He fulfilled the promise first.
Three days after the training accident, when Antiphus had cleared Miros to return, Lysander found him before the morning session started. The main training ground was quiet still — the early arrivals, a few guards checking equipment, the trainer walking the perimeter with the automatic attention of a man doing his morning count.
Miros was near the wall, running through a solo warm-up with the focused economy of someone who had been doing this long enough that it required no thought.
Lysander came and stood nearby.
Miros stopped.
*"The pivot,"* Lysander said.
Miros looked at him.
*"You said you wanted the correction."*
*"Yes."*
*"Run the drill. The one from before. I will watch."*
Miros ran it. Lysander watched the weight distribution — the slight leftward lean that appeared when he pivoted right, the compensation that had built up over years until it was invisible to Miros himself but completely visible to anyone watching the right thing.
*"Stop there,"* Lysander said. *"Hold that position."*
Miros held it.
*"Your weight is here,"* Lysander touched his left shoulder lightly, *"when it should be here."* He touched the center of his back. *"You are leading with the shoulder instead of the core. It happens before the pivot, not during it — which is why you have never caught it."*
Miros thought about that.
*"It is an old habit,"* he said. *"From when I was young. My left arm was stronger. I led with it."*
*"The arm evened out. The habit stayed."*
*"Yes."*
*"Run it again. This time think about the center of your back as the pivot point, not the shoulder."*
Miros ran it again.
It was not perfect — a habit of years did not dissolve in one correction. But the lean was less. The right side vulnerability was smaller.
*"Better,"* Lysander said. *"It will take time. Run it ten times slowly every morning before the session. Do not run it fast until it is automatic slowly."*
Miros looked at him.
*"Where did you learn to see that."*
*"I watch,"* Lysander said. *"I have been watching everyone in this ground for two months."*
*"Everyone."*
*"Every person who trains here has a specific way their body compensates for something. Most compensations are fine — the body finds what works. Some create vulnerabilities. I have been mapping them."*
Miros was quiet for a moment.
He said: *"Does Hector know you do this."*
*"Hector does it too. More naturally than I do — it is instinct for him. For me it is deliberate."*
*"And me. Did you — were you going to tell me. Before the fall."*
*"I had not decided yet,"* Lysander said honestly. *"The fall decided for me."*
Miros nodded — the nod of a man filing something accurately rather than judging it.
The trainer's whistle sounded. The session was starting.
They moved to their positions without further discussion, and Lysander noticed that Miros, through the first drill of the morning, was consciously working the center-back pivot. Not perfectly. But working it.
*Good,* he thought. *That is enough for now.*
---
He went to the harbor in the afternoon.
The harbor road ran down from the lower city to the water — a wide, well-maintained track that carried the constant traffic of Troy's commercial life. Carts, traders, sailors, the workers who lived by the sea's rhythms. Lysander had been down it many times in his role as overseer of trade and supply, always for the administrative aspects — the records, the cargo manifests, the conversations with harbor officials about incoming and outgoing goods.
Today he had a different reason.
Three days ago, reviewing the fleet inventory as part of his supply role, he had found a discrepancy in the repair records for one of the mid-size trading vessels. The repair had been logged, the materials recorded, but the description of the work done was imprecise in a way that made him want to look at the actual ship.
He had looked at the actual ship.
What he found was not the repair issue — that turned out to be a recording problem, a scribe who had been imprecise rather than a worker who had been incompetent. The repair was fine.
What he found instead was something in the hull design of the vessel next to it — a newer ship, one of the fleet's recent additions, still in the finishing stages of construction — that he had been looking at for ten minutes before he understood why it bothered him.
The angle of the lower strake junction. The specific geometry of where the planks met along the waterline. He had seen this design in the older ships and seen it performed differently in the one vessel that had been built to his modified specifications — the one Hector had approved the trial for, the one that had proven faster in the sea tests. The difference was subtle but it was there, and it was the kind of thing that would produce drag in specific sea conditions and could, in heavy water, create a stress point that the hull would feel.
He had gone back to the harbor records and found the name of the man responsible for the fleet's construction program.
Daidalos.
---
He found him where the records said he would be: on the work platform beside the unfinished ship, doing something with a length of rope and a measuring tool that Lysander didn't recognize.
