“If standing behind the sail and blowing into it would help them go faster, they’d do that, too,” Menedemos said with a laugh.

“They’ll be hours beating their way back up to their old course against the wind,” Sostratos said.

“Too bad for them,” Menedemos said.

“Hard to blame them,” Sostratos said. “When taking chances can get you sold into slavery or murdered and tossed over the side, you don’t do it. If we believed in taking chances, we wouldn’t have armed ourselves.”

He wasn’t wrong. Even so, Menedemos said, “You know, there are times when you squeeze all the juice out of life.”

“There are times when I think you want just enough juice to drown yourself,” Sostratos replied.

They scowled at each other. Menedemos yawned in Sostratos’ face to show how dull he thought Sostratos was. Sostratos turned his back, walked over to the rail, and pissed into the wine-dark sea. Maybe that was general contempt; maybe he was getting rid of juice. Menedemos didn’t inquire. Sostratos set his chiton to rights and stalked up to the foredeck, back very stiff.

Diokles clucked in distress. “The two of you shouldn’t quarrel,” he said. “The ship needs you both.” He used the dual, implying Menedemos and Sostratos were a natural pair.

Menedemos was steering the ship. He couldn’t turn his back on Diokles, no matter how much he wanted to. At the moment, he would sooner have given his cousin a good kick in the fundament than been yoked to him in the Greek language as part of a pair. Sanctimonious prig, he thought.

For the rest of the day, none of the sailors seemed to want to come near either him or Sostratos. The men walked on tiptoe, as if the Aphrodite ’s planking were covered with eggs and they would be whipped if they broke one. Songs, jokes, the usual chatter-all disappeared. Only the sounds of wind and wave remained. The merchant galley had never been so quiet.

Too stubborn and too proud to make any move toward Sostratos, Menedemos stayed at the steering oars the rest of the day. Slowly, slowly, the island of Syros drew near. It was even more desiccated than Kythnos. The Aphrodite had stopped here, too, a couple of years before. Menedemos remembered the verses from the Odyssey wherein Eumaios the swineherd praised the island from which he’d come. He also recalled Sostratos’ comment: that the praise proved Homer a blind poet.

He angrily tossed his head; he didn’t want to think about Sostratos at all. Doing his grim best not to, he steered the merchant galley around the northern tip of the island (which, like Kythnos, was taller than it was wide) and down toward Syros town on the eastern coast. The town sat inside the curve of a little bay. The harbor was fine; had the island of Syros had more in the way of water and people and crops, the harbor could easily have supported a real city. As things were, it mattered about as much as nice eyebrows on an ugly girl.

Because only a few fishing boats and the occasional ship going from somewhere else to somewhere else used the harbor, no one had bothered to improve it with moles and piers. The Aphrodite sat in the bay a couple of plethra from the town. Her anchors plopped into the water to hold her fast.

By the sun, an hour or so of daylight remained. Sostratos called for sailors to row him ashore. “Where do you think you’re going?” Menedemos demanded.

“There’s a temple to Poseidon here,” Sostratos answered. “There’s supposed to be a sundial in it made by Pherekides, who taught Pythagoras. It may be the oldest sundial in Hellas. While we’re here, I’d like to take a look at it. Why? Are you planning to sail off without me?”

“Don’t tempt me.” But Menedemos gestured gruffly toward the boat. “Go on, then. Be back by dark.”

Sostratos pointed to the handful of houses that made up the town. “If you think I’d stay there, you’re-” He broke off.

You’re even stupider than I thought you were. That was what he’d been on the point of saying, that or something like it. Menedemos’ resentment flared anew; he conveniently forgot all the equally unkind thoughts he’d had about Sostratos. “On second thought, stay away as long as you please,” he snapped.

He watched the boat take his cousin to the shore, watched Sostratos talk with an elderly local and take an obolos out of his mouth to give the fellow, watched the graybeard point uphill and to the north, and watched Sostratos hurry off in that direction. He also watched the men who’d rowed Sostratos ashore disappear into a wineshop.

“Skipper, what will you do if the young gentleman has trouble?” Diokles asked. “Going off on your own in a strange place isn’t always the smartest thing you can do.”

“How could there possibly be a problem?” Menedemos answered. “Sostratos seems sure it’s safe, and he knows everything. If you don’t believe me, just ask him.”

Diokles gave him a reproachful look. “Most of the time, the two of you”-he used the dual again, perhaps to drive home his point, perhaps to annoy Menedemos-”have pretty good sense. But when you don’t, you really don’t.” Most of the time, he would have added something like, meaning no disrespect. Today, he didn’t bother.

Menedemos pointed to the boat, which lay on the beach. “What am I supposed to do when that’s there?”

Unfazed, the oarmaster replied, “Find some sailors who can swim, and make sure they’re good and ready.”

That made better sense than Menedemos wished it did. Muttering under his breath, he strode the length of the galley, asking men if they could swim. Less than half the crew could, which didn’t surprise him, though he knew how himself. “We’ll wait till half an hour after sundown,” he said. “If Sostratos isn’t back by then…”

But he was. Menedemos spied his long, angular form with a curious mixture of resentment and relief. After brief confusion when Sostratos didn’t see the sailors, he went into the wineshop and brought them out. They weren’t too drunk to row him back to the Aphrodite .

“And how was your precious sundial?” Menedemos asked after his cousin scrambled back into the akatos.

“It seemed remarkably like… an old, decrepit sundial.” Sostratos looked and sounded sheepish.

“Eat some supper and then lay your old, decrepit bones down on the planks.” Menedemos spoke gruffly, like a father annoyed at a wayward child. That was how he felt. Again, how Sostratos felt about him never entered his mind.

Resentment sparked in Sostratos’ eyes, but he seemed to decide he couldn’t disobey sensible advice like that without looking a proper fool. He wrapped himself in his himation. Before long, he was asleep. If he spoke very little to Menedemos… I don’t much want to talk to him right now, either, Menedemos thought, just before sleep also overtook him.

Sostratos looked down at the waxed wooden tablets on which he’d kept the accounts of the trading run to Athens. As long as he paid attention to those, he didn’t have to worry about Menedemos. That, at the moment, suited him fine.

Clang! Clang! The keleustes’ bronze square beat out time for the rowers. The wind had died. The sail was brailed up tight to the yard. The Aphrodite glided east from Syros across a dead-calm sea, propelled by ten grunting, sweating rowers on each side: every other bench had a man in place.

“Sail ho!” called the lookout on the foredeck. “Sail ho off the port bow!”

That made Sostratos look up from his accounts. The lookout was pointing northeast. Sostratos stood up to see farther. Before long, he spied the sail, too. He shaded his eyes with his hand to cut the glare from the morning sun.

Nor was his the only head to swing that way. After a few heartbeats, a sailor said, “That’s a round ship. Nothing to worry about.” He was right. That huge sail and broad, beamy hull could only belong to one of the merchantmen that hauled grain and lumber and cheap wine and oil and other bulk commodities around the Inner Sea. The only way a round ship could endanger the akatos was by colliding with her.