The Gryphon's Skull

2

Sostratos stood on the Aphrodite's tiny foredeck, peering into Kaunos. “Where is he?” he grumbled. Twilight was coming on, paling the waning crescent moon, Kronos' wandering star not far from it, and Zeus' bright wandering star now low in the west.

“I don't know where he is,” Menedemos answered from the poop; Sostratos' voice must have carried better than he'd thought. His cousin continued, “I don't much care, either. If he's not here by the time the sun climbs up out of the sea, we're sailing anyhow. Furies take me if I'm going to risk my ship in this stupid war.”

You risked it last year, in the war between Syracuse and Carthage, Sostratos thought. He'd reckoned Menedemos utterly mad, but his cousin had got away with it, and made a fat profit beside. Maybe Menedemos had learned his lesson. Maybe—more likely—he just saw no money in staying in Kaunos.

Aristeidas' arm shot out. “Someone's coming this way.”

“Stand by to cast off!” Diokles rasped. “Rowers, be ready.” If those were Hipparkhos' soldiers approaching the merchant galley rather than Kissidas and whatever companions he had with him, the Aphrodite could flee in a hurry.

Along with Aristeidas and everyone else aboard the akatos, Sostratos tried to make out who those shapes were. His eyes weren't bad, but the lookout's were better. “Whoever they are, they've got women with them,” Aristeidas said. “See the long chitons?”

After a moment, Sostratos did. “Unless Antigonos has Amazon mercenaries, that'll be the proxenos and his family,” he said. A couple of rowers chuckled. Once Sostratos had spoken, though, he wondered if that wasn't possible. With a gryphon's skull there among the Aphrodite's cargo, what had seemed obvious myth suddenly looked like something else altogether.

Three men, three women, a little boy, a baby of indeterminate sex in one of the women's arms. One of the men, the biggest and squarest, was undoubtedly Kissidas. One of the women would be his wife. One might be a daughter. The other, almost without a doubt, would be a daughter-in-law; hardly any families reared two girls.

As the day got brighter and the women got closer, Sostratos saw they were veiled against the prying eyes of men not of their household. Kissidas called, “Thank you for waiting for us, my guest-friends.”

“Come aboard, and quickly,” Menedemos said from his station at the stern. “We've got no time to waste.”

“You're probably right,” Kissidas agreed with a sigh. “Chances are good a slave in one, of our houses will have gone up the hill to Hipparkhos by now.” He and his companions hurried along the quay toward the ship. As they boarded, the olive merchant introduced the males: “My son Hypermenes, my grandson Kissidas, my son-in-law Lykomedes son of Lykophron.” He did his best to pretend the women weren't there.

Menedemos followed custom, too, doing his best not to look as if he was trying to see through those veils. But be is, Sostratos said. He's bound to be. The more women cover up, the more he wants to know what they're hiding. A lot of men among the Hellenes felt that way, but his cousin did so to a greater degree than most.

“Why don't you all go up to the foredeck?” Menedemos said; like Kissidas, he didn't acknowledge the women with any special words. The closest he came to it was a brief addition: “No one will bother you there.”

“Thank you,” Kissidas said.

Sostratos hastily descended from the foredeck and made his way back toward the stern as the Rhodian proxenos and his kinsfolk came forward. At least one of the women wore perfume; the sweet scent of roses made him whip his head around. But he couldn't even be sure which one it was.

“Cast off!” Diokles called, and the lines tying the Aphrodite to the pier thumped down into the akatos.

At almost the same moment, Aristeidas said, “I see more people coming down toward the harbor.” Sostratos saw them, too. The horsehair plumes in their bronze helmets made them look taller and more fearsome than they really were.

“They aren't coming to invite us to symposion,” Menedemos said with commendable calm. “Let's get out of here.”

“Back oars!” Diokles said, and set the stroke with his mallet and bronze square. He also called it out: “Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai! Come on, you lugs! Put your backs into it!”

As if sliding through glue, the Aphrodite began easing away from the pier. Each stroke seemed to push her a bit faster than the one before, but she needed a little while to build up momentum. Kissidas' son—or maybe it was his son-in-law—spoke in a nervous tenor; “They're starting to run.”

“Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!”Diokles called.

“You, there!” someone shouted from the shore.

“Who, us?” Sostratos called as the Aphrodite eased another few cubits away from the pier.

“Yes, you!” That had to be a soldier; no one else could hope to put so much authority into a shout. “Are you the polluted Rhodians?” More soldiers trotted down to the end of the wharf. Most of them carried spears, which would do them no good, but a few had bows, and the merchant galley wasn't out of arrow range yet.

“Rhodians?” Sostratos answered. “Are you daft? We're the Thetis, out of Kos. Want to buy some silk?”

That made the fellow with the big voice pause for a moment to talk to one of his comrades. Then he started yelling again: “Liar! We know you've got that gods-detested Kissidas on board. Bring him back or you'll be sorry!”

“What?” Sostratos artfully cupped a hand to his ear. “Say that again. I couldn't hear you.”

His performance might have won applause on the comic stage, but it failed to impress Antigonos' soldiers. They wasted no time in consultation now. One word came very clearly over the widening expanse of water: “Shoot!”

The handful of archers on the shore drew their bows and did their best. Sostratos thought the Aphrodite had got safely out of range. Indeed, most of the arrows splashed into the sea well short of the akatos. But one shaft, either shot with a superhuman tug on the bow or pushed along by a vagrant puff of breeze, thudded into the ship's planking a few cubits from Sostratos. That could have killed me, he thought with a sick dizziness he recognized only belatedly as fear.

Menedemos pulled in on one steering-oar tiller and out on the other till the Aphrodite's bow swung toward the south. “Regular stroke!” Diokles commanded, and the rowers shifted from backing oars as smoothly as if they'd been working together for years. The archers kept on shooting, but now all their shafts fell short.

“Lower the sail from the yard,” Menedemos called, and the sailors leaped to obey. The great linen square sail descended from the yard as the men released the brails that had tightly held it there. The sail wasn't a single piece of linen; for strength, it was sewn from many smaller squares. It also had light lines stretched horizontally across its front, perpendicular to the brails, giving it something of the appearance of a pavement made from square slabs of stone. The breeze blew from the north, as it usually did at this season of the year. As the sail filled with wind, the lines thrummed and the mast grunted in its socket as it leaned forward under the pull of the wind and got to work.

Sostratos ascended to the poop deck. Menedemos grinned at him. “You did a good job with those soldiers,” he said. “You kept them confused till we were too far away for it to matter.” He snickered. 'Want to buy some silk?' “

“That was foolish of me.” Sostratos was never satisfied with his own performance. “I should have said we came from Haiikarnassos or Knidos. Antigonos holds all the mainland cities, but Kos belongs to Ptolemaios.”

“Don't worry about it. It didn't matter,” his cousin said.

A new and unpleasant thought occurred to Sostratos. “You don't suppose they'll send a trireme after us, do you?”

“I hope not!” Menedemos exclaimed, and spat into the bosom of his tunic to avert the evil omen. Sostratos was a modern man who prided himself on rationality, but he did the same thing.It can't hurt, he thought with a twinge of guilt.

