The second day was a tour.

Standard in diplomatic visits of this kind — the formal reception established the relationship, the tour established the facts. The facts being: what Troy was, how large, how organized, how defended, how supplied. All of this was information Pelonides would carry back in his own head, filtered through his own assessment, shaped by what he had been told to look for before he left Mycenae.

Lysander had thought about this extensively.

The question was not whether Pelonides would gather intelligence. He would. The question was which intelligence he would gather and what he would conclude from it.

*We are not showing him Troy,* Lysander thought, walking three positions behind Pelonides in the correct formation. *We are showing him a Troy. The question is which Troy is most useful for him to see.*

He had one piece of luck he had not planned for.

Sarpedon was still in Troy. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

The addendum to the passage terms document — the clause that incorporated the multilateral strait principle into the original Lycian framework — had required more precise legal language than either party had anticipated. Sarpedon had stayed to see it concluded rather than delegate to correspondence. He was in the eastern conference room at the second hour of the morning when the delegation’s tour began, working with two administrative scribes on language that both parties could accept.

He had not been invited to participate in the tour.

He did not need to be.

Pelonides would learn that Sarpedon was in Troy the same way he had learned everything else — through the specific intelligence of someone who observed carefully and drew accurate conclusions.

---

The harbor first.

Pelonides stood at the harbor entrance and looked at the barrier pilings with the expression of a man who was not looking at barrier pilings but at what the barrier pilings implied — about the person who had ordered them built, the resources available, the surplus administrative capacity required to order and execute such a project while also running the ordinary business of the palace.

*He is calculating cost,* Lysander thought. *How much material. How much labor. How long. What it says about everything else.*

Hector stood beside Pelonides for the harbor section. He said almost nothing. He did not need to. The barrier pilings said what they said. The twelve coastal freight vessels moored at the eastern dock said what they said. The expanded fishing fleet said what it said.

Pelonides walked and looked and said polite things that meant nothing and noticed everything.

At the eastern dock he paused at the coastal freight vessels.

Longer than he had paused at anything else.

*He recognized the design,* Lysander thought. *Or he recognized that it was new. Either way, he is filing this.*

He said, from three positions back, in the tone of a man making routine supply overseer conversation: *"The coastal freight program has been developing for two years. The third design iteration launched last month."*

Pelonides turned slightly. *"Third iteration. You have been refining."*

*"The coastal conditions required specific hull characteristics. We found them on the third attempt."*

*"And the Carian arrangement. Is that related to this program."*

The conversation changed altitude.

Lysander had not mentioned Caria. The Carian arrangement was not in any document Pelonides should have had access to. Which meant his sources in the region were reporting on Troy’s regional relationships with more detail than expected.

*Of course they are,* Lysander thought. *He would not have come without them.*

*"Troy has been developing regional commercial relationships as part of the supply network review,"* he said. *"The coastal freight program supports those relationships."*

*"Of course,"* Pelonides said.

He moved on.

*He showed me he knows about Caria,* Lysander thought, walking behind him. *The same way I showed him the supply records at the dinner. We are still accounting. The ledger is getting long.*

---

The administrative wing in the afternoon.

Pelonides walked through it with Priam — the king showing a guest the operation of the palace, a demonstration of confidence. Lysander walked in the secondary position, available if needed, quiet if not.

The administrative records room. Doros at the long table with the quarterly accounts, looked up when they entered and immediately returned to his work. Not rudeness — the specific signal that the accounting work was ongoing and not suspended for the visit. Continuity. Discipline. Both visible at a glance.

*Doros did that deliberately,* Lysander thought. *He knew they were coming.*

Of course he did.

Pelonides looked at Doros. Then at the accounts spread on the table — not reading them, registering their existence, their detail, the evident competence of the man working on them.

He said something polite to Priam about the records system.

Priam responded correctly.

They moved on.

In the corridor Pelonides paused at the eastern conference room — the door was partially open, the sound of two scribes working audible from within, the specific low sound of tablets being reviewed and language being refined.

He looked through the gap in the door.

Sarpedon was visible — not dramatically, not positioned for effect. He was simply there, at the table, with a stylus and a document and the absorbed attention of a man working through precise language with people who knew the material.

Pelonides looked for perhaps three seconds.

Then he continued walking.

Lysander walked behind him and thought: *three seconds. That is all it took. A Lycian senior official in the eastern conference room, working on a document with Trojan scribes, as though this were ordinary. As though regional partnerships were so established that their administration happened alongside the normal business of the day.*

*Because it does,* he thought. *That is exactly what is happening.*

*But what Pelonides sees is: they have regional partners present in the palace. Not visiting — working.*

*He is going to tell Agamemnon something he did not expect to tell him.*

---

In the corridor afterward Lysander fell into step beside Hector.

