The Gryphon's Skull

11

As the Aphrodite glided east through the Saronic Gulf, away from Aigina, Sostratos mournfully peered north toward the mainland of Attica. There were Athens' two chief ports, Peiraieus and Phaleron, seeming almost close enough to touch. There on the higher ground inland lay Athens itself, the magnificent buildings of the akropolis tiny but perfect in the distance. Pointing to port, he burst out, “A pestilence take those pirates! We should be there now.”

“We'll get there yet,” Menedemos said soothingly.

“But not with the gryphon's skull.” Sostratos scowled at his cousin, though it wasn't Menedemos' fault. But he couldn't get the picture out of his mind: the pirate, maybe—he hoped—wounded, undoing the leather lashing that held the sack closed, staring in horrified dismay at the skull that stared blindly back, and then, cursing, flinging it into the sea while all his thieving comrades laughed.

“Can't be helped. We were lucky to get away with our freedom and most of our goods,” Menedemos said.

He was right again; Sostratos knew as much. But his cool indifference grated. “So much knowledge wasted!” Sostratos said.

“A lot, a little—how can you tell?” Menedemos remained indifferent. “You can't even tell for sure whether your philosophical friends would have cared a tenth as much about the skull as you did.”

Sostratos bit down on that like a man biting down on a big piece of grit in a chunk of bread, and counted himself lucky not to break a mental tooth. He didn't know what the philosophers of the Lykeion and the Academy would have made of the gryphon's skull. He never would know now. He gave back the best answer he could: “Damonax was interested in it.”

“Damonax didn't care about studying it—he wanted it for a decoration,” Menedemos said. “That says something nasty about his taste, but it doesn't say anything about what a real philosopher would think of it.”

Stubbornly, Sostratos said, “Aristoteles wrote books about animals and the parts that make them up. His successor Theophrastos, whom I studied under, is doing the same thing with plants. He would have wanted to see the gryphon's skull.”

“Why? Would he think it grew on a tree like a pine cone?”

“You're impossible!” Sostratos said, but he laughed in spite of himself.

Maybe that was what his cousin had had in mind. Little by little, Athens receded behind the Aphrodite. Sostratos found things with which to busy himself about the ship instead of mooning over the city like a lover over his lost beloved. Eventually, he looked up and saw that it lay far astern. I will come back, he thought, even if it is without the gryphon's skull.

For now, though, mundane business: he asked Menedemos, “Are you going to put in at Sounion again tonight?”

“That's right. Why?” His cousin gave him a suspicious look. “Do you plan on jumping ship and heading back to Athens even without your precious toy?”

“No, no, no.” Sostratos tossed his head. Having taken so many barbs, Sostratos gave one back: “I was just thinking how handy it was that there are still a few places around the Inner Sea where you haven't outraged any husbands.”

“Heh,” Menedemos said: one syllable's worth of laughter. But he'd never been a man who could dish it out without taking it. After a moment, he lifted one hand from the steering-oar tillers and waved to Sostratos. “All right, my dear, you got me that time.”

Sounion, as far as Sostratos was concerned, remained as unprepossessing as it had been the last time the Aphrodite put in there, a few days earlier. Now, at least, the ship didn't need to be cleansed of pollution (unless adultery counts, he thought), and they had no dead or dying aboard. The setting sun sent gold and orange and crimson ripples across the sea as the akatos' anchors splashed down into the water.

A boat rowed out from the hamlet toward the merchant galley. Sostratos had seen the man at the oars before, but not his passenger, a dapper fellow who looked out of place in Sounion. The dapper man hailed the ship: “Ahoy, there! Who are you, and where are you bound?”

“We're the Aphrodite, out of Rhodes, and we're heading home,” Sostratos replied.

“Told you so,” said the man at the oars in the small boat.

The dapper man ignored him. “Will you take a passenger to Kos?” he called.

“That depends,” Sostratos said.

“Ah, yes.” The dapper man dipped his head and grinned. “It always does, doesn't it? Well, what's your fare?”

Sostratos considered. This fellow plainly didn't belong here, which meant that, for one reason or another, he had some urgent need to go east. And so the only question was, how much to charge him? Sostratos thought of Euxenides of Phaselis, and how much they'd squeezed out of him for a much shorter trip. Bracing himself for either a scream of fury or a furious haggle, he named the most outrageous price he could think of: “Fifty drakhmai.”

But the dapper man in the boat didn't scream. He didn't even blink. He just dipped his head and said, “Done. You sail in the morning, don't you?”

Behind Sostratos, Menedemos muttered, “By the dog of Egypt!” Sostratos couldn't tell whether that was praise for him or astonishment that the dapper fellow—the new passenger, he was now— hadn't screamed blue murder. Some of both, maybe. As for Sostratos himself, he had the feeling he could have asked for a whole mina, not just a half, and he would have got the same instant agreement.

He had to make himself remember the man's question. “That's right,” he said. “You pay half then, half when we get there.”

“I know how it's done,” the dapper man said impatiently. “I'll have my own food and wine, too.”

“All right.” Sostratos knew he sounded a little dazed, but couldn't help it. He had to make himself come out with one more question: “And, ah, your name is. . . ?”

“You can call me Dionysios son of Herakleitos,” the man answered. “I'll be aboard early enough to suit you, I promise.” He spoke to the local at the oars, who took him back to Sounion.

Sostratos stared after him. “Well, well,” Menedemos said. “Isn't that interesting?”

“I wonder what he's running from,” Sostratos said. “Nothing right here in town, surely, or he'd have asked to spend the night on the foredeck. Something back in Athens, I suppose. He looks like an Athenian—sounds like one, too.”

“I wonder who he is,” Menedemos said.

“Dionysios son of Herakl—” Sostratos began.

His cousin tossed his head. “He said we could call him that. He didn't say it was his name.” Sostratos thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. He prided himself on noticing such things, but he'd missed that one. Menedemos went on, “He strung a couple of the most ordinary names in the world together, is what he did. He might have been Odysseus telling Polyphemos the Cyclops to call him Nobody.”

“Trust you to haul Homer into it somehow,” Sostratos said, but he had to admit the comparison was apt. And then his own wits, stunned since Dionysios so casually agreed to that ridiculous fare, started to work again. “He wants to go to Kos.”

“He said so,” Menedemos agreed. After a moment, he snapped his fingers. “And staying on Kos—”

“Is Ptolemaios,” Sostratos finished for him, not wanting to hear his own thought hijacked. “I wonder if he's some sort of envoy from Demetrios of Phaleron here in Attica, or from Kassandros, or if he's one of Ptolemaios' spies.”

“I'd bet on the last,” Menedemos said. “Ptolemaios has all the money in the world, so why should his spies have to quarrel about fares?”

“That makes sense,” Sostratos said. “Of course, just because it makes sense doesn't have to mean it's true. I'll tell you something else.” He waited for Menedemos to raise a questioning eyebrow, then continued, “Whatever he is, we won't find out from him.”

“Well, my dear, if you think I'm going to argue about that, you're mad as a maenad,” Menedemos said.

Dionysios son of Herakleitos—or whatever his real name was— proved as good as his word. He hailed the Aphrodite so early the next morning, some of her sailors were still asleep. Carrying a leather sack big enough to hold food and wine and the few belongings a traveling man needed, he scrambled up from the local's rowboat into the low waist of the merchant galley.