He was older than Lysander had expected — late fifties, perhaps, with the build of someone who had spent decades doing physical work and whose body had adapted accordingly. Hands that were remarkable: large, scarred, with the specific callus pattern of someone who worked with wood and rope and metal every day. He moved with an efficiency that reminded Lysander, oddly, of Hector — no wasted motion, every action purposeful.
He was working alone. Two younger men were further down the platform doing something with pitch, but Daidalos himself was alone with his rope and his measuring tool and the hull.
Lysander stood at the edge of the platform and looked at the ship.
He looked at it for a while without approaching.
He was looking at the strake junction again — trying to make sure he had it right, that what he was seeing was real and not an artifact of looking at an unfinished hull at an unfamiliar angle.
It was real.
Daidalos noticed him when he moved.
He looked up with the expression of a man interrupted who was deciding whether the interruption was worth acknowledging.
He said: *"Harbor business?"*
*"Not exactly,"* Lysander said. *"I am Lysander. I work in the supply office."*
*"I know who you are,"* Daidalos said. He did not say it with warmth or hostility. The statement of a man who kept track of who was doing what in the palace's operations because it occasionally affected his work. *"What do you want."*
*"I have a question. About the hull."*
Daidalos looked at him.
Then he looked back at the hull.
*"What question."*
Lysander said: *"The strake junction. At the waterline. The angle is different from the modified vessel — the one that went through the sea trials last season."*
A pause.
Daidalos set down his rope.
He turned and looked at Lysander with the full attention he had been giving the rope.
He said: *"You noticed the strake angle."*
*"Yes."*
*"The difference between this hull and the trial vessel."*
*"Yes."*
*"You are the supply overseer."*
*"Yes."*
*"Not a builder."*
*"No."*
Daidalos was quiet for a moment. He had the expression of a man recalibrating, the same expression Lysander had seen on Antiphus and on Doros and on Priam — the adjustment that happened when someone turned out to be different from the category they had been filed under.
He said: *"Why were you looking at the strake angle."*
*"I was reviewing the repair records for the vessel beside this one. I looked at this hull while I was here. The difference caught my attention."*
*"What caught your attention specifically."*
Lysander said: *"I am not a builder. I do not have the language for what I saw precisely. What I noticed was that the angle here—"* he indicated the junction *"—is shallower than the corresponding point on the trial vessel. And the trial vessel performed better in the sea tests. I found myself wondering if the angles were related."*
Daidalos looked at the hull.
Then at Lysander.
Then at the hull again.
He picked up his rope and walked to the waterline of the hull. He ran his hand along the strake junction slowly — not checking it, Lysander had the impression, he knew exactly what was there. Thinking about something.
He said: *"The trial vessel was built to a different specification. The strake angle was part of that specification."*
*"Yes,"* Lysander said. *"I read the original specification document. That is how I knew what to compare."*
*"And this vessel was built to the standard specification."*
*"Yes."*
*"The standard specification has been in use for forty years."*
*"I know."*
Daidalos turned and looked at him.
He said: *"You are asking why the new vessel is not being built to the modified specification."*
*"I am asking whether the angle difference matters in practice. I do not know enough to know if what I noticed is significant or irrelevant."*
This was true. He had strong reasons to believe it was significant — the physics of water resistance were what they were, and the modified angle had produced measurably better results. But he did not know the full picture of why Daidalos had reverted to the standard specification, and there might be reasons he was not aware of.
He was asking, not telling.
Daidalos walked back to his rope. He picked it up. Put it down again. The hands-needing-occupation gesture that Lysander was starting to recognize as universal among people who thought with their hands.
He said: *"The modified specification requires more precise cutting of the strake planks. The margin of acceptable variance is smaller. Three of my best cutters are currently assigned to the eastern fortification repairs. I do not have the workforce to hold the tighter tolerance on this hull."*
*"So you returned to the standard specification for this vessel because the workforce required for the modified specification is not available."*
*"Yes."*
*"And when the eastern repairs are complete."*
*"The next vessel will be built to the modified specification."*
*"How long are the eastern repairs."*
*"Another two months. Perhaps three."*
Lysander looked at the hull.
