Heir of Troy: The Third Son-Chapter 27: What Arsini Wants
She came to find him.
Not in the library — in his office, the small room off the supply corridor that had become his working space since Priam gave him the title. She knocked with a knock that was not Hector’s knock and not Fylon’s knock, something more direct — two taps, no apology in the rhythm, the knock of someone who had decided to do something and was doing it.
He opened the door.
She said: *"I want to talk about my role."*
*"Come in."*
She came in and looked at the room — the tablets organized on the shelves, the shard collection on the window ledge, the working copy of the supply inventory spread on the table. She looked at it the way she looked at most things: quickly, comprehensively, filing.
She sat in the chair across from the table.
He sat.
She said: *"In the meeting. You said I would share my records and my tracking and my willingness to connect things. And that the condition was that I would have a voice in what is done with what I find."*
*"Yes."*
*"I accepted those terms."*
*"Yes."*
*"I want to renegotiate them."*
He looked at her.
She was sitting with the composed straightness of someone who had prepared for this conversation — not rehearsed it exactly, but thought about what she wanted to say and in what order.
She said: *"The terms I accepted were the terms of an observer. Someone who provides data and participates in discussions. I want something different."*
*"Tell me what you want."*
*"I want a task. Something specific and active. Not just tracking patterns and bringing them to the group — I have been doing that alone for two years. I want to be doing something that could not happen without me."*
Lysander said: *"Why."*
She looked at him.
*"Because I have been in that library for two years,"* she said. *"I have read everything in it. I have connected things that no one else connected. And the result of two years of that work was a room of six people who looked at my summary for ten minutes and found it useful."*
*"It was more than useful. Antiphus is using your data to reframe his entire understanding of the patient presentations he has been seeing for five years."*
*"I know,"* she said. *"And I am glad. But Antiphus is doing something with it. I want to do something with it too."*
He sat with that.
He said: *"What specifically do you want to do."*
*"I want to build the education system,"* she said.
He looked at her.
*"The schools,"* she said. *"You have mentioned it — the idea of teaching children to read and write and calculate and understand basic geography and trade. Not just the children of nobles. The children of traders and craftsmen and harbor workers. The generation that will be running this city when the pressure comes."*
*"I mentioned it once. In passing."*
*"I know. I was listening."*
He was quiet.
The education system was on his list — had been on it since the outline he had drawn up on the ship back from Sparta. Not the first priority, not the second, but present, because he understood that the long-term resilience of Troy depended not just on physical preparations but on a population with the basic literacy and numeracy to adapt to disruption.
He had not yet figured out how to start it.
She had apparently been thinking about it since he mentioned it.
He said: *"Tell me what you have in mind."*
She reached into the fold of her garment and produced a small tablet — her own, the personal one she carried everywhere.
She set it on the table between them.
*"Three schools initially. The harbor district, the craftsmen’s quarter, and the eastern residential area. Each school needs a space — not a dedicated building yet, a room that is used for something else in the day but available in the early morning or late afternoon. Needs a teacher — someone who can read and write and has basic numeracy. The palace has several scribes who are not fully employed in their current roles, particularly the junior scribes who copy administrative documents. They could teach two sessions a day without affecting their primary work."* 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮
He looked at the tablet.
The layout was clear. She had thought about locations, staffing, timing. She had thought about what was available rather than what would be ideal.
He said: *"What would the curriculum be."*
*"Reading and writing first. The simplified script — the administrative form, not the full ceremonial form. It is faster to learn and more practically useful. Basic calculation — the kind used in trade and supply measurement. Geography — the trade routes, the key cities, the distances. Not theory. Application."*
*"Why geography specifically."*
*"Because the children learning this will spend their lives in a city whose survival depends on trade. Understanding where things come from and where they go and how far is basic knowledge for anyone who will work in that system."*
He looked at the tablet.
He looked at her.
He said: *"You have been planning this."*
*"Since before the meeting. When you mentioned it I realized I had been thinking about it without knowing it. The library — I learned there because the resources were there and I was allowed to be there. Most children in this city do not have either of those things. I want to change that."*
*"Why,"* he said. Not challenging — genuinely asking.
