She let out another long breath, looking at him closely, trying to determine how far she would trust his word. Then she smiled, relaxing. 'Medion left his cloak at the workshop.'
'At least we know where he left it,' said Marcus. 'In Alexandria I was always having to run all over the Museum looking for it.'
She giggled. The sweet soft sound seemed to bubble a moment in his heart. 'Fifty drachmae a week!' she repeated reverently, smiling over it. 'We could buy back the vineyard! And I…'
She stopped herself. The vineyard sold to pay for her brother's Alexandrian education should have been her dowry, but she had always tried very hard not to acknowledge that painful fact. Her father, she knew, had hoped to save a new dowry for her from his earnings, but his savings had all been eaten away during his illness. She was of an age to marry, she had school friends who were married already, but with no dowry she was unlikely to find a bridegroom. That was a humiliation she tried not to think about, and not the sort of thing a young lady should confide to a household slave. She scowled at Marcus, who was waiting, his face open and alive, for her to finish her sentence.
Marcus abruptly understood how that sentence would have ended, and busied himself by bending down for his bucket of dirty water. Of course. He had silently disapproved of the vineyard sale precisely because it had seemed to him to cheat the daughter of the house of an essential in order to pay for a luxury for the son. But now he found that he was in no hurry to see Philyra dowried and married off. He would miss her. No need to worry yet, though. It would take some time to amass a dowry for her, even at the rate of fifty drachmae a week. And with the war…
He was determined not to think about the war. 'If you'll excuse me, mistress,' he muttered, and went to tip the water over the scraggle of pot herbs by the door. Philyra watched him a moment in surprise, taken aback by the way he had pulled off a sore subject unprompted. She had not thought he had either the sensitivity or the wit.
The following morning Archimedes set off early for the catapult workshop. Philyra, setting out to do the shopping about midmorning, found only Marcus in the courtyard: Agatha, who normally accompanied her, was helping her mother in the kitchen, and the boy Chrestos had exercised his talent at making himself scarce when he was needed. She looked at Marcus a moment, thoughtfully, then clapped her hands to summon him over and handed him the basket.
Walking behind her along the narrow street in the morning sun, looking at her straight back, respectably swathed in a white woolen cloak, Marcus found his steps light with an unaccustomed happiness. Philyra was starting to trust him a little. He prayed silently that the gods would offer him the opportunity to prove his honesty. He kept his eyes firmly shut to the reason he wanted her good opinion: there was nothing to be had there, except pain. Getting that good opinion, winning her trust and liking- that was a pleasure no one could deny him.
They went first to the baker's, and then to the greengrocer's shop around the corner. The groceress, a thin shrewish woman named Praxinoa, looked at them warily. Philyra bought some leeks and some olives, and paid for the goods with one of her brother's Egyptian silver pieces. The groceress studied the money a moment before putting it in her box and taking out the change. 'How's your brother settling in?' she asked Philyra, with an eagerness that surprised the girl.
'Very well,' Philyra told her; then, eager for the neighbors to appreciate the family's improved status, went on, 'He's found work already. He's building catapults for the king.'
'Catapults, is it?' asked the groceress. 'Huh.' She glanced around, then leaned closer to her customer and said in a low voice, 'Perhaps that explains it, then. I had a fellow in here just before you came, asking about your brother.'
'What?' asked Philyra, startled and alarmed. 'Who?'
'I don't know who,' said Praxinoa, with relish. 'Never seen him before. He wasn't anybody from the neighborhood. He was smartly dressed, though. Official, I thought. Must be because of those catapults. They're strategic, aren't they?' Her eyes glittered, hungry for scandal.
'Yes,' said Philyra, trying to sound resolute, though her heart had speeded up. In Syracuse, official interest could be very, very dangerous. 'They probably ask about everyone who works in the catapult workshop.'
'They do in Alexandria,' put in Marcus dismissively. 'Saw it there, too.'
