The Philosopher Kings (24 page)

“I can agree to that,” Father said. “What should it be? Original lyre composition?”

“Any instrument,” Kebes said. “Original composition. I have an instrument you may not have seen.”

I could almost hear Father's sneer. “Who judges this competition?” he asked.

“Four of yours and four of ours,” Kebes said, then he glanced down at me again. “None of our children.”

“Nine judges,” Father countered. “Four of yours, four of ours, and one chosen by lot.”

“Very well,” Kebes said. “And the winner does what they want to the loser, and the loser doesn't stop them?”

“Without a judgment? That's barbaric,” Aristomache put in. There was a muttering of agreement in the crowd. “It's one thing when somebody has been condemned, but we've never done it without that.”

“We're all civilized people,” Kebes said, lying again, and still staring over my head at Father.

“Pytheas has been unhinged since Simmea's death,” Klymene said. I hadn't noticed her there in the crowd. “This is madness. We know the Goodness Group didn't kill her. The ship was in Troy last autumn, nowhere near Kallisti.” She was speaking the truth as she knew it, even about Father being mad.

“I believe that,” Father said. “This isn't about that. It's about what he did to Simmea before he left.” Father didn't ever lie, I realized. He sometimes deliberately said things that could be misinterpreted, but as far as I could see he always told the truth.

“What did you do to Simmea?” Maia asked. She had a soft voice but it sounded hard now.

“Nothing you didn't personally sanction,” Kebes said, looking at her for the first time since he had greeted her. “You chose the partners for the Florentines for the Festival of Hera. You yourself matched me with her.”

Maia made an inarticulate choking sound.

“He raped her,” I said, into the silence, to make it clear, since it seemed nobody else was going to. “She wrote about it.”

Klymene looked shocked. “Is this true?”

Kebes looked at me, then at her. “No. She wanted it. She loved me.” He wanted to believe what he was saying, but he couldn't quite manage it. There was guilt behind his words. I wished everyone could hear it as clearly as I could.

“But there's a written record?” Klymene asked, glancing back at me.

“Whatever she may have said later, she didn't report it as rape at the time,” Kebes said, speaking the whole truth now. “There were procedures, if she had wanted to complain about me. You know that. Did she tell you about this, or are we taking Pytheas's word, and his daughter's? This was all twenty years ago.”

“But Kebes—” Klymene began.

“Matthias,” he interrupted. “That's always been my name.”

She waved this off. “Matthias, then. This contest is insane. Pytheas—”

“We've agreed,” Father said. His hand was still on my shoulder. “He suggested it himself. A musical contest. What could be more civilized?”

“But the consequences—one of you is going to kill the other one!” Klymene sounded appalled.

“That's going to happen anyway,” Father said, gently.

“I could tie you up until we're back on Kallisti,” Klymene said, and she meant it. “You always take too much on yourself, you always put yourself forward, you think you're the best and that gives you the right to do whatever you want, but it doesn't. You're not sane, Pytheas, and I can't let you go ahead with this. It's unjust!”

“It doesn't involve anyone but the two of us,” Father said.

“He has always hated me, it's not the madness of grief,” Kebes said, to the crowd. “But I have proposed this fair contest. It's the best way. The winner to do what they want.” He seemed so sure that he could win. There was a kind of gloating in his voice.

Klymene shook her head. “We want peace and trade with your cities,” she said.

“That can happen without Pytheas or myself being involved,” Kebes said. “We can give assurances. This is a personal matter.” Then he turned to me. “You may not believe me, but your mother and I loved each other. Nobody answered my question, and I have a right to know. Do you have older brothers?”

I didn't believe him. He wasn't lying, he believed what he said, but it was something he had convinced himself of, not the truth. I knew my mother. “I have lots of older brothers, but none of them are your sons,” I said.

“You wouldn't necessarily know. She said she'd give it up to philosophy,” he said, half to himself.

