Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"I'm sorry, but I don't," Menedemos replied. "These are the first chicks I've seen, too, you'll remember. Either way, though, you'll have something unique in Great Hellas."

"The fellow who got something unique in Great Hellas will be heading out of Great Hellas pretty soon: the gods-detested Samnite you sold the grown peacock to," Gylippos grumbled.

"He paid for it, too," Menedemos answered. "I'm not asking nearly so much for the little ones." He ate another olive and spat out the pit. One of the chicks gulped it down. Menedemos wondered whether it could get nourishment from the pit or would use it as a gizzard stone.

"Well, how much are you asking?" Gylippos asked.

"A mina and a half apiece," Menedemos said lightly.

"A hundred and fifty drakhmai?" Gylippos howled. "By the dog of Egypt, Rhodian, either you're mad or you think I am."

Dickers always began with such cries. Menedemos sold the two birds for two Tarentine minai, just about the price he'd wanted to get. "My cousin will curse me when I get back to the house where we're staying," he complained, not wanting Gylippos to know how pleased he was.

Gylippos laughed. "He's probably off spending the money you make, screwing that barbarian with the ugly whey-colored skin and the hair like copper. He's welcome to her, you ask me."

"I'm with you." Menedemos laughed, too. He was far more likely to be accused of squandering silver on women than was his cousin.

"Speaking of which," Gylippos went on, "which of the house slaves did you have at the symposion? None of them owns up to it, and they usually brag about such things."

Alarm shot through Menedemos, though he did his best not to show it. One of the chicks wandered over and pecked experimentally at his toe. He thought fast while shooing it away. "I didn't ask her name," he said when he straightened. "It was dark - I can't even tell you what she looks like. But I will tell you this: I gave her three oboloi."

"Ah. That could be it." The dried-fish merchant looked wise. "I suppose she thinks I'd take it away from her. She ought to know better - I'm no skinflint, not like some people I could name - but you never can tell with slaves."

"True." Menedemos let out a sigh of relief. Gylippos didn't suspect him. Gylippos didn't suspect his own wife, either. Maybe Phyllis was good at keeping her affairs secret, or maybe she hadn't strayed till she met Menedemos. He preferred the latter explanation.

"Do you know," Gylippos said, "I offered Herennius Egnatius ten minai for the peacock, and he wouldn't take it. I still say it's not right to let him go off with a prize like that instead of selling it to a Hellene."

"Well, O best one, if you'd offered me ten minai, you'd have a peacock in your courtyard right now. Since you didn't . . ." Menedemos shrugged.

Gylippos gave him a sour look. Before Herennius Egnatius bought the peacock, he hadn't thought it was worth ten minai, or even five. He wanted it more because somebody else had it. Menedemos thought he was entitled to look sour himself, too. He would have loved to get ten minai for the bird. Because of her many rowers, sailing in the Aphrodite cost a lot more than a regular merchantman would have. The two chicks he'd just sold Gylippos were worth about three days of wages for the crew. Sostratos was the one who did most of the mumbling over a counting board, but Menedemos worried about turning a profit, too.

Instead of scowling, though, he gave Gylippos a broad, friendly smile, one so charming that the Tarentine couldn't help smiling back. Gylippos wouldn't have smiled had he known what Menedemos was thinking: I will lay your wife again, by the gods. Do I want her more because you've got her? What if I do?

Gylippos called to Titus Manlius. His majordomo went off, soon to return with a leather sack pleasantly full of silver. Menedemos opened the sack and began to count the coins. "Don't you trust me?" Gylippos inquired in injured tones.

"Of course I trust you," Menedemos lied politely. "But accidents can happen to anyone. With the money out in the open between us, there's no room for doubt." Before long, he was saying, "A hundred ninety-three . . . ninety-five . . . This nice fat tetradrakhm makes a hundred ninety-nine . . . and a last drakhma for two hundred. Everything's just as it should be."

"I told you so." Gylippos still sounded huffy.

"So you did." Menedemos started scooping the coins back into the sack. "When you sell your fish, best one, do you always take your customers' payments on trust?"

"Those thieves? Not likely!" But Gylippos didn't, wouldn't, see that anyone could reckon him anything less than a paragon of virtue. Menedemos sighed and shrugged and said his farewells.

Titus Manlius closed the door behind him as if glad to see him go. The Italian slave didn't seem to approve of him. Menedemos chuckled. From what he'd seen, the majordomo didn't seem to approve of anyone, save possibly his master. Some slaves got to be that way: more partisan for the families they served than half the members of those families.

Menedemos didn't go straight back to the house he shared with Sostratos. Instead, he walked around the corner so he could look up to the second-story windows. The women's quarters would be up there. Phyllis and the house slaves were doing whatever women did when shut away from the prying eyes of men: spinning, weaving, drinking wine, gossiping, who could say what all else?

The shutters were thrown back to let some air into the women's rooms. Looking up from the dusty street, Menedemos could see only ceiling beams stained with smoke from the braziers that would fight the cold in wintertime. Experimentally, he whistled one of the tunes the flutegirls had played the night of the symposion.

A woman came to the closest window and looked out at him. She was small and dark and young - not any great beauty, not to Menedemos' eyes, but not ugly, either. Was she the one who'd leaned forward against the wall for him? He started to call her name, but checked himself. He silently mouthed it: Phyllis?

She dipped her head. Her own lips moved without a sound: Menedemos? He bowed low, as he might have to Ptolemaios or Antigonos or another of Alexander's generals. She smiled. Her teeth were very white, as if she took special pains to keep them that way. She mouthed something else. Menedemos couldn't make out what it was. He did his best to look comically confused. It must have worked, for Phyllis raised a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. Then she repeated herself, moving her lips more exaggeratedly.

Tomorrow night. This time, Menedemos understood what she was saying. He blew her a kiss, waved, and hurried off. When he looked back over his shoulder as he rounded the corner, she was gone.

You're mad. He could hear Sostratos' voice inside his head. You're a stupid little cockproud billy goat, and you deserve whatever happens to you. That wasn't Sostratos' voice; it was his father's, and it held more than a little gloating anticipation.

He didn't care. For years, he'd made a point of not listening to Sostratos, and his father was back in Rhodes. If I can sneak over here and get it in, I'll do it, by Aphrodite's tits. That was his own voice, and he heard it louder and stronger than either of the other two.

Maibia looked over at Sostratos from a distance of perhaps a palm and a half; the bed they shared in Lamakhos' establishment was none too wide. "Sure and you're so rich and all," she said, "so why don't you buy me for your very own self?"

Sostratos had heard ideas he liked much, much less. He enjoyed himself with the Keltic girl even more than he'd expected. If she didn't enjoy herself with him, she was artful at concealing it.

Of course, she might well have been artful at concealing it. What girl in a brothel didn't hope to escape it by becoming a rich man's plaything? He ran a hand along her smooth, pale curves. She purred and snuggled against him. "I have something for you," he said.