The Gryphon's Skull

8

Ptolemaios looked searchingly from Sostratos to Menedemos and back again. Sostratos did his best to look back without flinching. He'd thought some flunky of Ptolemaios' would question them; he hadn't expected to be brought before the ruler of Egypt himself. “So,” Ptolemaios rasped, “you say you weren't dickering over the price you wanted for getting him out of my reach?”

“That's right, sir,” Sostratos answered. “Besides, even if we'd wanted to—which we didn't, as my cousin and I have told you over and over—we couldn't have gone anywhere with Polemaios.”

A torch behind Ptolemaios' head crackled. The sun had set, but torches and lamps made the andron of the ruler of Egypt's residence almost as bright as day. Ptolemaios leaned forward, thrusting his blunt-featured, strong-chinned face toward the two Rhodians. “Why not?” he said.

“Because we've got sprung planking, that's why not,” Menedemos exclaimed, his temper slipping. “If you don't believe us, ask any of your carpenters. We've been screaming a: them for most of a month now, but they won't give us the time of day—they're too busy with your polluted ships to care a fig about ours.”

Sostratos feared his cousin had spoken too boldly. Ptolemaios, though, only dipped his head, remarking, “You say what's on your mind, don't you?”

“Yes, sir,” Menedemos answered. “If we could have got our ship repaired, we would have been long gone from here, and then you wouldn't be wondering if we were plotting with Antigonos' nephew.”

“Suppose I ask my shipwrights if you've been coming by?” Ptolemaios said.

“By the dog of Egypt, go ahead,” Menedemos burst out. Again, Sostratos wondered whether he should have used that particular oath to the ruler of Egypt. Menedemos went on, “Your men will tell you we've been in their hair like lice,”

“Heh.” Ptolemaios scratched reminiscently. “I've been lousy a time or two—more than a time or two. T hate those little bastards.” He called for one of his men—a soldier, not a servitor—and spoke to him in a low voice. The fellow dipped his head. He hurried away. Ptolemaios went on, “We'll see if you're telling the truth.”

If the Rhodians hadn't been, that would have alarmed them. As things were, Menedemos said only, “Fine.”

“What's going to happen to Polemaios now?” Sostratos asked, that being what was uppermost in his mind.

Ptolemaios scowled. “That son of a whore was trying to win over my officers with sweet talk and bribes. I took him in, a stray dog, and he used me so? I'll give him no bites at all, only a sip: he drinks hemlock tomorrow.” He laid the full weight of his formidable stare on Sostratos. “And what do you think of that?”

“May I watch, sir?” Sostratos blurted.

“What?” Ptolemaios blinked. Whatever sort of answer he'd expected, that wasn't it. He stared more grimly than ever. “Why?”

Sostratos wished he'd thought more before speaking. He answered as best he could: “Because I studied at the Lykeion in Athens; and I've talked with men from the Academy, the school Platon founded; and I've read Platon's tale of how Sokrates died. I'd like to see it for myself, if I could.”

“I've read the Phaidon, too,” Ptolemaios said, which surprised Sostratos in turn; the ruler of Egypt looked like a warrior, not a man who'd studied philosophy. And Ptolemaios surprised him all over again by continuing, “That man wrote like a god.”

“Y-yes,” Sostratos stammered; his amazement came not because he disagreed but because bluff Ptolemaios was voicing such art opinion.

Going on in the same vein, the Macedonian marshal sighed and said, “I wish I would have met him. I was nineteen or twenty when he died, but I didn't get down to Athens till. . . later.”

Till after the battle of Khaironeia, Sostratos realized he meant: after Philip of Macedon crushed Athens as a power. He eyed the ruler of Egypt. Khaironeia had been fought three years before he himself was born. So much had happened since—Alexander's astonishing career and the wars of his successors—that seeing a man who'd fought there seemed a surprise, too. He's only a few years older than my father, Sostratos reminded himself. But Ptolemaios had been so many places, done so much . . .

Ptolemaios' thoughts had traveled down a different road. He shook a forefinger at Sostratos and said, “I warn you, it's not as neat as Platon tells it.”

“Sir?” Lost in his own musings, Sostratos had dropped the thread of the conversation.

“Hemlock,” Ptolemaios said. “Are you sure you want to see it?”

“Oh,” Sostratos said, and then, after some thought, “Yes. Yes, I am. I'd ... like to know what Sokrates went through.”

“Ah,” Ptolemaios said. “I can understand that. It may be foolishness, but I can understand it. All right, young fellow. I'm keeping Antigonos' nephew in the house next door to this one. You be here early tomorrow morning and you'll see what you want to see. But don't dawdle; my men won't wait. Bargain?”

“Bargain,” Sostratos said at once. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don't thank me, not till after you know what you talked yourself into.” Ptolemaios turned to Menedemos. “What about you? Do you want to watch Polemaios die, too?”

Menedemos tossed his head. “Not me. What I want is a carpenter.”

As if on cue, the man Ptolemaios had sent out came back into the andron. “Well?” the ruler of Egypt barked at him.

“Your Excellency,” the man replied, “the shipwrights all say these Rhodians have been clinging to them like leeches in a swamp.”

“Oh, they do, do they?” Ptolemaios rumbled. His messenger dipped his head. The marshal pointed at Menedemos. “You'll have your woodworker tomorrow. You can keep an eye on him instead of on Polemaios.”

“Thank you very much,” Menedemos said. “I think that's a better bargain.”

“You and your cousin both want to see things for yourselves,” Ptolemaios said. “You just want to see different things, that's all.” He gestured toward the doorway of the andron. “Go on, get out of here. I've wasted too much time on you,”

“May we beg a torch, to light our way back to the ship?” Sostratos asked.

“Take one from the courtyard.” Ptolemaios gestured again, even more imperiously than before. Sostratos retreated, his cousin on his heels.

Outside, a little twilight still lingered: enough, with the torch, to help the Rhodians find their way. As soon as they were well away from Ptolemaios' residence, Menedemos burst out, “Are you out of your mind?”

“What?” As Sostratos tossed his head, he stepped in something damp and nasty. He scrapped his foot in the dirt to clean it. “No, just curious. Ptolemaios understood that. He understood it better than I thought he would.”

“He understood it wouldn't cost him anything to humor a zany,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos tossed his head again. “No, I don't believe that's what he was thinking. He's read Platon himself. I never would have guessed that of a Macedonian, even if Aristoteles did teach Alexander.”

His cousin walked along for a couple of paces before saying, “Well, maybe it worked out for the best. You did convince him we weren't plotting with Polemaios. And”—Menedemos did a couple of dance steps, his shadow swooping wildly in the torchlight—”we'll get the Aphrodite fixed up.”

“That's good,” Sostratos agreed. “That's very good. We'll finally be able to press on towards Athens.”

“Toward Miletos first,” Menedemos said as they started up the quay. Sostratos swallowed a sigh.

“Gods be praised!” Diokles said when they came aboard the merchant galley once more. “When the soldiers took you away, I didn't know what would happen next.”

“As a matter of fact, neither did we,” Sostratos said. “It's all right, though.”

“It's better than all right,” Menedemos added. “We get a carpenter tomorrow.”

“Euge!” Diokles exclaimed. Then he asked, “What does Polemaios get?”

“Something to drink,” Sostratos answered. “He won't be thirsty afterwards, either.”

