new member, scrutinized him sidewise. A few sidled over to ask his name like dogs sniffing out new territory. The patronymic “Amyntoros” daunted most, even in this corps of Companions’ sons, children of the wealthy, landowning elite. It had always been so, and Hephaistion had come to view his father’s name like a charm. When he chose to wear it, he could be assured of quick service or a wide berth at the stables. When he didn’t, he was the same as any other mortal.

  Sleeping cots served as supper couches, and soon five wobbly circles had formed up and down the dormitory, lit by flickering lamps and torches. Royal slaves, Thracians and Illyrians taken in Philippos’s wars, brought in trays of cheese and olives and boiled onions, bowls of gruel, and barley bread with which to clean their plates. If Hephaistion wasn’t openly included in a circle, he wasn’t excluded either, so he pulled his couch around to the edge of one. With over a hundred Pages in Pella, suppers were rambunctious, full of boasting about everything from battle, to hunting, to love.

  A titan of a boy on the couch beside Hephaistion’s leaned over to point with his bread. “You’re in m’squad.” He spoke in Makedonistē, the regional patois. “I’m Airopos Amphoterou. They say you’re in delta.” Hephaistion nodded and Airopos went on, “You an athlete?”

  “I race horses,” Hephaistion replied, also in Makedonistē.

  “You don’ wrestle?”

  “Nah.”

  “I wrestle. Pankration.”

  “Oh.” That was obvious to anyone with eyes.

  “You really don’ wrestle none?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Sarcasm seemed to confuse Airopos; had all his wits been knocked out in the sandpit? Their exchange, however, had won the notice of a handsome boy with short, curly dark hair. What Airopos lacked in keenness, Hephaistion suspected this one had and to spare, but it felt wrong, like sunlight on snow that will blind a man if stared at too long. He sat upright on his couch, which meant he’d yet to kill his boar and earn the right to recline. Half the Pages still had to eat so; Hephaistion wasn’t among them. “Wrestle?” the boy called now. “You think he’d risk that face in a sandpit?”

  “Leave ’im be, Sandros. It’s his first day.”

  “I was only trying to rescue him from your inane, meat-headed questions.” Sandros’s eyes sought out Hephaistion’s, but Hephaistion didn’t speak. Perhaps annoyed by the silence, or perhaps intrigued, Sandros patted his couch as one might invite a dog to come and sit. Debating whether or not to accept, Hephaistion finally crossed to take the spot. He didn’t know who this Sandros was, and doubted Sandros knew him, but perverse curiosity drove him to pursue the matter. Guessing something was up, the rest of their circle halted conversation to watch.

  Running a hand up Hephaistion’s back, Sandros tugged at the thick braid. “O kalē.” O Beautiful One. “Why bind such hair?” Pulling off the tie, he unwound it till it hung loose about Hephaistion’s shoulders, and then he pressed a lock to his lips in a mocking, votary gesture. “Such splendid hair, as fine as flax.”

  Skin crawling, Hephaistion bore it without moving, like a boy who tests his bravery by handling scorpions. Born under the sign of the Scorpion himself, he knew how to sting.

  Next, Sandros traced the line of his cheekbone. “Your lashes put my sister’s to shame, o kalē. But this beard! It quite ruins the effect. Do you keep it to scratch the lips of lovers seeking kisses? Or to prove your manhood to those who chase after your sweet thighs?”

  Still in patois, Hephaistion asked, “D’you gamble, Sandros?”

  The gentle tug on his hair turned to a yank. “My name is Kassandros. Kassandros Antipatrou.”

  Ah, the son of the king’s regent. Hephaistion glanced about. Silence had a way of catching, and they had quite the audience now. “D’you gamble?” he asked again, adding, “Kassandros.”

  Given what he believed his due, Kassandros smiled as he toyed with Hephaistion’s hair. “Occasionally. Would you like a game of kottabos?” A courting game, kottabos was played by tossing wine lees at a target, the stakes usually kisses.

  “I’ve another in mind.” Hephaistion slid away to rifle through the chest beneath his cot, retrieving a small bag, then snagging a squat table. This he set in the circle center and emptied the bag atop it: three walnut shells and an acorn. Snickers greeted him. The shell game was an old trick known to every legerdemainist from Skythia to Rhodēs. Only a backwoods idiot would assume he alone held the secret, and a backwoods idiot was just what Kassandros took him for.

  Boys crowded about as Kassandros, puffed full of certainty, swaggered to the table’s opposite side. Hephaistion watched from beneath half-lowered lids. Torches cast everything in triple shadows that cut across their faces. Grinning, the regent’s son braced his knuckles on the table. “How much shall we bet?”

  Hephaistion set a tetradrakhma between them. If not high enough to be suspicious, it was high enough to elicit a proportional bravado from Kassandros, who delved into his own trunk to match it.

  Like the worst of tricksters playing to his audience, Hephaistion drew out his shuffling whilst watching boys hooted and laughed and called out suggestions, not all of which had to do with the shells. Finished finally, he leaned over, hands fisted against the low top. “Where is it?”

  Still grinning, Kassandros tapped Hephaistion’s wrist, using patois in mocking triumph. “O kalē, it ain’t beneath the shells a’tall, but in your hand.”

  “Of course it is,” Hephaistion replied in Attik-perfect Hellenistē, opening both palms to show them empty. Then he lifted the center shell to reveal the acorn. He’d never remo
ved it. “You shouldn’t assume quite so much. Things aren’t always what they seem.”

  The boys around them whistled and laughed and shoved at Kassandros in delighted victory-by-proxy, but the regent’s son pulled away, face progressing from white to pink to deep red. “Cistern arse!” One hand snatched for his tetradrakhma.

  Hephaistion’s fist smashed down atop it. “I think not, o kuon.” O Dog. “I did win.”

  “You cheated is what you did!” Kassandros upended the table. Shells, acorn, and coins flew. “You cheated!”

  A barrel-chested young man intervened, pushing Kassandros back with rough authority. “Shut your babbling arsehole of a mouth, o kuon. If you broke that table, I’ll break your head. Go and sit down before I put a collar and a leash on you.”

  It seemed black-eyed Kassandros had earned a nickname.

  Grinning to himself, Hephaistion bent to collect his shells before anyone could step on them. Small, square hands pressed coins and a shell at him. He looked up into a pair of shocking eyes: brilliant lapis blue—that shade so clear it startled—deep-set beneath a fierce brow and wry with intelligence. Nonetheless, they gave the appearance of being vaguely unfocused, as if the mind behind them wandered. That, perhaps, owed to a physical peculiarity: the right pupil was preternaturally expanded so the whole eye looked dark. Unnerved, Hephaistion sat back on his heels, only then remembering to say, “Thank you.”

  The other sat back also, moving with the succinct quickness of a small animal. “You’re welcome.”

  Then he smiled.

  This, Hephaistion thought, was what the word kharis had been coined for. Pure, raw charm, as thick and rich as Thasian honey. None but a flatterer would call him handsome, yet his dimpled smile compelled like a bewitchment, melting all Hephaistion’s habitual cynicism into an irrational desire to befriend him. Whoever he was. Yet he retreated into the melee before Hephaistion could ask his name.