Sacred Games (28 page)

It was an odd thing that Pericles and Diotima, who couldn’t stand each other, were so alike when it came to ruthlessly achieving their objectives.

I sighed. “You’re right. I’ll talk to Exelon.” I told myself I’d be more diplomatic about it than Diotima.

We’d missed most of the lunch, but we could smell it, and we headed that way. As we walked across the Sanctuary of Zeus, discussing the case, we came across a man lying in the dirt. I recognized him at once.

“Niallos, are you all right?” It was the manager of the Theban chariot team, who had tried to protect Iphicles from our questions and who had sat with the charioteer while he died.

“No, I’m not bloody all right,” he said, his face in the dirt. “I killed my friend.”

His hair was shredded almost to nothing. He’d cut it with a knife, and either the knife had been blunt, or he’d been mighty careless as he hewed, because there were ugly wounds in his scalp that had barely scabbed over. To cut one’s hair is the traditional sign of mourning, but usually it’s a polite shear. Niallos had really meant it.

I helped him up and wrinkled my nose. Niallos hadn’t washed
or eaten or, if the way he clutched a wineskin was any indication, done anything but drink since Iphicles had died the day before. The dust caked on his face had tracks where the tears had fallen.

He said, “If only it had been a decent death, I could accept it, you know? Racing’s a deadly game, always has been. If another chariot had gone into him, or his team went down, or he didn’t make the turn, then it’d be the will of the gods. I could accept that. If only it weren’t my chariot that killed him.”

He stifled a sob.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

“Of course it’s my bloody fault! I’m the team manager. Iphicles died because I gave him a faulty vehicle. Did you see the way that wheel came off?”

“Accidents happen,” Diotima said. I heard the pity in her voice.

“Yeah, well, that’s what I tell myself, but it’s not much consolation.” He swayed from side to side, and his face was gray. For a moment I wondered if Niallos was about to pass out.

Instead, he said, “I’ve known Iphicles ever since he was a lad. He used to hang around the chariot teams and bother the drivers, when he was, oh, I don’t know, eight or nine years old? That boy was born to race.”

“You’d been together that long?”

“All he ever wanted was to be a driver. Back then, I was a crew member, a chariot specialist. All I wanted was to be manager. I was working my way up.”

He upended the wineskin. I thought about taking it from him, but it would have been cruel. He needed to forget.

Niallos went on, “The drivers are the stars, you know. They thought Iphicles was just another fan boy, but I knew the lad loved the race as much as I did. He and I used to talk chariots long into the night. Now see what it’s brought us.”

The way he said it, I could tell they’d done more than just talk. Niallos had lost his love.

“Can we help?” Diotima asked gently.

“You can’t bring back the dead, can you?”

Diotima was silent.

Niallos began to sob once more. All we could do was sit him in the shade with his wine and leave him alone.

“These Games are cruel,” Diotima said.

E
XELON WAS A
hard man to catch, which was not surprising for someone running the largest athletic event in the world. I eventually managed by waylaying him at lunch, where he sat with the other judges before bowls of steaming ox meat.

I pushed my way into their group with mumbled excuses. “Exelon, I must ask you some questions.”

“Now?” he said. He looked meaningfully down at his bowl of hot food.

“Have you any idea how hard it is to get hold of you?”

He said angrily, “I’ve been working since before dawn yesterday morning. It’s the middle of the day; I will be up half the night and at work again before Apollo rises tomorrow. So yes, young man, I have some vague awareness of how busy I am. What do you want?”

I studied the man who was hated so very much by his daughter Klymene, and I wondered which of them was in the right. For my purposes, though, the answer didn’t matter.

“Exelon, new evidence has come to light that, when you’ve heard it, will probably cause you to drop all charges against Timodemus.” I began praying that Diotima’s idea would work.

Exelon looked amazed. “That’s an extraordinary statement, young man!”

“It’s extraordinary evidence, sir.” I took a deep breath. Then I whispered, so quietly that no one else could hear, “Exelon, I must report to you, in your official role as Judge of the Games, that the Priestess of the Games may be a tad … er … impure.”

