“I get old, he do after me,” Marempsemis said, as any father might.

  “Good,” Menedemos said. Barbarians might only now be discovering the glories of Greek culture and the beauty and precision of the Greek language. If not for Alexander’s conquests, they might have wallowed in squalid ignorance for centuries more. Ignorant or not, though, they were still recognizably people. Marempsemis’ hope for his son would have made perfect sense to Philodemos back in Rhodes.

  Menedemos paid the hatmaker four small silver coins. He got four broad bronze ones in return. Bronze coins, for amounts smaller than silver could easily deal with, were new in the world. No one had thought of them when the polis of Rhodes was first built. That was only a hundred years ago, too, Menedemos thought—change visible almost within the span of a lifetime. They certainly helped grease the capstan of commerce so it went round and round without squeaking.

  After the Hellene set the hat on his head, he looked a question at Marempsemis. “You fine,” the brown man assured him. “No cook over—ah, under—sun.”

  “Thanks,” Menedemos said. He fiddled with the hat to get its brim just so. Along with shielding him from the remorseless fire in the sky, it also cut some of the glare. He liked that.

  Well pleased with himself, he made his way back to the palace. By now, he was starting to be practiced at negotiating the maze of corridors that led to the room he and Sostratos shared. He tapped on the door and waited. If Sostratos and Seseset were in there together, he’d give them time to put on their clothes, even if he’d seen both of them naked.

  But Sostratos’ voice penetrated the wood: “Come in.” Menedemos did. Sostratos pointed to his hat. “So you went and got one, did you?”

  “Yes, I did. I’m tired of baking under this horrible sun.”

  “What did you pay and where did you get it? I think I’ll do the same,” Sostratos said. “I’m a bit darker than you, but not enough to keep from baking myself.”

  Menedemos told him what he needed to know, adding, “Tell Marempsemis that Diophantes sent you. He’ll knock the price down a bit.”

  “Who’s Diophantes?”

  “A Hellene who had a hat. I met him on the street when I was sweating like a swine, so I asked him where he got it. He sent me to that hatmaker.”

  Sostratos looked at him in admiration. “I’d never have the nerve to do anything like that.”

  “It’s easy enough,” Menedemos said. So it was—for him. “You don’t have any trouble doing business. What’s so tough about talking to someone on the street?”

  “Business is almost as full of ritual as sacrificing is,” Sostratos said. “And I’m dealing with people I know, or at least with people who may want to do business with me. Just chatting up a stranger …?” He tossed his head.

  “Really, my dear? I never should have guessed,” Menedemos said, and started to laugh. Sostratos swore at him. That only made him laugh harder. These days, he had to work to get under his cousin’s skin. He’d done it this time, though.

  Breakfast for guests in Ptolemaios’ palace wasn’t fancy, but breakfast anywhere Hellenes lived wasn’t commonly fancy. Sostratos and Menedemos sat on low stools in front of a table that held good wheat bread, indifferent olive oil, and pitchers of wine and water. Both Rhodians watered their wine more than they would have at home; getting drunk or even giddy was the last thing they wanted to do here.

  A couple of Egyptians from well up the Nile didn’t worry about it, and poured down neat wine. They were involved in some kind of lawsuit whose appeals had finally gone all the way up to Ptolemaios himself. They knew enough Greek to get by, but talked to each other in their own language. Only when another Egyptian came in did they clam up. He also pretended they weren’t there. Sostratos guessed he was involved in the lawsuit, too, but on the other side.

  The hard-faced steward who looked as if he’d campaigned with Alexander walked up to the Rhodians and tapped each of them on the shoulder. “I am to bring you before the Ptolemaios,” Demodamas said. “Come along with me, if you please.”

  They came. Sostratos gulped his cup empty; Menedemos ate one more big bite of bread and left the refectory still chewing. Sostratos didn’t think the steward was leading them on the same route they’d used before.

  He soon found he was right. Instead of going to a private chamber, they washed up in a waiting room to an audience chamber that would have been a throne room if only Ptolemaios called himself a king. None of Alexander’s marshals had yet taken that step, though Sostratos kept thinking it couldn’t be far away.

