hitting him- but as soon as the foot shifted Archimedes lunged for his calculations, and the kick caught him squarely in the right eye. There was an explosion of red and green which seemed to lance up into his brain, and he collapsed, stunned. He clasped at his face with both hands and rolled back and forth on the ground, gasping with pain. Then he became fuzzily aware of people clustering around him and someone trying to pull his hands away from his face.
He had the papyrus in one fist, and he resisted.
'Come on!' said a man's voice- Captain Dionysios, he realized. 'Let me see your eye.'
At that Archimedes lowered his hands- though he kept firm hold of the papyrus- and Dionysios examined the injury gently. 'Try to open your eye,' he said. 'Can you see?'
Archimedes blinked at him: the captain's face swam, clear on one side, blurred and reddened on the other. He groaned and put a hand over the blur. 'Not clearly,' he said. 'You look red.'
Dionysios sat back on his heels. 'You're lucky. You could have lost the eye. No permanent harm done, though.' He slapped Archimedes' shoulder and stood up.
Archimedes pulled himself up to a sitting position against the side of the fountain and nursed his eye again; it hurt. 'By Apollo!' he muttered. He found Eudaimon with his good eye, standing back and looking embarrassed, and gave him a glare.
Delia suddenly bent over him. Without a word she slipped the crumpled papyrus out of his fingers and gave him a wet lump of leather instead. The cool wetness against his burning face was indescribably comforting. 'Thank you!' he told her gratefully.
She noticed, however, that his good eye followed her a moment, and returned to the others only when he saw that she was not doing anything with his calculations.
The men began upon the incident's aftermath- Leptines rebuking Eudaimon; Eudaimon protesting that it had been an accident; Dionysios suggesting that he take his protege out, and the protege himself trying to get back to the subject of making catapults. Delia stood back and allowed them to get on with it. She uncrumpled the cracked piece of papyrus and looked at it. Itheld a drawing of a catapult, labeled with measurements, done in a precise and careful hand. She turned the sheet over: on the other side, in the same careful hand, were less intelligible sketches- cylinders, curved lines cut by straight ones, pairs of letters joined by squiggles or arrows- and some of the same numbers that had adorned the catapult. She frowned, then looked back at the young man propped up against the side of the fountain. Until that moment she had not really noticed him. She had been interested in what he told her about the intermediate notes on the aulos and excited by the water-aulos; she'd been pleased because he'd continued to speak to her naturally even after he'd discovered who her brother was; she'd been concerned that she might have got him into trouble. But she hadn't had any interest in who he was. Now she felt as though she'd stubbed her toe on a rock, and looked down to find that it was part of a buried city. He had guarded these incomprehensible squiggles more jealously than his own eyes, and she wondered what kind of mind would order its priorities so strangely.
Dionysios helped Archimedes to his feet; Leptines asked him if he was all right; Archimedes swore that he was. There was more discussion of catapult-making, and finally a price was set for the finished catapult if it worked- fifty drachmae. When this point had been resolved, Delia stepped forward and handed Archimedes his sheet of calculations. Archimedes bowed unsteadily, still pressing the wad of wet leather to his eye, wished the company joy, and wobbled off toward the door. Captain Dionysios followed him, caught his arm, and helped him out.
Delia waited. Leptines turned to her- then gave a sigh of resigned exasperation and strode off without saying anything. She had never been obedient, and he had long before given up trying to discipline her. Eudaimon bowed and stalked off in the opposite direction. The exalted doorkeeper waited until regent and engineer were gone, then crossed his arms and looked at Delia with his usual disapproving expression. 'You want something,' he said.
Delia felt herself flushing. The doorkeeper's name was Agathon, and he was a shrewd, sour man who missed nothing. He was a slave, but he had served her brother, Hieron, long before Hieron was a king, and his loyalty had won him an influence free men could only envy. Delia disliked his habit of guessing that she was going to ask him something before she asked it, but, like Hieron himself, she tolerated it because Agathon always knew more about what was happening in the city than anyone else in the house, including the king.
'Yes,' she admitted. 'That young man who was here- I want to know more about him.'
Agathon's disapproval grew heavy enough to press olives. 'A fine thing to ask!' he exclaimed. 'The king's sister wants to know more about some brash young flute player!'
Delia made an impatient gesture. 'Herakles, Agathon, not like that!'
'You, mistress, have no business being interested in wine-stained engineers!'
Delia sighed. 'If Hieron were here, he'd be interested,' she said.
Agathon's disapproving look lightened a little, and his eyes narrowed. 'Eh?'
'Two things,' said Delia, picking up her auloi and resting her chin on them. 'First: he's confidently offered to make a bigger catapult than any machine in the city, even though he's never made a catapult before. You don't think that would interest Hieron?'
'Mmm,' said Agathon, and waggled the fingers of one hand a little to show doubt. 'There's no shortage of ignorant and conceited young men.'
'Maybe- but before you and Father came up, he was talking about catapults as confidently as he talked about auloi- and he knew auloi, Agathon: even you have to admit I couldn't be fooled on that.'
'Boasting,' said Agathon shortly. 'Like many another man faced with a pretty girl. Second interesting thing about Archimedes son of Phidias?'
'He loved those calculations better than his eyes.'
Agathon gave a sudden snort of laughter. 'True son of his father, there. Phidias is supposed to have claimed that Euclid's Elements is a greater book than Homer's Iliad, and to have sacrificed to the gods in gratitude for some mathematical observation of the stars.'
'You know something about him?'
'Most of Syracuse has heard of Phidias the Astronomer. Bit of an eccentric, bit of a reputation, see? Teaches, too: only man in the city who teaches advanced mathematics. The master studied with him for a little, oh, must be fifteen, twenty years ago now.'
Delia stared. To Agathon, 'the master' was always and exclusively Hieron. 'I didn't know that!' she exclaimed.
'Why should you?' asked Agathon. 'Long time ago, before he bought me, even. But the master's said a couple of times he wished he'd had more time to study mathematics with Phidias. He only had a couple of months, see? Then your father stopped paying the fees, and the master went into the army. I doubt Phidias even remembers him.'
Delia nodded: she'd long known the story of how her father had paid for his bastard's education, but only until the boy was seventeen. Hieron had then been a year too young to join the army, but he'd been thrust into it anyway, and left to make his own way in the world- with spectacular results. 'So why does Hieron regret not having studied longer?' she asked. 'Was Phidias a very good teacher?'
'Don't think so,' said Agathon. 'No, it's that mathematics is useful to kings. War engines, surveying, building, navigation…' Agathon trailed off, staring at Delia, then lost his disapproving look completely and uncrossed his arms. 'Very well!' he exclaimed. 'You're right: he'd be interested in Archimedes son of Phidias. If that fellow's confidence is well founded, he's valuable.'
Delia nodded.
'I'll see what I can find out,' said Agathon. Then he looked at Delia again and asked, 'And?'
He'd done it again. Delia sighed. 'How much would you trust Eudaimon?' she asked.
'Ah,' said Agathon, face relaxing to something as close to geniality as it was ever likely to attain. 'You mean, do I think he's going to try to sabotage your dusty musician's one-talent catapult?'
Delia didn't answer for a moment. To suggest that Eudaimon would deliberately disable a machine which was potentially of great value to the defense of the threatened city was to accuse him of treason. 'I don't know him very well,' she said at last, humbly. 'Father's been cursing him ever since Hieron went away, he's obviously furious to have a rival, and I don't like him- that's all.'
Agathon shrugged. 'He's a man that's worked all his life and never been much good at what he works at. He's the worst of the master's engineers, which is why he's here and not at Messana. He's bitter and he's tired, he's