Exelon looked left and right to make sure no one had heard
me. “Shhhh! Don’t say that out in the open, you idiot.” He set aside his bowl of food. “Come with me at once.”

He dragged me across the grounds of Olympia to where the judges had their tents, in the best, most central location. He ushered me into his own tent and went straight to an ornately carved traveling cabinet I knew must hold wine, since it was decorated with the figure of the god Dionysos surrounded by grapes. He opened the door to pull out a cooler in the shape of a flying heron.

Exelon poured himself a slug of wine into a cup fashioned and painted to look like an egg. He took a hefty swallow, then collected himself and held the cooler up to me. “Do you want some?”

“Yes.” I felt I was about to be as depressed as he looked.

Exelon pulled out another egg-shaped cup from a chest and handed it to me. I was surprised at the weight and then saw that it was solid silver.

“They’re family heirlooms,” he said when he noticed my interest. “My family is one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most respected in all of Elis. I come from a long line of judges stretching back generations, but I believe I am the first of my genos to be Chief Judge of the Games. For the Chief Judge, young man, the Games he runs define the success or failure of his entire life. I’m not the suicidal type, but I wonder if by the end of this disaster I might not feel like it.”

“Has it been that bad?”

“What do you think? How many Games have seen contestants murdered? No matter what trouble this might mean for Athens and Sparta, for me it’s a personal disaster, and now Olympia is becoming an armed camp. Will this be the first Olympics in history to be abandoned due to war? And to top it off, there was that impious
idiot
with the cow made of dough.”

“It was an ox.”

“My Olympics will be a laughing stock because of him.
A hundred years from now men will still be calling this the Olympics of the bread cow, and they’ll laugh.”

“I’m pretty sure it was an ox.”

“An ox, you say? You must have looked more closely than I.” Exelon emptied his cup and filled himself another. He fell back on a comfortable stool. “Now you may say what you have to say.”

“I’ve said it. Your daughter, the Priestess of Demeter, was having it off with two of the contestants. Arakos and Timodemus. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

Exelon snorted. “What you bring me is no news at all, and it’s no coincidence. The pankratists are the stars of the Olympics. It seems my daughter likes them strong and flashy.”

“What?”

“I’m not blind, young man. I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I stop it? Well, by the time I found out, the damage was done. If I made a fuss, it would have hurt her more than them.”

It wasn’t what I was thinking at all. “How did you find out?”

“My daughter is a featherhead—I may be her father, but I’m not deluded—she left enough hints that anyone would have known. I see that I must tell you the whole story, but you must never reveal what I’m about to say.”

“I’m sorry, Exelon, I can’t promise you that. Not if it proves Timodemus is innocent.”

“You have no choice,” he said. “I remind you, young man, that you swore an Olympic Oath.”

“I could hardly forget it. I must discover this killer no matter what the consequences.”

“You’re wrong,” said the Chief Judge of the Games. “Nothing in your oath
requires
you to catch the killer. But you are required to obey the orders of the Judges of the Games.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. Then I almost shouted, “You deliberately wrote the oath so that I must obey you!”

“No,” he said. “You spoke the standard oath. But it so happens in your case the words take a different meaning from any other
event. I therefore order you, Nicolaos of Athens, not to reveal my daughter’s activities.”

I was honor bound by oath to Zeus to obey.

Angry, I said, “You realize, don’t you, Exelon, that this makes you a suspect.”

“It does not.”

“A man whose daughter was despoiled by the victim
and
the accused? You must hate them both.”

“On the contrary. I called Arakos and Timodemus to my house in Elis on the day before the procession.”

I imagined the scene, the two bitter rivals, standing side by side, facing the man who would soon decide their fate in the Games, the event for which they’d trained since they were boys, the event they’d been born to contest, and both knowing they’d been screwing this man’s daughter.

“I suppose you tore strips off them?” I said

“I was the voice of reason, after I finished shouting at them. I told them that I knew what had been going on. They both turned a distinct green color.”

“I can imagine. They both probably expected to be disqualified. It would have ruined their lives.”