“Something to .. . ? Oh.” The oarmaster didn't need long to figure that out. “Well, can't say I'm surprised. You play those games and lose, you pay.”

“Just so,” Sostratos said, and waited for Menedemos to tell Diokles and the handful of sailors aboard the merchant galley what he'd be doing in the morning.

But Menedemos said only, “Kleiteles will be wondering what happened to us. I'll have to send someone over there tomorrow and let him know. I wouldn't have minded another round or two with his slave woman, either.” He shrugged. “Well, it'll be a hard deck tonight, not a soft bed and a wench. Can't be helped, I suppose.” He lay down on the planking as calmly as if there were no such things as beds or women within a thousand stadia.

Diokles went forward to sleep sitting on a rower's bench and leaning against the planking, as he always did when aboard ship. Sostratos took off his chiton, folded it up for a pillow, and lay down beside Menedemos, wrapping a himation around himself for warmth. “Good night, my dear,” he murmured.

“Good night,” his cousin answered. “You'd better not sleep late tomorrow, or you'll miss your big chance.”

He meant it sarcastically, which didn't mean he was wrong. Sostratos said, “You usually wake before I do. Give me a shake if I'm still sleeping.”

“All right, though why you'd want to watch such a thing . . .” Menedemos said no more, but rolled onto his side with his back to Sostratos. In a few minutes, he was snoring. Sostratos stayed awake a little longer, but not much.

Next thing he knew, Menedemos' prodding hand was on his shoulder. The sun hadn't risen. Sostratos needed a moment to remember why his cousin was getting him up so early. When he did, he stopped the feeble complaints he'd been making and said, “Thank you. I know what needs doing now.”

He gulped bread and cheese and wine, threw on his tunic, and hurried into the city of Kos. When he got to the street on which Ptolemaios was staying, he had no trouble figuring out which of the houses next door to the ruler of Egypt's residence held Antigonos' nephew. That one had more soldiers guarding it than did Ptolemaios' house itself. How many of Polemaios' men had come from Khalkis to Kos? Enough to leave Ptolemaios nervous, however calm things seemed at the moment.

Sostratos gave his name to one of the guards in front of the door. “Tell me who your father is, too,” the fellow said. When Sostratos did, the soldier dipped his head. “All right, you are who you say you are.” He rapped on the door. “Open up in there. That Rhodian's here.”

The man who did open the door was another soldier, not a house slave. “Come along with me,” he said briskly, and led Sostratos to the andron. The courtyard was also full of armed men. The soldiers in the andron were older, and looked to be of higher rank. Ptolemaios' witnesses, Sostratos thought. One chair among them remained empty. Sostratos' escort waved him into it. He tossed his head in bemusement as he sat down: the ruler of Egypt thought of everything.

Polemaios strode into the andron a few minutes later. He wasn't bound or fettered, and the soldiers flanking him looked very alert. A supper couch with a small table beside it waited for him. As he reclined on the couch, he glared at the men who'd come to see him die. “To the crows with all of you,” he said harshly, and then, catching sight of Sostratos, “One more vulture waiting for my carrion, eh?”

Before Sostratos could find any words, a man brought in a plain earthenware cup and set it on the table. He started to slip out of the room. “Wait,” Polemaios said. “Have I got enough here to pour out a libation before I drink?”

With a start, Sostratos recalled that Sokrates had asked the same question. His gaoler had said no. This fellow dipped his head. “Go on, if you care to. There's enough In there to do in an elephant.”

“Taking no chances, eh?” Antigonos' nephew said, not without pride. He lifted the cup and spilled out a few drops, as if he were offering a little wine to Dionysos. Then he drank the poison down. As he lowered the cup, he made a horrible face. “Oh, by the gods, that's vile stuff. You'd never catch me drinking it more than once.”

“Euge! Bravely done,” murmured the officer sitting next to Sostratos. The Khodian was inclined to agree. Polemaios might have earned every bit of what he was getting, but that didn't mean he wasn't dying well.

And he hadn't quite finished. He splashed some of the dregs from the cup onto the floor of the andron, saying, “This for Ptolemaios the beautiful.” He might have been playing kottabos and praising a pretty boy.

A couple of Ptolemaios' officers laughed out loud. Their master was a great many things, most of them praiseworthy, but hardly beautiful. In his own blocky way, Sostratos thought, he must have made as unlovely a youth as I did.

Polemaios glared at the fellow who'd fetched in the hemlock. “I don't feel anything,” he said. “What do I do now?”

“Walk around till your legs get heavy, if you like,” the man answered. “Then just lie down. It will work.”

Antigonos' nephew muttered something nasty under his breath. He stumped around the andron. The soldiers watched him closely, their spears at the ready. He had nothing left to lose now. Who could guess what he might do? He caught them watching, and twisted his fingers into an obscene gesture.

Back and forth, back and forth strode Polemaios. The whole business took longer than Sostratos had thought it would. He'd got the impression from the Phaidon that Sokrates had died fairly fast. But Sokrates had been old, and of no more than average size. Polemaios was a huge bear of a man, and in the prime of life. Maybe that was why the drug needed longer to work on him.

Most of an hour had gone by before he grunted and said, “I can't feel my feet.” He looked pale. Sweat beaded his forehead.

Sostratos looked around for the man who'd brought the deadly dose, but the fellow had left the andron. One of Ptolemaios' officers said, “You can probably lie down now.”

“Right.” Moving with some difficulty, Polemaios made his way over to the couch. As he eased himself down onto it, he said, “Before I came in here, that son of a whore told me the drug wouldn't hurt. One more lie.”

“What does it feel like?” Sostratos asked.

“Drink some yourself and find out, you nosy bastard,” Polemaios said. But then he went on, “Feels like my legs are on fire, and my belly, too. And I'm going to—” He leaned over the side of the couch and was noisily sick.

Besides the usual sharp stink of vomit, the air held an acrid tang Sostratos had never smelled before—the odor of hemlock, he realized. The officer sitting next to him waved to one of the soldiers and said, “Go fetch the man who brought the drug. Find out if puking it up will save Polemaios. If it does . . .” He slashed his thumb across his throat. The soldier hurried away.

But when the poisoner came back, he said, “No, it's too late now. He may take a little longer, but he's still a dead man. With hemlock, you need to heave it up right away to have any chance of coming through.”

Polemaios vomited again half an hour later. He cursed Ptolemaios, and also all the men who were watching him die. Sostratos spat into the bosom of his chiton to turn aside the omen. He wasn't the only one, either.

“Cold,” Antigonos' nephew moaned. “So cold. And it's getting dark.” He paused, then tossed his head. “It can't be so late in the day already. The cursed drug must be stealing my sight.” Despite the ravages the hemlock worked on his body, his mind stayed clear. Sostratos would have preferred delirium.

After a while, Polemaios fouled himself, adding one more stench to the air in the andron. The man who'd given him the hemlock came up to him and said, “I'm going to feel of you, to find out how far the drug has gone.”

“Go ahead,” Polemaios answered. “I can't feel any of myself down past my middle anymore.”

The poisoner probed at his groin and belly. “Your body's cold up to your navel. When it gets to your chest, that will be the end, because your heart will stop and you won't be able to breathe.”

“I wish it would hurry up,” the big Macedonian said. “I don't want to go on lying here smelling like Ptolemaios.” Even as death advanced on him, he had the spirit to revile the man who was its author. But the ruler of Egypt had had the right of it, too: in the Phaidon, Platon had surely cleaned up the way Sokrates perished, not wanting to present his beloved teacher in an unflattering light.

