He got the ink, and helped Menedemos carry the jars of crimson dye to Adrastos’ shop. Menedemos took the dyer’s money without counting it. Showing silver now could be dangerous.

“Let’s head back up to the city,” Sostratos said. “The farther away from all these soldiers we get, the better I’ll like it.” His cousin was in many ways a daredevil. Sostratos wanted to throttle Menedemos for taking up with their host’s wife. He seemed to have got away with it, but what if Xenokleia had gone straight to Protomakhos after his first advances toward her? Trouble, that was what. And what if her baby ended up looking like Menedemos? Trouble again, perhaps, though not till the next visit to Athens. But Menedemos showed no desire to play dangerous games with Demetrios’ soldiers. For that, at least, Sostratos was grateful.

Back toward Athens they went. The way up to the city was more crowded than Sostratos had ever seen it. He wasn’t surprised. He and Menedemos couldn’t have been the only ones who wanted to get away from the newly arrived Macedonians. Demetrios’ name was on everyone’s lips. Somewhere up in front of them was the dividing line between people who knew Antigonos’ son was seizing control of the harbors of Athens and those who didn’t. As traders traveling from city to city, Sostratos and Menedemos had often been news-b ringers, on the very edge between those who knew and those who wanted to find out. Not today; their stop at Adrastos’ had let others get ahead.

They hadn’t gone far before hoofbeats thundered behind them. Raucous voices shouted, “Make way! Make way for the envoys of Demetrios son of Antigonos!” The cavalrymen raced past at a fast trot. At that rate, they might get to Athens before any of the people on foot.

Menedemos sighed as the horses went by. “I wish I’d done more riding,” he said.

“Not me.” As far as Sostratos was concerned, that was as much daredeviltry as his cousin’s taste for sleeping with other men’s wives. “I may admire a man who can stay on a horse’s back, but that doesn’t mean I want to imitate him very often. It’s a long way down, the ground is hard, and what have you got to hold on with? Your knees. No, thanks.”

“You were the one who hired a donkey to go exploring when we were in Italy,” Menedemos pointed out.

“That was a donkey,” Sostratos said, nobly resisting the temptation to add, And you’re another one. “It was small, and I’m pretty large. My feet were almost dragging in the dust when I got astride it. It walked. It didn’t trot or gallop.”

“And besides, you were curious then,” Menedemos said. Sostratos didn’t dignify that with a reply, especially since it was true.

On they went. Sweat poured off Sostratos; he wished he’d drunk some wine, or even water, before setting out from Peiraieus. Who could guess what Demetrios’ men were doing back there, though? He looked over his shoulder. No great cloud of black smoke rose into the sky. They hadn’t started burning for the sport of it, anyhow. Demetrios had said he’d come to liberate Athens. Of course, the difference between what a general said and what he did was all too often enormous.

Sostratos and Menedemos had almost got back to Athens when they saw Demetrios’ horsemen again, this time coming the other way. Along with the soldiers rode a worried-looking civilian who looked none too happy on horseback, Sostratos caught a snatch of conversation: a cavalryman said, “Don’t worry, O best one. I’m sure we’ll work something out.”

“I wonder what that means,” Menedemos said.

“Maybe Demetrios son of Antigonos hasn’t got a Persian torturer waiting for Demetrios of Phaleron after all,” Sostratos replied.

“Maybe.” Menedemos laughed a nasty laugh. “Or maybe he wants Demetrios of Phaleron to think he hasn’t got a torturer waiting for him.”

“It could be,” Sostratos admitted. “The Macedonians play the game for keeps, Kassandros has had it all his own way here in Athens for a long time, and so has Demetrios of Phaleron. If the other Demetrios has trouble finding reasons to give him a hard time, I’m sure plenty of Athenians could suggest some.”

Once the Rhodians got into the city, Sostratos found out how right he was. Athens bubbled like grape juice fermenting into wine. For ten years, people had had to keep quiet about what they thought. That was what tyranny did. It had been a genteel tyranny, but tyranny it was nonetheless. Now…,

Now, going through the city toward Protomakhos’ house, Sostratos heard a lot of what people must have been thinking and not saying. “Furies take Demetrios!” was popular. So was, “To the crows with Demetrios!” Someone said, “One of Demetrios’ pals cheated me on a house. I couldn’t do anything about it for a long time, but I’ll get even now.” Somebody else added, “There’s a lot of polluted villains who’d better run before we catch ‘em and hamstring ‘em!” Maybe he was speaking metaphorically. On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t. Had Sostratos been a man who’d enriched himself during Demetrios of Phaleron’s years in power, he didn’t believe he would have cared to linger in Athens to find out.

No matter who ruled Athens, business had to go on. Menedemos went back down to Peiraieus the day after Demetrios son of Antigonos’ men took the port, to make sure the Aphrodite stayed safe. “No trouble here, skipper,” Diokles reported. “The soldiers are under good discipline, and they aren’t plundering.”

“That’s a relief,” Menedemos said, and brought some more perfume up into Athens.

He was haggling with a hetaira’s slave in the agora the following day when a single sentence swept across the market square: “He’s gone!”

“Demetrios of Phaleron?” Menedemos asked.

“Couldn’t be anyone else,” the slave woman answered. She was middle-aged and plain, but her face glowed. “Maybe things will be better here now.”

“I hope so,” Menedemos said, thinking, On the other hand, maybe they won’t. He muttered to himself. That was something more likely to occur to Sostratos. But nobody who’d watched Alexander’s Macedonian marshals bang one another back and forth had an easy time believing any one of them could solve a polis’ problems just by appearing and snapping his fingers. However much they wanted to be, the marshals weren’t gods. About Alexander himself, Menedemos wasn’t so sure.

As he and the slave went on dickering, details followed that first exciting breath of rumor. From what people said, Demetrios son of Antigonos had granted Demetrios of Phaleron a safe-conduct up to the border of Boiotia, which remained in Kassandros’ hands.

“Too bad,” the woman said. “I wanted him up on a cross.”

“What did he do to you?” Menedemos asked.

“Oh, he didn’t do anything to me,” she answered. “But he’s been sucking up to the Macedonians for years, and I’m sick of it.”

“I see,” Menedemos said. “But isn’t Demetrios son of Antigonos a Macedonian, too?”

“Well, what if he is?” the slave woman asked in return. “He said we’re going to be free, so of course I’d rather see him than Demetrios of Phaleron.”

She herself was unlikely to be free no matter which Demetrios called the shots in Athens. Would the polis be free? She certainly seemed to think so. By the excited chattering all around, so did a lot of the Athenians. To Menedemos, their optimism only proved they hadn’t been free for a long time, and weren’t very good at gauging what promises were worth. Demetrios son of Antigonos would promise anything to win the Athenians over, just as Menedemos might to coax a girl into bed. Delivering afterwards? That was liable to be a different story.

Menedemos shrugged. The only thing he could do now was try to stay out of the way of Macedonian soldiers, no matter which marshal they claimed as their master. He went back to haggling with the slave woman. At last, they reached a price that satisfied both of them. She went off to get the silver from her mistress.