“And the life of my daughter, too. She could never survive the scandal and find a husband. But equally I did not dare let them go unpunished. One or the other of these two over-endowed idiots was certain to win the pankration, and when he did, he would be untouchable. The winner could boast that he’d despoiled the daughter of the Chief Judge and be immune from my revenge. Happily, I had the perfect punishment.”

“I can’t imagine what it was.”

“I congratulated them and said that one of them was about to become my son-in-law. I told Arakos and Timodemus that whichever of them won the Olympic crown would also win my daughter in marriage.”

He paused.

“So you see, one of them would lose the Olympics, and the other would be stuck with my daughter. I’m not sure which is the worse fate, but either way, why should I wish to kill my future son-in-law? Especially when he’s about to become an Olympic champion.”

“W
HEN
D
ROMEUS ADVISED
you to have regular sex, he probably didn’t mean with the Priestess of the Games.”

Timo shrugged. “Can I help it if I’m irresistible to women?”

I’d marched to the makeshift prison via the fire pits, where I’d snaffled a rib of succulent meat that dripped with fat, maybe the best I’d ever tasted. Timo and I sat on the dirty floor and ate it. I needed to confirm Exelon’s statement with the only man left alive who would know. Also, I had a few bones to pick with my supposed friend, the one who’d sworn he’d told me the truth.

“Besides,” Timo went on, “Klymene is good in bed.” He paused. “She’s really good.”

“Oh?” I said, deeply interested. “What does she do?” Then it occurred to me Diotima might not approve that line of questioning, so before he could answer, I said, “You’re going to be really dead if anyone finds out the Games are being blessed by a ritually impure priestess. Timo, why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t want to get Klymene into trouble.”

“So instead you thought it might be a good idea to die?”

“When you put it like that … perhaps I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Or perhaps my friend was more in love than he knew.

“What’s this story about Exelon pulling you and Arakos up in front of him?”

Timo sighed. “It’s true. There was Arakos and me, side by side, in Exelon’s private office. I’ve never been scared of anything, but I was shaking in that room! I thought to myself, this is the Chief Judge. If he wanted, he could find some way to destroy my chances in the Sacred Games. Then, when Exelon announced the
winner of the pankration would wed his daughter, I was almost relieved. It meant my chances in the Games were still good.”

“What about Arakos?”

“I hated him then, knowing he’d been with Klymene.”

“And he hated you.”

“He was insanely jealous.”

“I’ve heard about the accusations of witchcraft at Nemea, Timo.”

“Oh.” He was crestfallen. “It’s not true, Nico. I swear it isn’t.”

“Did you cheat at the Nemean Games?”

“No.”

“Did you kill Arakos?”

“No.”

“After the way you’ve lied to me, is there any reason why I should believe you now?”

Timodemus paused, then hung his head and said, “No.”

I
REPORTED BACK
to Diotima what Exelon had told me. She was in her tent, reading.

She focused on the issue closest to her own heart. “You mean he
allowed
his daughter to have affairs?”

I nodded.

“Why couldn’t I get fathers like that?”

“It’s rather the reverse of our problem, isn’t it?” I paused. “Diotima, is being really good in bed a basis for a marriage?”

“Hmm? How would I know?”

“Thanks a lot!”

“Oh Nico, I didn’t mean it like that.” Diotima put down her scroll. “What I mean is, we have so much more in common than merely sex.”

“
Merely
sex?”

“We have our common work. We get on—mostly. We respect each other. You’re good to me, Nico. You listen to what I say.”

“That’s because you’re right more often than I am,” I admitted.

“You see? How many men would admit that? Why are you asking these questions?”

“You heard Klymene say Timo was the man to see for an orgasm. Later, Timo told me that Klymene is
really good
in bed.”

“Oho!”

“Yes. Of course, their fathers would have to agree.”

“Which as we know all too well isn’t certain.”

“Right. But I wouldn’t want Timo to make a mistake. I don’t know what sort of wife Klymene would make.”

Diotima considered. “She doesn’t seem marriage material at first glance, does she?”

“No, and to top it off, she’s not a … er …”