Polemaios began fighting for air, each breath coming harder than the one before. “Furies take—all of you—and especially—Ptolemaios,” he said, forcing the words out in little bursts. With ever increasing effort, he took a few more breaths, and then, after one last soft sigh, breathed no more.

The man who'd given him the drug took hold of his wrist, feeling for a pulse like a physician. When the fellow let go, Polemaios' arm flopped down limply. The poisoner dipped his head to his audience. “It's over, best ones.”

“About time, too,” grumbled the officer next to Sostratos. He got to his feet and stretched. “I really have to piss.”

Another officer said, “Remember, we've got to mix his men in amongst our own so there aren't enough of 'em in any one place to give us trouble.”

That struck Sostratos as a good idea, and very much the sort of thing Ptolemaios would think of. Yet another officer said, “As long as we pay 'em on time, they shouldn't cause too many problems. Mercenaries worry about what they get first and everything else afterwards.” He added, “Let's get out of here. This place stinks.”

Sostratos was glad to breathe fresh air out in the courtyard, too. His shadow puddled at his feet. It was close to noon. He hadn't realized he'd been in the andron so long. Several slaves went into the room. They came out carrying Polemaios' corpse. Sostratos wondered whether whoever owned this place knew it had just been used for an execution. Were the house his own, it wouldn't have been just a matter of making it ritually clean once more. Even after that, he wouldn't have cared to hold a symposion, say, in the chamber where a man had been put to death.

Fortunately, that wasn't his worry. He wouldn't see this place again, and he was glad of it. A soldier politely opened the door for him. When he stepped out into the street, a guard asked, “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”

How am I supposed to answer that? I was curious about how hemlock works, but did I really want to watch a man die? Finding no way to separate the one from the other, Sostratos sighed and said, “I suppose I did.” He hurried away before the guard could find any other questions he didn't care to think about.

When he got back to the harbor, Menedemos hailed him with, “It's over, eh?” Sostratos dipped his head. His cousin went on, “How did he do?”

“As well as he could,” Sostratos answered. “Ptolemaios was right— it's an uglier business than Platon made it out to be.” He could change the subject here, could and did: “How's the Aphrodite doing?”

Before Menedemos could answer, the sound of a man pounding on something with a mallet came from under the poop deck, Sostratos' cousin beamed. “That's Nikagoras,” he said. “He got here just after you went into the polis, and he's been banging away like Talos the bronze man ever since.” He raised his voice: “Oë, Nikagoras! Come out for a cup of wine and say hello to my cousin,”

More banging, and then someone—presumably Nikagoras—spoke from below: “Let me finish driving this treenail home. After that, I'm your man.” The banging resumed.

“He's already joining the timbers, is he?” Sostratos was impressed. “He does know his business.”

“I heard that. I should hope I do,” Nikagoras said. After still more banging, he grunted. “There. That'll hold the son of a whore.”

“Best part of it is, Ptolemaios is paying for him, too,” Menedemos said.

“That is good news,” Sostratos agreed. “Being laid up here has cost us too much already.” He lowered his voice: “Maybe he's grateful we didn't sail away with Andgonos' nephew.”

“Maybe.” Menedemos also spoke quietly. “To the crows with me if I know where we would have taken him, though, even if we'd wanted to take him anywhere.”

Sostratos dipped his head. “A point.” Polemaios had made enemies of all the Macedonian marshals except Lysimakhos up in Thrace and Seleukos in the distant east, and no doubt the only reason he hadn't fallen foul of them, too, was that he hadn't had much to do with them.

Nikagoras came up the stairs and onto the poop deck. He was in his early forties, naked as a sailor, with broad shoulders, powerful arms, and scarred, gnarled hands. “Hail,” he said to Sostratos, and wiped the back of one hand across his sweaty forehead.

“Hail,” Sostratos said. “Sounds as though you're making good progress.”

“Sure am,” Nikagoras said. “Thanks,” he told Menedemos, who'd given him the promised wine. He spilled a feu7 drops onto the deck, drank, and then gave his attention back to Sostratos, “After all the battle damage I've repaired lately, this is almost like a holiday for me.”

“I hadn't thought of it like that,” Sostratos said.

“You would have if you were in my line of work,” the carpenter told him, “Rams are bad enough. That's collision damage, too, like what you took, only worse, on account of a ram's going fast and the fins concentrate where it hits. But if you think that's rough, you ought to try patching up a ship that's had a couple-three thirty-mina stones smack into her right about at the waterline.”

“Bad?” Sostratos asked.

“Worse,” Nikagoras said. “Sometimes it seems like you end up taking out half the planks and replacing them. And naturally the captain's screaming at you that he's got to get back into the fight as fast as he can, and that everything'll be buggered forever if you don't get him fixed up right away. You want to drown big-mouthed bastards like that, by the gods—they think you're too cursed stupid to figure things out for yourself.”

“I'm just glad you're finally here,” Menedemos said. “It's taken a month of screaming at people to get a carpenter at all. Of course, the Aphrodite's no warship.”

“No, but you can fight if you have to. And,” Nikagoras said shrewdly, “a lot of the time, being able to fight means you don't have to, doesn't it?”

“That's right,” Sostratos said. “You're a man who sees how things work.”

“I try,” the carpenter said. “And that's a game I know myself. I haven't been in a brawl in close to twenty years now, on account of I look like I'm tough.” He made a fist, then grinned. “Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But nobody wants to find out the hard way.”

“Fair enough,” Sostratos said. Men seldom wanted to brawl with him, either, because he was well above average size. He knew perfectly well that he wasn't particularly tough, but that wasn't obvious from looking at him.

Nikagoras gulped the rest of the wine, wiped his mouth, and set down the cup. “Thank you kindly, best one. That hit the spot,” he told Menedemos, and then disappeared under the poop deck once more. A moment later, he started banging away with the mallet again.

“A good man,” Sostratos said. “I wonder if you could persuade him to go to sea.”

His cousin laughed. “My dear, you're reading my mind. I asked him that very thing, but he said, 'I repair ships for a living. D'you think I'd be daft enough to want to travel on one when I know what all can happen to them?' “

“Hmm.” Sostratos plucked at his beard. “What does that say about us?”

Menedemos laughed again. “Nothing good, I'm certain.”

“ Come on, you lazy whoresons,” Diokles called to the Aphrodites rowers. “Put your backs into it, and your arms, too. Do you still remember how to pull an oar? Rhyppapai!. Rhyppapai!”

A couple of men groaned as they stroked. Listening to them, Menedemos could tell how much the unnatural layoff had cost them as a crew. “We'll have plenty of sore muscles tonight,” he predicted as the Aphrodite glided out of Kos' harbor.

“That we will,” the keleustes agreed. “Blistered hands, too, same as we do when we start out in the spring.”

“If they'll rub oil on their hands as soon as they start getting raw, they won't blister so much,” Sostratos said.

“Not a bad notion,” Diokles agreed, smiting his bronze square to give the rowers their stroke. “I'd do that myself every now and again when I pulled an oar, and I did enough rowing to make my palms hard as horn.”

Menedemos kept the merchant galley close to the coast of Kos. Across the channel, Ptolemaios' ships and soldiers still laid siege to Halikarnassos. Stopping up a harbor tight as a wine jar wasn't easy, though. Every so often, one or two of Antigonos' war galleys would slip out and sink or capture any ships they could catch, Menedemos didn't want to make things easy for them.

