The Gryphon's Skull

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I try not to,” he answered.

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

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

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

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