And so I won’t sleep with Baukis, no matter how much I want to-and no matter how much she might want me to. And, O cousin of mine, I don’t care how curious you are, either. Some secrets are going to stay secret, that’s all.

“Can we get more papyrus before we set sail?” Sostratos asked.

“Papyrus?” Menedemos echoed in some surprise. “I’m sure we can- the Egyptian grain ships that put in here often carry the stuff. But why should we bother? Phoenicia’s a lot closer to Egypt than we are.”

His cousin didn’t say, You thick-skull! or anything of the sort. But the look he got made him wish Sostratos had come right out and called him an idiot. It wasn’t that Sostratos was right so often, though he was. In fact, that made him very useful. But when he stared at you with pity in his eyes because you were too stupid to see what was obvious to him… I haven’t wrung his neck yet, Menedemos thought. I don’t know why I haven’t, but I haven’t.

“Ptolemaios and Antigonos are at war again,” Sostratos said. “Ships from Egypt won’t be going up to the Phoenician ports these days, not when Antigonos is holding those ports. If we can bring papyrus there, it ought to fetch a good price.”

And he was right again. Menedemos couldn’t have denied it if he tried. “All right. Fine,” he said. “We’ll get some papyrus, then. Might as well get some ink to take with it. We’ve done pretty well with ink before.”

“I’ll see to it,” Sostratos said. “I’m not sure what the market will be, though. It’s not like papyrus; the Phoenicians know how to make their own ink. They’re clever about such things.”

“They copy everything their neighbors do,” Menedemos said with more than a little scorn. “They don’t do anything of their own.”