The Gryphon's Skull

“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.”