Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Sostratos started at the question, then tried to pretend he hadn't. Menedemos laughed easily. "Tripped over my own two feet - them and a pebble," he answered. "I feel like a fool. We rode out a nasty storm on the Ionian Sea coming over from Hellas, and I was steady on my legs no matter how the deck pitched and no matter how wet it got. Put me on dry land, and I go and do this."

"Bad luck," Gylippos agreed. Sostratos studied him from the corner of his eye. Was he disingenuous? He was a trader, too; Sostratos couldn't tell. Gylippos said, "I'll buy the one that pecked you, but go run down that mottled one over there for me, too."

The mottled chick didn't want to be run down. Menedemos had to chase after it. Gylippos eyed him as he limped around. The dried-fish dealer's face didn't show much, but Sostratos didn't like what he could see. Gylippos was paying altogether too much attention to his cousin's bad ankle. How much noise had Menedemos made when he left by that second-story window? Enough to raise Gylippos' suspicions when he saw an acquaintance with a limp? Evidently.

At last, after much bad language, Menedemos caught the little peafowl. He brought it over to Gylippos, saying, "Here you are, sir. As far as I'm concerned, now that you've got it, you can roast it."

"Not at these prices." Gylippos turned to Titus Manlius, who'd been standing there quietly, watching Menedemos with him. Sostratos couldn't read the slave's face at all. Did he know? If he did, had he told his master? Gylippos said, "Pay him the money."

"Yes, sir." The Roman might have been a talking statue. He handed Menedemos a leather sack. "Same price as for the last two chicks."

"I ought to charge more. These are bigger birds," Menedemos said.

Gylippos brusquely tossed his head. "Not likely."

Menedemos glanced toward Sostratos. Sostratos tossed his head, too, ever so slightly, as if to say he didn't think Menedemos could get away with it. With a small sigh, Menedemos said, "Well, never mind. Let me count the coins, and you can take your birds away."

Sostratos sat down on the ground beside him to make the counting go faster. The Tarentines minted handsome drakhmai, with an armored horseman holding a javelin on one side and with a man riding a dolphin on the other. Some people said that was Arion, others that it was the hero for whom the polis of Taras was named.

"All here," Sostratos told Gylippos when the counting was through. "We do thank you very much."

"You have things I can't get anywhere else," Gylippos answered. He dipped his head to Titus Manlius. "Let's go." Off they went, carrying one chick each.

Once the door closed behind them, Sostratos said, "I think he knows, or at least suspects. Did you see how he was watching you?"

"I doubt it," Menedemos said. "What kind of a man would do business with someone who'd been screwing his wife?"

"There are people of that sort," Sostratos said. "Back in Athens, Theophrastos called them ironical men: the sort who chat with people they despise, who are friendly to men who slander them, and praise to their faces men they insult behind their backs. They're dangerous, because they never admit to anything they're doing."

"Men like that aren't proper Hellenes, if you want to know what I think," Menedemos said.

"Well, I agree with you," Sostratos answered, "but that doesn't mean they don't exist. And it doesn't mean they aren't dangerous."

Menedemos waved his words away. "You worry too much."

"I hope so," Sostratos said, "but I'm afraid you don't worry enough."

Menedemos did stop going round to Gylippos' house, even though checking on the peafowl chicks would have given him a perfect excuse to visit. He thought Sostratos was mistaken - Gylippos didn't strike him as lacking self-respect to the point of staying polite to an adulterer - but he decided not to take any needless chances. And if Phyllis wants to try again, she knows where to find me, he thought.

He sold the last adult peahen, along with four chicks, to a rich farmer who lived just outside of Taras. "To the crows with me if I know what I'll do with 'em," the fellow said, "but I think it'd be kind of fun to have a peacock strutting around the barn. I seen the one that Samnite bought, and I decided I wanted one my own self. I figure my chances for getting one peacock out of all the chicks are pretty fair."

"Of course." Menedemos wasn't about to argue with him, not when he was putting down good silver for the birds. "And you can breed them and sell birds yourself and make back what you're paying me and more besides."

"That's right. I sure can," the farmer said. Menedemos wasn't so sure he could. Once these chicks grew up, a lot of people in and around Taras would be breeding and selling peafowl. There would be a lot more birds for sale, too. Prices were bound to drop. But if the farmer couldn't see that for himself, Menedemos didn't feel obliged to point it out to him.

The Tarentine had brought an oxcart and a couple of cages with him. The one for the peahen was a little small, but he got her into it. Off he went, the creak of the cart's axle almost as raucous and annoying as the peahen's screeches.

Sostratos was flicking beads back and forth on a counting board. "How does it look?" Menedemos asked.

"Not too bad," his cousin answered. "We'll show a tidy profit when we get home." Sostratos looked up from the beads. "Now that you've sold the last of the grown peafowl, do you plan on sailing back toward Rhodes?"

"Not yet, by Zeus," Menedemos answered. "Doesn't look like we'll be able to get to Syracuse, not with the Carthaginians pressing it so hard, but I was thinking of taking the Aphrodite up the western coast of Italy toward Neapolis. How often do the cities there get the chance to buy Khian wine and papyrus and ink and Koan silk? They should pay through the nose."

"Plenty of pirates in those waters," Sostratos observed.

"Plenty of pirates everywhere these days," Menedemos said. "We've been over this before." But Sostratos wasn't really arguing, not as he'd argued against stopping at Cape Tainaron. His tone was more that of a man pointing out the risks of doing business. Menedemos added, "Since we'll be sailing north once we pass between Italy and Sicily, maybe we'll find more of these redheaded women you like."

As he'd thought it would, that made his cousin splutter. "Don't talk to me of women, considering what you've been up to," Sostratos said. "We'd better be ready to sail at a moment's notice, in case Gylippos finds out for certain."

"We are," Menedemos said complacently, always pleased to be one step ahead. "I've let Diokles know, so he always has men ready to pull the crew out of the dives. They can't do so much drinking and wenching on a drakhma and a half a day as they could when they had back pay coming to them, either."

"True," Sostratos said. "Probably just as well, too. Men who roister like that often die young."

"And men who don't roister like that also often die young, don't they?" Menedemos said with his most innocent smile. Sostratos gave him a sour look in return. Menedemos clapped his cousin on the back. "I'm going out for a while."

"Not to Gylippos', I hope," Sostratos exclaimed.

"No, no. I need to see a ropemaker. Diokles found some frayed lines on the ship, and I want to take care of that," Menedemos answered.

"He's a solid man, Diokles," Sostratos said. "He'd make a good captain, and I'd tell my father the same thing."

"We could do worse if we didn't have an owner aboard," Menedemos agreed. He headed for the door. "See you later. I shouldn't be too long."

"All right," Sostratos replied in absent tones. He was already flicking beads up and down again. He paid as much attention to the counting board as he did to his precious books. When they engrossed him, Zeus might hurl a thunderbolt a cubit away without his noticing.