Still, I’d rather clear things up with a Rhodian war galley than fight off a hemiolia full of cutthroats, Sostratos thought. He anxiously peered ahead. So did all the sailors not straining at the oars.

Suddenly, painfully, Sostratos wished Aristeidas still lived. The lynx-eyed sailor would have known exactly what to make of that other galley. Sostratos and the rest of the men with only average eyesight had to wait till she came nearer-which meant, till she became more dangerous if she was a pirate.

“I think…” A sailor spoke hesitantly, then with growing conviction: “I think she’s showing three banks of oars.”

Sostratos squinted. He pulled the skin at the outer corner of one eye taut, closing the other. That sometimes helped him see farther and more clearly. Sometimes… The galley did have more than one bank of rowers. Did she have three?

“I… think you’re right,” Sostratos said after a few more heartbeats. He let out a sigh of relief, and the heartbeats after that didn’t come faster on account of fear. A ship with three banks of oars was bound to be a war galley, not a piratical hemiolia or bireme. He watched the sailors relax their grip on weapons, too. They wouldn’t have to fight for their lives and their freedom today.

From the stern, Menedemos asked, “Is that the Dikaiosyne, come to pay us another call?” The Justice was the Rhodian navy’s first trihemiolia, an idea Menedemos had had. She was lighter and swifter than an ordinary trireme, just as a hemiolia was lighter and swifter than an ordinary ship with two banks of oars. Both classes could quickly remove the thranite rowing benches aft of the mast, and could stow the mast and yard on the decking where they had been.

After another glance across the narrowing gap of water, Sostratos tossed his head. “No,” he answered. “She’s an ordinary trireme.” Her mast was down, but he could see that all three banks were manned from bow to stern.

“Ah, well,” Menedemos said. “One of these days, I’d like to take a trihemiolia out and see what she can do. Seems only fair, when there wouldn’t be any if I hadn’t thought of them.”

The officer who’d captained the Dikaiosyne had done so not least because he was rich enough to have the leisure to go pirate-hunting without needing to worry about making a living. Here, for once, Sostratos fully sympathized with his cousin. Just as having to work for a living had kept Menedemos from command of a trihemiolia, so it had kept Sostratos himself from finishing his studies at the Lykeion. I am what I am now, and I’ve made the best of it, he thought. But still I persist in wondering-what would I have been, what would I have become, if I could have stayed?

An officer in a red cape strode up along the trireme’s deck to the bow. He cupped both hands in front of his mouth and shouted across the blue, sun-sparkled sea: “Ahoy, there! What ship are you?”

“We’re the Aphrodite , out of Rhodes and bound for home,” Sostratos shouted back.

“The Aphrodite, eh? Tell me what firm you belong to and where you were headed when you left this spring.”

“We sail for Philodemos and Lysistratos,” Sostratos answered, reflecting that Rhodes wasn’t too big to keep everyone from knowing everyone else’s business. “And we went to Athens. We’re on our way back from there now. You do know Demetrios Antigonos’ son has run Demetrios of Phaleron and Kassandros’ garrison out of Athens?”

“Yes, we’ve heard that,” the officer said. As his ship came up alongside the Aphrodite , Sostratos spied her name-Iskhys-painted above one of the eyes at her bow. Strength was a good name for a war galley.

Thanks to the trireme’s greater freeboard, the Rhodian officer could peer down into the merchant galley. “You haven’t got much aboard there. What’s your cargo?”

“Well, we’ve got honey from Mount Hymettos and cheeses from Kythnos,” Sostratos told him. “Mostly, though, we’re bringing back a fine crop of Athenian owls.”

“You’ll change them back to Rhodian coins, of course,” the officer said.

“Of course,” Sostratos agreed, hoping he wouldn’t have to. He would rather have seen the two percent Rhodes took on changed money go into the coffers of the firm of Philodemos and Lysistratos.

“Safe journey back to Rhodes,” the man on the Iskhys said. Sostratos waved his thanks, thinking the trireme would go on its way. But before it did, the fellow added, “I’ll check with the customs men to make sure you got back all right.”

He waved to his keleustes, who got the war galley moving again. As she glided away, the stench from her rowers, who worked in the closed-in area below the deck, filled Sostratos’ nostrils. But the stench from the officer’s words revolted him even more. The man had sounded polite enough, but what he meant was that he would check up on the Aphrodite after the Iskhys got back from her patrol. And that meant Sostratos would have to change his money, or some large part of it, or else face endless trouble from the Rhodian authorities. Two percent of the gross-a considerably larger part of the profit-had just taken flight.

“Would you come back here, my dear?” Menedemos called. He sounded polite, too, but Sostratos wasn’t deceived. His cousin left most of the financial arrangements to him, but Menedemos wasn’t altogether ignorant of the way money worked. He couldn’t be, not if he wanted to make a living as a merchant. He knew what the conversion fee would do to their profits.

“What was I supposed to tell him?” Sostratos asked as soon as he ascended to the poop deck. “He could see we weren’t carrying wine or oil or statues or slaves or anything of the sort. He’d figure out we had silver instead.”

“Cursed money-changers are worse than vultures,” Menedemos grumbled. “They sit behind their tables and flick the beads on their counting-boards with eyes cold as winter. I don’t think there’s one of them who has a soul. And they’ll try to steal more than two percent if we don’t watch them like hawks, too.”

“I’ll watch them,” Sostratos promised. “I know their tricks. No false weights; no thumbs on the scales; none of their games. I promise.”

“That’s better than nothing.” Menedemos’ tone suggested it wasn’t good enough. He didn’t snarl at Sostratos the way he might have, but he didn’t sound delighted, either. Since Sostratos himself was less than delighted, he couldn’t blame his cousin. Menedemos went on, “Hide as much of the silver as you possibly can. If we’re paying two percent on part of it, that’s better than paying two percent on all of it.”

“I already thought of that,” Sostratos said.

“Good. I wasn’t sure you would. Sometimes you’re… more honest than you need to be.”

“I’m honest with our customers, especially the ones we deal with year after year,” Sostratos said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s only good business.” It also fit who he was, but he didn’t make that argument; Menedemos would have jeered at it. He did add, “Anyone who lets the government know exactly how much silver he has is a fool, though.”

“I should hope so,” Menedemos said. “We’ve earned it. Those bunglers would only squander it.”

Sostratos dipped his head. Then he ducked under the poop deck. There wasn’t much room to hide things on an akatos, but still, if you knew what you were doing…