Agariste was glad Manias was with her when she came across groups of young men, shouting and arguing. Order would soon be restored, she knew. Her husband would organise them and have them work until they were exhausted. Xanthippus knew how to apply force and how to bend men to his will. It was his talent, the reason Themistocles had called him home.

When they reached the site of her husband’s town-house, it had been consumed. Somehow, Agariste had hoped for more than a few charred beams and a broken column. The door was still discernible, but made into a shiny black plate that broke under the pressure of a hand.

‘We’ll need new wood – and tools,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t think iron tools would have burned. Manias? Will the road be safe, do you think? We could fell trees out at the estate, if they are still there. Surely not all will have burned. We’ll need as many men as you can find to work. Can you gather them?’

‘I think so,’ Manias said.

He had been a slave to her house for over thirty years, serving her own father and uncle before her. Though the hair on his forearms and chest was white, he was still strong and somehow relieved to have a purpose. His freedom remained, as a hard seed in him. He felt it there. Yet when he heard Agariste rattling off instructions, it brought a sort of comfort amidst all the strangeness of the new world.

‘We’ll rebuild, Manias,’ she said. ‘Take Ariphron out to the estate. Pericles will keep me safe until you return. Eleni and I will clear the site and gather whatever might be reused. I think this would be a good time to buy the plots on either side, if we can make the owners a good offer.’

Manias blinked at that. She was looking around her, like everyone else, but somehow seeing the future. He nodded to her. A fleeting thought had him wondering how she would find silver even to pay for workers, when all Athens wanted the same. Yet somehow, he knew she would do it. Or her husband would. For some of the families wandering through what had been their home, broken walls and burned streets would be the end of the world. Yet they were Athenian – and he saw what that meant in Agariste. The world owed them nothing, but that did not matter. They would rebuild. Better and more splendid than before.

Part Two

Part Two

‘No one escapes his fate, whether brave or coward, not from the moment he is born.’

– Homer, The Iliad

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