Salamis

X

When they did get back to the chamber in Ptolemaios’ palace, Menedemos watched in amusement as his cousin made a small production out of barring the door. Then Sostratos rummaged in his large leather sack till he found a smaller one that clinked nicely as he lifted it out.

He reached inside and rummaged through the drakhmai before lifting out something that wasn’t silver. “This,” he said softly but proudly, “this is what I got for the amber I brought here.”

“By the dog!” Menedemos exclaimed. He held out both hands close together, palms up. “Let me have a better look at that.” With visible reluctance, Sostratos gave him the necklace. He felt the weight of the gold and admired the workmanship. “You got value for value and then some, I’d say,” Menedemos agreed. “Do you have any idea how old this is?”

“Old,” Sostratos said. “That’s as much as I can tell you. Five hundred years? A thousand? Five thousand? I couldn’t begin to guess. If I had to bet, I’d say it goes back to the days before the Trojan War.”

“That’s ri—” Menedemos broke off. It might not be ridiculous after all. The Trojan War, people thought, had been fought about nine hundred years before. Everyone knew Egypt was an ancient land. They’d had goldsmiths and jewelers long before brilliant Akhilleus slew Hektor of the shining helm on the windy plains of Troy. Menedemos found a business question instead: “Will you break it up and sell the pieces or keep it together?”

“I’d like to leave it intact,” his cousin answered. “It’s stayed this way for all these centuries. I’d feel I was robbing the world of something precious and wonderful if I took it apart.”

Menedemos suspected the firm might make more profit from selling off the bracelet piecemeal, but he didn’t quarrel with Sostratos. For one thing, they still had to get the piece, and themselves, out of Egypt and back to Rhodes. For another, he understood what Sostratos was talking about. Selling the gold and ivory from the image of Athena in the Parthenon might net more than the statue would as a whole, but it would also be a dreadful desecration. Breaking up the necklace would make a smaller sin, but one of the same kind.

As gently as he could, he gave the necklace back to Sostratos. His cousin hid it under the silver he’d got for Damonax’s oil. The coins had their own value, of course, but that whole sack probably didn’t match the necklace.

“When will the fleet sail? Do you know?” Sostratos asked.

“Not to the day, but it won’t be long,” Menedemos said. “The Ptolemaios has been making ready since before you left for Memphis.” He paused as a different thought struck him. “I wonder if my father’s wife has had the baby yet.”

“We’ll find out when we get back.” Sostratos had only a dim interest in Baukis’ baby.

“I guess we will,” Menedemos agreed tonelessly. He couldn’t let on that his own interest was much greater than his cousin’s. As far as Sostratos knew—as far as anyone but he and Baukis knew—the child surely sprouted from his father’s seed. That was how things had to look to the outside world.

“Would you rather have a little boy or a little girl running around and getting into trouble?” his cousin asked.

“A boy,” Menedemos answered at once. A son! he thought. “I’m glad the gods made me a man. I could teach him what he needs to know to get along in the world.” But not who is father is, or may be, curse it!

“Well, I can see that. A sister isn’t so bad, though,” Sostratos said.

“If you say so. I played with Erinna a bit when we were all small, but I don’t know much about little girls.” Thinking a leer was called for, Menedemos duly produced one. “When they get bigger, though ….”

“Yes, my dear. You don’t have to remind me you’re cockproud,” Sostratos said. “I already know that. Maybe you should remind me which towns we can’t trade in because they have outraged husbands who want to kill you.”

Menedemos raised an eyebrow. “You must have eaten something sour on your way back to Alexandria.”

“The whole thing was sour,” Sostratos said. “I didn’t even know why I was ordered out of Memphis till I walked into the palace here. If Ptolemaios’ man did know why he had to fetch me, he didn’t let on, not even a little bit. Are you sure hiring the Aphrodite to Ptolemaios was smart? If Antigonos and Demetrios get wind of it—”

“I thought about all that. You said it yourself—I’m not as stupid as I look,” Menedemos replied. “I had two choices, O cousin of mine. I could take Ptolemaios’ silver and let him hire the akatos, or I could watch him confiscate it without giving me even a khalkos. He may not call himself a king, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t one.”

