Salamis

XVII

Menedemos had just bought some bread with fried cheese on it in the agora when a man strolling by told his companion, “Well, he’s gone and done it.”

“Who’s gone and done what?” the second man asked, which saved Menedemos the trouble.

“The Ptolemaios. He’s gone and put a crown on his own noggin now that Antigonos and Demetrios have started wearing them.”

“How do you know that?” The news-bearer’s friend couldn’t have done a better job of asking Menedemos’ questions for him if he’d rehearsed for a month.

“I heard it from someone who heard it from a ship just in from Paphos.”

“Oh.” The friend considered that. After a moment, he said, “I suppose the Demetrios doesn’t have such a tight hold on the southwest of Cyprus, even after Salamis has fallen.” He might have been a stage magician, only he was picking thoughts out of Menedemos’ head instead of drakhmai from his ear.

Cutting short his own wanderings through the market square, Menedemos hurried home. When he walked in, his father was talking about a fine-looking piece of tuna with Sikon the cook. Menedemos said, “You’ll never guess what I just heard.”

“What? That Ptolemaios has named himself king, too?” his father said. “Pretty soon, the only Macedonian who isn’t wearing a crown will be some knacker who carves up dead farm animals in the hills back of Pella.”

“I just heard it now,” Menedemos said in annoyance. “How did the news get here ahead of me?”

“I heard it in the fish market, young master, and brought it back myself,” Sikon said smugly.

“Ah,” Menedemos said. The fish market, naturally, lay next to the harbor. Any news from the sea would get there before it reached the agora.

“Everyone knew it was coming—more a matter of when than of if,” his father said. “Ptolemaios wouldn’t let Antigonos and Demetrios outrank him for long. And I hear that out in the east, Seleukos has been calling himself a king for a while now when he deals with barbarians—though he hasn’t had the crust to do it with Hellenes.”

“He will from now on,” Menedemos predicted.

“No doubt you’re right. He wouldn’t want to seem a mere general among all those ancient monarchs. They might not let him sit at the same table with their glorious selves when they all gather for supper.” Philodemos could be as sardonic about the great and powerful as he could about his own son.

Menedemos sent him an odd look. “That’s almost the kind of thing I’d look to hear from Sostratos, not from you.”

“I could do worse. Your cousin’s a clever youngster. Even the Ptolemaios—I beg your pardon, even his Magnificent Majesty, King Ptolemaios—thinks so,” Philodemos replied, still in that dry mood. “I could do worse than imitate him. And so could you.”

“I doubt it. If I tried, I’d think myself to death inside a month. And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me—” Menedemos didn’t wait to learn whether his father would excuse him or not. He turned on his heel and strode out of the kitchen.

As he made for the front door, he heard Sikon say, “Do you have to twit him like that?”

“Bah!” his father said. “He takes everything the wrong way. Why, he—”

What mistakes he’d made now, Menedemos didn’t wait to hear. He opened the door, then quietly closed it behind him, cutting off the voices from inside the house. He wanted to slam the door. He’d done that often enough, after one run-in or another with his father. But he held back this time, for fear of frightening Diodoros.

No, he’d never know if the baby was his. Bound to be just as well, he told himself, not for the first time. If he did know, he might throw it in his father’s face in a fit of fury. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have them, gods knew. When the two men clashed, they struck sparks off each other, as stones sometimes did.

Even Baukis couldn’t name Diodoros’ sire. That bothered Menedemos, too, in a different way. He didn’t want to look at the tiny boy—or at her—and imagine his father caressing her, imagine his father penetrating her. Of course his father did just that; he was Baukis’ husband, after all. But imagining it made Menedemos want to behave like one of the characters in the tragedies that Sostratos admired more than he did.

When he was away at sea, none of that mattered, or not so much. Hundreds or thousands of stadia from Rhodes, he didn’t think about it … except when he did. Whether he thought about it or not, he couldn’t do anything about it then. Maybe he wasn’t so clever or rational as his clever, rational cousin, but he was smart enough to get that.

But when he was home again, under the same roof as his father and Baukis …. That had been bad every winter since he’d found himself drawn to his stepmother. It had been worse last winter, when he took her as she was coming home from her women’s festival and when she found she was going to have a baby. Now the baby was here. Menedemos wanted Baukis more than ever, and she had no time even to think of him.