He said: *"The drag difference between the two specifications — in heavy weather, in the northern passage — do you have a number for it."*
Daidalos looked at him.
*"From the sea trials. Yes. The modified specification produced approximately twelve percent better performance in the test conditions."*
*"Twelve percent."*
*"In those conditions. In calm water the difference is smaller."*
*"But in the northern passage in autumn."*
*"The conditions are rarely calm,"* Daidalos said. *"No."*
Lysander said: *"We have three vessels scheduled for northern route work beginning in early autumn. If this vessel is one of them—"*
*"It is,"* Daidalos said.
*"Then the twelve percent matters."*
A silence.
The harbor sounds around them — the water, the workers further down, the distant calls of the port.
Daidalos said: *"You are suggesting I rebuild the strakes to the modified specification."*
*"I am asking whether the workforce problem could be solved another way. I do not know your work well enough to tell you how — you know that better than I do. But the performance difference on a northern route vessel seems significant enough that it is worth asking the question."*
Daidalos looked at the hull for a long moment.
He said: *"The eastern repair crew. They are using three of my best cutters. If those cutters were rotated — two weeks on the eastern repair, two weeks here — the pace of the eastern work would slow, but this vessel could be rebuilt to specification before the autumn schedule."*
*"Would that require an approval I cannot give."*
*"It would require a conversation with the fortification supervisor. A man named Arkon."*
*"I know Arkon,"* Lysander said. *"Not well. But I have met him in the supply reviews. Would it help if I raised the rotation question with him, or would you prefer to do it directly."*
Daidalos looked at him.
He said: *"Why would you do that."*
*"Because I want the autumn fleet to perform at its best capacity. That requires this hull to be built correctly. Helping that happen is part of my role."*
*"The fortification supervisor reports to a different chain than the harbor."*
*"Yes. But the supply office sits across both chains. I have standing to raise the question without it being an intrusion."*
Daidalos was quiet.
He was doing the calculation that Lysander had watched other careful people do — not the obvious calculation, the deeper one. Not *is this useful* but *who is this person and why are they here and what do they actually want.*
He said: *"You came down here to review a repair record."*
*"Yes."*
*"And you ended up here."*
*"The hull caught my attention."*
*"You read the modified specification document before today."*
*"I read all the fleet specification documents. When I took the supply role I went through the full inventory of what Troy's fleet currently is and what it was designed to do. I wanted to understand what we have before I started thinking about what we might need."*
*"That is — thorough."*
*"I have found thoroughness useful."*
Daidalos picked up his rope. This time he actually used it — ran it along the waterline of the hull, checking something, his attention back on the work. But he was still thinking about the conversation. Lysander could see it in the set of his shoulders.
After a moment he said, without looking up: *"Talk to Arkon. Tell him the rotation would be two weeks on, two weeks here. If he agrees I can have this hull rebuilt to specification in six weeks."*
*"I will talk to him tomorrow,"* Lysander said.
Daidalos said nothing.
Lysander took that as the end of the conversation and turned to go.
He had gone perhaps ten steps when Daidalos said:
*"The modified specification."*
He stopped. Turned.
*"The original trial. The vessel that performed better in the sea tests."* Daidalos was still looking at the hull, not at Lysander. *"The specification modifications were small. Very specific. Someone understood what they were doing."*
*"The modifications came from several sources,"* Lysander said carefully. *"I contributed some observations. The actual design work was done by your team."*
*"I know whose hands built it,"* Daidalos said. *"I am asking whose mind designed it."*
A pause.
*"A collaboration,"* Lysander said. *"Over time."*
Daidalos was quiet for a moment.
Then: *"If you have more observations. About the fleet design. I would be interested to hear them."*
He said it to the hull. But he said it.
*"I will bring them when I have something worth bringing,"* Lysander said.
He walked back up the harbor road.
He had not planned for the conversation to go this far. He had come to ask a question about a strake angle and had ended up in a working arrangement with the man who built Troy's ships.
He had also, he noted, not fabricated anything. Every piece of knowledge he had used — the specification documents, the trial results, Arkon's name, the autumn schedule — was genuinely available to him through his supply role.
*That is the pattern,* he thought. *Not inventing knowledge. Reading what is already there more carefully than anyone else bothers to.*
Six hundred and seventy-nine words.