Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

He'd hoped that would annoy his cousin. It did, but not quite enough to suit him. Instead of going off in a huff, Sostratos answered seriously: "What happens tomorrow will happen in part because of what happened a hundred years ago. How can you understand the present if you don't understand the past?"

"I don't know, and I don't much care," Menedemos said. That did affront Sostratos. He stalked toward the bow, dodging men with sacks of grain on their shoulders. Menedemos smiled behind his back.

The slaves weren't the only people on the pier. A tavern tout called, "First two cups of wine free for all the sailors who brought us grain when we needed it so bad. Come to Leosthenes' place, right off the harbor."

A cheer went up on the Aphrodite. The cheers that rose from the round ships were smaller - they carried fewer sailors. Menedemos said, "Diokles, I'm going to want half a dozen men on board through the night. Two days' bonus pay for anybody who's willing not to drink and screw himself blind tonight."

He hadn't tried to keep his voice down, on the contrary, he wanted the sailors to hear and to volunteer to pick up an extra three drakhmai. Along with the sailors, Sostratos also heard. He whirled in alarm: he hated spending extra silver. Menedemos thought he would protest out loud, which wouldn't have been good. But Sostratos proved to have sense enough not to do that. Menedemos beckoned him back to the stern as Diokles found volunteers.

"Don't worry," Menedemos told his cousin. "Once Antandros pays us, a few drakhmai won't matter one way or the other."

"They always matter," Sostratos said primly, "and I always worry. One of the things I'm worrying about now is, suppose Antandros doesn't pay us?"

"His man said he would," Menedemos said, that being the strongest reply he could make. He was worried, too, and doing his best not to show it. "And even if he doesn't, we still got half again the going rate up in Rhegion - and we're in Syracuse, by the dog of Egypt! We've got a fresh chance for top prices on peafowl chicks and silk and Ariousian - and a fresh chance to unload what's left of our papyrus and ink. If we can't sell 'em here, we can't sell 'em anywhere this side of Athens. And everybody takes them there, so nobody gets a good price for them."

He waited to see if his cousin would stay mulish. Most men would have.But Sostratos was uncommonly reasonable - sometimes, as far as Menedemos was concerned, too reasonable for his own good. Instead of growling, he stopped and thought. At last, grudgingly, he dipped his head. "Fair enough, I suppose. You were right about coming here, as things worked out. Maybe you'll be right again. I hope so."

"Me, too," Menedemos said. And then, because Sostratos had gone halfway toward healing the quarrel, he tried to do the same himself: "I'd have had more faith myself coming down here if I'd known ahead of time that Agathokles would pick that moment to sally forth. Good luck, like we said before."

Sostratos snapped his fingers in annoyance. "By the gods, I'm an idiot! Why didn't I see that before?"

"If you'd asked me, I could have told you you were an idiot," Menedemos said cheerfully. Sostratos glowered. Menedemos went on, "But what didn't you see?"

"It probably wasn't just good luck," Sostratos answered.

"What wasn't?" Menedemos hated it when his cousin got ahead of him. Sostratos thought too well of his thinking as things were.

"Agathokles' sally, of course," he said now. "It all fits together, don't you see? Agathokles had to use something to break the Carthaginians' blockade if he was going to get his own fleet loose. What would be more likely to make the Carthaginians move than a gaggle of nice, fat grain ships?"

Menedemos stared. It did fit together, provided . . .. "That Agathokles must be one sneaky rogue." He held up a hand; this time, he was running even with Sostratos. "We already know he is, from the way he treated his enemies."

"We can't prove any of this, you know," Sostratos said. "I wonder if Antandros would tell us."

"If you ask him, I'll hit you over the head with the biggest pot I can pick up," Menedemos said. "How can you be clever enough to see plots and schemes and foolish enough to want to get in trouble sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong, both at the same time?"

"Hmm." Sostratos pondered again. "Well, maybe you're right."

"I should hope so!" Menedemos said. "Are you going to stay aboard the Aphrodite tonight?"

"I think so," Sostratos replied. "Why?"

Menedemos grinned. That was the answer he'd wanted to hear. "Why? Because, O best one, I intend to go into Syracuse and celebrate getting here without getting sunk the way such things ought to be celebrated."

"You're going to have a couple of girls and you're going to get so drunk you won't remember having them," Sostratos said with distaste.

"Right!" Menedemos said. His cousin rolled his eyes. Menedemos couldn't have cared less about his cousin's opinion.

* * *

As the oarsmen rowed the Aphrodite's boat across the narrow channel separating the Sicilian mainland from the island of Ortygia, Sostratos took a certain somber satisfaction in Menedemos' condition. His cousin's eyes were red, his face sallow. He shaded his eyes from the sun with the palm of his hand. Even though the sea in the Little Harbor was calm as could be, he kept gulping as if he were about to lean over the gunwale and feed the fish.

"I hope you had a good time last night," Sostratos said sweetly.

"I certainly did," Menedemos answered - not too loud. "This one girl - by the gods, she could suck the pit right out of an olive. But . . ." He grimaced. "Now I'm paying the price. If my head fell off, it'd do me a favor."

Sostratos hadn't had the pleasure, but he didn't have the pain, either. As he usually did, he thought that a good bargain. The boat slid up to one of the quays on Ortygia. The fellow standing on the quay looked more like a majordomo than the usual harborside roustabout, but he made the boat fast. As he did so, he asked, "And you are . . .?"

"I'm Menedemos son of Philodemos, captain of the merchant galley Aphrodite," Menedemos told him, still speaking softly. He pointed to Sostratos. "This is my toikharkhos, Sostratos son of Lysistratos."

"You will be here for payment, I expect?" the Syracusan servitor said.

Menedemos dipped his head, then winced. Carefully not smiling, Sostratos said, "That's right."

"Come with me, then," the servitor said, and walked off toward a small, metal-faced gate in the frowning wall of gray stone that warded the rulers of Syracuse from their enemies. Over the past hundred years, those rulers had had a good many foes from whom they needed protection. Not only had the Athenians and Carthaginians besieged the city, but it had also gone through endless rounds of civil strife. I don't always remember how lucky I am to live in a place like Rhodes, Sostratos thought. Coming to a polis that's seen the worst of what its own people can do to one another ought to remind me.

Inside the grim wall, Ortygia proved surprisingly lush. Fruit trees grew on grassy swards that sheep cropped close. The shade was welcome. So were the perfumes of oleander and arbutus and lavender. Sostratos breathed deeply and sighed with pleasure.

So did Menedemos. "I'm glad to be here," he said. "The light doesn't hurt my eyes nearly so much as it did before."

"That's because you're in the shade now," Sostratos said: only tiny patches of sunlight dappled the path along which they were walking.

"No, I don't think so," Menedemos replied. "I guess my hangover is going away faster than I thought it would."

Sostratos scarcely heard him. He was staring at those little sundapples, the places where light slid through gaps in the leaves above. They should have been round. They should have been, but they weren't. They were so many narrow crescents, as if the early moon had broken into hundreds or thousands or myriads of pieces, each shaped like the original.