He drank more than he’d been in the habit of doing. He didn’t drink as much as he wanted to. As he’d feared what Baukis might blurt out in the pangs of labor, he feared what he might say if Dionysos seized his tongue in an unguarded instant. He did his best not to leave himself open to unguarded instants.

When he headed for the door late in the afternoon a couple of days later, his father asked, “Where are you off to now?”

“To Simaristos,” he answered truthfully. Simaristos ran far and away the grandest brothel in Rhodes.

Philodemos frowned. “Do you think we’re made of silver, the way Talos was made of bronze in the myth?”

Menedemos had been sure his father would say something like that. He was ready for it. Dipping his head, he said, “By the gods, sir, I do. After everything Sostratos and I brought back from Egypt, we’ve got plenty to let me have a good time if I fancy one. And you know it as well as I do, too.”

He didn’t sound defiant: more like a man stating facts so obvious, they shouldn’t really need stating. His father opened his mouth, but closed it without saying anything. After a couple of heartbeats, he tried again. “Well, enjoy yourself, then,” he managed.

No matter how gruff and grudging he sounded, that was more than Menedemos had looked for from him. “Thank you, Father,” he answered, and left the house whistling.

“Philodemos’ son! This is an unexpected pleasure!” Simaristos said when Menedemos walked in. The brothelkeeper rubbed his hands together, anticipating profit.

“That’s what I’m after—unexpected pleasure,” Menedemos said. Simaristos laughed; anything a client said was funny.

Octopus stewed in garlic sauce wasn’t exactly an unexpected pleasure, but was a savory one. So was Thasian as sweet and smooth as any that had ever traveled on the Aphrodite. Simaristos showed Menedemos the amphora before broaching it (but after making sure he could pay the price). “You will know such things, and know I’m not playing tricks on you,” he said.

“That amphora’s from Thasos, sure enough,” Menedemos agreed.

When he drank a cup’s worth neat, Simaristos clapped his hands, either in admiration or, more likely, in the hope of getting many more coins out of him once he was drunk. “I didn’t know you were Macedonian!” the brothelkeeper exclaimed.

“Please!” Menedemos tossed his head. “Anything but that! I had a bellyful of Macedonians this last trip. A bellyful and a half.”

“However you please, O best one,” Simaristos replied. “Let’s say you’re drinking like a Kelt, then—one of those new barbarians coming down into the lands north of where the Thracians live. They have a name for pouring it down as though there’s no tomorrow.”

“I’ve heard of the Keltoi, yes,” Menedemos said with owlish seriousness; the potent Thasian was hitting him hard. He might make vows against getting sozzled, but Dionysos had a will of his own, and gods were always stronger than men when they wanted to be.

“Would you like to see one? Would you like to futter one?” Suddenly, Simaristos was greasy as pork fat. “We have a new girl here, one of those Keltoi. We call her Khryse.”

“ ‘The Golden One?’ All right,” Menedemos said. Slaves got names like that, and Keltoi were said to be fair.

“Her tribe is the Tolistobogioi—I think I’m saying that right,” Simaristos told him. “To the crows with me, though, if I want to try to call her Tolistobogia, or to make my customers have to say that. Shall I bring her out for you? She’s something special when it comes to women. Even Aphrodite might be jealous.”

“Well, you’ve interested me, anyhow. Why not? Let me see what you’re talking up.” Even with the Thasian dancing through his veins, Menedemos felt sure the brothelkeeper was stretching things.

But when Simaristos brought the girl out of a back room, Menedemos saw he’d told nothing but the truth. She was a couple of digits taller than he was, with wavy golden hair falling down past her shoulders, sky-blue eyes, and skin pale as milk. Even her nipples were only a delicate pink.

Women among the Hellenes were in the habit of shaving or plucking their pubic hair; Menedemos remembered being intrigued to learn Egyptian women did the same. Khryse didn’t. As her bush was only a shade darker than the hair on her head, it seemed more intriguing than barbarous.

“What do you think?” Simaristos asked.

“She’s quite something,” Menedemos asked. To Khryse, he added, “You’re beautiful.”

“I do thank you,” she said quietly. Her Greek had an odd, almost musical, accent.

“What do you want for as much of the night as I feel like spending with her?” Menedemos asked the brothelkeeper.

“Six drakhmai will do it—eight if you want her to ride you like a racehorse,” Simaristos replied. Putting the woman on top and making her do the work always cost more.

Menedemos gave the man two fat silver tetradrakhms. “I may ask for change, and I may not. We’ll just see what happens,” he said.