He glanced over to his cousin. “Oë, Sostratos, there's history going on, just a few stadia away.”

“Well, so there is,” Sostratos said. “But it's not going on very fast, is it? I don't think I'll miss much if I look northwest instead of northeast.”

Look towards Athens, he meant. Menedemos said. “We're not there yet, and we're not going there yet, either. Why don't you look due north instead? That's where Miletos lies, near enough. We need the money we'll make there, too.”

“I know,” Sostratos said, “Every word you say is true. I understand that. But I have a hard time caring.”

“You'd better not,” Menedemos warned him. “When we trade there, we'll have to haggle extra hard, squeeze all the silver we can out of the merchants. If you're mooning over that miserable gryphon's skull, you won't do us any good.”

“I know,” Sostratos said again. But his gaze went back to the rower's bench under which the skull was stowed. A lover's gaze might have gone to his beloved in the same way. A lover's gaze would have been no more tender, either.

“Me, I'll be glad when we get to Athens, just so we're rid of the miserable, ugly thing,” Menedemos said.

“Anything you can learn from is beautiful,” his cousin said stiffly.

“When I want beauty, I'll find it in a girl's flesh, not a gryphon's bone,” Menedemos said.

“There's beauty of the flesh, and then there's beauty of the mind,” Sostratos said. “The gryphon's skull has none of the one, but thinking about it may lead those who love wisdom to the other.”

After a few heartbeats, Menedemos tossed his head. “I'm afraid that's beyond me, my dear. Nothing you say can make that bone seem anything but ugly to me.”

“Let it go, then,” Sostratos said, somewhat to Menedemos' sur­prise: when his cousin felt philosophical, he was often inclined to lecture. A moment later, Sostratos explained himself: “I've got Platon and Sokrates on my mind, that's all.”

“Why?” Menedemos asked. Before Sostratos could, he answered his own question: “Oh. Hemlock, of course.”

“That's right,” Sostratos said. “There's a good deal of talk about the relationship between physical beauty and real love in the Symposion.”

“Is there? Well, that's more interesting than philosophy usually gets.”

“Scoffer.”

“Scoffer?” Menedemos assumed a hurt expression. “Now you've gone and got me interested, and you complain I'm scoffing. What does Sokrates have to say about it? Or should I ask, what does Platon have to say?”

“That's a good question,” Sostratos said thoughtfully. “There's probably no one left alive who can say how much of what Platon put in Sokrates' mouth really belongs there, and how much comes from the younger man.”

“Don't get sidetracked,” Menedemos told him. “What does beauty have to do with real love? That's a lot more interesting than who wrote what.”

“You were the one who brought it up, but never mind,” Sostratos said. “If you follow the argument in the Symposion, not a great deal. Physical beauty leads you on toward beauty of the mind, and that's where real love lies.”

“Sounds like an old man's argument to me,” Menedemos said. “If your prick won't stand, you talk about the beauty of the mind so you don't have to fret yourself about it.”

“You are a scoffer,” Sostratos said, and then, “I just had a nasty thought.”

“What's that?”

“Do we dare put in at Miletos? We spent all that time stuck in Kos when we hadn't planned to. By now, news that we brought Polemaios there will have spread all over the place. Antigonos' men may want to roast us over a slow fire.”

“I know you. You're still looking for an excuse to head straight for Athens,” Menedemos said. “That one won't do, though. Remember, Demetrios of Phaleron is Kassandros' puppet, and Kassandros won't be happy to find out Polemaios got loose, either.” He suddenly grinned. “Besides, it's not a worry anymore.”

“Why not?” Sostratos asked.

“I'll tell you why not. Suppose they blame us for letting Polemaios get loose so he can plague his uncle. What do we say? We say, 'Well, O marvelous one, you don't need to lose any sleep about that, be­cause we watched Polemaios die.' They won't be angry at us for that news—they'll be glad to hear it.”

His cousin looked sheepish. “You're right. You're absolutely right, of course. I can't think of anybody who wouldn't be glad to hear Polemaios was dead.”

“Neither can I,” Menedemos said. “He made himself loved as much for his mind as for his beauty, didn't he?”

Sostratos started just to dip his head, but broke out laughing with the motion half done. “You're not just a scoffer, you're a dangerous scoffer, I think you'd make Sokrates choke on his wine.”

“No, no—Sokrates choked down his hemlock, the same as Polemaios did,” Menedemos replied.

He and Sostratos kept on chaffing each other as the Aphrodite sailed north and west through the strait between the Anatolian main­land and the island of Kalymnos. This time, the akatos had fine weather for the journey. One of Ptolemaios' war galleys came out from the newly captured town of Myndos to look her over, but turned back on recognizing what ship it was. “I remember you,” an officer aboard the five called to Menedemos. “You're the fellow who brought what's-his-name—Antigonos' nephew—back to Kos.”

“That's right,” Menedemos answered, lifting a hand from the steering-oar tillers to wave to the war galley.

After the five swung away toward the east, Sostratos said, “You didn't tell him what's-his-name was dead.”

“I certainly didn't,” Menedemos said. “He would have wasted an hour of our time asking questions, and we haven't got an hour to spare, not if we want to make Miletos by sundown. You're not the only one who can be in a hurry to get where we're going, you know.”

Not long after the war galley came out from the mainland, the Aphrodite passed a sponge boat most likely from Kalymnos, which had a lot of sponge divers. A trident in his right hand to free sponges from the ocean floor and a large stone clutched to his chest to make him sink quickly, a diver leaped off the stern of the boat and splashed into the blue water. He came up again a couple of minutes later, hanging on to black sponges of varying sizes. The other men on the boat took the sponges from him and hauled him aboard again. Naked and dripping, he waved to the Aphrodite.

From his station at an oar, Moskhion said, “This is what I was talking about when we fothered the sailcloth over the planks. Gods know I'd rather be here than over there doing that.”

“I believe you,” Menedemos said. As he had to the men on Ptolemaios' five, he did wave back. “He doesn't think we're pirates, anyhow. Either that or he knows there's nothing worth stealing on his boat.”

“I wouldn't want his sponges, that's certain,” Sostratos said. “They don't look like the ones you'd use in a fine bathhouse.”

“Of course they don't,” Moskhion said. “They haven't been cleaned and dried yet.”

“Sponge diving is as hard a way to make a living as any other kind of fishing,” Menedemos said.

“Harder,” Moskhion said with conviction. “Believe me—harder.”

''When you get right down to it, there's no easy way to make a living,” Sostratos said.

“I'd rather be doing this than that,” Menedemos said. Sostratos and Moskhion both dipped their heads in agreement, Menedemos went on, “Easy work, now—wouldn't you like to be a sophist and make speeches in the market square for money?”

“By the dog of Egypt, I would,” Moskhion said.

“It can't be that easy,” Sostratos said. “If it were, more men would be able to make a living at it. Most of the ones who try fail, you know. You need to be able to think on your feet, and people have to want to listen to you. Otherwise, you go hungry.”

Menedemos hadn't thought about that. Sostratos had a way of reminding him of things he hadn't thought of. “Maybe you're right,” Menedemos allowed. “It must be something like being an actor.”

“Not so easy as acting, I'd say,” his cousin answered. “A sophist hasn't got a mask to hide behind, the way an actor does.”