“I didn't see any triremes in the harbor,” Diokles said. Before that could do much to reassure Sostratos, the oarmaster went on, “I don't know how much it matters, though. A pentekonter or a hemiolia packed with soldiers could do for us nicely. Just depends on how bad that captain wants us.”

He was right. Sostratos felt it at once. By Menedemos’ dismayed expression, so did he. When Diokles spoke of matters pertaining to the sea, he almost always knew what he was talking about. Menedemos called, “Oë, Kissidas!”

“What is it?” the olive merchant asked.

“How bad does Hipparkhos want you dead? Will he throw some of his mercenaries into a ship and come after us?”

The blunt question made one of the women up on the foredeck begin to wail. But Kissidas tossed his head. “I don't think so. Now that I'm gone from Kaunos, he'll just go on about his business. He suspected me because I was Rhodian proxenos, not because I was myself, if you know what I mean.” He paused, then snarled a curse. “But I'll bet he steals my groves and my oil press, the son of a whore.”

“If Ptolemaios really is coming west through Lykia, nobody who backs Antigonos will have long to enjoy them,” Sostratos said.

“That's true.” Kissidas brightened. He asked, “How long a sail is it to Rhodes? Do you know, I've never been to your polis, even though I've represented her in Kaunos for years. I've never been farther away than the edge of my groves.”

“If the wind holds, we should be in the harbor in the early afternoon,” Menedemos answered. “Even if the wind doesn't hold, we'll make it before nightfall. I'll put men at the oars to make sure we do, in case you're wrong and Hipparkhos does try to come after us.”

The Rhodian proxenos—now, the exile—bowed. “From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for rescuing me and mine.”

“My pleasure,” Menedemos replied. Then mischief glinted in his eyes. In a voice only Sostratos and Diokles could hear, he murmured, “From the heart of my bottom, you're welcome.”

Diokles guffawed. Sostratos snorted and gave his cousin a severe look. “You really have read too much Aristophanes for your own

“There's no such thing as too much Aristophanes,” Menedemos said.

Before Sostratos could rise to that—and he would have, as surely as a tunny would rise to the anchovy impaled on a fisherman's hook—Kissidas called back to the poop in plaintive tones: “Excuse me, gentlemen, but does this boat always jerk and sway so?” He followed the question with a gulp audible all the way from the fore-deck.

“He hasn't got any stomach at all, has he?” Menedemos muttered.

“No,” Sostratos said. He sometimes got sick in what most sailors reckoned moderate seas, but this light pitching didn't bother him in the least. “Good thing it is only a day's journey.” To a seasick man, of course, only was the wrong word; the voyage would seem to last forever.

His cousin must have been thinking along the same lines, for he spoke up urgently: “If you have to heave, O best one, in the name of the gods lean out over the rail before you do.”

“Good thing we've got a following breeze,” Diokles said with wry amusement. “Otherwise, you'd have to explain the difference between leeward and windward—if he didn't find out by getting it blown back into his face.”

Menedemos laughed the callous laugh of a man with a bronze stomach. “One lesson like that and you remember forever.”

Well before noon, Kissidas and one of the women of his household bent over the rail, puking. From his post at the steering oars, Menedemos avidly stared forward. “Trying to see what she looks like without her veil?” Sostratos asked, his voice dry.

“Well, of course,” his cousin answered. “How often do you get the chance to look at a respectable woman unveiled? Unwrapped, you might say?”

“You might,” Sostratos said as another spasm of vomiting wracked the woman. “Tell me, though, my dear—if she came back here right now and wanted to give you a kiss, how would you like that?”

Menedemos started to say something, then checked himself. “Mm, maybe not right now.” But he kept looking ahead. After a moment, he gave a dismissive shrug. “Besides, she's not very pretty. She must have brought a fat dowry.”

The familiar bulk of the island of Rhodes swelled in the south, dead ahead. Sostratos said, “We will get in not long after noon.”

“So we will,” Menedemos replied.

Sostratos gave him a curious look. “Aren't you glad to be able to spend a couple of extra days at home?”

“No,” Menedemos said. Goodness, Sostratos thought as his cousin steered the akatos south without another word and with his face as set and hard as iron. His quarrel with his father must he worse than I thought.

“OöP!” Diokles called, and the rowers rested at their oars. Sailors tossed lines to a couple of longshoremen, who made the Aphrodite fast to one of the quays in the great harbor of Rhodes.

“What are you doing here?” one of the longshoremen asked, looping the coarse flax rope round a post. “Nobody thought you'd be back till fall. Get in trouble up in Kaunos?” He leered at die merchant galley, and at Menedemos in particular.

“We had to get out in a hurry, all right,” Menedemos said, and the longshoreman's leer got wider. You haven't heard the news, then, Menedemos thought. He smiled, too, but only to himself. After a suitably dramatic pause, he went on, “Ptolemaios has an army and a fleet operating in Lykia. He's taken Phaselis, and he's heading west— he'll probably take the whole country. Antigonos’ garrison commander in Kaunos was going to seize the Rhodian proxenos there, and maybe us, too, so we grabbed Kissidas and his family and got away. *

“Ptolemaios is in Lykia?” That wasn't just the one longshoreman; that was almost everyone within earshot, speaking as if in chorus. Heads swung to the northeast, as if men expected to see Ptolemaios from where they stood. An excited gabble rose.

“That will be all over the polis by sunset,” Sostratos remarked.

“It should be. It's important,” Menedemos said. “Now we ought to take Kissidas and his people to the Kaunian proxenos here. Do you know who handles Kaunos' affairs in Rhodes?”

“Isn't it that moneychanger named Hagesidamos?” Sostratos said. “He'll be easy to find—he'll have a table in the agora where foreigners can turn their silver into Rhodian money.”

“And where he can turn a profit,” Menedemos added. “Moneychangers never starve.” He raised his voice: “Kissidas! Oe, Kissidas! Gather up your kin and come along with us. We'll take you to the Kaunian proxenos here. He'll make arrangements for all of you.”

“Send the gangplank across to the pier,” Kissidas said. “When I reach dry land again, I'll kiss the ground.”

Menedemos gave the order. Bald head shining in the sun, Kissidas hurried up onto the quay, followed by his kinsfolk. He bustled down it to the end, stepped off onto the soil of Rhodes, and kept his promise. Sostratos took an obolos out of his mouth and gave it to a fellow standing on the wharf. “Go to my father's house, near the temple to Demeter in the north end of the city. Let him know we've returned, and that we'll see him soon. Menedemos' father lives next door. Tell him, too.”

“Yes, tell my father we're home,” Menedemos echoed with a singular lack of enthusiasm. Eager to put off the moment when he saw Philodemos again, he went on, “Let's go scare up old Hagesidamos.” He started up the gangplank himself.

His cousin followed, but kept looking back over his shoulder. “Are you sure. . . things will be all right here?”

“I know you.” Menedemos laughed in his face. “You don't mean 'things.' You mean your precious gryphon's skull. Answer me this, my dear: what thief would be mad enough to steal it?”

Sostratos' ears turned red. “I think the skull is worth something,” he said with dignity. “I think the philosophers in Athens will agree with me, too.”

“Anyone else?” Menedemos asked. Sostratos proved his basic honesty by tossing his head. Menedemos laughed again. It wasn't likely, and he knew it. He waved to Kissidas. “Come along with my cousin and me. We'll take you to the proxenos.”