“Hail,” he said as Sostratos came up to him.

“Good day,” Sostratos replied.

“I doubt it,” Dionysios replied. “It's going to be beastly hot. I hope you don't expect a man to bring his own water along with everything else.”

“No,” Sostratos said. “Water we share, especially on a hot day— and I think you're right: this will be one. My eyes feel drier than they should, and the sun's not even over the horizon.” He held out his hand. “Now, if you'd be so kind, the first part of the fare.”

“Certainly.” Dionysios reached into the sack for a smaller leather wallet. He took coins from it and gave them to Sostratos one by one. “Here you are, best one: twenty-five drakhmai.”

The coins had an eagle on one side and a blunt-featured man's profile on the other. “These are Ptolemaios' drakhmai!” Sostratos said in dismay—they were far lighter than the Attic owls he'd expected.

“You never said in whose currency you wanted to be paid,” Dionysios pointed out.

“Have we got a problem?” Menedemos called from the stern. After Sostratos explained, his cousin asked, “Well, what do we do about that? Shall we send him back to shore unless he comes up with the proper weight of silver?”

“Where's the justice in that?” Dionysios demanded. “I'm not cheating you out of anything I promised to give.”

“So what?” Menedemos said. “If you don't pay us what we want, you can wait for another ship.” That made the dapper man unhappy, try as he would to hide it.

But Sostratos reluctantly tossed his head—that gibe about justice struck home. “He's right, Menedemos. It's my own fault, for not saying we wanted it in Attic money.” He took advantage of exchange rates whenever he could; it wasn't often that anyone got the better of him, but it had happened here.

“You're too soft for your own good,” Menedemos grumbled.

Dionysios son of Herakleitos gave Sostratos a bow. “What you are, my dear fellow, is a kalos k'agathos.”

“A gentleman? Me? I don't know about that,” Sostratos said, more flattered than he was willing to show. “I do know I expect people who deal with me to be honest, so I'd better give what I hope to get.”

“And if that doesn't make you a kalos k'agathos, to the crows with me if I know what would,” Dionysios said.

The sun, a ball of molten bronze, rose over the little island of Helena, where Helen had paused on her way home to Sparta after the Trojan War. Almost at once, the air began to quiver and dance, as it would above hot metal in a smithy. Those first few harsh beams seemed to scorch the hillsides back of Sounion. They'd been sere and dry and brown before; Sostratos knew as much. But he could almost watch the last moisture baking out of them now. He marveled that he couldn't watch the sea steam and retreat, as water would in a pot left over the fire too long.

“Papai!” he exclaimed. “I hope we have some wind. Rowing in this will be worse than it was the last time we went through the Kyklades.”

Dionysios rummaged in his sack again. This time, he pulled out a broad-brimmed hat, which he set on his head. “I don't care to cook, thank you very much,” he said.

“Why don't you go up to the foredeck so the rowers can work freely?” Sostratos said.

“Oh, of course. I don't mean to be a bother.” Dionysios picked up his bag and headed for the bow.

Sostratos went back to the stern and climbed up onto the poop deck. He waited for Menedemos to rake him over the coals; his cousin had earned the right. But Menedemos just clicked his tongue between his teeth and said, “Well, well—the biter bit.”

“I never dreamt he'd give me Ptolemaios' money,” Sostratos said. “He's as cocksure as an Athenian ought to be; he speaks good Attic Greek; I expected owls. This does make it all the more likely he's Ptolemaios' man.”

“Because he uses coins from Egypt? I should say so.”

“Well, that, too, but it isn't what I had in mind. I was thinking that he acts like a rich cheapskate, the way Ptolemaios did when we were haggling over the price for the tiger skin,” Sostratos said.

“A rich cheapskate.” Menedemos savored the paradox before dipping his head in agreement. “That's good. He can get anything he wants and pay anything he wants, and he knows it, but he still doesn't want to pay too much.”

Up at the bow, capstans creaked as sailors brought up the anchors. Rich cheapskate or not, Dionysios son of Herakleitos knew enough to stay out of their way. Sweat and olive oil sheened their naked bodies. Sostratos swiped a forearm across his brow. It came away wet. “I'm going to get a hat for myself, too,” he said. “I don't care to bake my brains today.”

His cousin wet a finger and tested the breeze—or would have, had there been any breeze to test. He sighed. “That's a good idea, however much I wish it weren't.”

Diokles said, “I'm only going to put half a dozen men on a side at the oars, and I'll change shifts more often than I usually do. Otherwise, we'll lose somebody from heatstroke, sure as sure.”

“As you think best,” Menedemos told the keleustes.

With shouted orders from the captain and the oarmaster, the Aphrodite left the little harbor of Sounion and started east across the Aegean toward Kos and then toward Rhodes and home. Sostratos kept looking back towards the north and west, towards Athens, toward what might have been. He cursed the pirate who'd stolen the gryphon's skull—and every other pirate who'd ever lived. Those curses felt weak, empty. The skull was gone, and he'd never see its like again. He wondered if the world would.

Rather than merely cursing pirates, Menedemos got ready to fend them off, serving out weapons to the crew as he had on the voyage towards Attica. Seeing that, the Aphrodite's passenger took a hoplite's shortsword from his bag and belted it on around his waist. He had the air of a man who knew what to do with it.

In a dead calm, the Aegean lay smooth as polished metal under that fierce, broiling sun. Sweat rivered off Menedemos as he stood at the steering oars. He guzzled heavily watered wine to keep some moisture in him. So did the rowers. They couldn't pull their best, not in heat like this. Diokles didn't chide them. The oarmaster knew they were giving what they could.

Halfway between Sounion and Keos, the Aphrodite slid past a becalmed round ship. Sailors on the tubby merchantman shouted in alarm when they spied the merchant galley. Had she been a pirate ship, they couldn't possibly have escaped. The sailors on the round ship shouted again, this time in relief, when the akatos didn't turn toward them.

Well before noon, Menedemos decided to put in at Keos. “We'll fill up our water jars and hope for wind tomorrow,” he told Sostratos. “I know we've only come about a hundred stadia, but even so. ...”

To his relief, his cousin didn't feel like arguing. “We wouldn't have made Kythnos by sundown, anyhow, and we need the fresh water.”

“That's right.” Menedemos dipped his head. “And the water here is better than the nasty stuff they have on Kythnos.”

Keos did look greener and more inviting than its southern neighbor, though the savage sun was baking it, too. As the Aphrodite came into the harbor at Koressia, one of the little island's four poleis, Sostratos remarked, “This was the place where, in the old days, they made people drink hemlock when they turned sixty—they didn't want any useless mouths to feed.”

Menedemos snapped his fingers. “I knew that was one of the Kyklades, but you could have given me to a Persian torturer and he wouldn't have squeezed which one out of me.”

Sostratos said, “I remember useless things—you know that. It's also where Simonides the poet came from.”

“ 'Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.' “ Menedemos quoted the epitaph for the men who'd died at Thermopylai.

“He wrote a lot of other verses besides that one,” Sostratos said.

“I know, but it's the one everybody recalls,” Menedemos said. “I'm not like you, my dear—I don't come up with the strange things at the drop of a hat.”

