Roshaan exits the suite, shutting the Calliope door quietly behind her. Blood thumps in her ears.
She contacts Maxine, updates her, and asks her to handle security. “I have an urgent matter with one of my other elites that requires immediate attention.” It’s a lie—another move against her grain.
She kills the call before Maxine can object, or even ask what’s going on, and she hurries to the next closest suite—Hendrick Lodewijk’s.
She isn’t sure which will be worse—security coming up here now and stumbling across the bugs.
Or Avi Galev.
Carter
The ship has departed for Turkey fifteen minutes late. Carter heard them calling earlier for guest “Arrabella Fairfax” over the PA. He’s worried that the tall pale man—or the orchid man—did something to red-haired Arrabella after the fight he witnessed down the stone alley.
He’s on the deck outside his mother’s suite. Gramps is napping. Carter tried telling Mom what he saw down the alley in Chania, but she only sighed and said, “Oh, Carter, you and your people watching and conspiracy theories.”
Now she’s making him do homework before dinner.
He thought about telling Gramps, but ever since that weird phone ping before dawn, after which Gramps made a phone call, then left the room saying he needed air, his grandfather has been distracted. Not normal.
The person whowouldactually believe him is Poppy Poirot.
“So what does the Minotaur and Theseus teach us?” Mom asks. “What did you learn in the labyrinth today?”
He starts banging the back of his heel against the chair again.Thump thump thump.
“Carter, please stop that,” his mother snaps irritably. “Let’s just finish this, and then we’ll go for fish and chips, okay?”
He nods, but his mind replays Arrabella in her little white shorts, fighting with the sweaty blond man. Then the orchid man following them. He wishes that stupid tour bus hadn’t blocked his view.
“So,” his mother continues, “when did the Minotaur story originate?”
He tries to focus. “Late Bronze Age? Early Greek Dark Age?”
“Correct. Somewhere around 1600 to 1100 BCE. It was already a deep part of the oral tradition before written records appeared in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry.”
He zones out again.
“Carter—did you not enjoy the labyrinth today?”
“I got lost,” he mutters. “You know I did. My fake torch died, and the older kids ran off yelling. Their shrieks echoed in the caves like a monster roaring.”
It had only been a minute or two before one of the guides handed him another torch and helped him out into the sunlight, but he’d been truly scared. He’d cried.
He hadn’t even been able to face his own inner beast—his fear of the dark—let alone the stupid fake one in a cage.
His mom softens. “Okay, you’re tired. Let’s finish this up. What does Theseus’s slaying of the Minotaur symbolize?”
He sighs. “Don’t know.”
“Come on, Carter. I know you know it.”
“The triumph of reason over chaos,” he mumbles, “because Theseus wins with cleverness, not brute force.”
“Exactly.” Her “teacher” voice warms. “Some also say it represents Athens rising over Crete. Or a shift from the old matriarchal, more pagan-like culture to the new male-dominated one.”
Her words roll over his head. He wishes again his father would come home, and Mom would be less focused on him all the time. He’d like to go to real school for a change. With other kids.
“Theseus might have been a man, but he didn’t win without a woman’s help,” Carter counters. “Ariadne gave him the twine so he could find his way back. It was pretty stupid of her to trust him, though, seeing as he dumped her on Naxos afterward. If I’d had twine today, I could’ve found my own way out. Even without the torch.”
