The Gryphon's Skull

Another knock sounded, this one next door. “Alypetos is here again,” KleiteJes said, which convinced Sostratos he really was awake. “Ptolemaios wants to see both of you gentlemen, at once.”

“But do I want to see Ptolemaios?” Sostratos muttered. He tossed his head in annoyance. That didn't matter. Even a free Hellene found limits to his freedom when he dealt with a Macedonian marshal. Sostratos patted Thestylis, saying, “Go back to sleep if you can. This has nothing to do with you.” He threw on his tunic and went out into Kleiteles' courtyard.

Menedemos came out of the adjacent room at the same time. He too looked unhappy. “What is it now?” he demanded of Alypetos.

Ptolemaios' henchman only shrugged. “Come with me,” he said.

Grumbling and yawning, Sostratos and Menedemos went. As they had the day before, they found Ptolemaios at breakfast. This morning, though, he offered them none, but fixed them with the sort of glare calculated to make them remember all their sins and fear punishment for everyone. Sostratos did his best to show no expression at all. Does he know about the emeralds? he wondered nervously. His eyes flicked to Menedemos. His cousin, fortunately, was not a man to show guilt even if he felt it.

Ptolemaios thrust out his boulder of a chin and growled, “Why didn't you two tell me you had one of that one-eyed bastard's officers aboard your ship when you sailed into Knidos?”

He doubtless meant to intimidate them. But, since it had nothing to do with the gems, his blunt question came more as a relief than anything else. “Why should we have?” Sostratos answered. “Rhodes is free and autonomous and neutral. We can carry whoever pays our fare.”

“He paid ten drakhmai, too,” Menedemos added.

“Ten drakhmai, for passage from Rhodes to Knidos? You cheated him right and proper,” Ptolemaios said. His anger seemed to evaporate; he might have donned it as a man dons a himation on a chilly morning and sheds it when the sun climbs higher. He eyed the two traders. “Free and neutral Rhodians, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” Sostratos said stoutly.

“All right, then,” Ptolemaios said. “If you did a service for Antigonos and made a profit, will you do one for me as well?”

“If we profit from it,” Menedemos answered.

“You will,” Ptolemaios said in a voice that brooked no contradiction. “Ill pay you a talent of silver—twenty minai in advance, to give you whatever money you'll need on the way, with the other forty waiting for you when you come back here to Kos.”

“A talent?” Sostratos and Menedemos both whispered the words. Sixty minai, six thousand drakhmai—that was a lot of money. Slowly, Sostratos said, “You wouldn't offer us so much silver for just anything, sir. What have you got in mind?”

“You're a clever fellow, aren't you? I thought so before, by the way you haggled,” Ptolemaios said. “Yes, you're right: I wouldn't pay so much for anything easy. You'll know that Antigonos' nephew Polemaios broke with his uncle last year and went over to Kassandros.”

Menedemos dipped his head at the same time as Sostratos said, “Yes, we did know chat.”

“All right, then,” Ptolemaios said briskly. “He's holed up in Khalkis these days, on the island of Euboia, and he's decided he doesn't like Kassandros any better than he liked his uncle. He was jealous of Antigonos' sons. I don't know what his quarrel with Kassandros is—I just know he has one. He'd make me a useful ally, I think.”

We'd make you a useful tool, is what you mean,

Sostratos thought. He wondered how wise the ruler of Egypt was. If Polemaios had fallen out with both Antigonos and Kassandros in a year's time, he was liable to turn in the hand of anyone who tried to wield him. But that was Ptolemaios' worry, not his. He said, “And you want us to go up to Khalkis?”

“And get him, and bring him back down here to me. That's right,” Ptolemaios said. “He needs to slide out of the place without anyone's being the wiser—he hasn't got the fleet to just up and sail away.”

“No, he wouldn't have the ships for that,” Sostratos agreed. “He'd have to come past the coast of Attica on the way south. Athens isn't what it was in the days of Perikles, but it still has a decent navy, and Demetrios of Phaleron is Kassandros' creature.”

“Exactly. I have officers who wouldn't see it that fast,” Ptolemaios said. “Polemaios' soldiers can get out a few at a time in small craft once he's escaped. He'll lose some, but a lot of them will join him here. Polemaios himself is the man I really want. What do you say, Rhodians?”

Sostratos knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to say no to another delay in reaching Athens with the gryphon's skull. And this one would be all the more frustrating because the Aphrodite would go past the eastern coast of Attica on the way to and from Khalkis. But Ptolemaios had given him and Menedemos one big reason to say yes—or, looked at another way, six thousand little reasons.