Sostratos took off his hat. Menedemos wondered if he would drop it, but he only fanned himself with it and put it back on. One of his eyebrows rose. He studied Menedemos the same way he'd examined the gryphon's skull—analyzing him, classifying him, finding a place for him in the bigger scheme of things. Menedemos didn't know that he cared for the place to which his cousin had assigned him. It would be higher on the scheme of things than the gryphon, surely, but how much higher?

Before Sostratos could give him the answer there—in greater detail than he would like, he guessed—Dionysios came back to the stern. “Considering the price I'm paying, I hoped to get closer to Kos my first day out than one miserable little hop,” the dapper man said.

“I hoped to get closer, too,” Menedemos answered, “but there was no wind, and I don't intend to kill my rowers. Maybe we'll do better tomorrow.”

“We'd better,” Dionysios said darkly.

With a smile even cooler and nastier than the one he'd just bestowed on Menedemos, Sostratos said, “Well, O marvelous one, if our pace doesn't suit you, I'll give you back all but five drakhmai of your fare, and you're welcome to find another eastbound ship here.”

The dull red Dionysios turned had nothing to do with the heat. The harbor at Koressia, into which the Elixos River ran, held no other ships besides the Aphrodite: only little fishing boats that never got out of sight of the island. How long would the traveler have to wait for another vessel bound for Kos? Menedemos had no idea, and neither, plainly, did Dionysios.

With twin splashes, the akatos' anchors went into the sea. Sailors wrestled water jars into the boat and went ashore with them. The men made for the Elixos to fill the jars. Menedemos said, “Shall we go into the market square with some perfume and a little silk and see if we can sell 'em?”

“Here?” Sostratos' glance was eloquent. “I don't think they've done anything here since they sent a couple of ships to fight the Persians at Salamis.”

Menedemos laughed. “You're probably right. Even so, though, they're bound to want their women to smell sweet and look pretty.”

“I suppose so,” his cousin admitted. “But can they pay for what they want?”

“Always a question,” Menedemos admitted. “I think it's worth finding out.”

Next to no one in Koressia was stirring as the two Rhodians made their way to the agora. Men stayed in wineshops or squatted like lizards in whatever shade the walls gave them. A couple of drunks lay snoring, empty cups or wine jars beside them. Sostratos raised an eyebrow. Menedemos only shrugged.

They nearly had the market square to themselves. A man hawked raisins, while a farm woman displayed eggs and cheeses. Neither had any customers or seemed to expect any—they were going through the motions of selling, no more. Menedemos had seen that before; it always made him scornful.

“Come on,” he told Sostratos. “Let's show these people not everybody sleeps all the time.”

His cousin yawned. “I'm sorry, best one. Did you say something?”

Snorting, Menedemos raised his voice till it filled the agora: “Perfume from Rhodes! Fine silk from Kos! Who wants to buy? We won't stay here long, so you'd better come quick. Who wants to buy?”

The man with the raisins and the woman from the farm both stared at them. Sostratos took up the call and joined with Menedemos. For a while, though, Menedemos wondered if anyone cared but a couple of doves grubbing whatever they could from the ground. Koressia wasn't just a sleepy town; it might have been a dead one.

At last, though, a middle-aged man strolled into the agora. “ 'Ail,” he said, dropping his rough breathings as did those who used the Ionic dialect. “What 'ave you got for sale?”

Why. I'm selling doors and roof tiles. Haven't you heard me crying them? Menedemos thought. But Sostratos was already displaying a bolt of filmy silk. Grudgingly, Menedemos admitted he and his cousin also sold perfume.

“ 'Ow about that?” The Kean gaped as if he'd never heard of either commodity. “ 'Ow much do you want for 'em?”

Menedemos named his prices, adding, “That's in Athenian drakhmai, of course.” Keos was part of Antigonos' Island League, but had more intimate connections with nearby Attica.

“All right,” the local said. “Let me 'ave a couple of jars of the perfume, and maybe two-three bolts of silk. Sounds like a pretty good deal.”

“You . . . have the money?” Menedemos tried to hide his astonishment.

“I'll be back directly,” the Kean replied. “Don't you go away, now.” Off he went, no faster than he had to. He did come back, and started piling Athenian owls in front of Sostratos. “That should do it,” he said when he was done.

“Why, so it does.” Maybe the local couldn't hear how amazed Sostratos was. Menedemos could. But, at his cousin's gesture, he gave the man the perfume and the silk.

“Thank you kindly,” the fellow said. “You got anything else?”

“Well...” Menedemos hesitated.

“Come on. Spit it out. I'm not going to buy it if you don't tell me what it is,” the local said. “If I want it, though, I will. I've got the money. You've seen I do.”

“So we have,” Menedemos said. “All right, then, most noble: the other thing I have is a single Egyptian emerald.”

“Now, that's something that doesn't come along every day.” The Kean held out his hand. “Let's see it.” Reluctantly, Menedemos produced the stone, half expecting the local to run off with it. But he didn't. He held it in the sunlight, murmuring, “Isn't that pretty?” When he returned it to Menedemos, he asked the right question: “How much?”

Without blinking, Menedemos said, “Ten minai.”

The Kean handed back the emerald and spoke in mild protest: “That's a lot of silver, friend.” But he didn't turn on his heel and walk away. Instead, he said, “I'll give you six.”

Menedemos felt like shouting. Beside him, Sostratos inhaled sharply, but he didn't think the local noticed. He tossed his head. “I'm sorry, but I can't sell it for that without costing myself money.” The money he was talking about was all profit, but the Kean didn't have to know that.

“Well, six minai, twenty drakhmai, then,” the fellow said.

In a quick, neat dicker, they settled on eight minai, fifteen drakhmai for the stone. That was even more than Nikodromos had paid on Aigina. The more I ask for emeralds, the more I seem to get, Menedemos thought dazedly, and kicked himself for letting others, earlier in the trading run, go so cheap.

“See you soon,” the Kean said, and strolled away. Menedemos hated to let the man out of his sight. Would he really come back? Some of the sweat pouring down the merchant's face had nothing to do with the beastly weather. In due course, the Kean did return, this time with a bigger leather sack, which he handed to Sostratos. “Count 'em out, friend. If I'm one or two light, I'll give 'em to you.”

Count them Sostratos did. “As a matter of fact, best one, you're one drakhma over,” he said, and handed the Kean an owl.

“I thank you.” The man popped it into his mouth. It was heavy enough to make his cheek sag slightly. “A pleasure to know I'm dealing with 'onest men.”

He put that extra coin in on purpose, to see what we'd do, Menedemos realized as he passed the Kean the emerald. The fellow might move slowly and talk like a rustic, but he was no fool. Nikodromos had played the same game, but only after he'd been caught cheating himself. This felt different—not nearly so annoying.

“A pleasure to know our goods please you,” Sostratos said.

“You might say so.” The local dipped his head. “Yes, you just might say so. 'Ail, the two of you.” Without any fuss, he turned and ambled out of the market square.

I never even found out his name, Menedemos thought. He called out to the fellow selling raisins: “Ea, friend, who's that man we were doing business with?”

The fellow's eyes got big. “You don't know Kallimedes son of Kallias?” By the way he said it, everybody on Keos knew him. Sure enough, the raisin seller went on, “ 'E's got bigger wheatfields and more olive trees than anybody else on this island, maybe more than everybody else on this island put together—I wouldn't be surprised.”

“No wonder he could afford what we were selling,” Sostratos murmured.