Simaristos bowed, slick and polite as a Phoenician. “You always were a kalos kagathos, son of Philodemos. Khryse, take him to the blue room. Nothing but the best for him, now.”

“This way, O best one, if you please.” Khryse started up the stairs. Menedemos followed. She was as lovely from behind as from in front.

Sure enough, the blue room’s walls were painted that color. The bed was large and comfortable. Menedemos closed the door. It latched, but had no bar. In case a brawl broke out, Simaristos or a bouncer might need to get in there in a hurry. He shrugged. He didn’t plan on brawling with Khryse.

He took off his chiton and lay down on the bed. He felt the wine, but not enough to keep from rising to the occasion. Khryse got down beside him. “And what might you want, now?” she asked.

He shrugged again. “I don’t know. We’ll do things, and then we’ll do some other things.” She wasn’t Baukis, but she was very beautiful.

After a while, he found it worked the other way round: she was very beautiful, but she wasn’t Baukis. She was also skilled; she gave him great pleasure. When it was over, though, he felt as if it might as well not have happened at all.

By then, it was getting dark. She looked at him in the gathering gloom. “Who did you wish I was, there?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, dully embarrassed. “I didn’t realize it showed.”

“Well, it did. You’re, after all, paying enough for me. Shouldn’t you get the joy you paid for? Will you try again?” Even slaves who were whores had their pride. Khryse was miffed he hadn’t enjoyed her more.

“Give me a bit,” he said; he didn’t rise to the occasion again so soon as he had a few years earlier. “Shall I get some wine for us in the meantime?”

“I won’t say no,” she answered.

If he was spending money, he’d spend money. He got a cup of Thasian for each of them. He knew he’d feel it in the morning, but the morning still lay most of a night away.

As he drank, he wondered why he hadn’t felt this way in Alexandria. He supposed it was that he hadn’t seen Baukis for a while then, and he was across the sea from her. Now she was only a few streets away, doing whatever she was doing with Diodoros … or with Menedemos’ father. Menedemos didn’t want to think about that, so he drank some more.

Khryse poured it down with an ease a tavern tosspot might have envied. Simaristos hadn’t lied when he said Keltoi drank like Macedonians. She reached for him with practiced fingers. “Let’s see if it’s better this time.”

It felt wonderful while it was going on. If you were a man, it always did. Afterwards, the only woman in Menedemos’ mind was Baukis.

Khryse’s sigh mingled resignation and annoyance. “If you cared for the girl you were with as much as you do for the one you haven’t got, you’d be a lover to remember.”

He’d been in the habit of doing that. He’d acquired a reputation for it, in towns around the Inner Sea. Now …. Now he wanted to burst into tears. Telling himself that was the wine, he made himself hold them in. He said, “Sometimes you just can’t get around what’s inside your head.”

She stayed silent some little while. Then, in a low voice, she answered, “Well, it’s plain you’ve never been a slave. Or a woman.”

“You shame me.”

“How can I be doing that? What am I, now? Only a chunk of meat with a pleasing shape. Ask the master if you doubt me.”

Menedemos had no doubt about what Simaristos would say. “I hope you find some way to get free and do whatever it is you want to do,” he said. He fumbled on the floor till he found his belt pouch, which he’d discarded with his tunic. By feel, he got out a didrakhm. “Here. You don’t have to tell the vulture I gave you this.”

“I thank you. He’ll likely find some way to steal it from me, but I thank you even so. A kind thought, it is,” Khryse said. “If I had my way, I’d go home to my own folk. But I’d only be enslaved again if I left Rhodes, and maybe in a place worse than this. I’ve seen some.” She sighed. “And even if I did come back to my clan, they’d hate me and scorn me me for giving myself to every passing man, as though I do it by choice.”

Try as he would, Menedemos found nothing to say to that. If he told her he’d swear off visiting brothels, she wouldn’t believe him. Even he would know he was lying. He’d always thanked the gods he was neither woman nor slave. Now he did it once more, with special fervor.

He picked up his tunic. “I’d better go.”

“Come again if you care to. I’d soon take you than a good many others,” Khryse said. With that faint praise in his ears, Menedemos went downstairs. For a couple of oboloi, Simaristos gave him a tough-looking torchbearer to light his way home and scare off robbers lurking in the darkness. He tipped that slave, too, and hoped the fellow got to keep his silver.

