“I suppose I can get away with it,” Kissidas said. “But Hipparkhos— he's Antigonos' garrison commander— doesn't much like Rhodians. He's made it hard to keep up the proxeny, he really has.” “We're glad you have kept it up, best one.” Sostratos meant every word of that. Neither a buggy, noisy, crowded inn nor sleeping on the hard planks of the poop deck much appealed to him. “And what has old One-Eye's officer got against Rhodians?” “What would you expect?” Kissidas answered. “He thinks your polls leans toward Ptolemaios.” That held a good deal of truth. Considering how much Egyptian grain went through Rhodes for transshipment all over the Aegean, Sostratos' city had to stay friendly with Ptolemaios. Nonetheless, Sostratos spoke the technical truth when he said, “That's foolish. We're neutral. We have to stay neutral, or somebody would gobble us up for leaning to the other side.” “My cousin's right,” Menedemos said. He and Sostratos might squabble with each other, but they presented a united front to the world. Menedemos went on, “We even built some ships for Antigonos two or three years ago. How does that make us lean toward Ptolemaios?” “You don't need to persuade me, friends,” Kissidas said, “and you won't persuade Hipparkhos, for his mind's made up.” “Will you have trouble with him because you're taking us in?” Sostratos asked. “I hope not,” the proxenos answered bleakly. “But whether I do or don't, it's my duty to help Rhodians here, the same as it's the duty of the Kaunian proxenos in Rhodes to help men from this city there. Come along with me, best ones, and use my home as your own as long as you're in Kaunos.” Before leaving the Aphrodite , Menedemos made sure Diokles would keep at least half a dozen sailors aboard her. “Wouldn't do to come back and find half our cargo had grown legs and walked off, now would it?” Menedemos said. “Not hardly, skipper, especially when we haven't got any peafowl along with us this spring,” Diokles said. “We haven't got 'em, and we—or I, anyhow—don't miss 'em, either,” Sostratos said. He'd had to care for the birds till they sold the last of them in Syracuse, and hadn't enjoyed the experience. As far as raucous, stupid bipeds go, they're even worse than sailors , he thought—a bit of fluff he wisely didn't pass on to the oarmaster. “Come along, my friends,” Kissidas repeated, more urgently than before: maybe he didn't want to be seen hanging around a Rhodian ship. Would informers denounce him to Antigonos' garrison commander? As Sostratos went up the gangplank onto the quay, he thanked Fortune and the other gods that Rhodes really was free and autonomous, and that Rhodians didn't have to worry about such nonsense. As far as the look of both buildings and people went, Kaunos might have been a purely Hellenic city. The temples were older and plainer than those of Rhodes, but built in the same style. Houses showed the world only blank fronts, some whitewashed, and red tile roofs, as they would have back home. All the signs were in Greek, Men wore thigh-length chitons; a few wrapped hitmatia over the tunics. Women's chitons reached their ankles. If prosperous or prominent women came out in public, they wore hats and veils against the prying eyes of men. “Just thinking about what might be under those wrappings builds a fire under you, doesn't it?” Menedemos murmured after one such woman walked by. “Under you, maybe,” Sostratos said. His cousin laughed at him.
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