He finished his pastry, then looked up at her and nodded.

“And the same for my family. It would be good not to worry about the hazards of travel for them.”

“You have a large family,” he remarked, staring down at a bunch of grapes he was turning between his fingers.

She glanced at me and back to him. “The Antigonids are my family now. Demetrios will be coming here from Athens soon. My husband, and my sons? It’s a small thing for you, but a great one for me.”

“I can do that, though it is greater than you think,” he said. “My blessing on all their voyaging, which will be remarkable.”

It would, too, I knew; the area the Antigonids controlled would move all over Greece and Asia Minor. But they’d never keep control anywhere for long, always needing to move. I wondered if this was a blessing or a curse. Hermes was smiling. He set down the grapes on the table and took up another of the skewered birds. He dipped it into a thick dark red sauce then put it in his mouth. We watched in silence as he crunched and swallowed it. I felt a combined horror and fascination, and absolutely no desire to eat one myself. “You keep a good table,” he said. “But you charge a high price to sit at it.”

Phila laughed. “Thank you,” she said. She clapped her hands. The slaves came running. “Water and a towel,” she said to them, with no more acknowledgement of their humanity than before. She looked at me. “I will think about what you have said, and dream of your city.”

The slaves brought a bowl of water, and she used it to wash the sauce off her fingers. Then she dried her hands carefully. The slave brought the bowl to me, and I dipped my fingers, although I had no need to. I tried to smile at the slave, but he would not meet my eyes. Phila drew a flat box out of her kiton. She opened it with a key. Inside was a leather pouch, and from inside that she drew out a folded sheet of paper, much like the one Kebes had given us. I took this one as she offered it to us, and glanced at it. It was covered with the incomprehensible writing, like the other, as I had expected. “Go in,” she said to the slaves, and as they scurried off, “I will free these three, who have waited on the gods.”

“It is a small thing for you, and it’s a drop in the ocean, but it will make a huge difference to those three people to be free. Thank you,” I said. “And try to remember you share humanity with them, and as Aristotle was wrong about women so he was wrong about slaves. And don’t forget about the importance of education.”