Though the season was drawing on, Sostratos kept regularly visiting the harbor in hopes of picking up news. The weather stayed good, but fewer and fewer ships came from Cyprus. The local rulers, having yielded to Demetrios in preference to being stormed or besieged and sacked, might have thought commerce with Rhodes seemed too disloyal to encourage.

In their sandals, Sostratos supposed he might have felt the same way. Few towns on Cyprus boasted works to match the ones Menelaos had defended at Salamis. Those hadn’t prevailed, so how could any others? And Demetrios and Antigonos, while implacable foes, didn’t make the worst overlords.

So he told himself, while continuing to practice with spear and shield. Rhodes was a nut with a shell tough to crack. Tough enough? All he could do was hope … and go on practicing.

He also suspected Antigonos and Demetrios didn’t care for their new Cypriot subjects trading with men who wouldn’t bend the knee to them. No skippers who did come to Rhodes wanted to admit any such thing. They acted as prickly about independence and respect as any other Hellenes. Wherever Greek was spoken, men were touchy about letting others subject them.

He didn’t ask any Cypriots, then, about whether their cities belonged to the new-crowned kings. He asked questions like, “Have you heard whether Antigonos and Demetrios aim to move against Rhodes?” No one could mind a question like that. What else was likely to be uppermost in a Rhodian’s mind these days?

None of the men from Cyprus said that he’d heard about or seen an expeditionary force fitting out or sailing this way. And then one day the captain of a fishing boat out of Paphos laughed out loud at his question. “Thou hast not learned, then?” he asked.

As always, his old-fashioned dialect made Sostratos want to smile. He carefully kept his face straight, though. “Learned what?” he said. “Not much news from overseas here since the Macedonians all started putting diadems on their heads.”

“Why, man, thou and thy polis’ll be the olives served after a great feast of tunny and mullet and eel,” the fisherman said. “Art thou ignorant, then, of the two kings’ movement against the one?”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it, by the gods!” Sostratos exclaimed. “The first anyone here has, I’m sure. Tell me what you know, if you’d be so kind.”

The Cypriot just stood there on the deck of his boat. He had black, prominent eyebrows: all the more so when he raised one, as he did now. Sostratos could take a hint. He tossed the fellow a drakhma. Deft as a monkey, the fisherman caught it out of the air. “I am in thy debt,” he said. “ ’Tis true—they move on Egypt by both land and sea, the elder king commanding the army setting out across the desert Nilewards, the younger leading the fleet accompanying.”

“If they can do that ….” Sostratos’ voice trailed away. This was the time to try, sure enough. With Ptolemaios weakened by the sea-fight off Salamis, Egypt might fall into Antigonos and Demetrios’ hands like a ripe fruit. And the Cypriot was right—next to Egypt, Rhodes, rich as it was, would be only a snack.

“Verily, thou seest whither bloweth the wind,” the Cypriot said.

“I do. And I thank you.” Sostratos carefully didn’t say anything like Forsooth or thee. He didn’t mock people for their accents—not to their faces, anyhow. He hadn’t liked it a bit when the Athenians snickered at the Doric drawl he’d had when he came to study at the center of Greek learning and wisdom, and had sense enough to see other people were unlikely to care for what he didn’t. He added, “Men here who are more important than I am will need to hear this. Can you come with me and tell them whatever you know about it?”

“Will they pay me more, so I waste not my time? Otherwise, belike I’d make better use of selling the mackerel in my hold.”

He cared nothing for Rhodes except for the money he could get here. Why should he? It wasn’t his polis. Most Hellenes had always brought that attitude to their dealings with their neighbors. It was their besetting flaw. Because of it, the Great Kings of Persia had almost conquered Hellas, and the kings of Macedonia had. The ancient Greek homeland was a backwater these days.

Except for Rhodes, Sostratos thought, not without a certain parochial pride of his own. Except for Rhodes.

He realized the fishing-boat captain was still waiting for an answer. “You’ll be paid, O best one. By the gods, I’ll pay you myself if no one else does.”

“Thy speech shows thee a true kalos kagathos. I’ll come with thee,” the skipper said. Before he did, though, he briefed the three men with him on what he wanted to make from the catch. They were all young, two clean-shaven and one with a soft, thin, fuzzy beard, and they all looked a bit like him. “My sons, and a nephew,” he told Sostratos as he gained the pier with a gangplank.

“Likely lads,” the Rhodian said politely. “Come this way, if you’d be so kind.” For calling him a kalos kagathos, Sostratos would have forgiven his new acquaintance almost anything. The praise would have mattered more had he got it younger, but he didn’t despise it even now.