Having done that, though, he had little choice but to go home. His father waited for him in the courtyard. “I heard you were home,” Philodemos said when he came in, “but I haven't heard why yet.”

“I'll tell you,” Menedemos said. He plunged into the tale, heading for the andron as he did. “—and so,” he finished a little later, “I didn't see what else I could do except bring Kissidas and his family back here to Rhodes.”

His father studied him. He's looking through me, not at me, Menedemos thought nervously. Somewhere outside the men's room, a woodpecker drummed on a tree trunk. The sudden noise made Menedemos start. “No need to jump, son,” Philodemos said. “I don't see what else you could have done, either. If a man's made himself your guest-friend, you can't very well leave him behind to be harmed by his enemies.”

Menedemos tried not to show how relieved he was. “My thought exactly. He took us in even though he knew it might anger Antigonos' captain. And then this news of Ptolemaios. . .”

“Yes.” Philodemos dipped his head. “That's part of the picture, too. If Ptolemaios is coming west across Lykia, it puts the war right on our doorstep. I wish it were farther away. If he and Antigonos start hammering away at each other next door to us, one of them or the other is bound to notice what fine harbors we have and what useful subjects we'd make.”

“I wish I thought you were wrong, sir.” Menedemos wished that for more reasons than one. Not only did he worry about his polis, he also worried about agreeing with his father. To keep from thinking about it, he changed the subject: “What sort of opson will Sikon have for us tonight?”

“I don't know,” Philodemos replied, “He ran out to the market square as soon as that fellow from the harbor came here shouting that the Aphrodite had come in. He was muttering something as he went, something about why hadn't anyone told him.” He rolled his eyes. “You know what cooks are like.”

“Everybody knows what cooks are like,” Menedemos said. Like any prosperous household's cook, Sikon was a slave. But, because he ruled the kitchen like a king, he often acted as if he were master of the whole house. Menedemos rose from his chair, “If you'll excuse me, Father, I think I'll go in there and find out what he's up to.”

“Good luck.” Even iron-willed Philodemos often lost his skirmishes with Sikon.

The cook was a middle-aged man, on the plump side—who would have wanted a man who didn't care for the meals he turned out? “Snooping, are you?” he said when Menedemos stuck his head in the door.

“I live here, every now and again,” Menedemos said mildly. He didn't want to quarrel with the cook, either. A man who did that often regretted it in short order.

“Oh. It's you, young master.” Sikon relaxed. “I thought it'd be your stepmother.” He snorted, sounding amazingly like a bad-tempered donkey. Philodemos' second wife was ten years younger than her stepson. The cook went on, “You won't pitch a fit if I spend a couple of oboloi so the house has something better than sprats or salt fish for opson.”

“Baukis takes the business of being a wife seriously.” Menedemos didn't want to criticize the girl. What he wanted to do ... Had she been another man's, any other man's, wife, he would have gone after her without hesitation. He knew himself well enough to be sure of that. But even he fought shy of adultery with his own father's new spouse.

“Seriously!” Sikon threw his hands in the air. “You'd think we'd all eat nothing but barley porridge for the next ten years if I buy something tasty. Can you talk some sense into her, young master? Your father doesn't want to do it; that's pretty plain. She just looks down her nose at me, the way free people do with slaves sometimes, but maybe she'd listen to you.”

“Maybe,” Menedemos said uncomfortably. He didn't want reasons to talk with Baukis; he wanted reasons to stay away from her. But Sikon had given him an opening to shift the subject, and he seized it: “What sort of tasty things did you find this afternoon?”

“Some nice shrimp—they were still wriggling when I got 'em,” Sikon answered. “I'm going to glaze them with honey and oregano, the way your father likes. And a fellow there in the market had the first good eels I've seen this spring. What do you say to eel pie, baked with cabbage and mushrooms and silphium from Kyrene? And a cheesecake, to use up the rest of the honey I got for the glaze.”

“What do I say? I say hurry up and cook, and quit wasting your time talking to me. Eels!” Menedemos had all he could do not to lick his chops like a hungry dog. He didn't ask what the seafood had cost. All he wanted to do was eat it.

And he did, along with his father in the andron. He supposed Sikon also sent some of the splendid supper to Baukis in the women's quarters. She would surely find out from Philodemos what the cook had bought; sharing the bounty might make her better inclined to him. If anything could, that would.

As he usually did, Menedemos woke before sunrise the next morning. He went to the kitchen for some barley rolls—leftovers from sitos at supper—and olive oil and wine for breakfast. Carrying them out to the courtyard, he sat down on a stone bench there and watched the sky get light. He would have done the same thing lying on the Aphrodite's poop deck after a night spent at sea.

A couple of slaves dipped their heads to him as they ducked into the kitchen for their morning meal. They ate the same sort of breakfast he did; Philodemos wasn't the sort of master who gave them a precisely measured ration of flour every day and made sure they didn't sneak into the kitchen to supplement it. To make up for that generosity, he worked them hard.

When a laughing dove fluttered down into the courtyard, Mene-demos tossed a small chunk of roll onto the ground in front of it. It walked over, head bobbing, examined the morsel, and ate it. They were very tame birds. Had Sikon tossed it crumbs, it would have been with a view toward netting it for a meal.

Someone came down the stairs and out into the courtyard. Tame or not, the dove took off, wings whirring. “Good day, Menedemos,” Baukis said.

“Good day,” Menedemos answered gravely.

“How are you?” his stepmother asked. The title, applied to a girl who couldn't have had more than sixteen years, was as absurd as Sikon's snort had made it. She was no great beauty, and even at sixteen had hardly more breasts than a boy.

“I'm well, thanks.” Menedemos kept his tone formal. He knew what his father saw in her: dowry, family connection, the chance for another son or two. He was much less sure what he saw in Baukis himself. Maybe nothing but the chance to outrage his father in the greatest possible way. But maybe something more, too. Doing his best not to think about that, he asked, “And you?”

She thought before answering, “Well enough.” She was no fool; the way she said even commonplace things showed that. And so? Menedemos jeered at himself. Are you Sostratos, to look for what a woman has between her ears before you look for what she has between her legs? Baukis went on, “I didn't expect to see you back in Rhodes so soon.”

“I didn't expect to be in one of Antigonos' cities so close to where Ptolemaios started his campaign,” Menedemos replied.

“This endless war is liable to be the death of trade,” she said. “That would be bad for Rhodes, and especially bad for this family,”

“True,” Menedemos agreed. No, she was no fool; plenty of men who stood up and blathered in the Assembly couldn't see so clearly.

Her expression sharpened. “You surprised Sikon when you came home, too. Do you know how much he paid for last night's shrimp and eels?”

Menedemos tossed his head. “No. All I know is, they were delicious.”

“Expensive, too,” Baukis said. “If we make less money because of the war, how long can we afford such fancy opson?”

“Quite a while,” Menedemos said in some alarm. However young she was, his father's second wife took her duties as household manager most seriously. She'd already had several rows with the cook. Menedemos went on, “We're still a long way from poor, you know.”

“Now we are,” Baukis answered. “But how long will we stay that way if we make less and spend more? I'd better have a word with Sikon. Sooner or later, he'll have to listen to me.”

