The three days passed quietly.

Too quietly. The palace had a specific quality in those three days — fewer people in the corridors than usual, shorter morning briefings, conversations that started and stopped faster than normal. Collective instinct. Everyone knew something important was happening in the upper rooms and had decided without being told that the appropriate response was less noise.

’Or,’ Lysander thought, on the second morning, ’the harbor is exactly as loud as it always is and I am the one who is quieter and blaming it on everyone else.’

He ran the drill.

Six repetitions. The weight-shift sequence, the morning cold, the sword that had started to feel less like an instrument he was operating and more like an extension of a decision he had already made. On the seventh repetition Hector appeared at the gate without announcement — he sometimes did this, stood and watched without explaining why.

Two repetitions. Silence.

Then: "The fourth. The hesitation is almost gone."

"Almost," Lysander said.

"’Almost’ is doing considerable work in that sentence."

"Yes."

"Run it again."

He ran it.

"Better," Hector said. "Not gone. Better." A pause that had weight in it. "Today."

"Yes," Lysander said. "Today."

Hector went out without further comment.

’He came to check on me,’ Lysander thought. ’Not the shoulder. Me. He wanted to see what the three days looked like in a person who knew what the three days were about.’

’What did he see.’

’I ran the drill seven times. I think that answered his question.’

Priam summoned Pelonides at the second hour of the third morning.

To the formal reception chamber — not the briefing room. Lysander was in the correct position, three back from Priam, and he saw Pelonides register the room the moment he walked in. The slight adjustment in posture. The recalibration of expectations.

’He knew before Priam spoke,’ Lysander thought. ’The room told him.’

Priam said: "Troy is grateful for Agamemnon’s generous offer and for the thoughtfulness with which it was conveyed. We value our relationship with Mycenae and with the Peloponnesian courts, and we look forward to continued and expanding cooperation in the years ahead. On the specific question of a formalized regional framework — Troy believes that the most durable arrangements emerge from the natural development of relationships between parties over time, rather than from formal structures imposed in advance of that development. We therefore respectfully decline to formalize the arrangement at this time, while affirming our genuine desire to continue building the relationship through practical cooperation."

Forty-seven words of content. A hundred and thirty of wrapping.

The content: no.

Pelonides said: "Troy’s position is understood. I will convey it faithfully to Agamemnon’s court."

’Faithfully,’ Lysander thought. ’He is telling us he will not soften it. He is also telling us that Agamemnon already expected this answer and is prepared for it. The offer was not a genuine expectation of acceptance. It was a step in a sequence.’

’We are not the first domino. We are the second or third. He has been building this sequence for longer than we knew.’

’Very comforting thought. Very useful for a peaceful morning.’

The formalities concluded. Pelonides withdrew to prepare for departure.

The ship left at the midday tide.

Lysander watched from the harbor master’s office window — the barrier pilings, the trireme escort falling into formation, the hull catching the light as it cleared the mouth and entered the open water.

He watched until it was past the headland.

’Well,’ he thought. ’That is done.’

Priam called them to the briefing room an hour after.

All four of them. The same configuration as the morning they had received Pelonides’s real message — Priam at the head, Hector to his right, Ampelos and Lysander across the table.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

The cedar and old clay smell. The afternoon light at the angle where it was simply present.

Hector said: "He will not move immediately."

"No," Ampelos said. "He will apply pressure first. The regional partners — Lycia, Caria. The northern timber routes. Commercial pressure on the strait access. He will test the edges of what we have built before he moves directly against the center."

"How long before the edges."

"He is already applying pressure to the edges. The approaches to Lycia and Caria were the edges. We held them. He will find different edges now."

"The fleet," Hector said. "Daidalos’s timeline."

"Four years at current pace. Two if we double capacity."

"We do not have four years."

"No."

"Do we have two."

The question sat between them.

’I don’t know,’ Lysander thought. ’The honest answer that none of us can say out loud because saying it would require us to also say what happens if the answer is no. And none of us have a good answer to that part yet.’

He said: "I believe we have time to build what we need to build. I do not know how much time. The next several months will show us where the pressure comes and how fast."

"And the places where the network does not hold," Hector said.

"We build faster."

Ampelos said: "Lycia and Caria need to know what is coming before it arrives. The shared intelligence — they should receive a report on the offer and the refusal within the week."

"Agreed," Lysander said. "Not through a formal document. Through the existing channels. The same way they told us about Agamemnon’s approaches to them — person to person, ahead of anything official."

"I will write to my contacts today."

"Good."

The room was quiet again.

They were four people who had just refused the most powerful king in the Greek world and were sitting in a room trying to calculate how long they had before he did something about it. None of them knew the number. All of them knew it was not long enough.

’This is the most expensive decision Troy has made in a generation,’ Lysander thought. ’And the most important. And also the only decision that could have been made. And also the one that could get everyone killed.’

’All four of those things are true simultaneously. History is very inconvenient that way.’

Priam looked at each of them in turn.

He said: "The answer we gave was correct."

He said it the way he said things that were not questions — not seeking confirmation, providing it.

"Yes," Hector said.

"Yes," Ampelos said.

Lysander said nothing. He did not need to.

Priam looked at the table.

He said: "Now we see how long his response takes."

He stood and walked out.

The three of them sat in the room.

Hector said, after a moment: "Two years."

"What."

"If I had to put a number on it. Two years before he moves in a way that cannot be called anything other than what it is."

"That is an estimate."

"Yes." He stood. "Build fast."

He went out.

Ampelos stood.

He said: "The number might be less than two years."

"I know."

"I wanted to say it to someone."

"I know," Lysander said. "Thank you."

Ampelos went out.

Lysander sat alone in the room for a moment.

’Two years,’ he thought. ’Hector said two years. Ampelos thinks less. Cassandra said the decision was already made. I think the question is not when he moves but when the movement becomes unmistakable.’

’The answer we gave was correct. Priam said it like a fact. It is a fact. It is also the fact that starts a clock.’

He stood and walked out into the corridor.

He found Arsini outside the school administrative office.

She was reviewing a tablet with the absorbed attention of a discrepancy she was resolving. She looked up when he came around the corner.

"The enrollment for the shared session," she said. "Eleven children this week. Up from seven."

"Good."

"If the numbers hold another two weeks, I expect twenty more requests from the settlement."

"We can accommodate them."

She looked at her tablet. Then at him.

"The ship left at midday," she said.

"Yes."

"And."

"And Troy said no."

She held the tablet.

Not reading it — the gesture of a person giving themselves a moment without appearing to need one.

She said: "Taia asked me last week whether it was worth building her students’ reading capacity to the level where they could use administrative documents. I told her I would have a better answer in a few days."

He looked at her.

"Tell her yes," he said. "The answer is yes."

She held his gaze for one moment.

The look she sometimes had — not the recalibrating look, something quieter. The look of a person who has understood something they did not know they were trying to understand.

She said: "Yes."

She turned and went into the administrative office.

He stood in the corridor.

’She asked through Taia,’ he thought. ’Because asking directly — are we staying, is what we are building real, does today’s answer mean we are committed to duration — would have been asking something else entirely. So she asked through the school. And I answered through the school.’

’And we both understood the other conversation.’

’Which is either the most efficient communication I have had in two years or evidence that I have been spending too much time thinking in indirect channels.’

’Possibly both.’

He walked toward the training ground.

One more repetition before the afternoon work.

He picked up his shard.

One thousand and sixty-five words.

Keep going.