Paris came back on a Tuesday.
Not the way Lysander had expected him to come back — not announced, not with the quality of a prince returning from a significant journey. He arrived on a trading ship that came through the northern passage with three other vessels and docked in the afternoon with the ordinary traffic of a busy harbor day. Fylon mentioned it that evening in his regular briefing, as a single line: *Paris arrived. He is at the harbor master's office completing the cargo documentation.*
Cargo documentation.
Three months in an interior Anatolian trading house and he was handling his own cargo documentation at the harbor.
Lysander sat with that for a moment before continuing the briefing.
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Paris came to him the next morning.
Not to his office — to the south training ground, at the same hour he had come before his departure. Which meant he remembered where Lysander was in the early morning and had chosen to come there rather than to the official space.
