Menedemos’ smile was almost a leer. It said, I know something you don’t know. Sostratos hated being on the receiving end of a smile like that. He hated having other people know things he didn’t, too. Menedemos, who knew him as well as anyone, undoubtedly also knew that. “You were studying Phoenicia and Aramaic so hard, you forgot to pay attention to how we would get there.”
Sostratos said something in Aramaic. Not only was it splendidly vulgar in its own right, it sounded like a man ripping a thick piece of cloth in half. Best of all, Menedemos didn’t understand a word of it. Returning to Greek, Sostratos said, “What do they have here, then?”
“Why, smoked fish,” Menedemos answered. The fearsome noises Sostratos had just made kept him from rubbing it in. “This place is supposed to have some of the best smoked fish in the world.”
“Papai!” Sostratos said.
“What’s the matter?” his cousin asked.
“I actually knew that, but it had gone clean out of my head.”
“I’m not surprised, my dear. You’ve got so many useless facts jostling and crowding each other in there, it’s no wonder some of them fall out now and again.”
“But they shouldn’t.” Sostratos hated forgetting things. A man who prided himself on his wits naturally worried about any failure. He changed the subject, as much for his own sake as for Menedemos’. “If it’s good enough, we can carry smoked fish to Phoenicia.”
“Better than the dried and salted stuff that usually travels.” The horrible face Menedemos made showed his opinion of that, though the Aphrodite carried some to feed its crew. “We ought to be able to charge enough to make it profitable, too. That’s your job, of course.”
“Of course,” Sostratos agreed. It wasn’t that his cousin was wrong- Menedemos was right. But if they couldn’t make a profit on smoked fish, Menedemos wouldn’t get the blame, Sostratos would. That was what being toikharkhos meant. With a small sigh, Sostratos said, “Let’s go into town and see what they’ve got.”
One thing Phaselis had-as Patara had had, and Myra, too-was plenty of soldiers. Some were Hellenes and swaggering Macedonians: Ptolemaios’ garrison troops. Others were Lykians, who sounded as if they were sneezing whenever they opened their mouths.
“Looks like Ptolemaios thinks his men are on this coast to stay,” Sostratos remarked. “He’s training up plenty of local barbarians to give them a hand.”
“If he does, he’s liable to be an optimist,” Menedemos answered. “Antigonos is going to have more than a little to say about who rules Lykia.”
“I know. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just telling you what it looks like to me,” Sostratos said.
They walked past a statue whose base had an inscription written in Greek letters that spelled out nonsense words. “Must be Lykian, like that stele in Patara,” Menedemos said.
“No doubt, though it could be anything at all for the sense it makes to me,” Sostratos said. “Karian and Lykian both, even if I did figure out a name on the stele.”
“If they want anybody to care about what they say, they’d better use Greek,” Menedemos said.
“Well, yes, of course,” Sostratos agreed.
Phaselis stood on a long spine of land projecting out into the sea. The market square lay in the center of town, not far from the theater. Pointing to the bowl scooped out of the gray local stone, Menedemos said, ‘‘That looks Hellenic enough,”
“So it does,” Sostratos said. “There are Hellenes here. There have been for hundreds of years. Lakios of Argos paid Kylabras the shepherd a tribute of smoked fish in exchange for the land on which to build the city, and that was back in the days we know only from myth and legend.”
“I think I’d heard that once, but I’d forgotten it,” Menedemos said. Unlike Sostratos, he didn’t seem worried about forgetting something. He went on with his own thought: “They’ve been smoking fish here for a long time, too, then,”
“I’ve heard they still offer it to Kylabras,” Sostratos said. “They reckon him a hero.”
“If I were a hero, I’d want a fat bullock, or maybe a boar,” Menedemos said. “Fish is for ordinary mortals and their opson,”
“Custom,” Sostratos said, as he had not long before.
“Smoked tunny!” shouted a fellow in the agora. Another chimed in with, “Smoked eels! Who wants some fine smoked eels, nice and fat?”
“Smoked tunny? Smoked eels’?” Menedemos’ ears seemed to prick up like a foxs. “I thought they’d smoke any old thing. But those are some of the best fish there are. I wonder how they taste smoked.”
“Shall we go find out?” Sostratos said. “If they won’t give us samples, we’ve got no reason to buy, do we?”
“Not a bit,” Menedemos said. “Not a bit, by Herakles-and he’d have a taste, too, if he were here.” Sostratos dipped his head. If there was food around, food of any sort, Herakles would eat it.
The fellow crying his eels was a bald Hellene with a freckled scalp and startling green eyes. “Hail, my friends,” he said as Sostratos and Menedemos came up. “You’re new in Phaselis, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” Sostratos answered. “We’re from the Aphrodite, an akatos out of Rhodes. Smoked eels, eh?” He gave his name and his cousins.
“Pleased to meet you both. I’m Epianax son of Kleitomenes. Yes, smoked eels. We give ‘em to the gods, and you can’t say that about fish very often.”
“We’ve heard stories about that,” Sostratos said. “Your hero’s name is Kylabras, isn’t it?”
Epianax dipped his head. “That’s right, I wouldn’t have expected a man from as far away as Rhodes to know it, but that’s just right. And what’s good enough for Kylabras is more than good enough for mortal men.”
Menedemos grinned at him, “I hope you’re going to give us a chance to eat your words, O best one.”
“Give you a chance to eat my…” Epianax frowned, then laughed when he got it. “Say, you’re a clever fellow, aren’t you? That’s a neat way to put things, to the crows with me if it isn’t. I’ll use it myself, if you don’t mind.”
“Be my guest,” Menedemos told him. “After all, we’ll only hear it the once.” That made the eel-seller laugh again. Sostratos and Menedemos shared a look. The people in Phaselis’ agora were liable to be hearing the same line thirty years from now, if Epianax lived so long. Menedemos went on, “You will let us try a sample, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes.” Epianax had a formidable knife on his hip: another few digits and it could have been a hoplite’s shortsword. He used it to hack off a couple of lengths of smoked eel, then handed one to each Rhodian. “Here you are, most noble ones. Take a taste, and then we’ll talk.”
Sostratos popped his piece of eel into his mouth with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand: it wasn’t sitos, which he would have eaten with his left, and it wasn’t fresh fish, for which he would have used two fingers and his thumb, not just one. He chewed, savoring both the smoke and the fatty richness of the eel. He had to work hard not to show how delicious he thought it was.
“Not bad,” Menedemos said after swallowing. A certain tension in his expression said he was having the same problem as Sostratos. Maybe Epianax, who didn’t know him, wouldn’t notice. His voice sounded casual enough: “What do you want for it? If the price is decent, we might take some along with us-we’re bound for the east, and it could do well there.”
“You talking about cash, or do you want to trade for it?” Epianax asked. “What are you carrying?”
“We’ve got prime olive oil, fine Rhodian perfume, Koan silk, hams from Patara, papyrus and ink, and some books,” Sostratos said.
“Didn’t expect you’d have oil,” Epianax remarked. “Most places can make that for themselves.”
This time, Sostratos didn’t meet Menedemos’ eye. His cousin muttered something he couldn’t make out, which was probably just as well. Damonax, he thought unkindly. He hadn’t imagined that acquiring a brother-in-law would hurt his business, but it had. As loyally as he could, he said, “It’s excellent oil, from the very first of the harvest.”