Hannibal: A Private Life

183 BC, Libyssa, Bithynia

The sea is close enough here that I can smell it when the shutters are opened, though the room itself smells of lamp oil, damp wool, and men waiting for news they do not wish to hear from me directly. Libyssa was offered as shelter. It is shelter in the way a narrowed harbour is shelter, useful until the ships appear at its mouth. Prusias sends assurances. Rome sends inquiries. I no longer mistake the order of those things. The table beside me holds maps that will not be used again, a cup I have already considered too often, and dispatches folded small enough for secrecy, which means they carry fear before they are even read. My body is not failing, not in the way old men complain of their bodies, but time has become visible all the same in the caution of servants and the sudden politeness of kings. They mean to deliver me eventually. What remains uncertain is whether I speak first or am spoken over.