“How much do we need to worry about that dude?” Dak asked. “You don’t think he’s SQ, do you? Did Tilda get some of her people back to this time somehow? With her Eternity Ring?”
“Seems pretty darn likely to me,” Riq responded. “There’s no way that guy was a local, and he said the words Time Warden.”
“Who knows what Tilda is up to?” Sera murmured. Any look of satisfaction she’d gotten from punching the bald guy’s lights out had long since faded into grim worry. “We just have to hope we’re one step ahead of them. Aristotle was close to Alexander and his dad, so we have an in that she should never be able to get. Let’s just find him and make sure we keep this . . . Pausanius from getting anywhere near his target.”
“Excellent plan,” Dak said. He and Sera both then eyed Riq to see if he approved.
“After you,” he said with an ornate, sweeping bow, stepping aside so the other two could lead the way.
Up the stairs they went.
Things were a little different back in the old days.
Sera half-expected the front entrance to have metal detectors and beefy men and women with guns strapped on their belts to watch for strangers up to no good. Not so, of course. Nothing like it — not even an ancient Greek version. Instead they found an open, breezy atrium without a soul in sight save for a man who had to be a hundred years old if he was ten. He sat at a wooden desk, staring at the huge front doors but not seeing anything. He didn’t blink or budge a muscle when Sera and the others walked in.
Dak started to approach the guy, but Sera quickly reached out and grabbed his arm. “Are you sure we want to bother him?” she asked. “Better to ask for forgiveness than permission sometimes. Let’s just go find Aristotle.”
Dak shook his head. “Your lack of Greek political etiquette is embarrassing. Just give me a sec with the old dude, and we’ll save ourselves hours of wandering around like dweebs.”
“Fine,” Sera replied.
“Careful,” Riq butt in. “He might keel over dead if you get him too excited.”
Dak gave him an appalled look, then jogged over to the patron for the League of Corinth. Sera and Riq followed.
“Excuse me, sir,” Dak began. “We’re . . . not from around here, but we have some very — and trust me when I say very, I mean very, very — important information for Master Aristotle.”
“Want to throw in a couple more verys?” Riq whispered. “That’ll get us in for sure.”
Sera elbowed him. She was the only one with official permission to give Dak a hard time.
The old man at the desk acted as if he hadn’t heard a word or seen anyone enter the building. His eyes hadn’t so much as twitched.
“Sir?” Dak asked. “Can you tell us where to find Aristotle?”
Still nothing. They might as well have been talking to a statue. But Sera could see the geezer’s chest moving, although his breaths were very shallow and spaced apart.
Dak shrugged. “Oh, well, at least we tried. So . . . I guess we just start walking around, yelling ‘Aristooooootle, where arrrrrrrrre you?’”
“That oughta do it,” Riq answered.
They moved to go around the man and his desk, heading for a set of marble stairs behind him, when the old guy suddenly sprang to his feet, fury animating his face. It seemed like an entirely different person had magically replaced the wrinkled zombie who’d been sitting there seconds earlier.
“Stop!” the man yelled, his surprisingly deep voice echoing off the high stone ceiling — in ancient Greek. “None shall enter here who has not sworn the oath! Those not of the League shall suffer the consequences for even attempting such a breach against the hegemon!”
Sera suddenly realized their mistake. The last person they’d spoken to had been speaking English. That meant their translators were only now calibrating to ancient Greek. And that meant Dak had effectively been speaking gibberish to the man who stood between them and Arisotle.
A thunder of footsteps sounded from down a hallway to their left. Seconds later, at least a dozen soldiers appeared, spears pointing at the three young newcomers.
“Kill these foreigners,” the old man standing at the desk barked. “Kill them swiftly and without mercy.”
The soldiers seemed all too eager to obey, charging forward with a chorus of yells.
DAK FELT like he’d been thrown into the middle of a practical joke. This couldn’t be happening. The League of Corinth was about peace, about philosophy, about negotiation, about bettering the fate of man. And now Dak had some old dude calling him names at the top of his lungs and a group of manly soldiers charging at him with big, heavy spears, their points looking sharp enough to gut a half-ton pig.
It all seemed so out of place that he almost forgot to run.
Sera grabbed him by the arm, yanking him back to cold, ugly reality.
They sprinted on the heels of Riq toward the stairs that led deeper into the building. As they rounded the wooden desk, Dak glared at the traitorous old geezer, red-faced and puffing his chest, standing at attention, shouting orders that were drowned out by the screaming soldiers. Dak thought those guys must’ve not seen any action in a while and wanted to make up for it by slicing three kids to tiny pieces. How had everything gone so terribly wrong?
They hit the stairs and started leaping up them two at a time. Sera had yet to let go of Dak’s arm, like a mother shepherding her son. He wanted to rip it free — he was perfectly fine to run from bad guys on his own, thank you. But his smarter side said that he might lose his balance doing such a stupid thing.
Up, up they went, the stairs seeming to multiply the more they ascended. They were only three from the top when something sharp poked Dak in the shoulder just as a hand gripped him by the ankle. He yelped and his arm came loose from Sera’s grip after all as he stumbled forward, smacking his head on the blunted edge of the very top step. He had a split moment to be thankful that thousands of feet had smoothed the thing out over the years, then a soldier was on top of him. There was a clatter as the spear the man had held tumbled down the marble stairs. But it was quickly replaced by the nastiest-looking dagger Dak had ever seen — all iron and sharp edges.
A few grumbled words of gibberish came out of the dude’s mouth before the translator in Dak’s ear kicked back into gear. It had taken a nasty hit.
“— out sliver by sliver.”
Dak didn’t want to know the first part. He struggled, squirming to get his body out from under the soldier, who had a knee placed directly in the middle of Dak’s chest, pressing him into the hard steps below.