“No wonder at all,” Menedemos whispered back. He asked the man with the basket of raisins, “Was he buying our dainties for his wife or for a favorite hetaira?”

“Kallimedes?” The raisin seller stared again. “You must not know him. Those are bound to be for a pretty boy. 'E's mad for boys, Kallimedes is.”

“Oh,” Menedemos said in slightly crestfallen tones.

“Ha,” Sostratos said. Menedemos tried to step on his foot, but missed. His cousin laughed. Menedemos muttered under his breath. He hadn't really intended doing anything with Kallimedes' wife, if the Kean had one. He'd just asked out of curiosity. And he'd got his answer.

“I think we're done here,” he told Sostratos, who dipped his head in agreement. As they headed back toward the Aphrodite. Menedemos wished he were wearing his sword. He hadn't expected to be carrying so much silver. But he and Sostratos had no trouble. Not even the panting scavenger dogs found a couple of strangers worth barking at.

On board ship, Dionysios son of Herakleitos remained in a foul mood. “You've certainly gone and wasted the best part of the day.”

“Wasted? I should say not, O marvelous one.” Menedemos held up the two sacks of coins he'd got from Kallimedes son of Kallias. “Do you see these? Which do you suppose is more important to me, the business I did here or your paltry fare?”

“Paltry?” Dionysios said. “You've got your nerve, calling it that.”

“Next to this, it is,” Menedemos said. “You'll get to Kos soon enough, but you're out of your mind if you think I won't do business along the way.”

“And you're out of your mind if you think we didn't need fresh water,” Sostratos added. “We're not going to have our rowers fall over dead from working the oars too hard in this heat.”

Dionysios looked back toward Cape Sounion, whose headland was still plainly visible in the west. “I could have swum this far,” he grumbled.

“If you keep complaining, you will swim from here on out,” Menedemos said, no trace of smile on his face. That got through to the passenger, who fell silent.

The following day dawned as hot and bright as the one before. The breeze that came up from the south might have blown from a smithy's furnace. But it was a breeze; Menedemos ordered the akatos' sail lowered from the yard. By the time the sun came up over the eastern horizon, the Aphrodite had left Keos behind.

“Are you going to make Syros tonight?” Sostratos asked.

“I'm going to try,” Menedemos answered. “If the wind holds, we shouldn't have any trouble.”

“And if we don't run into pirates,” his cousin added. Menedemos spat into the bosom of his tunic. After a moment, Sostratos did the same. He went on, “Shall I pass out the weapons again, just in case?”

“Maybe you'd better,” Menedemos said with a sigh.

They saw no pirate galleys on the Aegean, only fishing boats and one round ship that took the Aphrodite for a pirate and sped away, running before the wind. Syros rose from the sea ahead of them: a sun-baked island much longer from north to south than from east to west. The only polis on the island, also called Syros, lay by a bay on the eastern coast; Menedemos brought the Aphrodite down from the north into the harbor.

He quoted from the Odyssey as the akatos' anchors splashed into the Aegean:

“That's Eumaios the swineherd talking to Odysseus, isn't it?” Sostratos asked.

“Yes, that's right,” Menedemos said.

Sostratos took a long look at Syros, then clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Well, if Eumaios was telling as much truth about his ancestors as he was about the island, he must have been a pig-keeper from a long line of pigkeepers.”

“Scoffer!” Menedemos said, deliciously scandalized. But, the more he eyed the dry, barren landscape beyond the steeply rising streets of the polis of Syros, the more he realized Sostratos had a point: he saw not a tree, hardly even a bush. Still, he went on, “It must grow something, or no one would live here.”

“I suppose so,” Sostratos said grudgingly. “All the same, this is one of those places that prove Homer was a blind poet.” He pointed ahead. “Even the polis is a miserable little dump. Herodotos never says a word about it, and neither does Thoukydides. I see why not, too.”

“Why should they?” Menedemos said. “Nothing much happens here.”

“That's what I mean,” Sostratos said. “You could live out your life in this polis. You could be as big a man here as that Kallimedes son of Kallias was back on Keos, and nobody who's not from Syros would ever hear of you, any more than we'd heard of Kallimedes. In Rhodes or Athens or Taras or Syracuse or Alexandria, at least you have a chance to be remembered. Here?” He tossed his head.

Menedemos wondered if bright young men, ambitious young men, left Syros and crossed the sea to some other polis where they could seek their heart's desire. He supposed some had to. But most, surely, lived out their lives within a few stadia of where they were born. All through the civilized world, most people did.

The heat wave broke that night. The northerly breeze that blew the next morning had a distinct nip to it, a warning that autumn, even if it hadn't got here yet, would come. Menedemos enjoyed that, but he enjoyed its steadiness even more. “Now we'll show that son of a whore what the Aphrodite can do,” he muttered, dipping a chunk of bread into olive oil and taking a big bite.

“If the wind holds, we'll make Naxos easy as you please,” Diokles agreed, “and that's a pretty fair day's run.”

Wind thrummed in the rigging and quickly filled the sail when Menedemos ordered it lowered. The merchant galley seemed to lean forward, letting that wind pull her along. Naxos lay at the heart of Antigonos' Island League. With malice aforethought, Menedemos asked Dionysios son of Herakleitos, “When we get there, shall we tell the Naxians how eager you are to go on to Kos?”

The passenger's eyes were cool as marble. “Tell them anything you please, O best one. It's all the same to me.” He was probably lying about that, but he'd made his point, and Menedemos stopped twitting him.

From Naxos to Amorgos the next day was an even better run. Menedemos steered past several little islands that housed a few shepherds and fishermen. He'd almost gone aground on one of them in the rain on his last trip through the Kyklades, with Polemaios aboard. No danger of that here; not with the weather fine and sunny, but he did have to do several usual days' worth of steering before he left them astern. Sostratos said, “Any one of those horrid little rocks makes Syros look like Athens.”

“And if that's not a frightening thought, Furies take me if I know what would be,” Menedemos replied.

He took the Aphrodite south and west again the following day, to Astypalaia, where they spoke Doric Greek like his own rather than Ionic. A great many fishing boats bobbed in the offshore waters; a fertile valley stretched behind the polis, which lay in the southeastern part of the island.

“One more place where nobody ever made a name for himself,” Menedemos said.

To his surprise, Sostratos tossed his head. “Don't you know the story of Kleomedes of Astypalaia?” he asked.

“Can't say that I do,” Menedemos admitted. “Who was he?”

“A pankratiast, back around the time of the Persian Wars,” Sostratos answered. “He would have won at the Olympic Games, but he killed his foe in the all-out fight and got disqualified. He must have gone mad with grief after that. He came back to Astypalaia and pulled down a pillar that held up the roof for a boys' school—fifty or sixty people died. He fled to Athena's temple and hid in a wooden chest there, but when the Astypalaians broke it open he wasn't inside, either: not alive, not dead, just. . . gone.”

Menedemos felt the hair at the back of his neck try to prickle up in awe and dread. “What happened then?” he asked.

“They sent to Delphi to find out what they should do, and the verse they got back was,

'Last of the heroes—Kleomedes the Astypalaian. Honor him with sacrifices, he being mortal no more.' “

“Do they?” Menedemos asked.

“I've never heard otherwise,” Sostratos said.