A good-sized wave slapped the merchant galley's bow, and then another and another, making her pitch up and down. “And we're coming out into the Ikarian Sea,” Menedemos said, “which means we haven't got any more islands to hide behind. We'll be bouncing like a toy boat in a little boy's hip bath all the way up to Miletos. This is one of the roughest stretches of the Aegean,”

“I know.” Sostratos gulped and looked faintly green. “I had my sea legs, but I may have lost them in the layover at Kos.”

He wasn't the only one. A couple of sailors leaned out over the rail and heaved up their guts, too. Maybe they wouldn't have done it if they hadn't drunk deep in Kos the night before. But maybe, like Sostratos, they'd just spent too much time ashore.

To Menedemos' relief, the Aphrodite did make Miletos by night­fall. He wouldn't have cared to spend a night at sea in such rough waters, and a wind might have blown up to make things worse still. Tying up at a quay as the sun went down made him much happier about the world.

The Milesians who made the ship fast to the quay chattered away amongst themselves in the town's Ionic dialect. When one of Antigonos' officers strutted up to ask his questions, the harbor workers fell silent and flinched away like beaten children. A generation before, Miletos had tried to hold out Alexander's soldiers and been sacked for its effort. These days, the locals gave their occupiers no trouble.

“From Kos, eh?” the officer said, Menedemos hadn't dared lie about that, not when the akatos carried so much silk. Bristles rasped under the officer's fingers as he rubbed his chin in thought. At last, he asked, “While you were there, did you . .. hear anything about Antigonos' nephew joining forces with that ugly toad of a Ptolemaios?”

Oh, good, Menedemos thought. He has no idea we're the ones who brought Polemaios to Kos. That makes things a lot easier. Aloud, he answered, “Yes, Polemaios was there while we were. But your master doesn't have to worry about him anymore.”

“What? Why not?” the man demanded.

“Because he's dead,” Menedemos replied. “He tried to bring some of Ptolemaios' officers over to his own cause. Ptolemaios caught him at it and made him drink hemlock. I'm sure the news is true—it was all over Kos when we left this morning.” That seemed preferable to telling the officer Sostratos had watched Polemaios die. If the fellow believed him, he might—probably would—wonder how Sostratos had gained that privilege.

As things were, the officer's jaw dropped. “That's wonderful news, if it's so. Are you certain of it?”

“I didn't see his body,” Menedemos answered truthfully, “but I don't see why Ptolemaios would lie about something like that. A lie would only make the soldiers who came along with Antigonos' nephew want to riot, don't you think?”

After a little thought, the officer dipped his head. When he grinned, a scar on one cheek that Menedemos hadn't noticed till then pulled the expression out of shape. “You're right, by the gods. This has to go straight to Antigonos. He's up by the Hellespont, setting things to rights there. You might want to stay in port here for a while; I wouldn't be surprised if he gave you a reward for the news.”

Sostratos looked like a man who'd just taken a knife in the back. Menedemos spoke to the officer: “Best one, if I were sure of that, I would stay. But look at the size of my crew. I don't know that I can afford to linger just on the hope of a reward—I have to pay them any which way.”

“That's a problem,” Antigonos' man admitted, “You'll have to do what you think best, then.”

Menedemos was tempted to linger. Old One-Eye might be very glad indeed to learn that his unpleasant nephew wouldn't bother him anymore, with or without the help of Ptolemaios. But he'd meant what he said; the Aphrodite's crew was expensive. If he waited half a month, he'd go through half a talent of silver.

Sounding like someone who'd just had a reprieve, Sostratos asked the officer, “What's the news here?”

“Not much right here,” the fellow said, “though some from Hellas came in the other day.”

“Tell us!” Menedemos spoke as quickly as his cousin,

“Well,” the officer went on, with the smug smile of someone who knows something his listeners do not, “you may have heard tell of the youth called Herakles, Alexander's bastard son by Barsine.”

“Oh, yes.” Menedemos dipped his head. “The one who got out of Pergamon last year, and went across to Polyperkhon to help him drive Kassandros mad in Macedonia.”

“That's right,” Antigonos' officer said, at the same time as Sostra­tos spoke out of the side of his mouth: “This Herakles likely isn't Alexander's get at all, but a tool of Antigonos' against Kassandros.”

“I know. Shut up,” Menedemos hissed to him, before asking the officer, “What about this youth?”

“He's dead, that's what,” the officer answered. “Dead as Polemaios, if what you say about him is true. Kassandros persuaded Polyperkhon that Alexander's kin were too dangerous to leave running around loose, and so—” He drew a finger across his throat. “They say Polyperkhon got land in Macedonia for it, and soldiers to help him fight down in the Peloponnesos.”

“Kassandros doesn't want any folk of Alexander's blood left alive, because they weaken his hold on Macedonia,” Sostratos said. “He's just a general; they could call themselves kings.”

“That's true,” Menedemos said. “Look how he got rid of Alexander's legitimate son, Alexandras, winter before last—and Roxane, the boy's mother, too.”

“Sure enough, you can't trust Kassandros,” Antigonos' officer de­clared. He started hack up the quay. “I'm off to tell my superiors of your news. Like I say, you can be sure they'll be glad to hear it.” He hurried away.

“ 'You can't trust Kassandros,' “ Sostratos echoed, irony in his voice. “You can't trust any of the Macedonian marshals, and they all want to see Alexander's kin dead.”

“No doubt you're right,” Menedemos said, “but it's still news. It hadn't got to Kos yet.”

“I don't think there's even a bastard pretender from Alexander's line left alive now,” Sostratos said.

“His sister Kleopatra's still up in Sardis, isn't she?” Menedemos asked.

“By the gods, you're right. I'd forgotten about Kleopatra.” Sostra­tos looked annoyed at himself, as he often did when he forgot some­thing like that. The smile following his annoyed expression wasn't one Menedemos would have wanted aimed at him. “I wonder how long she'll last,” Sostratos added.

Like Kaunos, Miletos was an old city, one with streets wandering wherever they would. Sostratos had to pay out not one obolos but two to find his way to the market square in the middle of town. He feared he would need to pay for directions back to the harbor, too. He'd got so turned around, he had to keep looking at the sun to know which direction was which.

In the agora, hawkers cried the produce of the rich Anatolian countryside: onions and garlic and olives and raisins and wine. Pot­ters and tinkers and leatherworkers and wool dealers added to the din. So did the fellow who walked through the square with a brazier shouting, “Fresh squid!”

Sostratos bought a couple of them. He burned his fingers and his mouth on the hot oily flesh, but didn't care: they were delicious. After he'd gulped them down, he started doing some shouting of his own: “Fine silk from Kos!”

Miletos being only a day's sail from the island, he hadn't expected too much in the way of business. He'd assumed most Milesians who wanted silk would have gone down to Kos and bought it for them­selves. As soon as he opened his mouth, he saw he'd made a mistake, for he started selling the stuff as if it had never before appeared in this polis.

And that, it seemed, was not so far from the truth. “Thank you so much for fetching some at last,” said a tailor who bought several bolts. “No one from Kos has been here for a while, and no one from our town wanted to go down there. You know how it is.”

“Well, no, as a matter of fact,” Sostratos said.