They walked past the gymnasion on the way to Komanos’ home. The Cypriot eyed the men there training in warlike arts. “Thy polis hath no trust in kings,” he remarked.

“Would you?” Sostratos returned, and then, “Tell me your name, if you would, so I can give it to my leaders.”

“I hight Paramonos, the son of Khairemon. And thou art …?”

Sostratos gave his name. A block farther on, he stopped in front of Komanos’ house and knocked at the door. The old Lykian who was Komanos’ man of affairs opened it. “Hail, son of Lysistratos,” he said, his Greek almost without accent after many years of slavery. Dipping his head to Paramonos, he added, “And hail to you as well, best one.”

“For which I thank thee,” Paramonos said.

“Is your master in, Lydos?” Sostratos asked.

“He is, sir,” the old man replied. “Come into the andron. I’ll have refreshments brought for you and your friend, and tell the master you wish to speak with him.”

The men’s chamber was larger and grander than the one in Sostratos’ home, or Menedemos’. They were far from poor, but Komanos was rich. Another slave brought in wine and olives and figs candied in honey; Lydos didn’t lower himself to such a menial task.

After a short pause to let his guests eat and drink, Komanos walked into the andron. He clasped hands with Sostratos and, after Paramonos was introduced to him, with the Cypriot as well. Sostratos said, “I met Paramonos at the harbor. As soon as I heard his news, I brought him straight to you.”

“Did you? You’re still a young man, but not one to get excited over nothing. I’ve seen that before,” Komanos said. Sostratos stared down at the mosaic tiles under his feet, embarrassed and pleased at the same time. Menedemos wouldn’t have been flustered; he would have strutted. Komanos turned to the fisherman. “And what is this news, sir?”

Paramonos told of Antigonos and Demetrios’ move against Egypt. He gave details Sostratos hadn’t heard before: that Antigonos, with 80,000 men, was advancing on the Nile from Gaza, while Demetrios had accompanied his father down the coasts of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine with a fleet of 150 warships and some large number of transports.

“And they seize Egypt and put the Ptolemaios to the sword, they’ll swallow Rhodes for a sweet,” Paramonos finished. “An they fail there, haply they’ll have thy polis in place of the supper they ate not.”

Komanos sighed. “I wish I could tell you you were mistaken, my friend, but I fear you see all too clearly.” He dug in his belt pouch, found a pair of massy silver tetradrakhms, and put them in Paramonos’ callused palm. “This for your grace in telling us what you’ve learned.”

“I thank thee for thy kindness,” the Cypriot said. “Sostratos here assured me I’d not find thee lacking, and I see he spoke but the truth.”

“Will you stay for supper with me?” Komanos asked. “And you, too, Sostratos, of course?”

Paramonos tossed his head. “Again I thank thee, but I needs must say thee nay. I’d best hie me back to the harbor, to make sure my spawn and my brother’s son make all they can from what we brought to sell.”

“You will know your own business best, of course,” Komanos said smoothly, and then, in a louder voice, “Lydos! Show the gentleman to the door, if you’d be so kind.”

By the speed with which Lydos appeared, he’d been standing just out of sight of the doorway. “Come with me, sir, if you would,” he said to Paramonos. “Will you need help finding your way back to the harbor?” He didn’t pretend he hadn’t overheard.

“Nay, though thou’rt good to enquire.” Paramonos smiled the kind of smile Sostratos had also aimed at landlubbers. “Sun and shadows will guide me back as well as any man might.”

“As you please, of course,” Lydos answered, and led him to the front door. How else could a slave respond to a free man?

After the door closed again and the bar thudded into place, Komanos used his fingers as if they were scissors blades to mime cutting a mourning lock from his gray hair. “I don’t see how we can hope to stave off war now when spring comes round again,” he said to Sostratos. “Shall we cheer for Antigonos and Demetrios in the present fight, or for Ptolemaios?”

“For Ptolemaios,” Sostratos said at once. “If he wins, it will weaken the two kings. Also, we’ll still have an ally then, even if not such a strong one as we’d like.”

“That’s very plain once you say it.” Komanos dipped his head. “And we buy a fair bit of our grain from Egypt. I wouldn’t want Antigonos and Demetrios to pinch us with hunger that way. Yes, you’re a sensible chap, all right.”

