Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

"Good idea," his cousin said.

By the time Sostratos got up onto the pier, the locals were shouting insults at one another. A couple of them had hands on knife hilts, though nobody'd yet drawn a weapon. But with the shouts of "Traitor!" and "Liar!" flying back and forth, how long before someone did? Sostratos carefully picked his way around the edge of the crowd and headed up the pier toward dry land.

He hadn't been on that dry land more than a few heartbeats before he realized he'd have trouble finding the agora. Hippodamos and his ideas had never come to Messene. Streets and alleys and lanes didn't run in straight lines or intersect at right angles. They did exactly as they pleased, curving and twisting and doubling back on themselves. Had Sostratos gone out of sight of the harbor, he would have been lost in moments.

He was glad he figured that out before it happened. "How do I get to the agora?" he asked a man in a grimy chiton leading a donkey festooned with very plain clay pots.

The man didn't say anything. He just stopped in the middle of the street - incidentally blocking Sostratos' path - and waited. Sostratos wiggled his tongue to dislodge one of the oboloi he'd stashed between the inside of his cheek and his lower teeth. "Thanks, pal," the fellow with the donkey said as Sostratos handed him the wet, gleaming little coin. "What you do is, you . . ."

Sostratos made him go through it twice, then repeated the directions back to make sure he had them straight. "Is that right?" he asked when he was done.

"Sure is, pal," the Messenian said, and then added the words so often fatal to a stranger's hopes: "You can't miss it." Sostratos felt like spitting into his bosom to avert the omen. But that would have offended the local, who guided his donkey over by the mud-brick front of a house so Sostratos could squeeze past.

"Second right, third left, first right," Sostratos muttered, and, for a marvel, found the market square. He wondered if he could get back to the harbor again, and looked back into the alley from which he'd just emerged. "First left, third right, second left," he said, and then repeated it a couple of times so it would stick in his memory.

"Hail, stranger!" somebody called from behind a basket filled with dried chickpeas. "Where are you from, and what are you selling?"

Having sung his song in Rhegion the day before, Sostratos started singing it again. He traded news with the Messenians, though, as on the pier, they gave him none he hadn't already heard. Here, even more than in Rhegion and much more than in Taras, the people, while interested in what was going on in the east and in the struggles among Alexander's marshals, had other, more immediate, things on their minds. "D'you suppose there's a chance this Ptolemaios or Antigonos'd come west and put paid to the gods-detested Carthaginians once for all?" asked a fellow selling fried squid.

"I doubt it," Sostratos answered honestly. Everyone's face fell. He wished he'd been more diplomatic. Menedemos surely would have been.

A middle-aged man in a chiton of very fine, very soft wool came up to him and said, "Did I hear you say your ship had perfume on board?"

"You certainly did, perfume from the finest Rhodian roses." Sostratos studied the Messenian. The man had a sleek, prosperous look: just the sort of fellow to keep a mistress with expensive tastes. "If you like, you can tell your hetaira it came straight from Aphrodite. You don't have to say that's the name of my ship."

By the way the local started, Sostratos knew he'd made a good guess. "You're a clever chap, aren't you?" the Messenian said. "How much are you asking for this precious perfume?"

"For that, you need to go back to the harbor and talk to my cousin," Sostratos replied. "Menedemos is much more clever than I am." He didn't really think so, not when it came to most things, but Menedemos was at least as good a bargainer. And Sostratos had an ulterior motive: "Maybe she'd like a peafowl chick, too, or maybe you'd like to buy one for your own house to keep your wife happy even if you do give your hetaira a nice present."

The Messenian rubbed his chin, which was shaved very smooth: another sign of wealth, and also of fastidiousness. "You are clever," he said. "You look young to be married, so how do you know such things?"

"No, I'm not married," Sostratos agreed, "but I'm not wrong, either, am I?"

"No, though I wish you were. A peafowl chick, eh? That would keep Nossis quiet for a while."

Of course it will, Sostratos thought. Before long, the bird will make more noise, and worse, than even the most shrewish wife. He kept that to himself; the Messenian would find out soon enough if he bought. All Sostratos did say was, "Well, there you are, then," as if it were settled. By the way the Messenian strode out of the agora and off in the direction of the harbor, maybe it was.

Sostratos went right on extolling the goods aboard the Aphrodite till the sun sank toward the hills in back of Messene. Then he headed back toward the merchant galley. Trying to find his way through a strange polis in the dark was the last thing he wanted to do. He remembered the turns the fellow in the ragged chiton had given him, and didn't get lost in a maze Minos might have envied.

There was the harbor, the wine-dark sea beyond dotted with fishing boats, almost all of them making for port now. There was the akatos, big and lean enough to frighten a fisherman out of his wits. And there, waving as Sostratos came down the pier toward the ship, was Menedemos. Sostratos waved back and asked, "How did it go?"

"Better than I expected," his cousin answered. "Sold a peafowl chick and some perfume and some Koan silk, all to a smooth fellow who wasn't too smooth to cough up more silver than he might have."

"If he's the man I think he is, he bought the perfume for a hetaira and the chick for his wife." Sostratos grinned. "I wonder who gets the silk."

"Not my worry - he can sort that out himself," Menedemos said. "I also sold some papyrus and ink to a skinny little man who told me he aimed to write an epic poem on the war between Syracuse and Carthage."

"Good luck to him," Sostratos said. "If the barbarians win and head north toward Messene here, he won't have much leisure for his hexameters. And if Agathokles somehow manages to beat back the Carthaginians, well, Syracuse isn't shy about throwing its weight around, either."

"True." Menedemos dipped his head. "But I can't think of anything much Agathokles could do. Can you?"

"No," Sostratos admitted. "Still, when Xerxes invaded Hellas, I don't suppose he thought the Hellenes could do anything against him, either."

"That's also true enough," Menedemos replied. "Just the same, I'm not sorry we'll be sailing north, and away from that war. Trying to fight off a four or a five with our little akatos is a losing bet." He spat into his bosom to avert the omen. Since Sostratos agreed completely, he did the same.

Cape Pelorias, above Messene, marked the northeasternmost point of Sicily. With it falling astern and to port of the Aphrodite, Menedemos gave all his attention to the Tyrrhenian Sea ahead. Just because he'd escaped the war between Syracuse and Carthage didn't mean he or his ship was home free. He probably wouldn't fall foul of great war galleys here. But the Tyrrhenian Sea, not least because no great naval power lay anywhere near, swarmed with pirates.

"Keep your eye peeled," he called to the lynx-eyed Aristeidas at the bow. "Sing out if you spy any sail or mast." The sailor waved to show he understood. Menedemos turned to Sostratos, who was doing lookout duty at the stern. "The same goes for you."

"I know," his cousin said in injured tones.

"Well, see that you remember," Menedemos said. "Don't let your wits go wandering, the way you . . . do when you start thinking about history." He'd started to say, The way you did when the peahen jumped into the sea, but checked himself. If he hadn't thrown that in Sostratos' face when it happened, doing so now hardly seemed fair. By the sour look his cousin sent him, Sostratos had a pretty good notion of what he hadn't said.