Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

He wasn't sure he wanted her again till she said that. Then he decided it would be a nice way to start the day. “Go ahead,” he told her. “And after you're done, I'll use it myself. And then . . .”

But he'd just set down the pot when brisk footsteps resounded out in the courtyard. Someone knocked first on his door, then on the one beside it it, the door to Menedemos' room. Thestylis let out a startled squeak. She plainly hadn't expected anyone to disturb them so early; the light leaking out through the shutters was predawn gray.

“Who's there?” Sostratos asked. His eye went to the little knife he carried, now lying on the floor. It was a tool much more than a weapon. He heard Menedemos asking the same question with the same undertone of worry. After Kaunos, who could be sure staying in a proxenos' house was safe?

“It's me, Kleiteles,” came the answer. “You gentlemen need to get dressed right away and come out.”

“Why?” Sostratos asked in some irritation. He looked back at Thestylis, who lay naked and waiting on the bed. Not getting the chance to dip his wick after he'd made up his mind that he was going to annoyed him.

But Kleiteles answered, “Because one of Ptolemaios' servants is standing here beside me. Ptolemaios wants to speak to you as fast as you can get to him.”

Ice ran through Sostratos. Zeus ! Has he found out about the emeralds? How could be have found out about the emeralds? But what else would he want to talk about? He had no idea. But he realized he was going to have to find out. Astonishment widened Thestylis' eyes.

As Sostratos put on his chiton, Menedemos spoke from the other room: “Ptolemaios wants to talk to us?” His cousin sounded un-wontedly subdued. Nothing like being discovered, or worrying that you've been discovered, to put the fear of the gods in you, Sostratos thought. The fear, if not of the gods, then of a power greater than his own, was certainly in him.

“That's right,” Kleiteles answered along with another man: presumably, Ptolemaios' servant. Sostratos touched the hilt of that little knife. Much good it would do him against one of the great marshals of the Hellenic world.

“I'll see you again,” Sostratos told Thestylis, and hoped he meant it. He opened the door and stepped out into the courtyard. The fellow standing beside Kleiteles reminded him of Euxenides of Phaselis without looking like him: he was solidly made, erect, alert. He looks like a soldier — that's what it is, Sostratos thought.

“Hail,” the stranger said. “I'm Alypetos son of Leon.” Sostratos gave his own name. Menedemos came out. Alypetos went through introductions again, then gestured toward Kleiteles' doorway. “Come with me, best ones.”

“Can you tell us why Ptolemaios wants to see us?” Sostratos asked as they went out onto the street.

“I can make some guesses,” Alypetos answered, “but I might be wrong, and it's not my place to gab, anyhow.”

Something else occurred to Sostratos: “We've just made a bargain with Pixodaros the silk merchant. He'll probably bring his cloth to the Aphrodite this morning, expecting to pick up dye and perfume in exchange for it. Can you send someone to his house, asking him to wait till we're back to look things over for ourselves?”

“I'll take care of it,” Alypetos promised. He didn't sound as if Ptolemaios intended to do anything dreadful to Sostratos and Menedemos. That left Sostratos slightly reassured, but only slightly. He wouldn't, would he? If he did, we might try to run away.

Kos was waking up. Women with water jars gathered at a fountain, some of them pausing to chat before they took the water back to their homes. A farmer in from the countryside with a big basket of onions trudged toward the market square. A stonecutter pounded away with mallet and chisel at a memorial stone. A little naked boy, pecker flapping as he ran, chased a mouse till it slipped into a crack in a wall and got away. The child burst into tears.

Like any house in a polis, the one where Ptolemaios was staying presented only a blank, whitewashed wall and a doorway to the world. Unlike any house Sostratos had seen, though, this one had a couple of hoplites in full panoply—crested helm, bronze corselet, greaves, shield, spear, sword on the hip—standing sentry in front of it.

“Hail,” Alypetos said to them. “These are the Rhodians Ptolemaios wants to see.”

“Hail,” the sentries said together. Then one of them added something that sounded as if it ought to be Greek but made next to no sense to Sostratos. They're Macedonians, he realized. Well ,no surprise that Ptolemaios would use his countrymen for bodyguards. Unless you were used to it, the dialect Macedonians spoke among themselves might almost have been another language.

Alypetos had no trouble following it. “He says to bring you right on in,” he told Sostratos and Menedemos.

Inside, the house proved large and spacious, with a fountain and a bronze of Artemis with a bow in the courtyard. Alypetos ducked into the andron. Sostratos wondered whose home this was, and where he'd gone while Ptolemaios was using it. Not a question to which you're likely to find an answer, he thought.

Alypetos emerged. “He's eating breakfast,” he said. “Plenty of bread and oil and wine for the two of you as well. Go on in.”

“Thank you,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. Now he knew real relief. Ptolemaios, by all accounts, was not the sort of tyrant who broke bread with a man one moment and ordered him tortured the next.

“Go on. Go on.” Alypetos shooed them toward the andron. Menedemos put a bold front on things and strode into it. Sostratos followed, content here to let his cousin take the lead.

Ptolemaios looked up from dipping a chunk of bread in a bowl of olive oil. “Ah, you must be the Rhodians,” he said, speaking Attic Greek with a slight accent that put Sostratos in mind of the way the bodyguards outside the house talked (two more guards stood stolidly in the andron). “Hail, both of you. Have something to eat.”

“Hail, sir,” Menedemos said.

“Hail,” Sostratos added. As he sat and reached for some bread, he studied the ruler of Egypt out of the corner of his eye. Ptolemaios was somewhere in his mid- to late fifties, but strong and vigorous for his years. Though his hair was gray, he had all of it; he wore it rather long, with locks falling over his ears. He had an engagingly ugly face, with a big nose and a jutting chin; a scar on one cheek; a wide, fleshy mouth; and alert, dark eyes under shaggy eyebrows. To Sostratos' way of thinking, he looked more like a peasant then a general.

A slave poured the Rhodians wine from the mixing bowl. Sounding apologetic, Ptolemaios said, “It's not very strong, I'm afraid. I don't care to start getting drunk first thing in the morning.”

Macedonians had, and often lived up to, a reputation for drunkenness. But, sure enough, when Sostratos sipped, he discovered Ptolemaios didn't live up to it: the wine was cut three or four to one with water, a thin mix indeed. It was very good wine, though, and he said so.

“Thank you kindly.” Ptolemaios' smile was engagingly ugly, too, for it showed a couple of broken teeth. He's no youth, Sostratos thought, but he fought his way across Persia and into India with Alexander the Great. More scars, old and white and puckered, seamed his arms.

The bread was good, too: of wheat flour, soft and fine. And the oil had a sharp green tang that said it was squeezed from the first olives picked in the fall. None of that surprised Sostratos. If the lord of Egypt couldn't afford the best, who could?

Ptolemaios let him and Menedemos eat and drink for a while. Then, after sipping from his own cup and setting it down, he said, “You boys are probably wondering why f sent for you this morning.”