You could have seen it for yourself if you’d thought for a moment instead of just talking, Sostratos thought. There would have been a day, and it wouldn’t have been so long before, when he would have come right out with that. Little by little, he was learning you didn’t always help yourself with the full and exact truth.

Sokrates never did learn that. Men would remember Sokrates for centuries to come; Sostratos had the sorry certainty men wouldn’t remember him the same way. But, in the end, what had the full and exact truth got Sokrates? Hemlock. Having watched a man die from it, Sostratos knew Platon hadn’t told the full and exact truth about what a nasty way to go it was.

Komanos said something—Sostratos realized he had no idea what. “I’m sorry, O best one. I was woolgathering,” he said sheepishly.

“Thinking those fine, clever thoughts of yours, I’m sure,” the civic leader said with a smile. He knew how to keep men sweet, sure enough. To Sostratos, perhaps because he had so much trouble getting along with people, that seemed a more important talent than being clever. Komanos continued, “What I said was, if Antigonos and Demetrios do take Egypt from Ptolemaios, we may have to acknowledge them whether we want to or not.”

“Demetrios freed Athens last year. He says he did, anyway. So do the Athenians. But he has soldiers in the polis, and I think I’d sooner die than lick a man’s arse the way the Athenian Assembly did with him. I was there, sir, with my cousin. We saw it.”

“I understand. Believe me, I want Rhodes to stay truly free and independent, too. But when the choice is between submitting and actually dying, it gets harder. The Alexander had a garrison here for a little while when you were a boy. We got rid of it. We could do that again.”

“I remember, sir.”

“Yes, you would have been the kind of boy who took note of such things, I’m sure. I am no god. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t want to close off any choices, though.”

“That’s … bound to be wise,” Sostratos said with reluctant respect. “Maybe I could stand for Macedonian pikemen swaggering through the streets. But Antigonos and Demetrios pad out their fleet with pirates. The idea of those stinking jackals coming into our harbor ….” He made a fist.

“Spoken like a trading man. You won’t be alone in feeling that way, either. It’s the kind of thing we can dicker about if worse comes to worst. The kings will want our fleet to sail alongside them, too. I can hope they’ll be reasonable.”

“They’ll be reasonable—as long as we do whatever they command,” Sostratos said. “Flattering them till they glow with all the grease we’ve smeared on them won’t hurt, either. Demetrios laps up praise the way a Molossian hound laps up water.”

“I’ve heard the same thing,” Komanos replied. “Antigonos, though, is supposed to be harder to charm that way. The old Cyclops has a jaundiced view through the eye he’s got left, people say.”

“I’ve heard the same thing. I don’t know how true it is.” Sostratos left it there, not caring to quarrel with Komanos. He did know Antigonos hadn’t declined any of the ridiculous honors Athens had conferred on Demetrios and him. But he could have kept quiet about them because his son enjoyed them, not because he did himself.

Sostratos had also heard the old man doted on Demetrios, all the more so now that Philippos, his other son, had died. There was a story that he’d gone to visit Demetrios and got to his room just as an uncommonly beautiful hetaira was coming out. Later, Demetrios told him he’d been in bed with a fever, at which Antigonos chuckled and replied, “Yes, I saw her leaving a little while ago.”

That little tale sparked a thought in Sostratos. He said, “Sir, if the polis boasts something uncommonly lively in the female line and we make Demetrios a present of her, that might make him think better of us. After he and Antigonos come back from their fight in Egypt, I mean, of course.”

Komanos pursed his lips, considering. “That’s not the worst notion I ever heard, by Aphrodite’s sacred piggy,” he said. “I don’t go to the brothels as often as I used to, so I don’t know whether we’ve got anyone special enough or not. I’ll ask Simaristos, though. If he doesn’t have a girl like that himself, he’ll know whether any of the other brothelkeepers does.”

“Good enough.” Sostratos knew of Simaristos’ place. When he got to the urge, he visited less expensive establishments. Even if the women at those places weren’t quite so pretty, what you did with them or what you had them do for you felt just as good. And going home with more silver felt good, too.

Or he could just take Threissa to bed again. Most masters wouldn’t stop because she didn’t care for it. Her resentment might even have excited some men more. But he wasn’t one of those men. He wanted a willing partner, even if she was willing only because of money.

He said his farewells and started home, to pass the news to his kin. He hoped Ptolemaios prevailed, not only because that would be good for Rhodes but also because Egypt’s newly proclaimed king thought well of him. That mattered little in the grand scheme of things, but it did to him.