Sostratos opened his mouth, then closed it again. After a moment, he remarked, “Maybe I should just shut up.”

“Maybe you should,” Menedemos agreed. “When the lions fight, the mice get mauled by accident.”

“Or not by accident. We’re worth more to Ptolemaios the way we are, but Antigonos just itches to get his hands on our island and our polis and our people and our fleet,” Sostratos said.

“I’d sooner see every trireme we own burn in its shipshed than let the Cyclops get hold of it,” Menedemos said savagely.

“The really frightening thing is, he could be worse,” Sostratos said. “Up in Macedonia, Kassandros is just a soldier. Antigonos is clever—you have to give him that.”

“I’d like to give him a good swift kick, is what I’d like to give him.” Menedemos lowered his voice. “I’d like to give the Ptolemaios another one, too, even harder.”

“He’s made you do something you didn’t want to do, something that may prove bad for Rhodes,” Sostratos said, also not much above a whisper.

“Too cursed right, he has,” Menedemos said, sending Sostratos a grateful glance—his cousin knew what was gnawing at him, all right. “I’m a free Hellene, from a free and independent polis. He’s got no right to treat me like a barbarian or a slave.”

“Remember what the Alexander said on his deathbed when they asked him to whom his empire should go,” Sostratos said.

“ ‘To the strongest,’ ” Menedemos responded. Almost any Hellene from Sicily to the Indos could have done the same. “I don’t care if Alexander did study with what’s-his-name—”

“Aristoteles,” Sostratos supplied.

“Aristoteles. Thanks. I don’t care if Alexander studied with him or not. You know what veneer is?”

“Oh, yes.” Sostratos dipped his head. “They glue thin strips of good wood over cheap stuff so a table will look more expensive than it is. Or they hope it will. Most of the time, you can see what they’re up to.”

“There you go. That’s what I’m talking about, all right,” Menedemos said. “Well, Aristoteles may have given Alexander the veneer of a Hellene, but down under it he was still a Macedonian. And so are his generals. They’re used to having kings. Pretty soon, they’ll get used to being kings and they won’t care a fart about free and independent Hellenes.”

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Sostratos said.

“To the crows with that! It happened to me!” Menedemos exclaimed.

“It hasn’t happened to Rhodes, gods be thanked. If we stay lucky, it won’t,” his cousin said.

“That seems a bigger, harder if every day,” Menedemos replied, and then, after a moment, “Do you suppose the Athenians still imagine they live in a free and independent polis?”

Sostratos needed only a moment of his own to answer that: “The stupid ones do.”

Menedemos started laughing and discovered he didn’t want to stop. If he stopped laughing, he would either shriek or weep, and he feared he also wouldn’t be able to stop either one of those. So he laughed and laughed and laughed.

“Are you all right, my dear?” Sostratos asked after a while, real anxiety in his voice.

Wiping his eyes with the back of his arm, Menedemos tossed his head. “I’m afraid not, O marvelous one,” he said, gasping a little as the spasm passed. “But I daresay it’s for the best. In times like these, anyone who thinks he’s all right has to have something wrong with him, doesn’t he?” Sostratos didn’t answer, which was probably just as well.

Leskhaios didn’t look at Sostratos. The rower looked through him, at a point a couple of cubits behind his head. “No,” Leskhaios said.

“But—” Sostratos began.

“No,” Leskhaios said again, and by the way he said it he might have been Zeus pronouncing doom for some strong-greaved Akhaian in the Iliad. “I don’t care when the Aphrodite’s going back to Rhodes. I’m not going back there with her.”

“What will you do here?” Sostratos asked.

“I’ve been sniffing around, like,” Leskhaios said. “There’s a baker not far from this inn who needs himself a helper. He wants to take on a Hellene, not an Egyptian, so he’ll be able to talk with him. He doesn’t pay a whole lot, but it’s better work than pulling an oar, and if you’re in a bakery you’ll never starve.”

