“Hail,” the stranger said. “I'm Alypetos son of Leon.” Sostratos gave his own name. Menedemos came out. Alypetos went through introductions again, then gestured toward Kleiteles' doorway. “Come with me, best ones.” “Can you tell us why Ptolemaios wants to see us?” Sostratos asked as they went out onto the street. “I can make some guesses,” Alypetos answered, “but I might be wrong, and it's not my place to gab, anyhow.” Something else occurred to Sostratos: “We've just made a bargain with Pixodaros the silk merchant. He'll probably bring his cloth to the Aphrodite this morning, expecting to pick up dye and perfume in exchange for it. Can you send someone to his house, asking him to wait till we're back to look things over for ourselves?” “I'll take care of it,” Alypetos promised. He didn't sound as if Ptolemaios intended to do anything dreadful to Sostratos and Menedemos. That left Sostratos slightly reassured, but only slightly. He wouldn't, would he? If he did, we might try to run away. Kos was waking up. Women with water jars gathered at a fountain, some of them pausing to chat before they took the water back to their homes. A farmer in from the countryside with a big basket of onions trudged toward the market square. A stonecutter pounded away with mallet and chisel at a memorial stone. A little naked boy, pecker flapping as he ran, chased a mouse till it slipped into a crack in a wall and got away. The child burst into tears. Like any house in a polis, the one where Ptolemaios was staying presented only a blank, whitewashed wall and a doorway to the world. Unlike any house Sostratos had seen, though, this one had a couple of hoplites in full panoply—crested helm, bronze corselet, greaves, shield, spear, sword on the hip—standing sentry in front of it. “Hail,” Alypetos said to them. “These are the Rhodians Ptolemaios wants to see.” “Hail,” the sentries said together. Then one of them added something that sounded as if it ought to be Greek but made next to no sense to Sostratos. They're Macedonians, he realized. Well, no surprise that Ptolemaios would use his countrymen for bodyguards. Unless you were used to it, the dialect Macedonians spoke among themselves might almost have been another language. Alypetos had no trouble following it. “He says to bring you right on in,” he told Sostratos and Menedemos. Inside, the house proved large and spacious, with a fountain and a bronze of Artemis with a bow in the courtyard. Alypetos ducked into the andron. Sostratos wondered whose home this was, and where he'd gone while Ptolemaios was using it. Not a question to which you're likely to find an answer, he thought. Alypetos emerged. “He's eating breakfast,” he said. “Plenty of bread and oil and wine for the two of you as well. Go on in.” “Thank you,” Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head. Now he knew real relief. Ptolemaios, by all accounts, was not the sort of tyrant who broke bread with a man one moment and ordered him tortured the next. “Go on. Go on.” Alypetos shooed them toward the andron. Menedemos put a bold front on things and strode into it. Sostratos followed, content here to let his cousin take the lead. Ptolemaios looked up from dipping a chunk of bread in a bowl of olive oil. “Ah, you must be the Rhodians,” he said, speaking Attic Greek with a slight accent that put Sostratos in mind of the way the bodyguards outside the
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