Tedor thanked him and set off at a fast pace down one of the mean streets radiating from the gate. He reached the Agora merely by following the crowds and wended his way through the crowded marketplace with the shouts of the fish, bread, wine and honey-mongers on all sides of him.
The tradesmen jockeyed their pushcarts around for more advantageous positions; the slaves ran nimbly about the Agora on nameless errands; the gentlemen of leisure, garbed in embroidered tunics and mantles of white, red, purple and black, sauntered without hurry under the shade of the adjacent stoas, servants following behind them or preceding them like schools of pilot fish.
It was a hot day, the bright sun scorching everything and engendering an odor in the fish-carts which made the fish-mongers decidedly unpopular. Twice Tedor spotted Laniq ahead of him in tunic and mantle but with her hair free, snapping pictures with her camera, but each time the crowds swirled in ahead of him and he lost her.
The third time he shouted her name and she ran. He took off after her and tripped over something, stumbling against a fish-cart and overturning it. The vendor was an ugly old man with warts all over his face and a raspy voice. He threw a steady torrent of invective at Tedor, and in all these generations the meanings hadn't changed even if the sounds had. Tedor kept running, for he lacked Athenian money to pay the fish vendor. But by then he had lost Laniq Hadrien once more.
Her trail led him through all the stalls of the Agora but he did not see her again. He began to realize it would be foolish to remain in Athens any longer for fear he might lose her entirely when he became aware someone was following him. The man maintained two dozen paces distance between them. The man hurried when he hurried, slowed when he did. Tedor stopped, then turned swiftly and sprinted toward the mantled figure.
"All right," he said, gathering up a fistful of the mantle and holding the man. "Why were you following me?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. It's a free city."
"For citizens, it is," said Tedor harshly. "Whose son are you?" To say whose son you were was the equivalent of telling a man your name, since surnames were as yet unknown in Athens. Tedor suspected his follower, like Laniq and himself, did not belong in Athens.
He admired the man's poise. A vague suggestion of uneasiness crept over his eyes like a film, then he smiled and said, "I am Posicles, son of Posicles."