“Oh, but my dear fellow, you must,” the tailor said. When Sos­tratos still looked blank, the fellow let out an exasperated sigh and condescended to explain: “If we go down to Kos or men from there come hither, what's likely to happen? Antigonos' officers will say we're spying for Ptolemaios, or else the other way round, that's what. Silk's all very fine, but it's not worth a visit to the torturer.”

“I... see,” Sostratos said in a small voice. And so he did, once the Milesian pointed it out to him. This is what I get for living in a free and autonomous polis that really is both, he thought. Such things don't occur to me. These lands are subject to the marshals who rule them and if the marshals become enemies, so do the lands, no matter what most of the people want. To someone from an independent democracy, the notion was absurd. But that made it no less real hereabouts.

Silver came clinking in from one customer after another. When Sostratos saw how eager the locals were to buy, he raised the price. That didn't keep him from running low on silk before noon. He sent a couple of sailors back to the Aphrodite to bring more to the market square.

Not long after they returned, Menedemos stopped by. He looked as happy and as sated as a fox in a henhouse. “You must have spent part of your morning in a brothel,” Sostratos said. When his cousin tossed his head, alarm shot through him. “Don't tell me you found a friendly wife so quick. Remember, friendly wives have unfriendly husbands.”

“No whores, no wives—no women at all,” Menedemos answered. Seeing Sostratos' dubious expression, he went on, “I'll take oath by any god you care to name. No, I've been meeting. . . jewelers.” He leaned forward and spoke the last word in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Jewelers?” Sostratos echoed. For a moment, he couldn't imagine why Menedemos might be interested in talking with them. Then he did, and felt foolish. “Oh. The emeralds.” He also dropped his voice for the last word.

“That's right, Menedemos said. “This isn't Kos. I can sell them here without worrying about Ptolemaios. As a matter of fact, people here are all the more eager to buy just for the sake of giving Ptolemaios a black eye.”

But if Ptolemaios ruled Miletos, they would —or some of them would—inform on you for smuggling, Sostratos thought—the other side of the coin to his earlier reflections. Thinking of coins made him ask, “How much are you getting?”

“My dear, they're fighting with one another for the chance to get their hands on my little green stones,” Menedemos said. “I sold two medium-good ones—not the finest, mind you—for ten minai.”

“By the dog of Egypt!” Sostratos exclaimed—the right oath for gems coming out of Ptolemaios' realm. “That's almost twice what we paid for the lot of them.”

“I know,” Menedemos said happily. “And once the fellows who didn't buy take a look at the stones and decide they have to have some, too .. . We really may clear more than a talent from them.”

“Who can buy from the jewelers at such prices, though?” Sostratos asked, “Are there that many rich Milesians?”

“I don't think so,” his cousin answered. “But Antigonos has plenty of rich officers.”

“Ah,” Sostratos said. “That's true. And they'll have wives for whom they'll want rings or pendants—or else hetairai to whom they'll have to give presents.”

Menedemos dipped his head. “You're beginning to understand.”

At another time, his sarcastic tone would have irked Sostratos. His thoughts were elsewhere now. He wished he had a counting board, but managed well enough without one; along with his fine memory, he'd always had a knack for mental arithmetic. When he came out of his study, he found Menedemos looking at him oddly. He'd seen that particular expression on his cousin's face once or twice before. A little sheepishly, he asked, “How long was I away?”

“Not very long,” Menedemos answered, “but I said something to you and you never heard me. What were you thinking about so hard?”

“Money,” Sostratos said, a word that was enough to seize Menedemos' attention by itself. “If you can bring in a talent or so for those emeralds, and. if I keep getting the prices I've been getting for the silk, we'll turn a profit on this run yet.”

“And you would have flung me into the sea for wanting to come here instead of making straight for Athens,” Menedemos said.

“We might have done just as well for ourselves there,” Sostratos said. “We probably would have with the emeralds; Athenian jewelers have Kassandros' officers to sell to, as the Milesians have Antigonos'. And there's the gryphon's skull,”

“So there is.” To Sostratos surprise, Menedemos chuckled and patted him on the back. “I'm all finished arguing about that with you. You want to take it over to a bunch of other men who'll stand around looking at it and thinking so hard, they can't even hear.”

Sostratos kissed him on the cheek. “You do understand!” he exclaimed. Only later did he realize that his cousin's description of the philosophers of the Lykeion might have been imperfectly flattering.

Menedemos said, “I can't stay, my dear. I'm going to the ship, and then back to talk to some more jewelers. And who knows? One of them may turn out to have a pretty wife.” He hurried off before Sostratos could even begin a gasp of horror.

Swallowing a sigh, Sostratos went back to calling out the virtues of the silk he was selling. He did that on purpose, he thought. He wanted to make me jump, and he did. But he also knew that, if one of the jewelers did turn out to be married to a women whose looks Menedemos liked, he might try to seduce her. And if he does, we may have to head for Athens sooner than he wants. Sostratos tossed his head. They were doing such good business here, they really needed to stay a while. And he wanted to be able to come back to Miletos next year or the year after.

A plump man wearing a chiton of snowy linen and sandals with gold buckles came up and waited to be noticed. “Hail,” Sostratos said: the fellow looked prosperous enough to make him hope he was a customer. “Would you be interested in buying some silk?”

“ 'Ail,” the man replied, his accent not just Ionian but something else, something that told Sostratos he wasn't a Hellene. “Not for myself, no. But I 'ave come to tell you that my mistress may well be, if you 'ave what she wants.”

“Your. . , mistress?” Sostratos hoped his startlement didn't show.

Few Milesians dressed as well as this fellow; Sostratos had assumed he had money of his own. If he was someone's slave, how much money did his owner have?

“Yes, sir,” the plump man said. “My mistress is Metrikhe, who is well known in Miletos. She might be interested in your silk, if you 'ave any fine enough. For . . . professional purposes, you understand.”

“Yes,” Sostratos said. A hetaira. She has to be, he thought. And one of the very rich ones, if she can afford a slave like this. “I'll be happy to show you what I've got here.”

“Thank you, sir, but not to me.” The plump man shook his head, again proving himself no Hellene. “If you would bring it to my mis­tress' house, though ...”

Sostratos almost burst out laughing, Menedemos will be sorry he's off talking to jewelers, he thought. If he were here, he'd do anything this side of bashing me with a rock to go himself. “Yes, I'll come,” he told the slave. “Let me find some bolts that might best suit her,” As he gathered them up, he told the couple of sailors with him, “If anyone comes looking to buy, let him know I'll be back before too long.”

“Right you are,” one of them said. With a grin, he added, “Tough bit of work you've got ahead of you, sounds like.”

“Doesn't it, though?” Sostratos answered, deadpan. He turned to the slave. “I'm ready. Take me to your mistress.”

As in most poleis, the houses of the rich and poor lay side by side, and it wasn't easy to tell which was which from the outside: the rich hid their wealth behind their walls. When the slave stopped and said, “ 'Ere we are,” Sostratos saw that the house was whitewashed and had a very solid-looking door. Both suggested money; neither proved it.

Another slave opened the door when the fellow with Sostratos knocked. “Come with me, sir,” he told Sostratos, and led him to the andron. Again, Sostratos held in amusement, thinking, In a hetaira's house, is this still the men's chamber? And if it is, what exactly does that mean?

The chairs and tables in the andron were well made. The courtyard at which Sostratos looked out also suggested quiet prosperity, with a colonnade around its outer edge, a neat flower garden surrounding a fountain, and a nearly life-sized statue of a goddess likelier to be Artemis than Aphrodite. Sostratos would have expected something gaudier and bawdier.

