He passed Arsini in the eastern corridor on the way to the supply office.

She was moving in the opposite direction, the leather satchel on her shoulder, a tablet in her hand that she was reading while walking — not the careful reading of someone who had time, the quick reading of someone who was checking a number before a meeting. She glanced up when she heard his step.

She said: "The harbor school enrollment. Thirty-one children now. The afternoon session is full."

"Good."

"We need a third session or a second teacher. I prefer a second teacher — a third session stretches Thelon past what produces good results."

"The archive scribes. Two are still underutilized."

She had already thought of this. He could see it in the way she did not pause before answering.

"Maris evaluated both of them last week. One is suitable. The other is better with documents than with people — I would rather keep him in records and wait for the right candidate."

"Then use the suitable one."

"Yes," she said. "I will arrange it today."

She looked back at the tablet in her hand and continued walking.

He continued in the other direction.

One is suitable. The other is better with documents than with people. She had evaluated them, formed clear opinions, and come to him with a recommendation, not a question. She had been doing this since the second month of the schools. He had stopped being surprised by it somewhere in the fourth month and had started simply trusting it.

He was not sure exactly when that had happened.

He went to his office and picked up where he had left the coastal watch reports.

Ampelos brought the draft at the fifth day, late afternoon.

The hour when the supply office received its last deliveries and the harbor outside began its shift from the percussion of active work to the quieter sounds of things being secured for the night. Lysander had been going through the coastal watch summary — the weekly report from the five northern stations, longer now than it used to be, more information from further away. He read the pattern of what was not reported as carefully as what was. Silence from a station that had been reporting regularly was information.

Ampelos placed the draft on the table and sat.

He said: "Read it before I tell you what I think."

Lysander read.

Four paragraphs. The language was precise — Ampelos wrote with the economy of someone who had spent decades understanding that excess words in a formal document were not decoration but risk. The first paragraph established the existing relationship between Troy and Lycia. The second acknowledged the Dardanelles passage under Trojan administrative authority. The third contained the clause itself: Troy commits that control of the Dardanelles passage will not be employed as a mechanism of economic or military pressure against Lycia in circumstances of regional conflict, political dispute, or military crisis. The fourth established the conditions under which the commitment remained in force.

He read it twice.

Set it down.

"The third paragraph," he said.

"Yes."

"It commits Troy not to use the strait against Lycia. Only Lycia."

"That is what the Lycian king asked for."

"Yes."

He stood and went to the window. The harbor was moving into its evening — the fishing fleet returning, the trading ships settling at their moorings, the specific loosening of a port that never fully stopped but changed quality with the light. The barrier pilings at the harbor mouth were dark against the late sky. He looked at them for a moment.

"If the clause applies only to Lycia, Caria will want the same clause. The Thracian contacts will want it. Every regional partner we have or will have. In time we will have signed the specific use of the strait away in separate bilateral arrangements with every party in the network — each one generating its own conditions, its own surface for dispute, its own moment of leverage when relationships change."

"I saw this when I finished drafting," Ampelos said. "I brought it anyway."

"To see if I saw it."

"Yes."

Lysander came back to the table.

He said: "What the Lycian king actually needs is not protection from Troy specifically. It is assurance that the strait will not become a weapon in whoever’s hands at the moment when it matters. That concern is not unique to Lycia."

"It is the concern of every party that depends on passage for its trade and supply lines."

"Which is every party in the regional network. So instead of protecting Lycia from Troy, we make the strait a shared resource. Troy retains administrative control — the clause does not change who manages the passage. It specifies one thing we will not do with that control."

"And we specify it for everyone simultaneously."

"A multilateral principle instead of a bilateral protection. Every committed partner has the same assurance. No party can argue it received less than another. And Troy has committed to something that costs us nothing we intended to do anyway."

Ampelos was quiet.

He had the thinking silence — the specific quality of a man allowing something to complete itself rather than forcing a conclusion. Lysander had learned to wait for it.

"It is more binding because it is less personal," Ampelos said.

"Yes. A commitment that depends on the current quality of two parties’ relationship can be withdrawn when the relationship changes. A structural principle is harder to withdraw without undermining the administrative authority that makes it meaningful."

"Sarpedon will recognize that this is more than his king asked for."

"His king asked for the maximum he thought he could get. We are offering something more durable than the maximum."

"And Caria."

"When the Carian situation resolves — if it resolves in our favor — they receive the same protection without asking for it. It is already in the document."

Ampelos looked at the draft on the table.

He said: "I redraft the third and fourth paragraphs. The first two stay. Give me until tomorrow morning."

"Yes. And Doros — the administrative language, the specific wording that makes this a palace commitment rather than a personal one. He reviews it before it carries the seal."

"I will bring him the draft when it is done."

He picked up the existing draft and stood.

At the door he paused — the brief pause of a man making sure he had said what he came to say.

"The Lycian king asked for something smaller than what you are now offering him. There is a version of this where the answer to what he asked for is better than what he asked for."

"That is what I am hoping."

"Good," Ampelos said. "That is the kind of answer that builds trust faster than giving exactly what was requested."

He went out.

The redraft came before the third hour the next morning.

Three paragraphs now. The first two unchanged. The third: Troy commits that the Dardanelles passage will function as an open passage for all parties operating within the regional commitment framework, in circumstances of regional conflict, political crisis, or supply emergency, and that administrative control of the passage will not be employed as a mechanism of pressure against any committed partner.

He read it once.

Yes, he thought. That is exactly right.

He brought it to Doros.

Doros was in the administrative records room — the long table, the quarterly accounts spread out in the third week of every season without fail, the same arrangement he had been using since long before Lysander had a supply role. He was standing at the table when Lysander came in, a stylus in one hand and the expression of a man who had been interrupted at a calculation that did not welcome interruption.

He looked up.

He took the document without speaking and read it standing, the way he read things he intended to assess rather than absorb. When he finished he set it beside the accounts.

"The original request from Lycia was bilateral," he said.

"Yes."

"This is multilateral."

"Yes."

"That is a more significant commitment than what was requested."

"It is a more durable one. The bilateral version creates a precedent that multiplies. The multilateral version creates a principle that is established once."

Doros looked at the document again with the expression he sometimes had — the one that meant he had found something interesting and was deciding whether to say so.

He said: "The administrative language is correct. The commitment is within the scope of what the palace seal can authorize — it specifies the use of an administrative resource, not a military one. Priam has already approved the general direction. This specific language falls within that approval."

"Then the seal."

"Tomorrow. The formal document requires proper preparation."

He returned to the accounts.

Lysander was almost at the door when Doros said — without looking up — "The Lycian king asked for something smaller."

"Yes."

"He will notice that he received something larger."

"I am counting on it."

The sound Doros made — brief, contained, the sound of a man who found something genuinely useful rather than genuinely funny.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Come before the second hour."

The sealed document went to Sarpedon’s city on the morning tide — a Lycian trading ship that had been waiting for its departure window, the fastest available route south. Fylon handled the routing personally.

Lysander watched from the harbor master’s office window as the ship moved through the barrier pilings and into the open water. The hull caught the morning light for a moment — the specific brightness of a vessel moving from harbor shadow into full sun — and then it was past the headland.

He thought about the Lycian king reading an argument twice.

He thought about what it meant to receive an answer better than what you asked for. Whether a careful man read it as generosity or as strategy.

Both, he thought. And he should.

He walked back to the supply office.

The coastal watch reports were still on the table. Three remaining from yesterday’s summary. He sat down and picked up where he had left off before Ampelos had arrived with the draft.

He picked up his shard.

Nine hundred and sixty words.

Keep going.