“That's not fair. I'm making us money,” Menedemos said.
“Less than last year,” Philodemos said again.
Menedemos made as if to tear his hair. “Last year you called me an idiot for taking some of the chances I took. I took fewer chances this year, and we made less money. Now you complain about that! How can I please you?” It's simple, he thought. / can't.
“Lower your voice. Do you want the slaves hearing all our business?” Philodemos said.
“No.” All Menedemos wanted was to get away. That was generally true whenever he talked with his father. It had been true before Philodemos wed Baukis, and was doubly true these days. Now he wanted—he needed—to escape Rhodes altogether, not just the andron or the house. And he would be stuck here till spring. With a growl that might have come from the throat of a cornered wolf, he got to his feet. “If you'll excuse me, Father...”
He went into the kitchen, where Sikon was expertly shucking boiled prawns out of their shells. The cook was chewing as he worked, which meant he'd sampled a few, or maybe more than a few. Philodemos fed his slaves well; he wouldn't mind that. And who'd ever heard of a scrawny cook, or at least of a scrawny cook worth having?
But when the door opened, Sikon looked up in alarm. When he saw Menedemos coming in, he relaxed. “Gods be praised, it's just you, sir. I was afraid it might be the lady.” He rolled his eyes and let his head twist bonelessly in a gesture he must have filched from the comic stage.
“She'll learn,” Menedemos said uncomfortably. He didn't like to hear anyone criticize Baukis. That had little to do with her position as manager of the household, much more with the position he would have liked her to . .. Stop that! he shouted at himself, as he did several times a day.
Sikon, of course, had no idea what he was thinking. Had the cook known, he wouldn't have dared roll his eyes again and say, “Maybe she will, but when? And will she drive me daft before she does? She fusses over every obolos I spend.”
“You've got to make her happy,” Menedemos said, and sternly told himself not to pursue that line of thought, either.
“Make her happy?” Sikon howled, peeling another prawn. “How am I supposed to manage that, short of serving nothing but barley porridge for the next six months? I think her mother must have been frightened by a tunny while she was in the womb.”
Menedemos pointed to the prawn shells and the tiny bits of flesh clinging to them. “Instead of throwing those in the street in front of the house, why don't you give them to her to bury in the garden? They'll make her flowers and herbs grow better, and she's bound to like that.”
“Is she? If you want to know what I think, I think she's more likely to grill me about how much the polluted prawns cost,” the cook said. As Menedemos did when his temper began to rise, he drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh. Sikon recognized the danger sign. “All right, all right. I'll give them to her, and I hope it does some good, that's all I've got to say.”
It wasn't all he had to say, nor anywhere close to it. And he said still more when Menedemos reached out and hooked a fat prawn from the bowl into which he'd been tossing them. Mouth full, Menedemos retreated.
A moment later, he wished he hadn't: Baukis had come down from the women's quarters and was picking up a hydria so she could water the garden. “Hail,” she called to him.
“Hail,” he answered. His gaze flicked to the andron. Sure enough, his father still sat inside. He would have to be all the more careful about what he said, then.
But before he had a chance to say anything, Sikon stormed out of the kitchen, both hands full of prawn shells. He all but threw them at Baukis' feet. “Here you are, my lady,” he said. “They'll make good manure for the plants, I hope.”
She looked startled; plainly, Sikon had never done anything like that before. “Thank you,” she said. “You're right. They will.” But then she asked, “How much did you pay for the prawns?”
The cook glared at Menedemos. I told you so, his eyes said. Then, reluctantly, he turned back to Baukis. “I got a good price for them.”
“I'm sure they'll be very tasty,” Menedemos said. “In fact, I know they'll be very tasty, because I tasted one.” Since he'd suggested this course to Sikon, he had to back him now.
Baukis said, “Tasty is one thing. Expensive is something else. What exactly did you pay for the prawns, Sikon?” Having no choice, the cook told her. She fixed him with a stony glance. “What would you call a bad price, if that's a good one?”
Defiantly, Sikon answered, “I've paid plenty more in years gone by. And”—he folded his arms across his chest—”nobody complained, either.”
The Macedonians and Persians lined up against each other at Gaugamela could not have glowered with greater ferocity. Menedemos, in the middle, feared he might be torn limb from limb. “Peace, both of you,” he said. “That isn't a dreadful price.” He found himself wishing his father would come out of the andron and help him. If that wasn't a measure of his alarm and desperation, he couldn't imagine what would be.
Philodemos stayed where he was. He had too much sense, or too little courage, to jump into the middle of this battle. Under Menedemos' protection, Sikon preened and swaggered. Baukis looked as if he'd stabbed her in the back. “If you care more about your belly than about what this house really needs ...” She didn't finish the sentence, but turned on her heel and stalked toward the stairs leading up to the women's quarters.
Menedemos watched—he couldn't help watching—the furious roll of her hips. Beside him, Sikon cackled with glee. “Thank you kindly, sir,” the cook said. “I guess you told her.”
“I guess I did,” Menedemos said dully. He scowled at Sikon. Could those prawns possibly be good enough to make up for getting Baukis angry at him? He doubted ambrosia from Olympos would be good enough for that.
“—And I looked under the rower's bench,” Sostratos said, “and the sack with the gryphon's skull in it was gone. One of those polluted pirates had stolen it. What I'd do to that son of a whore if I could ...”
“I'm sorry,” Erinna said, and then, with something like awe, “I've never seen you so angry before.”
Sostratos looked down at his hands. Of themselves, they'd folded into fists. When he willed them open, the marks of his nails were printed on his palms. More than a little sheepishly, he smiled at his younger sister. “If you think I'm angry now, you should have seen me when it happened. So much knowledge that might have been so important, gone forever ... I was beside myself.”
A fly landed on Erinna's arm. She brushed at it, and it darted away. Gyges, the majordomo here, had heard from Philodemos' cook next door that Baukis was using fish offal to fertilize her garden. Erinna had started doing the same thing. Maybe the plants appreciated it. Sostratos was certain the flies did. The one that had been on Erinna's arm landed on his leg. He smashed it. It fell in the dirt. A tiny gecko darted out from between two stones, seized it, and disappeared again. Sostratos wiped his hand on his chiton.
His sister sighed. “Being a man, being able to do all those things, go all those places, must be wonderful.”
“Not always,” Sostratos said dryly. “I could have done without pirates trying to kill me or sell me into slavery.”
Erinna flushed. “Well, yes. But most of the time . . . You know what I mean. You usually know what I mean.”
Sostratos coughed. “Thank you.” That was a rare compliment. He couldn't imagine anyone else saying such a thing to him. Menedemos? No, not likely. And he couldn't imagine saying such a thing to anybody else himself, not even to Erinna.