An angry flush heated Sostratos’ face. “You pulled an oar from Rhodes to here, and since then you’ve collected your pay for lying around and doing nothing most of the time.”

“That’s how it goes. I didn’t know we’d be stuck here so long when I climbed into your akatos,” Leskhaios said. “You’d put slaves at the oars if you could trust ’em far enough—they’d cost you less. And have you got any notion of what a rower’s life’s like in winter when the ships stay in port? If I came around to your house to beg some oil ’cause I was flat, you’d set the dogs on me.”

“To the crows with you if we would!” Sostratos snapped. “Sometimes men who’ve rowed on the Aphrodite do come in the wintertime, asking for money or food. My father and I always give—Menedemos’ family, too. We know rowing’s a trade for spring and summer.”

“Mm, maybe. Your family doesn’t have the bad name some shipowners do. I give you so much,” Leskhaios said. “But that’s not the point. The point is, if I stay in Alexandria, I won’t have to worry about getting thin after the cranes fly south.”

Sostratos doubted that. Leskhaios was the kind who did as little as he could to get by, or a bit less than that. Such men often failed to endear themselves to the people who paid them. Telling him so would only be a waste of breath; Sostratos knew as much. Instead, he asked, “What about your family in Rhodes?”

“What about ’em?” the rower said. “If I never see my father again, I’ll thank the gods. He’ll have to hit my mother some more, ’cause he won’t have me to knock around. My brother didn’t live past eight—lockjaw. Don’t have a wife. Don’t have a sweetheart. Maybe I’ll find one here.”

Again, Sostratos wondered. Why would anyone want anything to do with somebody like Leskhaios? “You’re leaving us in the lurch,” he said.

“Don’t blame just me,” Leskhaios answered. “You know as well as I do, I’m a long way from being the only one.”

That made Sostratos’ lips skin back from his teeth in what came closer to a snarl than a smile. Half a dozen rowers had decided they didn’t want to go north with the Aphrodite. Like Leskhaios, the others thought they could do better for themselves here in Egypt, As with Leskhaios, Sostratos thought most of them were fooling themselves, but they didn’t want to listen.

Trying to sound patient, Leskhaios went on, “So if you’ll pay me what you still owe me, I’ll be on my way.”

Sostratos was tempted to tell him he could be on his way without his back pay. More than a few traders would have said just that. What could Leskhaios do about it? Nothing. Nothing legal, anyhow, though murder and arson might jump to mind. But Sostratos prided himself on scrupulous honesty. “I’ll do it,” he said. “It may be less than you hope. You’ve drawn silver while you were here and when you went up and down the Nile with me.”

“Yes, yes,” the rower said. “It’ll keep me afloat a little while, anyway. The baker will be putting money in my hands before long.”

“I think I know how much you’re due. Let me talk to Menedemos and Diokles to make sure we all have about the same number in mind, and I’ll give you your money this afternoon,” Sostratos said.

“That’s fair, I expect. Gods only know how you stay in business when you don’t go out of your way to cheat people,” Leskhaios said.

After Sostratos left the inn where most of the rowers were staying, he kicked at the dirt in the street. He wouldn’t show Leskhaios his fury, but he couldn’t hold it all in, either. When he got back to the palace, he knocked on the door to the room he shared with Menedemos.

His cousin opened it, then drew back a pace. “What’s wrong? You look as though a mask-maker could do a Gorgon from your face.”

“Do I? I’m not surprised. Leskhaios just told me he’s staying in Alexandria,” Sostratos said.

“Another one?” Menedemos swore. He went on, “Many good-byes to him! He didn’t like to row. He just wanted to eat and complain.”

“I know, but he still leaves another bench empty. Where will we get the bodies to fill them up? If we go where there’s fighting, we’ll want a man at every oar,” Sostratos said.

“We could ask the Ptolemaios or his admirals for rowers,” Menedemos said.

“I don’t like doing that. It would be all right till we got to Cyprus, but what about when we go on to Rhodes? Men with families here won’t care to do that,” Sostratos said.

