Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"You must be Lamakhos," Sostratos said, and the brothelkeeper dipped his head. Sostratos went on, "I met your Keltic girls last night."

"Did you?" Lamakhos' eyes lit up. Sostratos had little trouble thinking along with him. If he, Sostratos, had been at the symposion, he was prosperous. And if he was here so early, he was probably besotted with at least one of the Kelts - which could only profit the man who owned them. "If you want to meet 'em again, friend, I'll be glad to get 'em for you."

I'm sure you would, Sostratos thought. Lamakhos wasn't so far wrong, either, but Sostratos didn't want him realizing that. And so, as casually as he could, he said, "Later, maybe. The real reason I came here was that I noticed your flutegirls were decked in thin linen last night."

"Well, what about it?" Lamakhos' bonhomie dropped away like a himation in hot weather.

"They'd make more for themselves and more for you if they wore silk." Sostratos showed him the bolt of Koan cloth he'd brought along.

"Ah." Now Lamakhos looked thoughtful. This was business, too, if not quite the business he'd had in mind. He pointed. "Come on into the courtyard, so I can have a look at this stuff in the sunlight."

He led Sostratos through the main reception room, where the girls sat around waiting for customers. Some of them wore linen tunics, as the flutegirls had the night before. Others were altogether naked. As they sat, most of them spun wool into thread - if they weren't making money for Lamakhos one way, they'd do it another.

"Hail, little brother!" one of them called to Sostratos, and fluttered her eyelashes at him. Her bare breasts jiggled, too.

"Shut up, Aphrodisia," Lamakhos said. "He's not here for a piece. He's here to try and sell me some silk."

Telling that to the whores proved a mistake. By their excited squeals, they all wanted to wear the filmy, exotic fabric. Sostratos displayed the bolt. The women reached for it. Lamakhos looked sour, but took Sostratos into the courtyard, as he'd said he would. Sostratos displayed it again. "Oh, look!" one of the girls said. "You can see right through it. What the men wouldn't pay if we went to a symposion dressed like that!" The other whores loudly agreed.

Lamakhos looked harassed. Even though the women were slaves, they could make his life miserable. "Well, what do you want for it?" he growled at Sostratos.

"Fifteen drakhmai for each bolt," Sostratos answered. "Plenty of silk in each one for a chiton, and your girls will make the price back inside a few months."

The women put up a clamor that hamstrung Lamakhos' tries at dickering. They made such a racket, they woke up the flutegirls and dancers who'd been at Gylippos' symposion the night before. The fluteplayer who'd given Menedemos the name of her master and the redheaded dancer with whom Sostratos had enjoyed himself both waved to him. They and the other girls joined in the outcry for silk.

Despite that outcry, Lamakhos did his best, but he couldn't get Sostratos down below thirteen drakhmai a bolt for twenty bolts. "You've seduced my girls, that's what it is," he said unhappily.

"You'll make money in the long run," Sostratos said again. Since the brothelkeeper seemed prepared to pay and didn't argue, he concluded Lamakhos held the same opinion. And then inspiration struck. "If you'll do something for me, I'll knock five drakhmai off the total."

"What's that?" Lamakhos asked.

Sostratos pointed to the Keltic girl. "Let me come by and have Maibia" - the name she'd given him didn't fit well in a Hellene's mouth - "whenever I like for as long as I'm in Taras this year."

Lamakhos pursed his lips, considering. "I ought to say no. I'd get more than five drakhmai out of you that way."

"You might," Sostratos replied. "On the other hand, you might not. You should know that I am not one who spends wildly on women."

That made Lamakhos look unhappy again. "You haven't got the look, I have to say. You'd probably stay away just to spite me, too, wouldn't you?" Sostratos only smiled. Lamakhos drummed his fingers on the side of his thigh. "All right - a deal, as long as you don't hurt her or do anything that makes her worth less. If you do, I'll take you to law, by the gods."

"I wouldn't," Sostratos said. "I'm not somebody who hurts slaves for sport. In fact, I'll even ask her if it's all right." He turned to Maibia.

She shrugged. "Why not? You weren't cruel last night, even with wine in you, and your breath doesn't stink." Such tiny praise - if that was what it was - made Sostratos' ears burn. The Keltic girl went on, "And if you want me enough to bargain for me, I expect you'll be giving me summat every so often to keep me sweet."

"I . . . expect I will." Sostratos didn't know why such a mercenary attitude surprised him. What did Maibia have to bargain with, except the favors she doled out?

Lamakhos stuck out his hand. Sostratos clasped it. "A bargain," they said together. The brothelkeeper went on, "I'll pay for this bolt now, and come to the house you're renting for the rest this afternoon or tomorrow."

"Good enough," Sostratos said. "Ah . . . You ought to know we have some stout sailors keeping an eye on things."

"Everybody knows that, on account of the Samnite," Lamakhos said. "I wasn't going to try and rob you." But he smiled, as if Sostratos had complimented him by thinking he might. In the circles in which he traveled, maybe that was a compliment.

7

Menedemos probably would have gone to Gylippos' house even without a good excuse. He knew that much about himself, from experience: that was how he'd got in trouble with the merchant he'd cuckolded in Halikarnassos. But he had a perfectly good excuse here - two perfectly good excuses, in fact, which he carried in a canvas sack.

When he knocked on Gylippos' door, the dried-fish merchant's majordomo, a stonefaced Italian of some sort named Titus Manlius, said, "Hail, sir. My master is waiting for you." He did speak Greek with an an accent different from Herennius Egnatius', so maybe Sostratos was right in guessing him a Roman.

As Menedemos walked across the courtyard toward the andron, his eye naturally went to the dark corner near the stairs where Phyllis had bent herself forward for him. The corner wasn't dark now, of course, not with the warm sun of southern Italy shining down on it. Menedemos had hoped for a glimpse of Gylippos' wife, but he was disappointed in that. He shrugged as he walked into the andron. He wasn't sure he could have told her from a slave woman, anyhow. All he really knew was that she was short and young - and friendly, very friendly.

"Hail," Gylippos said. "Have some wine. Have some olives." He pointed to a bowl on the round three-legged table in front of him.

"Thank you." Menedemos popped one into his mouth, worked off the pulp with his teeth and tongue, and spat the pit onto the pebbles of the floor mosaic.

Gylippos pointed to the canvas sack. "So those are the chicks, eh?"

"Either that or I've caught a kakodaimon in there," Menedemos replied with a grin.

The purveyor of dried fish chuckled. "Let's see 'em."

"Right." Menedemos upended the sack on the floor. Out spilled the two peafowl chicks. "Here - I brought some barley for them." Menedemos scattered the grain over the mosaic. The chicks started contentedly pecking away. They were a good deal bigger than newly hatched chickens, brownish above and buff below. The little noises they made were louder and sharper than ordinary chicks', too, though not nearly so raucous as those of adult peafowl.

"I see they can take care of themselves," Gylippos said, and Menedemos dipped his head. "Figures that they would - most birds of that sort can," the fish dealer went on; he was no fool. "Still, it's good to see with your own eyes. Now - d'you know how to tell the peacocks from the peahens when they're this little?"