“Simmea didn't have a child after that last festival,” Maia said, forcing her voice out.

Kebes nodded, looking disappointed. He looked at me again. “And what's your name, little girl?”

“Arete,” I said, putting my chin up. I have been embarrassed and teased about my name all my life, but never have I been prouder to declare it than that day. It was like declaring my mother's true allegiance, proclaiming the name she gave me. It encapsulated the choices she had made in her life, her allegiance to philosophy, to Father, to the City, to her own excellence, and mine, and the excellence of the world.

Kebes looked at Father, and back at me. “Arete,” he said, as if he hated the word. It seemed to me that he should have known then and by that alone that he had lost.

 

19

APOLLO

Mortals can be wonderful and maddening and fascinating, and sometimes all three at the same time.

Every single member of the company of the
Excellence
, except my children, came to try to persuade me not to kill Kebes after I won the competition, even dear Ficino and lark-voiced Erinna. None of them doubted that I'd win. I'd been winning musical competitions since the first years of the Republic, after all. They took it utterly for granted. They just didn't want me to kill Kebes afterward. They had different reasons.

Klymene didn't want me to kill Kebes because he had been her friend, and Simmea's friend. She also didn't believe me about the rape. “Even before this you always misjudged him. Exactly what did Simmea write? She never said anything to me about it, and I saw her that night. Can I see it? Do you have it here?”

Maecenas didn't want me to kill Kebes because he wanted to trade with Lucia and Marissa, and he was afraid it would mess up diplomatic relations. “It might just be that we've been conflating Kebes and the Goodness Group all this time, but he really is important to these people, and if you take him out then it'll make everything harder. I appreciate that you want to hurt him for what he did to Simmea. But you can do what you like—it's your choice, eh? You could just beat him up. Break his nose! That would be satisfying. Break a couple of bones if you have to. Or how about if you rape him, if you could bring yourself to? Humiliate him. But leave him alive, eh?”

Ficino didn't want me to kill Kebes because he thought it would be bad for my soul. “You don't want to have that stain on your soul when you go on to your next life. Killing somebody in battle is one thing, but deliberately setting out to kill them for revenge is different. I'm not thinking about Kebes here, Pytheas, I'm thinking about you. Killing him doesn't avenge what he did to Simmea. It won't bring her back, or change what he did. Vengeance isn't justice. You understand that.”

I thought I understood it. I'd taken vengeance before. It certainly isn't justice, or restitution, let alone changing what had happened. I agree that those things would be better, if they were possible. Not even Father can wind back time, though he can wipe it out as if it had never been. But vengeance, inadequate as it may be, is sometimes better than having people get away with what they've done. Kebes was going to go on to a new life, and I sincerely hoped he'd learned something in this one so that he'd do better next time. It was the thought of leaving him alive to enjoy the memory of what he had done to Simmea that was intolerable.

To carry through Ficino's argument, killing Kebes was the best thing I could possibly do for him, for the only part of him that was important, his soul. Kebes had demonstrated over and over again that in this life he would turn away from chances to become his best self. He held tight through everything to his narrow Christianity, his supposed love for Simmea, and most of all his hate for the Masters and the City. He refused reason and justice and excellence. He had turned away from all his opportunities. A new life might give him new chances, with less ingrained intransigence.

Most of the arguments the crew made to me were variants on these three. Erinna was entirely pragmatic, asking what would happen to Arete if they took against us and attacked the ship. Maia was extremely Platonic. She told me that Ikaros had raped her when they'd been setting up the city, but she believed he didn't understand what rape was. She hadn't told anyone because she didn't want to cause trouble, so she understood why Simmea hadn't talked about it.

“When Kebes said I'd personally sanctioned it, I felt as if he'd hit me,” she said. “Those Festivals of Hera. It didn't give the girls any choice. I hadn't thought of it that way.”

“It didn't give the boys any choice either,” I said, remembering that awful time with Klymene. “Sometimes Plato had an idea that seemed good to him, but just doesn't work at all when you try it with actual people.”