“I’ll do it anyhow. Maybe we can give them back to Ptolemaios after he wins his sea-fight. We wouldn’t need them so much then,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. When he spoke again, it was in a voice not much above a whisper: “But what if Ptolemaios loses?”

His cousin scowled at him. “That would spill the perfume into the soup, wouldn’t it?” Menedemos also made sure no one outside the chamber could overhear. He sighed. “I’ll ask around. Maybe some Rhodians here are willing to pull an oar to go home again. Maybe.” He didn’t sound as if he believed it.

Sostratos didn’t, either. He changed the subject: “By your reckoning, what do we owe Leskhaios?”

“A good kick in the arse,” Menedemos said. He startled a laugh out of Sostratos. Menedemos calculated on his fingers, then named a number not far from the one Sostratos had in mind.

Relieved, Sostratos said, “I want to check with Diokles, too—make sure we haven’t forgotten anything.”

“I forget things all the cursed time. I didn’t think you ever did,” Menedemos said, which made Sostratos’ ears heat. Menedemos continued, “But ask Diokles, of course. If we did miss something, he’ll catch it.”

When Sostratos asked the keleustes what Leskhaios had coming to him, Diokles answered, “How about a sharp stake up his backside, the kind the Persians use to get rid of people they don’t like?”

“Tempting, but I was thinking more along the lines of back pay,” Sostratos said.

“Too bad,” Diokles grunted. Then his face got a faraway look for a few heartbeats. When he came back to himself, he named a figure only a couple of drakhmai less than the ones Sostratos and Menedemos had worked out.

Determined to be as fair as he could, Sostratos paid Leskhaios the highest of the three calculations (his own). After counting the silver coins, the rower rolled his eyes up toward the heavens. “Well, I was afraid you’d give it to me by the back door in spite of all your fancy talk, and by the gods you did.”

Whatever sympathy Sostratos might have felt for him went out as abruptly as a torch dropped in a rain puddle. “If you aren’t happy with it, you can give it back,” he said in a voice so cold and deadly, he had trouble recognizing it as his own.

It made Leskhaios flinch, too. “Never mind that,” he said hastily. “I’m off to make my fortune.” He left the rowers’ inn at something not far short of a run, as if afraid Sostratos would kick him or take the money away if he lingered. He might not have been so far wrong, either.

The captain of one of Ptolemaios’ fives was a Thasian named Blepyros. He might have been carved from the same block of dark wood that had produced Diokles. At the moment, he eyed Menedemos with all the warmth of a Thracian blizzard. “How many rowers are you after?” he demanded, his voice as frigid as the rest of his manner.

“Half a dozen, sir,” Menedemos answered.

And Blepyros thawed as if by magic. “Is that all?” he exclaimed. “I thought you were trying to steal scores of ’em from me.”

“My akatos only has forty oars,” Menedemos said. “I’m just trying to get them all filled.”

“Akatos?” Blepyros’ bushy eyebrows jumped. “Oh. You’re that fellow, the Rhodian. I heard about you.”

“Did you?” Menedemos said tonelessly. How many of Ptolemaios’ skippers had heard about him? How many of them were laughing at the way Ptolemaios had made him join their fleet?

“Sure did. The way the story goes, you held the big boss man for ransom, or near enough as makes no difference, before you finally threw in with him,” Blepyros said. “Must be something to that ‘free and independent’ stuff after all, hey?”

“Well, we like to think so,” Menedemos replied, all at once feeling better about the world. “The rowers need to know my ship will go on to Rhodes after the campaign off Cyprus is over. We won’t come back to Alexandria.”

“I understand. Do you suppose you can put them aboard one of the other ships in the fleet before you head off on your own?”

Menedemos puffed out his cheeks, then blew a stream of air through pursed lips. He’d done more thinking about that after talking with his cousin. “Part of me wants to say yes, O best one, but I don’t dare promise. Gods only know what we’ll run into in Rhodian waters. Maybe we’ll have clear sailing. But if we find pirates or some of the Demetrios’ war galleys, we’ll want a backside on every bench.”

