Keeper of the Flame by Tracy L. Higley Page A

but she felt more inclined to slap him than kiss him. “What am I supposed to do with them?”
    Sosigenes peered over her shoulder, toward the bustling village. “For now, I should think you would get us out of this wagon, and somewhere unseen.”
    Sophia snorted and yanked the canvas to cover again its ludicrous cargo. “Circle it to the lighthouse entrance,” she said to Ares. “And be quick about it!”
    Within a few minutes, the twelve top scholars in all of Greece stood in the front hall of the Base.
    “You have more than enough room here, Sophia,” Sosigenes said. “We can continue our studies—”
    “You cannot stay here!” Sophia laughed, but the older man did not appear amused. “It is impossible. I live here alone, except for the servants. That is how it must remain. Besides, Caesar would certainly come here to find you first, when he learns that I am your biggest patron.”
    The other men murmured together at the side of the corridor. It was clear that none of them wished Caesar to know their whereabouts.
    “Sophia”—Sosigenes gripped her arm—“I must speak with you.”
    Finally . “Yes. Ares, take the Council to the kitchen, find them something to eat. Bring the noon meal to my chambers for Sosigenes and myself.”
    Sosigenes followed her through the courtyard to the lighthouse, then up the ramp to her private chambers. He was huffing by the time they reached her door, and she remembered his weak lungs.
    “You can rest here awhile, Sosigenes. Ares will bring food and wine, and you can tell me of this important news that you spoke of with such urgency.”
    She led the older man in and settled him on one of her couches. He was as lean as the day she had met him, but the effort of the climb seemed to show itself in the creases of his face. He stretched his long legs over the couch, reclined against a sandcolored cushion and sighed.
    Sophia patted his arm and waited. Sosigenes loved to present his ideas dramatically. He would need to catch his breath first.
    A lock of his white hair fell down across his eye, and Sophia pushed it aside.
    The old scholar had been her husband’s mentor, all those years ago, when she had been young and in love and thought the world would always treat her gently. Sosigenes had stood at Kallias’s side, marveling over the younger man’s calculations, cheering him as he developed the most extraordinary mechanism the world had yet seen. It had all been done in secrecy, with the knowledge that there were some who would go to great lengths to obtain his findings. Even Sophia, when she would bring Kallias his lunch of bread and cheese in the Museum, would have to stand on her toes and peer over Kallias’s shoulder to get a glimpse of his work.
    Then came the day when Kallias rushed home, swept her off her feet, and twirled her in circles, shouting, “It works! It truly works, my love!”
    Sophia closed her eyes, tasting the memory of that day. It had been the beginning of the end, but she had not known it then.
    Sosigenes gripped her arm and she opened her eyes.
    “I have rebuilt it.” His eyes held steady on hers.
    She shook her head. “Don’t speak to me in riddles, Sosigenes.”
    “I speak plainly. I have rebuilt it. Kallias’s mechanism. The Proginosko.”
    “Impossible!”
    He laughed. “Kallias had a brilliant mind, Sophia. But did you think he was the only one in all the world capable of such a feat?”
    She stood, unwilling to remain still. “Perhaps not, but you—”
    He smiled up at her. “You forget I was there, for the years that he worked on it.”
    “But you always said that you never could have built it. And when we lost him—”
    “We lost everything. It is true. But always, all these years, I have worked on the idea when there was time. Hopeful that someday I would find the key . . .”
    Sophia was pacing now. “And you have?”
    “Almost. I was almost finished when those barbarians rounded us up and chased us from the Museum. The next