The Gryphon's Skull

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

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

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

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

last,” Sostratos added.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I... see,” Sostratos said in a small voice. And so he did, once the Milesian pointed it out to him. This is what I get for living in a free and autonomous polis that really is both,

he thought. Such things don't occur to me. These lands are subject to the marshals who rule them and if the marshals become enemies, so do the lands, no matter what most of the people want. To someone from an independent democracy, the notion was absurd. But that made it no less real hereabouts.

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

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

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

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

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

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