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tell if someone is lying to you.” I sighed, suddenly missing my father very much and feeling homesick for Rome.
    â€œAh, yes, your father, who calls himself the Finder.” Kettel nodded. “You seem to have learned a great deal from the man, Gordianus.”
    â€œYet I never knew how much, until I was out in the world on my own and needed all those lessons. How would he choose a name for this occasion?” I glanced about the room, until my eyes fell on a scroll from my hosts’ library that I was reading at my leisure, an old play called in Greek Anthos, or “The Flower.” A copy had been among the few scrolls my father owned—the gift of a wealthy, satisfied client when he learned that the Finder’s son was studying Greek. Antipater had taught me to quote long passages from the play, to my father’s delight. The copy now at my bedside was owned by the eunuchs; during their years of royal service, they had acquired a great many scrolls, laying claim to damaged or redundant copies no longer needed in the great Library of Alexandria.
    â€œAgathon,” I said. “I shall call myself Agathon, like the playwright of old Athens who wrote ‘The Flower.’”
    Berynus glimpsed the scroll at my bedside and clapped his long, narrow hands. “An excellent choice! The name is neither too common nor too uncommon nowadays in Alexandria—we’ve all met an Agathon or two. And the name in Greek means ‘good fellow,’ which you certainly are.”
    â€œAnd as I recall,” said Kettel, nibbling at a date, “‘The Flower’ was especially praised by Aristotle for giving pleasure, despite the fact that everything and everybody in the drama is completely made up—invented wholly from the author’s imagination. As shall be this identity under which you’ll be traveling, Gordianus—or rather, Agathon.”
    â€œIn this drama, our Agathon is going in search of Antipater,” said Berynus. “A playwright seeks a poet—there you have a mnemonic device that makes it easy to remember.”
    I nodded, and did not explain that I should hardly forget the connection, since Antipater himself had drilled me in reciting Agathon.
    â€œYou’ll be needing travel documents, too,” noted Berynus.
    â€œYes, I was just thinking about that.” I had traveled widely with Antipater, but always as myself, Gordianus, citizen of Rome, and never using a false name. “Everyone entering Ephesus by ship is questioned, perhaps more closely now than ever. My old documents—the ones I’ve carried ever since I left Rome—won’t do. But I’ve crossed paths with a forger or two since I came to Egypt. I suppose, for a reasonable sum…”
    â€œNonsense!” said Kettel. “You needn’t hire a forger to produce suitable documents for this so-called Agathon of Alexandria. We can take care of that for you. Can’t we, Berynus?”
    The thin eunuch squeezed his lips together to make a sour expression of displeasure, or so I thought at first; then I realized that his wizened features had compressed into a sly smile. The face of Berynus was not as easy to read as that of Kettel. Behind his tightly shut lips he was silently laughing.
    â€œOh, yes,” he said. “One does not spend a lifetime in the service of the royal palace without learning how to cut a corner here and there, or grant a special favor to a friend—or forge an official document, so expertly that not even the king himself could detect the counterfeit. Kettel and I can whip up documents for you that will fool the port authorities at Ephesus, never fear.”
    â€œFor such a favor, I would be very grateful,” I said. “How long does the journey take, if a ship sails directly from Alexandria to Ephesus?”
    â€œFive days, more or less, depending on the weather and the winds,” said Berynus.
    â€œHow easy will it be