Chương 113: 104. Planē

They call the hill by the goddess's name now, and I let them. A name keeps the path swept and the roof mended in a way a number never will. The faithful tend the name. We tend the measure. — Codex of the Long Watch, Field Observation, 9th Century, Arcadia Steve sat in the lee of the surviving pillars, his ledger balanced on his knee and a pencil stub tucked behind his ear. He muttered the lines back to himself, his voice low against the constant rush of the coastal wind.

They had settled into the only sheltered pocket left on the headland. Sarah leaned against the nearest column, her left arm tightly bound and immobilized across her chest to keep her fractured collarbone from shifting. It still allowed her to feed the injured area Ether without moving the arm. Donna lay on her bedroll a few feet away, her forearm thrown over her eyes as her overtaxed nervous system slowly cleared the lingering cost of the technique. Arthur watched the horizon.

Steve had been right about the geometry days ago. The sun was dropping straight past the temple at this hour, the remaining pillars cutting the gold light into long, sharp slats of shadow across the platform. Four of those columns were gone now, reduced to heaps of chalky rubble that spilled toward the cliff's edge. Arthur turned the ruined shield over in his hands. The bottom half was entirely missing, sheared down to a jagged, gray lip.

He pressed his thumbnail against the edge; the iron crumbled into a pale, dry powder under the pressure. The guardian's trident had force-aged the metal by decades in a single afternoon, leaving the central boss pitted, brittle, and chalk-pale where the prongs had repeatedly connected. Steve tilted the page toward the failing light, reading louder now.

"Cross the grey water where the maiden leapt and fled, to the isle of the vanished, the grey-eyed's hidden bed. Let the golden measure, not her name, run true. The second hand waits where the line carries through." He tapped the paper with the back of his pencil.

"Four lines. A destination, a warning, and an instruction. Assuming I'm reading it right. Which I'm not entirely sure I am yet." Arthur laid the broken weight of the iron across his knees.

"Walk me through it."

"Line one." Steve lifted a finger.

"A maiden who leapt and fled. That's not decorative prose; it's a specific myth with the serial numbers filed off. A girl runs from a king, throws herself off a cliff into the sea, and the water refuses to let her drown. It's almost too straightforward. The story is famous."

"In nerd school, maybe," Donna's voice came from beneath her arm.

"Who is this maiden, what was she running from, and why did she jump?"

"Britomartis, a Cretan," Steve said, sliding right past the jibe.

"King Minos wanted her. She spent nine months running across the island to keep her purity and when she couldn't run anymore she jumped off a headland. Fishermen caught her in their nets and hauled her up alive, so they started calling her Diktynna; the lady of the nets. Artemis eventually turned her into an immortal goddess for her dedication to purity."

"Good for her," Donna muttered.

"Personally, I would have circled back to cut things off the king."

"He actually died a pretty gruesome death anyway," Steve noted, flipping the pencil around in his fingers.

"Boiled alive in a bathtub, according to the myths." Donna shifted slightly on her bedroll, her arm still blocking the light.

"Satisfying end to that story, then."

"And the isle of the vanished?" Arthur asked, pulling Steve back to the text before he could drift.

"That's where Britomartis gets her second name," Steve said, dropping his head back to the page.

"She is taken to the shore, and Andromedes, the fisherman who hauled her out of the nets, tries to assault her. She flees into a sacred grove with him right on her heels, and she simply ups and vanishes. The locals built a temple on the exact spot and called her Aphaia." He let the word hang in the dry air.

"Which means, give or take, the one who vanished. The invisible." Sarah shifted against the column, her face tightening as the small movement jarred her bound collarbone.

"That's Aegina," she said, her voice thin.

"The temple on the pine hill, on the way up from the harbor. I went there on a school trip. Half the bus was sick on the ferry ride over. But she vanished in a cave, not a grove."

"Bollocks," Arthur murmured under his breath. Donna let out a snort from her bedroll. Steve pursed his lips, staring at Sarah as if she had just insulted his lineage.

"What?" Sarah asked, looking from Arthur to Steve.

"Not according to Antoninus Liberalis 40 and Pausanias 2. 30. 3," Steve said, his voice dropping into a clipped, lecturing rhythm.

"The cave only shows up in modern secondary retellings and tourist brochures. So no, she did not vanish into a cave."

"You'll learn," Arthur said to Sarah, a faint grin breaking through his exhaustion.

"Never argue ancient history with Steve unless you've brought primary sources, cross-referenced citations, and competent legal representation." He glanced at Steve.