Praxinoa subsided, disappointed. 'Learned about catapults in Alexandria, did he?'
Outside the shop again, Philyra looked at Marcus angrily. 'You think it really was somebody from the king, because of the catapults?'
'I can't think of anything else it would be,' Marcus told her.
Anger gave way to anxiety- and embarrassment at asking advice from a household slave. 'Did people come and ask about him in Alexandria too?'
Marcus shrugged. 'No. But in Alexandria he wasn't allowed in the royal workshops. King Ptolemy thinks a lot of his catapults, and never allows foreigners anywhere near 'em. Archimedes looked at some machines on the wall with his engineer friend, that was all. But catapults are strategic. I don't think this is anything to worry about.'
Philyra nodded, but she was still frowning as they walked on. Phidias had never attracted any disquieting official interest. Of course, Phidias had never earned fifty drachmae in a week, either. Things were changing. She wished she felt more confident that all the changes would be for the good.
Archimedes was obliviously enjoying the workshop. In the past he had always made his machines himself, assisted frequently by Marcus and occasionally by an unskilled slave lent for a particular task: there had always been a great deal of sawing, hammering, and blistered hands in between the interesting parts of machine-making. Now he only needed to say 'I want a beam this big to be joined to that beam with tenons,' or 'I need an iron heel plate this shape to fit that aperture,' and within an hour, there it would be. It removed the drudgery from machine-making and left only the agreeable inventive side.
He wore a linen patch over his eye for his first few days in the workshop, tying it on with Delia's cheekstrap. He had already resolved to give the king's sister her new cheek strap when he went to the house to announce the catapult's completion; in the meantime, it gave him a secret thrill each time he tied on the old one. He did not tell his family where he'd acquired the little leather strap, however. He thought they would disapprove.
He followed his own advice and tried to stay out of Eudaimon's way. It was impossible to do this entirely, of course. They were sharing the same workshop and the services of the same carpenters. But Eudaimon seemed as happy to avoid speaking to Archimedes as Archimedes was to avoid speaking to him, and for some days all proceeded peacefully. Archimedes made a trip to the nearer forts on the city wall, looking for a catapult whose dimensions he could copy. He eventually fixed on a fifteen-pounder with a particularly vigorous and accurate throw, and corrected the estimated dimensions of his own machine accordingly. The fact that his original was much smaller than his copy raised a few problems, which he enjoyed solving. The one-talenter would have an eighteen- foot arm span and be nearly thirty feet long; it was too heavy and too powerful to aim or draw by conventional methods, and he had to devise systems of pulleys and winches for it. That was fun.
Eudaimon paid no attention to what his rival was doing until Archimedes had been working on the catapult for four days and was ready to balance the stock on the stand. Then the chief catapult engineer came up and watched in silence as the beam- thick enough for a ship's mainmast, and still only partially finished- was suspended above its tripodal stand by a system of ropes and lowered carefully. When Archimedes signaled the workmen to stop lowering and secure their ropes, however, Eudaimon stiffened. With the beam dangling just above the pin, Archimedes began to thread about it the first of his aiming devices.
'What's that?' asked Eudaimon harshly.
Archimedes glanced at him- a process that involved turning his whole body, since his eye was still bandaged- then went on threading his pulleys. 'It's to help it pivot,' he said.
'There's nothing like that on the fifty-pounders at the Euryalus fort!' snapped Eudaimon. He sounded affronted by it.
'Isn't there?' said Archimedes, mildly surprised. 'How do they pivot, then?'
'Didn't you look?' said Eudaimon.
Archimedes shook his head. Biting his tongue with concentration, he threaded a rope around a pulley set into the stand, looped it through the attachment on the stock, and fixed it back on the stand, to a windlass. Only when he'd made it fast did he realize that Eudaimon hadn't answered his question, and look back.
Eudaimon was still standing behind him, staring at him with a mixture of shock and outrage. 'What's the
