No one moved on the wall, Mardonius noted. After what he had witnessed at close hand in the pass of Thermopylae, he’d half-expected the gates to be thrown open and the Spartans to come charging out. He spat again in the dust, disgusted at the relief washing through him. Damn them for the damage they had done! He wondered if he would ever be able to face those red-cloaked warriors without his stomach creeping up behind his ribs.

He reminded himself of what the Thebans had sworn was true. The Spartans had no more than ten thousand – at the very most. As Xerxes had ordered with Leonidas, Mardonius could surround them, bring them down with spears and arrows and sling-stones. They were just men. Their gods were false. He told himself that, though his stomach croaked, for all the world like a warning voice.

Agariste stepped down once again onto the port of Piraeus. She knew well enough that Athens would not be the same, but it was hard to comprehend the reality. The shore was littered with broken beams and curved ship strakes like the carcasses of whales. Bodies still bumped every hull afloat, some shuddering as if alive. Fish bit at them, she knew, nipping at flesh unseen. She had seen one poor fellow dragged out with great pale parts missing from his face. The rest were left where they lay for the moment. Real life – ordinary life – had not returned.

She stood, with her three children, on a stone dock. The horses she had brought down from the estate had long vanished, of course, either stolen or run off. Agariste understood she would have to walk. She looked round as another of the young women in her household came running up, head down and wild-haired. Two others had found their mistress, full of apologies for their absence. Agariste had caught glimpses of them in their brief exile across the water. She was certain one of them had also seen her, but Agariste had not called her over, for fear she might not come. Yet with every passing hour, the laws and certainties of life were being asserted once more. The slaves of her house had nowhere else to go, after all. If there was a moment of resentment or resignation in them, it was quickly hidden.

Agariste felt her heart leap when she saw another face she knew in the passing crowd. The entire city was flooding through that port, trudging home to whatever they would find in Athens. The Acropolis was visible in the distance, as if nothing had changed. If not for the smell of smoke and bodies turning in the surf, it might almost have been an ordinary day.

‘Manias!’ she called.