“That makes sense. Your mother may not have licked you all the way dry yet, but you know your trade,” Blepyros said. “Come back tomorrow morning and I’ll line my men up outside the shed here. Tell ’em whatever you’re going to tell ’em, and if five or six want to go with you, fine. I can pick up replacements easy enough.” A certain hard glint in his eye suggested he might not be fussy about how he picked them up, either.

The next morning, the rowers looked like … rowers: sun-tanned men with wide shoulders, thick arms, and horny hands. Most were Hellenes, though there were also a handful of Egyptians. “I need half a dozen men to pull a one-man oar on an akatos from here to Cyprus, and then on to Rhodes,” Menedemos said. “Two drakhmai a day. We won’t come back to Alexandria this year. You can settle in my polis if you like, or you can take passage on a ship sailing here next spring if things stay peaceful. What do you say?”

Three men, two Hellenes and an Egyptian, stepped forward right away. “I’m for it,” one of the Hellenes said in the broad Doric of Crete. “A little fella like that, the work’s bound to be easier than pulling a five along.”

Blepyros waited to see whether more rowers would volunteer. When none did, he said, “All you men who aren’t married, hold up a hand.” Several unwary rowers did. Blepyros pointed at three of them. “You, you, and you. Yes, you, Kerdon. Go with the Rhodian and help him out.”

Kerdon scowled. Then he took another look at Blepyros’ face and thought better of arguing. “Looks like I’m your man, Rhodian,” he said to Menedemos. By the way he talked, he might have sprung from the same Cretan village as the other rower. With more people than it had land for, Crete exported sailors and mercenaries. A lot of the men who stayed behind went to sea anyhow, as pirates. Hard as that life was, it was bound to be easier than trying to scratch out a living on a tiny, dusty, stony plot of ground.

Menedemos sketched a salute to Blepyros. “Much obliged, sir.”

“Any time.” Ptolemaios’ captain turned to the rowers who were changing ships, some willingly, some less so. “Go on, lads. Chances are you can count yourselves lucky. That little toy boat won’t get into any sea fights. You stay with me, who knows how much fun you’ll have off Cyprus?”

Naval battles with fours and fives and sixes were a different business from those involving triremes. Triremes fought with lizard-quick maneuver; the ram at the bow was their main weapon, though they also carried a few archers. Along with the swarms of rowers, the bigger war galleys had far more marines on them. They would lay alongside an enemy ship, board it, overwhelm its fighters, and then slaughter the men at the oars. For all practical purposes, it was land warfare on the ocean.

Menedemos wanted no part of it. The Aphrodite would be at an even worse disadvantage against such seagoing monsters than a trireme would. Hoping his new recruits felt the same way, he said, “Come along with me. You can meet the men you’ll be rowing with.” He eyed the Egyptian. “You do speak Greek, don’t you?”

“Fornicating right, I do,” the brown man answered.

“All right.” Menedemos laughed. “Let’s go, everybody.” As he led the rowers toward the inn where the Aphrodite’s men were quartered, he wondered just where Blepyros would get his replacements. He guessed they’d come from the fishermen and merchant seamen who used the Harbor of Happy Return, on the other side of the long mole from the Great Harbor. Some of them would want to pull an oar for Ptolemaios, or at least for his silver. Others might prove less eager, which, Menedemos suspected, wouldn’t matter one bit to the war galley’s skipper.

As Menedemos and the akatos’ new crewmen neared the inn, Sostratos came out the front door. Seeing the miniature procession, he stopped in glad surprise. “You got them!” he exclaimed.

“I figured I would,” Menedemos answered. Then he spoke to the new rowers: “This is my cousin, Sostratos. He’s toikharkhos on the Aphrodite.” He remembered the title meant something different on a merchant ship from what it did aboard a naval vessel. “That means he’s the supercargo and the purser, not a petty officer. He’ll write down your names, and you’ll draw your pay from him.”

