Harry Turtledove - Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Can it be this simple? Sostratos wondered as he followed the steward out of what would have been the throne room had Agathokles called himself a king. Will Antandros really just pay us for the grain and the peafowl and send us on our way? Nothing this whole voyage has been that simple.

Seeing the treasury did nothing to reassure him. Ortygia was a fortress. The rulers of Syracuse stored their silver and gold in a fortress within a fortress, behind massive stone walls, gates whose valves seemed to Sostratos as thick as his own body, and a veritable phalanx of soldiers: some Hellenes, others Italians and Kelts. Sostratos tried to imagine what those soldiers would have done had he and Menedemos approached them without the steward's protective company. He wasn't sorry to find himself failing.

But the steward, whatever he thought, did not dare disobey Antandros. The clerk to whom he spoke looked surprised, but asked no questions. How long would a man who asked questions last in Syracuse? Sostratos couldn't have gauged it by the water clock, but thought he knew the answer nonetheless: not long.

Instead of asking those dangerous questions, the clerk started bringing out leather sacks. When Sostratos hefted one, he asked the fellow, "A mina?" The clerk dipped his head and went back for more silver. By the time he was done, what seemed like a small mountain of sacks stood on the broad stone counter that separated him from the two Rhodians.

Solemnly, Menedemos said, "We have just made a profit."

"So we have," Sostratos said. "I ought to count the drakhmai in a few of these sacks." Cheating by one part in twenty, maybe even one part in ten, would be easy if the treasury clerk didn't offer the use of a set of scales to weight the silver, something he showed no sign of doing.

The silence that came crashing down was so very frigid, it put Sostratos in mind of snow: only a word to most Rhodians, since none had fallen on his island in all the days of his life, or, for that matter, his father's, but he'd seen the stuff in a hard winter in Athens. Now Menedemos spoke quickly: "I think we're all right."

"But - " Sostratos was the sort of man who liked to see everything pegged down tight, so there could be no possible doubt about where it lay.

"I said, I think we're all right." As if trying to get something across to Antandros, Menedemos spoke louder than he had to. He spoke so loud, in fact, that his voice echoed from the stone walls and ceiling of the treasury.

Hearing those echoes reminded Sostratos of exactly where he was. It also reminded him of his earlier thought about what happened to Syracusans who asked questions. That thought led to another: what would happen to a stranger who asked questions in Syracuse? Sostratos decided he didn't really want to find out the answer to that one.

"Well, I suppose we are, too," he said, with what he hoped wasn't too sheepish a smile. Menedemos' sigh of relief was loud enough to raise echoes, too. The steward and the treasury clerk relaxed.

Menedemos said, "Could we have two large leather sacks and a couple of guards to take us back to the Aphrodite's boat? This is a lot of silver, and all of Ortygia knows by now that we're getting it."

When the steward hesitated, Sostratos said, "If you like, they could come across to the akatos with us, and bring the peafowl chicks and their cages back for Antandros."

"All right." The steward dipped his head. "That does make sense."

Sostratos felt like cheering. The peafowl had been a weight on his back like the world on Atlas' ever since he first heard the peacock screech in the Great Harbor at Rhodes. Now, at last, after spring and most of summer, he would be free of it. He hadn't known just how heavy it was till he faced the prospect of having it lifted from him.

And he gave a sigh of relief of his own when the guards the steward summoned proved to be Hellenes. Had he had a couple of tall, beefy Kelts for an escort, he would have worried that they might set on Menedemos and him. Of course, Hellenes could be light-fingered and murderous, too, but he chose not to dwell on that.

"How much money have you got there?" one of these fellows asked in interested tones.

"As much as Antandros wanted us to have," Menedemos answered before Sostratos could come up with a reply to a question with so many implications. He admired the one his cousin had found.

From somewhere or other, the rowers in the Aphrodite's boat had got hold of a jar of wine. When they took the Syracusan soldiers across the narrow channel to the merchant galley's berth in the Little Harbor, their stroke suggested that this was the first time they'd ever handled oars in their lives. Sostratos was embarrassed. Menedemos, plainly, was mortified. He couldn't even yell at the men without making them all look even worse to the Syracusans than they did already.

Menedemos cursed in a low voice as he boarded the Aphrodite. But Sostratos' exasperation melted away as sailors loaded the peafowl chicks and their cages into the boat. He even tossed the two Syracusans a drakhma each, more in sympathy with them for having to deal with the birds than as a tip for getting him and Menedemos back to the akatos unrobbed.

"Thank you kindly, O best one," one soldier said. The other waved and grinned. The boat's crew took them back to Ortygia. The channel between mainland and island was narrow enough to let them escape misfortune.

As the crew returned - still rowing most erratically - Sostratos said, "It's a good thing they didn't have to do anything difficult."

"What's so good about it?" Menedemos growled. He screamed at the men in the boat: "You idiots! If you're on your own polluted time, I don't care what you do, you whipworthy rogues. I'll do it right alongside you, as a matter of fact. But you've got no business - none, not a dust speck's worth - getting drunk when you know you're going to have to do something important in a little while. Suppose Sostratos and I had been running for our lives. Could you have got us away safe? Not likely!"

The rowers wore wide, wine-filled, placating smiles, like so many dogs that had somehow angered the leader of their pack. One of them said, "Sorry, skipper. That eclipse knocked us for a loop, it did. And everything worked out all right." His grin got wider and more foolish.

Sostratos thought that a fair excuse, but not his cousin: "No, it didn't, the gods curse you." Menedemos' voice rose in both volume and pitch. It got so shrill, in fact, that Sostratos dug a finger in his ear. "You wide-arsed simpleton, you made the ship look bad. Nobody makes my ship look bad - nobody, do you hear me?"

Half of Syracuse heard him. By the way he was shrieking, Sostratos wouldn't have been surprised if Agathokles, somewhere off the north coast of Sicily, heard him. He tried to remember the last time he'd seen Menedemos so furious, tried and failed. It's been a long time since anyone embarrassed him in public, he thought.

If the sodden rowers had had tails, they would have wagged them. "Yes, skipper," said the one who felt like talking. "We are sorry, skipper - aren't we, lads?" All of them solemnly dipped their heads.

But Menedemos, like a Fury, remained unappeased. "Sorry? You aren't sorry yet!" He spun toward Sostratos. "Dock every one of those bastards three days' pay!"

"Three days?" Sostratos said - quietly. "Isn't that a bit much?"

"By the gods, no!" Menedemos didn't bother lowering his voice. "One day because they've wasted a day's work with their antics. And two more to remind them not to be such drunken donkeys again."

Instead of getting angry themselves, as they might have done, the men in the Aphrodite's boat looked contrite, as if they were sacrificing their silver in place of a goat in expiation for their sins. That too was the wine working in them, Sostratos judged. "It'll never happen again, skipper," their spokesman said. "Never!" A tear rolled down his cheek.