  He planted himself on a stool no different from the ones in the refectory. A couple of other Hellenes already sat in the room, waiting to be summoned. They didn’t speak to Sostratos or Menedemos, but chatted with each other in low voices so the Rhodians couldn’t overhear.

  Before Sostratos could decide whether he was insulted, someone new strode into the antechamber. The man was as tall as he was, or even a digit or two taller. There the resemblance ceased. The newcomer, who wore only an Egyptian-style linen skirt, was broad in the shoulders and thick through the chest, as Sostratos wished he were.

  And he was far darker than the Egyptians, his skin a brown so dark it was nearly black. He had full lips, a rather low nose, and hair so curly it was almost crispy. He carried himself like a man of consequence; since he’d come to this more or less royal waiting room, no doubt he was.

  Beside Sostratos, Menedemos was also doing his best not to stare. Out of the side of his mouth, he whispered, “I’ve heard some people were that color, but I never saw anybody who was before.”

  “Neither have I,” Sostratos whispered back. The way the dark brown man’s eyes swung toward them made the Rhodian wonder if the fellow understood Greek. “Excuse me, best one, but do you speak my language?” he asked, almost before realizing he’d done it. The idea of asking directions on the street could paralyze him with anxiety. This, though, this was pure intellectual curiosity. And intellectual curiosity was important.

  “Enough to manage,” the dark man said, his accent softer than the one with which Egyptians flavored their Greek. He bowed to the Rhodians. “I am Harsioteph son of Nasakhma, envoy of King Gatisen to the Ptolemaios. And you gentlemen are …?”

  Sostratos and Menedemos rose from their stools to introduce themselves. Harsioteph gravely clasped hands with each of them in turn. His hand was large and strong and hard; the skin on his palm was paler than the rest of his hide. Sostratos asked, “Is, uh, Gatisen king of Ethiopia?”

  “Hellenes use this name sometimes,” Harsioteph said. “We call our land Kus.” The last sound was a hissed or sneezed consonant like the ones in Seseset’s name, a sound for which the Greek alphabet had no letter. The dark brown man added, “King Gatisen’s capital is Meroë.”

  “Meroë!” Sostratos felt himself caught up in history. “Herodotos wrote of it a century and a half ago!” To Harsioteph, he explained, “Herodotos was a man who wrote about the long-ago wars between the Hellenes and the Persians.”

  “We of Kus fought the Persians, too. We also fight Hellenes if we have to.” Harsioteph sent him a measuring stare.

  Ignoring it, Sostratos exclaimed, “Your wars were in the days of the Persian King Kambyses, weren’t they? Herodotos talks about them.”

  Harsioteph shrugged. “Old Persian king a long time ago. Don’t know if anyone in Kus remember—ah, remembers—his name.”

  Before he could say anything more, an attendant came out of the audience chamber and spoke to him: “The Ptolemaios will see you now. He asks me to ask you to give his respects to King Gatisen.”

  “I do that,” Harsioteph replied, and followed the man inside. The Hellenes who’d got there before Sostratos and Menedemos scowled at his back.

  In other circumstances, Sostratos might have done the same. He was too excited now. “An Ethiopian, straight out of Herodotos!” he said. “The old gossip knew what he was talking about after all—he mostly did. Pity Harsioteph didn’t daub himself half with ash, half with vermilion, the way the historian says Ethiopians do when they go to war.”

  “He’s not going to war. He’s talking peacefully, which is more than you can say for Demetrios,” Menedemos remarked. “If Alexandria thrives the way it looks like it’s thriving, there’ll be a colony of black people here before long, if there isn’t one already. Money draws men the way honey draws flies.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re likely right,” Sostratos said.

  “Those people are only good for the mines,” one of the other Hellenes said. “If their dark hides don’t mark them as the slaves by nature Aristoteles talks about, what ever could?”

  “I don’t think I’d care to try making a slave of that Harsioteph,” Sostratos said. “He may be a barbarian, but he’s a man.”

  “Chains and the lash would soften him up soon enough,” the other man said.