“But it was a long time ago, and we
had
sanctioned it—we, the Masters. Me. I had sanctioned it.” Maia was never a coward; she faced her own responsibility squarely. She was pale but she went on. “And Simmea might not have made a complaint because she didn't want everyone to know. But she didn't tell you either. You know that means she didn't want vengeance.” She hesitated, assessing how I was taking it, and then went on. “And Kebes might have learned better since. He seems to be doing good work here. Ikaros understands now. I have forgiven him.”

This was the one argument that made me hesitate.
I
had learned better since Daphne had turned into a tree. I hadn't understood what was happening with Daphne. Kebes gave every sign of failing to understand what he had done. But he wasn't sorry. He had hurt her and gone on when she asked him to stop, and afterward he had insulted her. Now he seemed to have deluded himself again into believing, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that she was really his. He had named his city after her. He had insisted on knowing whether she'd had a child. He said she loved him. He kept on claiming her, over and over, when in fact she was … her own. (And, yes, all right, mine, but mine because she wanted to be. One of the reasons I hated Kebes was because he was my dark and twisted mirror, and forced me to confront these things. I do try to be just and pursue excellence.)

I struggled to say some of this to Maia. “He didn't sound as if he has learned better. He wasn't acting as if he believed she had equal significance and was her own self. He thought he owned her. She wrote that he said that to her at the time, and I believe from what he said today that he still thinks that.”

“But Pytheas, do you truly think it's just to kill him for thinking that?”

“What is justice, Maia? It took Plato ten books, and it's taking us decades, and none of us has a proper answer.”

I don't know what she would have replied, because at that moment Ismene came up, and with her my son. He looked like me, and like his brothers. He was much taller than his mother. She was still pretty. I had never known her well. “Joy to you, Ismene,” I said. Maia turned to greet her.

“This is Fabius,” she said, presenting the boy. He wished me joy gruffly, not knowing where to look. I looked at him, almost as much at a loss. I had met sons before who had been strangers, but they had always known who I was. Should I tell this boy he had a heroic soul? How could I, in front of Maia and his mother? And what could he make of the information in any case? He might not even believe me. It seemed kinder to leave him to make what he could of himself. So we had a limping uncomfortable conversation, and after a little while he and his mother went away together.

“Another son,” Maia said, watching them go.

“I can't do anything for that one,” I said.

“Oh Pytheas, do you really think you might lose tomorrow?”

“That's for the gods,” I said. “Are you thinking of going to talk to Kebes to urge him not to kill me if he wins?”

“Yes,” she said, biting her lip. “But as he hates me just as much as he hates you, I can't imagine it doing much good.”

At sunset Arete insisted everyone leave me to rest before the competition, and she and the boys and I walked off up the beach. She had brought food from the city, roast lamb with herbs and colored eggs for Easter, but wise Neleus had brought dried meat and raisins from the ship which he shared with me. I had brought a jar of wine. We built a fire of driftwood and sat down by it

“You're not accepting their hospitality, then?” Arete said. “I thought not.”

“They'll forget the name Lucia,” I said. “This place was called Mithymna.” The sun was sliding into the sea before us, lighting the clouds a thousand shades of red and violet and gold. I looked along the curve of the hill where the moon, two days past full, was due to rise. I opened the wine and took a sip. Neat, it was as sweet as honey, and as strong. I handed it to Kallikles, who was on my right.

Arete looked sideways at Neleus. “I can tell when people are telling the truth,” she said.

Kallikles and Phaedrus looked interested. Neleus grunted, taking the wine. “Useful ability,” I said, carefully.

“Kebes thought he might well win,” she said.

“I noticed that,” I said. “Interesting, isn't it? He was never known for his musical ability. But he didn't act as if he was committing suicide, and the Lucians in the crowd didn't act that way either. He said he had a new instrument. I wonder what it is?”