There were rumors Antigonos and Demetrios had been recruiting pirate ships and crews to pad out their naval forces. Menedemos didn’t want to believe that; it was too likely to be aimed at his island and his polis. He sighed and made the two-fingered gesture used to turn aside the evil eye and other misfortunes not stoppable by natural means alone. “Maybe everything will turn out for the best,” he said.
“Sure it will,” Heragoras said. “But whose notion of the best really is the best?”
That was such a philosophical question, Menedemos would have looked for it from his cousin, not from this battered soldier of fortune. Since he had no good answer, he hefted his rag-tipped spearshaft again. “As long as I’m here, I should get some more work in,” he said.
Sostratos walked across the courtyard that lay at the heart of his family’s home. A red-headed Thracian slave woman poured water on the flowers and herbs in the little garden there. “Good day, Threissa,” he said. The name she’d been born with sounded more like a sneeze than a word; the one he and his kin used for her just meant the woman from Thrace.
“Good day, young master.” Threissa kept her head down and didn’t look at him. Her accented Greek was soft and nervous. He’d taken her to bed a few times after the family bought her. She’d put up with it, as a slave woman had to, but she hadn’t been delighted about it. Well, she hadn’t delighted him, either. He didn’t intend to sleep with her again unless his prong got a desperate itch. She couldn’t know that, though, and tried her best to make herself invisible in plain sight.
He heard her low sigh of relief when he kept walking. Some men would have got angry at that. He just went on toward the strongroom. Things went better when you didn’t make a pointless fuss. He thought so, anyhow, though plenty might have made a pointless fuss arguing with him.
The firm, in which his father and uncle were the head and he and Menedemos the arms, kept most of its merchandise in a warehouse down by the harbor. They paid a night watchman—an old soldier who limped because he’d lost three toes from his right foot—to keep thieves at bay. Alxiadas did a good job, too.
But things that were small, easy to carry, and very valuable stayed in the strongroom here or in the one at Philodemos’ house. Sostratos fumbled in a pouch on his belt for the bronze key that would open the lock on the strongroom door.
As he pulled out the key, it slipped between his fingers and fell to the ground. He swore at himself as he bent to pick it up. He was not the most graceful young man in Rhodes, and had such small mishaps more often than he wished. As he straightened, the key now firmly in his grasp, he stole a glance back at Threissa to see if she was laughing at his clumsiness.
She was paying him no attention whatsoever. He tried to decided whether that was better or worse than laughter. Then he chuckled in wry amusement: both were pretty bad. And, whether Threissa laughed at him or not, he could laugh at himself.
He eased the key into the iron lock. The lock had worked fine the last time he used it, a couple of weeks before. His fingers felt how greasy it was; he and his father both smeared it with olive oil to hold rust at bay. Yet the lock didn’t release now when he twisted the key. Maybe they hadn’t greased it well enough.
He jiggled the key forward and back, trying to get it to set better. It didn’t want to move … and then it did. When he twisted it this time, a snick! inside said it had done its job.
“That’s better,” he muttered. He took the lock off the bar, pulled the bar from the brackets supporting it, and pushed the door open. When he stepped inside, the air smelled rich and pungent, almost perfumed—spices like pepper, cinnamon, and cloves were part of the firm’s stock in trade.
But, aside from making certain that mice hadn’t been nibbling at the pitched stoppers of the spice jars, he didn’t worry about them. It seemed likely that he and Menedemos would take the Aphrodite down to Alexandria this sailing season. No profit in bringing spices to Egypt. Many of them were shipped from there to the Hellenese farther north after arriving from the distant, exotic lands that produced them.
Instead, after letting his eyes adjust to the gloom inside the strongroom, he picked up a wooden box that sat on a shelf against the far wall. Even the box was a curiosity: the wood was paler than pine, so pale as to be almost white. He’d never seen anything like the carvings—an odd mix of sinuous and clumsy—that ornamented the top and sides, either.
He took off the top. Nestled inside were the chunks of amber he’d bought from Himilkon the Phoenician the autumn before. Amber came to Hellas from the north. It wouldn’t be common in Alexandria, which traded more with the lands to the south and east. He hoped he could get a good price for it there. He hoped he could get a very good price, in fact, because he’d paid Himilkon a good one.
One of the smaller chunks of amber in particular …. Yes, that one. Sostratos took it from the box and walked out of the strongroom and into the watery sunshine. Trapped inside the almost-transparent amber was some kind of insect, smaller than the nail on his little finger. How had it got there? How long had it been there? He could wonder—he did wonder—but he had no way to know.
A shadow fell on his hand. He looked up in surprise. “Oh. Father! Hail,” he said foolishly.
“Hail, Sostratos.” Lysistratos sounded more amused than annoyed. He made allowances for his absentminded, often single-minded son: more allowances, certainly, than his brother Philodemos was in the habit of making for Menedemos. When he continued, “You’re thinking about the trip to Egypt,” it wasn’t a question.
“That’s right.” Sostratos dipped his head. “I’ve got the feeling we have a chance to do some really excellent business, and—” He broke off, truly noticing for the first time the expression on Lysistratos’ face. “Father! What’s wrong?”
“Word’s just reached the city—just reached me, anyhow—that the Demetrios is in Loryma and wants to come to Rhodes to address the Assembly.” Lysistratos sounded as grim as he looked. Adding the article in front of Demetrios’ name signaled how important he was.
Loryma was the closest city to Rhodes on the Anatolia mainland. And Lysistratos was prominent enough that the news would reach him very quickly. Sostratos puffed out his cheeks and exhaled through pursed lips. “Have you heard what he wants to talk to us about?” he asked, fearing he already knew.
“Not officially,” his father said. “But it can be only one thing, don’t you think? He’ll want to squeeze us or scare us into an alliance with his father and him.”
“We can’t do that!” Sostratos exclaimed.
“I hope we won’t have to. I hope we can convince him we’re of more good to Antigonos as a real neutral.” Lysistratos’ mouth turned down further. “If we can’t do that, I hope he doesn’t decide to invade the island. He can draw on a lot more men and lands than we can.”
“He’s clever, too,” Sostratos said. “The way he cleared Kassandros’ men out of Athens ….” His voice trailed away. He’d been there with Menedemos when Demetrios took the city. After a moment, he resumed, “He’s not the kind of general I’d like to face.”
“I understand that, son. Believe me, I do. Antigonos is the same way—maybe more so,” Lysistratos said. “But if we’re going to be a free and independent polis, if we’re going to stay a free and independent polis, we may have to fight.”