  “Or make him murder you as soon as you turn your back,” Menedemos put in, which matched Sostratos’ view of things.

  The other Hellene and his friend argued with the Rhodians, more or less good-naturedly, till the attendant came out again and said, “The Ptolemaios will see Menedemos and Sostratos now.” In they went. Sostratos didn’t look over his shoulder, lest he see the other Hellenes glaring daggers at him.

  He and Menedemos bowed before Ptolemaios. The general who ruled Egypt as a king in all but name frowned from his massive chair—no stool for him. “Well, men of Rhodes, I kept hoping you were wrong with your word of what old Cyclops’ brat is up to, but you had the straight word,” Ptolemaios said. “Between his army and his cursed fleet, he’s been gobbling up the poleis in eastern Cyprus one by one, and he’s laying siege to Salamis.”

  “Has he, sir? Is he? That’s not good news. We heard that he was starting the campaign, but we left Rhodes before we got word of how it was going,” Sostratos said.

  “We wanted to make sure we got the news to you as soon as we could,” Menedemos added. Sostratos had to work to keep from grimacing; he should have thought to put that in himself. Greasing the powerful never hurt.

  “Not good news at all,” Ptolemaios said heavily. “Who would have guessed the gods-cursed brat had a gift for laying siege to cities? But he does, pestilence take him. His old man is a good general, too—don’t get me wrong. The brat will have it in the blood and in the training. But Antigonos is about as charming as a viper. Demetrios can talk anybody into anything, or so it seems.”

  “He didn’t talk the Rhodian people into allying with him and his father against you,” Menedemos said.

  “Yes, the free and independent Rhodian people.” To Sostratos’ ear, Ptolemaios sounded sardonic, as Demetrios had in the agora. But Rhodes was more useful to the ruler of Egypt than to Demetrios and Antigonos—and Ptolemaios’ power lay a long way from the island.

  Sostratos said, “The Athenians certainly fell all over themselves voting honors to Demetrios and Antigonos after the polis fell to Demetrios and his men.”

  “I heard about that. It embarrassed me. Not the kind of thing you expect from free and independent people, even if the Athenians still claim that’s what they are.” Ptolemaios made as if to spit in disgust. Had he been with his fellow Macedonians, he likely would have. But he’d learned proper Greek manners, even if he sometimes wore them awkwardly.

  “Rhodes isn’t like that,” Menedemos said.

  “I hope Rhodes isn’t like that,” Sostratos said.

  Ptolemaios eyed him. “You’re made like an asparagus shoot, but not much gets past you, does it?” He was shaped more like a brick himself: these days, a brick with a potbelly.

  “I try not to let it, sir,” Sostratos said. “What do you plan to do about Cyprus, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m going to rescue it, that’s what. I need it. And I’ll get Menelaos out of whatever pickle he’s in up there,” Ptolemaios answered. Like Menedemos, Sostratos had no brothers. He’d seen how his father and Menedemos’ could make a sport of tearing strips off each other, though. Evidently even the great and prominent weren’t immune to that.

  When Sostratos glanced over at Menedemos, he found his cousin looking back at him. They’d watched Demetrios swoop down on Athens. Could this aging warlord keep up with the rising generation?

  “Building up my fleet and getting soldiers aboard will take a bit,” Ptolemaios said, as if thinking out loud. “But when I hit Demetrios, by the gods, I’ll hit him with a rock in my fist.”

  To that, Sostratos said nothing at all. Menedemos murmured, “Yes, sir.” That was what you were supposed to say to a man who could order you thrown to the crocodiles. But Sostratos wondered whether Ptolemaios had paid any attention to what Alexander was doing when he campaigned with him. As much as anything else, Alexander had beaten the Persians with sheer speed.

  “On your way, lads,” the ruler of Egypt said. “I just wanted to let you know what I’ve heard. When you go back to Rhodes, you’ll pass it along. I may even pay your polis a call myself, once I’ve given the puppy the kicking he deserves.”

