Harry Turtledove - The Gryphon's Skull

“No, your Excellency,” Sostratos said. Menedemos said nothing, but cautiously dipped his head to show he agreed with Sostratos. I'm going to have to do this by myself, Sostratos thought, annoyed at his cousin for being useless here. But who would have thought Ptolemaios would want us? Be fair.

“No, eh?” the Macedonian marshal rumbled. “That's not how Dionysios tells it, and I agree with him. Fifty drakhmai from Cape Sounion to here? That's piracy.”

“Piracy? No, sir. By the dog of Egypt, no, sir!” Sostratos said.

Ptolemaios raised a bushy eyebrow at his vehemence. “I tell you it is.”

“And I tell you you're talking like a fool. . . sir,” Sostratos retorted. Both of Ptolemaios' eyebrows flew upwards. A couple of his bodyguards growled ominously. Sostratos didn't care. He was past caring. Rage almost choking him, he went on, “I'll tell you what piracy really is. Piracy's really a pack of howling whoresons swarming onto your ship and killing your men and stealing your goods, your . . . your most precious goods.” He'd thought some of the pain from the loss of the gryphon's skull had eased. Now it stabbed him again. “It happened to us between Andros and Euboia. So Furies take your precious Dionysios if he calls us pirates. Nobody held a knife to his throat and made him come along with us. He could have taken any other ship he chose.”

Furies take you if you call us pirates. He didn't quite say that to Ptolemaios, but it hung in the air. A vast silence fell over the andron. Some of Ptolemaios' servitors stared at Sostratos. More eyed the lord of Egypt. How long has it been since anyone called him a fool to his face? Sostratos wondered. Years, probably.

Something glinted in Ptolemaios' eyes. Amusement or anger? Sostratos couldn't tell. The marshal said, “If you think you can insult me as you please because you come from a free and autonomous polis, you're badly mistaken.”

Sostratos made himself meet the older man's stare. “If you think you can insult us as you please because you rule Egypt—”

“I'm right,” Ptolemaios broke in.

“You may be right, sir, but are you just?” Sostratos asked. “The last time we were in Kos, you said you wished you'd gone to Athens and met Platon. Would he have called that just?”

Ptolemaios grimaced. Sostratos hid a smile. A lot of the leading Macedonians craved acceptance as cultured Hellenes, and Ptolemaios was indeed an educated man. Every once in a while, someone could turn that longing for acceptance against them. Ptolemaios gave a sudden, sharp dip of the head. “Very well. I withdraw the word. Are you happy now?”

“Thank you, best one,” Sostratos replied. Bodyguards and courtiers relaxed.

“But I still say that was an outrageously high fare,” Ptolemaios went on.

Shrugging, Sostratos answered, “We're in business to make a profit, sir. As I said just now, Dionysios didn't have to come with us if it didn't please him.”

“He might still be in Sounion if he hadn't,” Ptolemaios said. Sostratos only shrugged again. Ptolemaios' gaze sharpened. “You say you lost your most precious cargo? That's not what I heard.”

Ice ran through Sostratos. “Sir?” He had to force the word out, for he was dreadfully afraid he knew what Ptolemaios would say next.

And the lord of Egypt said it: “I heard you were selling emeralds. No, not you—your cousin.” He pointed at Menedemos. “This fellow. He talked a lot more the last time I saw him. I wonder why that is. If you were selling emeralds, they were smuggled out of Egypt. I don't like smugglers. I don't like people who deal with them, either.”

To Sostratos' amazement—and maybe to Ptolemaios', too—Menedemos burst out laughing. Bowing to the ruler of Egypt, he said, “Search me, sir. Here are your guards—they can look at whatever I have. So long as your men don't steal, they're welcome to come aboard the Aphrodite and search the ship, too. If they find a single emerald aboard, you can do what you like to me.”

He sold the last one back at Keos, Sostratos remembered. He dipped his head. “My cousin is right, sir,” he told Ptolemaios. “Dionysios is trying to get us in trouble because he's angry at the fare he had to pay.”

“It could be,” Ptolemaios said. “Sure enough, it could be. But, on the other hand, you may be bluffing. Who knows what kind of abandoned rogues you are?” He turned to his guards. “They've given you the invitation. Go ahead and search them. Do a good job of it.”

“Yes, sir,” the bodyguards chorused. They took Sostratos and Menedemos into separate rooms. Sostratos didn't know what Menedemos went through, and hoped it was as unpleasant as his own experience. After making him get out of his chiton and examining the garment, his belt, the little knife on it, the leather sheath for the knife, and the pouch in which he carried odds and ends, they turned their attention to his person.

They had more practice or more imagination than he'd expected. Their leader ran a finger around inside his mouth and discovered an obolos he'd entirely forgotten was in there. “Keep it,” he told the fellow.

“Not me,” the bodyguard said. “I'm no thief.”

He might not have been a thief, but he would have made a good torturer's apprentice. He ran a straw up Sostratos' nostrils. That produced no emeralds, but did bring on a sneezing fit. He probed Sostratos' ears with a twig. He made Sostratos bend over and probed another orifice, too. He didn't go out of his way to hurt the Rhodian, but he wasn't gentle about it, either. He also made Sostratos pull back his foreskin.

Before the fellow got any other bright ideas, Sostratos said, “Let me piss in a pot. If I'm hiding anything up there, that will flush it out.”

“Mm—all right,” the guard said, and, to Sostratos' vast relief, tossed aside another twig. “Lift up your feet, one after the other, so I can make sure you haven't got anything stuck under your arches.”

As Sostratos obeyed, he said, “How likely am I to have an emerald glued to the bottom of my foot, especially when I had no idea coming here that I would be searched?”

“I don't know how likely you are to have one there, friend,” the bodyguard answered. “That's why I'm looking: to find out.”

Finally, for good measure, he used a very fine-toothed comb, one suitable for getting rid of lice and nits, on Sostratos' hair and beard. Since his hair was wavy and his beard curly, and since he hadn't combed them out too well himself, that hurt as much as anything else he'd been through.

“Are you satisfied now?” he asked when the guard tossed the comb aside.

“Pretty much so,” the man replied. “Either you haven't got any or you're a sneakier bastard than most.”

After that less than ringing endorsement, he and his comrades let Sostratos put his tunic on again. He'd just slid it down over his head when the other group of guards led Menedemos past the doorway and toward the andron. His cousin, he was not at all sorry to see, looked at least as put upon as he felt himself—but his hair was well combed now. The men who'd searched Sostratos took him back to the andron, too.

“Well?” Ptolemaios barked.

“No emeralds, sir,” chorused the men who'd searched Menedemos, and the ones who'd searched Sostratos dipped their heads. A guard asked Ptolemaios, “Shall we take their ship apart, too, the way this fellow told us we could?”

Ptolemaios thought that over, but not for long. Then he tossed his head. “No, no point to that. Too many places to hide such small things; you'd only find 'em by luck.” He glowered at the two Rhodians. “I'm not convinced you're telling me the truth, not by a long shot. But I can't prove you're not, so I'm going to let you go: you did serve me well before.”