That made Sostratos the object of the new rowers’ interested attention. He took from his belt pouch a stylus and a small, three-faced wooden tablet whose leaves were coated with wax. “I’ll take your names now, if that’s all right.” When he got to the Egyptian, he asked, as Menedemos had, “You do speak Greek?”

“No, not me. Not a fornicating word of it, not even a little bit,” the man answered.

Sostratos blinked. “He did the same thing to me,” Menedemos told him.

“Did he?” Sostratos said, and then, to the Egyptian, “All right, tell me your name.” He poised the sharp end of the stylus above the wax.

“I’m Attinos son of Thonis,” the fellow said.

Sostratos asked him to repeat it, then set it down in Greek letters as best he could. “The real register is on papyrus, which isn’t so easy to alter without leaving a trace,” he said, holding the stylus with the blunt end, the end that rubbed out, uppermost to show what he meant. “I’ll enter all of you properly as soon as I can, but I have what I need for now.”

“Go on in. Meet our Rhodians—they’ve pretty much taken over the place since we got here,” Menedemos told the new men. “They’ll be glad to see you. Nobody wants to start a trip with empty benches.”

In went the rowers. The inn had its own wineshop; Menedemos hoped no brawls would start right away. When things inside the place stayed quiet, he breathed easier. To Sostratos, he said, “They’re warm bodies, anyhow, and at least they know what to do with an oar.”

“My dear, I wasn’t complaining—not a bit of it,” his cousin answered. “I’m more impressed than I can tell you. I didn’t think you’d be able to fother our leak so fast.”

“Thank you!” Menedemos said, and then, “Thank you very much.” Sostratos was more in the habit of calling him a thickskull than of singing his praises. That thought led to another: “Do you know what the Ptolemaios said about you while he was, ah, hiring the Aphrodite?”

“No. What?” Sostratos asked. Menedemos told him, imitating the lord of Egypt’s gruff voice and manner as best he could. Sostratos dug his toes into the dirt in embarrassed pleasure, like a girl hearing someone say she’s pretty for the first time. “Did he really say that? It won’t be easy to live up to.”

“Let’s see if we can get back to Rhodes in one piece, and without Demetrios only half a bowshot behind us. If we manage that, you can worry about everything else later,” Menedemos said.

“You say the sweetest things,” Sostratos murmured. Menedemos laughed and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cousin’s cheek. Yes, when you laughed you could pretend for a little while that the things you laughed about didn’t really matter, and that they had no chance at all of happening.

Sostratos peered over the Aphrodite’s rail, down into the muddy, filthy water of Ptolemaios’ Harbor. The akatos had even less freeboard than usual; Ptolemaios’ workers had filled it fuller with weapons than he and Menedemos did with merchandise.

They had another new rower, as one more man who’d come down from Rhodes decided at the last minute to stay in Alexandria instead of going home again. Like a couple of the other new fellows, Okumenes was a Cretan. He took the akatos’ oars so much for granted, Sostratos wondered if he’d rowed before in a piratical pentekonter. The way his eyes darted now here, now there also suggested he was looking for the chance to lift something.

Out at the opening in the moles that separated Ptolemaios’ harbor from the larger Great Harbor, the lord of Egypt’s fours and fives were going out one by one. The Aphrodite waited with the other ships that carried men and beasts and supplies. The war galleys—there had to be well over a hundred of them—were the teeth and claws of the fleet, the rest of the ships just the tail. Like any other tail, they came last.

People on the moles cheered and waved squares of colored cloth as the war galleys rowed past them. They made a brave show, one the men in the fours and fives would forget as soon as they got out of sight.

The oared transports followed the warships out of Ptolemaios’ harbor. Sostratos took his place at the Aphrodite’s bow. Menedemos clasped the steering oars at the stern. Diokles stood in front of him on the stern platform, hammer and bronze triangle ready to give the rowers their rhythm. For the exit, every oar was manned. They wouldn’t keep that up once they got out on the Inner Sea. Several days of it would leave the rowers on the fours and fives worn and useless in battle.