  How did he mean that? Would he come with the fleet he was building up and the soldiers who’d travel in the ships? Sostratos feared he might prove as dangerous as Demetrios. When you were small, everyone large looked dangerous. An attendant appeared at his elbow. Another stood by Menedemos. The Rhodians bowed to Ptolemaios, who dipped his head to them as if he were Zeus in the Iliad. The attendants led them away.

  Menedemos would have shushed Sostratos if he’d started talking about the audience while they were still inside the palace. Sostratos could be an innocent about such business (Menedemos conveniently forgot that his cousin had already shushed him once over the same thing). But Sostratos had the sense to keep quiet till they were out on the wide, noisy streets of Alexandria.

  Two amphorai had fallen from an oxcart and smashed, spilling something sticky onto the street. Half a dozen Egyptian-looking men shouted at one another. A couple sounded angry enough to go for their knives, but they didn’t. The ox, standing in the middle of the street and blocking traffic, lifted its tail to deliver its own commentary on the situation.

  Both Menedemos and Sostratos started talking at the same time. Menedemos laughed. The two Hellenes must have each decided the commotion would cover whatever they had to say.

  “So he is going to fight Demetrios on Cyprus!” Menedemos said. “That’s important news.”

  “It is,” his cousin agreed. “They need to know it on Rhodes. Now if only we had some way to tell them.”

  “If only,” Menedemos echoed mournfully. “I wonder how many important affairs down through the years have smashed like a dropped amphora because the men in charge of them didn’t get news they needed soon enough.”

  “Quite a few, I’m sure.” Sostratos plucked at his beard as he thought. He did that often; it never failed to annoy Menedemos. “Xerxes might have conquered Hellas if he’d known what was going on with all his forces while it was happening instead of later. And the Athenians’ attack on Syracuse might have gone better. It couldn’t very well have gone worse.”

  “That came after the Persian War,” Menedemos said.

  Sostratos dipped his head. “Yes, a lifetime later. It would have been … let me think … about a hundred years ago. Somewhere not far from the time when the polis of Rhodes went up.”

  “How do you keep all that stuff straight in your head?” Menedemos asked.

  “I never thought about how. I just do.” Sostratos sounded surprised. “You can come out with whole books of Homer or all the filthiest bits from Aristophanes.”

  “But those are fun. Dates are just boring,” Menedemos said.

  “No, they aren’t,” Sostratos said. “Dates are the bones of history. Knowing when something happened tells you about the other things that caused it to happen, and about the things it influenced in turn. Without dates, everything would be chaos. ‘Without form and void,’ the Ioudaioi say.”

  “Do they?” Menedemos spoke without much interest. To him, the Ioudaioi were just another set of barbarians who got too excited about their religion to care about learning true civilization from the Hellenes. Sostratos’ opinion of them was a little higher, but he spoke a bit of their language and had spent more time among them.

  “They do, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is getting word back to Rhodes. How can we do that?” Sostratos said.

  “Quickest way would be to hop back into the Aphrodite and take her across the Inner Sea again.” Menedemos laughed a laugh sour as vinegar. “With most of our cargo still unsold, of course. Our fathers would skin us and grind us for sausage stuffing. The news about the Ptolemaios’ plans for Cyprus may be important, but it’s not that important. Trading comes first.”

  “Which reminds me,” Sostratos said. “I still hope I’ll be able to sell the amber I brought for a good price here, but nobody in Alexandria wants Damonax’s olive oil for anything close to what he thinks it should bring.”

  “Let me guess. The Egyptians think the stuff is nasty, and the Hellenes get theirs from the Phoenicians and the Ioudaioi,” Menedemos said.

  “Right both times.” Sostratos smiled a twisted smile. “I’d tell him what I think of him, only I’m afraid he’d make my sister sorry if I did. Families are so enjoyable.”

  “Aren’t they just?” Once more, Menedemos almost said more than he should have, but caught himself in time. Keeping Baukis’ secret meant keeping it. He’d come close to spilling his guts before. This time, he went back to business so smoothly, he could hope his cousin didn’t notice the hitch. “The wine is moving pretty well. After you finish your dealing with the amber, maybe you could hire a barge or a riverboat or whatever they use on the Nile and take some of the oil up the river to where people don’t see it so often.”