The Gryphon's Skull

Like Rhodes, Kos city was built on a sensible grid. It was an even newer town than Rhodes. The earlier polis on the island, Meropis, had lain in the far southwest, but an earthquake and a Spartan sack during the Peloponnesian War had put paid to it. The new polis looked forward to Anatolia, not back toward Hellas.

Going two streets up and three streets over produced no sign of the silk merchant's establishment—or of the boy brothel, either. Menedemos dug his toes into the dirt of the narrow street. “I'm sure that's how we got here,” he muttered. “Remember? Last year we had to pay somebody an obolos to tell us the way.”

“I remember,” Sostratos said. “In fact, I remember the fellow saying three streets up and two

streets over. If we go up one more street and back to our left...”

“I'm sure it was two up and three over.” Menedemos looked around, then shrugged. “But it couldn't have been, could it?” He gave his cousin a glance half respectful, half rueful. “AH right, my dear, we'll try it your way. I know you've got the same nose for details as a fox does for chickens.”

One block farther up, one block back to the left, and there was the boy brothel, with the slaves lounging about in an anteroom open to the street, waiting for whoever might want them. Sostratos didn't say, I told you so. Menedemos wished he would have; he would have preferred it to the smug expression Sostratos wore.

The house across from the brothel was also familiar. Menedemos knocked on the door there. Before long, a plump Karian opened it. He smiled at them. “Well, if it isn't the gentlemen from Rhodes! Hail, both of you. Welcome. Come in.” He spoke almost perfect Greek.

“Hail,” Menedemos said, stepping forward as the Karian slave stood aside to let him and Sostratos into the house.

“How are you, Pixodaros?” Sostratos asked, Menedemos smiled. His cousin did have the nose for details. He'd come up with the slave's name the year before, too. Menedemos had heard it and promptly forgotten it again. Sostratos went on, “And how's Xenophanes these days?”

Pixodaros' expressive black eyebrows leaped toward his hairline. “Haven't you heard—?” he began. But then he shook his head, proving he remained a barbarian no matter how long he'd lived among Hellenes. “No, of course you wouldn't have, for it happened a couple of months after the end of the sailing season. Xenophanes took sick with an inflammation of the lungs and died. He had no living children of his own, you know. In his will, he was kind enough to manumit me and leave me his business.”

“I... see,” Menedemos said slowly. Such things happened all the time. If his father, or Sostratos', had been childless ... He didn't want to think about that. What he did think was, / won't forget Pixodaros' name now.

“Here we are.” The slave—-no, the freedman—led them to the parlor where they'd dickered with Xenophanes the year before. He waved them to stools. “Sit down, best ones.” He called for a slave to bring wine. The year before, he'd done it himself. When the wine came, he splashed out a small libation. “My master had more than seventy years when he died. We'll be lucky if we match him.”

“That's so.” Menedemos poured a little wine onto the floor in Xenophanes' memory. So did Sostratos. Menedemos glanced over to his cousin. Both our fathers are past fifty. How long will they live? How long will we live? He shivered, as if he'd heard an owl hoot in daylight, and took a long pull at the wine. Again, Sostratos did the same thing. Maybe he was thinking along similar lines. Menedemos wouldn't have been surprised. Such thoughts fit his cousin better than him. I'm not made for looking deep, he thought, and drank again.

Presently, Pixodaros said, “And what is the news from the wider world?”

Menedemos laughed. “Living here on Kos, you'll know more of it than we will, for Ptolemaios has been making most of it.”

“So he has.” Pixodaros didn't look delighted. A moment later, he explained why: “Even more drunken sailors than usual making a racket in the street at all hours of the day and night.” He shrugged. “What can a peaceable man do?” Pointing to Menedemos, he went on, “You were heading far into the west last year. How did your journey fare? What is the news from those places?”

It was still early in the sailing season. No ship from Great Hellas was likely to have come into these waters yet. Menedemos told of the Romans' war against the Samnites, and the larger and more important war Syracuse was waging against Carthage. He spoke of the Aphrodite's journey into besieged Syracuse with the grain fleet, and of Agathokles' escape from Syracuse and invasion of Africa.

“And there was the eclipse of the sun after we got into Syracuse,” Sostratos added.

Pixodaros' eyes widened. “I have heard of them, but I have never seen one. They really do happen, then?”