One of the slaves brought him wine and olives. The first taste of the wine made his eyebrows shoot up. He knew Ariousian, the finest vintage from Khios; the Aphrodite had carried it to Great Hellas the year before. If Metrikhe could afford it, she was more than prosper­ous. The tangy green olives were also very fine, plainly from the first picking.

Metrikhe gave Sostratos just long enough to refresh himself before coming to the andron. Maybe she had a slave keeping an eye on him; maybe she simply knew how long a man would need. At any rate, he'd just set down his empty cup when she paused in the doorway and said, “ 'Ail. You are the silk-seller?”

“Hail. Yes, that's right.” As Sostratos gave his name, he eyed Me­trikhe. No one could have proved her a hetaira by the way she dressed. Indeed, she seemed the height of respectability. Over her long chiton, she wore a wrap of fine, soft wool; Miletos was famous for the quality of its khlaneis. She even veiled herself against his eyes. How disappointing, he thought.

What was in his mind must have shown on his face, for she chuck­led. “Were you expecting to see me in something where you could see all of me?” she asked as she walked in and sat down. She moved with a dancer's grace.

Sostratos' ears heated. “I did . . . wonder,” he mumbled, that seem­ing a safer word than hope.

“I can't say I'm surprised.” Metrikhe tossed her head, a startlingly emphatic gesture. “But no. I don't show myself unless it's time to show myself. That makes it mean more when I do.”

“Ah.” Sostratos took the point at once, “I see. Each craft has its own mysteries. Plainly, you know yours.”

“I 'ad better,” she answered, and cocked his head to one side, studying him for a few heartbeats. “You're not a fool, are you?”

“I do try not to be.” Sostratos smiled. “Of course, I understand that you want men to be fools around you, and I'm sure you know how to get just what you want.” His cousin was far fonder of quoting Homer than he was, but a few lines from the Odyssey seemed to fit:

Metrikhe studied him again, this time, he thought, more sharply. An edge in her voice, she said, “I don't turn men into swine.”

He didn't want to antagonize her. That might cost him a sale even before they started haggling. He picked his words with care; “I wouldn't think you'd need to. Isn't it true that a lot of men are swine before they stand in your doorway?”

“You are a man. 'Ow do you know these things?” She sounded half astonished, half suspicious.

How do I know? Sostratos wondered. He knew what happened to women when cities fell. In his student days in Athens, he'd gone to the theater for several revivals of Euripides, including The Trojan Women. And he worried about Menedemos whenever the Aphrodite came into a new port. How much of that could he tell a stranger? None, he decided. And so he simply shrugged and said, “Am I wrong?”

“No, by Zeus,” the hetaira answered. “Be thankful you don't know 'ow right you are.” Perhaps still taken aback by what he'd said, she dipped up a cup of wine for herself. She had to push aside the veils to drink. Sostratos didn't know what he'd expected—hard, dazzling beauty, most likely. He didn't find that; she was pretty, but not ravishing, and younger than he would have guessed from her voice: about his own age. She knew he was looking, of course. She smiled as she let the veiling drop back into place, “What do you think?”

He chose another line from the Odyssey. “ 'Nausikaa, having loveliness from the gods . . .' “ and then finished with his own invention, improvising the end of a hexameter: “... chose to look at silk.”

Metrikhe clapped her hands. “Euge!”

“Not really,” Sostratos said. “It's an anachronism, for they didn't know of silk in the days of the Trojan War. Homer never mentions it. But if you choose to look at silk, I'll be happy to show you what I have here.”

“Please do,” she said, and then, “You're an unusual man.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Sostratos answered. He didn't particularly expect her to notice the quiet irony in his voice, but she did, and dipped her head. He started opening leather sacks and taking out bolts of cloth. “Your slave said you wanted the thinnest I have.”

“Yes,” Metrikhe said. “Mysteries of the craft again—not that that's much of a mystery.. . , Can we go out into the courtyard? Seeing these in the sunlight's the best way to judge 'ow thin they are.”

“Certainly,” Sostratos said. “I wish most of the men I do business with had as good an idea of what they wanted,”

“Thank you,” Metrikhe replied. “And I wish most of the men !oo come 'ere to do business—not that kind of business, but other sorts, the way you are—would do business with me, and not act as if all they care about is my little piggy.” She used the obscenity as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Out in the courtyard, Sostratos held up bolt after bolt of silk. Metrikhe waved for him to put some aside for later haggling; at others she simply tossed her head. After a while, he said, “That's the last one I have.”

“All right,” the hetaira answered. “What do you want for all the ones I can use?”

“For all those bolts together?” Sostratos looked up into the sky while numbers danced in his head. Before long, he named a price.

Metrikhe looked from the silk to him and back again. “I thought you would give me some round figure. You reckoned that to the very drakhma, didn't you?”

“Of course,” he answered, honestly surprised. “Isn't that what you wanted me to do?”

“What you want and what you get often 'ave nothing to do with each other,” she said, “If it weren't for what men want, I would have to be a washerwoman or a tavern-keeper or something of the sort. But what do they get from me they couldn't have from a three-obolos 'ore?” She snapped her fingers, “Illusion, that's all.”

Sostratos smiled, “Should you tell me such things?”

“I wouldn't tell them to most men, but I think you can see them for yourself,” Metrikhe said. “And I'll tell you something else: no matter 'ow carefully you figured your price, you're still a thief.” She named one of her own, less than half as high.

“If I'm a thief, you're a joker,” Sostratos replied. “I can't possibly make a profit on that, or anything close to it. You say you don't want to wash clothes or sell wine? That cuts both ways. I don't want to tan hides or make pots.”

She stepped forward and set a hand on his arm. Till then, she'd acted like a well-bred woman and spoken like a well-educated man. Now, suddenly, she chose to remind him of what she really was, what she really did. Her flesh was warm and soft. Her voice was warm and soft, too: “Suppose I give you that very same price, and the rest of the afternoon in my bed? If you want illusion, I can give you the best.”

“If my cousin were here, he might take you up on that,” Sostratos said. “Please believe me, it's not that I'm not interested.” That was true; her touch had startled him and stirred him at the same time. Even so, he went on, “You're lucky: you can make a living from illusion. I can't; I have to have silver.”

“It's not always luck, believe me. Some of the men who visit here have illusions of their own,” Metrikhe said. She went from wanton back to businesslike in the space of a sentence. “All right, then— silver and nothing but silver.” She came up a little.

“You're speaking of Milesian drakhmai?” Sostratos asked.

Metrikhe dipped her head. “They're a little heavier than your Rhodian coins.”

He'd known that. Somehow, he wasn't surprised she did, too. “Even so, you're still too low,” he said, thinking, When we do make a bargain, I won't find any heavy drakhmai here, the way I did at the temple in Kos.

She said, “Let's go back into the andron and hash it out over more wine.”

“Why not?” Sostratos said. “If you can afford to pay for the lovely Khian, you can afford to pay for my silk, too.”

Metrikhe laughed. “You're as spiny as a hedgehog. Why didn't your cousin come here instead? He would have been easier to deal with.”

“I'm sorry,” said Sostratos, who wasn't sorry at all. “You're stuck with me.”