"The proper approach is: 'Steve, I'd always heard she vanished into a cave. Is that incorrect, or am I missing something?'" Steve glared at him. Arthur just chuckled.

"Alright, sorry, don't get so worked up," Sarah said, managing a weak wave of her uninjured hand.

"Steve, come now. Continue."

"The island referenced seems to be Aegina," Steve said with a small, sharp huff, tapping the pencil stub against his knee.

"Which is precisely the problem."

"You found the island and you don't like it," Donna said, her arm still clamped firmly over her eyes.

"Why?"

"Because of the second line." Steve pointed the pencil at the paper.

"'Grey-eyed,' or Glaukopis, is a very specific Greek epithet used by Homer to describe one goddess, and it isn't Aphaia or Diktynna. Grey-eyed is Athena. Every single time, zero exceptions. Aphaia is a hunting deity, a mountain goddess. She protects ships and runs with Artemis's crowd." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. He turned the ledger slightly to catch the last rays of the gold sun.

"But over time, under heavy Athenian political influence, her identity was sometimes merged and synthesized with Athena, because Aphaia was also looked upon as a local protector. It is exactly the kind of historical misdirection this riddle is warning us off. Let the golden measure, not her name, run true."

"So the riddle says don't trust the name," Arthur said leaning forward, "and you're reading that as don't trust the name on the island."

"The island Ageina, is linked to the first part of the riddle of the leaping maiden. We know the leaping maiden is Aphaia so the island being referred to must be Ageina." Steve was up now, the pencil waving in the air.

"Then the riddle mentions Grey-Eyed who is Athena which is then followed by a warning to let the name run true. If the verse is telling me to follow the true thing and not the muddle, then it cannot be pointing me at the muddle."

"And what makes you think Aphaia is the muddle and not Athena?" Donna asked"Because Athena's clean. Mythologically speaking, anyway. Her name's her own; it doesn't get muddled up with anyone else's. Can't say the same for Aphaia. Half the time she's folded into Athena." Steve stared out across the sea.

"And it only goes one way. Aphaia gets mistaken for Athena, not Athena for Aphaia. So the clue's got to be pointing at a proper Athena site. Where Grey-Eyes actually lives."

"There's more than one island in a gulf, mate," Arthur said.

"There's one that fits." Steve turned the ledger so Arthur could see the rough coastline he had pencilled across the corner of the page.

"Cross the grey water from here and you're in the Saronic Gulf. Aegina sits right in the middle of it. But there's Salamis too, tucked in close, practically sat in Athens' lap."

"And Salamis has a clean claim on Athena. Athena belongs there without any of the usual faffing about." Steve pointed with the pencil.

"They worshipped her as Skiras, one of her own titles. Herodotus actually names the temple on the island when he's writing about a sea battle."

"Here's what settles it." Steve turned the ledger so Arthur could see the Acropolis sketched at the top of the page, his pencil lead tapping a dark mark on its southwest corner.

"There's a small temple up here, at the Acropolis in Athens, hung right out over the drop. Athena Nike. Athena as Victory. The goddess you thank after you've won a war."

"Yes, I know of it," Sarah said.

"Temples face east, as a rule," Steve continued.

"You set the threshold to face the sunrise so the light from the rising sun falls on the statue inside. Nearly all of them do it." He drew a short, sharp line out from the mark, cutting straight across his penciled gulf.

"This one doesn't, and nobody's ever quite explained why. The sightline down its axis runs clean across the open water." Steve paused theatrically, holding his pencil poised in the air.

"To the Skiras sanctuary. On Salamis."

"People point things at other things for the dullest of reasons," Donna countered from her bedroll.

"Every gun on a harbor wall is aimed squarely at the channel. Doesn't make the channel holy. It's just the way in."

"The Athena Nike was built to celebrate the most famous naval engagement in Greek history," Steve said, tapping the line twice.

"Salamis is where the fleet broke the Persians. The sea battle that saved the entire country. You think the orientation of the temple was random? They raised a temple to Victory on the most visible corner of the most sacred hill they had. This victory was so massive that they carved the cult statue wingless; Nike Apteros, so Victory could never fly off and leave Athens." He sat back on a block of stone.

"You don't aim your monument to winning what was nothing short of survival at an empty stretch of sea. You point it at the exact place it happened. At Salamis."

"Or you point it at what you were keeping safe," Arthur said, his voice dropping low.

"Hmmm?" Steve muttered. Then his eyes sharpened as the underlying logic of Arthur's words settled on him.

