Chương 104: 95. Symposion

"You can always tell the scholar who knows a site only from a page. He gives you the dates faultlessly, and then you ask what the cook burned on the bad mornings and the lecture stops. I caught a dozen of them out over the years, always at dinner. I was rather good at it." — The Ether Atlas: Field Notes of Steven Parr, Piraeus They walked into a long room with the shutters thrown wide to the water and a table half-full of people who looked as though they had been there for a while.

Papadakis guided them down the line of faces, offering short introductions with a warm smile. There was a retired classicist named Vlachos who held the head of the table by a right of seniority that no one explained. Arthur disliked him within a minute for reasons he could not quite define. A woman named Theodoulou, who had taught architecture, corrected Steve's Greek twice in the first five minutes with open pleasure.

Beside her sat a thin, nervous man, Konstantinos, who said he had been at the Polytechnic, though he did not elaborate on what he did now that the machines were dead. There were a couple more people at the far end of the table whom Papadakis named as historians, though she did not otherwise draw them into the group. Then there was an old man two seats along who half-rose when Steve's academic field was mentioned, beaming as though Christmas had come early.

"Ilias," Papadakis said, gesturing to him.

"Ilias Stamatis. You will definitely want to talk to Dr Parr. Ilias spent his entire working life in Egypt. Ela, sit, sit. I have put the two of you together." Once they were seated, a few young men brought in the food and the local conversations picked up. It did not take Arthur long to see that Donna had been entirely right about the Council. The table argued about everything, loudly and with relish and no apparent malice.

While every academic discourse quickly turned into a three-way debate, their place in the new Greek political landscape was where the real cracks showed. Vlachos, from the head of the table, held that the academy's sole business was to advise the Council and be paid in protection. He spoke in a dismissive, airy tone, treating the matter as though it should be obvious to a child.

"Look, our value does not change," Vlachos said, lifting his glass.

"Our role, our calling, none of it changes. Aristotle shaped Greece through Alexander, eh? Physical weapons are for the uninformed. We have a rare opportunity to influence the rise of Greece to its rightful place in this new world."

"And Socrates was executed for trying to shape the state," countered Theodoulou, her fork clicking against her plate.

"Aristotle had an Alexander to work with. We have no such visionaries in Piraeus, what can I tell you." She leaned forward, looking around the table to gather supporters.

"Advising soldiers without participating in governance is a very short road to becoming the soldiers' clerk. You are right that we are living in unprecedented times, but I think we should be leading this change instead of merely offering commentary from the sidelines. If the scholars of the Song Dynasty could run an empire, so can we." Papadakis sat between the debaters, agreeing smoothly with whoever had spoken last without ever giving offence to the previous speaker.

She poured the wine and soothed the tempers while giving away absolutely nothing of her own mind. Arthur watched her manage the room with effortless grace, silently revising his estimate of her political weight upward. The classicist believes he leads them. He does not. Three of the six turn their eyes to your hostess before they speak, Archie said unprompted.

"We are being terrible hosts," Papadakis said, stepping into a lull after managing to settle a sharp back-and-forth between Theodoulou and one of the unnamed historians.

"We are boring our guests with local faction politics that they can have no real interest in."

"Oh, Dr Parr would make a fine addition to the academic faction," Ilias said, chuckling as he gestured toward Steve with his glass.

"After all, we scholars have to stick together in times like these."

"I don't know about that," Steve said in a light tone.

"I barely understand the local landscape."

"The landscape reminds me," Papadakis joined in, her attention shifting smoothly to the centre of the table.

"It must have been horrible walking all the way from Nafplio to Athens. I can only imagine the sort of trials you must have faced along the road." Every face at the table turned toward them at the mention of the journey, the academic arguments evaporating instantly.

"Yes, it was quite difficult," Sarah replied with a small smile.

"But we thought getting back home was worth the risk."

"Yet you surely must have seen combat out in the wild," Papadakis said, leaning forward slightly, her eyes wide with a perfect mix of concern and curiosity.

"Those horrible monsters we keep hearing about. How did you survive them?" Donna took a slow sip of her wine and joined the conversation.

"I have some combat experience," she said.

