Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

“If I'm a thief, you're a joker,” Sostratos replied. “I can't possibly make a profit on that, or anything close to it. You say you don't want to wash clothes or sell wine? That cuts both ways. I don't want to tan hides or make pots.”

She stepped forward and set a hand on his arm. Till then, she'd acted like a well-bred woman and spoken like a well-educated man. Now, suddenly, she chose to remind him of what she really was, what she really did. Her flesh was warm and soft. Her voice was warm and soft, too: “Suppose I give you that very same price, and the rest of the afternoon in my bed? If you want illusion, I can give you the best.”

“If my cousin were here, he might take you up on that,” Sostratos said. “Please believe me, it's not that I'm not interested.” That was true; her touch had startled him and stirred him at the same time. Even so, he went on, “You're lucky: you can make a living from illusion. I can't; I have to have silver.”

“It's not always luck, believe me. Some of the men who visit here have illusions of their own,” Metrikhe said. She went from wanton back to businesslike in the space of a sentence. “All right, then— silver and nothing but silver.” She came up a little.

“You're speaking of Milesian drakhmai?” Sostratos asked.

Metrikhe dipped her head. “They're a little heavier than your Rhodian coins.”

He'd known that. Somehow, he wasn't surprised she did, too. “Even so, you're still too low,” he said, thinking, When we do make a bargain, I won't find any heavy drakhmai here, the way I did at the temple in Kos.

She said, “Let's go back into the andron and hash it out over more wine.”

“Why not?” Sostratos said. “If you can afford to pay for the lovely Khian, you can afford to pay for my silk, too.”

Metrikhe laughed. “You're as spiny as a hedgehog. Why didn't your cousin come here instead? He would have been easier to deal with.”

“I'm sorry,” said Sostratos, who wasn't sorry at all. “You're stuck with me.”

When they did agree on a price, it was about as low as Sostratos was willing to go without abandoning the deal altogether. That didn't surprise him, either. And, when he went through the money she gave him, he found a few coins—only a few—from Rhodes and other poleis that coined to a lighter standard than Miletos. “I'll get you lions to take their places,” Metrikhe said, and did replace them with Milesian money. As he'd expected, there were no owls or turtles or other heavy coins.

The drakhmai jingled sweetly as Sostratos put them back into the leather sack Metrikhe had given him. He tied the sack shut with a strip of rawhide. “Thank you for your hospitality and for your business,” he told her, rising to go. “I hope to see you again one day.” It could happen. Ships from his father and uncle's firm came into Miletos every year or two.

Metrikhe said, “Do you need to leave so soon?”

Sostratos frowned. “We're done here, aren't we? Or have you changed your mind about some of the silk you said you didn't want?”

“I wasn't talking about silk,” she said, a hint—more than a hint— of exasperation in her voice.

His frown deepened. “Then what do you—?” He broke off be­cause of one possibility that occurred to him. It would, he was sure, have occurred to Menedemos much sooner. “Do you mean that?” He was pleased his voice didn't rise to a startled squeak, as if he were still a youth.

“Certainly, I mean that” she answered, now sounding amused. “Why did you think I might mean anything else?”

Because those sorts of things happen to my cousin, not to me, Sostratos thought. Because women don't usually find me very interesting. He had just enough sense not to blurt that out to Metrikhe. Instead, he said, “Because you chose to dress like a woman of quality. Because you bargain like a man. Because I already turned you down when you, ah, didn't bargain like a man.”

She laughed and waved that aside. “You didn't insult me. That was business on both sides, when I offered and when you said no. This wouldn't be business. I think this would be fun. You've treated me like a person, not like a slut. You don't know how unusual that is. And so ...” She shrugged. “If you want to, of course.”

“You really mean it,” Sostratos said in slow wonder. Metrikhe dipped her head. He still had trouble believing it. In his youth, he'd had a couple of painful jokes played on him, painful enough to make him wince when he thought of them now, ten years later.

“Come on,” Metrikhe said. “I'm doing this because I feel like it, not because I have to make one of my companions feel good. That's unusual, too, and I'm going to enjoy it.”

Sostratos needed no more urging. He did bring along the silk she hadn't bought and the money she'd given him for what she had. If he left them here in the andron, he wasn't sure they would stay here till he got back.

Metrikhe didn't urge him to leave them behind. All she said was, “You don't take chances, do you?”

“I try not to,” he answered.

“Well, good for you,” she said. “My room is upstairs—it's the women's quarters, after all.”

Her bed was wider, her mattress thicker and softer, than those Sostratos had used at Kleiteles' house back in Kos. As soon as she closed the bedroom door behind them, she took off her veil and set it on the cabinet by the wall. Her letting him see her face after con­cealing it through nearly the whole afternoon was almost like letting him see her altogether naked.

That soon followed. She neatly folded the khlanis and laid it beside the veil. Then, undoing her girdle, she got out of the long chiton and stood bare before him. “Praxiteles should have got a look at you,” he said. “He never would have bothered modeling his Aphrodite on Phryne.”

She blushed. He was delighted to follow the surge of color from her breasts all the way to her hairline. “I wish more men talked so sweetly,” she said.

“If they don't, they're either blind or missing a chance,” Sostratos told her, which made her flush all over again. And I'm not even exaggerating very much, he thought, pulling his own chiton off over his head. Metrikhe's shape was everything a man could ask for in a woman: slim waist, round hips, firm breasts of just the right size. A sculptor would have been pleased to use her for a model. Most sculptors would be pleased to do quite a lot of things with her, went through Sostratos’ mind as he stepped forward and took her in his arms.

Her body molded itself against his. Her skin was soft and smooth, he wondered if she oiled it. She tilted her face up to his. Seen from a distance of less than a palm, her eyes weren't brown, but dark, dark hazel, an intriguingly complex color. “I like tall men,” she whispered.

“I like you,” Sostratos answered. Metrikhe laughed and squeezed him. Her breath was sweet. When he kissed her, she tasted of wine.

They lay down on the bed. Sostratos' mouth went from hers to her cheeks, the lobes of her ears, her neck, her breasts. His hand wandered lower, down the curve of her belly to where her legs joined. They opened for him. He stroked her there while his tongue teased her nipples. She let out a soft sigh of pleasure. If it wasn't real, she was a better actor than any who went on the stage in Athens.

Before long, she began to stroke him, too, and then twisted, limber as an eel, and took him in her mouth. He enjoyed it for a little while before pulling away. “You don't need to play the Lesbian for me,” he said: women from Lesbos were famous for giving men that par­ticular pleasure.

Her smile was saucy. “Well, what do you want to do, then?” she asked archly.