When the oars on the freight-haulers just ahead of the akatos began churning the water to foam, Menedemos dipped his head to Diokles. “Come on, boys!” the keleustes said. “We may be little, but by the gods we’ll show ’em what we can do!” He smote the triangle with the hammer, at the same time calling, “Rhyppapai!” Another clang. Another “Rhyppapai!” Clang! “Rhyppapai!”

The Aphrodite’s oars dug into the dirty water, a little more raggedly than Sostratos would have liked. The rowers grunted and swore. They hadn’t worked for quite a while; they hadn’t got hardened by going from one polis to another the way they did on most trading runs.

Slowly, slowly, the akatos began to move. The bigger galleys in the fleet’s supply tail weren’t setting the sea on fire with their speed, either; the Aphrodite had no trouble keeping up. She might have left Ptolemaios’ harbor last of all, but Sostratos thought she did so in some style.

By the time she glided out through the opening between the moles, most of Ptolemaios’ cheering claque had given up and gone home. War galleys were exciting, ships laden with sheep or horses or catapult stones much less so. But one of the men still standing there pointed at the Aphrodite not just with his chin but with his index finger and shouted, “Look at the toy boat with all the big ones!”

Sostratos wasn’t about the let anyone sneer at his ship that way. He leaned out over the rail and stared at the man on the mole, widening his eyes as much as he could. As someone who did his best to stay rational, he—mostly—thought the evil eye was so much nonsense. But he knew other people (foolish people, as far as he was concerned) felt otherwise. If this fellow did ….

Sure enough, the Alexandrian noticed his gaze and flinched away from it as he would have from a clenched fist. He thrust out his own fist at Sostratos, thumb thrusting forth between index and middle fingers: a protective gesture. Sostratos just kept on staring. “Don’t you cast a spell on me! Don’t you dare!” the man cried shrilly. “By the gods, I’ll murder you if you do!”

Out into the Great Harbor glided the Aphrodite. Sostratos kept staring till he got too far from the man on the mole to see the point anymore. Then he walked back to the stern platform. As he passed Attinos, the Egyptian rower asked, “You really have the fornicating evil eye?”

“If you think I do, maybe I do,” Sostratos answered, and paused to see what Attinos made of that.

He might be a barbarian who flavored his Greek with obscenities the way a rich man’s cook flavored his cheese casseroles with pepper, but no one would ever call him a fool. With a sly little chuckle, he said, “Like that, huh?” He kept the stroke perfectly while he talked; he’d done enough rowing so he didn’t need to think about it.

“Just like that, my dear,” Sostratos answered, liking him very much in the moment.

“You had the shit-talking lardhead so scared, he futtering near fell in the water,” Attinos said, and laughed some more.

“I was hoping he would, but it didn’t quite happen.” Sostratos went on back to the stern.

“What were you talking about with the new fellow?” Menedemos asked when Sostratos took his place next to Diokles. He explained. “Oh, is that what you were up to?” his cousin said. “I saw you looking at the fellow and I saw him hopping around as though he’d just come out of a brothel full of fleas, but I didn’t know what was going on. Euge! You gave him something to remember you by.”

“If you really did have the evil eye, you should’ve aimed it at the Demetrios,” Diokles said.

“Or at some of the abandoned rogues who’ve cheated us or made us do things that might turn out bad for the polis.” Menedemos named no names, but looked ahead toward Ptolemaios’ gaudily ornamented flagship. By his expression, he wouldn’t have minded owning the evil eye himself at that moment.

More Alexandrians stood on the low, sandy island connected to the mainland by the mole called the Heptastadion: it was seven stadia long. They also cheered the departing war galleys. Because they were farther away, their cries had the strange, attenuated quality voices over water often took on.

Sostratos didn’t think he’d ever left a harbor to applause before. Of course, Rhodes remained a free and independent polis. It had no ruler who would order people to cheer him; it had no people who cared to curry favor with that kind of ruler. If the gods knew mercy, it never would.

If. Still hindmost in Ptolemaios’ fleet, the Aphrodite centipeded out of the Great Harbor and onto the rougher waters of the Inner Sea.