He waved to his keleustes, who got the war galley moving again. As she glided away, the stench from her rowers, who worked in the closed-in area below the deck, filled Sostratos’ nostrils. But the stench from the officer’s words revolted him even more. The man had sounded polite enough, but what he meant was that he would check up on the Aphrodite after the Iskhys got back from her patrol. And that meant Sostratos would have to change his money, or some large part of it, or else face endless trouble from the Rhodian authorities. Two percent of the gross-a considerably larger part of the profit-had just taken flight.
“Would you come back here, my dear?” Menedemos called. He sounded polite, too, but Sostratos wasn’t deceived. His cousin left most of the financial arrangements to him, but Menedemos wasn’t altogether ignorant of the way money worked. He couldn’t be, not if he wanted to make a living as a merchant. He knew what the conversion fee would do to their profits.
“What was I supposed to tell him?” Sostratos asked as soon as he ascended to the poop deck. “He could see we weren’t carrying wine or oil or statues or slaves or anything of the sort. He’d figure out we had silver instead.”
“Cursed money-changers are worse than vultures,” Menedemos grumbled. “They sit behind their tables and flick the beads on their counting-boards with eyes cold as winter. I don’t think there’s one of them who has a soul. And they’ll try to steal more than two percent if we don’t watch them like hawks, too.”
“I’ll watch them,” Sostratos promised. “I know their tricks. No false weights; no thumbs on the scales; none of their games. I promise.”
“That’s better than nothing.” Menedemos’ tone suggested it wasn’t good enough. He didn’t snarl at Sostratos the way he might have, but he didn’t sound delighted, either. Since Sostratos himself was less than delighted, he couldn’t blame his cousin. Menedemos went on, “Hide as much of the silver as you possibly can. If we’re paying two percent on part of it, that’s better than paying two percent on all of it.”
“I already thought of that,” Sostratos said.
“Good. I wasn’t sure you would. Sometimes you’re… more honest than you need to be.”
“I’m honest with our customers, especially the ones we deal with year after year,” Sostratos said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s only good business.” It also fit who he was, but he didn’t make that argument; Menedemos would have jeered at it. He did add, “Anyone who lets the government know exactly how much silver he has is a fool, though.”
“I should hope so,” Menedemos said. “We’ve earned it. Those bunglers would only squander it.”
Sostratos dipped his head. Then he ducked under the poop deck. There wasn’t much room to hide things on an akatos, but still, if you knew what you were doing…
11
Philodemos couldn’t have looked more disgusted if he’d practiced in front of a mirror of polished bronze. “Waste of silver,” he grumbled. “As if what passes for a government in this polis will do anything worthwhile with the money it mulcts from us. Better we should have kept it.”
“Yes, Father.” Menedemos sounded as resigned as he felt. He’d known his father would be disgusted that they’d had to pay money-changing fees. “We didn’t have to hand over two percent of everything: we managed to hide a good part of the silver.”
“Euge!” But Philodemos sounded sarcastic, not pleased. “You shouldn’t have had to pay any of it.”
“Just the roll of the dice,” Menedemos said. “That officer on the Iskhys warned he was going to check on us. If he followed through and found we hadn’t paid an obolos, that would have been worse.”
“Furies take him!” his father snarled. “Who was the long-nosed snoop, anyhow? Did you recognize him?”
Menedemos tossed his head. “No, I didn’t.” Philodemos rolled his eyes, as if to ask the gods why they’d given him such a purblind son. Stung, Menedemos said, “I’m sorry, Father. Maybe Sostratos did.”
“Maybe so. I can hope he did, anyhow. At least your cousin’s not a blind man.”
That did worse than sting. Nothing else Philodemos did hurt as much as his praising Sostratos. Menedemos knew his cousin had certain virtues he lacked. What his father couldn’t seem to see was that he also had virtues Sostratos lacked. Sostratos himself admitted as much. But Sostratos’ approval wasn’t what Menedemos had been struggling to win since he was a toddler… had been struggling to win, and too often hadn’t won.
Abruptly, his father changed course: “And what do you make of Demetrios son of Antigonos? How dangerous is he?”
“If you’re his enemy, very dangerous,” Menedemos answered. “We should have seen that a couple of years ago, when he raised Ptolemaios’ siege of Halikarnassos for his father.”
“Halikarnassos,” Philodemos muttered, and Menedemos knew his father was thinking of his misadventures there, not Demetrios’ adventures. The older man asked, “Did he restore the Athenian democracy, as we’ve heard here?”
“He restored it, yes, not that the Athenians know what to do with it anymore.” Menedemos told of the extravagant honors the Athenian Assembly had conferred upon Demetrios and Antigonos.
“Those are true? Genuine?” Philodemos demanded. “Not just rumors?
“By the dog, Father, they’re true,” Menedemos said. “I went to the Assembly with the Rhodian proxenos, and I listened to the decrees being passed myself.”
“Disgusting. Disgraceful,” Philodemos said. “I had heard of some of those, and thought they were a pack of lies put out to blacken the Athenians’ name-and Demetrios’, for accepting what he doesn’t deserve. They and he must be blind to shame.”
“I wish they were rumors,” Menedemos said. “I think the Athenians took Demetrios by surprise. I think they turned his head, too. You could almost see him thinking, Oh, I must be marvelous after all!”
“He’s young-he’s around your age, isn’t he?” By the way Menedemos’ father said it, no one of about his age had any business being allowed to run loose without a pedagogue following him around, let alone being entrusted with anything important like captaining a merchant galley or seizing a polis from a powerful foe.
Menedemos wanted to make a hot retort to that. But he was the one who’d said Athenian sycophancy had turned Demetrios’ head. Philodemos hadn’t had to say it, or even to suggest it. I’m doing Father’s work for him, Menedemos thought in dismay. What he did say was, “He’s going to be formidable, Demetrios is. He’s already formidable, as a matter of fact. He took Kassandros’ men by surprise when he brought his fleet to Athens, and he took their fortress by the harbor neat as anyone could want.”
“What do you suppose he’ll try to take next?” Philodemos asked.
“He’ll come east from Athens,” Menedemos said. “He’d almost have to. Antigonos’ two most dangerous foes right now are Ptolemaios and Seleukos, the one in Egypt, the other in Mesopotamia and points east. But which one Antigonos will send him after… Well, old One-Eye may know, but no one else does.”
“I say Seleukos.” Philodemos stuck out his chin. “He’s the upstart amongst the Macedonian marshals. Kassandros and Lysimakhos and Ptolemaios and Antigonos all have their places. Seleukos, though, he’s trying to bring an extra couch into the andron for a symposion. Antigonos won’t let him get away with that if he can help it.”
“Makes good sense to me, Father.” Menedemos would have guessed Antigonos and Demetrios would go after Ptolemaios because he was closer and held lands along the coast of the Inner Sea, on which coast Hellenes clustered like frogs around a pond. But Philodemos’ arguments were also cogent-cogent enough that quarreling about them seemed more trouble than it was worth. Besides… “We’ll all know next spring.”