"Of course, rounding the Peloponnesos is no bargain, either, especially not with that mercenary hiring camp that's sprung up at the end of Cape Tainaron," Sostratos said. "Crete's not very far away, either, and pirates swarm out of Crete the way bugs swarm out from under flat rocks."
"I wish I could say you were wrong," Menedemos answered.
"What will you do, then?" his cousin demanded.
"Sail west," he said with a grin. Sostratos' scowl grew fiercer than ever, which only made Menedemos grin more widely.
Menedemos had wondered if Aristagoras would let Alyattes take charge of delivering the wine and collecting the money for it, but the merchant showed up in person. Menedemos decided he couldn't blame him. Aristagoras was getting more than a quarter of a talent of silver; that much money could easily tempt a slave into striking out on his own, especially with only a few stadia of water separating him from his native Lydia.
Sostratos gave the wine merchant his money, each mina in its own leather sack. "Thank you, young fellow," Aristagoras said, smugly dipping his head as he accepted the last pound of silver. "All I can say is, it's a good thing your cousin came along when he did, or you'd be sailing without my fine Ariousian."
"No doubt, sir," Sostratos replied, as ostentatiously polite as a Phoenician. "And, in that case, you'd be sitting in your house without our fine Rhodian drakhmai."
"Is that a joke?" Aristagoras demanded. "Are you trying to be funny with me?"
"Not at all," Sostratos said. If Menedemos was any judge, his cousin was trying not to kill the wine seller. "All I'm trying to do is tell the truth."
"You'll never make a trader that way," Aristagoras said. "Hail." He turned his back and walked down the wharf and into Khios. Menedemos could hear the silver clinking in the sacks almost until the wine merchant reached solid ground.
"May Athana turn him into a spider, as she did with Arakhne," Sostratos ground out. "She'd have an easier time of it with Aristagoras, because he's already halfway there." He was quivering with fury; Menedemos didn't think he'd ever seen his cousin so angry. He'd even let his dialect slip, calling the goddess Athana in broad Doric rather than speaking in the half-Attic style he usually used.
"Easy, there," Menedemos said, and reached up to put a hand on Sostratos' shoulder. Sostratos shook him off. Menedemos' cousin was bigger than he, but Menedemos could usually count on his strength and grace to give him an edge. Not this time. In Sostratos' fury, he might lash out wildly at the least little thing, and might not care about consequences till much too late. "Easy there," Menedemos repeated, as if gentling a spooked horse. "If you let him get under your skin, he's won."
In a deadly voice, Sostratos said, "I shall bind Aristagoras and his possessions and his thoughts. May he become hateful to his friends. I bind him under empty Tartaros in cruel bonds, and with the aide of Hekate under the earth and the Furies who drive men mad. So may it be."
Menedemos stared at his cousin as if he'd never seen him before. Calm, rational, mild-mannered Sostratos, ripping loose with a curse that would have chilled a Thessalian witch? All the sailors were staring at him, too. Several of the men closest to him edged away. They'd thought Sostratos mild-mannered, too, mild-mannered and ineffectual. But if he could call a curse like that down on a merchant's head, who was to say he couldn't also call its like down on one of them?
Rather nervously, Diokles said, "That was quite . . . something." He fingered his ring.
Sostratos blinked. The flush of fury faded from his cheeks. He looked like a man whose fierce fever had just broken. And when he laughed, he sounded like himself, not the savage stranger who seemed to have seized him for a moment. "It was, wasn't it?" he said.
"Are you . . . all right now?" Menedemos asked, and heard the caution in his own voice.
Sostratos considered that with his usual gravity. At last, he tossed his head. "All right? No. I won't be all right till Khios goes down under the horizon - and if it went down under the waves, I wouldn't shed a tear. But I'm . . . not mad any more, I don't think." He plucked at his beard, the picture of bemusement. "That was very strange. If he'd stayed here even another moment, I would have killed him."
"I noticed," Menedemos said dryly.
"I have to think about that," Sostratos said.
Diokles nudged Menedemos. Lost in thought, Sostratos didn't notice. The oarmaster said, "What we have to do is get out of here, skipper. I don't think anybody but us heard him, but I could be wrong."
"That's . . . probably not the worst idea I ever heard," Menedemos agreed. He raised his voice: "Bring in the lines. Bring in the gangplank. Man the oars. We've got what we came for, and we don't need to hang around any more."
None of the sailors argued with him. By the way they leaped to obey, they might have been thinking along with Diokles and wanted to get out of Khios while they still had the chance. The Aphrodite left the harbor in a hurry, almost as if several of Antigonos' war galleys were in hot pursuit. But the war galleys stayed snug and dry in their sheds, as they usually did when not on patrol.
Once out in the channel between Khios and the mainland, Menedemos swung the akatos south. "Lower the sail," he said. Again, the sailors hurried to follow his order. This time, escape wasn't on their minds. They'd rowed every digit of the way from Knidos up to Khios. Now the wind would do the work for them. The northerly breeze filled the sail. Running before it, the Aphrodite scudded over the waves. Her motion was different, smoother, now that she no longer fought them.
But that motion wasn't quite what it might have been. "Sostratos!" Menedemos called.
His cousin was making sure one of the peahens didn't do anything more than usually birdbrained. Not taking his eyes off the peafowl for a moment, he answered, "Yes? What is it?"
"Get the bird back in its cage," Menedemos said. "Then I'm going to ask you to shift those amphorai we got from Aristagoras farther toward the stern. I don't like her trim - she's down by the bow just a bit." He held his thumb and forefinger together to show he didn't mean much.
"Seems all right to me," Sostratos said, but then, before Menedemos could get angry, he went on, "You're the skipper, so it will be however it suits you." He chivvied the peahen forward and actually succeeded in chasing it into its cage without having to net it first.
That done, he told off several sailors to move the heavy jars of wine back toward the poop deck. He had plenty from whom to choose; with the sail sweeping the Aphrodite along, the oars went unmanned. Even so, the sailors grumbled. "Aristagoras had slaves lugging these miserable jars," one of them said, "and now we've got to do it."
"If you want to bring your slave along, Leontiskos, he can fetch and carry for you," Menedemos said sweetly.
"If I had one, I would bring him," Leontiskos said. But, seeing that his comrades were laughing at him, he settled down and helped do what needed doing.
"That's much better," Menedemos said when the work was finished. "My thanks to you all." It wasn't much better, but he could feel the difference; the Aphrodite responded to the sail and to the steering oars more readily than she had before.
Sostratos ascended to the poop deck and asked, "Now will you tell me what you plan to do?"
Menedemos considered. "I'll make you a bargain," he said at last. "I will tell you - if you answer a question of mine first."
"Go ahead," Sostratos said. Menedemos noticed that he hadn't promised to answer - he wanted to hear the question first.