His cousin knew nothing of that. No one but Menedemos knew of the passion he'd conceived for his father's young second wife— unless Baukis herself had some inkling of it. But whatever he thought, whatever he felt, he hadn't done anything about it, and the strain of doing nothing had made living with his father even harder than it would have been otherwise. He would have known blindfolded the instant when the Aphrodite glided out between the fortified moles that sheltered the great harbor and onto the open waters of the Aegean. The akatos' motion changed inside the space of a heartbeat. Real waves—not big ones, but waves nonetheless, driven by a brisk northerly breeze—slapped her bow and foamed over the three-finned bronze ram she carried there. She began to pitch, going up and down, up and down, under Menedemos' feet. “Now we're really on the sea!” he said happily. “So we are.” Sostratos sounded less delighted. The merchant galley's motion remained quite mild, but Menedemos' cousin had an uncertain stomach till he got back his sea legs at the start of each new sailing season. Menedemos thanked the gods that that affliction didn't trouble him. The chop made the Aphrodite's timbers creak. Menedemos cocked his head and smiled at the familiar sound. The mortises and tenons and treenails that held plank to plank hadn't taken any strain since the akatos came back from Great Hellas the autumn before. Indeed, she'd been beached all winter, for all the world as if she were a warship, to let her dry out. She would be uncommonly fast for a while, till the pine got waterlogged again. Fishing boats bobbed on the swells. Seeing the Aphrodite out-bound from the harbor at Rhodes, they knew the galley was no pirate ship. A couple of fishermen even waved at her. Menedemos lifted his right hand from the steering oar to wave back. He loved eating fish— what Hellene didn't?—but nothing could have made him catch them for a living. Endless labor, poor reward . . . He tossed his head: no, anything but that.