“I was worried about these Rhodians, too, but they treated me as well as if I were one of Ptolemaios' men,” Euxenides said, and Sostratos couldn't fault him for that. He went on, “They really did act as neutrals should, and I expect you'll show them every kindness here.” That expect held the snap of command, and told Sostratos which of Antigonos' officers owned the higher rank.
“Just as you say,” Aristarkhos answered, still sounding unhappy about it. “For now, though, come with me, why don't you? We'll send a messenger to Antigonos first thing in the morning. He’ll be pleased to know you got away.”
Euxenides picked up the leather sack that held his worldly goods. “Thank you for my passage,” he said, waving first to Sostratos and then to Menedemos as he went up the gangplank to stand on the quay beside Aristarkhos.
“Thank you for your help on Telos,” Menedemos replied. Thank you for your help here, Sostratos thought. Maybe jealousy had made him misjudge Euxenides. They could have made their own steering oar on the island, even if it wouldn't have been so perfect as the one the officer had turned out. But for Euxenides' acquaintance with Aristarkhos here in Knidos, though, things might have gone hard for them.
Aristarkhos asked, “What cargo are you carrying, Rhodians?”
“Perfume and purple dye,” Menedemos answered.
“Papyrus and ink,” Sostratos added. His cousin shot him a warning look. He realized he might have done better to keep quiet about the papyrus. It came from Egypt, Ptolemaios' stronghold. Reminding Antigonos' captain about it might cause trouble.
Aristarkhos only grunted. “Where are you bound?” he asked.
“Athens,” Sostratos and Menedemos said together. Sostratos wondered if that admission were wise. For the past eight years, Demetrios of Phaleron had ruled Athens as Kassandros' puppet, and Kassandros was no friend to Antigonos, either.
But Aristarkhos merely grunted again, remarking, “With that cargo, you would be.” He leaned forward, trying to see better as twilight thickened. “Will you stop at Kos on the way?”
Anther dangerous question. Lying might be safer, but also might be more dangerous. Sostratos decided to tell the truth, as calmly and reasonably as he could: “Of course we will, O best one. We are traders, and we are neutral. They make silk on Kos, and you can't get it anywhere else in the world. We'll buy some to take with us, and we'll sell crimson dye there,”
“When I left Rhodes bound for Miletos, they warned me ahead of time they planned to put in at Kos,” Euxenides said. “This was before we knew Ptolemaios' whole war fleet was heading that way.”
“All right, fair enough,” Aristarkhos said. His suspicions finally seemed to have dissolved. “Will you want to spend a day in the market square here before you go on?”
Sostratos and Menedemos looked at each other. Sostratos could think of nothing he wanted less. What he wanted was to get to Athens as fast as he could. But what he wanted and what was expedient were liable to be two different things. “Thank you,” he said. “That's very kind.”
He'd made the right choice. He saw that at once, by the way Aristarkhos relaxed. The officer turned to Euxenides, saying, “Come on, let's get you back to the barracks before it's too dark for us to see where we're going.” They walked down the quay together.
“Just what I want—a day in Knidos' market square,” Menedemos said. “It would take a special miracle from Zeus to make enough to pay the whole crew an extra day's wages.” He reached up and set a hand on Sostratos' shoulder. “And I'm sure you're even happier about the layover than I am.”
“Oh, of course.” Sostratos' sounded even glummer than his cousin had. But then he brightened. “You never can tell what we might find, though. Who would have thought we'd come across the gryphon's skull in Kaunos?”
“Yes, who would?” Menedemos' tone suggested he would have been just as well pleased never to have set eyes on it. He sighed. “We couldn't even hope to find the Rhodian proxenos' house without a torchbearer now. Do you feel like going to an inn, or will the poop deck do for the night?”
“The poop deck is fine, as far as I'm concerned,” Sostratos said. “Nothing but bugs and noise and thieves at an inn.”
“Not quite nothing,” his cousin observed.
“We've got wine here, and I'm not so mad for girls that I've got to have one the instant I come into a port,” Sostratos replied.
“Well, I don't have to have one, either,” Menedemos said in tones of affronted dignity. Sostratos smiled to himself. That gibe had gone home. Menedemos stripped off his chiton, crumpled it up, and set it on the deck to serve for a pillow. He wrapped himself in his himation and lay down. Sostratos did the same.
There was room on the deck for Diokles, too. But the keleustes perched on a rower's bench and leaned against the Aphrodite’s side planking, as he usually did when spending a night aboard ship. He'd got into the habit years earlier, when he still pulled an oar, and he'd never been able to get out of it.
Sostratos peered up into the night sky. Aphrodite's wandering star, brightest of them all, blazed in the west, following the sun down toward the horizon. That of Zeus, less brilliant but able to travel all around the heavenly sphere, shone low in the east. Distant music from the double flute and voices raised in song argued that more than a few people preferred revelry and wenching to this almost Lakedaimonian simplicity. To the crows with them, he thought, and fell asleep.
Menedemos was anything but enthusiastic about spending a day in Knidos' agora hawking the Aphrodite's goods. “Not your fault,” he said to Sostratos as they set up their little display of dye and perfume and papyrus and ink. “You couldn't afford to make that Aristarkhos angry at us. But even so ...”
“Even so,” Sostratos agreed mournfully. “I want to go on to Athens.”
He sounded like a small boy who wanted a sweet and was about to throw a tantrum because his pedagogue wouldn't buy one for him. Menedemos chuckled. If there were thinking-brothels like the thinking-shop Aristophanes had given Sokrates in his Clouds, nothing would have kept Sostratos aboard the Aphrodite the night before. He'd practically boasted about not caring whether he got laid, but he would have been gone like a dart from a catapult if he'd seen a chance to argue about the whichness of what.
“We'll go through the motions,” Menedemos said. “Then we can prowl the market square for a while, and then we'll head back to the ship.”
“Fair enough.” But Sostratos heaved a sigh. “We could be most of the way to Kos by now.” He exaggerated, but not by a great deal; the island lay less than half a day's journey north and west of Knidos.
Local merchants started crying the virtues of their olives and onions and drinking cups and wool cloth. And, not too far away, a couple of bearded Phoenicians in ankle-length linen robes and brim-less caps called out, “Balsam! Fine balsam! The finest incense and medicine the gods ever made!”
Hearing that, Sostratos perked up. “We ought to see what sort of bargain we can strike with them, A mina of balsam goes for two minai of silver.”
“You're right,” Menedemos said. “We'll have time to dicker, I expect. It won't move fast in a little town like this.”
But they'd hardly begun singing the praises of their own goods before a man with the careful, forward-leaning walk of the shortsighted came up to them and said, “You'd be the Rhodians who got in last night?”