She strode off toward the kitchen. Menedemos' gaze followed her. She didn't have a boy's hips and backside, not at all. And, here inside the house, she didn't veil herself against the prying eyes of men. It was practically like seeing her naked all the time. Menedemos’ manhood stirred.

Baukis came out of the kitchen with bread, wine, and an indignant expression on her face. “He's not in there yet,” she complained. “He spends too much money, and he's lazy, too.” She sat down on the bench, hardly more than a cubit away from Menedemos, and began to eat her breakfast.

Does she know what I feel? Menedemos wondered, as he had ever since realizing it himself the autumn before. He didn't think so, but. .. Is she sitting there to tease me? Is she sitting there because she has something in mind, too?

He had more than a little practice seducing other men's wives. Here, he didn't want to use what he knew. He wished he were aboard the Aphrodite, a steering-oar tiller in each hand, wave and wind and the chance of pirates all he had to worry about. None of them seemed so dangerous as the woman beside him.

Gulping down the last of his wine, he got to his feet and said, “I'm off. As long as I'm back in Rhodes, I have a couple of men I need to see.”

“All right.” Baukis went on eating. Menedemos' withdrawal felt uncomfortably like headlong retreat.

One of the advantages of being a free Hellene was having slaves to do the work one didn't care to do oneself. Sostratos took that for granted. His slave, a Karian named Arlissos, did not. “Is it much farther, boss?” he whined in almost unaccented Greek. “This polluted thing gets heavier every step I take.”

Such illogical arguments were the wrong sort to use against Sostratos, who answered, “That's impossible,” and for good measure added, “And, since no place inside the walls of Rhodes is more than about ten stadia from anywhere else inside the walls, you're not walking all that far.”

“I bet it seems farther to me than it does to you,” Arlissos said darkly.

Sostratos didn't deign to reply to that. He was just glad he'd had Arlissos drape the gryphon's skull in a square of sailcloth before taking it through the streets of Rhodes. Otherwise, people would have stopped him every plethron—more likely, every few cubits— and pestered him with questions.

Arlissos seemed more inclined to pester him with complaints: “And then, once we get where we're going, I'll have to lug it all the way back.”

Not if I break it over your head, Sostratos thought. But he couldn't do that, no matter how tempting it might be. So far as he knew, this was the only gryphon's skull ever seen by Hellenes. He couldn't afford to have anything happen to it.

“You'll have plenty of time to rest and loaf when we get where we're going,” he said. “In fact, if you slide back to the kitchen, you can probably wheedle the cook out of some wine, and maybe some figs or some nuts while you're at it.”

The slave brightened, though he didn't seem to want to show Sostratos he was any happier. “My arms are going to come out of their sockets,” he grumbled.

“Oh, be quiet,” Sostratos said, and then, “There's that little temple to Hephaistos, so it's only another couple of blocks.”

They'd come into the western part of the city, most of the way from Sostratos' house to the gymnasion. But Sostratos didn't intend to strip off his clothes and run or wrestle. He exercised as little as he could get away with, not least because Menedemos easily outdid him when they went to the gymnasion together. Sostratos was larger than his cousin, but Menedemos was far quicker and more graceful.

“I... think this is the house,” Sostratos said. He had trouble being sure; one blank housefront looked very much like another. If I'm wrong, he thought as he knocked on the door, whoever answers can probably set me right.

Somewhere inside the house, a dog started barking. Arlissos set down the gryphon's skull so he could stretch and show how put-upon he was. He'd just picked up the skull again when somebody said, “Yes? What is it?” through the door.

“Is this the house of Damonax son of Polydoros?” Sostratos asked.

“Yes. Who wants to know?” The door still didn't open.

Sostratos gave his own name, adding, “I've brought something your master may be interested in seeing.”

“Wait,” said the man on the other side of the door. Sostratos duly waited. So did Arlissos, who exuded silent reproach. After a bit, the door did swing open on the lengths of doweling that turned in holes in the floor and the lintel. “He'll see you,” Damonax's slave reported. By his guttural accent and narrow, swarthy face, he was probably a Phoenician. “He's in the courtyard. Come with me.”

“Hail, Sostratos,' Damonax said when the doorman brought the newcomers into the courtyard. He was a handsome man about ten years older than Sostratos, his hairline beginning to recede at the temples. Pointing to the sailcloth-shrouded bundle Arlissos bore, he asked, “What have you got there?” Like Sostratos', his Doric Greek—the dialect spoken in Rhodes—had an Attic overlay; he'd studied at the Lykeion for several years, returning to his home polis the year after Sostratos arrived.

Like a conjurer performing at a symposion, Sostratos whipped away the square of sailcloth. “Behold!” he said. “A gryphon's skull!”

“Really? You're joking.” Damonax got up off the bench where he'd been sitting and came over for a closer look. He tapped the skull with his fingernail. “No, by the dog of Egypt, I see you're not. Where on earth did you find it?”

“Kaunos,” Sostratos answered, and explained how he and Menedemos had come by the skull. “I brought it here because you also studied under Theophrastos. What do you make of it?”

“I wish you could have brought that tiger skin you mentioned, too,” Damonax said wistfully. “If going out to trade can lead to such marvels as this, the Hellenes who look down their noses at it may have to think again.”

Most upper-class Hellenes looked down their noses at merchants. The life of a gentleman farmer was the ideal, with an overseer and slaves to do the actual work, giving the gentleman farmer himself the money and leisure he needed to live as he would, beholden to no one. Damonax wore two heavy gold rings; the clasps of his sandals were likewise golden, Roses scented the olive oil he rubbed into his skin. He lived the ideal.

Acknowledging that, envying it, Sostratos said, “Thank you, O best one.”

“Thank you for letting me see this.” Damonax pointed to the bench on which he'd been sitting, then spoke to Arlissos: “Why don't you put the skull down there, so your master and I can examine it as we please?”

“I'll gladly do that, sir.” The Karian sighed with relief as he set down the skull.

To his own slave, Damonax said, “Bring us some wine, Phelles, and some olives, or whatever else you find in the kitchen.” Nodding his head as barbarians often did to show agreement, the Phoenician hurried away. Damonax leaned close to the gryphon's skull and tapped it again. “It feels more like stone than bone,” he remarked.

“\ noticed the same thing,” Sostratos answered. “I don't know what it means, except that the skull is old and was buried for a long time.”

“Not just old,” Arlissos muttered. “Heavy.”

“Who was the philosopher,” Damonax asked, “who found petrified seashells on the mountainside and realized the ocean must have covered it long ago?”

“I should know that.” Sostratos thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “A pestilence! I do know that.” He snapped his fingers, then suddenly grinned. “Xenophanes of Kolophon, that's who it was.”

“Euge!” Damonax exclaimed. “Very well done indeed, in fact. I couldn't have come up with the name if you'd given me to Antigonos' nastiest torturer.”

Phelles came back with a wooden tray on which he carried a bowl of olives and two cups of wine. He set them down on the bench by the gryphon's skull. Seeing no wine for himself, Arlissos took the tray from Phelles' startled hands. “Here, my friend,” Sostratos' slave said, “let me carry this to the kitchen for you.” Sostratos popped an olive into his mouth to hide a smile. If Arlissos didn't end up with a snack, he would be surprised.

Damonax pointed to the back-projecting horn. “Pity this bit seems broken off. I wonder what the beast would have looked like when it was alive.”