When they did agree on a price, it was about as low as Sostratos was willing to go without abandoning the deal altogether. That didn't surprise him, either. And, when he went through the money she gave him, he found a few coins—only a few—from Rhodes and other poleis that coined to a lighter standard than Miletos. “I'll get you lions to take their places,” Metrikhe said, and did replace them with Milesian money. As he'd expected, there were no owls or turtles or other heavy coins.

The drakhmai jingled sweetly as Sostratos put them back into the leather sack Metrikhe had given him. He tied the sack shut with a strip of rawhide. “Thank you for your hospitality and for your business,” he told her, rising to go. “I hope to see you again one day.” It could happen. Ships from his father and uncle's firm came into Miletos every year or two.

Metrikhe said, “Do you need to leave so soon?”

Sostratos frowned. “We're done here, aren't we? Or have you changed your mind about some of the silk you said you didn't want?”

“I wasn't talking about silk,” she said, a hint—more than a hint— of exasperation in her voice.

His frown deepened. “Then what do you—?” He broke off be­cause of one possibility that occurred to him. It would, he was sure, have occurred to Menedemos much sooner. “Do you mean that?” He was pleased his voice didn't rise to a startled squeak, as if he were still a youth.

“Certainly, I mean that” she answered, now sounding amused. “Why did you think I might mean anything else?”

Because those sorts of things happen to my cousin, not to me, Sostratos thought. Because women don't usually find me very interesting. He had just enough sense not to blurt that out to Metrikhe. Instead, he said, “Because you chose to dress like a woman of quality. Because you bargain like a man. Because I already turned you down when you, ah, didn't bargain like a man.”

She laughed and waved that aside. “You didn't insult me. That was business on both sides, when I offered and when you said no. This wouldn't be business. I think this would be fun. You've treated me like a person, not like a slut. You don't know how unusual that is. And so ...” She shrugged. “If you want to, of course.”

“You really mean it,” Sostratos said in slow wonder. Metrikhe dipped her head. He still had trouble believing it. In his youth, he'd had a couple of painful jokes played on him, painful enough to make him wince when he thought of them now, ten years later.

“Come on,” Metrikhe said. “I'm doing this because I feel like it, not because I have to make one of my companions feel good. That's unusual, too, and I'm going to enjoy it.”

Sostratos needed no more urging. He did bring along the silk she hadn't bought and the money she'd given him for what she had. If he left them here in the andron, he wasn't sure they would stay here till he got back.

Metrikhe didn't urge him to leave them behind. All she said was, “You don't take chances, do you?”

“I try not to,” he answered.

“Well, good for you,” she said. “My room is upstairs—it's the women's quarters, after all.”

Her bed was wider, her mattress thicker and softer, than those Sostratos had used at Kleiteles' house back in Kos. As soon as she closed the bedroom door behind them, she took off her veil and set it on the cabinet by the wall. Her letting him see her face after con­cealing it through nearly the whole afternoon was almost like letting him see her altogether naked.

That soon followed. She neatly folded the khlanis and laid it beside the veil. Then, undoing her girdle, she got out of the long chiton and stood bare before him. “Praxiteles should have got a look at you,” he said. “He never would have bothered modeling his Aphrodite on Phryne.”

She blushed. He was delighted to follow the surge of color from her breasts all the way to her hairline. “I wish more men talked so sweetly,” she said.

“If they don't, they're either blind or missing a chance,” Sostratos told her, which made her flush all over again. And I'm not even exaggerating very much, he thought, pulling his own chiton off over his head. Metrikhe's shape was everything a man could ask for in a woman: slim waist, round hips, firm breasts of just the right size. A sculptor would have been pleased to use her for a model. Most sculptors would be pleased to do quite a lot of things with her, went through Sostratos’ mind as he stepped forward and took her in his arms.

Her body molded itself against his. Her skin was soft and smooth, he wondered if she oiled it. She tilted her face up to his. Seen from a distance of less than a palm, her eyes weren't brown, but dark, dark hazel, an intriguingly complex color. “I like tall men,” she whispered.

“I like you,” Sostratos answered. Metrikhe laughed and squeezed him. Her breath was sweet. When he kissed her, she tasted of wine.

They lay down on the bed. Sostratos' mouth went from hers to her cheeks, the lobes of her ears, her neck, her breasts. His hand wandered lower, down the curve of her belly to where her legs joined. They opened for him. He stroked her there while his tongue teased her nipples. She let out a soft sigh of pleasure. If it wasn't real, she was a better actor than any who went on the stage in Athens.

Before long, she began to stroke him, too, and then twisted, limber as an eel, and took him in her mouth. He enjoyed it for a little while before pulling away. “You don't need to play the Lesbian for me,” he said: women from Lesbos were famous for giving men that par­ticular pleasure.

Her smile was saucy. “Well, what do you want to do, then?” she asked archly.

“This,” he said, and did it. Metrikhe sighed when he went into her. Having lain with the Rhodian proxenos' slave woman back in Kos a couple of nights before, he didn't feel the need to spend him­self as fast as he could. He spun it out, enjoying the journey as well as the eventual destination. Metrikhe bucked against him like an un­broken colt. Her breathing came quick and short, till she threw back her head and a gasping moan broke from her.

Sostratos spent himself a few heartbeats later. In a throaty voice, Metrikhe said, “If we'd done that while we were bargaining, I'd 'ave paid you more for your silk, not less.”

“Thank you,” he told her, and gave her a kiss. “I don't suppose I'll get too many finer compliments.”

She dipped her head; she was a merchant, too, in her own way, and knew what her words had meant. “You're welcome,” she said, “And you're welcome 'ere any time, with silk or without.”

That might have been a bigger compliment than the other. “Thank you,” Sostratos said again, “For now, though, I'd better get back to the agora. Do I remember the turns rightly? First left, second right, fourth left, second right?”

She frowned. “That's not 'ow I keep track of the way. Let me think.” After a moment, she dipped her head once more. “Yes, that will get you there.”

“Good.” Sostratos got off the bed and put his tunic back on. “Thank you for your business,” he said, “and for everything else.”

Metrikhe lay there smiling up at him, naked still. “Thank you for everything else,” she said, “and for your business.”

“We were—we are—bound for Athens,” Sostratos said. “Now I hope we stay here for a while.” Did he really mean that? Part of him did, at any rate, and he knew just which part. Which was more im­portant in the general scheme of things, a woman or the gryphon's skull? I can find women anywhere, he thought. There's only one gryphon's skull. But the physical pleasure the hetaira had given him was less easy to surmount for the pleasures of the mind than Platon had made it out to be.

Realizing that made Sostratos leave Metrikhe's house faster than he would have otherwise. He made his way back to the agora, where he found Menedemos dickering over silk with a plump man who had the look of someone knowing himself to be important. After his cousin made the bargain—a better one than he'd got from Metrikhe himself—and sent the fellow on his way; he turned to Sostratos and said, “Well, my dear, I stopped back here for what I thought would be only a moment. It was just long enough to hear where you'd gone and to talk with that chap. You had a rugged bit of duty there, didn't you? Is she pretty?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Sostratos answered.

“And did she give you half the price in trade?” Menedemos went on.

“Of course not. We need the silver.” Sostratos held up the sack of coins. He told Menedemos what he'd sold and how much he'd got.

“Not the best bargain in the world, but passable, passable,” his cousin said. “So you didn't get anything more from her than a smile and the money, eh?”

“I didn't say that,” Sostratos replied, and had the satisfaction of seeing Menedemos look very jealous indeed.