Chương 103: 94. Amphiesis

I kept no guard on the door of the Antioch house and I set a good table. A watched man holds his tongue; a fed man cannot find the end of his. The ones who feared me lied to me. The ones who liked me told me everything, and went home thinking they had charmed a free supper out of a lonely old woman. — Codex of the Long Watch, Field Observation, 11th Century, Antioch Arthur was splitting the last of the kindling when Sarah came out into the courtyard.

The war upstairs had started back up at dawn, and he could tell from ten feet off that it was finally over and that she hadn't enjoyed winning it.

"She has agreed," Sarah said, setting a tray of coffee onto the low stone wall.

"She is also still furious with me, and she will stay furious right up until the morning we leave. Then she will cry and pack enough food for a regiment." She wiped her hands on her apron, her gaze sweeping the yard before landing, with intent, on Arthur.

"So, we do not mention Sounion at the table again. Any of us. Especially the ones who cannot keep a road trip to themselves over a plate of fish."

"Coffee, Lovely stuff. Cheers." Arthur said, taking a cup. She gave him a pointed look and went back inside to help her mother be angry in the kitchen.

"Haven't had a good cup of tea in forever," Steve muttered from behind him.

The day went as a mundane day would, and they were all deeply thankful for the monotony. Mundane in a world of monsters and countdown clocks was a rare luxury. Donna and Arthur worked on the woodpile and then the courtyard, clearing the dead bougainvillea and the silt the cistern overflow had left behind. Sarah stayed in the kitchen with her mother and Maria, and the talk from inside was no longer about Sounion.

Steve kept to the shadows with his three borrowed books, surfacing only for meals and once, near mid-afternoon, to announce that the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Cape Tainaron did indeed have a matching sunset alignment, and that he had been entirely justified in worrying about it. By dusk, the courtyard was swept, the split wood was stacked neat against the stone, and another of the days before they could claim their gear and tackle the road had gone.

The knock came the next morning while everyone was on their second coffee after a breakfast of Kagianas and Koulouri. A boy of about sixteen stood at the gate when Petros opened it. He wore a clean, ironed shirt and held a folded card in his hand. A few rapid words were exchanged in Greek before he handed the card to Petros with both hands and a warm smile. Arthur caught the word Yassas, which he knew meant goodbye, and then went back down the lane. Petros turned the card over.

It was heavy paper, the kind very few people had owned even before the system, and it was sealed with a neat blob of dark wax.

"Dr. Steven Parr and friends," he read off the front, and his eyebrows climbed.

"Re. We are important people now." He handed it down the table to Steve, who cracked the wax with a thumbnail, read it quickly and laid it on the cloth.

"We are invited to dinner this evening," Steve said.

"It is from our friend from Markopoulos's steps, Dr. Papadakis. She writes that she could not let a fellow scholar pass through Piraeus without a proper chat. She says she has gathered a few friends who would never forgive her if she kept us to herself." As the table absorbed the message Petros raised a finger.

"Why," he said, around a mouthful of bread, "does a woman from the Council want to feed four foreigners she met for ninety seconds on a doorstep?"

"Because she is an academic and so am I, and there are not many of us left to talk to," Steve said, his tone nonchalant.

"It was hard enough finding people interested in history and archaeology before all of this." He moved his hands in a loose circle over his head.

"Now that we have no phones or emails, it is even harder to find someone who cares about Bronze Age survey methods. She is lonely and I am interesting. It is not complicated."

"Interesting, are you?" Donna said.

"Could have fooled me." She had not touched her bread. Her eyes remained fixed on the card resting on the tablecloth, noting the quality of the wax and the thickness of the paper.

"Steve, people starved for conversation do not send a sealed card by a runner the morning after they meet you," she said, picking up the paper to turn it over in her fingers.

"They would knock on the gate themselves, or they would tell Markopoulos to bring you round for a coffee. And why does she want to meet all of us? I know bugger all about ancient masonry. This is not an invitation. It is an appointment." Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Then we don't go," Arthur said simply.

"Oh no. We very much go," Donna said.

"Turning down a Council member who has been nothing but charming is the single most suspicious thing we could do. Decline, and we go from a curious lot to a hostile lot. Accept, and we are exactly what we tell everyone we are. Four bored survivors glad of a hot meal and good company." She finally tore a piece off the loaf.

"We go, we play dull and we leave early."

"You wouldn't need to do a lot to play dull." Steve muttered, drawing a sharp glare from across the table. Maria looked up from the child asleep against her shoulder.

"It is a good house, the Papadakis house," she said mildly.

"Above Mikrolimano. You will eat well, whatever else happens."

"You will eat here first," Eleni said from the stove, in the voice of a woman who did not trust another kitchen to do it properly.

"And you should wear something that is not made for killing things in." Petros pointed his bread at the three of them.

"Ne. You go up there in your war clothes and your," he waved a hand at Arthur, "your shoulders, and the whole table picks you out like a fly in the milk the moment you come through the door." Arthur looked at him without the first idea what he meant.

