Harry Turtledove: The Gryphon's Skull

“You don't need to persuade me, friends,” Kissidas said, “and you won't persuade Hipparkhos, for his mind's made up.”

“Will you have trouble with him because you're taking us in?” Sostratos asked.

“I hope not,” the proxenos answered bleakly. “But whether I do or don't, it's my duty to help Rhodians here, the same as it's the duty of the Kaunian proxenos in Rhodes to help men from this city there. Come along with me, best ones, and use my home as your own as long as you're in Kaunos.”

Before leaving the Aphrodite, Menedemos made sure Diokles would keep at least half a dozen sailors aboard her. “Wouldn't do to come back and find half our cargo had grown legs and walked off, now would it?” Menedemos said.

“Not hardly, skipper, especially when we haven't got any peafowl along with us this spring,” Diokles said.

“We haven't got 'em, and we—or I, anyhow—don't miss 'em, either,” Sostratos said. He'd had to care for the birds till they sold the last of them in Syracuse, and hadn't enjoyed the experience. As far as raucous, stupid bipeds go, they're even worse than sailors , he thought—a bit of fluff he wisely didn't pass on to the oarmaster.

“Come along, my friends,” Kissidas repeated, more urgently than before: maybe he didn't want to be seen hanging around a Rhodian ship. Would informers denounce him to Antigonos' garrison commander? As Sostratos went up the gangplank onto the quay, he thanked Fortune and the other gods that Rhodes really was free and autonomous, and that Rhodians didn't have to worry about such nonsense.

As far as the look of both buildings and people went, Kaunos might have been a purely Hellenic city. The temples were older and plainer than those of Rhodes, but built in the same style. Houses showed the world only blank fronts, some whitewashed, and red tile roofs, as they would have back home. All the signs were in Greek, Men wore thigh-length chitons; a few wrapped hitmatia over the tunics. Women's chitons reached their ankles. If prosperous or prominent women came out in public, they wore hats and veils against the prying eyes of men.

“Just thinking about what might be under those wrappings builds a fire under you, doesn't it?” Menedemos murmured after one such woman walked by.

“Under you, maybe,” Sostratos said. His cousin laughed at him.

As Sostratos walked along the narrow, muddy, winding streets, he realized the Karians who shared Kaunos with the Hellenes also made their presence felt. Though they were hellenized as far as dress went, more of their men wore beards than was true at Rhodes—the fad for shaving hadn't caught on among them. Some of them wore short, curved swords on their belts, too: outlandish weapons to a Hellene's eye. And, even if they didn't write their own language, they did speak it—a gurgling tongue that meant nothing to Sostratos.

“Tell me,” he said to Kissidas, suddenly curious, “do men and women and even children here in Kaunos sometimes get large drinking parties together for friends of about the same age?”

The Rhodian proxenos stopped in his tracks and gave him an odd look. “Why, yes,” he answered. “But how could you know that?

You've never been here before, I don't believe, and that's not the custom anywhere else in Karia.”

“I've heard it said, and I wondered if it was true,” Sostratos answered. Explaining he'd stumbled across it in the history of Herodotos was likely to spawn as many questions as it answered, so he didn't bother.

When they got to the olive merchant's home, a slave greeted Kissidas in bad Greek before barring the door after him and his guests. Kissidas led the two Rhodians across the rather bare courtyard to the andron. The slave brought a jar of wine, another of water, a mixing bowl, and three cups to the men's room. “Supper soon,” he said, mixing wine and water in the bowl and filling the cups from it.

“To what shall we drink?” Sostratos asked. “To peace among the marshals?”

“That would be wonderful. It would also be too much to hope for,” Kissidas said bleakly. He lifted his own cup. “Here is a prayer the gods may hear: to staying out from underfoot when the marshals clash!” He drank. So did Menedemos. And so did Sostratos. The proxenos' toast summed up his own hope for Rhodes.

Menedemos raised his cup, too. “To making a profit while we stay out from underfoot!” They all drank again. Warmth spread outward from Sostratos' belly. He guessed the mix was one part wine to two of water, a little stronger than usual.

Kissidas said, “I can have couches brought if you like, gentlemen, but I usually dine sitting unless I'm giving a real symposion.”

“Don't trouble yourself, best one,” Sostratos said at once. “You're doing us the kindness of putting us up. We don't want to disrupt your household any more than we must.”

“Good of you. Kind of you.” The wine seemed to hit Kissidas even harder than it hit Sostratos. “My dear fellow, some people imagine that staying at a proxenos' house means they own the place.” He rolled his eyes. “The stories I could tell you ...” After another cup of wine, he started telling those stories. Sostratos heard a good one about a long-winded Rhodian of his father's generation whom he already disliked, a pleasure sweeter than most.

At Kissidas' wave, his house slave set a three-legged round table in front of each chair. The sitos—the main part of the meal—the slave fetched in was wheat bread, still warm from the oven. The opson—the relish that accompanied it—consisted of plates of small squids fried in olive oil till they were golden brown.

Like any mannerly person, Sostratos ate sitos with his left hand, opson with his right, and was careful to eat more bread than squid. As Menedemos popped a squid into his mouth with the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, he inclined his head to Kissidas and said, “You'll make an opsophagos out of me with a supper like this.”

Not wanting to be taken for someone who ate opson at the expense of sitos helped keep Sostratos mannerly. He dipped his head to show his host he agreed with Menedemos' comment. Actually, he thought his cousin was exaggerating for politeness' sake. The squids were good—like most Hellenes, Sostratos was very fond of seafood— but nothing exceptional.

“You're too kind,” Kissidas said. “I forgot to ask before: what have you got aboard? With an akatos, I wouldn't expect you to be carrying grain or timber or cheap wine or oil.”

“No, the Aphrodite's not a bulk hauler, though she's carried grain before,” Menedemos said. “We've got perfume from Rhodian roses, and some of the finest crimson dye to come out of Phoenicia since Alexander sacked Tyre twenty years ago.”

“And papyrus out of Egypt, and pots of first-quality ink from Rhodes,” Sostratos added.

“A few other odds and ends, too: things for men who aren't satisfied with the everyday,” Menedemos said.

“The luxury trade, sure enough—I knew it as soon as I saw your ship,” Kissidas said. “And what do you hope to get here? This isn't a town with a lot of luxuries to sell; we make our living from our crops, and from the timber and mines in the mountains.”

Sostratos and Menedemos shrugged in such perfect unison, they might have been actors on the comic stage. “We'll go into the agora tomorrow and see what your traders have,” Sostratos said. “And we'll gladly sell for silver, too. Plenty of that in these parts, if we can pry it out of people.”

“I wish you the best of luck,” Kissidas said. “But Antigonos squeezes us pretty hard. He—” He broke off as the house slave came in to light lamps and torches, and didn't resume till the man had left the andron. Even afterwards, he kept the conversation innocuous for a while. He had to be worrying about informers.