Suddenly Sera was standing before him. She touched his elbow and spoke low, out of earshot of Dak. “Riq, what was that all about back there?”
Riq grimaced. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I overdid it a little.”
Sera shook her head. “Tilda had that coming to her, and worse. I mean before. You were ready to jump right into the fight with twenty heavily armed men.”
“Sera,” he began. Then he paused, searching for the words. “You know this is it for me. I can’t risk going back to the future when we’re done here. The mission —”
“The mission is important,” Sera cut in. “But so are you.” She gave him a look that was somehow friendly and dangerous at the same time. “Ever since 1850, you’ve been way too willing to sacrifice yourself for the mission. You’ve thrown yourself in front of swords, spears, and bombs. It’s got to stop, Riq. Even if you really can’t come back to the future, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a future of your own.”
Riq blinked mutely, unsure what to say to that. Had he really been that careless? Had he been acting like a hero or a lunatic with a death wish?
“You two want to join us?” Dak hollered. “We need to make a decision.”
“Well, you won’t do it in my home,” Olympias announced. She’d recovered some of her earlier hauteur, and once again looked like a princess. “Aristotle, you’ve done great things for my family, but you were also paid in kind. You’re no longer welcome here.” She raised a hand when he started to protest. “No. Please. Enough quarrels for one day. Please respect my wishes and leave. Immediately.”
“Respect?” Dak blurted. “You wanna talk about respect? Not only are you planning on killing the king, you know now that it could very well mean your kid dies, too. And you’re not going to do anything? What kind of person are you anyway?”
Sera touched Dak on the arm, her eyes down. Riq felt for him, but he also knew there was nothing they could do to change things through Olympias.
“Hey,” Riq said to his friend. “Dude. Just let it go. Come on.”
“Yes,” Aristotle agreed. “It’s plain that dealing with this woman can no longer lead to solutions. Dak. Sera. Riq. Let’s go and gather our thoughts in a place more welcoming than here.”
They started to walk off, and Olympias called out some parting words.
“Never come back.”
They found a little alcove in an abandoned warehouse, where the smell of fish and salt and rotting meat mixed with the scent of flowers that covered the grounds nearby. It all combined into something that wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and for some reason it made Sera’s stomach rumble with hunger. They sat on old benches of stone — cracked and dirty — and tried to figure out what they should do next.
“Look on the bright side,” Dak said. “We’re no worse off than before. Actually, we’re better off in some ways. We still have to stop this Pausanius dude from killing Alexander, which was right where we started. But at least we know that Tilda is out of the picture. Right?”
Sera didn’t think that was much to get excited about. “Yeah, I guess. But now Olympias can warn her man, make sure he’s more careful.”
“But,” Riq said, “that might be good, too. She obviously doesn’t really want to kill her son. Maybe she’ll drive that through the guy’s head: Don’t kill Alexander, no matter what.”
Aristotle was shaking his head. “All excellent points, but I fear you’re missing the most important. Whether or not Pausanius means him any harm, Alexander is now out for the man’s blood. If Alexander defends his father, or avenges him, Pausanius will fight back to protect his own life.”
Dak scoffed at that. “Did you see the way he mowed down all those soldiers out there? Unless this Pausanius guy is Hercules or something, I think old boy Alex will be just fine.”
“Except he wasn’t.” Sera didn’t mean to be flippant, but it was the sad truth that Pausanius had killed Alexander, no matter how great a fighter the heir to Philip might have been. “He died, and there’s nothing to say it won’t happen just like it did in our history books.”
Dak opened his mouth for a retort, but then left it hanging there. She was right, and he knew it.
“So, what do we do?” Riq asked.
Aristotle gave the answer. “It’s quite simple, really. We use your time device to jump ahead a few days to the future, traveling to the camps of King Philip. Once there, we do everything in our power to keep Pausanius away from the hegemon and his son. I still have a lot of sway, I believe.”
Sera liked to hear him sound so confident. “Perfect. That’s about the best plan we can hope for. I just hope they believe us.”
Before anyone could respond to her, a soldier appeared from around the corner, collapsing in a heap right in front of their benches. He was ragged and bruised and bloody, gasping for each and every breath as if his lungs had been punctured. Sera recognized him as one of Tilda’s men. She jumped up in fear but then realized just how weak the man was, not a threat at all. Everyone else had stood up as well.
“Aris . . . totle,” the man wheezed.
The philosopher knelt down by the man, though keeping his distance in case it was a trap. “Yes. What is it?”
“You . . . spared . . . my life.” The man’s face pinched up in pain, and he took several long, struggling breaths. “I want to . . . repay you.” He reached out and opened his hand, where a scroll had been clutched between his fingers.
Aristotle stood up, took the scroll, unrolled it, then read through it quickly. When he was finished, he looked right at Dak.
“When you told me your story, you mentioned something about your parents possibly being in this time period, correct?”
Dak nodded uncertainly. “Yeah, what’s going on?”
“They have the name Smyth, just like yours?”
“Yes!”
The philosopher’s face creased in concern. “An unusual name for these parts, so I can’t imagine it to be a coincidence.”
This time it was Sera’s turn to yell in frustration, Aristotle or not. “Tell us!”
The man complied. “It looks like your Tilda gave us one last blow. If I understand correctly, Dak, your parents have been sent to the front line of King Philip’s upcoming battle.” He slowly shook his head back and forth, even sadder than before. “A place where almost no one survives, I’m afraid.”