“Not so pretty as gryphons are supposed to be, I suspect,” Sostratos said. “And what do you make of its teeth?”

“I didn't pay any attention to them,” Damonax confessed. As Sostratos had in the market square at Kaunos, the other Rhodian picked up the skull and turned it over for a closer look. When he put it down on the bench again, his face was thoughtful. “Doesn't have much in the way of fangs, does it?”

“I thought the same thing,” Sostratos said. “How is it supposed to guard the gold at the edge of the world and fight off thieves?”

“With its claws, perhaps,” Damonax suggested, and Sostratos dipped his head—that was a good idea, and it hadn't occurred to him. The older man looked from him to the gryphon's skull and back again, “Tell me, best one, now that you've got this remarkable thing here, what did you have in mind doing with it? Are you going to keep it at your house and tell stories about it the rest of your life?”

“No, by Zeus!” Sostratos exclaimed.

“Ah.” Damonax looked wise. “Then you'll want to sell it, I expect.” Try as he would, he couldn't keep a slightly dismissive tone from his voice. No matter what he says, he really does look down on traders, Sostratos realized. Smoothly, Damonax went on, “I could give you a good price for it myself, as a matter of fact.”

So you can keep it here and tell your own stories about it, Sostratos thought. He tossed his head. “I was going to take it to Athens, to let the philosophers at the Lykeion and the Academy examine it.”

As if he hadn't spoken, Damonax said, “How does two minai sound?”

“Two hundred drakhmai?” Sostratos tried hard not to show how startled he was. Menedemos, he was certain, would have sold the gryphon's skull on the spot, and spent the next year bragging about the profit he'd squeezed from worthless, ugly bones.

Damonax must have taken astonishment for rejection, for he said, “Well, if you won't take two, what about three?”

Part of Sostratos, the part that made him a pretty good merchant, wondered how high Damonax would go to buy the skull. The other part, the part that valued knowledge for its own sake, quailed in horror. Gods be praised my family is well enough off that I don't have to sell it for the first decent offer that comes along.

“You're very kind,” he said, by which he meant, You're very greedy, “but I really do intend to take it to Athens. I'd be on my way there now if my ship hadn't had to bring the Rhodian proxenos and his kin here from Kaunos.”

“Four minai?” Damonax said hopefully. Sostratos tossed his head again. Damonax sighed. “You're serious about going to Athens, aren't you?”

“Yes, of course I am,” Sostratos replied.

“Isn't that interesting? And here I thought someone who traded things for money would trade anything for money.” Damonax didn't seem to think Sostratos might take that for an insult: the older man hadn't quite called him a whore, but he'd come close. Damonax continued, “You never did explain why you had to get the Rhodian proxenos out of Kaunos.”

“Didn't I?” Thinking back, Sostratos realized he hadn't. He told the other man about Ptolemaios' descent on Lykia.

“Ah—that was news to me,” Damonax said. “Are you sure you won't reconsider my offer? I wish you luck getting to Athens from here. As soon as the word spreads, the Aegean will be full of war galleys. How much will Ptolemaios and Antigonos' sailors care about a gryphon's skull?”

Sostratos grimaced. Ptolemaios' fleet was based on Kos, while Antigonos' navy sailed from ports on the Ionian islands farther north and on the mainland of Anatolia. Damonax was bound to be right: those ships would clash, Sostratos said, “We're free. We're autonomous. We're neutral. No one's ships have any business interfering with us.”

“Certainly, that's how we Rhodians feel.” Damonax was polite as the ideal landed gentleman, too. That didn't keep him from asking the next obvious question: “Do you think the marshals' captains, or the pirates they hire to do their scouting and raiding, will agree with us?”

“I can't answer that,” Sostratos answered, in lieu of saying, Not a chance they will. But he went on, “The Aphrodite will try to get to Athens, though.”

“You are a stiff-necked fellow, aren't you?” Damonax said. “Suppose I were to give you six minai for that skull?”

“I didn't bring it here to try to sell it to you.” Sostratos raised his voice: “Arlissos! Where have you gone and disappeared to?”

When the Karian slave emerged, his cheeks were full as a dormouse's. “Are we leaving already?” he asked in disappointed tones around a mouthful of something or other.

“I'm afraid we must.” Sostratos pointed to the gryphon's skull. “Wrap the sailcloth around that, and let's get's going.” He wanted to get out of there as fast as he could. Damonax had shown even more interest in the skull than he'd expected, and not of the sort he'd looked for. If the gentleman farmer suddenly called out half a dozen hulking slaves . . . If that idea hadn't yet occurred to Damonax, Sostratos thought it wise to leave before it did.

“Are you sure I can't persuade you to let me take that skull off your hands?” Damonax said. “I offered a good price: six minai is a lot of money.”

“I know, O best one,” Sostratos answered. “But I want to take it to Athens. And who knows? I may do better there.”

He didn't believe it for a moment. By Damonax's expression, neither did he. But the older man didn't try to keep Sostratos from leaving, and no burly slaves appeared to rape away the gryphon's skull. Once out in the street again, Sostratos breathed a long sigh of relief. He and Arlissos hadn't gone more than a few steps back toward his own house before the slave asked, “Did he really say he'd give you six hundred drakhmai for these miserable old bones?”

“Yes, that's what he said.” Sostratos dipped his head.

“And you turned him down}” Arlissos sounded disbelieving. He sounded more than disbelieving; he sounded as if he'd just witnessed a prodigy. “By Zeus Labraundeus, master, I don't think you'd turn down six hundred drakhmai for me?

He might well have been right. Karian slaves were cheap and easy to come by in Rhodes, while the gryphon's skull was—and, Sostratos was convinced, would remain—unique. Instead of saying so straight out, Sostratos tried a joke: “Well, Arlissos, you have to understand: it eats a lot less than you do.”

“Six hundred drakhmai,” Arlissos said; Sostratos wondered if the slave had even heard him. “Six hundred drakhmai, and he said no.” He looked down at the shrouded skull and spoke to it as if they were equals in more than price: “Hellenes are crazy, old bone, you know that?”

Sostratos indignantly started to deny it. Then he thought about what Menedemos would say if his cousin found out he'd turned down six minai for the gryphon's skull. Menedemos would be certain at least one Hellene was raving mad.

“No,” Menedemos said impatiently when Sostratos began to pester him again. “We can't sail for Athens as soon as you want,”

“But—” his cousin began.

“No,” he repeated. “I want to get out of Rhodes, too, but we can't, not right now. Have you seen these new gemstones coming in from Egypt, the ones called emeralds?”

“I've heard of them. I haven't seen any yet,” Sostratos replied.

“Well, my dear, you'd better, if you think you can pry me out of Rhodes before I pry some emeralds out of this round-ship captain who has some,” Menedemos declared.

“But the gryphon's skull—” Sostratos protested.

“No!” Menedemos tossed his head. His shadow tossed, too, and frightened a butterfly from a flower in the courtyard garden of Lysistratos' house. He watched it flitter away, then resumed: “The skull's been buried since before the Trojan War. We talked about that. Whether it gets to Athens now or next month or month after that doesn't matter so much. Whether I can get my hands on these emeralds does.”