"By God, that's bloody brilliant."

"Care to share with the class?" Sarah asked from her spot by the column.

"If the node is indeed on Salamis, then the Curators had a massive vested interest in keeping that island safe," Steve said, his voice rising with excitement.

"Don't you see? The Athena Nike isn't just a commemorative monument; it's a nod to what Athens was actually protecting at Salamis. The node itself." He sat back down, thoroughly pleased.

"'Grey-eyed's hidden bed.' Athena's place across the gray water. They aimed a monument at it two and a half thousand years ago, showing in plain view exactly what the Battle of Salamis was meant to shield."

"I can't argue about the battle. Every Greek kid knows about it," Sarah said, nodding slowly.

"What was so important about it?" Donna asked.

"The Battle of Salamis, 480 BC," Steve explained.

"The second Persian invasion of Greece. Xerxes' invasion - the exact same war as the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae. After their fleet took a beating at Salamis, the Persian invasion never recovered." Sarah frowned, adjusting her position carefully against the column.

"Here is what I don't get. Why even mention Britomartis in the text? Why not just build the riddle entirely around Athena?"

"Because the maiden gets us to the gulf," Steve said.

"The grey-eyed line corrects the final destination. That's how these things are engineered, each line tightens the constraints of the last. Or maybe the Curators were just bored, coggety old sods."

"It would be so much easier if Archie stops being such a pain and just tells us the next destination," Donna muttered. You are perfectly well aware that I cannot give information on inactive nodes. A node answers the hand, not the academic argument constructed around it.

"That's a no, then," Donna said. It is a functional description of the System's sector-locking parameters. You are entirely welcome to mistake it for a refusal. Arthur looked across the remaining stones at Steve.

"How certain are you that we have the right place?"

"Grey-eyed is Athena. Athena lived on Salamis and they pointed a temple at her from the hill. The verse told me to trust the measure and not the muddle, and Aphaia Athena is the muddle." He closed the ledger on his thumb.

"Yes. Salamis. Ninety percent."

"Good enough for me," Arthur said, leaning back against his broken shield.

"Which brings up a minor logistical problem," Sarah said from her spot by the column, her face pale under the fading light.

"Now what?" Donna asked, still not moving her arm from her eyes.

"Salamis is an island. An island requires a boat," Sarah said plainly.

"And the boats all run on the Council's schedule." Arthur rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers catching on the dried salt and grit from the fight.

"Bloody hell. It could never be simple, could it."

"Though," Sarah murmured, trailing off into a long, contemplative silence.

"Are we playing the Weasley brothers now?" Arthur asked.

"Finishing each other's thoughts?"

"Huh?" Sarah blinked.

"Nothing. You were saying?" Arthur prodded.

"Salamis is close," Sarah said.

"Steve wasn't exaggerating when he said it sits right in the lap of Athens. Crossing over from the mainland near Pachi is barely five hundred metres of open water. Even the Perama channel is only about a kilometre wide."

"And because the island breaks the current, the strait is dead calm compared to the open Aegean."

"Are there fishing villages along that stretch of the coast?" Donna asked, sitting up.

"Of course. The entire shoreline is dense with them," Sarah said.

"Then the solution is simple." A smile touched Donna's face.

"Forget the Council's schedules. We commandeer a small fishing boat and row across. As Steve keeps saying, Arthur has a gazillion points in Strength anyway; he can be the outboard motor."

"Oh, I actually like that idea," Sarah said.

"Not around Perama, though. It was heavily industrialised before the System, and there will still be too many eyes on the docks. But if we slip into the smaller spots around Megara or Pachi, we'll definitely find a varka."

"Donna, you're a terrible influence," Steve muttered, closing his ledger.

"You've turned an MSF doctor into a willing boat thief in less than a month."

"I'm teaching her how to survive," Donna replied.

"And also, might I remind you, you stole books from an old librarian. Pot and kettle, mate." Steve opened his mouth to formulate a defence, found absolutely no ground to stand on, and quietly shut it. By the time the argument had run itself out the sun had gone down and the cold had won. Steve built the fire up out of driftwood and the splinters of a crate, and the four of them ate olives and stale koulouri around it.

"We should allocate the points while we still can keep our eyes open," Donna said. She was mobile now and had run a perimeter, though they could all see clear across the cape.

"Sarah, do you think you can manage?" she asked.

"Won't know till I try it," Sarah replied.

"Before we do that," Steve said with a thoughtful look on his face, "there's been something that I've been thinking about."