“You work hard, yes,” she said after they finished.
“What man wouldn’t, with you?” he said. She liked that, and smiled back over her shoulder at him.
He smiled, too, hoping she couldn’t see he was forcing it a little. The real reason he hadn’t taken her to bed so often lately was that he trusted her less than he had before. He trusted everyone in Alexandria less than he had before: everyone who hadn’t come with him from Rhodes, anyhow.
Drinking wine with Diokles in a little tavern not far from the palace, he spoke in a low voice: “You want to watch what you say in this town. You never can tell who’s listening.”
The keleustes spat an olive pit on the dirt floor. Brine-cured olives, dried and salted sprats—the bowls on the counter held cheap snacks designed to make a drinker thirstier. Tavernkeepers in Hellas played the same game. Then Diokles glanced around to make sure no one was listening just now. Also quietly, he said, “You noticed that, too, huh, skipper?”
Menedemos set a hand on his arm. “I might have known I didn’t need to tell you.”
“Being careful’s never wasted.” Diokles’ hair was gray, almost white. His skin was dark and tough as leather. No one who went to sea got old unless he was careful.
“Do you think it’s worthwhile to warn the rowers, too?” Menedemos asked.
“I wouldn’t bother,” Diokles said, tossing his head. “They don’t know enough to get in trouble running their mouths. If you could tell them not to drink themselves blind and get into tavern brawls over whores …. By the dog, you can tell them till you’re black in the face, but you can’t make the thickskulls listen to you.”
“Pretty much the same thing I was thinking,” Menedemos said with a sigh. “Most rowers don’t have much sense.”
“No? I was a rower. I was a rower for years.” Diokles set his cup on the table and opened his hands, palms up. He hadn’t pulled an oar for a long time now, but still had ridges of callus running across his palms.
“I know. That’s why I said most.” Menedemos didn’t care to anger a man he liked, respected, and needed. He was also sure that, when it came to tavern brawls, Diokles could still more than hold his own. To make sure it didn’t come to that, he soothed the keleustes’ ruffled feathers and bought him another cup of wine.
Everything was fine after that … till Menedemos started glancing around the tavern. Who in there could overhear him? How soon would word of whatever he said get back to Ptolemaios’ henchmen, and perhaps to the lord of Egypt himself?
How soon before you start thinking everyone is spying on you, whether anyone is or not? Menedemos wondered. To keep himself from stewing over that, he got more wine for himself—and a fresh cup for Diokles, of course.
Sostratos and the rowers made their way toward the edge of Memphis as twilight brightened into day. By the way Khamouas led them, he was used to finding his way around in the middle of the night. “Leaving early better,” he said. “Not too hot yet.”
“Not too,” Sostratos more or less agreed, watching the paling sky swallow another star. Then he stepped in something nasty, and realized he would do better to keep his eyes on the ground. He scuffed his foot in the dirt to clean it as best he could.
“Ha!” Khamouas said when the sun’s red disc climbed up over the horizon. “Ra rises.”
“We call the sun Helios,” Sostratos said. “Usually, though, we name the sun god Apollo.” He took the gods less seriously than men had even a couple of generations earlier, but the sun was impossible to ignore.
Several Egyptians waited on the northern outskirts of town along with the camels that would take them and the Hellenes to the Pyramids. Khamouas waved when he saw them. One of the Egyptians, a tall, lanky fellow, waved back. “Is Pakebkis,” Khamouas said. “You can with he talk. Him speak Greek like me.”
His Greek might not be perfect, but it was infinitely better than Sostratos’ Egyptian, which didn’t exist. “Thanks,” Sostratos said, and gave the cook a thick silver didrakhm.
Khamouas spoke in crackling Egyptian to his brother-in-law’s cousin. Pakebkis answered in the same language. “He say we do like we say before,” Khamouas translated. “Three drakhmai a man, ten-and-eight all told.”
“Yes.” Sostratos dipped his head. Then he made himself nod, as he had sometimes in Palestine to make sure the locals understood. “I will give you half now, half when you’ve brought us back here.”
“Is good,” Pakebkis said—sure enough, his Greek was no more villainous than that of his kinsman by marriage. He held out his right hand, palm up. Sostratos paid him nine drakhmai. Pakebkis examined them, then stowed them in a belt pouch. “Is good,” he said again. “You, me, friends of you, friends of me, we go together. All friends.”
“All friends,” Sostratos echoed, hoping it was true. The rowers and Egyptians eyed each other like two packs of dogs meeting in the street. All of them carried a spear or a sword or a club or a sturdy knife. One Hellene might vanish without a trace in a foreign land. Half a dozen Hellenes might still vanish, but not without putting up a fight.
One of the camels turned its large, ugly head toward Sostratos. Its jaw worked—not up and down, but from side to side. Then, with purpose (with malice, he would have sworn), it spat at him. He jerked aside just in time. The glob of saliva splashed the ground, not his face. The Egyptians thought it was hilarious. Sostratos found himself less amused.
“How do we get on those big, funny-looking critters?” asked a rower named Trityllos. “I didn’t reckon they’d be so tall. They make horses look like donkeys beside ’em.”
Pakebkis walked over to the camel that had spit. It tried to bite him. He smacked it on the nose. It let out a groan full of horrible indignation. The formalities complete, he tapped it on the back of a foreleg. It squatted on the sand. “You see?” Pakebkis said.
The saddle looked more like a padded bench made to fit on the camel’s hump and strapped around its belly than anything else Sostratos could think of. Grinning, Pakebkis waved him forward. Gulping, he went. The rowers were grinning, too, at seeing him try it before they had to. If they laughed at him for showing fear, he’d never be able to lead them again. Be what you wish to seem, he thought, though philosophy didn’t come easy then.
At Pakebkis’ gesture, he got on the saddle. The camel sent him a yellowish stare full of ancient evil. Pakebkis tapped its foreleg again and said something in Egyptian. One piece at a time, the animal stood, jerking Sostratos this way and that as it did. He didn’t drop the reins, but he came close.
He stared down from higher off the ground than he’d even been aboard a beast. “You all good?” Pakebkis asked. Sostratos started to dip his head, then managed a shaky nod. Pakebkis seemed used to people unsure of themselves on camelback. He got the other Hellenes mounted, too. A couple of the Egyptians knew what they were doing around camels. The others, plainly no more than hired toughs, gabbled and exclaimed like the rowers.
Pakebkis mounted last. Like most of the others, his camel made hideous noises at having to carry a man. He whacked it with an iron-tipped goad. It made different dreadful noises, then shut up. When he poked its sides with his heels, it started north at a surprisingly good clip. The other camels followed in a ragged line.
Sostratos had heard camels called the ships of the desert. He’d always thought that was because they could carry men and goods through wastes no other creatures could cross. Now he discovered they had a rocking, swaying motion very different from that of a donkey or a horse. The height at which he traveled magnified the effect.
He wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Hope I don’t get seasick!” Trityllos said. The rest of the rowers laughed. So did Pakebkis and a couple of other Egyptians who knew some Greek. Sostratos wished he thought it was funnier.