“That is logical,” Sostratos admitted. Then, when Menedemos hoped that meant he would be reasonable, he added, “But I still don't like it.”

“Too bad,” Menedemos said heartlessly.

Too heartlessly: he put his cousin's back up. “What makes these emeralds so special?” Sostratos demanded.

“They're fine gems, that's what,” Menedemos answered. “They're as fine as rubies, except they're green, not red. They're greener than green garnets; they're as green as ... as ...” He was stuck for a comparison till he plucked a leaf from one of the plants in the garden. “As this.”

“That's my sister's mint, and she'd give you a piece of her mind if she saw you picking sprigs,” Sostratos said.

“How immodest,” Menedemos said. Except for her wedding, he hadn't seen Erinna unveiled since she was a little girl.

“She does speak her mind,” Sostratos said, not without a certain pride. And she was probably up there in the women's quarters listening to every word said here in the courtyard. Women of good family might not get out much, but that didn't mean they had no way to find out—and to influence—what went on around them.

“Let's give her a chance to talk behind our backs, then,” Menedemos said. “Till you've seen these stones, you have no idea why I'm in such an uproar about them. Thrasyllos has no idea I'm in such an uproar, you understand, and I'll thank you kindly not to give the game away.”

“You know me better than that, I hope.” Sostratos sounded affronted. “Thrasyllos is the man who has these emeralds?”

“That's right. He's just in to Rhodes from Alexandria with a round ship full of Egyptian wheat.”

“Why has he got them, then?” Sostratos asked.

“He gets cagey about that,” Menedemos answered. “I think one of his kinsmen works in the mine, somewhere out in the desert east of the Nile.”

“So these may be ... unofficial emeralds, then?”

“That thought did cross my mind, yes.”

Sostratos' eyes narrowed craftily, “Lots of Hellenes from Egypt who can get Ptolemaios' ear come through Rhodes. If you have to, you might want to point that out to the marvelous Thrasyllos.”

“You're a demon, aren't you?” Menedemos' voice rose in admiration. “I should have thought of that myself.”

They left the house and headed down toward the harbor, a route Menedemos had taken ever since he was old enough to toddle along after his father. He didn't care to think about that now; he didn't like to think about anything having to do with Philodemos. But the journey was as familiar to him as any in the polis could be.

There stood Mnesipolis the smith, banging away at something while his fire sent smoke up into the sky. There was the usual crowd of gabbers and loungers outside the shop of Pythion the cobbler. Sostratos made the remark he usually made, too; “Sokrates taught outside a cobbler's shop just like this one. In Athens, they still show you the place that used to be Simon's.”

“Pythion can teach you everything you want to know about shoes,” Menedemos said.

“Can he teach me what's true and what's good and what's beautiful and why?”

“Certainly—about shoes.”

“You're no help, and neither is Pythion.”

“Yes he is, if the sole of my sandal is ripped—not that I wear sandals very often.”

“What about your own soul?”

Instead of playing word games with his cousin, Menedemos picked a stone up out of the street and chucked it at a couple of scrawny dogs that were squabbling over some garbage by a wall. The stone hit the wall with a sharp crack. One of the dogs ran off. The other gulped down whatever they'd been fighting about. Then it, too, trotted away.

Agathippos' bakery was as smoky as Mnesipolis' smithy, but the sweet smell of baking bread made Menedemos forgive the smoke. A goggle-eyed gecko clung to the wall at Agathippos'. A crow tried to grab it, but it scurried into a crack in the mud brick and the bird flew away unhappy.

Down by the great harbor, every other building seemed to house a tavern. A man stood pissing against a wall by one of them; a drunk lay asleep in the street outside another. Sostratos clucked disapprovingly and said, “There is a man with no self-control.”

“Can't argue with you,” Menedemos said, “Getting a bellyful of wine is one thing. Getting blind-drunk in the morning?” He tossed his head. “No thanks.”

Gulls and terns wheeled overhead, mewling and skrawking. A pelican, its wingspan as wide as a man was tall, flapped majestically by. Shorebirds skittered here and there with nervous little steps, now and then pausing to peck at bugs or small crabs.

Menedemos pointed ahead. “There's Thrasyllos' ship: the Aura,”

“ 'Fair Wind,' eh?” Sostratos' lip curled. “He ought to call her the 'Breaks Wind.'“ Menedemos let out a yip of startled laughter. Sostratos went on, “How can the skipper of a ship that looks like that have any real jewels? He's probably trying to sell you green glass.”

The ship wasn't much to look at. The eyes at the bow needed repainting, which gave her a sad, half blind appearance. The goose-head ornament on the round ship's sternpost hadn't been touched up any time lately, either. Her unpainted timber was gray with age. Even so, Menedemos said, “You'll see.” He raised his voice: “Oë, Thrasyllos! You there?”

“Where else would I be?” The Auras captain came up on deck. He was a lean little man with a sailor's sun-darkened skin and a narrow, worried face. “Hail, Menedemos. Who's your friend?”

“My cousin,” Menedemos answered, and introduced Sostratos. “He wanted to see your stones, too,” That seemed better than saying, He thinks you're a fraud.

“Hail,” Sostratos said politely, but his voice held no warmth at all.

“Well, come aboard, both of you.” Thrasyllos didn't sound especially happy, either. He wasn't shy about explaining why, either: “The fewer people who know about this business, the better. Come on, come on. My crew's off getting drunk and getting laid. We can talk.”

The Aura could probably carry ten times as much as the Aphrodite. Even so, Menedemos wouldn't have traded his akatos for the merchantman for anything in the world. The round ship lived up to her description, with a beam close to a third of her length. Even with a fair wind behind her, she would waddle along like a fat old man, and she'd be slower yet struggling to make headway against contrary breezes. “An amphora with a sail,” Menedemos muttered as he strode down the gangplank.

“Amphorai have better lines than this floating hip-bath ever dreamt of,” Sostratos answered, also in a low voice.

But Thrasyllos' big, ugly ship had certain advantages of its own. He had a much smaller crew than Menedemos needed on the Aphrodite, for he required no rowers, only men to handle the enormous square sail now brailed up against the yard. That kept his expenses down, and meant he could haul cargo that wouldn't have been profitable aboard the merchant galley.

Thrasyllos also enjoyed more comfort than Menedemos did. He had a real deckhouse on the poop, and could sleep in a bed even if the Aura had to spend a night at sea. Menedemos didn't mind occasionally wrapping himself in his himation and sleeping on the timbers, but he could see how other men might.

“Show my cousin these emeralds,” he said as he came up to the round ship's captain.

“Let's go inside the deckhouse,” Thrasyllos said nervously. “You never can tell who might be watching.”

Menedemos was willing, but Sostratos tossed his head. “No. The light won't be any good in there. If I'm going to look at these stones, I want to be able to do a proper job of it.”

“My cousin has a point,” Menedemos said.

“Oh, all right.” Thrasyllos didn't sound happy about it. He kept peering around the harbor, as if he expected Ptolemaios himself to emerge from behind a careened fishing boat. “Here.” He reached into a leather sack with a drawstring mouth, took out a couple of stones, and set them in Menedemos' palm as if not trusting Sostratos to touch them.

“Let me see,” Sostratos said. Menedemos handed him the emeralds; whether Thrasyllos did or not, he knew his cousin was almost painfully reliable.

