That’s what we have in common.”
“Why do you want to pretend that?”
“Why do you resist it? It’s no different from your attraction to Astiza. When you wanted me, on Lake Superior, you couldn’t have me. Now that you can, you repudiate me. Which of us is confused?”
How lovely she was, and how dangerous! I shivered, and hoped she didn’t see it. I did want her, but I also wanted to kill her, and would do so in an instant if Horus and Astiza weren’t at risk. Why hadn’t I insisted on staying with Astiza in the first place, three years before? Then none of this would have happened.
Aurora stepped close, her scent a mix of perfume and sweat from the day’s exertions. “I could learn to be a mother, too. Do you think I’ve never wanted children? Do you think I don’t have feelings, like you?” She grasped my arm. “I could be like other women, Ethan. I could!” And for just a moment I glimpsed the desperation beneath her steel.
I shook free. “Aurora, the last thing you’re like is other women. Harry has the good sense and instinct to be afraid of you.”
“He’ll feel different when I make him a prince.” The stubborn yearning was pathetic, the determination unnerving. “You both don’t know me. Not all of me.”
I knew enough, and looked away. “We should find Hamidou and decide what to do next,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.
“The mirror is here somewhere, I can feel it,” she said. “Some great bronze thing, as bright as the sun, bringing fire like Prometheus and remaking the world.”
“Somewhere.”
“We’re going to find it, Ethan, and possess it together.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“If this ancient invention worked, why did Syracuse lose?” I asked.
“All weapons have vulnerabilities,” Dragut said. “Perhaps the Romans came at night, when there was no sun. Perhaps it didn’t work in the rain.”
“And perhaps there was treachery,” Aurora said. “There is always someone willing to bargain away a city to save his own life.” She gave a glance as she said it, which annoyed me.
“Or bargain for the life of his innocent family,” I replied. Did even my captors hold me in contempt for helping them?
“But for medieval knights to be interested, the mirror must have somehow survived,” Aurora went on. “Somehow Archimedes knew the city must fall and he hid his machine. There is no record of the Romans capturing it. He secreted the mirror and either the Templars never found it, or they did so and hid it again. You saw the map, Ethan. You’re the key.” She smiled again, as if that might forestall any mutiny.
But the map didn’t show anything obvious, not even a picture of the mirror itself. These pirates were chasing a pipe dream of opiates and legend. I tried to remember the parchment we ate, its taste all too vivid. “Well, there’s the cathedral.” I pointed downhill toward Ortygia and the towers and domes of the duomo. “There was a cross on the map at that point.”
“I believe we could have found that landmark without your help,” Dragut said drily.
“There was also a castle or fort on the map, probably this Euryalus: the one that Archimedes supposedly designed. Where is that?”
“This way.” Dragut led us up a ridgeline past a tall, blocky mill to a plateau above the quarries. He pointed to a ridge in the distance. “It’s up there.” I saw a ramble of broken stone, with farms on the hill below. There were also the ruins of an old aqueduct that appeared to lead toward the mountains.
I considered a moment, and then held my arms out with my thumbs pointed skyward. One was aimed at the fort, the other at the cathedral several miles away. That line from one to the other should be the roughly angled line I’d seen drawn on the old map. I walked to the lip of a low cliff and looked down. Below were the ruins of a Greek theater, built into the limestone hillside. This was the horseshoe on the map, I figured. The nearby caves might be the humps drawn on the old parchment. Numbers might be measurements. But where was the squiggle that was the river? This was dry country.
“What is it you’re seeing?” Aurora asked. “What are you looking for?”
I ignored her. “Listen,” I said to Dragut. “Do you hear water?”
“It sounds almost under our feet.”
We climbed back down to an earthen platform that formed the top rim of the Greek amphitheater. At its rear was a limestone cliff about forty feet high, again pocked with caves. The largest of these was directly behind the center of the theater, a half-moon with a stream issuing from a dark tunnel in the back. The water fell into a pool contained by a stone wall. The rock behind the little waterfall was bright green with slime.
“Explain this, Hamidou.”
“A spring,” he guessed. “Perhaps that’s why they built the theater here. The citizens would make their hot climb for a performance and at the top have fresh water to drink.”
“They didn’t bring the theater to the spring,” Aurora said. “They brought the spring to the theater. This is below that aqueduct we saw. It feeds a tunnel that leads to this pool.” She pointed. “The water probably goes on to power that mill there, and then flows downhill to the city’s fountains. Clever.”
“Water power is just the kind of thing that would have fascinated Archimedes.”
“Yes,” Dragut said. “He invented a screw to lift water into irrigation canals.”
“So perhaps he engineered this. Which means he might have known this aqueduct and tunnel intimately.” I studied the cave mouth the water was pouring out of. “Not big enough to hide a ship-burning mirror, however.”
The other two watched me ponder, not sure if I was onto something or deliberately misleading them. I wasn’t sure myself, but I enjoyed that they were forced to trust me as much as I distrusted them. “Well. There was a line on the map that angled at this stream. I don’t have the slightest idea what it meant, but I think it might be worthwhile to take a look inside. The very fact that Roman soldiers would most likely
“You’re going to climb in that hole?”
“Yes. Hand me a lantern when I get up to the entrance.”
“How do we know you aren’t going to try to run away through the tunnel?” Aurora asked.
“Because your henchman holds my son, my dear. Your perfidy, your greed, your cruelty, and your ruthlessness are all keeping me perfectly in place.” I smiled sweetly and hopped over the low wall to splash across the thigh-deep pool to the little waterfall. As I expected, it was slippery, but by working up one side I was able to pull myself the ten feet up to the tunnel mouth, black as a nun’s habit. I squatted, water running past my boots, and called back to the others. “Now, a lantern!” I don’t like underground places, but I do have a certain expertise. There’s pride in having a skill besides cards, women, and wine.
Dragut handed me up a lamp and I began duckwalking into a passageway four feet high. Water splashed to my knees. The tunnel seemed wholly unremarkable, carved for the sole purpose of delivering what I was wading through. I was exploring because I didn’t know what else to do.
I left daylight behind. The others shouted but I ignored them, squatting and thinking in the dark. It was good to be by myself for a moment. But this cave crawl seemed pointless—until I saw a sign in the lantern light and my heart jumped.
A fat Templar cross, etched into the stone. No Archimedes did that, two and a half centuries before Christ was even born. Some medieval knight had crawled in here, too.