"From my previous job in corporate security. Arthur here, as you can probably see, packs a bit of a punch as well." She laughed good-naturedly, and a few people around the table cracked a smile with her.

"We were able to make our way back with some fights along the way. Sarah, with her medical training, kept us patched up and alive."

"Undoubtedly. I am sure you all have a certain competence with arms," Papadakis added, her tone smooth and encouraging.

"The wolves are formidable opponents, from what we read in the Council reports." She is quite well informed. And you all are not as invisible as you thought you were, Archie said.

"Did you manage to acquire a technique?" Konstantinos asked suddenly, leaning across his plate. No one spoke for a moment. The question hung heavily over the table until Papadakis finally broke it after waiting a full five seconds.

"Konstantinos, come now," Papadakis said with a gentle, chiding smile.

"Such intrusive questions are not meant for a first dinner." This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Kala, kala, I apologise," Konstantinos added hurriedly, his cheeks colouring.

"It is all so terrifying, and so fascinating at the same time. I unlocked mine just a few days ago. Quite remarkable, really." The party gave him a polite, uniform smile, offering absolutely nothing in return.

"Letting four people walk all the way from Nafplio," Vlachos said next, shifting at the head of the table.

"What was Stefanos thinking?" He looked around the room, clearly annoyed.

"If he did not have the necessary manpower, he could have written to the Council for directions. Did you ask him for a formal escort before you departed?" The party looked at each other, and Sarah spoke up before the silence could stretch.

"I'm sorry, but I am afraid we don't know who that is."

"The mayor of Nafplio," Vlachos said, waving a hand dismissively.

"A former student of mine. You should have asked him for help instead of taking such a perilous journey."

"Oh, everything was in complete turmoil when we left," Sarah said, her voice dropping into a defensive note.

"I doubt he would have had the time or the local resources to spare for us."

"Still, he could have commanded you to wait until things settled down in the region," Vlachos insisted, leaning back into his chair.

"It is reckless. I shall write a letter to him tomorrow regarding the matter."

"I really don't think that would be necessary," Donna added in a smooth register.

"There is no need to risk more runners on the road when we did manage to get to Athens perfectly safe." Vlachos did not answer, appearing to be lost in thought already, no doubt drafting the opening lines of the letter in his head.

"Aten," Ilias said the very moment the table's collective attention drifted off the party.

"Papadakis told me, and I did not believe her. You were actually there, at the Rise of Aten?"

"For a season," Steve nodded, leaning back.

"Consulting. I was lucky enough to see it before the world's press arrived."

"Lucky," Ilias laughed, a dry, rattling sound.

"Re, you were blessed. I sat in Athens and read about the discovery like a common tourist, an old man too tired to go on another adventure. Tell me about it. Was it truly as they said?" And Steve told him, and he was wonderful. He talked about the ancient mudbrick walls standing up out of the sand to the height of a man, and the distinctive zigzag wall running around the administrative quarter. He named Amenhotep III and spoke on the complexities of the co-regency.

He detailed the bakery with its rows of ovens and the industrial district, describing how the entire city emptied overnight when Akhenaten took the court north to Amarna and declared the old gods a heresy. The old man's eyes shone with reflected memory. Papadakis had turned her face their way as well, listening with a soft, pleased hostess's smile.

"Yes," Ilias kept saying, nodding eagerly, "yes, yes, exactly so."

"And where did they quarter you?" Ilias asked, his voice rising with excitement.

"On the west bank, surely. You must have been on the west bank for the season. Were you staying at the Marsam, or did Zahi keep you closer to the valley? I always preferred the Marsam myself."

"Closer," Steve said, his smile remaining fixed.

"Most of the time."

"Of course. And your reis?" Ilias spread his hands, entirely lost in the romance of a happy past.

"A man out there is only ever as good as his foreman. Tell me they gave you a Qufti, one of the old families. They are the only ones who can properly read the stratification of the ground. Mine was a Qufti. Forty years his family had dug the sand. He found things I had walked over twice without seeing."

"They were extraordinary," Steve said, his nod a fraction too slow.

