Free The Orpheus Descent by Tom Harper Page B

provisions to outfit an army. Archytas said he would walk the first stretch with us.
    We took a ferry across the mouth of the lagoon. On the far side, we picked up a shady road leading south, through the ripe fields along the coastal plain. I wanted to ask Archytas about Agathon again – I could feel the time slipping away with every step – but somehow it never seemed like the right moment.
    We hadn’t gone far when I saw a cluster of low mounds, too small and isolated to be hills, bulging up on our right under a stand of poplars.
    Archytas stopped. ‘Let me show you something.’
    Tethering the mules, he led us off the road down a path through the grass. Asphodels and daisies licked at our feet; I could smell thyme and wild onions.
    Coming closer, we entered a sort of valley between the mounds. They rose above head height, each with a stone doorframe set into the side, sealed with a clay slab. Blackened lamps, long burned out, sat in niches cut into the lintels. Weeds grew from cracks in the stones, and grass had begun filling in the spaces between the doorposts.
    I supposed they must be tombs. I wondered why they were so far back from the road, on this isolated patch.
    One was different. A dark tongue of earth trailed from its door where something had been dug or dragged out of it. Fragments of a smashed clay slab lay on the ground; the opening had been blocked by a few planks hastily jammed across.
    Archytas paused in front of it, making sure I saw.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Someone broke in two weeks ago. They opened the coffin and stole some grave goods.’
    ‘That’s terrible.’
    It sounds like a platitude – but I meant it. Disrespecting the dead is about the worst thing you can do to provoke the gods: no Greek in his right mind would want to do it. If you’ve seen
Antigone
, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
    ‘Did they catch the person who did it?’
    Archytas picked up one of the clay shards, turning it in his hand.
    ‘Not yet.’
    He was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand what. Perhaps I was naïve; perhaps I had too generous a view of my friend.
    Euphemus, with no illusions to confuse him, got it at once. He coughed, with the contrived sorrow of a doctor giving a diagnosis which will be immensely profitable to him.
    ‘I think what our friend is trying to tell us is: Agathon did it.’

Eight
Jonah – London
    He’d seen films where astronauts passed their journeys in hypersleep, dreaming away the light years in glass cocoons until they reached their distant star. There were no cocoons on Ryanair, but it felt the same. He was numb, oblivious, moving through space in suspended animation. Even when he arrived, he didn’t feel he’d woken up.
    He’d rung Lily’s mobile from the hotel phone before he went to bed, but her mobile was still switched off. No answer from their home number, either. The thought that she might have tried to call him on his dead phone ate away at him: without it, he felt as though he’d lost a limb. The moment he reached the terminal at Stansted, he found a phone shop and paid over the odds for a new handset, praying his old SIM card would work.
    The new phone switched on. A circle spun in infinite loops on screen as it looked for a network, twisting his hopes into knots.
    It’s only a phone
, he reminded himself. But it was more than that. It was his lifeline.
    Network found.
    He checked the Contacts and saw all his old numbers had come with the SIM. The feeling of relief was embarrassing – but he didn’t care. He found Lily’s mother’s number and dialled.
    Julie, Lily’s sister, answered after three rings. It made sense she’d be there. She sounded surprised to hear him.
    ‘Is everything OK?’ she asked.
    That’s what I want to know.
‘How’s your mum doing?’
    ‘Not too bad.’
    ‘Is Lily there?’
    A pause. ‘Isn’t she with you?’
    ‘She flew back last night to be with your mum.’
    ‘What are you talking