“A demigod, from as late as the Persian Wars,” Menedemos mused. “That's strange all by itself. . . although people are saying Alexander was divine, too.”

“They're saying it, all right,” Sostratos agreed. “What do you think of it?”

“I don't know,” Menedemos answered. “He did things no ordinary mortal could do. Maybe that does make him divine. Who knows where humanity stops and divinity starts? It's not as though there were a neat line between gods and men.” He poked his cousin in the ribs. “What do you think?”

“I don't know, either.” Sostratos sounded uncomfortable, even a little annoyed: he always hated not knowing. He went on, “He was just a man—Ptolemaios and Polemaios knew him. I'm not comfortable with calling anyone a god—but, as you say, he did things you wouldn't think a mere man could do. I wish I had a better answer, but I don't. I wonder what Ptolemaios would say if we asked him.”

“Well, we're only a couple of days from Kos,” Menedemos said. “You can do that, if you've got the nerve.”

“Oh, I'm sure he'd talk about Alexander—Alexander's dead, divine or not,” Sostratos said. “Now, if I were to start talking about Antigonos ... I don't think I'd want to do that.” He glanced toward Dionysios son of Herakleitos, who'd dropped a fishing line over the side to see if he could catch some opson to go with his sitos. In a low voice, he added, “You never can tell who might be listening.”

Just then, Dionysios tugged on the line and hauled a plump mackerel up into the ship. It wasn't a mullet or a dogfish—no opsophagos' delight—but it was a lot better than nothing. He gutted it, threw the offal into the sea, and took out a little charcoal brazier to cook his catch.

“He's got good luck,” Menedemos remarked.

“So he does,” Sostratos said, still quietly. “I wonder where he stole it.” To that, Menedemos had no answer.

The run from Astypalaia to Kos the next day proved harder work and slower than he'd hoped, for the wind died away to next to nothing and the rowers had to go to their benches. Even with a good following wind, though, Menedemos would have been amazed to make the polis of Kos before nightfall. The Aphrodite did reach the western end of the island, where he grounded her on a broad, fair beach on the north coast. “She'll be easy to get into the water again tomorrow,” he told Sostratos. “We're not carrying enough to weigh her down.”

“True,” his cousin said. “And we ought to be safe from pirates, with so much of Ptolemaios' fleet in the neighborhood.”

“If we're not safe here, we're not safe anywhere outside the great harbor at Rhodes,” Menedemos said.

A couple of peasants came up with honey and olives to sell. As Sostratos did when buying anything, he clicked his tongue between his teeth and gave other signs of distress, but after they left he said, “If people here know it's likely to be safe to come up to a beached ship, that's the best sign pirates don't come sniffing around very often.”

Menedemos dipped his head. “And tomorrow we'll put Dionysios ashore, and then we can head for home ourselves.”

“I wonder whether Halikarnassos has fallen,” Sostratos said.

“Me, I hope Ptolemaios' men sacked it,” Menedemos said.

His cousin laughed. “Of course you do. That would mean what's-his-name, the fellow with the friendly wife there, was likely dead. And then we could trade there again without worrying about your getting murdered.”

Ears hot, Menedemos said, “Well, that's not the only reason.” Sostratos laughed again, sure he was lying through his teeth. Since he was, he changed the subject in a hurry.

As the Aphrodite came into the harbor at Kos, Sostratos shaded his eyes from the sun with the palm of his hand and peered northeast across the narrow channel separating the island from Halikarnassos on the mainland. “No smoke,” he said. “No sea battles. Either the place fell a while ago or it hasn't fallen at all.” Menedemos didn't answer. “Did you hear me?” Sostratos asked. “I said—”

“I heard you,” Menedemos answered. “I'm just not listening to you.”

“Oh,” Sostratos said. “All right.” The anger lying under Menedemos' quiet words warned him he'd pushed things about as far as they would go, or perhaps a little further. Now if only Menedemos were as good at noticing when he goes too far with me, he thought, and then laughed. Wish for the moon, while you're at it.

“Harbor's crowded,” Diokles remarked. “Ships stuffed tight as olives in a jar.”

“There's the likely answer,” Sostratos said. “If Ptolemaios' fleet is back here, Halikarnassos probably still belongs to Antigonos.”

“Too bad,” Menedemos said. Then, suddenly, he took his right hand from the steering-oar tiller and pointed. His voice rose to a shout: “There's a spot we can squeeze into! Row, you bastards, before somebody steals it from us.”

“Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” the oarmaster called, giving the rowers the stroke. The merchant galley slid into the wharf space. “Back oars!” Diokles commanded, and then, as she came to a halt, “Oöp!” The men rested at the oars.

Dionysios son of Herakleitos, leather duffel on his shoulder, hurried back to the poop deck as longshoremen caught lines from the Aphrodite and made her fast to the quay. “Put up the gangplank,” he barked at Menedemos. “I have to be on my way.”

Menedemos tilted his head back and looked down his nose at the passenger. “You talk to a skipper like that aboard his ship and he'll throw you overboard. You won't need to worry about the gangplank then, by Zeus.”

“And you don't go anywhere till you pay us the twenty-five drakhmai you still owe us,” Sostratos added.

Fuming, the dapper man gave him the second half of his fare— again, in Ptolemaios' light drakhmai. Even after that, Menedemos took his own sweet time about running the gangplank over to the pier. When he finally did, Dionysios sprang onto it and went down the pier and into the polis of Kos at a dead run.

“What's chasing him?” one of the longshoremen asked.

Sostratos shrugged. “Who knows? Some people are just glad to get off a ship.” The longshoreman laughed. Sostratos asked a question of his own: “What went wrong with the siege of Halikarnassos?”

“Oh, you were here when that started?” the longshoreman asked. Sostratos dipped his head. The Koan, a disgusted look on his face, spat into the sea. “Ptolemaios' army was on the point of taking the place when who should show up but Demetrios son of Antigonos, with the army he'd brought back from fighting somebody or other way off in the east.”

“Seleukos?” Sostratos suggested.

“I think so,” the longshoreman answered. “Anyway, he relieved the place and put a big new garrison into it, so there's no point going after it anymore.”

Menedemos made a horrible face. “Too bad,” he said.

“I think so, too,” the Koan agreed; Halikarnassos was his polis' longtime trading rival.

“Demetrios came back to Anatolia from fighting Seleukos, you said?” Sostratos asked, and the longshoreman dipped his head. As was his way, Sostratos found another question: “How did he do out in the east?”

“Well, I don't know all the battles and such, but I don't think he won the war,” the Koan replied.

Demetrios beat Ptolemaios' army here, but he couldn't beat Seleukos' army there, Sostratos thought. Isn't that interesting? Ptolemaios had let Seleukos go off to the east to cause trouble for Antigonos in a new quarter. By all appearances, Seleukos was giving the lord of Egypt everything he wanted and then some.

“What other news besides Halikarnassos?” Menedemos asked.

“You should have got here half a month ago,” the longshoreman told him. “The festival Ptolemaios gave when his lady had a boy ...” He grinned reminiscently. “I drank so much wine, my head ached for two days afterwards.”

“What did he name the baby?” Sostratos asked: he wanted to know all the details.

“Why, Ptolemaios,” the Koan said.

Sostratos frowned. “Doesn't he already have a son named Ptolemaios? His wife bore the other one, not his mistress.”

“I think you're right,” Menedemos said.