He also knew, just at a glance, that Thrasyllos was showing his biggest and finest gems. One of them was wide as his fingernail, the other only a tiny bit smaller. Both had the astonishing deep rich green color that had drawn his eye when the captain from Egypt first showed him the stones.

“Interesting,” Sostratos said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could make it. He was a merchant; he knew better than to show any sort of enthusiasm. But he couldn't help adding, “They are gemstones of a sort, no doubt about it.”

“I said so,” Menedemos told him.

“So you did.” Sostratos gave him a measuring stare. “But you've been known to ... How should I put it? To let your enthusiasm run away with you.”

“At least I have enthusiasms. You're as cold-blooded as a frog.” Were they alone, Menedemos might have had a good deal more than that to say. Sostratos wasn't the real opponent here, though. Thrasyllos was. And so Menedemos contented himself with adding, “You see why I'm interested in them.”

“I can see why you might be, anyhow.” Sostratos looked at Thrasyllos. “My cousin didn't tell me what you're asking for them.”

Thrasyllos licked his lips. “A mina apiece,” he said.

“A pound of silver?” Sostratos made a production of returning the emeralds. “I'm sorry, O marvelous one, but I have to tell you I think you're quite mad.”

“Brekekekex koax koax,” Menedemos said softly—the noise of the chorus of frogs in Aristophanes' play. Sostratos ignored him, and Thrasyllos plainly had no idea what the nonsense words meant.

The captain of the Aura said, “You wouldn't talk like that if you know what my nephew went through to sneak these out of the mines. He stuck 'em up his arse, is what he did, then dosed himself with poppy juice so he wouldn't have to take a shit for a couple of days, till he was well away from there.”

Sostratos unobtrusively rubbed the palm of his hand on his chiton. Menedemos fought down laughter. His cousin had always been a little on the prissy side. But Menedemos was using Sostratos as a weapon against Thrasyllos here, and so he said, “They are interesting, but your price is way out of line.”

“Somebody will pay it,” Thrasyllos said, but he sounded none too confident.

“Somebody will give your name to Ptolemaios, is what will happen,” Menedemos said, and Thrasyllos flinched as if he'd hit him. Pressing his advantage, Menedemos went on, “He's not down in Alexandria—he's right over there in Lykia with a big fleet. You think you can outrun his war galleys in this wallowing scow? Good luck, best one.”

“Menedemos and I now, we know how to keep quiet,” Sostratos added, his tone suggesting they were the only people in the whole world who did. Menedemos dipped his head in solemn agreement.

Thrasyllos licked his lips again. His shoulders stiffened, though. Menedemos would have bet he was going to be stubborn. But one of the Rhodian dock loungers chose that moment to wave and call out, “Oë, Menedemos!”

“What is it, Moiragenes?” Menedemos asked impatiently.

The shabby, skinny man couldn't have played his part better had Menedemos paid him a mina of silver. “You hear the latest?” he said. “Ptolemaios just took Xanthos in Lykia away from old One-Eye, and they say he's going to move on Kaunos, too.”

“No, as a matter of fact, I hadn't heard that,” Menedemos answered, watching Thrasyllos much more closely than he seemed to. The news hit the merchant skipper like a twenty-mina rock flung from a catapult.

“How do you know it's true?” Sostratos asked Moiragenes. Menedemos wished his cousin hadn't chosen that moment to play the historian.

“Fellow who brought the news is called Euxenides of Phaselis,” Moiragenes answered. “He got out of his home town two jumps ahead of Ptolemaios, got out of Xanthos one jump ahead of him, and he didn't want to try his luck at Kaunos, so he came here instead.” He waved and went on down the pier to pass the news to someone else.

“Well, well,” Menedemos said to Thrasyllos. “Isn't that interesting?”

“Ptolemaios won't come here,” Thrasyllos said.

“Of course not,” Menedemos said in soothing tones. “Gods be praised, Rhodes really is a free and autonomous polis. But sooner or later, you're going to have to sail away. Do you want to deal with traders whose grandfathers were in the business of buying and selling things, or will you take a chance on getting a little more from somebody who might cut your throat or might just blab instead?”

“To the crows with you,” Thrasyllos whispered. “You're not a man. You're an evil spirit.”

“All right. If you don't want to dicker . . .” Menedemos took a few steps toward the gangplank. Sostratos followed him.

He hadn't left the Aura's deck before he heard the word he'd been hoping for: “Wait!” Thrasyllos croaked.

For dramatic effect, Menedemos did take a couple of steps up the gangplank before pausing. Even then, he asked Sostratos, “Do you think it's worth our while?”

“No,” Sostratos said, and Menedemos could have kissed him. In lieu of that, he spent a little while taking his cousin around so he could stay and haggle with Thrasyllos. Sostratos did such a good job of acting reluctant, Menedemos wondered if he really was. No matter. Menedemos got his own way, as he was accustomed to doing.

“Well, if you won't pay a mina apiece, what will you pay?” Thrasyllos demanded when Menedemos and Sostratos finally came back to him.

“How many of those emeralds have you got to sell?” Menedemos asked in turn.

“Fourteen,” Thrasyllos said. “How big an arsehole do you think my nephew has?”

“You'd know that better than I, O best one,” Menedemos murmured. Sostratos almost succeeded in turning a guffaw into a cough. The joke, fortunately, went right by Thrasyllos. Menedemos said, “I haven't seen all fourteen of these stones yet, you know. I'm sure the ones I have seen are the best you've got, so the others are going to be worth less.”

“No such thing,” Thrasyllos said, but his show of indignation couldn't have sounded convincing even to himself, for he didn't push it.

“I'll give you . . oh, two minai for the lot of 'em,” Menedemos said. “Two pounds of silver free and clear for you—or one for you, one for your nephew, if you're in a generous mood.”

“Two minai?” the captain of the Aura echoed. This time, his anger was altogether unfeigned. “You time-wasting, whipworthy bastard, get off my ship, and take your kinsman with you. If I had a dog, I'd set him on you both.”

“Well, what do you think they're worth?”

“I already told you: a mina apiece. Fourteen minai all told.”

“And I already told you, I'm not going to pay that much. What would you take? I'm gambling, remember. These stones are new, so I don't know what I can resell them for.”

“To the crows with you, pal—that's not my worry.” Thrasyllos hesitated, then went on, “I wouldn't take a khalkos, not a single copper, less than twelve minai for the lot of them.”

“Still too much. Still far too much,” Menedemos said. He'd been afraid the round-ship captain wouldn't come down at all. That would have meant he'd have to go up first, and would have shown weakness, for he would have gone up—he wanted those stones. Now he could say, “I might give you three,” and not worry: Thrasyllos had weakened first.

He got the emeralds for five minai, fifty drakhmai. “Thief,” Thrasyllos ground out even as he clasped Menedemos' hand to seal the bargain.

“By no means,” Menedemos said, though he was sure he would turn a handsome profit on the deal. “Ptolemaios won't hear about this even if he brings his whole fleet into the harbor here.” That made Thrasyllos nervous all over again, as Menedemos had hoped it would. He turned to Sostratos. “Would you be so kind as to get the gentleman his silver while I wait here with him?” I'll make sure he doesn't change his mind, was what he meant.

