The next morning, Theron was back at work before the sun was fully up.
He sat in the marketplace with a stack of contracts to copy for a merchant named Dimos. Dimos paid three coins per contract. Slow work, boring work, but it kept bread on the table. Theron dipped his reed pen and started writing, his hand moving automatically while his mind stayed somewhere else entirely.
He was still thinking about the circles.
Nine failures. Zero results. He needed more information. He needed to watch the nobles train up close, study every detail of what they did. But the nobles trained inside their estates, behind walls, away from the public eye. The only reason he'd seen Kyros cast at the duel was because it was a festival spectacle. Those didn't happen every day.
So how was he supposed to get closer?
He didn't have an answer. Not yet.
His mother found him at midday.
Naia was a small woman, thin from years of hard work, with calloused hands and sharp eyes. She'd been a slave once, before Theron's father had bought her freedom. Now she worked as a weaver in a noble household, earning just enough to keep them fed alongside Theron's scribing work.
She sat down across from him at the small table and placed a cloth bundle on the surface. Bread and olives. His lunch.
"You look tired," she said.
"I didn't sleep much."
"Thinking again?"
He nodded without looking up from his copying.
Naia watched him for a moment. She already knew something was going on. She always knew. Theron had never been good at hiding things from her.
"I heard something today," she said.
That made him look up.
"From one of the other weavers. She works at the Aristophon estate."
Theron's pen stopped moving.
"They need a new assistant in the library," Naia continued. "The old librarian, a man named Philippos, is overwhelmed. He wants help. Someone who can read, write well, and organize texts."
She paused.
"They're accepting applications from anyone. Citizens, metics, even freedmen."
Theron set his pen down carefully.
The Aristophon estate. The same family whose son had cast fire at the duel. The same family that had almost enslaved him two years ago, after he'd been caught watching their magical training and trying to copy one of their spells in the dirt outside their walls.
He still remembered the look on Lord Aristophon's face. Cold. Disgusted. Like Theron was an insect that had crawled onto his dinner plate.
They knew his face. They watched for him.
And yet.
The estate library. A place where magical texts might be kept. A place with a window that probably overlooked the training yard. A place where he could observe the nobles up close, every single day, without anyone questioning why he was there.
It was exactly what he needed.
"No," Naia said flatly.
Theron looked at her.
"I can see it on your face," she said. "Whatever you're thinking. The answer is no."
"Mother —"
"They almost enslaved you, Theron. Two years ago. You stood outside their walls watching their son practice magic and sketching circles in the dirt like a madman. Lord Aristophon wanted you flogged. It was only because you hadn't actually cast anything that they let you walk away."
She leaned forward.
"And now you want to go back inside? To work for them?"
"I'd be in the library. Copying books. Organizing scrolls. There's nothing suspicious about that."
"There's nothing suspicious about it unless you do something suspicious. And you always do."
That one landed. Theron looked away.
Naia sighed. She reached across the table and put her hand on his.
"I know you," she said. "You can't help yourself. You see something you don't understand and you have to pull at it. You have to know. It's who you are."
She squeezed his hand.
"But that estate is dangerous for you. If they catch you doing anything — anything at all — related to magic, they won't warn you next time. They'll make an example of you."
Theron was quiet for a long time.
She was right. He knew she was right.
But the opportunity was too perfect to ignore. The library. The training yard. Access to texts that might explain everything he'd been wondering about for years.
"I'll be careful," he said.
Naia shook her head. "You always say that."
"I mean it this time."
"You meant it last time too."
They looked at each other. Naia's expression was tired. Not angry. Just worried. The way she always looked when Theron was about to do something she couldn't stop him from doing.
"Just promise me one thing," she said.
"What?"
"Don't practice magic there. Don't try anything. Don't touch their crystals or their texts or their circles. Just watch. Just listen. Just learn. Can you do that?"
Theron nodded. "I can do that."
"I don't believe you," she said. But she smiled when she said it. A sad, small smile. The smile of a mother who knows her son is going to walk into danger no matter what she says.
That afternoon, Theron spent two hours preparing.
He reviewed the classics he'd read over the years — Homer, Hesiod, the philosophers he'd studied from borrowed scrolls and overheard lectures. He practiced his penmanship on a scrap of parchment, writing out neat, careful lines until his hand was steady and sure.
Then he made a list. Not of what to look for in the library — that was obvious. But of what not to do.
Do not ask about magic.
Do not sketch circles near the training yard.
Do not stare at the nobles when they practice.
Do not touch anything in the locked cabinet.
Do not get caught.
He read the list three times. Then he burned it in his lamp flame and watched the ash curl into nothing.
The application was the next morning. Thirty-seven people showed up at the estate gates, all competing for one position.
Theron looked at them — citizens in clean tunics, metics trying to look like citizens, a handful of freedmen who clearly knew they had no chance but had come anyway.
He took a breath.
He had one shot at this.
Tomorrow, he would find out if he was good enough to get inside.
End of Chapter Three