The longshoreman shrugged. “I don't know anything about that. He's the richest fellow in the world. Who's going to tell him he can't have two boys with the same name, if that's what he wants? Not me, by Zeus.”

“Nor me,” Sostratos agreed. “But I wonder how happy his wife will be, knowing his mistress has a little Ptolemaios, too.”

“You're too young to have a wife of your own, aren't you, best one?” asked the longshoreman, whose hair was thinning on top and gray at the temples. He didn't wait for Sostratos to answer, but continued, “You must be—you're nowhere near thirty. But I'll tell you something: you've got that right, whether you learned it from your own wife or not. She'll be steaming, sure as sure.”

“Of course, Eurydike is back in Alexandria, and Berenike's here along with Ptolemaios—the grown-up Ptolemaios, I mean,” Sostratos said.

“He'll go home sooner or later, and so will his lady—and so will their brat,” the Koan said. “And how long he's been away won't matter a khalkos. What's-her-name back there will have plenty to say to him, no matter how long it is.” He spoke with a mixture of glum certainty and gloating anticipation; Sostratos wondered who ruled the roost at his house. No, actually he didn't wonder—he thought he could guess.

Something else struck him: “Eurydike is Kassandros' sister, remember. He won't be happy if she loses her place.”

“One more reason for a fight, maybe,” Menedemos said.

“Don't the Macedonians have enough already?” Sostratos said. “It's not as if they need more.”

“They're like a gang of pankratiasts fighting it out,” the longshoreman said. “They won't quit till only one's left standing.”

Sostratos thought uneasily of Kleomedes of Astypalaia. He'd slain his foe, and been disqualified for it. Nobody disqualified a Macedonian marshal who killed a rival or a royal heir. Unlike athletes, the marshals advanced their positions through murder.

Menedemos said, “Now that we've put Dionysios ashore here, to the crows with me if I'm not tempted to head straight for Rhodes and not spend even a night.”

Diokles gave him a reproachful look. “Seeing how hard the men worked through the hot spell, skipper, and seeing all the miserable, good-for-nothing places we stopped at on our way across the Aegean, don't you think they deserve one night's fun in a real polis?”

“Oh, I suppose so.” Menedemos donned a lopsided grin. “I may even deserve a night's fun in a real polis myself.”

“Sounds fair,” the oarmaster said. “Except that once over in Aigina, you had yourself a pretty quiet run this year.”

“We were talking about pankratiasts a minute ago,” Menedemos said. “I didn't realize everyone was keeping score on me.” Diokles and Sostratos solemnly dipped their heads at the same time. Menedemos made faces at both of them. Diokles laughed.

And Sostratos said, “Well, my dear, even if you do go out drinking and wenching tonight, I'm glad you sound as though you want to go home. When we set out this past spring, you didn't seem to care if you ever saw Rhodes again.”

Menedemos' face froze—and the expression on which it froze was one not far from hatred. Sostratos took a startled, altogether involuntary step away from him. After a moment, his cousin's bleak look faded ... a little. Menedemos said, “I'd almost forgotten about that, and you went and made me remember.” He sighed and shrugged. “I don't suppose I can blame you much. It would have come back to me when we got into the great harbor.”

“What would have?” Sostratos had known something was bothering Menedemos, but he'd had no idea what. And he still didn't; Menedemos had been unusually close-mouthed—astoundingly so, for him—all through this season's sailing.

He still was. He smiled at Sostratos and said, “However strange and sorrowful you may feel about it, O marvelous one, there are some things you aren't going to find out, no matter how much research you do.”

“No, eh?” Sostratos almost made a crack about going on with his investigations, but the memory of the look his cousin had given him a moment before made him hold his tongue. Whatever reasons Menedemos had for wanting to stay away from Rhodes, he was serious about them.

“No,” he said firmly. Maybe he'd expected a crack from Sostratos and was relieved not to get it, for his manner lightened again. He went on, “Why don't you come drinking and wenching tonight, too? It'd do you good.”

“Me?” Sostratos tossed his head. “Going around with a thick head the next day isn't my idea of fun.” He held up a hand before Menedemos could say anything. “Oh, once in a while—in a symposion, say. But getting drunk in a tavern isn't my idea of fun.”

“Well, don't get drunk in a tavern, then. Get laid in a brothel instead.” Menedemos smiled once more—or was that a leer? Whatever it was, his good humor seemed restored. “You can't tell me that's not your idea of fun, not after that girl in Taras last year, the one with hair like new copper.”

“Every now and then,” Sostratos admitted, “but not tonight.”

“Wet blanket.”

“I am not,” Sostratos said irately. “No such thing, by Zeus! You can do whatever you want. Do I complain about it?”

“Only when you talk,” Menedemos assured him.

Since he was right, or at least partly right, Sostratos tried a different tack: “Did I tell you not to go drinking tonight? Did I tell you not to go to a brothel tonight?”

“Not yet,” Menedemos said.

“Funny man,” Sostratos grumbled.

His cousin bowed, as if thinking he'd meant it. “Thank you very much.”

That evening, most of the sailors, and Menedemos with them, went into Kos to revel. “Try not to drink up all our profits, anyhow,” Sostratos said as Menedemos strode up the gangplank.

“You sound like the pedagogue who took me to school every morning when I was a boy,” Menedemos said. “But you haven't got a switch, and he did.”

Sostratos spent the night aboard. He ate bread and olives and cheese and a fish he bought from a little boy who'd caught it at the end of the pier, and washed the supper down with wine. If I wanted to get drunk, I could do it here, he thought. If he wanted a woman . . . He tossed his head. He wouldn't have cared to do that aboard a ship, even one called the Aphrodite.

He got little sleep. Drunken sailors kept reeling back to the merchant galley at all hours. At some point, Menedemos must have come back, too, though Sostratos didn't remember that. Morning twilight was beginning to make the eastern sky turn pale when he jerked awake yet again at a snatch of drunken song and found Menedemos snoring on the planks of the poop deck beside him.

Sunrise woke Sostratos for good. It also woke his cousin, who looked none too happy about being awake. “If I jump into the sea, do you suppose I'll turn into a dolphin?” he asked. “I'm sure dolphins don't get hangovers.”

“By the way your eyes look, I'd say you were more likely to turn into a jellyfish,” Sostratos answered. “Was the good time you had worth the sore head you've got now?”

“From what I remember of it, yes,” Menedemos said, which wasn't the conclusion Sostratos had hoped he would draw. Menedemos peered through half shut eyes at a couple of well-dressed men coming up the quay toward the Aphrodite. “What do they want? Tell 'em to go away, Sostratos. I don't want anything to do with 'em, not this early in the morning.”

“Maybe they're passengers,” Sostratos said.

“Tell 'em to go away anyhow,” Menedemos answered, something Sostratos had no intention of doing.

His intentions turned out not to matter. One of the men said, “Menedemos son of Philodemos and Sostratos son of Lysistratos? Come with us at once, if you please.”

There was breathtaking arrogance. “Who says we should?” Sostratos demanded.

“Ptolemaios, the lord of Egypt,” the man answered. “He assumed you would come peaceably. If not, we can make other arrangements.”

“What does Ptolemaios want with us?” Sostratos asked in surprise.

“That's for him to tell you, not me,” his man answered. “Are you coming?”