Sostratos knew as much. He knew more than that, for as he dipped his head, he said, “If I get it, your father won't hear about it quite so soon,”

“Maybe.” Menedemos waved him away. Sostratos went, a grin on his face. Menedemos didn't like yielding him the last word, but liked squabbling with him in front of a stranger even less.

When Sostratos got back, he wore a sword on his hip and had a couple of burly slaves with him. Even in law-abiding Rhodes, carrying five and a half minai of silver was not to be taken lightly. “Here you are,” Sostratos said, handing Thrasyllos the fat leather sack he'd brought. Menedemos held out his hand, and Thrasyllos gave him the much smaller sack with the emeralds.

Before leaving the Aura's deck, Menedemos opened the sack, poured the stones into the palm of his hand, and counted them. “Don't you trust me?” Thrasyllos asked in aggrieved tones.

“. . . twelve . . , thirteen . .. fourteen,” Menedemos muttered. Then, having satisfied himself, he replied, “Of course I do, best one.” Now I trust you. “Better to be safe, though.”

“Safe?” the round-ship captain echoed. “I don't think I'll ever feel safe again. You'd better go now, before one of my sailors comes back and wonders who you are and what you're doing here.”

“Just as you say,” Menedemos answered. If this wasn't Thrasyllos' first smuggling venture, he would have been amazed. I wonder if I could blackmail him into giving us the emeralds for nothing, he thought. More than a little reluctantly, he tossed his head. He'd made a bargain. “Come on, Sostratos.”

Thrasyllos dashed into the deckhouse with his silver, no doubt to stow it in the safest, most secret place he could find. As Menedemos and Sostratos went down the pier, Sostratos said, “You were thinking about squeezing him even harder, weren't you? I saw it in your eyes.”

“Who, me?” Menedemos said in his most innocent tones. They both laughed.

When Menedemos got home, he found his father waiting for him in the courtyard. “Let's see those gemstones you just bought,” Philodemos said.

So much for keeping things quiet, Menedemos thought. Sostratos must have told his father why he needed the money, and Uncle Lysistratos would have hotfooted it next door to give Philodemos the news. “Here you are, sir,” Menedemos said, and handed his father the little sack he'd got from Thrasyllos.

As he had himself, Philodemos poured the emeralds out into the palm of his hand, Menedemos had brought them up close to his face for a better look. His father didn't. Philodemos held them out at arm's length. Even then, he grumbled; his sight had lengthened over the past few years. But at last he dipped his head. “You'll get some money from jewelers and rich men, sure enough. How much did you pay for the lot of 'em? Six minai?”

“Five and a half, Father,” Menedemos answered.

“You could have done worse,” Philodemos allowed: high praise, from him.

Inspiration smote Menedemos. He said, “Why don't you keep one of the stones, Father, and get it made into a ring or a bracelet for your new wife? She'd like that, I'd bet—it'd be something not many Rhodian women could match.”

Only after the words were spoken did he pause to wonder what sort of inspiration that had been. But Philodemos, to his great relief, noticed nothing out of the ordinary. “Do you know, that's not a bad idea,” his father said. “Women are fond of trinkets.” He eyed Menedemos. “You know all about what women are fond of, don't you?”

That was just general sarcasm; Philodemos sounded about as pleased as he ever did. “No man knows all about what women are fond of,” Menedemos said with great conviction. “I may have found out a little something, though.”

His father snorted. “Enough to get you into trouble from Halikarnassos to Taras.” Enough to get me into worse trouble right here at home, if I let it, Menedemos thought. His father went on, “Here, pick a nice one for me,” and held out his hand. “My eyes aren't up to such things these days.”

“This one has a fine color,” Menedemos said, holding up an emerald.

“So it does,” Philodemos agreed. “I can see it better when you hold it than when it's in my own hand. Isn't that a sorry business? Old age is bitter, no doubt about it.”

“Baukis will be happy, I think,” Menedemos said. Will she find out this was my idea and not my father's? I can't very well tell her, and half of me—the sensible half I'm sure—doesn't want her to.

Philodemos' thoughts were going down a different track. “What's a fourteenth part of five hundred and fifty drakhmai? I can't do that in my head.”

“Neither can I,” Menedemos said. “Sostratos probably could.”

“Never mind; there's a counting board in the andron. I'll figure it out there.” His father walked over to the men's chamber, where, sure enough, an abacus lay on a table. Philodemos flicked beads back and forth in their grooves. “Thirty-nine drakhmai—a couple of oboloi over, in fact. I'll have to move the silver from my own money to the business.”

“Why bother?” Menedemos said.

“Because I'm buying it from the business, that's why,” Philodemos said. “Because Lysistratos would bellow like a bull and roar like a lion if I didn't—and because he'd be right when he did. Never cheat the business, son, not if you want to stay in business.”

“All right.” Menedemos dipped his head. Father is as stern with himself as he is with everybody else, he thought. That made Philodemos more admirable, but hardly easier or more comfortable to live with.

His father pointed to the leather sack that held the rest of the emeralds, “Where do you think you can get the best price for those?”

“Well, Sostratos is wild to go to Athens on account of his gryphon's skull.”

“That thing.” Philodemos snorted once more, on a different note. “He ought to pay for it from his personal funds instead of sticking the business with the cost.”

“He thinks he can get these two different schools of philosophy bidding against each other,” Menedemos said.

His father snorted again, “Moonshine, nothing else but.” “I don't know,” Menedemos said. “You never can tell with philosophers. Who can guess what they might want, and how much they'd pay for it?” He quoted from Aristophanes' Clouds:

He couldn't held smiling. He loved Aristophanes' absurdities.

“Cresses?” his father said. “What's he talking about, philosophy or salad?”

“Some of each, I think,” Menedemos answered. “But Athens has some of the best jewelers in the world. I don't know what philosophers will pay for a stone skull, but I think jewelers will pay plenty for emeralds.”

Philodemos pursed his lips. “You may be right,” he said at last. “If you can get to Athens, that is.”

Menedemos thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Oi-moi! That reminds me, Father.” He passed on the news he'd got from Moiragenes at the harbor.

“Ptolemaios has Xanthos, you say?” Philodemos whistled. “There's all of Lykia, near enough, stolen away from Antigonos just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“And Kaunos is next on the list,” Menedemos said. “The fight between the marshals is so close now, we can see it from here.”

“This is not good for Rhodes, not good at all,” his father said. “The last thing we want is for the war to come to our door. The longer it stays close to us, the likelier someone will try to kick the door down.”

That thought had occurred to Menedemos, too. He didn't like agreeing with his father. It didn't happen very often, so he seldom needed to worry about it. Here, though, he found himself saying, “I know. It's not easy staying a free and autonomous—a really free and really autonomous—polls these days. It puts me in mind of being a sprat in the middle of a school of hungry tunny, if you want to know the truth.”

“I won't quarrel with you,” Philodemos said: again, no small concession, coming from him. When it comes to Rhodes, we can see eye to eye, Menedemos thought. When it comes to the two of us. . .

He wished he hadn't suggested that his father mount the emerald and give it to Baukis. His father was liable to tell her he'd done so, as proof he wasn't worried about sharing an inheritance with any sons she might bear. And she might even take it that way, and be relieved.

Or she might think, Menedemos gave me this lovely stone. And if she thought that, what would she do then? And what would he?