"He means we will give ourselves away," Sarah said.

"One look and they know exactly what we are." She did not look as though she entirely disagreed. She paused for a moment, evaluating Donna, Arthur, and Steve in turn.

"I have clothes upstairs that will do for Donna and me" she said "My stuff, from before. We are close enough in size. I might even have some dresses."

"I'm not wearing anything I cannot kick in." Donna said flatly.

"You obviously did not see Lucy Liu in Charlie's Angels," Arthur said with a smile.

"I'm more Kate Beckinsale from Underworld."

"I'm sure we will find you something fashionable and practical." Sarah said She looked at Arthur and Steve and crinkled her nose.

"You two are the problem. Petros's shirts will not go around Arthur, and in any case his wardrobe is more mechanic couture than dinner couture."

"Working man," Petros said, unbothered.

"Papa did not let me go to Santorini with friends to have fun."

"Your Papa gave her too much freedom," Eleni agreed from the stove.

"That is why she joined MSF instead of continuing at the nice, safe clinic here."

"I know exactly what you did for fun," Sarah said to Petros.

"Do you want me to tell Maria all about it?" Maria threw a mock frown at Petros and then gave a small laugh.

"We should go take a look at the container yard market," Sarah said, making up her mind.

"We might find something that would fit the two of you there. We still have that last fox core left to trade." She looked at Donna, who simply waved her hand in agreement. The container yard market had come up in the weeks after the change, in the long shadow of the port cranes, where someone had worked out that a few hundred steel boxes nobody would ever load onto a ship again made serviceable shops.

What followed Arthur would remember chiefly as a couple of hours of being turned by the shoulders, held against lengths of other men's trousers, and told to stop apologising to the stallholder. Steve was no help. He had found a crate of mildewed paperbacks at the back of one stall and parked himself there, showing no interest in whatever Sarah was choosing for him, merely throwing her a generic thumbs-up every time she held a garment. The real campaign was Arthur.

It took over an hour to find a jacket that would fit his chest, and even then, he couldn't breathe in too deeply without stretching the seams. A relatively clean white polo neck was a tad easier to manage. Sarah offered a silent prayer of thanks for the invention of Lycra. The trousers were a lost cause, mostly proving too small either in the waist or the length, so Sarah finally had to settle for a decent pair of dark jeans. Arthur looked a little too happy with the compromise.

They came home with a bag of clothes that mostly fit and the fox core gone. They found Donna lounging in the courtyard sun, lazily peeling an orange. By late afternoon, the house had given itself over to the business of turning four survivors into respectable dinner guests, relatively speaking. Steve came down first. In his beige linen jacket and tan slacks, he looked like the quintessential island tourist, lacking only a panama hat to complete the look.

He carried a small backpack borrowed from Petros, the canvas concealing his focus and the ledger. Arthur came after him and stopped at the foot of the stairs. He tugged uselessly at the cuffs of the single-breasted navy blue jacket, trying to coax the fabric over his shoulders. He had managed to trim his beard, which only made him look broader.

"I feel naked without the shield," he said to Steve.

"Mage-build for the win," Steve said, wiggling his fingers in the air. Donna came next, wearing an asymmetrical black cocktail dress that cut high on one side.

"You clean up well, Ms. Callas," Arthur said with a genuine smile.

"But I thought you preferred Underworld."

"Kate Beckinsale is with me in spirit," Donna said. She lifted the draped hem of the dress just enough to show a heavy combat knife strapped flat against her thigh.

"Besides, Sarah had absolutely nothing in leather."

"So Donna has a weapon, and Sarah and I mostly don't need one," Steve said, glancing at Arthur.

"You, old chap, are the only dead weight tonight." Then Sarah came down the stairs. She had found, somewhere in the deep wardrobe of her life from before, a dress the color of the sea in the last light before dark. The fading courtyard sun caught her as she descended, turning the fabric iridescent. Her hair fell across her shoulders in a golden-brown cascade, and for a long moment, Arthur found himself feeling distinctly underdressed. Sarah caught Arthur staring at her, and a faint color rose to her cheeks.

"Close your mouth," Donna said, her voice dry with amusement. Arthur hurriedly looked away. Sarah looked the three of them over one last time and seemed, against all odds, satisfied. Before they were permitted to leave, Eleni spent another fifteen minutes fussing over the hemlines and collars of both Sarah and Donna, muttering to herself in Greek until she finally ran out of things to straighten. At the front door, Sarah slipped her arm through Arthur's.

"We are meant to be in a relationship," she said softly, a small smile touching her lips.

"Try to look as though you are used to me." The Papadakis house stood on the steep slope rising above Mikrolimano. It was a grand, three-story structure of faded ochre stone, featuring a sweeping wrought-iron balcony and a massive lemon tree that had gone wild near the entrance. The heavy front door swung open before they even reached the first step.

"You came." Dr. Papadakis stood framed in the warm interior light, her hands extended and delight written across her face.

"I was so afraid you would send your regrets. Come in, come in, all of you. There are many people waiting to meet you."