Sostratos dipped his head. After a moment, so did Menedemos. He ran his fingers through his hair to try to make it a little less disheveled. “I'm ready,” he said, seeming anything but.

By all the signs, the tramp through town did little to improve his spirits. He paused once to hike up his tunic and piss against a wall. City stinks—dung and unwashed bodies and tanneries and all the others—were nastier away from the breezes of the harbor. His squint got worse as the sun rose higher in the sky.

When he came before Ptolemaios, he gave only a perfunctory bow, muttering, “My head wants to fall off.”

“You should have thought of that last night,” Sostratos said out of the side of his mouth. Menedemos sent him a horrible look.

“I hear you're thieves,” Ptolemaios said without preamble.

“No, your Excellency,” Sostratos said. Menedemos said nothing, but cautiously dipped his head to show he agreed with Sostratos. I'm going to have to do this by myself, Sostratos thought, annoyed at his cousin for being useless here. But who would have thought Ptolemaios would want us? Be fair.

“No, eh?” the Macedonian marshal rumbled. “That's not how Dionysios tells it, and I agree with him. Fifty drakhmai from Cape Sounion to here? That's piracy.”

“Piracy? No, sir. By the dog of Egypt, no, sir!” Sostratos said.

Ptolemaios raised a bushy eyebrow at his vehemence. “I tell you it is.”

“And I tell you you're talking like a fool. . . sir,” Sostratos retorted. Both of Ptolemaios' eyebrows flew upwards. A couple of his bodyguards growled ominously. Sostratos didn't care. He was past caring. Rage almost choking him, he went on, “I'll tell you what piracy really is. Piracy's really a pack of howling whoresons swarming onto your ship and killing your men and stealing your goods, your . . . your most precious goods.” He'd thought some of the pain from the loss of the gryphon's skull had eased. Now it stabbed him again. “It happened to us between Andros and Euboia. So Furies take your precious Dionysios if he calls us pirates. Nobody held a knife to his throat and made him come along with us. He could have taken any other ship he chose.”

Furies take you if you call us pirates. He didn't quite say that to Ptolemaios, but it hung in the air. A vast silence fell over the andron. Some of Ptolemaios' servitors stared at Sostratos. More eyed the lord of Egypt. How long has it been since anyone called him a fool to his face? Sostratos wondered. Years, probably.

Something glinted in Ptolemaios' eyes. Amusement or anger? Sostratos couldn't tell. The marshal said, “If you think you can insult me as you please because you come from a free and autonomous polis, you're badly mistaken.”

Sostratos made himself meet the older man's stare. “If you think you can insult us as you please because you rule Egypt—”

“I'm right,” Ptolemaios broke in.

“You may be right, sir, but are you just?” Sostratos asked. “The last time we were in Kos, you said you wished you'd gone to Athens and met Platon. Would he have called that just?”

Ptolemaios grimaced. Sostratos hid a smile. A lot of the leading Macedonians craved acceptance as cultured Hellenes, and Ptolemaios was indeed an educated man. Every once in a while, someone could turn that longing for acceptance against them. Ptolemaios gave a sudden, sharp dip of the head. “Very well. I withdraw the word. Are you happy now?”

“Thank you, best one,” Sostratos replied. Bodyguards and courtiers relaxed.

“But I still say that was an outrageously high fare,” Ptolemaios went on.

Shrugging, Sostratos answered, “We're in business to make a profit, sir. As I said just now, Dionysios didn't have to come with us if it didn't please him.”

“He might still be in Sounion if he hadn't,” Ptolemaios said. Sostratos only shrugged again. Ptolemaios' gaze sharpened. “You say you lost your most precious cargo? That's not what I heard.”

Ice ran through Sostratos. “Sir?” He had to force the word out, for he was dreadfully afraid he knew what Ptolemaios would say next.

And the lord of Egypt said it: “I heard you were selling emeralds. No, not you—your cousin.” He pointed at Menedemos. “This fellow. He talked a lot more the last time I saw him. I wonder why that is. If you were selling emeralds, they were smuggled out of Egypt. I don't like smugglers. I don't like people who deal with them, either.”

To Sostratos' amazement—and maybe to Ptolemaios', too—Menedemos burst out laughing. Bowing to the ruler of Egypt, he said, “Search me, sir. Here are your guards—they can look at whatever I have. So long as your men don't steal, they're welcome to come aboard the Aphrodite and search the ship, too. If they find a single emerald aboard, you can do what you like to me.”

He sold the last one back at Keos, Sostratos remembered. He dipped his head. “My cousin is right, sir,” he told Ptolemaios. “Dionysios is trying to get us in trouble because he's angry at the fare he had to pay.”

“It could be,” Ptolemaios said. “Sure enough, it could be. But, on the other hand, you may be bluffing. Who knows what kind of abandoned rogues you are?” He turned to his guards. “They've given you the invitation. Go ahead and search them. Do a good job of it.”

“Yes, sir,” the bodyguards chorused. They took Sostratos and Menedemos into separate rooms. Sostratos didn't know what Menedemos went through, and hoped it was as unpleasant as his own experience. After making him get out of his chiton and examining the garment, his belt, the little knife on it, the leather sheath for the knife, and the pouch in which he carried odds and ends, they turned their attention to his person.

They had more practice or more imagination than he'd expected. Their leader ran a finger around inside his mouth and discovered an obolos he'd entirely forgotten was in there. “Keep it,” he told the fellow.

“Not me,” the bodyguard said. “I'm no thief.”

He might not have been a thief, but he would have made a good torturer's apprentice. He ran a straw up Sostratos' nostrils. That produced no emeralds, but did bring on a sneezing fit. He probed Sostratos' ears with a twig. He made Sostratos bend over and probed another orifice, too. He didn't go out of his way to hurt the Rhodian, but he wasn't gentle about it, either. He also made Sostratos pull back his foreskin.

Before the fellow got any other bright ideas, Sostratos said, “Let me piss in a pot. If I'm hiding anything up there, that will flush it out.”

“Mm—all right,” the guard said, and, to Sostratos' vast relief, tossed aside another twig. “Lift up your feet, one after the other, so I can make sure you haven't got anything stuck under your arches.”

As Sostratos obeyed, he said, “How likely am I to have an emerald glued to the bottom of my foot, especially when I had no idea coming here that I would be searched?”

“I don't know how likely you are to have one there, friend,” the bodyguard answered. “That's why I'm looking: to find out.”

Finally, for good measure, he used a very fine-toothed comb, one suitable for getting rid of lice and nits, on Sostratos' hair and beard. Since his hair was wavy and his beard curly, and since he hadn't combed them out too well himself, that hurt as much as anything else he'd been through.

“Are you satisfied now?” he asked when the guard tossed the comb aside.

“Pretty much so,” the man replied. “Either you haven't got any or you're a sneakier bastard than most.”

After that less than ringing endorsement, he and his comrades let Sostratos put his tunic on again. He'd just slid it down over his head when the other group of guards led Menedemos past the doorway and toward the andron. His cousin, he was not at all sorry to see, looked at least as put upon as he felt himself—but his hair was well combed now. The men who'd searched Sostratos took him back to the andron, too.

“Well?” Ptolemaios barked.

“No emeralds, sir,” chorused the men who'd searched Menedemos, and the ones who'd searched Sostratos dipped their heads. A guard asked Ptolemaios, “Shall we take their ship apart, too, the way this fellow told us we could?”