She said: *"Because knowledge is not useful if it is only held by a few people. What I know about the temperature patterns and the harvest yields — it is useful because I can analyze it and bring it to people who can act on it. But if more people in this city understood how to read records and connect patterns, I would not be the only one doing this. There would be ten of me. Twenty."*
He sat with that for a long moment.
*Twenty people like Arsini,* he thought. *In one city. In one generation.*
He said: *"You said three schools initially. What would you need to start."*
*"Authorization. From someone with standing to approach the scribes’ office and the district administrators. I cannot do that myself — I am a military officer’s daughter with no official role. I need someone to open the doors."*
*"I can open the doors."*
*"I know. That is why I am here."*
He almost smiled.
He said: *"The scribes. You have specific people in mind."*
*"Two of them. Thelon and Maris. Junior scribes in the administrative office. I have spoken with both of them — not about this, but I know their work from the documents they produce. They are competent and underemployed and I believe they would be interested."*
*"You have spoken with them."*
*"In passing. In the archive. We have discussed texts. I did not tell them what I was thinking — I wanted to understand what was possible first."*
She had done the preliminary research before bringing the proposal. The way he would have done it.
He said: *"The spaces. You mentioned rooms that are used in the day."*
*"The harbor district has a storage room attached to the harbor master’s office that is empty in the early morning before the cargo work starts. The craftsmen’s quarter has a meeting space used by the guild council two evenings a week and empty otherwise. The eastern district — I have not found the right space yet. That is the part that is not solved."*
*"The eastern district residential association meets in a large room near the public well. The room is available most mornings. Fylon knows the association head — I can arrange access through him."*
She looked at him.
*"You already knew about the room."*
*"I have been thinking about the eastern district for other reasons. The room came up in a different context."*
*"So the three spaces are available."*
*"If I make the right requests, yes."*
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she said: *"You are going to say yes."*
*"Yes,"* he said. *"I am going to say yes."*
*"Why did you make me explain all of it if you were going to say yes."*
*"Because I wanted to understand what you had thought through and what you hadn’t. If I just said yes immediately you would not know what problems I had already seen and I would not know what you had already solved. Now we both know."*
She looked at him.
*"The eastern district space,"* she said. *"That was the test."*
*"It was the gap in your plan. Yes. The fact that you acknowledged it rather than pretending it was solved told me something important."*
*"What did it tell you."*
*"That you are honest about what you know and what you don’t. That is more useful than someone who has all the answers."*
She was quiet.
Then: *"The authorization. The scribes. The spaces. What do you need from me before you can start opening doors."*
*"Write the proposal formally. Everything you told me, on a tablet, with the specific names and locations and the curriculum outline. I need something I can put in front of the scribes’ office administrator and the district managers."*
*"How formal."*
*"Formal enough that it looks like something that has been thought through. Not so formal that it looks like something that needs a committee to approve it."*
She almost smiled.
*"I can have it tomorrow,"* she said.
*"Bring it to the library. I will be there in the afternoon."*
She stood.
She said: *"The condition I set at the meeting. That this is actually a group and not a situation where I bring my records and have no voice."*
*"Yes."*
*"This is what I meant."*
*"I know,"* he said. *"And this is what I meant when I accepted the condition."*
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she went to the door.
At the door she stopped — the stopping that he had come to recognize as the moment she said the thing she had been deciding about.
She said: *"You said knowledge is not useful if it is only held by a few people."*
*"You said that. Not me."*
*"You were thinking it. I could see it when I said it."*
He said: *"Yes. I was thinking it."*
*"Is that why you are doing all of this,"* she said. *"The network. The preparations. The changes. Because you know things that other people don’t and you want to — distribute the knowing."*
He sat with that.
It was not how he had framed it to himself. But it was not wrong.
He said: *"Partly. The other part is that I know what happens when the knowledge is not distributed. When only a few people can read the patterns and no one will listen to them."*
She looked at him.
*"Like Cassandra,"* she said.
*"Among others,"* he said.
A silence.
*"Tomorrow,"* she said. *"The library."*
She went out.
He sat in his office for a while after, the supply inventory spread on the table in front of him, not reading it.
*Twenty people like Arsini,* he thought again. *That is what the schools are for. Not the children who will be those twenty people. The city that will be different because those twenty people are in it.*
He picked up his shard.
Seven hundred and nineteen words.
*Keep going.*