"Quite remarkable people." Across the table, Donna's look flicked to Sarah. Arthur had caught it too: Steve was agreeing now where a minute ago he had been describing. He had hit the edge of his textbook Luxor.

"He always leaves out how much he bored me with it," Sarah said, leaning into the light to shift the topic before Ilias could press further.

"I came up from Aswan to see the site, two days on a ferry I would not put a goat on, and Steve spent the entire afternoon explaining the ancient mudbrick to me as though I had actually asked." The whole table laughed, and the humour pulled the old man's delight safely back to the grand romance of the thing, away from the logistics of the dig house and the local foremen.

"It was the colour," Steve said, finding his footing again.

"No one warns you about the colour. Three thousand years under the desert, and the ochre on those administrative walls still holds." The rest of the dinner discussion drifted safely toward various Mediterranean dig sites and their contemporary relevance, eventually turning to how the Acropolis seemed to feel significantly thicker with the new Ether than the rest of the city below.

"What do you think is the structural reason for that?" Papadakis asked, her gaze drifting curiously over the four of them.

"Can't say we have a technical explanation for it," Steve replied smoothly. Papadakis looked at them for a long, quiet interval, her smile polite and entirely unreadable before she looked away to offer more wine. They left the villa as soon as their departure could no longer be considered rude. Papadakis saw them to the heavy front door herself, holding Sarah's hands warmly in both of hers and telling her to bring her mother along next time.

She asked Steve to promise that he would return soon to settle the matter of the ancient survey angles with Vlachos, telling all of them how glad, how truly glad, she was that they had come.

"That woman could talk a cat off a fish cart," Steve said happily, once they were down the path and into the dark.

"I have not had a conversation like that since the last conference I attended. Did you hear Theodoulou on the Erechtheion? I could have stayed until dawn."

"We learned a great deal," Donna said.

"The Council is four cats in a sack, and their academy is a sack of its own. Vlachos thinks he runs them when it is Papadakis who actually pulls the strings. She let us watch her do it, which means she wanted us to know it." She walked a few paces, her shoes clicking softly on the asphalt.

"That alone was worth the evening."

"The old Egyptologist was a joy," Steve went on, his academic high finally beginning to cool.

"Got a little slippery there for a minute, though." He looked over his shoulder at Sarah.

"Thanks for the save."

"It felt like a fishing expedition to me," Arthur said, his hand lightly resting on Sarah's arm as they navigated the broken edge of the pavement.

"Some of those questions felt entirely premeditated." Donna nodded in the dark.

"We were taking their measure, and they were taking ours." * With the last of her guests gone, Papadakis carried the empty wine glasses to the kitchen herself, refusing to let Ilias help with the clearing.

"Sit," she told him, her tone warm but firm.

"You have done more than enough talking for one night."

"I liked them." Ilias lowered himself back into his chair, rubbing his old knees.

"The Vassilou girl, all grown up. And the Englishman knows his Bronze Age, knows it cold."

"He does," she said, running the tap and waving away a young man with a sharp flick of her fingers.

"The Egypt, though." Ilias clicked his tongue against his teeth.

"He knew the city layout. The royal seals, the king, the exact colour of the walls. Every word of it was perfect, like a man who has read everything there is to read about a place." He drained the last drops from his glass.

"But he did not seem to know the rhythm of a dig house. He did not even know his own reis. A whole season at the Rise of Aten, and he could not tell me where he slept." He shrugged, an old man's disappointment with the world.

"What can I tell you? The young ones have such bad attention spans these days. Always in a hurry." Papadakis dried a heavy crystal glass and set it carefully onto the shelf.

"Which season did he say he was there?" she asked mildly.

"Eh?" Ilias blinked, his eyes heavy with wine and exhaustion.

"He did not, now that you ask me." He waved a hand, dismissing it.

"It does not matter."

"No," she agreed warmly, turning to face him.

"It does not." She hung the linen cloth on its hook by the sink.

"Come. I will walk you down to the corner. The streets are not what they were before." When Papadakis returned to the empty house, she went straight to her heavy writing desk. She pulled a fresh sheet of thick paper from the drawer and dipped her pen. There was a great deal left to find out.