Ptolemaios thought that over, but not for long. Then he tossed his head. “No, no point to that. Too many places to hide such small things; you'd only find 'em by luck.” He glowered at the two Rhodians. “I'm not convinced you're telling me the truth, not by a long shot. But I can't prove you're not, so I'm going to let you go: you did serve me well before.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sostratos said before Menedemos could come out with anything that might land them in more trouble.

“I suppose you're welcome,” the ruler of Egypt replied. “I suppose.” He jerked a thumb toward the front door. “Meanwhile, why don't you go somewhere else and not give me any reason to call you here again?”

“Yes, sir,” Sostratos said. “Thank you again, sir.” He hurried out of the andron, Menedemos in his wake. Only after they were out in the street did he pause to let out a sigh of relief.

“Many goodbyes to that Dionysios,” Menedemos said.

“Yes, he tried to cover us in dung, didn't he?” Sostratos agreed. “I say we head for home first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Oh?” Menedemos asked. “Why's that?”

“Two reasons.” Sostratos looked around to make sure nobody was paying any special attention to them, then stuck his thumb in the air. “For one thing, Ptolemaios wouldn't find any precious stones hidden on the Aphrodite, but he would find the account books that talk about them. And, for another”—he stuck up his forefinger, too— “he might decide to hold us here till he sends to Keos or even to Aigina. Do you want to take the chance?”

“Now that you mention it, no,” his cousin said.

“Good. Neither do I.”

Menedemos said, “We bought the emeralds in Rhodes, not in any of the lands Ptolemaios rules. We didn't break any of his laws to get them. I don't see how he really could condemn us for that.”

“He's lord of Egypt, the richest man in the world, one of the four or five strongest men in the world,” Sostratos pointed out. “He doesn't need a reason. He can do as he pleases. That's what being one of the four or five strongest men in the world means. If he catches us lying ...” He shivered. “And we brought those stones through Kos before, and what do you want to bet he's made laws against that?”

His cousin pulled a sour face. “You're probably right. No, you're certainly right. Very well, best one—you've convinced me. We go out tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” Sostratos said.

Menedemos chuckled. “Besides, I'd want to spirit you away before Ptolemaios makes you shorter by a head for calling him a fool in front of his men. Did you see how far his eyes bugged out?”

“I'm a free Hellene, by the gods,” Sostratos said. “If he's not used to hearing people speak their minds, too bad for him.”

“He being who he is, though, it's liable to be bad for anyone who does speak his mind,” Menedemos said, and Sostratos could hardly argue.

He and Menedemos had almost reached the Aphrodite when someone called to them from behind. Alarm ran through Sostratos: had Ptolemaios decided to be difficult after all? But when he looked back over his shoulder, he recognized the fellow waving to them from up the street. “Hail, Pixodaros,” he said. “What can we do for you today? “

“Hail, both of you,” the silk dealer answered. “When I heard you'd come back to Kos, I thought it was a gift from the gods. Have you any more crimson dye?”

“Certainly,” Sostratos answered. “How much do you need?”

“How much do you have?” Pixodaros asked.

“Let me think.” Sostratos plucked at his beard. “I believe we have . . . fifty-three jars. That's based on what we sold. It might be fewer, though. We had to fight off pirates, and they might have stolen a few when they went back to their own ship.”

“By Zeus Labraundeus, I'm glad to see you well and safe,” Pixodaros said. “May they all go up on crosses!”

“May they indeed.” Normally, Sostratos was among the most mild-mannered of men. Now he sounded thoroughly grim. Whenever he thought of a pirate picking up the leather sack that held the gryphon's skull and leaping back into the hemiolia from the Aphrodite, his blood boiled.

“How do you keep such good track of what's sold and what isn't?” Menedemos asked him.

He shrugged. “I write up the accounts, and I remember them.” It didn't seem remarkable to him. He asked a question of his own: “How do you carry so much of the Iliad and Odyssey around in your head?”

“That's different. For one thing, the words don't change. For another, they're worth remembering.” Menedemos turned back to Pixodaros. “Please excuse us, best one. We do go back and forth at each other, I know.”

The Karian smiled. “Kinsmen will do that.”

“How much dye do you need?” Sostratos asked him.

“As much as you have. If you had more, I would buy it. I have a lot of silk to dye, and my, ah, client wants the cloth as soon as he can get it.”

“You can dye a lot of silk with fifty or so jars of crimson,” Sostratos said. Pixodaros nodded, then remembered himself and dipped his head. Sostratos plucked at his beard again. He lowered his voice to ask, “Does Antigonos want to give his officers silk tunics, or is this for the officers' women?”

Both Menedemos and Pixodaros started. “Not Antigonos—Demetrios, his son. But how can you know that?” the silk merchant demanded. “Are you a wizard?” The fingers of his left hand twisted in an apotropaic gesture Sostratos had seen other Karians use.

He tossed his head. “Not at all. Who but a Macedonian marshal could afford so much crimson-dyed silk? If it were Ptolemaios, you would have come out and said so. It might have been Lysimakhos or Kassandros, but they're on good terms with Ptolemaios now, and old One-Eye isn't. He's the one you have the best reason to be cagey about.”

“Ah. I see,” Pixodaros said. “True—it is all simple enough, once you explain it.”

Anything is simple, once someone else explains it, Sostratos thought sourly. But before he could say that out loud—and he might have— Menedemos contrived, almost by accident, to tread on his toe. After apologizing, his cousin asked Pixodaros, “And what will you give us for the dye?”

The merchant looked pained. “You have me where you want me, I know. I only ask you to remember this: if you hurt me badly now, we have years of dealing ahead where I can take my revenge.” He gave Sostratos half a bow. “I too have a long memory.”

“No doubt,” Sostratos said politely. “Well, what does fifteen drakhmai the jar sound like to you?”

“What does it sound like?” Pixodaros exclaimed. “Piracy. Robbery. Extortion. In your dreams, you sell it for half that much. Because you have me, because I need it, I will give you half that much.”

“You gave more than half that much in silk when we stopped here in the springtime,” Sostratos said.

“Silk is one thing. Silver is another,” Pixodaros replied. He haggled as fiercely as he could, but found himself at a disadvantage: the Rhodians knew how much he needed the dye. That meant they could bargain fiercely, while he couldn't. At the end, he threw his hands in the air. “All right, twelve drakhmai the jar it is. Bandits, both of you. How much silver is that altogether?”

“Let's see exactly how many jars we have.” Sostratos called orders to the sailors. They brought forty-nine jars of crimson dye up onto the quay. He muttered to himself. “That would be ... 588 drakhmai all told—not Ptolemaios' light drakhmai,” he added.

“I understand. I'll be back.” Pixodaros hurried off into Kos.

Menedemos snapped his fingers. “I promised to give a sheep at the Asklepeion here if the men healed well after the fight with the pirates. Now I won't be able to.”

Sostratos thought, then tossed his head. “No, you promised to give a sheep here if you could, or on Rhodes if you couldn't. As long as you offer the animal to the god, you're not forsworn.”

“Are you sure?” his cousin asked.

“Positive.”

“All right. Good. That's a relief,” Menedemos said. “We do want to leave as soon as we can. And then”—he sighed—”it's back to Rhodes.” Sostratos still had no idea what troubled him there. He wondered if he would ever learn.