He said, quietly: *"The Carian arrangement. He mentioned it at the harbor."*

*"He mentioned the expanded patrol range to me at the gate. He knew the number of stations."*

*"He has been thorough."*

*"Yes. And he saw Sarpedon."*

*"Three seconds through the doorway."*

*"Three seconds was enough."*

*"What do you think he is concluding."*

Hector was quiet for a moment.

*"That Troy is stronger than the last report suggested. That the coastal capacity is new and deliberate. That the regional relationships are not nominal — they are operational. A Lycian official working on documents in the eastern conference room is not a courtesy visit."*

*"And Agamemnon’s response to that conclusion."*

*"More cautious or more urgent,"* Hector said. *"I genuinely do not know which."*

*"Neither do I."*

They separated.

---

The third day: the settlement.

Not planned — the standard tour route did not include the organized buffer outside the northern wall. Pelonides requested it.

Lysander heard about this from Hector at the morning briefing and felt the sensation of something going exactly as he had not planned it.

*He asked to see it,* he thought. *Which means he already knew it existed. Which means his sources in the city are better than I thought.*

He rearranged his morning.

The tour was brief — twenty minutes, the northern edge, the main cleared space, the registration point. Pelonides walked it with the same quality he had brought to everything: apparent casualness, actual inventory.

He paused at the registration point.

A settlement elder was at the table — one of the cluster leaders, recording something with the absorbed attention of someone doing habitual work. Pelonides watched him for a moment.

*"How long has this been operating."*

*"The registration structure has been developing since the displacement arrivals began. The current form — approximately three weeks."*

*"It looks older."*

*"The community organization inside the settlement predates the formal registration. We built the structure onto what was already there."*

Pelonides looked at him directly — the first full look in three days, the look of a man updating an assessment.

*"You built it onto what was already there."*

*"Yes."*

*"Rather than imposing from the beginning."*

*"It was more efficient."*

*"Yes,"* Pelonides said. *"I imagine it was."*

He moved on.

*He is going to tell Agamemnon,* Lysander thought, *that whoever is running the administrative strategy here is not building the way Agamemnon expected. That the approach is different. That different is harder to counter than expected.*

*Whether Agamemnon finds that frightening or clarifying — I genuinely cannot tell. Which is itself a kind of answer about how much I do not know.*

---

He found Arsini in the harbor school in the afternoon.

The mixed session she had arranged was running. He stood in the doorway and watched.

Deia at the front — twelve years old, leading fourteen children through the second-level counting work, finding what each child already knew and building from that. The method she had not been taught. The one she had found.

Three of the fourteen children were from the settlement. Indistinguishable from the Troy-born children except, if anything, more concentrated in their attention. Children who had lost one learning environment understood its value in a way that children who had always had one did not.

Arsini appeared beside him in the doorway.

She said nothing for a moment.

Then: *"Pelonides. Did he see the school."*

*"He passed it on the tour route. The session was running as you arranged."*

*"Good."*

*"What do you think he concluded from it."*

She thought for a moment, watching Deia redirect a child who had lost the thread of the problem — not by explaining it again but by asking a question that found where the understanding had stopped.

*"That whoever is running the administrative strategy here is thinking in decades rather than seasons."* A pause. *"Whether that frightens him or impresses him depends on what Agamemnon told him to find."*

*"Hector said almost exactly the same thing about the military assessment."*

*"Frightened or impressed,"* she said. *"Both, probably. And they probably cancel each other out."*

*"Until they don’t."*

*"Until they don’t."*

They stood watching Deia teach.

*"She found her own method,"* Lysander said.

*"Yes."*

*"You didn’t teach her to teach that way."*

*"I gave her the space and the problem. She found the method."*

He thought about that. About the settlement’s internal organization — built before Troy formalized anything. About Fylon’s four sources sitting in the settlement waiting to be found. About the regional commitments that each party had extended beyond what he had proposed.

*"You said once — you did not start something. You joined something."*

*"Yes."*

*"It keeps being true."*

*"It does,"* she said.

They stood in the doorway of the school while fourteen children learned.

The city outside did its afternoon.

The Mycenaean delegation prepared to leave in the morning.

He did not move away from the doorway.

She did not move away from the doorway.

Neither of them mentioned this.

He picked up his shard.

One thousand and forty-nine words.

*Keep going.*